Let Their Spirits Dance

by Stella Pope Duarte

  “They’ll put a warrant out for my arrest if I don’t show up in court!”

  “They will do nothing to you! Do you think God is blind? This is His plan. Sandra will drop the charges.”

  “Sandra hates me.” I’m watching Mom rummaging through her dresser, pulling out underwear she’ll take on the trip. She pauses for a second.

  “Let her hate you, just don’t hate her back,” she says, then goes back to picking out underwear.

  • IRENE’S KIDS BUY LUGGAGE for her at Wal-Mart. I buy Mom’s luggage at Dillard’s. Why not? She’s got the money for the expensive stuff. Neither of the ladies has ever traveled. The only things they’ve ever packed are plastic clothes baskets with their family’s laundry. Blue, green, maroon luggage, we have a choice. I call Irene’s kids to make sure we don’t all buy the same color and mix the ladies up on a grand scale. Manuel is looking into car rentals—two vans, one for him, me, Mom, Irene, Lisa, and Lilly and another for Paul, Donna, Priscilla, Michael, Angelo, and Cisco. Elsa’s staying at Mom’s house with her husband Julio and my granddaughter, Marisol. She’s upset over the divorce, and says she’ll stay behind to make sure her dad has a square meal once in a while. Ray’s got Elsa convinced that Sandra’s the one who’s after him, and he’s tried to get away from her for the longest time. I went crazy, he says, for no reason. I’m full of bad memories. I’ve got screws loose. Why should he have to suffer for what my father did to my mother? Elsa listens, something I would have never done, and that’s how Ray holds on to her.

  Willy and his wife Susie will ride in a car with Gates. We’ll pick up Chris in Albuquerque, and he’ll get in wherever he can find room. My mother’s crazy energy is enveloping us all.

  The day after the money arrives, Channel 5 News descends on the house. They spoke to a family member by phone, they said, who gave them permission to conduct an interview with Mom. We later found out it was Michael who called the station and alerted the news media to the mistake the U.S. government had made.

  In between stories of natural disasters and graduation parties gone awry, the news people decide the story has merit. Neighbors are standing outside on the sidewalk next to the van with the letters CHANNEL 5 NEWS on it. I’m in the house with Paul, Donna, and Michael.

  “Nice touch, Einstein,” Paul tells Michael. “What were you thinking about? Trying to make your nana nervous with all this shit?”

  “Nothing wrong with a little publicity. People will follow us all the way to the Wall. I’m working on a web page for Nana. I’m putting her on the Internet. You’ve heard about the web sites, haven’t you?”

  Michael is working on a laptop computer he’s been given to use over the summer by the gifted program at school. They also gave him a cellular phone so he could connect with the Internet.

  “Michael, why are you doing this?” I ask him.

  “Publicity, Tía! Nana is now www.jramirez68.com. There are people out there who know Tío Jesse. Watch, they’ll be in touch with us.”

  “In touch with you, wise guy,” says Paul.

  “Leave him alone. He’s right. A little publicity is just what we need. A Chicano soldier from el barrio, unknown just like all our guys who went over there and were never appreciated. They emptied the barrios during the Vietnam War, and you’re complaining about some recognition?”

  One photographer and a redheaded reporter walk in to interview Mom. Mom sits in her rocker wearing her best blouse, a blue one with huge white buttons and a pair of navy blue slacks, two sizes too big. She’s at ease talking to the woman, a redhead with long legs who sits on the couch with a small yellow pad and pencil. She’s trying to look official, then her cellular phone rings.

  “I can’t talk right now, call me later…. No, I never said that, you took it wrong.” She looks at Mom. “Excuse me.” She rushes out to the front porch and talks heatedly to somebody.

  “Probably her boyfriend,” Paul says. “But I’m free. Hey redhead, I’m free.” Donna gives Paul a dirty look. “Just kidding, babe.”

  “Sorry, Mrs. Ramirez.” The redhead is back, and I notice the light on her cellular phone is out. Her face looks flushed.

  “Don’t worry about men,” Mom says. “They make trouble, but they can’t live without women.”

  The redhead smiles. “I think you’re right about that.” She signals the camera to start rolling. “Now, what about this money you received from the government, Mrs. Ramirez? Ninety-two thousand dollars, my goodness! Was it a shock?”

