by Lucia Berlin
I won’t tell you any more. I’m too ashamed. But it had exactly the effect I had intended. She sat there staring at her beautiful hands and she whispered, “You are a witch. You are magic.”
We had a wonderful week. We all went to Indian dances and climbed in Bandolier monument and Acoma pueblo. We sat in the cave where Sandia man had lived. We soaked in hot springs near Taos and went to the church of the Santo Niño. Two nights we even got a baby sitter so Melina and I could go to the club. The music was great. “I have had a wonderful time this week,” I said. She smiled, “I always have a wonderful time,” she said, simply.
The house was very quiet when they had gone. I woke up, as usual, when David came home. I think I wanted to confess to him about the palm reading, but I’m glad I didn’t. We were lying in bed together in the dark when he said to me,
“That was her.”
“That was who?”
“Melina. She was the woman in the grass.”
Step
The West Oakland detox used to be a warehouse. It is dark inside and echoes like an underground parking lot. Bedrooms, a kitchen and the office open off of a vast room. In the middle of the room is a pool table and the TV pit. They call it the pit because the walls around it are only five feet high, so the counselors can look down into it.
Most of the residents were in the pit, in blue pajamas, watching Leave it to Beaver. Bobo held a cup of tea for Carlotta to drink. The other men were laughing about her running around the train yard, trying to go under the engine. The Amtrak from L.A. had stopped. Carlotta laughed too. All of them running around in pajamas. Not that she didn’t care about what she had done. She didn’t remember, didn’t own the deed at all.
Milton, a counselor, came to the rim of the pit.
“When’s the fight?”
“Two hours.” Benitez and Sugar Ray Leonard for the welter-weight title.
“Sugar Ray will take it, easy.” Milton grinned at Carlotta and the men made comments, jokes. She knew most of the men from other times here, from detoxes in Hayward, Richmond, San Francisco. Bobo she knew from Highland psych ward too.
All twenty of the residents were in the pit now, with pillows and blankets, huddled together like pre-school kids at nap time, Henry Moore drawings of people in bomb shelters. On the TV Orson Welles said “We sell no wine before its time.” Bobo laughed, “It’s time, brother, it’s time!”
“Stop your shakin, woman, messes the TV.”
A man with dreadlocks sat down beside Carlotta, put his hand inside her thigh. Bobo grabbed the man’s wrist. “Move it or I’ll break it.” Old Sam came in wrapped in a blanket. There was no heat and it was bitterly cold.
“Sit there on her feets. You can hold them still.”
Cheaper by the Dozen was almost over. Clifton Webb died and Myrna Loy went to college. Willie said he had liked it in Europe because white people were ugly there. Carlotta didn’t know what he meant, then realized that the only people that solitary drunks ever see are on television. At three in the morning she would wait to see Jack the Ripper for Used Datsuns. Slashin them prices. Jest a hackin and a hewin.
The television was the only light in the detox. It was as if the pit were their own smoky ring, with the boxing ring inside it in color. The announcer’s voice was shrill. Tonight’s purse is one million dollars! All the men had their money on Sugar Ray, would have had. Bobo told Carlotta some of the men there weren’t even alcoholics, had just faked needing detox so they could watch the fight.
Carlotta was for Benitez. You likes them pretty boys, Mama? Benitez was pretty, with fine bones, a dapper moustache. He weighed 144 pounds, had won his first championship at seventeen. Sugar Ray Leonard was scarcely heavier but he seemed to tower, not moving. The men met in the center of the ring. There was no sound. The crowd on TV, the residents in the pit held their breath as the boxers faced each other, circling, sinuous, their eyes locked.
In the third round Leonard’s quick hook knocked Benitez to the ground. He was up in a second, with a child-like smile. Embarrassed. I didn’t mean for that to happen to me. At that moment the men in the pit began to want him to win.
No one moved, not even during the commercials. Sam rolled cigarettes all through the fight, passed them. Milton came up to the ledge of the pit during the sixth round, just as Benitez took a blow to the forehead, his only mark in the fight. Milton saw the blood reflected in everyone’s eyes, in their sweat.
“Figures …you’d all be backing a loser,” he said.
