Let Their Spirits Dance

  “Mom, do you remember that call you got from Saigon, three years after Jesse was killed?”

  “What about it? I never knew who it was.”

  “Suppose it was a woman. Somebody Jesse knew in Vietnam.”

  “Why would she call me and never say a word?”

  “Maybe she didn’t speak English.”

  “Ay, mija, that’s not possible.”

  “Why? The Vietnamese women are beautiful.”

  Mom sighs loudly. “I can’t think about that now, mija. I have to get them ready.”

  “Get what ready?”

  “The medals. Didn’t you ask me for the medals?” She’s standing in the middle of the living room, smoothing down her apron with one hand, leaning on her cane with the other. Her apron is clean, unsoiled by grease spots and food stains, not like when Jesse and I were kids. The safety pins are still stuck around the edge. My mother’s always on the hunt for new aprons at secondhand stores, Goodwill, and St. Vincent de Paul’s, where she still buys old furniture and clothes, dishes, and knickknacks. She now uses some of the safety pins on her apron to hold up her clothes. I can’t get her to understand that she’s not a size 16 anymore. She’s an 8. She tells me she doesn’t like men staring at her in tight clothes, and I wonder if she means the toothless nomad who hangs around the Goodwill store with a shopping cart, staring at everybody who walks in.

  “I hate those medals!” she says suddenly, with such anger that I close the book of poetry I’m reading.

  “They never brought him back! Those men, what did they know? Pendejos! They said, here, take these medals in place of your son. What were they thinking? I never wanted the medals. I wanted my son!” Her legs are shaking. There are no tears, only anger.

  “They’re just medals, Mom.” But I feel it, too. We were taken, cheated, lied to. What Jesse did in Vietnam doesn’t matter to us. We weren’t there. All we know is that he never came home, only the medals came, the colored ribbons stiff and new. No one asked us, “Do you women want to release your loved one to us?” They just took him away, and what we wanted didn’t matter. Then again, they never asked us, “Do you want the medals?” They just sent them. The war ended for us when Jesse was killed. For others, it went on and on. On TV—we looked away. On the radio—we turned it off. In magazines and newspapers—we flipped them upside down. Every time it was shoved in our faces we closed our eyes. The war was Jesse’s coffin, it had nothing to do with winning or losing.

  “Yes, yes, mija. Take them if you want.” She walks over to the cabinet and opens the door that has the working knob. Putting in her hand she opens the door under the ballerina. She takes out the medals one by one, brushing them off with her apron. There are tears now. “My poor mijito! Look at all he won! And he wasn’t even there a year.” She gives them to me one by one. I trace over the letters of his name on the Good Conduct Medal with my finger, Jesse A. Ramirez. I’m looking into La Cueva del Diablo, disturbing the bats that hung upside down. If he knew, why did he go? Did he have his own death planned? How could he do this to me, to my mother? My hair, caught in the button of his uniform before he left, tangled me up in his death before he even boarded the plane.

  “Remember, Teresa? Remember el cochito and how you ran to give it to Jesse at the airport? It was the last time he got to eat un cochito.” The scene is alive in me, as I run up to the man at the gate, the stewardess takes the cookie telling me how cute it is, everyone is staring. I want to tell my mother that Jesse isn’t coming back. I hide his words in my breastbone, the same place my mother hides all her pain. The words are a fiery ember, burning. If I tell her now, what will she say? Why did he go, then? How could he do this to me when he knew I loved him so much? I won’t be able to answer her. Maybe it’s too late. Maybe it’s not important anymore. Don Florencío knew, Nana knew. She saw it in the way I lived, hiding like a bandit from conversations about Jesse’s death, not wanting to know more than I had to.

  The ember inside my breastbone is fanning itself to life the longer I hold on to Jesse’s medals. I’ve carried a secret, more a wound that pools with guilt. It’s like the time Paul fell out of the tree and I wasn’t there to stop him. Jesse’s words are like the picture before the fall. I was waiting to hear the words come true, and when they did, all I could do was point to myself and say, “I knew.”

  “Here, mija, take the medals before I get them all wet with my tears. Show them to the children, tell them what a good person your brother was. Tell them that when a son dies, his mother’s heart goes with him.”

