Gun Love

by Jennifer Clement

Why you here? she asked.

  I’m doing my homework.

  She nodded. She knew. Everyone knew that my mother and Eli were a sweetheart thing.

  Corazón stepped closer to me. She smiled and her big brown eyes grew small. She held out her hand to me.

  Come on. You cannot be here. Ay, bebe, she said. You do your work in my house, yes?

  She touched the top of my head and wove her fingers into my hair. Your hair is soft, she said. So white, like flour.

  Corazón caressed the top of my head, smoothing down my frizzy light yellow-white hair.

  You’re not staying here, she said and picked me up. I was so small and skinny everyone always wanted to pick me up as if I were a six-year-old.

  We’re going to my house now, Corazón said. She’s waiting for you and I have some M&M’s.

  Corazón’s English was good, but she could never understand that objects in English did not have a gender and so she turned everything into a she and a he.

  I wrapped my legs around her waist and my arms around her neck. While she held me with one hand against her, she picked up my school workbook and tucked it under her arm.

  Corazón smelled like Joy lemon dishwashing liquid, Dove soap, Tide laundry detergent, Ajax, and Lysol. I could be standing in the cleaning-products aisle of the supermarket.

  Never come back here, promise, she said. This trailer, he’s for keeping the guns.

  Corazón carried me out and past the swing set and slide. She walked me around Pastor Rex’s and Mrs. Roberta Young’s trailers and toward her own.

  Corazón squeezed me tight as she carried me past the plastic gremlin and five plastic pink flamingos and toward her trailer. I liked being her baby.

  Never go back to that place again, Corazón said.

  I looked over her shoulder back at Noelle’s field of dolls. Bees hovered in small clouds in search of pollen in their red and yellow doll hair.

  15

  I no longer spent my afternoons and evenings in the abandoned trailer, and went to visit Corazón instead.

  The Mexicans had guns everywhere too.

  There were shotguns lined up against one wall and in stacks in the hallway leading to the bedrooms. In both bedrooms machine guns were kept under the beds. The living room had large bins filled with pistols. There were also boxes of ammunition piled high along the walls of almost every room.

  We would sit at the kitchen counter. While Corazón cleaned the used guns, I usually did my homework. Sometimes we’d talk or listen to music.

  She also let me watch Mexican soap operas on television.

  Mexican telenovelas are better than life, Corazón said. Somebody will study this one day and know it’s true.

  She gave me Sprite to drink and served me potato chips, Mars bars, doughnuts, and M&M’s. She also made bags of popcorn in her microwave. She and Ray ate only junk food.

  Corazón dismantled the firearms and then used a rag to remove the thick, caked-on carbon buildup. She also wiped off any old oil and powder buildup that had not burned. The white-and-red rags turned black as she worked. Then she’d apply a solvent, which she’d let sit for a couple of minutes. Often she had to scrub the whole gun with a toothbrush to get inside the cracks. Then she’d wipe the gun clean with a lint-free cloth. Sometimes she used a bore brush to break up any buildup inside the barrel, and she used oil on the areas that rotate in the trigger or added grease to the sliding parts. She had full and empty syringes of Lubriplate lying about on the countertops of the kitchen and in the living-room area.

  After cleaning the guns, Corazón had to attach a label on each weapon as identification. She wrote it out in black marker on a yellow label tag with string that she looped around the grip frame. She had several Brownells catalogs, which she used for looking up to find the kind of gun she was tagging. Corazón let me help her do this, as she thought my handwriting was better than hers. This was how I learned about firearms.

  Pastor Rex and Eli owned the weapons. They got them from Pastor Rex’s gun program, bought them from the veterans at the hospital, or purchased them at gun shows.

  Corazón cleaned them and Ray helped Eli resell them in Texas, but mostly he took them across the border and into Mexico.

  Corazón smoked the whole time. She even had an old-fashioned stand-up ashtray that was piled high with yellow filters stuck in fine beach sand.

  She was so nice, one afternoon I dared to ask her if I could smoke too, and she laughed and handed me a cigarette.

  As the afternoon drew into dusk, the trailer filled with smoke. Corazón said that the first thing she did when she moved into the trailer was to deactivate the stupid gringo smoke alarm.

  When Corazón was not working on the guns, she washed her trailer. I’d never been in such a spotless place before. No wonder she smelled like cleaning liquids and soaps. It was her reaction to living so close to a garbage dump.

  On one wall, Corazón had a large poster of the singer Selena Quintanilla dressed in a purple jumpsuit. Above the photograph were the words: Selena Queen of Tejano Music. Underneath the poster was a plaster figure of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

  Those are the two women I love, Corazón said.

  She listened to Selena all the time and her dream was to visit Selena’s grave.

  She’s buried in Corpus Christi and that means the body of Christ, Corazón said. That’s where she is in Texas, Corpus Christi, Texas.

  Thanks to Corazón I began to memorize Selena’s songs. She told me Selena was killed when she was only twenty-three years old and had been shot to death by her manager.