“Quiet! Round eight.”
“Come on, baby, don’t you go down.”
They weren’t asking Benitez to win, just to stay in the fight. He did, he stayed in. He retreated in the ninth behind a jab, then a left hook drove him into the ropes and a right knocked out his mouthpiece.
Round ten, round eleven, round twelve, round thirteen, round fourteen. He stayed in. No one in the pit spoke. Sam had fallen asleep.
The bell rang for the last round. The arena was so quiet you could hear Sugar Ray Leonard whisper. “Oh, my God. He is still standing.”
But Benitez’s right knee touched the canvas. Briefly, like a Catholic leaving a pew. The slightest deference that meant the flight was over; he had lost. Carlotta whispered,
“God, please help me.”
Fool to Cry
Solitude is an Anglo-Saxon concept. In Mexico City, if you’re the only person on a bus and someone gets on they’ll not only come next to you, they will lean against you.
When my sons were at home, if they came into my room there was usually a specific reason. Have you seen my socks? What’s for dinner? Even now, when the bell on my gate rings it will be Hi, Ma! let’s go to the A’s game, or Can you baby-sit tonight? But in Mexico, my sister’s daughters will come up three flights of stairs and through three doors just because I am there. To lean against me or say Qué honda?
Their mother Sally is sleeping soundly; she has taken pain pills and a sleeping pill. She doesn’t hear me, in the bed next to hers, turning pages, coughing. When Tino, her fifteen-year-old son, comes home he gives me a kiss, goes to her bed and lies next to her, holds her hand. He kisses her goodnight and goes to his room.
Mercedes and Victoria live in their own apartment across town, but every night they stop by even though she doesn’t wake up. Victoria smooths Sally’s brow, arranges her pillows and blankets, draws a star on her bald head with a felt-tip pen. Sally moans in her sleep, wrinkles her brow. Hold still, Amor, Victoria says. About four in the morning Mercedes comes to say goodnight to her mother. She is a set designer for movies. When she’s working she works day and night. She too lies against Sally, sings to her, kisses her head. She sees the star and she laughs. Victoria has been here! Tia, are you awake? Sí. Oye! let’s go smoke. We got into the kitchen. She is very tired, dirty. Stands staring into the refrigerator, sighs and closes it. We smoke and share an apple, sitting together on the only chair in the kitchen. She is happy. The film they are making is wonderful, the director is the best. She is doing a good job. “They treat me with respect, like a man! Cappelini wants me to work on his next movie!”
In the morning Sally and Tino and I go to La Vega for coffee. Tino carries his cappuccino with him as he goes from table to table, talking with friends, flirting with girls. Mauricio the chauffeur waits outside, to take Tino to school. Sally and I talk and talk, as we have since I arrived from California three days before. She is wearing a curly auburn wig, a green dress that enhances her jade eyes. Everyone stares at her, fascinated. Sally has come to this café for twenty-five years. Everyone knows she is dying, but she has never looked so beautiful or happy.
Now, me … if they said I had a year to live, I’ll bet I would just swim out to sea, get it over with. But Sally, it is as if the sentence had been a gift. Maybe it’s because she fell in love with Xavier the week before she found out. She has come alive. She savors everything. She says whatever she wants, does whatever makes her feel good. She laughs. Her walk is sexy, her voice is s
exy. She gets mad and throws things, hollers cuss words. Little Sally, always meek and passive, in my shadow as a girl, in her husband’s for most of her life. She is strong, radiant now; her zest is contagious. People stop by the table to greet her, men kiss her hand. The doctor, the architect, the widower.
Mexico City is a huge metropolis but people have titles, like the blacksmith in a village. The medical student; the judge; Victoria, the ballerina; Mercedes, the beauty; Sally’s ex-husband, the minister. I am the American sister. Everyone greets me with hugs and cheek kisses.
Sally’s ex-husband, Ramon, stops in for an espresso, shadowed by bodyguards. Chairs scrape back all over the restaurant as men stand to shake his hand or give him an abrazo. He is a cabinet member now, for the PRI. He kisses Sally and me, asks Tino about his school. Tino hugs his father goodbye and leaves for class. Ramon looks at his watch.
