Yo!

by Julia Alvarez

  “But you do not add any meat,” Sergio noted after she explained what a stir-fry was. If the lady gave him just a little entryway, he would suggest that adding meat might put some flesh on her bones.

  “Never,” she said, watching him, her eyes crinkling with laughter. “You probably think it’s crazy, don’t you, a vegetarian diet?”

  “If I may say so,” Sergio began, but then it seemed a too forward thing to say.

  As they walked up the long drive towards the house, Sergio noted that the hedges needed trimming again. But the lady did not seem to notice the straggly branches.

  “I’ll tell you what, Sergio,” she was saying. “I’m going to show you what a good meal you can have without meat. I’ll make you and Elena and your families one of my famous stir-fries. No, no, no, don’t refuse me or I’ll get insulted. Do you have any plans for tonight?”

  “Plans?” Sergio asked.

  “Can you come for dinner tonight?”

  “Mi mujer,” Sergio began, “she is coming this afternoon with the two boys to give you her salutations.”

  “Great! Then, it’s set. Tell Elena to bring her family, too. We’ll have a party. The kids can all have a swim before supper.”

  Sergio did not know how to tell her without sounding as if he were contradicting her wishes. “My boys,” he began, turning his hat around and around in his hands, “I do not want them near the pool. They do not know how to swim.”

  The lady seemed surprised, and then determined like the American missionaries that mounted their revivals in the center of town and gave out sacks of rice to those who said Christ was their personal savior. “They definitely should learn how to swim,” she proclaimed. “I’m going to teach them—it’s something they should know, living so near a river and all. I mean, don’t you think so?”

  “You are the one who knows,” he said quietly even though she had asked him not to say so.

  Sergio was sitting with the children under the shade of the samán tree when Porfirio arrived. The lady had let him go early. The afternoon had been so wickedly hot, it would not do for him to water the plants as the air soaked the moisture right up. “It’s going to be a long hot night tonight,” Porfirio noted. “Maybe we should all jump in the pool with the lady?”

  Sergio hushed him, looking over his shoulder to make sure the women were not within earshot. He had yet to mention the swimming lessons to María. Surely, when the lady saw the children all dressed up, she would not persist in her mission. Still, she had a will that was hard to bend once she made up her mind. To this day she was sleeping on a mattress on the floor of the tower room despite the mosquitoes helping themselves to the little there was of her to feast on.

  Inside the house, Sergio could hear the women giggling like girls as they dressed.

  “I’m not appearing with you in mourning. No, señora,” Elena was saying. “Today you leave that behind you.” Indeed when the women finally joined them outside, María was wearing her favorite blue dress from the last child’s baptism.

  Sergio whistled. Then he called out the compliment he usually saved for their private moments, “¡Cuántas curvas y yo sin freno!”

  “So many curves and my brakes are shot!” his oldest boy shouted, imitating his father.

  María lifted her head proudly. “Are we to go or are we to stand here and hear the roosters crowing?” Her hands were on her hips. But her mock scowl could not hide the pleasure on her face.

  As they left her yard, María felt a tightening in her gut. She had not been back on Don Mundín’s property since that dark day. Even when Doña Gabriela had sent for her before the funeral, María had refused to set foot in the house, and the patrona had had to come see María instead.

  “I am also a mother. I understand how you feel,” the patrona had said. She was so trim in her cream linen suit, it was hard to believe she had borne children. Perhaps she would get dirty just standing on the dirt floor of the hut. María had not said a word, but she had accepted the envelope of money that was handed to her. “For the funeral,” the patrona had said. Of course there had been quite a surplus beyond the funeral costs, and with that surplus, Sergio had rebuilt the wooden house with concrete blocks and poured a cement floor on the ground. But on that day, when the lady had stepped out of the house into the waiting car, María had spit on the ground those high heels had marked.

  “I wonder what the doña will cook?” she asked Elena, so as to keep such thoughts out of her head.

