Let Their Spirits Dance

  “Oh, no, mija, we’re not going by plane. We’re going by car!”

  Now it’s my turn to laugh. “Car! Mom, you’ve got to be kidding! It’ll take a week to get us there, and with you sick, it’ll take two!”

  “Me and Irene have never gotten on a plane. God forbid we get on a plane, tempting God by flying into the clouds!”

  “The two of you are going?” I can see them in my mind. My mother with her cane, Irene with her thick stockings, looking up a sobador in D.C., and the two of them wearing their medallions of La Virgen.

  “Mom this isn’t a joke. This is a long trip!”

  “Don’t worry, mija, El Santo Niño will get us there. He walks around in his sandals all over the place. Haven’t you heard?”

  “Mom, how can you believe in that? That’s just a story! It’s something people made up to make themselves feel better.” I’m up on my feet, reaching for the plastic pitcher on the nightstand. “I’ll go get you some water.”

  “God can do what He wants, Teresa. If He wants to get me to the Wall, He will.”

  “How? Can you tell me how? For one thing, we don’t have the money; for another thing, you don’t have the strength. Doctor Mann will never let you leave town. Do you want everything and everybody to stop just so you can get to the Wall? I’m working, and the kids are in school. And if that’s not enough, I’m waiting for the divorce to be final, and for my court date with Sandra. So now, how are we getting to the Wall?”

  “Don’t yell, Teresa. I’m not deaf.”

  “I’m not yelling!”

  “You are yelling, and you’re mad, too.”

  “If I’m mad it’s because you’re so stubborn!”

  “Too bad I can’t get to Magdalena to San Francisco’s Church to find out if God’s listening or not.”

  “Yeah, right, that would help us! Maybe I should check with El Santo Niño, too. Just think, he might lead the way to the Wall in his little sandals.”

  “What do you think Jesse wanted to tell me that night?” she asks as I’m walking out with the pitcher.

  “How should I know? I never heard anything.”

  • IT’S RAINING the day I call a family meeting with Priscilla and Paul, raining on a Sunday in March. Doesn’t the saying go April showers bring May flowers? In Arizona any rainy day is a miracle, so people don’t complain much when it rains. I run my thumbs along my bedroom windowpane tracing two trails of raindrops falling on the opposite side of the glass. Two smudges appear on the glass. Mom and Jesse separated by a thin layer of reality. I’m caught in the middle.

  I look into the backyard made lush green by the steady rain. Pomegranates appear ruby red between the plant’s boughs and leafy maze. New tendrils sprouting from the honeysuckle vine curl into white blossoms that look like bells. Tata’s Victory Garden is a sodden mess, its furrows extinct. Oleanders along the fence are overgrown, with branches bending under the weight of raindrops. I make a mental note to have Cisco cut them down. Oleander dust can be poisonous. Cholo lies crouched under my Honda, the white x on his chest hidden under his shaggy coat.

  I see Irene’s back door through the chain-link fence. Irene is in the house, probably resting her head on the pillow with the American flag under it, the flag her son, Faustino, won with his death. Keeping the flag close to her is Irene’s way of holding on to her son. The ancient shack is the same tottering structure I remember as a child, except it has a shingled roof and real glass on the windows. There was always a question as to what Irene did with the $10,000 she got for Faustino’s death. Mom says she handed it over to her husband, Lencho, and he bought a brand-new car and a fancy tool chest. He bought her new carpet, too, a shag green that looked like poor Irene had moved into the Vietnam jungle. Lencho wanted the tools so he could do side jobs at home and quit plaguing his flat feet by running all over the neighborhood playing delivery boy. I never heard of a single family who prospered from the money they got for their son’s death. It was as if they wanted to get rid of it as soon as they could.

  Reminds me that I never found out what my mother did with the money she got for Jesse. I make a mental note to ask her about it. I know there were repairs made on Consuelo’s house, probably my dad using some of the money (the gall of the man!). A washer and dryer were bought for the first time ever, and lots of trips to Mexico were made to visit old relatives and help them with money. My mother never said anything more about it. It took her three years to display Jesse’s medals in the cabinet with the ballerina. The money and the medals meant nothing to her.