Wait a little bit, Sally says. They want so badly to see you; they are sure to come.
Victoria first, in a low-cut leotard on her way to dance class. Her hair is punk; she has a tattoo on her shoulder. For God’s sake, cover yourself! her father says.
“Papi, everybody here is used to me, no, Julian?”
Julian, the waiter, shakes his head. “No, mi doña, each day you bring us a new surprise.”
He has brought us all what we wanted without taking an order. Tea for Sally, a second latte for me, an espresso, then a latte, for Ramon.
Mercedes arrives, her hair wild, her face heavily made-up, on the way to a modeling job before going to the movie set. Everyone in the café has known Victoria and Mercedes since they were babies, but stares at them nonetheless because they are so beautiful, so scandalously dressed.
Ramon starts his usual lecture. Mercedes has appeared in some sexy scenes for Mexican MTV. An embarrassment. He wants Victoria to go to college and get a part-time job. She puts her arms around him.
“Now, Papi, why should I go to school, when all I want to do is dance? And why should I work, when we are so rich?”
Ramon shakes his head, and ends up giving her money for her lessons, more for some shoes, more for a cab, since she’s late. She leaves, waving goodbyes and blowing kisses to the café.
Ramon groans. “I’m late!” He leaves too, weaving through a gauntlet of hand-shakes. A black limousine speeds him away, down Insurgentes.
“Pues, finally we can eat,” Mercedes says. Julian arrives with juice and fruit and chilaquiles. “Mamá, could you try something, just a little?” Sally shakes her head. She has chemo later, and it makes her sick.
“I didn’t sleep a wink last night!” Sally says. She looks hurt when Mercedes and I laugh, but she laughs, too, when we tell her all the people she slept through.
“Tomorrow is Tía’s birthday. Basil day!” Mercedes said. “Mamá, were you at the Grange Fête, too?”
“Yes, but I was little, only seven, the time it fell on Carlotta’s twelfth birthday, the year she met Basil. Everybody was there … grown-ups, children. There was a little English world within the country of Chile. Anglican churches and English manors and cottages. English gardens and dogs. The Prince of Wales Country Club. Rugby and cricket teams. And of course the Grange school. A very good Eton-type boys’ school.”
“And all the girls at our school were in love with Grange boys …”
“The Fête lasted all day. There were soccer and cricket games and cross-country races, shot-put and jumping events. All kinds of games and booths, things to buy and to eat.”
“Fortune tellers,” Carlotta said. “She told me I would have many lovers and many troubles.”
“I could have told you that. Anyway, it was just like an English country fair.”
“What did he look like?”
“Noble and worried. Tall and handsome, except for rather large ears.”
“And a lantern jaw…”
“Late in the afternoon was prize-giving, and the boys my friends and I had crushes on all won prizes for sports, but Basil kept getting called up to get prizes for Physics and Chemistry and History, Greek and Latin. Tons more. At first everybody clapped but then it got funny. His face got redder and redder every time he went up to get another prize, a book. About a dozen books. Things like Marcus Aurelius.”
“Then it was time for tea, before the dance. Everyone milling around or having tea at little tables. Conchi dared me to ask him to dance, so I did. He was standing with his whole family. A big-eared father, mother and three sisters, all with that same unfortunate jaw. I congratulated him, and asked him to dance. And he fell in love, right before my very eyes.”
“He had never danced before, so I showed him how easy it was, just making boxes. To ‘Siboney.’ ‘Long Ago and Far Away.’ We danced all night, or made boxes. He came to tea every day for a week. Then it was summer vacation and he went to his family’s fundo. He wrote to me every day, sent me dozens and dozens of poems.”
“Tía, how did he kiss?” Mercedes asked.
“Kiss! He never kissed me, didn’t even hold my hand. That would have been very serious, in Chile then. I remember feeling faint when Pirulo Diaz held my hand in the movie Beau Geste.”
“It was a big deal if a boy should address you as tú,” Sally said. “This was long, long ago. We rubbed alum rocks under our arms for deodorant. Kotex wasn’t even invented; we used rags that maids washed over and over.”
“And were you in love with Basil, Tía?”