  “She will tell you not to call her doña,” Elena coached her sister-in-law. “She says that she is just to be called Yolanda.”

  “I cannot get used to it,” Sergio admitted.

  “Every time I prepare to say, Yolanda, I look at her, so white and sorry-looking, and all I can get out is Doña Yolanda.” Elena was shaking her head and laughing.

  “I will call her Yolanda,” one of María’s boys piped up.

  “Yolanda! Yolanda!” the children chorused.

  “You little nothing, you be fresh to the lady and I’ll show you what a guayaba branch is good for,” María scolded.

  The women took the hands of the youngest children. It was like a wake, the whole family dressed up and marching down the streets of the village in the late afternoon. All that was missing was the little box decked with flowers and, of course, the cries of the mother.

  The lady came down the stepping-stone path from the pool, her arms held out in welcome. She wore a white jersey dress with dark patches where her wet bathing suit had soaked through. María was surprised by how small and fragile she looked. There was a blue aura around her head that meant that she herself was feeling a great sadness. María wondered if she had lost a child, too. According to Elena, the lady was unmarried and had never had any children. But perhaps in her youth, who knows? Many were the women who came to María wanting to get a child out of their womb. But that was one job María would not do. Not since the death of her son.

  “You must be María,” the lady began.

  “I am at your orders.” María bowed her head, not out of obedience, but because she did not want the lady to see the glint of defiance in her eye.

  But it was as if the lady had read her thoughts. “No, no, no, you are not at my orders”—she was shaking her head—“I don’t give orders!” And then, most surprisingly, the lady threw her arm around María’s shoulders. That is why minutes later when she offered to give the boys a swimming lesson, María hesitated, and then taking a deep breath as if she herself were going to plunge into the water, María said yes.

  “But you boys better mind whatever the doña says or she will give you a sound beating!” María whipped her fingers together in the air.

  “No, no, no,” the lady protested again. “I don’t hit children.”

  Certainly, she had made a lot of promesas—no orders, no meat, no whipping of children. Perhaps she, too, was marked at birth by the santos? According to Sergio and Elena, the lady shut herself in the tower room all day, only coming out in the afternoon to nibble at some insignificance in the kitchen and then to wander through town talking to the villagers as if everyone were a relation of hers. María recalled that first night she spotted the lady up in the tower room, poised at a table as if she, too, were listening for voices in the silence.

  With the lady’s permission, María found some old swimming shorts that belonged to Don Mundín’s children. But when the lady tried convincing her to join them by the side of the pool, María refused, pleading dizziness from having caught too much sun this hot day. Waiting in the kitchen, however, was proving to be unbearable. Every time María heard a scream, her mother’s heart skipped a beat or two.

  To calm herself, she wandered through the downstairs rooms. Elena had certainly let the place go. There were dust balls in every corner, and Doña Gabriela’s fancy glasses were out of the cabinet, put to everyday use. On the long, flowered couch, the cushions were annoyingly jumbled. María arranged them in a symmetrical way and slowly began climbing up the
stairs, curious to see what had become of each of the rooms. Through the window on the first landing, the lady’s voice came up from the garden, coaching one of the children. “Just let yourself fall back, go on. I’ll hold you. I promise.”

  In the tower room, María found the bed, as Sergio had described it, lying on the floor under the eastern windows. She would have talked the lady out of such foolishness! A table was wedged into the corner, and on it lay a notebook scribbled with unrecognizable words. The sun was coming in through the western windows and the whole room glowed with light, so that standing there, María felt as if her santos were descending. An old ache traveled down her back just as when she used to ride her baby boy on her shoulders. “Ay, Dios santo,” she whispered, looking up, but the setting sun blinded her, and for seconds she saw nothing at all.

