Girls screaming. Not Mami, but Miriam and Norma, running from the front yard. Mami on her knees, one knee catching the hem of her dress taut and hunching her over, the fabric too stiff to stretch. He held her hair at the scalp, no movement permitted. Mami had grown skinny from saving flour, butter, and sugar for the children: through her skin, sharp bones. The crunching of knuckle on jaw, knuckle on shoulder blade, knuckle on teeth. Blood on Papi’s hand. Was that where the purple came from—dried blood and dirt, never washed from some other beating?
In the past month, had Papi been at some other lady’s house, as Miriam sometimes said, collecting blood to stain his jagged fingers?
Or was the discoloration merely an old man’s decay, waiting for Miguel someday, too? Now, Miriam in the yard, a whirlwind in bare feet, shaking the fence. The neighbors stared: the girl was too proud, she and her American mother both. “Ayudenla! Ayuden a mi mami, ayudenla!” Who did the child think she was, asking that they get involved? That man was crazy—they had enough troubles of their own.
“Miriam!” Mami’s voice, weak but rising like a sharp note, stilling the air. “Go in the house!” The neighbors did not comprehend English, Mami’s command an unknown oracle. “Take the niños inside—now!”
Limbs flew. Miriam, soaring through the air with the wild grace of a savage ballerina in grand jeté—landing in a jumble of limbs on her father’s back, all gnarled ponytail, bare thighs, and dirty cotton underpants.
Papi reeled. At just thirteen, Miriam was a woman already, breasts and substance; he collapsed to his knees, flung her off by bending over so she flipped like TV kung fu: back against dirt, dress above her hips, collar still in Papi’s grip. Mami scampered to her feet, gathered Miguel and Norma tight; she did not seem to know her face was pulpy. The neighbors glanced at one another, worried—would the snotty American lady go away and leave him to beat the girl for show? They did not want to see him beat the little girl.
From the ground, Miriam shouted, phlegm and authority: “Mami—take them, take them!”
By the sockets of Miguel’s arms, Mami dragged. Around to the front of the house, down the street, farther, farther. Where was Miriam? Norma bawled next to him as they traveled en masse, away, off the block, running for their lives. A three-headed beast with one pair of legs: Mami’s. She did not stop pulling until Miguel was uncertain where he was and could no longer turn back. They stood on a corner, Mami’s face a fighter’s, her nose broken. Next week, she and Miguel would go to the doctor and the doctor would say, Sorry, nothing we can do for you, while Miguel’s healthy foot twitched in its cast. The week after that, Papi would be dead; they would hear it through the grapevine because by then, Mami and the two of them would be staying with “Tía,” an elderly widow who needed living assistance. Miriam would join them once Papi was dead, and after she had Angelina she would stay with Tía while Mami and the three youngest went to Mami’s family in Chicago, to throw themselves on the mercy of Abuela, who’d always known Mami should not go to Venezuela or marry Papi or do any of the things she had done. Miriam would arrive later, a grown woman, and at first Miguel would not remember that for two weeks prior to Papi’s death, he had not seen her. When he did, he assumed she’d been home still. Only years later would she mention, casually, in passing, how the police picked her off the street, tried to return her home before they made the connection that her father was el loco from the bridge. How they’d had to look for Mami, because Miriam didn’t know where the rest of the family had gone.
Angelina sits at the bar. She has a worn look inappropriate to her twenty years so that, though she is only five feet tall and still has acne littering the sides of her chiseled, Guerra jaw, she is able to gain entrance anywhere she chooses without question or fake ID. Of his sisters, Angelina is the least beautiful, with the wisest eyes. She has Miriam’s features, but on her they are larger, blunted, her skin too thick to appear feminine, though her hair is long and full, her smile wide. She looks to Miguel, with her ravaged little nut of a face, like a member of a girl gang in a 1980s made-for-TV movie. Tough but sweet. She was eight years old when he left for college; a generation separates them. He has never, that he can recall, had a conversation with her.
She blows smoke from a Marlboro Red into his face. “I just want you to know two things. One, I’m getting divorced. Two, nobody is coming to your wedding ’cause Miriam’s gone crazy and they all worship her, but I’ll be there. I won’t have a date, so maybe you can tell some of your cute flamer friends to take pity and dance with me.”
Miguel says, “Did he hit you?”
Angelina pushes his arm. “Are you on crack? Javier knows better than to be raising a hand to me. He’s just, you know, set in his ways. He doesn’t want me going to school, which I’m gonna do. He wants to, like, have a gazillion babies hanging off my boobs and shit, but I’m gonna be a nurse. Or a teacher. I don’t know. Something.”
“Oh.” He wants to say, Be something that pays better.
