“Señorita,” he said, “where does this Señora Márquez live?”
Chato has surrendered his bed and his wife to this dying man, and he sits quietly on a crate viewing the mountains from the next room where into a blissful sleep he can see his heart smiling.
For months, Don Joaquín came to the back door after Chato left to work the fields, ready with comfort, eager to please, rusting Amanda’s soul with sadness a little more each time. It numbed Amanda, this sadness, and she knew she was dying inside for her sins. She had resisted his advances at first, even refusing big sums of money for her embroidery, until one day, right before the full heat of the noon-day sun, she remembered, he ceased his elaborate romantics, the offerings, and guided her hand to his loin, hard like a stone, and he rubbed her hand against it until he eased away, and she realized she was rubbing of her own free will, without his hand and she began to die.
When Don Joaquín pulled up her skirt, she heard the music of the carousel. Chato, she sang to herself, over and over, my lovely Chato, I miss you, your warmth, your scent, your love. Damn you, damn you, forgive and get on with our life, she thought over and over. But it was over; her marriage was over; now her affair with Don Joaquín would soon be over because guilt had grown into a cancer.
Her cheeks were sunken, he noticed, her hand trembled, when she told him goodbye. “As you wish,” he replied without looking at her eyes. “But remember,” pausing, the shock so great, “a dog is meaner when his paw is crushed.” He rode off without stopping to see the progression of the workers, riding straight to the cantina where the woman waited with a mug of mescal, the dust making his eyes water with misery as he rode, his handkerchief crumbled up in his pocket, thinking Adiós, Amanda mía.
IV
The burden laid in carrying the mountain. Whether I travel paths on foot, my callouses as thick as leather, or ride on paved streets in a dirty bus, I have never seen myself moving. Because the mountain was too big for two little hands, one closed heart, too immovable. So finally after the long, long journey, keeping a pocket radio close, the static of the mountain sizzling in my ear, my lone companion except for the handkerchief, I must listen finally to the mountain’s songs and sorrows before the gravel hits my face again. I face the mountain now only to realize—such blindness in me—that the mountain was no bigger than a stone, a stone I could have thrown into the distance where the earth and sky meet, thrown it away at twenty-four, but instead waited fifty-eight years later when Amanda returned, still damned, still grieving, still loving you, on the Day of the Dead, that day when all the veins of memories are pumped with the blood of resurrection so that finally, Amanda, you have returned superior to me and helped me to cast the stone, to bury it, and we will be reconciled for eternity; you and I, our children welcoming us at the entrance of the heartland.
It was a lie; the mountain was a stone; the carousel horse with a glossy silver saddle moving but going nowhere was just wood. Myself as a liberator was also a lie. Shortly after I left you standing on the porch, we both knew I was never returning. You stood there without a word, immovable as the mountain, watching me ride off on a borrowed cloud. Shortly after that I loved you more than when I first saw you standing in my room by the fire, and we both knew then all we ever needed to know. But our neighbors did not. They waved me like a flag of liberation, they watching me as you stood nailing my insides with your eyes, they saying to me, “if not for Pancha and the niños, I’d go fight with you.” Me riding off to a different war, a different journey that was to end here in a city up north, Tejas, California, with tubes in my nose and arms where the federales would not hang me for murder. Maybe. Maybe to escape not from them but from you and your adultery. And yet I could never forget you, Amanda. After I left you, after I left the village, I lived for fifty-eight years but never saw life again. It began when I cheated you, drained you. You, in turn, cheated Don Joaquín. He cheated me and so I killed him. Maybe we were all born cheated. There is no justice, only honor in that little world out in the desert where our house sits like decayed bones. All that can be done is what you have done, Amanda; sit on the porch and weave your threads into time.