  • I FEEL LIKE we’re a secret clan making plans behind closed doors instead of a family trying to figure out what to do with a stubborn old woman. We’re sitting in the living room. Mom’s resting in her room. Lisa and Lilly are on the phone in their bedroom, Cisco’s watching a baseball game on TV in the next room.

  “It’s your fault,” Priscilla says. “You’re the one who took Jesse’s medals to school. You’re the one who showed Mom the picture of the Wall. All this is getting to her. I don’t even know why Jesse’s name is all over the place these days. Why can’t we just let him rest in peace?”

  “Get a life, Priscilla! Did I stage the voices she heard at Christmas? That’s what started the whole thing. Do you honestly think I want her to make the trip? And as far as Jesse’s concerned, it looks like he’s the one disturbing the peace.”

  “You got the money?” Priscilla asks. “Must be a fortune you’re getting for selling that house.”

  “I don’t have any money, you know that. Why don’t you try telling Mom she can’t go, huh? Or you, Paul?”

  “Nobody can take care of things as good as you can, right, Teresa? Why should we try?” Priscilla says.

  “I’m surprised you don’t remember how you felt when you lost Annette. Mom has felt that way for years.”

  “That has nothing to do with this!”

  “It has everything to do with it. Pain is pain, no matter whose pain it is. You should sympathize with Mom instead of trying to sabotage the trip.”

  “Sabotage it? I’m trying to help her get back to reality! She’s risking her life going to the Wall.”

  “How do you know? Maybe it’ll bring her peace, something she hasn’t had for years.”

  “It’ll be too much for her—you watch. Mom can’t take this.”

  “Speak for yourself!”

  “Get off my back. I don’t need any advice from you!”

  “Who’s up to bat?” Paul yells at Cisco.

  “Baltimore.”

  “Screwballs.”

  “Paul, are you listening to all this?” Donna asks.

  “Sure, I’m listening. I’m hearing that you girls want to get Mom to the Vietnam Wall when she’s practically on her deathbed. Great planners all of you!” Paul’s holding Donna’s hand. I can make out the last part of the letters, onna, tattooed on his left arm. He was lucky the girl’s name he tattooed on first was named Anna. All he did was go back to the same guy who tattooed Anna on his arm and had him redo the name and make it Donna. Now he’s running around with an A that looks like a capital O. Donna’s got tats that are small flowers and stars, one on her hand, one on her ankle.

  “It’s not what we want to do, Paul. It’s what Mom wants. I can’t get her to change her mind.”

  “You can’t leave the state anyway, Teresa. You’ve got a court case pending—you’ve joined my ranks, a common criminal. I can’t believe it, my holier-than-thou sister charged with assault!”

  “You weren’t there. She provoked it, so why don’t you back off.”

  “Some example you’re setting for Elsa and the twins.”

  “I can’t believe you just said that, Priscilla, considering how you’ve lived your life.”

  “Where’s Elsa, anyway?” Paul asks.

  “She’s not here. She’s pissed off,” Priscilla says, “mad as hell with Teresa for the divorce.”

  “At least I have a marriage to get a divorce from, not like some people I know who
live together like rats in a maze.” Priscilla glares at me.

  Paul’s son, Michael, is sprawled on the carpet reading a road atlas. He’s following lines of numbers on the page, marking distances with a red pen. He’s concentrating hard, his lower lip pressing tight over his upper lip. The spiky part of his hair looks like it’s grown out, and he swishes away a loose strand. “It’s 2,350 miles from Phoenix to Washington, D.C,” he says. Angelo, Priscilla’s son, is next to him, coloring with fat Crayola crayons on a Disneyland coloring book. He’s scribbling over Tinkerbell’s face. Angelo is chunky, his face full. When he smiles, he shows front teeth that haven’t finished rounding off yet.

  “Look,” Michael says. He points to a red circle he’s drawn on a chart and shows it to Priscilla.

  “I can’t see it,” says Priscilla, “the letters are too small.”

  “Hey, Einstein,” Paul says, “quit all the research, your nana’s not going there, pal, unless you want to pay for her funeral.”

