by Arturo Islas
A few weeks later, after Miguel Chico was out of the hospital, Miguel Grande accused her of screaming the words at him in front of everyone at the doctor’s office. “I didn’t scream at all. You thought I was yelling because you knew I was right.” Their son’s illness caused a breach between them that no one, least of all Miguel Chico, knew how to mend.
If later he made excuses to himself and others for his behavior toward his oldest son, Miguel Grande never forgave himself. But neither could he bring himself to express his regret to Miguel Chico. It pained him to see his son walk, and eventually he invented ways to make a man of the adolescent boy. One device had been to ask Miguel Chico’s school friends to engage him in fistfights so that he might learn to defend himself. Another was to enroll him in advanced swimming classes at the YMCA with private instructions to the teacher to be harder on him than on the other boys his age. All of his attempts failed because Juanita found out about them and protected her son even more vigilantly. Miguel Chico ignored his body and became a good student.
“You’ve ruined him,” Miguel said to Juanita. She did not answer.
Now the ruined son faced his father. “What does Lola think about this?” Miguel Chico asked again.
“I haven’t said anything to her yet.”
“Shouldn’t you? Won’t she have something to say about it?”
“She’ll do whatever I say. She’s not like your mother.” The strategy of suggesting that Juanita was to blame for being a disobedient female had puzzled Miguel Chico until he learned that his father had used it whenever he had something important to hide.
Traditionally the talk between him and his father had never gone beyond Miguel Grande’s questioning and his replies. Their physical contact had been limited to a slap in the face or a bone-crushing hug that lacked affection and had been his father’s way of showing that at middle-age he was still physically fit. Thus, Miguel Grande’s desperation in coming to him was not lost on Miguel Chico.
“Are you sure of that? She doesn’t look like a meek woman to me. She never has.”
The tears began anew. Miguel Chico began to taste his father’s blood.
“Women are shit, you know that? Why do you live alone?”
Miguel Chico remained silent. He felt his own manliness in choosing not to answer his father; it was his turn to question.
“She doesn’t want you to leave Mother, does she?”
“She doesn’t know what she wants. She wants me to tell her. She’s forcing me to tell her.”
“How?” The son used the knife as if it had been in his hands forever.
“I keep finding her with other men and it’s tearing my guts out. I’ve even caught her with your godfather.” The arid, strangling noises returned.
Miguel Chico had learned to believe only some of what his father said. Lola probably was sleeping with other men, but she was not calculating enough to try to force his father’s hand, particularly when her friendship with Juanita was at stake. She did it for pure pleasure and because she loved giving herself to as many men as pleased her. He did not believe the part about his godfather Ernesto. It was another lie to make the people he loved seem as low as his father felt himself to be. Because of his father, Miguel Chico would never trust another man to tell him the truth about anything. His father’s sins, visited upon him, helped and hurt him with the rest of the world. He would have preferred a life in which trust rather than suspicion guided his thoughts and actions.
His father looked at him stupidly. “You’ve got to make a decision, Dad. The one thing that’s clear is that you’re breaking down.”
“Never happen,” he said, wiping his face and blowing his nose.
There was no help for him. “Do you think you’ll be all right now? They’ll wonder what’s taking us so long.”
Miguel Grande watched his son walk out of the room, then followed to join the women upstairs in the dining room. After dinner, they played cards in a joyless attempt to ignore the tension. Miguel Chico began to feel an aversion toward Lola and his parents that abated when his father announced that they were leaving the following day.
“But we just got here,” Juanita said.
“We are leaving tomorrow,” Miguel Grande said impatiently without looking at her. They returned to the desert.
* * *
As Juanita listened to her husband tell her in a voice strained with shame that he was in love with Lola, she looked at him in the same way she had looked at her father when he behaved badly toward her or Nina. She had long ago accepted Miguel’s weakness for other women, and as she heard the sounds of his humiliation, she pitied him without anger. Fighting the impulse to hold him—she knew that to do so would hurt his pride—she sat staring at his pain, not yet aware of her own.
Her tears came from another source, deeper than the shame of the one man she had known intimately. She recalled being aware of her sexuality for the first time while bathing with Nina, who was too young to have hair on her body. Looking down at herself, Juanita had noticed a darkness there that shocked her. She had attempted to rub it out with the soap and washcloth, her back to her sister, ashamed to be seen touching herself. She knew with dreadful certainty that her father would punish her for that darkness, though how he would find out or how she would bring herself to tell him did not occur to her. She rubbed herself sore and wept secretly until she discovered from her aunt that such growth was natural. She wept because she could not understand the forces that drove men. They remained mysterious creatures to her, given either to tyrannizing others or to indulging themselves to distraction at the expense of others.
“Please don’t cry,” Miguel said to her.
“I can’t help it. I’m crying because I miss Lola already.” Saying her name, Juanita evoked her presence in the room where they had all sat together so many times. “And it makes me mad that I miss her. I know you have no shame, but she was my friend and I trusted her.”