Snapshots
Snapshots
It was the small things in life, I admit, that made me happy: ironing straight-arrow creases on Dave’s work khakis, cashing in enough coupons to actually save some money, or having my bus halt just right, so that I don’t have to jump off the curb and crack my kneecap like that poor shoe salesman I read about in Utah. Now, it’s no wonder that I wake mornings and try my damndest not to mimic the movements of ironing or cutting those stupid, dotted lines or slipping into my house shoes, groping for my robe, going to Marge’s room to check if she’s sufficiently covered, scruffling to the kitchen, dumping out the soggy coffee grounds, refilling the pot and only later realizing that the breakfast nook has been set for three, the iron is plugged in, the bargain page is open in front of me and I don’t remember, I mean I really don’t remember doing any of it because I’ve done it for thirty years now and Marge is already married. It kills me, the small things.
Like those balls of wool on the couch. They’re small and senseless, and yet, every time I see them, I want to scream. Since the divorce, Marge brings me balls and balls and balls of wool thread because she insists that I “take up a hobby,” “keep as busy as a bee,” or “make the best of things,” and all that other good-natured advice she probably hears from old folks who answer in such a way when asked how they’ve managed to live so long. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if she walked in one day with bushels of straw for me to weave into baskets. My only response to her endeavors is to give her the hardest stares I know how when she enters the living room, opens up her plastic shopping bag, and brings out another ball of bright-colored wool thread. I never move. Just sit and stare.
“Mother.”
She pronounces the words not as a truth but as an accusation.
“Please, Mother. Knit. Do something.” And then she places the new ball on top of the others on the couch, turns toward the kitchen and leaves. I give her a minute before I look out the window to see her standing on the sidewalk. I stick out my tongue, even make a face, but all she does is stand there with that horrible yellow and black plastic bag against her fat leg and wave good-bye.
Do something, she says. If I had a penny for all the things I have done, all the little details I was responsible for but which amounted to nonsense, I would be rich. But I haven’t a thing to show for it. The human spider gets on prime-time television for climbing a building because its there. Me? How can people believe that I’ve fought against motes of dust for years or dirt attracting floors or perfected bleached-white sheets when a few hours later the motes, the dirt, the stains return to remind me of the uselessness of it all? I missed the sound of swans slicing the lake water or the fluttering wings of wild geese flying south for a warm winter or the heartbeat I could have heard if I had just held Marge a little closer.
I realize all that time is lost now, and I find myself searching for it frantically under the bed where the balls of dust collect undisturbed and untouched, as it should be.
To be quite frank, the fact of the matter is I wish to do nothing but allow indulgence to rush through my veins with frightening speed. I do so because I have never been able to tolerate it in anyone, including myself.
I watch television to my heart’s content now, a thing I rarely did in my younger days. While I was growing up, television had not been invented. Once it was and became a must for every home, Dave saved and saved until we were able to get one. But who had the time? Most of mine was spent working part time as a clerk for Grants, then returning to create a happy home for Dave. This is the way I pictured it:
His wife in the kitchen wearing a freshly ironed apron, stirring a pot of soup, whistling a whistle-while-you-work tune, and preparing frosting for some cupcakes so that when he drove home from work, tired and sweaty, he would enter his castle to find his cherub baby in a pink d
ay suit with newly starched ribbons crawling to him and his wife looking at him with pleasing eyes and offering him a cupcake.
It was a good image I wanted him to have and everyday I almost expected him to stop, put down his lunch pail and cry at the whole scene. If it wasn’t for the burnt cupcakes, my damn varicose veins, and Marge blubbering all over her day suit, it would have made a perfect snapshot.
Snapshots are ghosts. I am told that shortly after women are married, they become addicted to one thing or another. In Reader’s Digest I read stories of closet alcoholic wives who gambled away grocery money or broke into their children’s piggy banks in order to quench their thirst and fill their souls. Unfortunately, I did not become addicted to alcohol because my only encounter with it had left me senseless and with my face in the toilet bowl. After that, I never had the desire to repeat the performance of a senior in high school whose prom date never showed. I did consider my addiction a lot more incurable. I had acquired a habit much more deadly: nostalgia.
