Ride it, girls, ride that deer, Sergeant Bob said to us when we stood looking at the carcass.
I want to take a photograph of you riding that thing. Look at its size. It’s big. Man, that’s a big deer.
It was a humid day. The air was a stew of mosquitoes. Flies were already buzzing around the dead animal. It smelled bad.
April May’s father was wearing his army combat uniform and stood on two legs, which meant he’d attached his prosthetic to his stump. He was still holding the shotgun in one hand.
I could see that Noelle, who rarely left her trailer, was standing behind a tree, watching everything.
Later, when I asked Noelle what she thought about Sergeant Bob killing the deer, she said, Don’t worry. No one will mourn.
And no one came over to look. Pastor Rex, Mrs. Roberta Young, the Mexicans, and my mother never showed up. Even Rose stayed inside the trailer hoping it would all be over soon. The fact that no one came out of their trailers to see what was going on had more to do with April May’s father than the animal. There wasn’t a person who didn’t know that April May’s father could become unhinged.
Come on, girls, ride that deer. Come on, girls, giddap, April May’s father insisted.
We didn’t want to get near the carcass and flies.
We backed away.
No, April May answered. It’s not a horse even.
Her father dropped the shotgun and in two long, clumsy strides he was at April May’s side. He wrapped his hand around her upper arm, which lay in his hand as slim as a plastic drinking straw, and pulled her over to the deer and shoved her down on its belly.
By this time April May was crying. She was wearing shorts and I could see that her bare legs were getting smeared with the animal’s blood. I’d never seen her cry.
I felt bad for April May but not bad enough, and so I ran home to my car as fast as I could. I locked myself in the Mercury and lay down flat on the backseat under my mother’s pile of plastic bags.
The next day April May and I walked back from school together. I knew she wasn’t going to be angry. In Florida no one blames anyone for running away from anything.
What happened to the deer? I asked her.
He dragged it to the dump and left it there.
We better stay away from there for some time.
You bet, April May answered.
The following Sunday at church Pastor Rex said that this was the day for Ezekiel. It made me think of the deer as if the animal deserved a prayer.
Pastor Rex read, Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.
And once I knew we had four bags of guns in the bus, I knew my old life would never be over. I’d never erase the blackboard of my mind or wash away my memory like it was a bucket full of dirt.
Thanks to my mother I knew memory was the only substitute for love. Thanks to my mother I knew the dream world was the only place to go.
My mother always said, Dreaming is cheap. It doesn’t cost a thing. In dreams you don’t have to pay the bills or pay the rent. In dreams you can buy a house and be loved back.
In the Greyhound bus I remembered another day at the trailer park. This was shortly after my forever-and-ever fight with April May, and I still did not know we would never speak to each other again. Now it seemed so stupid that we were no longer friends.
On the day that came back to me in the bus, it had been raining. The hurricane that had been forecast had missed Florida and had weakened over the Gulf of Mexico. There had not been a storm, but there had been a week of clouds.
On that afternoon, Eli was in the Mercury with my mother and I was at Corazón and Ray’s trailer doing my homework.
Corazón was cleaning a gun on the kitchen counter.
On that day, as the rain fell nonstop on the metallic roof of the trailer, Corazón gasped and threw the gun she was cleaning back on the countertop.
What am I looking at? Corazón asked.
The weapon skidded off the stainless-steel surface and fell on the floor.
What’s the matter?
Corazón took a few steps away from the gun and covered her mouth with one hand.
Look! She said and pointed at the gun.
What is it?
Oh, oh, she said.
What’s wrong?
This gun. Look, she still has blood all over her.
I stood up and walked over to Corazón’s side and looked down at the gun on the floor.
The weapon was dark brown, and we both knew we were looking at old, dried blood.
What’re you going to do? I asked.
What do you think I’m going to do?
Call the police?
No, Corazón said. No. Get out the Tide.
This gun was on the Greyhound bus.
36
If you want to find out who loves you, just get sick, Corazón said.
We’d both dozed off after leaving Mobile, and Corazón shook me awake with these words.
If you want to find out who loves you, just get sick, she said again.
What made you think of that?
It’s just my own grandmother’s advice. I remembered it right now and I wanted to tell you before I forget. So what do you think this means?
I don’t know, I said.
It means you have to fake being sick all the time so that you know who loves you! Okay?
Okay, I answered.
There’s one thing I’ve never been able to figure out, Corazón said.
What is it?
What can you do when you have a crazy desire for a married man? You can’t sleep. You’re disarranged.
Does this happen to you? I asked.
Ay, my Pearlita, she said. You’re still so young.
At the beginning of the trip I used to go into the bathroom and try not to touch any of the from-sea-to-shining-sea Greyhound germs I knew were all over the place. It made me cringe to think of all the people who’d been in there. In the open garbage I could peer in and see a baby’s diaper, an old syringe, and a book. I didn’t dare reach my hand in there and see what the book was about. Boredom was not enough for me to make peace with the filth.