  The song I liked best was “Si una vez,” and used to sing it while I did my homework and Corazón was cleaning the guns. It only took her a few days of hearing me sing along to realize I could sing. I told her my mother had raised me on love songs.

  Corazón put down the rifle she was cleaning. She walked over to the CD player and turned it off.

  Sing it again, Pearlita, she said. Sing it.

  In the quiet trailer I sang the song and Corazón said, You’re like the reincarnation of Selena. How can you sing like a Tejana? How can you sing like a Mexican?

  I knew she was exaggerating. Corazón exaggerated everything as if words could change things.

  I’m going to teach you all about Selena, she said. It was a .38-caliber Taurus revolver that was used to kill her. You know the one, the small one, I was cleaning yesterday? Just like that one.

  I thought that if anyone walked toward the trailer on one of those days, they would have seen smoke curling out of the windows and heard someone singing inside.

  Ray never said a word to me. Corazón said he was a quiet man and that talking to people was never going to happen. And he never asked what I was doing there. Corazón explained to me that Mexicans will never allow people to be alone. She said, We even have a proverb about this. We always say it is better to be poor than live alone.

  Every evening when Ray came home from work, he walked into the smoke cloud, lit a cigarette, and joined the bonfire.

  16

  After we had cleaned and labeled the guns, Corazón liked to dress me up and make up my face or paint my fingernails. She also liked to make elaborate hairdos using hairpieces she’d buy at Walmart.

  My mother never asked what I was doing while she was in the car with Eli. I never told her April May and I had a fight. And Rose never told my mother she never saw me anymore because, after the two policemen came to investigate our car, my mother stopped working at the hospital and never went back. Her pails and mops were left behind, along with her last paycheck.

  My mother explained she’d left her work at the hospital because she couldn’t stand to be near so many wounded men.

  They keep coming, she said. It will never end, not until the end of the world. Why bother to work or go to school? Maybe you should sta
y home from school now. What’s the point?

  One day as I walked back to the car, after having been with Corazón, I saw my mother standing outside the Mercury in her lavender nightgown. She was by the back of the car with the trunk open. She was with a man I’d never seen. His car was parked side by side next to ours.

  My mother held a long green felt cloth in her hand. She was pulling a silver fork and spoon out of one felt pocket in the cloth and holding it out for the man to look at. She was selling our silverware.

  My mother was selling our belongings.

  Almost every day someone turned up at the trailer park to sell guns to Pastor Rex and Eli. As the people left with a wad of gun cash in their pocket, my mother would stop them and offer something for almost nothing out of our trunk.

  I couldn’t stop her.

  For the Limoges she bought a box of Cheerios, a jar of peanut butter, and a can of Raid. The antique music box was worth two boxes of Kotex and a can of powdered milk. For the violin she bought a box of aspirin and some toothpaste.

  She sold every piece of silverware for a quarter apiece.

  It’s a steal, I heard her say to a man who came to sell guns to Pastor Rex on a regular basis.

  He was a tall, skinny man with deeply red, sunburned skin. He always wore jeans that were too large. The denims were kept on his hips by a belt with a huge belt buckle that had a hole in the center, which was a beer-bottle opener.

  Woman, he said, listen to me. I’ve just sold a rifle that killed a bear. Why would I want to buy a spoon when I’ve just sold a Savage?

  Well, to help me out, I guess, my mother answered.

  Within a few weeks everything was gone.

  I knew the next stop would be to stand with my mother at a red light with my hand held out, begging at car windows.

  On the night she sold the last Limoges plate we lay in the dark in silence. Outside, as on several nights a month, we could hear the sound of gunfire in the distance. On this night the sound seemed closer.

  Someone is shooting, I said. Are you awake? Do you hear it?

  Yes, my mother answered. Some man is down at the river shooting at the sky. He’s shooting angels.

  17

  The following Friday afternoon the piano arrived.

  From Corazón’s trailer kitchen window I saw the truck drive past the dump and move down the highway toward town and the church. There was a black piano painted on the side of the truck.

  This was Pastor Rex’s dream come true. He said that singing hymns to a DVD player plugged into a wall behind the altar was sacrilege. He truly believed that most people went to church because of the music.

  Music is what elevates us to God, he said.

  Pastor Rex managed to convince everyone to donate money and organize fund-raisers to get the piano and it had taken him over a year to accomplish his mission. He was able finally to buy an old piano from the 1950s.

  This is God’s present to us all, he said.

  No one at church knew how to play the piano except for Pastor Rex, and so he agreed both to play and to give the service.

  The Friday the piano arrived was also the day a great thunderstorm broke over us.

  From the kitchen window Corazón and I watched the downpour. We could see Mrs. Roberta Young’s trailer and Noelle’s field of dolls.

  The storm lasted twenty minutes. Rain fell in large drops and then the drops became stones of ice. When the rain stopped, everything was white.

  Corazón and I went outside. The air was damp and clean as if everything had been washed. The Barbie dolls were buried under piles of hailstones.

  Look over there. Look at the dump, Corazón said.

  The dump had become a white mountain.

  Everyone went to church that Sunday to see the piano. Even Corazón and Ray and my mother made an exception and went to a Protestant church just to see and hear the instrument.