I acquired the habit after Marge was born and I had to stay in bed for months because of my varicose veins. I began flipping through my family’s photo albums (my father threw them away after mom’s death) to pass the time and pain away. However, I soon became haunted by the frozen moments and the meaning of memories. Looking at the old photos, I’d get real depressed over my second-grade teacher’s smile or my father’s can of beer or the butt-naked smile of me as a young teen, because every detail, as minute as it may seem, made me feel that so much had passed unnoticed. As a result, I began to convince myself that my best years were up and that I had nothing to look forward to. I was too young and too ignorant to realize that that section of my life relied wholly on those crumbling photographs and my memory, and I probably wasted more time longing for a past that never really existed. Dave eventually packed them up in a wooden crate to keep me from hurting myself. He was good in that way. Like when he clipped roses for me. He made sure the thorns were cut off so I didn’t have to prick myself while putting them in a vase. And it was the same thing with the albums. They stood in the attic for years until I brought them down a day after he remarried.
The photo albums are unraveling and stained with spills and fingerprints and are filled with crinkled faded gray snapshots of people I can’t remember anymore. I turn the pages over and over again to see if somehow, some old dream will come into my blank mind. Like the black and white television box does when I turn it on. It warms up then flashes instant pictures, instant lives, instant people.
Parents. That I know for sure. The woman is tall and long, her plain black dress is over her knees, and she wears thick spongelike shoes. She’s over to the right of the photo, looks straight ahead at the camera. The man wears white baggy pants that go past his waist, thick suspenders. He smiles while holding a dull-faced baby. He points to the camera. His sleeves are pulled up, his tie undone, his hair is messy, as if some wild woman has driven his head between her breasts and ran her fingers into his perfect, greased duck-tail.
My mother always smelled of smoke and vanilla and that is why I stayed away from her. I suppose that is why my father stayed away from her as well. I don’t ever remember a time when I saw them show any sign of affection. Not like today. No sooner do I turn off the soaps when I turn around and catch two youngsters on a porch swing, their mouths open, their lips chewing and chewing as if they were sharing a piece of three-day-old liver. My mom was always one to believe that such passion be restricted to the privacy of one’s house and then, there too, be demonstrated with efficiency and not this urgency I witness almost every day. Dave and I were good about that.
Whenever I saw the vaseline jar on top of Dave’s bed-stand, I made sure the door was locked and the blinds down. This anticipation was more exciting to me than him lifting up my flannel gown over my head, pressing against me, slipping off my underwear then slipping into me. The vaseline came next, then he came right afterwards. In the morning, Dave looked into my eyes and I could never figure out what he expected to find. Eventually, there came a point in our relationship when passion passed to Marge’s generation, and I was somewhat relieved. And yet, I could never imagine Marge doing those types of things that these youngsters do today, though I’m sure she did them on those Sunday afternoons when she carried a blanket and a book and told me she was going to the park to do some reading and returned hours later with the bookmark in the same place. She must have done them, or else how could she have gotten engaged, married, had three children all under my nose, and me still going to check if she’s sufficiently covered?
“Mother?” Marge’s voice from the kitchen. It must be evening. Every morning it’s the ball of wool, every evening it’s dinner. Honestly, she treats me as if I have an incurable heart ailment. She stands under the doorway.
“Mother?” Picture it: She stands under the doorway looking befuddled, as if a movie director instructs her to stand there and look confused and upset; stand there as if you have seen your mother sitting in the same position for the last nine hours.
“What are you doing to yourself?” Marge is definitely not one for originality and she repeats the same lines every day. I’m beginning to think our conversation is coming from discarded scripts. I know the lines by heart, too. She’ll say: “Why do you continue to do this to us?” and I’ll answer: “Do what?” and she’ll say: “This”—-waving her plump, coarse hands over the albums scattered at my feet—-and I’ll say: “Why don’t you go home and leave me alone?” This is the extent of our conversation and usually there is an optional line like: “I brought you something to eat,” or “Let’s have dinner,” or “Come look what I have for you,” or even “I brought you your favorite dish.”