  “No. I was expecting to get some money. I knew God would send it to me. I need it to get to Washington, D.C.”

  “You mean to see our capital and the president?”

  “No, to get to the Vietnam Wall to touch my son’s name. I promised to do it before I die.”

  “Promised your family?”

  “I promised God. That’s why I got the money.”

  The redhead shuffles her long legs, uncrosses them, then crosses them again.

  “So, you believe in supernatural intervention?”

  “In what?”

  “In super…”

  “Never mind about all that,” I tell her. “Mom has lots of faith and believes we are meant to go to the Vietnam Wall.”

  “Tell them, Teresa, about the voices and El Santo Niño.”

  “What voices?” The redhead looks confused.

  “A dream Mom had.”

  “No! It wasn’t a dream, it was my son and his friends talking to me.”

  The redhead is curious. “What did they say?”

  “I don’t know. That’s why I tell my daughter here, that El Santo Niño will let us know.”

  “Who is El San…to Ni…no?” She signals the cameraman to stop.

  “God,” my mother says.

  “It’s her faith in God,” I say.

  The redhead looks at me. “Do you believe this?” Her blue eyes are boring into mine.

  “I don’t know what to believe…my brother, Jesse, the Vietnam vet, told her she’d hear his voice someday, and he told us we’d read about him in a book, and…” I stop myself before I announce to her he told me he’d never come back.

  Paul looks at me. “You don’t have to tell her anything.”

  The redhead purses her lips. “I’m not trying to pry, I’m really interested.”

  “In what?” Paul asks. “In a story for the six o’clock news? My brother’s body was sent to the wrong address, the sons-of-bitches couldn’t even get that part right! Why don’t you put that in your story, Miss Six O’Clock News.”

  “Don’t cuss, mijo!” my mother says.

  The redhead stands up. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know this was so disturbing. I had no…”

  “It’s OK, Miss Red Hair,” my mother says. “My mijito got his prayer answered in Heaven, and we’re leaving for the Vietnam Wall in a few days.”

  There are tears in the redhead’s eyes. “My cousin died in Vietnam. He was like a brother to me—Robert O’Connor, 1969.” Paul walks away without another word.

  “Was he Irish?” I ask her.

  “Yes.”

  “So was my grandfather, William James O’Brien, my mom’s dad.”

  “God bless you, pobrecita,” my mother says. “We’ll touch his name, too.” The redhead walks out crying into a Kleenex, followed by the cameraman, who unplugs his camera and thanks my mother for the interview.

  • ON THE SIX O’CLOCK NEWS that night we saw a head shot of Mom and the redhead, the front of the house, and neighbors around the Channel 5 van. We heard the part about the money, nothing about la manda or El Santo Niño. No surprise to me. We heard the redhead we found out was named Holly Stevens tell the audience that the Ramirezes, family of the deceased Vietnam vet Sgt. Jesse A. Ramirez, were on their way to the Vietnam Wall, made possible by a huge blunder made by the Veterans Administration in 1968. The government’s mistake is the Ramirezes’ good fortune, she said. Miracles can and do happen even in this day and age, she added, smiling big into the camera.


  Sacred Meal ·

  The next day Espi and I drive up to the old house on East Canterbury, the house Ray and I lived in for over fifteen years. It’s better than the apartments we lived in the first few years of our marriage, not counting the duplex Ray invested in with his friend Steve. Steve’s nothing but a con artist. Ray knew it but never admitted it, even when Steve ran off with the rent money and ended the campaign against roaches in the duplex by leaving all the fumigating solution in Ray’s pick-up. “I guess he never finished the job,” Ray told me. “Never finished? He never got started, you idiot! He took you for everything you had!” Ray says Steve’s one hell of a drummer, and he still lets him drum out beats for Latin Blast. If it were me, I’d have exchanged his beloved drums for the fumigating solution.

  “I’m glad I don’t have to worry about your brother’s business investments anymore, Espi. We almost lost the house because he owed so much on the duplex.”

  “Amen to that.”

  I double-check the carport to make sure Ray’s pick-up is gone.