  Michael looks closely at the atlas. “I can chart the whole way and build us an itinerary. It would be easier if Nana went by plane, of course; she’d be there in five hours.”

  “Look at that, my own kid making plans like a travel agent,” Paul says. He sits next to Michael on the floor. “A kid who doesn’t want to live with his poor old man even though I’ve been following the rules like a damn priest.” Paul gets on his knees. “Please forgive me, a sinner! But, na, I’m not good enough for you, right, Michael?”

  “I spoke to your parole officer yesterday and explained my side of the story,” Michael says. He keeps his eyes on the atlas.

  “You talked to Mindy? Doesn’t that beat all! Probably bad-mouthed me for all you’re worth! She probably thinks I’m not fit to be your dad—a real snake-in-the-grass is what she thinks of me.”

  “She says you can’t force me to live with you. I’ve got my rights, too.”

  “The only rights you have is to a beating. I should take my belt to you—using your brains against me! How did I get stuck with a kid like this?”

  “Yeah, use your belt, Paul. The right solution. Didn’t you learn anything from watching Dad get mad all the time?” Priscilla asks.

  “Stay out of this! You’re the one encouraging this kid to make me look like Jack the Ripper. All this brainy stuff is leading him nowhere!”

  “Leave him alone!” yells Priscilla. “Just because your brains are gone doesn’t mean Michael should be ashamed of his. You should be proud of him, but you don’t even have the sense to do that!”

  Donna bends down and yanks Paul’s shirt, making him sit next to her again. “He’s gifted, Paul. You know that,” Donna says.

  “Gifted, shifted, this kid’s just a smart aleck.”

  “You should be nice to me, Dad. You never know if I’ll have to defend you in court someday.”

  “Defend me? You’d probably send me to the electric chair!”

  “Capital punishment is by way of injection these days, besides I don’t want to be a lawyer, I want to be a cosmologist.”

  Paul slaps the side of his leg. “I knew this kid had some La La in him. See what you’re doing to him, Priscilla—making him a sissy. A cosmetologist! What do you say about that?”

  “If you’d listen to the word, asshole, you’d know what he said.”

  “Don’t call me asshole.”

  “A cosmologist is a scientist who studies the universe, the cosmos, in case you didn’t know,” says Michael.

  “I knew,” says Angelo, “and I’m only in third grade.”

  “Tell him what a cartographer is, Angelo.”

  “A person who makes maps.”

  “He’s brainwashing Angelo,” Paul says.

  “I want to be the first Chicano cosmic cartographer in the world. I’m gonna be like our ancestors the Mayas. They were astronomers like the Egyptians, way back in 1500 B.C. You’ll be coming to me to find your way to Pluto, Dad, and I don’t mean Mickey’s dog either.”

  “What do you think I am, stupid?”

  “Actually, you might have learned about some of these things if you had used your time to read while you wasted taxpayers’ money in that institution. Where were you? Maximum security, cell block B?”

  “Let me at that kid!” Paul stands up and so do I.

  “Stop it! Both of you!”

  “I’m leaving!” Priscilla yells. “I’ll be damned if I let Paul insult Michael in front of my face! That’s child abuse!”

  “Will you both stop! What am I, some kind of a referee?”

  “Paul, please,” Donna says. “We’re here for your mom.”

  “Exactly, we’re here for Mom. Thank you, Donna! We’re here to figure out what to do about all this. She wants us all to go with her to the Wall. I can see why now. Jesse was the only one she could count on for comfort.”

  “What does that mean, Miss Know-It-All? That I’m not any comfort to her?” asks Paul.

  “Don’t even go there! All you’ve ever given her is heartache!”

  “OK, OK, we all know that,” says Priscilla. “I want to get this whole thing settled about Mom so I can leave.”

  “Just like you, Priscilla, not to want to stay very long when somebody’s sick. Someone waiting for you?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know!”

  “Is Baltimore down?” Paul yells.

  “Yep,” Cisco shouts back.

  “A real kangaroo court, all of us! Mom’s sick, we all know that. How much more time she has, we don’t know.” Everyone is quiet. Nobody looks at anyone else. “She wants to get to the Wall, and she wants to take Irene with her. She won’t fly, neither one of them will, so that leaves us to go by car. If any of you think you can stop her, well then go ahead and try!”

