You acted like God, Amanda. I acted like a man should.
“Chato! How do you like the land? Practically given to you! Look, just to the south of here, you can set up irrigation ditches and…”
“It’s desert.”
“Excuse my laughter, but what did you expect for the few pennies you’ve given me?”
“I’ve given you everything I’m worth…without being castrated.”
“And I’ve given you what you’re worth, my friend. Desert!”
Chato sees himself surrounded by people who thicken like nervous ants as he brings Don Joaquín in. Mouths first murmur sentences, now shout words, while the cool bursts of breeze gently dry the drooling saliva from the dying man. The voices follow them to Chato’s porch. After the doctor leaves, Amanda Márquez prays near Don Joaquín. Chato has surrendered his bed and his wife to this man, and he sits quietly on a crate viewing the mountains from the next room. He turns to his wife, who holds a heavy rosary, then returns to the mountains, where into a blissful sleep he can see his heart smiling.
He remembers his heart smiling.
He remembers his mother’s crumbling voice calling for him: “Chato.” The word with no emphasis, just an empty “Chato” almost cursed, her son the runt boy who learned to hoe the land at three and could sing passionate corridos about men impoverished by love, men scorned or continuously intoxicated, like the clown who was the proprietor of the yearly event in the village, the carousel with its bells and rings enticing all the filthy children to steal, beg, hunt for centavos to hop on the painted wooden horses going nowhere but making little ragged puffed-cheeked children cheer and laugh for three minutes like they were kings, landowners, savoring every morsel of the carousel’s delight, proud of their majestic selves for three minutes until the carousel slowed to a stop and then the children cherished the memory beneath their fast-pacing hearts…hungrier.
And “Chato” was the soft breath of Amanda Márquez at the tender age of fourteen whispering penetration, and the moon was her first gift to him, gleaming raw that night when he presented himself to her family, telling them that his love would make up for her lack of it, and hearing her father laugh at him with a laugh that comes from deep inside saying “She’s a jewel,” grabbing her by the arm and laughing out loud knowing how ugly she was, but only to her family because Chato loved her so much that he bought her a small carousel to keep in the new house he would build for her, and he also promised her father (while she looked on in amazement at the carousel he held in one hand and the two red apples he held in the other) that he, Chato, would be as virile as the land he would buy. But all her father did was laugh at him, his virility, his dream, with a laugh that locked itself somewhere inside Chato; laughed that same, heavy boisterous laugh Don Joaquín laughed just before he, Chato, struck him with a knife, cutting him like butter. He was so soft, this man whom Amanda hated for no reason at all except she kept saying to the dying man, you told him, you told him, and Chato watched her as she prayed for him, and when she lifted herself up from kneeling, he watched her float into the next room where he, Chato, sat, going outside with an empty jar to where the heat had transformed the garbage into tireless maggots. And Chato wanted to stop her, wanted to ask Why are you doing this, watching her come inside the house, like an apparition, going over to where Don Joaquín was breathing heavily, and with her filthy hands Chato watched her force open the newly mended wound and he can almost hear the delicate tearing of each stitch plucking one by one, seeing her, his wife, Amanda, crazy with hate, put the bigger worms in his body to let him rot before his death, watching her replace the gauze neatly, then kneeling to pray once again for this man Don Joaquín, and the carousel is quiet in his heart.
II
“The cock will pluck the hen tonight.”
“Ah, Chato, my friend, how many sons will you sire? Five? Six? Can you even father one, you son of a bitch!”
“She is big-hipped. She will carry many children.”
“Always stand up. That way you won’t get pregnant. Look at me, only seven!!”
“Full-moon children are born with horns.”
“Let’s see you kiss the bride.”
“…then I took off my pants and I told her, ‘Now you put them on,’ and she did. Then I said, ‘See! The pants fit me, not you. Don’t forget that it’s me who wears them…’”
Only with an escaping nervous laugh did she open her mouth to reveal slightly enlarged gums. And Amanda was nervous. And excited. And frightened by the new arrangement, this idea of marriage. Her family called her wild, like the jackrabbits, timid, not strong, but strong-willed, and none expected her to marry. But married she was to a stranger nearly twice her age.