Corazón obviously didn’t share my feelings as she came back after several trips to the bathroom and said, Hey, I was reading that book in the trash. It was about fly-fishing. Did you know people make their flies? It’s complicated. They have to tie knots and make them look like insects in order to trick the fish.
I had no idea.
Look at it next time you go to the bathroom, Corazón said.
As we moved closer to Texas, Corazón talked about Selena and her town in Mexico.
We have the best parties, she said. The best music. One of my nieces wanted to have a famous singer sing at her fifteenth birthday party. And her father brought her one of those famous ones, you know, Christina Aguilera or Jennifer Lopez. One of those. A Latina. I can’t remember who it was, because I was here, in the United States, when they had that party. On December twelfth for the Virgin of Guadalupe Day another uncle of mine covers the whole town in roses in vases and buckets. Everyone in that area of Mexico knows there isn’t a single rose to be bought; he gets them all.
As the hours passed and we moved closer to Corpus Christi, Corazón stopped talking about her childhood and became very excited and began to hum Selena’s song “Tu Solo Tu.”
She’d organized everything. We were going to stay at the hotel where Selena had been shot and killed. Corazón knew, through the Selena Fan Club, that the room number where Selena had been shot as she ran away from the bullets had been changed from 158 to 150.
The hotel does not charge extra for the room, Corazón said. I think all they eve
r did was change the carpet. When I called to make a reservation they acted like they didn’t know what I was talking about.
Are we staying in that room? I asked.
You know, I thought about it, Corazón said. But I changed my mind. I think if I stayed in that room I’d get so terribly sad I’d just be sad for the rest of my life. I’d never be able to rub it off.
The city of Corpus Christi was built on the edge of Corpus Christi Bay. As we drove in we could see rows of sailboats lined up tied to the docks. The sky was a light blue and the bay water was a deep black blue. Between these two blue tunnels of sky and water we drove into the Greyhound bus station.
Before we got off the bus, Corazón whispered to me, We’re not taking those bags with us. Just get your own bag and I’ll get mine. Ray has arranged for someone to pick them up and get them to Laredo.
I was very happy to get away from those guns that gave me the let’s-not-forget-what-we-killed dreams.
We took a taxi to the hotel.
It’s 901 Navigation Boulevard, Corazón said to the taxi driver. She said the words slowly, as if saying the address were like reading a poem.
Corazón rolled down the window and looked out at the city. This day could be March 31, 1995, she said. It feels like that day.
We checked in at the lobby where Selena had run for help with a bullet wound in her shoulder. Corazón gave the hotel clerk her charge card and then looked around the lobby as the clerk activated our keycards.
Nothing has changed, Corazón said.
We walked toward our room and over the ground where Selena had fallen. Corazón walked lightly on tiptoe over the tiles, as if she might crush something. She also spoke softly, as if she didn’t want to wake someone up.
That night, after we ate a pizza we’d ordered in, we lay side by side in two twin beds. I expected she’d be talking to me all night, but as soon as she got under the covers she said, This hotel is like a temple.
She never said another word.
The next morning Corazón and I went to Selena’s grave.
A taxi took us to Seaside Memorial Park and Funeral Home. The taxi driver knew exactly where we were going.
Everyone from out of town here comes to see Selena, he said. He spoke English with a strong Mexican accent.
Everybody loved her, he said. Once I even brought two transvestites from Mexico City to visit her and they were crying the whole time.
I’m going to cry too, Corazón said. That’s what tears are for.
It was a large cemetery, with small graves except for Selena’s, which was a small monument and really stood out in the flat landscape. Under the largest mesquite tree in the cemetery, her grave was surrounded by a wrought-iron gate and signs that stated: STAY OUT. RESPECT THE GRAVE SITE.
On the tomb was the image of Selena’s face engraved in bronze. At the base of the sculpture was written: Selena Quintanilla-Perez: April 16, 1971–March 31, 1995.
Now I see her grave, Corazón said. I believe it. Selena’s dead.
Corazón bowed her head and looked at the quote that was carved at the base. She read the words aloud, He will actually swallow up death forever, and the Sovereign Lord Jehovah will certainly wipe the tears from all faces. Isaiah.
I walked around the grave and stood under the encircling shade of the tree.
She’s an angel, Corazón said. How could someone kill her?
I didn’t want to look at Corazón’s face. I knew that she was crying and didn’t want to comfort her.
There was a breeze that stirred in the sky of branches above me. I felt drowsy and could see it all.
On that day of days Selena ran away from the gun with a .38-caliber hollow-point bullet in her body. In the wake and tide of her escape she left a 392-foot-long trail of blood.
Selena was a black sparrow lifting her wings and she bled out as she ran across the field of the parking lot, through the grove of cars, toward the long grass of the hotel lobby. She was calling, Wait wait wait for me. She was calling for death to wait up, she was catching up, she was almost there.