  “She’ll never make it,” Priscilla says.

  “She’ll make it,” says Donna. “Your mother is the strongest woman I’ve ever known.”

  “Stay out of this, Donna,” says Priscilla. “She’s not your mom. I know one thing, if anything happens to her, I’m going after you, Teresa.”

  “How? With the acrylic nails you just got? You might get them damaged!” Priscilla grabs her purse and stands up.

  “Sit down, Madonna!” says Paul. “You ain’t going nowhere until we get this thing settled.”

  Mom walks into the living room with Lisa at her side. “All this yelling woke Nana up,” Lisa says.

  “Here, Alicia, sit here,” says Donna, leading Mom to the rocker. “Now, where were we?”

  Paul kneels next to Mom. Donna stands behind her with her hand on Mom’s shoulder.

  “Por favor, please, don’t fight, any of you. I just want to go touch my mijito’s name on the Vietnam Wall. It’s a promise, una manda I’ve made with God. I have to go now…don’t you see?”

  “You’re too sick to go, Mom,” Paul says. “Jesse would understand, and God won’t get mad either.”

  “Go by plane,” Michael says enthusiastically. “It’s safer than going by car.”

  “No, mijito, your nana can’t do that. I’m too old to fly. The only wings I’ll ever have are those God will give me if I ever make it to Heaven.”

  “Mom, it’s over two thousand miles,” says Paul.

  “You remembered!” says Michael with a smirk. Paul glares at him.

  “Don’t be mad at him, Paul. Your son’s a genius, pobrecito, he can’t help himself.”

  “Mom, I don’t want you to go there. It’ll be too hard for you.”

  “But I heard your brother! I heard Jesse—I know it was him!”

  “It’s the parallel universe talking to you, Nana,” says Michael. “Things we can’t see jump into our orbits and start traveling with us.”

  “You can’t believe everything you read in books, knucklehead,” Paul says.

  “How do you know that?” I ask Michael.

  “I read about it, Tía, and I believe it’s true. It’s like when somebody loses a leg and they still feel pain where the missing limb used to be. Energy can�
��t be created or destroyed; Einstein proved that. It only changes into another form. Tío Jesse is out there somewhere, and maybe the energy of his soul crossed orbits with Nana’s.”

  Don Florencío’s words flash through my mind…a new form, our people have always walked the earth.

  “The kid’s crazy!” says Paul.

  “No, Paul. Don Florencío told me years ago—that—” Paul doesn’t let me finish.

  “That crazy old man! He should have stopped smoking peyote. He was stoned half the time.”

  “You’re one to talk about being stoned! I never saw Don Florencío stoned, you I’ve seen stoned.”

  “I have to do this, mijo,” Mom says to Paul. “I’ve made a manda, don’t you understand? Do you want me to end up like the Robles brother?”

  “What Robles brother?”

  “Some guy who never kept his promise to God and died screaming in pain.”

  “Mom, that won’t happen to you,” says Paul. Mom grabs Paul’s hand and starts to cry. “Please, mijo, your mother is asking you for something, please take me to the Wall. God will do the rest.” Paul is holding Mom in his arms, and she is openly weeping. The rain is splattering on the roof, my mother is weeping, the phone rings in the bedroom, and Lilly yells for Lisa. Cisco walks in. His face is relaxed, as if he just finished yawning. He looks at me like he’s throwing me a lifeline.

  “What’s so hard about getting Nana to the Vietnam Wall?” he asks. “She wants to go, we’ll get her there.”

  Of course, so reasonable, so simple. Cisco’s like Tata O’Brien—nothing to it. We’ll get Mom to the Vietnam Wall and I’ll be the ambassador to Chile and bring back chili seeds for Tata to plant in his Victory Garden.

  “We’ll get you there,” Donna whispers to Mom. “Don’t cry, Alicia, we’ll get you there, won’t we, Teresa?”

  “Sure, Mom, yes we will.” There’s nothing else for me to say. Priscilla stares at me, then looks out the window.

  “Can you imagine being together all those days?” she asks.