In one breath she drifted from the priest, with his matrimonial rosary chains linking them together until death, to the reception where the neighborhood men with their ribboned guitars played music that jumped with dance steps and where she smeared her dress with chile, to finally her husband’s crusty rooms.
The rooms were humid until she started the fire. With a stove, table, two chairs, shelves and the bed she sat on, it was a house not yet a home and her duty was made clear by the light of the fire burning. Amanda heard the hoofs of his horse, then the creak from the saddle seating a man heavy with drink. She heard his spurs reach the wooden porch; an unsteady pace. The pace receded and became cushioned with distance as he reached the end of the porch, louder as he approached the door, then receded again. Finally, the pacing stopped and she heard him strike a match, imagining him lighting his cigar. She jumped from the bed when the door swung open. He stood there, immobile. To the back of him lay the dry, cold flatlands, thin with hunger. In front of him stood Amanda, frightened, pure, her skin brown and rich like the fertile soil, like the fruitful earth should be, his heartland, only hope, now his wife, amidst the warmth of the fire.
His hand was like ice on her budding breasts, and he pinched her nipples gently. Amanda was terrified. Unable to move, mesmerized by the sensation of his fingers, she closed her eyes and tried to imagine death. The pain was too great, her mother said, she must bear it, clench your teeth, children are made by pain, her mother said, children are born by pain, but she felt the softness of lips touch the sides of her body, as soft as a cat’s walk. That night he said her name a thousand times without sounds, probing her until his fingers were lost somewhere in maiden hair. The storm came as a surprise, the tropical rainfall between her legs, then he came hard and wet, with a grunt close to her ear.
Amanda lay there thinking of the moistness, the itch. He finally turned away to sleep, and she thought, so this is love, reaching down to contact her undiscovered island which Chato had just claimed as his own. She brought her moistened fingers up to her nose. So this, she thought, was the smell of love. Raising the same hand up to the moonlight, she spotted red fingers. The moon was red. She woke Chato.
“Chato,” she said, “I’m no longer a child. Look.” She held her hand for him to see.
“You’re still a child,” he said, “but one that can bear children.”
God didn’t listen to me, and neither did you, Chato. You are as guilty as I am.
“Anita, the young couple, they have been married for three months with no word of children.”
“Comadre, the first three months of a child are quiet ones. She is probably on her fourth month now.”
“If that is so, Anita, then tell me why she is visiting Don Serafín, God help him? She is dry, that’s why! What sadness. So young, so useless.”
“What’s this? Visits with the devil himself? May God in heaven save us all. When did you hear of this?”
“I…well…the curtains are thin in the confessional booths.”
“God save us, you heard Amanda’s sins, Comadre?”
“How could I help it, Anita, I was next in line?”
“May God forgive you for listening. What did the jackrabbit say? Comes to Church only when she needs God’s help.”
“Only this:
something about problems, something about corn-silk tea, something about Don Serafín. Then, Señora Ramírez enters carrying her youngest, and for no reason the child begins screaming like a soul in hell. I couldn’t hear another word.”
“So young, so useless. And to think your daughter would have been just right for Chato.”
“So young. But she doesn’t have half the problems Señora Ramírez has, you know, married to a drunk and all…”
Amanda saw the two women cackling on the front steps of the church. She had lit two candles for the Holy Virgin and she came out just in time to see the two stop and stare at her. She bowed out of custom to them and began her half-mile walk towards her house, hoping to get there before the deep dark. She walked quickly, recognizing the different houses and paths. When she passed the great white house, she saw Don Joaquín sitting on the porch with bare feet. Were he not living alone at the time, the barking of the dogs would have awakened the household. He saw her small image and waved for her to come in. Amanda, wrapped in her rebozo, quickly walked away, disappearing like the dreams he often had of her. As he lay down, Don Joaquín promised himself he would have to see her again.