Miguel did not understand her. He felt only his pain in having to hurt her.
When Miguel first met Juanita, she was seeing someone else whom she was rumored to love. He courted her anyway because he responded to her innocence and to his own desire to teach her about the world. She was not easy prey, and she did not use the usual devices the other girls employed when they played at refusing his attention.
“Give me a little kiss,” he said to her on their first date.
“No.”
“Why? Didn’t you like the show?” He had sat through it patiently knowing that she enjoyed musical extravaganzas. He liked them when the girls showed their legs.
“Yes, I did. Very much. Thanks.”
“Then why don’t you kiss me?”
“Because I don’t want to.”
Her manner, the complete lack of flirtation in her voice, her total indifference to the game of sex, surprised him and filled him with admiration. She was unreachable and incorruptible in the same ways as his mother, though he did not make the comparison then, or ever, but only presumed that she would be the mother of his children.
“What are you going to do now?” Juanita asked Miguel.
“I don’t know.”
“Why don’t you go away for a few weeks and think about it?” She did not know where such words came from; she was saying whatever came into her head. Beneath the words, she felt panic beginning to undo her.
“Does that mean you don’t want me to come back?”
“No. It means you have to decide what you’re going to do.” It did not seem to occur to him that he could not continue in the same way with both of them now.
“I don’t know where to go.”
“Oh, Miguel, how could you?” Anger was beginning to mix readily with her fear and pity.
“I don’t know.”
“I’m going to talk to Lola.”
“No,” he said quickly, “I don’t want you to talk to her. Leave her alone, and tell all your friends who have been phoning her up and calling her names to leave her alone
too.” The lost child in him vanished in his defense of Lola, which gave Juanita the courage she needed.
“I’m not staying in this house tonight. I’m going over to Nina’s. You do whatever you want.”
She packed an overnight case, and before she walked out the front door she heard him turn on the television set in the den. She fought a desire to smash it to pieces. When she arrived at Nina’s house, she lost control of herself.
When she was finally able to talk, Juanita said to her sister, “I hope you haven’t been one of the people phoning her up.”
“No, but now when I see her, I won’t have to choke on my words. I can ignore her completely.”
“Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
“We tried, but you wouldn’t listen.”
“Poor Lola.” She allowed herself to say her friend’s name as a way of testing her feelings. Something important was being decided.
Nina became impatient. “What do you mean ‘poor Lola’? That bitch has been taking advantage of you for a long time. And as for that husband of yours, it’s about time you got rid of him. He’s a liar and worse than a two-timer. I bet he’s been giving her money and presents all this time. She’s got a reputation for that, you know.”
Juanita put her hand over her sister’s mouth. “Nina, Nina, we have to understand each other about this,” she said very carefully, as if the words were forming her future. “You are very stubborn and you bear grudges. Didn’t losing Antony teach you anything at all? If you are going to be of any help to me in this, you have to promise that you will never again speak about Lola and Miguel like that. She is my friend and he is my husband and what has happened to the three of us is terrible and I am part of it. If you are going to make it worse, I won’t talk to you about it. I need you, Nina. Help me with this, please.”
Nina put her arms around her. After a while she said, “I’ll do whatever you want.”
Juanita went to bed in the room that would have been Tony’s and that Nina insisted on furnishing with his things. In the middle of the night she awoke feeling like an orphan, dressed, left a note for Nina, and drove back to her own house. There was a light on in the kitchen and a note saying that Miguel was staying at the Y and would call her. She felt better at home and remained awake until dawn. Then she read the morning paper, took her bath, and went to work as usual. No one asked about her eyes, and at noon Miguel phoned. His voice was weak and tired.
“I’m going to stay at the Y for a few days. I’ll let you know where I’ll be after that.”
“Fine,” she said. “Bring over your dirty clothes. I’ll take care of them for you.” The thought of his being alone was unbearable to her.
After Juanita had left for Nina’s house, Miguel had driven to Lola’s. When he told her what he had done, she reacted unexpectedly. “What’s going to happen?” she asked, and she repeated the question often enough during the evening to annoy him. He tried spending the night with her, but his nervousness made her uncomfortable and irritable. He stayed at the Y a few days and then drove through the desert for a week. Lola had also suggested that he go away for a while, which made him suspect that the women were in league against him. He asked Lola if she had talked to Juanita.
“No, what do you take me for?” she replied angrily. His love for her returned. She was his woman.
“Let’s go to Los Angeles,” he said.
“No, you need to be by yourself.” She had never before refused outright to do his bidding, and she quickly saw her error, adding, “I want to go, but I can’t get out of work right now. You go, Miguel. You need the rest.” She kissed his ear. “It will help you to be away from both of us.”
But during the days of driving and smoking through endless miles of desert, he felt betrayed. She had not responded unequivocally. She had not appeared ready to abandon everything for him as he had expected and as he thought he was ready to do for her. He cried when he thought of Juanita. Her helplessness without him caused him to miss her more.