I have devotion, Corazón said. She was walking around the grave looking at the fan letters, which were propped against or stuck on the iron fence with tape that circled the site. I have devotion just like these people, Corazón continued. I should have brought a letter too. We should have brought flowers.
Some of the fan letters were in sealed envelopes. Nobody would ever read them.
When I stand here, I think that every time I look at a grave it makes me miss the people before my time, Corazón said. Do you miss the people you never knew?
Yes, I said. I never knew anyone.
We spent a few more minutes at Selena’s grave and then walked through the cemetery and back to the road, where the taxi driver had waited for us.
Corazón asked him to drive us downtown to the Municipal Marina.
The taxi driver was in a talkative mood. It’s my great privilege to bring you to Selena’s grave, he said. I always say that I bring people here and it’s my way to keep Selena alive.
If April May had been with us, she’d have said, Man this man knows how to get a good tip!
Corazón gave the taxi driver an extra five dollars when we got out of the taxi.
Let’s go to the water, Corazón said.
We walked down one dock, past tall sailboats and motorboats, to the very end of the long walkway. There we sat down cross-legged on the wood planks and looked out at the bay.
The blue-black water reminded me of afternoons after school when April May and I would go smoke at the river. She was the only person who knew who I was. She knew to dare me to take off my shoes and sink my feet in the alligator-infested waters. If I’d lived under a roof, she would have dared me to jump off it.
Once she dared me to drink a beer when I was only nine years old because she said it would make me tell the truth. I did get drunk and she asked me all kinds of questions. She’d drawn up a list, which included asking me who my father was and if I was capable of killing.
April May did not dare me to cross the highway with my eyes closed. She knew I’d do it.
At the Municipal Marina dock looking out at the bay, Corazón and I sat close together so that my upper arms rubbed against hers. It made me think about how we accidently touch other peoples’ bodies and then always say we’re sorry. I was not sorry. I moved even closer, leaned into her, so that our knees also touched.
If it hadn’t been for my life, I know I would have been somebody, Corazón said. But I can’t get away from my life because it’s my life.
In the distance a sailboat unfurled a sail and it blew open like a billowing wedding dress.
On the dock next to ours two boys were flying red and blue kites.
I could hear the sound of the wind all around me as it moved everything and made the world sway and shake.
The gun was at the bottom of the bay.
On Monday, June 10, 2002, the five-shot, wooden-handled .38-caliber Taurus revolver used to kill Selena was cut into fifty nugget-sized pieces with a saw and dumped into Corpus Christi Bay. It was Jose Longoria, a Texas district court judge, who ordered the weapon destroyed and thrown into the bay.
If April May had been there beside me she would have said, That idiot judge had the gun drawn and quartered.
I looked out over the Body-of-Christ-water gun grave.
I knew that even though April May had given me the alcohol truth-serum lie detector test, I still had no idea who I was.
37
Afterward. I had not thought about afterward. I had not thought about what was going to happen after the visit to Selena’s grave. Corazón was just sweeping me along into her life. She was the broom and I was dust.
I was that kid who isn’t thinking and drives too fast and drinks too much. I was just living inside the w
ord “risk” as if it were an address.
On the bus on our way to Laredo to meet with Ray, I thought about Leo and wished I were back in Mr. Brodsky’s clean house.
I was beginning to think I needed to make a U-turn. This made me think of my mother and I remembered our pretend drives when she said, Okay, let’s go on a road trip. Leave skid marks. Go over the speed limit. Let’s go backward. Make a U-turn. Backward.
On the Greyhound bus, driving toward Laredo and Ray, I only wanted to go backward. I wanted my car living, my powdered-milk-mixed-with-water milk, the smell of Raid on my skin, and the taste of sugar cubes dissolving on my tongue.
All that was left of my old life was a Jesus-on-the-cross plastic toothbrush lying on the riverbed of bullets.
I asked Corazón if she had a little bag of sugar. She was always stealing packets of sugar and tea bags. Her purse was full of everything she could pick up along the way.
I wanted some sugar, but Corazón had only a yellow packet of Splenda. It was better than nothing. I ripped it open and poured the powder into my hand and licked it off my palm. Many things are better than nothing.
I’ve never known anyone to eat Splenda raw like that, Corazón said.
I haven’t either.
What happened was, after the excitement of visiting Selena’s grave, all I could think about was my mother and Leo.
Corazón watched as the walking-the-train-track sadness took me over.
38
The River Inn hotel in Laredo was close to the Rio Grande and the Mexico and United States border. The place was run-down. The plants in the pots were dead and the tile floor of the lobby was cracked. The swimming pool was empty but had a few old plastic balls in it. Kids must go down the metal ladder, I thought, and play ball in that waterless hole.
The hotel was built on the side of the highway, so the sound of trucks driving past never stopped.
The woman at reception knew Corazón well and greeted her in a mixture of Spanish and English. She explained that Ray had already checked in and had even requested an additional room for me.
Gun Love Page 16