  To recover her vision, she shaded her eyes and looked down at the village below. There was the mayor’s house, the mangy dog tied to the mango tree; the old woman Consuelo was sweeping her yard; and there was her own yellow house with the samán tree in front (she had forgotten to shut the back door!), the zinc roof Sergio had gotten for free by letting the Montecarlo people paint their ad on it—the sight stunned her as if she had never seen her spot on this earth before. From the pool, the happy cries of her own and Elena’s children rose up, and then the voice she had been waiting for came through, clear as a bell from the tiny chapel below. “Mamá!” he was shouting, “Mamá, come and see how I can float!”

  The best friend

  motivation

  Now that we’re best friends, I hardly remember a time when I didn’t know Yolanda García. I have to go back to that first year after my marriage fell apart and enter a peach-colored room where Brett Moore has gathered a group of us together to talk about the muse. That’s what she has told us the group is going to focus on since all of us in there are writers or painters or musicians—and all of us are going through some sort of block.

  We have our work cut out for us, Brett says, rolling up the sleeves of her plaid flannel shirt. Brett affects country manners with her clients—I think she thinks it makes them feel they’re not in therapy but at a dude ranch with Brett, their cowgirl shrink, ready to rope in their neuroses and problems and brand them with names, Self-Destructive Behavior, Panic Disorder, Weak Ego Formation. Anyhow, our work, according to Brett, who has invited each one of us to join, is to track down our silences to their sources.

  We will meet Thursday afternoons for a year, and we will all come to the same thing. At the back of every blank canvas, empty notebook, tin-ear composition book is an ex-husband or soon-to-be ex-husband or a bad lover or an unresponsive lover. Not that we’re blaming these guys. In fact, Brett says, blaming them would be relinquishing control of our silence as we have relinquished control of our lives. Take charge, gals! she exhorts us. Anyhow, though we originally gathered together to make contact with our muses, what we end up doing is talking about the men in our lives.

  Every one of us in that group is living out some unpleasant and, hopefully, temporary man situation. There is a woman named—well, I shouldn’t really give names, we’ve promised each other that much. Anyhow, there is a woman who keeps divorcing and remarrying the same man—I think they’ve gone through this routine three times. Another woman has a lover who disappears periodically—she doesn’t know where he goes. She’s afraid maybe he’s murdering women in some other state, or something. “Then, why keep on seeing him?” we ask her.

  “He’s not trying to murder me,” she defends herself.

  There is a woman who has married a politician who is gay but needs a cover-up relationship. Believe me, none of us are going to vote for him in the next election! There are four other women going through wretched divorces, and we get to hear all about them. This actually helps me feel better, knowing I’m not the only woman who can pick the worst husband for herself. Pete’s a sneak and a bully, that’s the only way to put it. And it’s amazing I’ve come out of this marriage with a full set of teeth, some self-esteem, and a healthy appetite for sex. I won’t say more. After all, he is the father of my two wonderful boys.

  Then there’s Brett Moore herself, marching us forward, cracking the whip. Brett is out-and-out gay—short, curly red hair, hair with chutzpah, I call it, which she usually covers up with one of her incredible collection of cowboy hats. They hang on one wall of her office under a poster that shows a woman being thrown by a bronco. EVEN COWGIRLS GET THE BLUES, it reads. She has a long-term lover, whom she calls a partner, and two kids from an earlier marriage before—as she puts it—“I knew better.” Sometimes I wonder if there isn’t a hidden agenda behind Brett’s starting this whole group thing. Like maybe Brett thinks we should cross over and try our happiness with women for a while. I’m just guessing. But she isn’t going to convince me. For the first time ever, I’m having a sex life like you wouldn’t believe. In fact, Brett has suggested—whirling that bighorn lasso diagnosis—that I might be a borderline nymphomaniac.

  But you got to take old Brett with a hunk of salt. Like I tell Yo, “I knew her before she was gay, when she was still wearing skirts and hot-combing her hair like the rest of us.” I also knew Brett before she became a shrink, when we were both teaching at that alternative college that has since gone under. As for my being a borderline anything, the only guys I’m seeing are an Israeli guy who fixed my shower and a political activist who just got divorced himself. Oh yes, I guess there’s also a computer programmer I met at contra dancing. Personally, I don’t think three men with the emotional maturity, combined, of my two boys is overdoing it. Besides, I’m making up for lost time. In my forty-four years all I ever got was a buss on the lips from my high school steady, periodic goosings from my Uncle Asa, and lots of heartache from an abusive husband.

