A Dream Called Home

by Reyna Grande

  “I don’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable,” he said. “I just want to be honest about where things are with me.”

  “I get it,” I said. What I didn’t get was why he was going to the party with me and not her. Where was his girlfriend?

  “She’s in Egypt,” Cory said, as if reading my thoughts. “She’s doing research for her PhD.”

  “That sounds interesting,” I said. “How long have you been together?”

  “Five years. We met in Minnesota when I was in college. Then we both came to UC, Irvine for grad school.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Five years was an eternity. I had never been with anyone longer than ten months. I felt stupid and disappointed as I walked to my classroom.

  Friday night, the day before our winter break began, we made our way to the Radisson Hotel by USC. Throughout the week, I had tried not to get too excited about the evening, but by the time I found myself stuck in traffic with Cory in his Honda, smelling his aftershave, our elbows almost touching, our breaths turning the windows foggy, I let my heart run away to fantasyland again. There were so many qualities I liked about him: his honesty, his frankness, his creativity. I especially loved talking with him about storytelling. Yes, I knew he had a girlfriend, but there was a part of me that hoped that someday, somehow, we could be more than friends. I had always been rather stubborn about my dreams.

  At the party, we ate dinner and enjoyed spending some time with our colleagues outside of work. Soon, the DJ started playing music, and everyone at our table migrated to the dance floor. Cory and I sat at the table alone.

  He smiled at me and said, “Do you want to dance?”

  Our colleagues were dancing the “Funky Chicken,” and there was no way I was going to dance that, so I said to Cory, “Let’s get out of here.”

  “You’re ready to go?” he said, surprised.

  “No. I do want to dance,” I said. “But somewhere else. Come on.” I dragged him to the Latino wedding at the reception hall adjacent to ours. I had taken a peek in there when I had gone to use the restroom earlier in the evening, and I knew that, like most Latino weddings, it was really happening.

  “We’re crashing a wedding?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “They’re playing cumbias, come on. No one will know.”

  Though a six-foot-tall gringo in a sea of brown people sticks out like, well, a six-foot-tall gringo in a sea of brown people, we didn’t get kicked out. I taught him the basic cumbia step, and we danced to La Sonora Tropicana’s “Qué Bello” among complete strangers. The bride and groom were having a great time and so were we. I wanted to congratulate the couple and wish them many years of happiness. Feeling Cory’s hand on my waist, his breath on my hair, the fingers of his other hand intertwined with my own, I wished their good fortune would rub off on me as well.

  When the music changed to quebraditas, a Mexican dance that imitated the taming of wild horses, a dance style beyond Cory’s skills, we ended up retiring from the dance floor and hanging out in the lobby instead. Neither of us was in a rush to leave, so we lounged on the couch and just talked. I told him about my struggles after college, trying to find my way and almost giving up on my writing until I had that nightmare. I told him about overcoming my doubts and fears, the class I took with María Amparo, getting into Emerging Voices, finding my agent.

  “It’s like the universe aligned itself to make it happen for you,” he said.

  He told me about his life in Wisconsin, his student years in St. Paul and Irvine, and the years after graduation when he had headed to Hollywood to pursue a career as a professional actor. “But that kind of life wasn’t for me,” he said.

  “What didn’t you like about it?”

  “I loved the acting, bringing a character to life, but the real job of a professional actor is to be constantly looking for your next job.”

  “Yeah, no kidding,” I said. I sympathized with him because that was exactly how I had felt with my creative writing degree. All I wanted was to write. I had known nothing about the business of writing. But I was hungry. Determined. Without my writing, my life had little meaning. I had been there already—trying to live without my art—and I wasn’t ever going back to that dark place again. Thanks to the Emerging Voices program, I had a finished novel, found an agent, and soon—I hoped—would have a book deal.

  “Are you sorry you walked away from Hollywood?” I asked as we walked back to the car.

  “Sometimes, but when I’m teaching, I feel like the kindest, most patient, best version of myself.”

  I realized then why he was considered one of the best teachers at Fremont. He truly had a passion for it. “They’re lucky to have you,” I said.