  My mother wore white wrist-length gloves she’d found in an old plastic bag that also contained stockings she’d never worn.

  It’s a disgrace that women don’t wear gloves to church, she said.

  That Sunday the church was packed. I’d never seen so many people in attendance. Everyone had come to hear the piano.

  From our pew I could see April May and her parents. It was the first time I’d seen her outside of school since our fight. She’d obviously told Sergeant Bob and Rose that my mother thought he was Ku Klux Klan, as they didn’t walk over and approach us as they would normally have done.

  In another pew right at the front Noelle and Mrs. Roberta Young were sitting beside Corazón and Ray. For this occasion, Corazón had fixed her long, curly black hair in a round bun at the top of her head. She had a perfect pin curl in the middle of her forehead. She’d also wrapped a pink ribbon around the bun and tied it in a bow. It was a true Selena look.

  Eli walked into the church with Pastor Rex.

  Everyone I knew in the world was gathered together for the first time in one place. I took my mother’s hand and realized it had been a long time since we’d held hands.

  When my mother saw Eli come she said, Oh, he’s here, he’s here. He came. Oh, this is good.

  Eli walked over toward us and slipped in next to my mother so that she sat between us. She placed her hand on his thigh and it was as if she were holding on to a banister or rail. It seemed to make her steady. When she heard the wounded vets being brought into the back of the church, she closed her eyes and fell asleep to the anthem of crutches and wheelchairs.

  Eli leaned over and whispered to me, Is she all right?

  Sleepy, I said. She’s going to play the piano. Did she tell you?

  Eli reached for the pack of cigarettes in the front pocket of his shirt. He knocked the pack against his wrist until a few were loosened out. He gave one to me. Eli gave me a cigarette because he knew I was for sale. He knew how much I cost. It only took one to keep me happy.

  I slipped the Camel up my sleeve.

  At the pulpit, before the service began, Pastor Rex announced that this church service was named Praise for the Piano Worship.

  We have our piano now, he said. We’re truly blessed.

  Everyone in the church clapped.

  During the course of the service, Pastor Rex had to move from the pulpit over to the piano to play the hymns. At first everyone was quiet and leaned way forward to hear the music but Pastor Rex didn’t play well and made many mistakes. He had to slow down in the middle of a hymn and draw up close to the sheet music to try and figure out what the notes were. No one could sing along.

  The initial excitement had turned into a quiet discomfort. The church had become a theater, and Pastor Rex’s failure was the act.

  At the end of the service, my mother and I stayed seated as the congregation slowly filed out of the building. Even Pastor Rex left the church to go outside to say goodbye to everyone.

  The day before, my mother had promised to play for me, but was worried. She’d not touched a piano for so many years.

  Eli stood up.

  Don’t you want to hear my mother play? I asked Eli.

  I’m sure it’s sweeter than sweet, he said. I’ll hear her another time. I need to tell Ray about something.

  Eli turned and walked toward the door.

  I’m sure he thought my mother was going to play “Mary Had a Little Lamb” or “Three Blind Mice.”

  Pastor Rex also left the church following quickly behind Eli.

  My mother didn’t look over her shoulder. She just closed her eyes and, after a few minutes, asked, Has everyone gone?

  Almost everyone, I said.

  We stood and walked up the aisle to the piano.

  As she was so small, my mother first pushed the piano bench close to the instrument so that she could reach the foot pedals.

  Onc
e she had everything in place, she slowly peeled off the gloves and gave them to me to hold. I stuffed them in the pocket of my dress.

  My mother sat at the piano. The small spotlight that hung above the altar illuminated her yellow hair. She placed her fingers on the black and white keys. Her hands were starred with tiny freckles and her nails were painted with Moon-Blue nail polish. The blue opal ring that her piano teacher had given to her was part of the constellation.

  My mother raised her hands and slowly brought them down on the piano. She played the first chord.

  Those who had not yet left the building stood still. A few wounded soldiers, who were still sitting at the back, closed their eyes. April May, who was almost out the front door, stopped to listen. Those who were not too far outside the church and heard a few notes walked back in and stood in silence.

  One music chord can make the world stop.

  My mother played Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor, Opus 18. I’d heard it on the radio a few times and she’d hummed it many times as she played the music on the car’s dashboard.

  In the church my mother’s small hands opened and her fingers reached and found full octaves.

  My mother bowed her head and the music came out of her. Her hands were flying, falling, and dying as they moved across the instrument.

  As my mother played, the gloom and beauty of Russia fell like a darkness over the state of Florida and turned the Sunshine State into the saddest place on Earth.

  18

  Monday morning, the day after my mother played the piano at church, we talked in the car for a while before getting up.

  Inside the Mercury, the sound of crickets and birds mixed with the sound of trucks and cars moving down the highway.

  My mother said, I always used to protect my hands. I’d forgotten. I used to avoid hammers and nails and opening jars. I was fearful of getting my fingers caught in a door or being cut by a knife in the kitchen.

  Do you think we can go back to the church later today, after school? I asked. I want to hear you play the piano again.