  I lay Jesse’s medals down on the coffee table. My mother walks slowly down the hallway to her room, leaning heavily on her cane. I’m right behind her, shadowing her shuffling steps.

  • MY CONVERSATION WITH Mr. H. does nothing to make me change my plans. I figure he’s on his way out anyway. I walk the thin line between truth and consequences that all teachers walk. You dance to the principal’s tune during evaluation time, then shut the door after he’s gone, give the kids the pizza you promised for good behavior, and go back to teaching your way.

  I bring in pictures of Jesse, of me, Priscilla, Paul, Mom and Dad. What does it mean to say good-bye? To see a person you love one day, then never again? The children don’t know. There’s a child in fifth grade whose mother died in a traffic accident last year. He knows. The child’s name is Gabriel, some kids say, like the angel at Christmas. Gabriel is sad now, not like the child he used to be who played soccer and got in trouble once in a while. Now he’s nervous and thin. At times his eyes open wide in alarm, then suddenly shut down, as if the pupils have been rubbed raw and there’s nothing left to reflect. I wonder if that’s the way I looked when Jesse died. Everybody walked around me on tiptoes like I had the flu. My friends wanted to carry my books for me at school. A girl I hated let me keep one of her sweaters, because she said she didn’t need it anymore. I never said a word, I just put it on and walked away. I listened, I passed my classes, graduating like the rest of the kids, but I don’t remember what I heard or what I learned or if I went to the prom that year or not. Maybe I did, but I don’t remember. Gabriel won’t remember either. His brain is spinning thoughts that get trapped behind his eyes, then fade away.

  • MY MOTHER PACKED Jesse’s medals in white tissue paper and put them carefully into a plastic bag. There are teachers in the lounge who want to see them before I bring them into my class. Orlando Gomez tells me his brother Ed served during the Vietnam War. A cousin too, who later died of a drug overdose. “He came back a full-blown drug addict from Vietnam,” he says, “died in an alley where his mother found him on her way to the store in the morning.” Edna and Vicki, two sixth-grade teachers, start their own horror stories about friends who came back and others, they say, who never made it.

  “I remember your brother, Teresa, he went to school with one of my cousins,” Edna says. “Smart, oh, he was smart! Wasn’t he in the National Honor Society?”

  “Yes, he was in all that.”

  “What a shame, I mean to lose someone who could have done so much for society.”

  “You still have another brother, don’t you, Teresa?” Vicki asks. She’s tall and pale, with dark hair hanging to her waist and dark circles under her eyes. She reminds me of a fantasma, someone who isn’t real. Her question makes me mad. I think of Paul, and all the trouble he’s caused.

  “Don’t you, Teresa?” she repeats herself. “Don’t you have another brother?”

  “One brother can’t replace another.”

  “Oh, no, sweetie, I didn’t mean it that way. I only mean you still have a brother.”

  “Right.” The word squeezes past my lips. My fingers twitch. A couple of other teachers come in with coffee mugs in hand. I wrap the medals up and have them packed in the plastic bag before they make their way to the table. The morning is like any other for everyone but me. Coffee is brewing and cool air drifts into the lounge from outside every time someone opens the door. My hands are ice cold. I’ve never had a part of J
esse with me at Jimenez Elementary. I’ve brought him into the teacher’s lounge, and already his name has been said so many times I’m starting to regret I brought his medals in. Questions are being asked, so many of them. What year was he killed? How? Where? The war was a farce, wasn’t it? America’s biggest mistake. Weren’t the baby killers of My Lai court-martialed? The U.S. are the real terrorists all over the world, look at what we did in Vietnam.

  People go quiet as I walk out. I hear the bathroom flush. They’re waiting for me to close the door. She looks like she’s gonna cry. Hard for her, she probably shouldn’t be doing this, but you know Teresa, she’ll do anything to teach a meaningful lesson.

  I know, but I can’t stop myself. I’m the man in my dream. The leaks in my life have caught up to me.

  Lorena helps me clear the work table of glue, scissors, and construction paper before the children come in. We set up Jesse’s medals on a white linen cloth I have stored in my classroom for special occasions. Lorena watches me closely. Working together for five years, she knows all the ups and downs of my face, like I know Mom’s.