  Perhaps Hollywood had lost out on a great actor, but the students at Fremont had gained a great teacher. And selfishly I thought, had Hollywood received him with open arms, our paths would have never crossed.

  Cory went to Wisconsin during Christmas break, and I stayed in L.A., trying not to think about him, but of course, he was on my mind day and night. He has a girlfriend. He’s unavailable. I repeated this again and again, hoping it would sink in.

  I took Nathan to buy a Christmas tree, and we came home with a little one that seemed even smaller and more insignificant as it sat in a corner of my living room full of mismatched thrift-store furniture. Holidays were the worst, especially Christmas, when all I could think about was that I had failed miserably to create a home for myself and my child. I wanted this to be enough—my son, my writing, my house. But something was missing. Love? Companionship? I wanted to deny it. Love is overrated, I would say with cynicism, remembering how my mother had yearned for this very thing and had gone so far as to abandon us in her search for it. But the truth was that like her, I longed for a partner, someone to share my life with. I came to realize what perhaps my mother had also discovered long ago: Just because I was a mother didn’t mean I wasn’t also a woman with needs and desires.

  Reyna and Nathan at Christmas

  But by falling for a white man, was I betraying my people?

  I was like la Malinche! The indigenous woman who aided Hernán Cortés to bring down the Aztec Empire. Malinche, the Mexican Judas. In Mexico, her name stood for treachery and betrayal. In Marta’s Chicano studies class, we had learned Malinche’s side of the story—how she had been sold into slavery by her own family and later was given as a gift to Cortés, as an object for him to use and abuse if he so desired. Instead, she became his translator, advisor, and lover. “Her people betrayed her first,” Marta had declared.

  I liked Cory, but aside from his ethnicity what was really insurmountable was that he was in a committed relationship. I needed to respect that. I told myself that if it was meant to be, then it would be. As Kahlil Gibran had written in The Prophet: “Think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.”

  I hoped that this time, finally, love would find me worthy.

  “Come on, chiquito,” I said to Nathan as we finished decorating our Christmas tree. “Want some hot chocolate and pan dulce?”

  After he fell asleep, I sat in the living room, watching the lights on the tree turn my world blue, green, yellow, and red, and I closed my eyes and pretended Cory and I were dancing cumbias under the disco lights.

  Enough! I told myself.

  I remembered the folklórico performance in Santa Cruz, dancing onstage under the bright lights and how happy I had been. It wasn’t a man who had given me that joy. It was the beauty of the dance. I went to my desk, opened my laptop, and stayed up all night to start a new novel about dancers which I would eventually title Dancing with Butterflies.

  This is what it comes down to.

  The sweat. The blisters on your feet. The aching of your arms from practicing the skirtwork. The hours and hours rehearsing the same song until the music buries itself so deeply in your brain you hear it even in your sleep. The constant need to coax your body to move past the hurt, the frustration,
the exhaustion, and convince it that it can do more . . .

  All that is worth this moment.

  To be up here onstage, bathed in the red, blue, and yellow stage lights. A thousand eyes looking at you, admiring your flawless movements. Your feet seem to float over the floor as you twirl and twirl around and around before jumping into the arms of your partner.

  Applause erupts out of the darkness, and you close your eyes and listen to it, let it envelop you. It gives you strength.

  34

  I RETURNED TO WORK after the holidays, grateful for my students who said “Buenas tardes, maestra. ¿Cómo está?” as I passed them in the hallway. They shook my hand and wished me a Happy New Year. I went into the office and said hello to the staff there, to my administrators, who seemed pleased to see me. “How’s Nathan?” they asked.

  I went to the copy room, where I ran into the teachers and we exchanged stories of our winter break. Then Cory came in to make copies, and I tried to hide how excited I was to see him.

  “How were the holidays for you?” he asked.

  “Great,” I said. “I started a new novel and wrote eighty pages. How about you?”

  He shook his head and said, “You’re so prolific. The only thing I did was put on weight. My mother always welcomes me home with piles of Christmas cookies.”