She remembered. It is so hard being female, Amanda, and you must understand that that is the way it was meant to be, said the priest in the confessional. But this is pain, Father, to sprout a child that we can’t feed or care for. Pray, pray, pray, said the priest, but what is a poor Amanda to do? The moon has hidden its face many times and I still have yet to bleed. Dried orange peels, and even corn-silk tea, will stir the blood to flow, said Don Serafín. Each morning I wait. Just drink the tea, drink it.
Each morning is drearier than the last. To awake and feel something inside draining you. Lying on my back, I can almost see where all my energy is going, below my navel, where my hair stops. It will be soon, he said. I stroke it to calm its hunger, but it won’t be satisfied until it gets all of me. Then he wants me. Amanda, Amanda, I love to hold you, to love you, said Chato. He likes mornings. I lie there rubbing my belly while he kneads my breasts. I know what he wants and I hide the sickness from him. But Father, wasn’t He supposed to take care of us, His poor? When you lie together, it is for creating children, said the priest. You have sinned, pray. Sex is the only free pleasure we have. It makes us feel like clouds for the minutes that not even you can prevent. You ask us not to lie together, but we are not made of you, we are not gods. You, God, eating and drinking as you like, you, there, not feeling the sweat or the pests that feed on the skin, you sitting with a kingly lust for comfort, tell us that we will be paid later on in death. Amanda, Amanda, I love you, said Chato. Listen to me, condemn me to hell, to this life, to anything, but please, please, let me not be pregnant. It will be soon.
“You make me crazy. Get up! Look at your dress. Howling like a coyote!”
She trembled with misery as he led her into the house. The kitchen was dark except for one candle on the table which flickered their phantom images on the walls. She sat, staring into the candle while he prepared some herbs and water. Numbly, she opened her mouth slowly with each teaspoon he fed her.
“The moon’s face is hidden again,” she said between teaspoons, still looking at the candle as her tears rolled down like the melted wax along the candlestick. Beads of sweat formed on his face. Why is it that he could never understand her? The moon’s face is hidden? She sees it. I see it, but I find her howling like a coyote, fighting in the dirt. At what? The faceless moon? What the devil is happening to you? What is causing you so much pain?
He watched her turn into a hurricane in the darkness. She threw up the meal she could not afford to, shattered dishes, and overturned the small kitchen table. Winded, she collapsed on the floor, sobbing until her eyes were swollen.
As confused and afraid as he was when he first held a rabbit, he held her. She was carried into the next room where she was gently laid on the bed, strands of hair removed from her face, and a blanket thrown over her trembling body. She heard him fumbling through some boxes in the closet and she turned to find him holding the carousel.
“Children die like crops here,” she said. But he could not hear her, for the bells of carousel music came forth sounding like an orchestra in the silence of the night.
III
He watched her breasts quiver each time she wiped the small creaky tables around him, and he viewed them with slow admiration. Don Joaquín was alone, except for her, in the one-room cantina where the wooden floor planks were covered with dust, and drank mescal from a clay mug, swallowing the stinging clear liquor fast. He pounded his empty mug on the table, startling her, he enjoying her fright, her breasts quivering as she scrambled over to the bar and returned to his table, flicking her long hair over her shoulder.
The woman felt his blurry red eyes burn holes into her skin and she thought, You lonely, lonely coward; if you need a woman, marry a local, share your money. She noticed his beard speckled with grey and thought, Or drink your nights and what’s left of your youth away.
At first he pictured himself feeling her bare hips, suckling those delicious breasts, but now, while she stood there pouring the mescal, he hated the woman because she was dull like worn bronze. Her hair, her face, especially her eyes, reflected the sameness of everyday, the waste—and he hated. Before, he was comforted with books, but here, people were puzzled with his words, his knowledge. Later, he turned to women. Now he was content to drink.