  “They’re beautiful, Teresa. I’ve never seen medals up close like this.”

  “Good experience for you.”

  “Are you OK? You look sad.”

  “What do you expect, Lorena? You know how close we were.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t do this. Mr. H. might…”

  “Never mind about that asshole! What does he know about anything?” My voice rises several pitches. Lorena stands up and looks out the window.

  “Look, there’s Andy, waving at us.” I look out and wave back. Andy’s dressed in his Phoenix Suns sweatshirt. He wears variations of the Phoenix Suns most every day. He lives with his dad and gets to go to all the Suns games, ASU games, and everything that has to do with sports. It’s amazing the kid can keep his eyes open at school after being out so late most nights.

  “Cute kid, I wish I had five others like him.” Without knowing it, Andy has relaxed me, for the moment.

  The room looks like America in the ’60s. I’ve cut out pictures of President Johnson, Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., Robert Kennedy, Cesar Chavez, Nixon, the demonstrators, the Vietnam Wall. A few war scenes dot the room. Under the picture of the Vietnam Wall is information the children copied from a book. There’s only one misspelling. The “y” is missing on the word “unity.”

  The Vietnam Wall forms a chevron-shaped angle like a V that connects the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. Ms. Lin designed the wall to create a unit between the nation’s past and present. It is made of black granite and each name is etched on the surface in white. People visit the Wall and look for the names of people they know. They take a paper and put it over the name. They use a crayon or pencil to get a rubbing of the man’s name to take back home with them.

  The children constructed a mural of the Vietnam Wall and taped it to the brick wall just outside the classroom door. A long strip of butcher paper is colored entirely with black crayon, a background for names that are etched in with a popsicle stick. The first name on the wall is Jesse A. Ramirez.

  I stare at the medals over and over again from wherever I am in the classroom. Houdini escaping death, the voices my mother heard, El Santo Niño’s solemn face staring at me from between the flickering veladoras, Don Florencío’s prophecy, your brother will come back in a new form, now this. I’m pinned under the medals, wearing them when I don’t want to, caring all over again about something I couldn’t do anything about.

  The children come into class. Oooo…Ah! Look at Jesse’s medals. How many did he kill, Mrs. Alvarez? POW, POW! Juan, Andy, and Brandon are pointing imaginary guns at one another. “Did you know the AK-47s were better than the M-16s?” That’s Brandon talking. His dad is a know-it-all, and they talk about everything.

  “My uncle went to Vietnam, and my mom says he’s crazy,” Julissa says.

  “Did you see anything, Li Ann?” Charlotte asks. “Anything?”

  “She didn’t see anything,” Lorena says, putting one arm over Li Ann. “She was born in America. Her mother, her grandmother saw it all.”

  Li Ann’s mother Huong (her name means perfume in Vietnamese), walks in behind the children, bringing in a medal given to her uncle by the South Vietnamese Army. She’s not too much taller than the children. My arms tingle like a draft of cold air just hit me. I feel my body go rigid and force myself to walk up to her, smiling, putting out my hand to touch her shoulder. I wonder if she looks like the woman Jesse knew in Vietnam. I want to ask her if her family knew any American soldiers in Vietnam. As soon as I think about asking her, I change my mind and don’t say a word.

  “That why my family come here,” she tells me. “Communist kill. Dey kill if you don’ do what dey say. My uncle was killed fighting like Jesse.” There are tears in her eyes, but she’s smiling. I know it’s the Asian face masking tragedy.

  “Come share with us,” I tell her, even though I don’t feel so bad that her uncle died. She’s one of the ones my brother fought to protect, and where did that get him? I know her answer will be no. She shyly hands me her uncle’s medal so I can display it with Jesse’s medals. The next day she sends us a Vietnamese dessert that reminds me of arroz con leche, except there’s no brown sugar in it. She explains it is simmered in coconut milk.

  I start a private dialogue with the medals while the children settle into their desks.