  I tried to picture his mother, the mountain of treats she had lovingly baked in anticipation of his arrival. I had grown up in a house where we never got treats. My father and stepmother were not big on fulfilling our cravings. Neither Mago, Carlos, nor I had much of a sweet tooth, which we were thankful for. Yet I wondered what it would be like to arrive at your parents’ house and be offered a cookie, a warm cup of milk, a hug, and a smile.

  “Well, at least you got to spend the holidays with your mom,” I said. “So, it’s worth the few extra pounds.”

  “You’re right. It was worth it,” he said. Then it was time to get to class, and just as we parted ways in the hallway, he stopped and said, “Reyna, maybe we can grab lunch sometime this week.”

  “That’d be nice,” I said in a nonchalant voice, and I headed to my class with my heart pounding in my chest.

  He came to pick me up the following Friday. We taught only a morning class that day and there were no evening classes. I debated about whether or not to take Nathan with me. Part of me longed to go out alone, to enjoy my time without a baby in tow, and yet there was another part of me that wanted Cory to see my reality—I was a single mom with a two-year-old. So we went out to lunch with Nathan, and I was nervous the whole time that he might throw a tantrum, that I would lose my patience, that Cory might think I was too much trouble to bother with and did he really want to spend his time with a woman and a toddler?

  But things went smoothly, and Nathan was on his best behavior. After lunch at my favorite Chinese restaurant, we returned to my house and Cory didn’t just drop me off and leave, as I was expecting him to do. Instead, he came in and sat down in the living room. We talked for hours, and he played ball with Nathan in the yard. At some point, he asked me if I had any board games. “Do you like Scrabble?”

  I had never heard of Scrabble. I hadn’t grown up playing board games, except Lotería, Mexican bingo. “I’ve never played it before,” I confessed.

  “We’ll have to play someday,” he said. We talked a little more, about our mothers, our fathers. His parents had divorced when he was three years old, and he had been raised by a single mother until she remarried. Through the years, he hadn’t seen his father very often, just like Nathan rarely saw his dad. What surprised me though was that Cory wasn’t resentful toward his father for not making a bigger effort to be part of his life, whereas I still struggled with my resentment toward my own parents for having left me. Of course, their repeated “abandonments”—emotionally and physically—hadn’t helped me heal from my first traumatic experiences. Cory seemed good at letting go of what he couldn’t control and couldn’t change, focusing instead on living a happy, healthy life and making the right choices.

  He was literally the most “no trauma, no drama” man I had ever met. I hoped Nathan would grow up to be like him one day. It was possible, I thought, to not grow up with a hole in your heart when you have an absent father.

  Before we knew it, it was dinnertime and he looked at me and said, “Do you want to go out to dinner?”

  It felt like two dates in one day, though officially, I reminded myself, we were not on a date. This time I decided that Nathan didn’t need to come along. We dropped him off at my mother’s house. It was the first time I had asked her to babysit for me, but what surprised her more was to meet my gringo friend. My mother was four-eleven. Next to her, Cory seemed like a giant. Since she didn’t speak English and he didn’t speak Spanish, the introductions were very brief and there were no embarrassing questions for either one to answer.

  We headed off to Old Town Pasadena and strolled along Colorado Boulevard, ending up at a Thai restaurant. Cory accidentally ate a chili pepper thinking it was a bell pepper, and his face turned as red as the chili pepper he had just eaten. He reached for his water and choked out the words “I think I’m in trouble, Reyna.” I watched his face, flushed a deep red, his blue eyes watery like an ocean. He was trying so hard to hold himself together and there was nothing I could do to help him. I could almost see the steam coming out of his ears. I was immune to spicy stuff, but I could sympathize. “I’m so sorry,” I said.

  Slowly the redness went away, leaving only a soft flush on his peaches-and-cream complexion. He got through it so bravely, never losing his composure. I wanted to laugh. I wanted to hug him. I wanted to tell him, I think I’m in trouble, too, Cory.