  Yolanda is the group’s “straight man,” if that makes any sense. I mean, whereas the rest of us are tussling with men in some way, she has opted for celibacy, which doesn’t make a bit of sense to me. She’s thirty-five years old, good-looking, with a skinny bod the rest of us would die for. She can have any man from the small pool of decent available guys around and maybe even some from the unavailable ones who are out cruising the single scene. There’s even this guy who’s followed her around since college, mad for her. And she’s going to hang up her sneakers and not play ball? Come on.

  I suppose I should be glad—one less pretty face around, and so on. But for some reason, Yo’s decision bugs me. Maybe it’s my need for neatness. (I’m a Virgo all right.) I want to sort the world into male and female, and here’s someone telling me that she’s asexual. I suppose if I’d grown up Catholic, I’d be used to this third category, what with nuns and priests. But I grew up Jewish near Jones Beach and even as a little kid, I saw the men and women in my family holding, fondling, nuzzling, enjoying, yeah, even goosing each other. It’s a wonder I married a goy from Boston whose idea of good sex was leaving the lights on.

  Seems like I keep trying to talk Yolanda into getting her feet—among other things—wet again. Her first marriage doesn’t even count—I mean, it lasted all of about eight months. Her second divorce is already five years old and it wasn’t mean or anything. Her ex was some big-wig Englishman whom she was actually very fond of. According to her, it was as if they were both like moms on the first day of school, saying to their kids, I’ll stay as long as you want me to. It took them several years to finally get the divorce. “So what was wrong with him?” the group asks.

  “Nothing was wrong with him really.” She gives us all an indignant look like how dare we criticize her ex. “I mean, he thought writing was eating your own head, yeah, that’s what he called it, and he kept telling me that I had to get hold of myself, stuff like that.” She looks up at us, hoping that’s enough. And I’m thinking, compared to being punched out, what you had there was a good marriage. But then everyone tells me I settle for a lot less than I deserve. Deserve-schmaserve. It’s not like we’re being matched up by merit, or something.

 
; Anyhow, all the time I’m trying to talk her into rebounding in one direction, old Brett is working on her to go in the opposite direction: has Yo ever considered that maybe what she is calling asexuality is really a revamping of her sexual orientation? It’s like Brett and I are those two mothers in the Bible who want King Solomon to decide who’s going to get the baby. But to tell you the truth, I don’t care which way Yo goes, I just want her to make a choice for the simple reason that the road has come to a T: she is not happy.

  “‘Everybody needs somebody,’” I hum for her when we get together for dinner. Over the course of the year, we’ve become good friends outside the group. Even though I am nine years older, we do have a lot in common. We’re both writers—and more importantly, she likes my poetry, I like her poetry; we both teach, and she’s got something I need, free babysitting. Oh, I don’t want it to sound like I’m using her, but Yo actually asked me if she could spend some time with my boys since it doesn’t look like she’s ever going to have any kids of her own.

  “Of course, you’re not,” I say, shaking my head at her. “But then maybe your Catholic mami never got to the part about having to have sex if you wanna have babies.”

  She gives me a withering look. “You know, Tammy, ever since you started dating what’s-his-face—” she calls all my men that—“your sense of humor has gone into the negative numbers.”

  “At least I’ve got one to start with,” I say.

  At this dinner we’re discussing this date Yo doesn’t want to go on. It’s actually not even a real date. This rich guy who owns a very ritzy gardening magazine published locally, Tillersmith—I mean gardening-for-people-with-gardeners type thing—started talking to Yo at the nursery and somewhere in there she tells him how she misses seeing plants from her native Dominican Republic, and so this guy asks her over to see his greenhouse where he grows orchids and bromeliads, and now she is having a panic attack.