  It’s Ray’s fault I’m like this, Jesse, the son-of-a-bitch took everything I had and ran with it as long and as hard as he could, then threw it all in the garbage. Maybe I turned to him to forget you. Married him because he was there and you weren’t. Why did you go, Jesse? What were you thinking? Was the war more important than us? I can’t make it here anymore, Jesse. Take me away from here to wherever you are. I trust you. Yes, Jesse…please say yes.”

  “Mrs. Alvarez? Are you OK?” Lorena is leaning over me. I’m sitting at my desk, staring at the attendance sheet without writing anything down. My breastbone is aching like somebody just hit me in the chest. I want Lorena to hold me tight, to take all the pain out of my breastbone, but I don’t want to prove Mr. H. right, the little plastic doughboy, all protected at home while my brother did all his dirty work.

  “I’m leaving…I mean…I’m going to the bathroom. Uh…have the kids start working in their groups.” Lorena looks closely at me.

  “Let me ask someone to cover the class.”

  “No, hell no,” I whisper, “and have Mr. H. find out?”

  I make it to the door. Li Ann is watching me. I see her tiny face staring at me while the other kids are oblivious to anything except Lorena’s voice, telling them what to do next. Li Ann knows. She looks deep into my eyes, her pencil poised in her hand, not intrusive, just knowing. I smile, weakly. She only stares, never changing the contours of her heart-shaped face.

  I’m out the door, out into a February morning that has turned gray. I brush up against the Vietnam Wall mural, unsealing the taped corner closest to Jesse’s name. I pause to fix it, running my fingers over Jesse’s name. Everything else is a blur. Please God, don’t let anyone be around. Don’t let anyone see me. I walk as normally as I can into the teacher’s lounge, then race into the bathroom, locking the door behind me. I run the water full blast and cry into a paper towel. My whole body is aching.

  Your mouthpiece, Jesse. Your mouthpiece—where was it? Did you fall and break all your teeth? And me nowhere near to help you. Oh, Jesse—where was the wound? The wound that took your life? The hole in your body that made you bleed to death. Where were the medics, the bandages, the helicopter? Why didn’t they move fast enough? Saved my brother. MY BROTHER! I’m sorry about everybody else’s brother, but that was MY BROTHER fighting for political monsters who could give a shit if he lived or died. MY BROTHER brought back in a sealed coffin with a plastic lid. Your body all swollen, your face disfigured. Too many days. So sorry. He was sent to the wrong family. Can you believe the bastards didn’t even get our ad
dress right! So sorry. The U.S. Army apologizes for such a tragic error. APOLOGIZES! What a trip! They should have gotten on their fuckin’ knees and begged our forgiveness. And don’t ever let me find out it was friendly fire, that some asshole from our side murdered MY BROTHER! Oh, God, I can’t take this anymore.

  I remember their faces, family friends—who is she? That one, over there. The one screaming like that? That’s his sister, Teresa. She was the one closest to him. The paper towel is in shreds. I wring my hands together, pretending one is Jesse’s. Pray for me, Don Florencío, tlachisqui of the Mexica Nation, pray for me, Virgen de Guadalupe. I need some tea, Don Florencío, the tea from the yellow flower, yoloxochitl, to heal my broken heart! Now, oh God, I need it now!

  I’m ready to start the wail Don Florencío said was the sound of my soul weeping. I feel it catch in my throat and swallow hard to make it go away. Someone is knocking on the door. It’s Lorena. I let her in, and if it hadn’t been for Lorena Padilla that day, I would have proven Mr. H. right.

  • THERE WAS A balance owing in my life that day—a debt of tears, pleas, cries, energy pushing to the surface. How can you owe a debt to the universe? But I did. And the universe wouldn’t be conned into taking anything less than the cold chill in my heart, strange payment for the warmth that was to follow.

  La Manda ·

  Irene is sitting across from me at the kitchen table. Mom’s at the sink washing dishes. Irene’s there almost every day visiting Mom. The two ward off loneliness by talking about the old days and comparing aches and pains. Irene has her legs massaged at least once a week by an old man who advertises himself as a “sobador.” Irene has diabetes and says she needs massages on her feet to keep the blood flowing. Who knows, without the sobador she might have to have her feet cut off, especially with crazy doctors who don’t care whose feet they cut off as long as they make money.