  “We bought the house because I liked that tree.” I’m pointing to the huge carob tree that engulfs the front yard. The tree is an evergreen sprouting dark green leaves year-round. The tree won’t produce the sphere-shaped carob nut until spring, when the hard nut bursts from its brown shell and falls to the ground, untouched. I’ve never known anyone who harvested the carob nut. It’s not like pecans or piñones. The nuts fall everywhere, casting a strong, sticky smell that borders on the unbearable on summer evenings when the heat of the day, like invisible waves, rises from the asphalt streets. All you do is rake up the mess under the tree. If you love trees like I do, you run your hand over the gnarled trunk, amazed at the tree’s dark, green beauty and pungent smell.

  This year the yard is a dismal yellow, the grass has gone unwatered. The FOR SALE sign is hanging out, inches from the sidewalk, announcing to the neighborhood that the marriage between Ray and Teresa Alvarez is over. Everybody knew it before the sign went up. It looks sad, the sign. I glance at it once coming in and once going out.

  Inside, the house is desolate. Most of the furniture is in storage, leaving only the pieces Ray and Cisco will need until the house sells: the couch, TV, kitchen table, chairs, bedroom furniture, and a desk in Cisco’s room. We’re here to look at the girls’ room to calculate how much furniture we should move to Mom’s.

  “Look at this mess, Espi! Your brother must be crazier than I thought. How does he expect to sell the house? And now we’re leaving for the Wall. It’ll take at least two weeks for me to get back and start cleaning up.”

  “You know how men are, anything is OK for them. They have no sense of the right thing to do. I’ll help you when you get back. Just think this is the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to your family. Jesse’s reaching for you from the Vietnam Wall!”

  “Or my mother’s reaching for him…or they’re both reaching for each other. Either way, it’ll be a long trip, you know how we are as a family. We only get together for Mom’s sake.” I’m standing in the dark hallway. It feels like I’m in a confessional. “I can’t ever go back to your brother, Espi, not after the whole thing with Sandra.”

  “It must be hard for you. I don’t know why my brother got mixed up with her. I’m glad Tommy doesn’t run around.”

  “Tommy? I can’t imagine it! Remember when he and Manuel joined the choir at St. Anthony’s just to be close to us?” We both laugh, remembering how Yolanda Escalante, the organist, scolded them for being off-key. Yolanda couldn’t get rid of them, because they were the only boys in the choir and we needed their voices. We both get quiet.

  “You OK?”

  “Yeah. What can I say? All these memories all over the place. I don’t know how much more I can take, Espi. But, I’ll tell you the truth about Sandra. I don’t think she started the problems between me and your brother.”

  “Then why did you fight her? I can’t believe you went that far. You might even end up with a prison record!”

  “Don’t get dramatic. I fought her because she was laughing at me—no shame, just like Consuelo, you remember, Dad’s mistress? But I think everything started before that, Sandra’s just the last thing that happened. Ray and I hardly talked anymore. He wanted to watch baseball on TV and live on beer and peanuts when he wasn’t working. A far cry from the man who got involved with the Brown Berets when they came to Phoenix. Ray was an activist, don’t you remember, Espi? He went to Denver in ’69 when los Chicanos proposed El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán. They were saying we had a history. We were descendants of the Aztec nation, but we were different, too. We were a people searching for our own mythical land, our own Atlantis. Then I don’t know what happened to Ray. He just quit. He wouldn’t go with us to the Chicano Moratorium in East L.A. He said we were crazy.”

  “We were crazy in those days, Teresa. We could have gotten ourselves killed. I still can’t forget that reporter the L.A. sheriff killed—Ruben Salazar. They murdered him in cold blood!”

  “Don’t even remind me. It makes my blood boil.”

  “I still have nightmares over it.”

  “Maybe you’ve got a form of PTSD, Espi—you know, posttraumatic stress disorder. You can suffer for years over some trauma that’s happened in your life. Now, I’m wondering if Ray didn’t have PTSD. I read about it. Lots of guys who served in Vietnam suffer from it. They live the war out in different ways and it doesn’t end for them until they come to terms with what’s happened to them. Ray never told me one thing about Vietnam, even though I asked him lots of times. The war was so brutal, then coming back here was just as bad with people blaming them for the whole thing. Now that I think of it, Ray might have been going through depression, but you know your brother, he never wanted anybody to help him.”