  I told him I loved to hike, and a week later we went to Malibu Creek. I dropped off Nathan with the sitter because my kind of hiking was not really for babies. I preferred to not follow trails. The goal was to get to the top of a cliff that overlooked the creek, high aboveground. There was a log that stretched from the edge of the creek to a boulder in the middle of the creek. From there you could get to the other side by jumping from rock to rock, and then go up the creek by scaling the rock face along the bank. Except that day there was no log.

  “Let’s just jump in,” I said, ready to throw myself into the creek, jeans and all.

  “There must be another way to get across,” he said.

  “There’s no other way,” I said. “Let’s jump in.”

  “Wait,” he said. “Let me think.”

  I jumped in and swam to the other side. After what felt like half an hour, he jumped to the boulder in the middle of the creek and then the next and the next until he made it to the other side without getting wet.

  “You’re soaked,” he said. I shrugged and continued the hike, hopping from rock to rock, scaling the rock walls along the creek. As we were about to get to dry land and begin our ascent to the cliff, Cory slipped and landed in the waist-deep water.

  “You see, you wasted your time trying to avoid jumping into the creek and now you’re wet anyway,” I laughed.

  “No kidding,” he said. And he laughed, too.

  In wet jeans, I had him scaling rocks and clinging to bushes for dear life. I worried that I would traumatize the poor guy and then he wouldn’t want to hang out with me again. But I had a sense that Cory needed a little excitement in his life, something different than the monotony of the safe, stable, normal life he had always had. I could surely give him that. My life had been anything but safe and stable.

  Wouldn’t it be nice to do this every weekend? I thought. I knew I shouldn’t be feeling what I was feeling, but I couldn’t help wishing for more than friendship from him. I was fully aware that he had a girlfriend, but she had left for Egypt. In Mexico, there’s a saying that I thought of whenever I was with Cory. “El que se fue a la villa, perdió su silla.” Basically, if you abandon an opportunity, someone else will jump on it, or to put it another way, if you don’t take care of what you have, you will lose it. To ease the guilt I wa
s feeling, I told myself that if the girl had left him for the land of camels and pyramids, it was her own fault if she lost him.

  His pale complexion was now as red as when he ate the chili pepper, but not once did he complain. Every time I turned around, he was still there, following me. Sometimes, I expected him to not be there anymore. That he would give up and say it was too much trouble. “You okay?” I asked.

  He caught his breath and smiled. “Yeah, this is fun. I feel like Indiana Jones.” He was a trooper, and I liked him for that. “You’re a mountain goat,” he said to me with admiration.

  Reyna getting hooked on Scrabble

  “I know how to cross mountains.”

  We finally made it to the top of the cliff and we sat on a boulder, our feet dangling in the air, with the creek below us and the blue sky above. Azure. That was the word I had played in one of our first Scrabble games, and Cory had been impressed. The Z tile had landed on the triple letter and the entire word itself had gotten a triple score, for a grand total of 120 points. “You’re a quick learner,” he had said with approval. Now here we were surrounded in azure, Cory and I. A hawk soared over our heads and I closed my eyes, my heart beating hard and fast. I had never felt as alive as I did at that moment. I felt exhilarated, exuberant from the hike, the endless blue sky, and the man by my side.

  “That was a hike like no other,” he said. And we both laughed.

  35

  THE FOLLOWING WEEK was Cory’s birthday. I invited him over to my house and made him mole with chicken, the national dish of Mexico. This was the first meal I’d made for him, and since it was his first time having mole, and it was his birthday, my cooking had to be extra delicious. I was determined to make my favorite dish from scratch, refusing to use the store-bought kind. I spent an hour stemming, seeding, roasting, boiling, and pureeing four different kinds of dried chili peppers: guajillo, New Mexico, pasilla, and negro. I fried and then ground other ingredients, such as shredded almonds, sesame seeds, cinnamon, and raisins. Mago had taught me how to make this mole several years earlier, when she had learned it from her mother-in-law. I hadn’t made it often myself, just a couple of times in Santa Cruz. I racked my brain trying to remember all the ingredients. I was tempted to call my sister and ask her for instructions, but decided not to. I had to do this on my own.