“No. I was in love with Pirulo Diaz. But for years Basil was always there, at our house, at rugby games, at parties. He came to tea every day. Daddy played golf with him, was always asking him to dinner.”
“He was the only suitor Daddy ever approved of.”
“The worst thing for romance,” Mercedes sighed. “Good men are never sexy.”
“My Xavier is good! So good to me! And he’s sexy,” Sally said.
“Basil and Daddy were good in a patronizing and judgemental way. I treated Basil horribly, but he kept coming back. Every single year on my birthday he has sent roses or called me. Year after year. For over forty years. He has found me through Conchi, or your mother… all kinds of places. Chiapas, New York, Idaho. Once I was even in a lockup psych ward in Oakland.”
“So what has he said, in those phone calls all these years?”
“Very little, actually. About his own life I mean. He is president of a grocery chain. Usually asked how I was. Invariably something terrible had just happened … our house burned down or a divorce, a car wreck. Each time he calls he says the same thing. Like a rosary. Today, on November 12th, he is thinking of the most lovely woman he ever knew. ‘Long Ago and Far Away’ plays in the background.”
“Year after year!”
“And he never wrote to you or saw you?”
“No,” Sally said. “When he called last week to ask where Carlotta was I told him she would be in Mexico City, why not have lunch with her. I got the feeling he didn’t really want to meet her tomorrow. He said it wouldn’t do to tell his wife. I said, why not bring her along, but he said that wouldn’t do.”
“Here comes Xavier! You are so lucky, Mamá. You get no sympathy from us at all. Pura envidia!”
Xavier is at her side, holding both her hands. He is married. Supposedly no one knows about their affair. He has stopped by, as if by chance. How can everyone not feel the electricity? Julian smiles at me.
Xavier has changed too, as much as my sister. He is an aristocrat, a prominent chemist, used to be very serious and reserved. Now he laughs too. He and Sally play and they cry and they fight. They take danzón lessons and go to Mérida. They dance the danzón in the plaza, under the stars, cats and children playing in the bushes, paper lanterns in the trees.
Everything they say, the most trivial thing like “good morning, mi vida” or “pass the salt” is charged with such urgency that Mercedes and I giggle. But we are moved, awed, by these two people in a state of grace.
“Tomorrow is Basil day!” Xavier smiles.
“Victoria and I t
hink she should dress up as a punk, or as an old old lady,” Mercedes says.
“Or I could have Sally go in my place!” I say.
“No. Victoria or Mercedes … And he’ll think you are still back in the 40s, almost as he remembers you!”
Xavier and Sally left for her chemo treatment and Mercedes went to work. I spent the day in Coyoacán. In the church the priest was baptizing about fifty babies at once. I knelt at the back, near the bloodiest Christ, and watched the ceremony. The parents and godparents stood in long rows, facing each other in the aisle. The mothers held the babies, dressed in white. Round babies, skinny babies, fat babies, bald babies. The priest walked down the middle of the aisle followed by two altar boys swinging incense censers. The priest prayed in Latin. Wetting his fingers in a chalice he held in his left hand, he made the sign of the cross on each baby’s forehead, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. The parents were serious, prayed solemnly. I wished that the priest would bless each mother, too, make some sign, give her some protection.
In Mexican villages, when my sons were infants, Indians would sometimes make the sign of the cross on their brows. Pobrecito! they would say. That such a lovely creature should have to suffer this life!
Mark, four years old, in a nursery school on Horatio Street in New York. He was playing pretend house with some other children. He opened a toy refrigerator, poured an imaginary glass of milk and handed it to his friend. The friend smashed the imaginary glass on the floor. Mark’s look of pain, the same I have seen later in all my sons during their lives. A wound from an accident, a divorce, a failure. The ferocity of my longing to protect them. My helplessness.
As I leave the church I light a candle beneath the statue of our Blessed Mother Mary. Pobrecita.
Sally is in bed, worn out and nauseated. I put cloths cooled in ice water on her head. I tell her about the people in the plaza at Coyoacán, about the baptism. She tells me about the other patients at chemo, about Pedro, her doctor. She tells me the things Xavier said to her, the tenderness of him, and she cries bitter, bitter tears.