  Pictures are all over the walls as we walk into the family room.

  “I told the girls to take all these pictures down and pack them in newspapers.”

  We browse around looking at the pictures. There’s Elsa and Julio sitting with Marisol in front of a fireplace, last year’s Christmas photo. Elsa’s petite, a little elf. Her thin hair hangs down around her shoulders.

  My life was gray inside when Elsa was born in early ’71. Nothing had color. Losing Jesse did that to me. Made me a blank sheet. I held Elsa and it was better for me, feeling flesh and blood, a little heart pounding through her lumpy chest. She was beautiful and always smelled of the fabric softener I used for her baby clothes. She was pink like her blankets and slept on my chest many nights curled in between my breasts, making them squirt milk when they were full.

  “Look, there’s Priscilla with Angelo and Michael.” Espi’s pointing to a photo of Priscilla, Angelo, and Michael at Disneyland. “Michael’s such a brainy kid.”

  “He’s a real Jeopardy candidate. He’s in a special school in Scottsdale, the only Chicano kid from the Southside over in rich man’s land.”

  “More power to him. I wonder what he’ll be when he grows up.”

  “Ask him. He’ll tell you. You’ll feel like you’re talking to a university professor.”

  “Wish I had a kid like that!”

  “Really? Some people are scared of kids like that. Paul can’t stand him, his own son! They get into arguments all the time.”

  Espi’s staring at a photo of Paul. “It must be hard for Paul, having a brother like Jesse who did everything right. Jesse was your mother’s favorite, for sure.”

  “I don’t know about that. Paul’s the baby, and you know how moms feel about their babies. Mom loves us all. I don’t think she ever made a distinction between us, but then again, if you ask Paul, he’ll tell you Jesse was Mom’s favorite.”

  Espi’s voice and mine bounce off the half-empty rooms. It’s like we’re walking in La Cueva del Diablo, not the house I used to live in. The angel with the flaming sword found something wanting and is sealing the place up. There’s a sore spot inside my chest I can’t reach. I open the door to the girls’ bedroom and stare
blankly at their twin beds, stripped of blankets and sheets. The twins’ identities split off in amazing directions, just like Priscilla’s and mine did. Lilly is all sports, She made varsity basketball in her freshman year. Her body is supple and strong. She winces at wearing jewelry and dresses. Her hairdo is nothing more than a short bob. She’s more Priscilla’s daughter than mine.

  Lisa is me all over again. Her nose is always in a book, memorizing poetry, reading the latest authors. She’s in drama, auditioning for Squanto’s wife this year, and last year for the lead female in Tom Sawyer. She’s almost plump. I’m hoping she won’t have a weight problem like some of her cousins, who weigh in at 200, if they were to tell the truth.

  “I’ll leave the chest of drawers and come back for the dresser. They’ve got beds at Mom’s, so we’ll have to put the beds in storage. The girls would hate it if I sold them. And look at all these clothes still hanging in the closet. Most of it they never wear. I’m gonna bag it all and give it to the Goodwill.”

  I glance into my old bedroom as we walk by. Ray wouldn’t bring Sandra here, not now anyway. Maybe later when he gets a place of his own. I glance at the bed. The pillows are lying on top of each other. The comforter’s in a heap in the middle of the bed. The bed’s been pushed up against the wall, instead of being centered in the middle of the room like Ray used to like it. I’m looking at the bed of a woman I don’t remember anymore. Was it really me in bed with Ray? When? I can’t even remember the smell of us together that made me catch my breath when we were first married.

  There was a warm, sacred part of Ray, a hand that held mine all night when I cried for Jesse. It was warm blood I felt when I pressed my fingers gently on the artery in Ray’s neck. It was something I had wanted to do for Jesse, to feel for his pulse. I felt Ray’s heartbeat over and over again to make up for not hearing Jesse’s.

  Walking down the hallway, I hear Cisco’s stereo playing in his room. He loves music and dancing like Ray. Names for his CDs are unpronounceable to me, 2-Pac, Aaliyah, Ice Cube, Bone Thugs, Jodeci, Lighter Shade of Brown, Snoop Doggy Dog, and the only one that makes any sense to me, Gloria Estefan.