Don Joaquín puffed on his second cigar while playing with a splinter from a table which bit into his finger and caused blood beads. I’ll be damned, he muttered, bringing his finger closer, and he wedged out the splinter with the point of his knife. With one last gulp he finished the mescal and listened, his hand still cupping the mug, to the cushioned sounds of dogs barking at the men walking home from the fields. Don’t you get tired of eating the dust that belongs to someone else’s land? he thought. The slow burn of the evening sun created a slab of light on the table where he sat watching the men proceed home, their shadow passing the window. His finger bled. Of going home to dull-eyed wives and filthy, ignorant children that look just like you?
“Señor,” the woman said, “your finger. It bleeds. Put this, like this, around it.” She handed him a handkerchief with her initials, and he recognized the design and touched the embroidery lightly. “Señora Márquez. She makes beautiful handkerchiefs, pillow cases, scarves, just you ask her,” the woman said, watching him, he silent. The clang of a single bell signaled the beginning of evening Mass, and soon the light slab on the table melted into the approaching night. His legs were outstretched and crossed at the ankles, his cigar burning a dark spot on the edge of the table. The woman still watched him, from the bar now, as he gazed into the graying horizon. He is not here, she thought. Perhaps he is in the rich valleys of Zacatecas, running through the green fields as a boy. Or is this rich son in colleges up north, states united? This man, he can return to those places anytime, but why always return here, to drink and burn my tables?
As Don Joaquín got up to leave, he asked the woman her name.
“Does it matter?” she asked.
“No. I guess not,” he replied. Don Joaquín staggered to his horse, burping the liquor. The mass was over and he saw two women on the church steps talking as he heaved onto the saddle. When he reached the porch of his home, he fell. The dogs licked his face while he sat on the steps, his hand slipping several times before he was able to remove his boots. He thought he had first imagined her, but when the dogs began barking, he knew it was her and he waved for her to come. Amanda, wrapped in her rebozo, quickly walked away, disappearing—like the dreams he often had of her. As he lay down, Don Joaquín promised himself he would have to see her again.
Mouths first murmur sentences, now shout words. Liberator, they call him as he brings Don Joaquín in while the cool bursts of breeze gently dry the drooling saliva from the dying man.
Right before the dawning, the kitchen fires glowed from the window across the village. The women
woke first to prepare tacos of tortillas and beans wrapped in cloth for lunch. Then the men woke, groggy, achey, quietly eating their tortilla and salt, with or without chile. Their lunch in one hand, their tools in the other, they walked to the fields, the older ones with their skin of leather and maps of age on their faces; the younger ones, like Chato, hopeful still, not yet resigned. And they talked, these vague images of men at dawn. They talked in low voices about a thing going on beyond their village, a revolution. There was a plan, a young one said, by some indio, to divide the lands and give it to landless people. Does that mean the death of the likes of Don Joaquín? asked an older one, his voice crumbling. Talk, all talk, Chato thought. He had finally saved enough to pay down on a piece of land, and he saved every penny because he did not believe in talk, or the revolution, or for that matter, God.
The voices follow them to Chato’s porch. The revolutionary, they say, the honorable liberator of the village. The mountains will be your home now.
At midday, Don Joaquín inspected the progression of work from a hill overlooking the fields. He could barely see the workers eating gathered together under a tree. He remembered the woman in the cantina. No. It really didn’t matter that he knew her name, and it really didn’t matter that he knew the workers’ names. They were all the same. He signaled to the foreman with a whistle. Nothing really mattered much. After giving instructions, he rode off to the cantina, the foreman watching the clouds of dust carried away by the breeze.
You told him, you told him, she kept telling the dying man, holding the heavy rosary and praying for his death.
The woman swore at the misfortune of him coming through the doors of the cantina, and she handed him the mug of mescal before he went to his usual table near the window. “Señor,” she said, “you took it, my handkerchief.” And she held out her hand.
The Moths and Other Stories Page 8