I think of the times, so many times, so many Mother’s Days that passed without so much as a thank you or how sweet you are for giving us thirty years of your life. I know I am to blame. When Marge first started school, she had made a ceramic handprint for me to hang in the kitchen. My hands were so greasy from cutting the fat off some pork chops, I dropped it before I could even unwrap my first Mother’s Day gift. I tried gluing it back together again with flour and water paste, but she never forgave me and I never received another gift until after the divorce. I wonder what happened to the ceramic handprint I gave to my mother?
In the kitchen I see that today my favorite dish is Chinese food getting cold in those little coffin-like containers. Yesterday my favorite dish was a salami sandwich, and before that a half-eaten rib, no doubt left over from Marge’s half-hour lunch. Last week she brought me some Sunday soup that had fish heads floating around in some greenish broth. When I threw it down the sink, all she could think of to say was: “Oh, Mother.”
We eat in silence. Or rather, she eats. I don’t understand how she can take my indifference. I wish that she would break out of her frozen look, jump out of any snapshot and slap me in the face. Do something. Do something. I begin to cry.
“Oh, Mother,” she says, picking up the plates and putting them in the sink.
“Mother, please.”
There’s fingerprints all over this one, my favorite. Both woman and child are clones: same bathing suit, same ponytails, same ribbons. The woman is looking directly at the camera, but the man is busy making a sand castle for his daughter. He doesn’t see the camera or the woman. On the back of this one, in vague pencil scratching, it says: San Juan Capistrano.
This is a bad night. On good nights I avoid familiar spots. On bad nights I am pulled towards them so much so that if I sit on the chair next to Dave’s I begin to cry. On bad nights I can’t sleep, and on bad nights I don’t know who the couples in the snapshots are. My mother and me? Me and Marge? I don’t remember San Juan Capistrano and I don’t remember the woman. She faded into thirty years of trivia. I don’t even remember what I had for dinner, or rather, what Marge had for dinner, just a few hours before. I wrap a blanket around myself and go into the kitchen to search for some evidence, but except for a few crumbs on the table, there is
no indication that Marge was here. Suddenly, I am relieved when I see the box containers in the trash under the sink. I can’t sleep the rest of the night wondering what happened to my ceramic handprint or what was in the boxes. Why can’t I remember? My mind thinks of nothing but those boxes in all shapes and sizes. I wash my face with warm water, put cold cream on, go back to bed, get up and wash my face again. Finally, I decide to call Marge at 3:30 in the morning. The voice is faint and there is static in the distance.
“Yes?” Marge asks automatically.
“Hello,” Marge says. I almost expected her to answer her usual “Dave’s Hardware.”
“Who is this?” Marge is fully awake now.
“What did we…” I ask, wondering why it was suddenly so important for me to know what we had for dinner. “What did you have for dinner?” I am confident that she’ll remember every movement I made or how much salt I put on whatever we ate, or rather, she ate. Marge is good about details.
“Mother?”
“Are you angry that I woke you up?”
“Mother. No. Of course not.”
I could hear some muffled sounds, vague voices, static. I can tell she is covering the mouthpiece with her hand. Finally, George’s voice.
“Mrs. Ruiz,” he says, restraining his words so that they almost come out slurred, “Mrs. Ruiz, why don’t you leave us alone?” and then there is a long buzzing sound. Right next to the vaseline jar are Dave’s cigarettes. I light one though I don’t smoke. I unscrew the jar and use the lid for an ashtray. I wait, staring at the phone until it rings.
“Dave’s Hardware,” I answer. “Don’t you know what time it is?”
“Yes.” It isn’t Marge’s voice. “Why don’t you leave the kids alone?” Dave’s voice is not angry. Groggy, but not angry. After a pause I say:
The Moths and Other Stories Page 9