When Miguel returned to her Juanita welcomed him back with open arms. She promised herself to learn what pleased him in bed and to devote more of her free time to him instead of to friends and social activities. But she noticed that his face grew sad whenever certain songs played on the radio, and after a while she grew tired of sitting with him in front of the tv set, cigarette smoke wafting about her, trying to make conversation during the commercials. They did not mention Lola.
After a few months, he started going out on Friday nights without telling her where he was going or when he would return. Usually he came back before dawn, but sometimes he would not return until late Saturday afternoon, saying that he had stopped at the Y to play a few games of handball. She continued to see to it that he ate well, and washed and ironed his clothes as diligently as before.
She planned outings for herself on Friday nights but found that she preferred staying home. It saved her the trouble of explaining Miguel’s whereabouts to his relatives or to her friends, who asked about him regularly. Alone, she watched television for an hour, then read, then walked around the house, then sang to herself, then cried, then went to bed and tried to read herself to sleep.
Their weekends together suffered from his Friday night excursions. She missed Lola most of all on Saturday nights and Sundays, and to make herself feel better she tried to bring back memories of weekends spent with El Compa and Sara. Sometimes she was able to persuade Miguel to play casino with her, but those games ended when he accused her of trying to make him feel guilty. Slowly, they slipped into a routine in which there always seemed to be a missing part. At the regular poker games, Miguel consistently annoyed everyone by playing “the widow” whenever it was his turn to deal. Nina bit her tongue and never mentioned Lola’s name in their presence, and she listened quietly whenever Juanita talked about how much she missed her friend. She noticed, however, that her sister was beginning to behave like a martyr. She held her tongue.
On Friday nights, friends called to tell Juanita that Miguel’s car was parked around the corner from Lola’s house. She thanked them for their concern and felt a great weariness set in. One day Nina said to her, “You sure look tired all the time, hermana. Are you all right?”
“Yes, fine. Why?”
“Nothing. You just look tired all the time.”
“All right, Nina. Say it.”
“I don’t want to say anything that will make you mad at me. I just don’t like the way you’ve been acting lately. You’re turning into one of those old ladies who do nothing but suffer, and usually because of some man. You haven’t started complaining about your health or wearing black all the time, but I see it coming.”
Juanita laughed. She was too tired to protest.
“I’m serious,” Nina went on. “Is that what you want to be? Why don’t you talk to her? You and the whole town know that he goes over there every Friday night. Why don’t you go over with him and have a good long talk with both of them. Get it over with, one way or another.”
“I can’t do that.” The thought of such a confrontation filled her with dread. “He wouldn’t allow it. And I haven’t spoken to her since he told me about it. What would I say?”
“You’ll think of something.”
As she approached the door of Lola’s house the following Friday, shortly after a friend had called to say that Miguel had arrived, Juanita prayed for the courage not to cry in front of them. Miguel came to the door and let her in without a word. He barely seemed surprised. Lola was sitting on the sofa with a drink in her hand. She looked thinner, but her skin was lovelier than ever and her eyes greeted Juanita with a warmth that showed through her guilt and fear.
“Juanita, how are you?”
“Fine, Lola. Long time no see.”
“Yes, it has been a long time.”
“May I sit down?”
“Of course.”
“The three of us need to talk.”
Miguel remained silent as the women discussed their situation.
>
“If you want him, Lola, you can have him,” Juanita began. He was stunned. In the end the women agreed that he was a liar, that he must choose between them, and that they were sorry for the hurt they had caused each other. Lola kept having to excuse herself with apologies for the weakness of her stomach, but she saw it through to the end. In her absence, Juanita ignored Miguel altogether. She did not cry.
After Juanita left, Lola told Miguel that since her son had just bought a house large enough to accommodate her and his family, she thought she might move to Los Angeles. She needed time by herself, she said, and asked Miguel not to spend the night. He went to the Y.
He stayed there for a week, astonished by the women’s behavior. Lola had not remained loyal to him in the crisis, but he did not believe she would leave town and begin a new life without him. And Juanita had not seemed at all helpless. Her disregard for him reminded him of his mother.
He returned to Juanita, and Lola made plans to move. Out of pride and because of the way she had behaved in front of Juanita, he refused to see her. Three months later, on the day before she left, she phoned Juanita.
“May I come over and say goodbye to you, Lola?”
“Oh, Juanita, what for?”
“I’ll tell you when I see you. I’ll be there in half an hour.”
When she returned, Miguel was waiting for her. He was still scoffing at Lola’s plans and firmly believed that she would be back. Her departure, he reasoned, would give her an excuse to sell at a profit the house she and El Compa had lived in together. Then when she returned, she would be able to set herself up in a nice apartment and make everything easier for him.
“Where have you been?” he asked his wife casually.
“Lola’s. I went to tell her goodbye. I won’t be seeing her for a long time.”
“She’ll be back.”
“I don’t think so, Miguel.”
After a few moments, he said, “You were there a long time.”
“We had a lot to say to each other.”
“Oh? What?”
“I’m not going to tell you.” She never told anyone, not even Nina.