She is drinking a whiskey or scotch on the rocks. A strange drink for a girl her age, he thinks, but she gulps it with a kind of desperation that transcends age. Under the too-long arms of her shirt cuffs, he sees that her nails are bitten down so low the fingertips are scabbed: picked over, re-scabbed again, mutilated and made sport of, just as he did at her age. He guesses that when she wounds herself, she torments the skin, does not allow a quick healing, is perversely fascinated with damage, or just bored and looking for something to do. He wants to put his arms around her, but he has never known how to do that, not with anybody—which is why he has Chad.
“Uh, are you still working at Dominick’s Deli during the day, to, uh, pay for tuition and stuff?” he asks lamely.
Her eyes meet his. Mocking, the eyes of a mother—except his mother never teased, always wore a sheepish expression, embarrassed for her mistakes, for what her children had seen. Angelina lights another cigarette, rubs up and down on his leg like a lover—no, like a sister, except in his family, nobody ever touches anyone, it is too dangerous, love too close to violence. “So,” she says, “can I be your Best Man or what?”
Behind the front door, a dilapidated ticket booth swims with cobwebs—they simply did not have time to tackle any area of the theater where guests would not roam. The entryway ceiling is partially collapsed. Miguel feels his stomach tighten; Chad’s grip on his hand simultaneously loosens as he rushes ahead, Miguel reluctantly trailing, eyes on the (admittedly cool) marble floors. “Look,” Chad squeals—is he crazy, is Miguel marrying a crazy person, is this what it has come to? “Look, baby—look!”
Miguel does. Two spiraling staircases frame the great lobby; they are aglow, entwined with gauzy silver ribbons and white lights, giant bronze candelabras at the base of each, flames lit. From the upper balcony, columns strain two stories upward like worshippers toward heaven; below are friezes—some painted, some raw—with alcoves on either side. In a daze, Miguel pauses beneath the chandelier in the mezzanine where the ceremony will be, glimpses a fountain overflowing with roses, more candelabras burning bright. He rushes into the second lobby, a giant vaulted room with dark wood beams, stenciled elaborately. He glances up again: winding along the balconies are wrought iron railings embedded with emblems, shields, coats of arms . . . such precision. Each detail, spare ribbons and white Christmas lights and voluptuous flowers, is unchanged from the dozens of times he has been here, on his knees scouring filth, eyes down, always down. He has never been here before. Of course this is where Chad wanted to have the ceremony—fought to have the ceremony. This place is all about transformation. Decay is not what Chad loves, but the mythic possibility of regeneration, the promise of something eternal. Beautiful.
“Is it OK?” Chad whispers. Then, tentative-but-hopeful, “Do you like it?”
Miguel kisses his ready-to-speak mouth. “I do.”
The basement of the Uptown remains dank and chilled. Elaine and Charles Merry pace the bottom of the staircase leading to the mezzanine, where guest
s slowly sift to their seats. Elaine has dubbed the decor makeshift eclectic: luxurious silver taffeta ribbons on chairs; light-up Teletubbies—all purple—as favors atop each plate. Cocktails are available before the ceremony, for those who need them, and Miguel hasn’t seen an empty hand yet. Fags and Blue Bloods size each other up: Who is prettier? Who makes more money? He thinks, a rare moment of Chad-inspired optimism: Everyone here makes enough to buy their good looks—maybe just for tonight, everyone will be friends.
The music begins. For the warm-up, to create a proper mood of both romance and whimsy, Chad’s mousy administrative assistant sings the Indigo Girls’ “Power of Two,” accompanied by X on guitar. His strumming hums unexpectedly gentle. Angelina is a black-locked, pornographic Shirley Temple in a curve-hugging dress, hair coiled tight, vampy but comical. She is a fag’s wet hag dream, a vixen who does not take herself seriously, whose charm is in her self-creation. In lieu of a bride, she flits around doing her dangly-wrist scotch routine; she hugs miniature grandmothers—in keeping with his fine, long-living lineage, Chad has two. Miguel keeps his eyes on Angelina like a talisman. How has she managed to hide so long in the shadow of their sister, her mother? His chest feels swollen; he is unable to draw a full breath. Chad’s hand touches his arms at intervals—here—away—here.
Procession music begins.
“Oh, Christ!” Elaine, departing from her usual Tammy Faye Bakker, honey-tongued sweetness, stomps a low-heeled foot. “I’ve got to pee—Charles, what’ll I do?”
“Go to the toilet, dear.”
And she’s off. Scampering up the stairs, skirt gathered at the knee. The men shift weight from one leg to another and back again. Somebody has apparently clued in the pianist to stall. Pacabel’s Canon—are they kidding,
who OK’d this? Charles Merry belches quietly into his fist. He has had more martinis than the rest.
“She might have gotten lost,” Chad suggests after five minutes pass. “She’s never been here before.”
“How could she get lost—the port-a-potties take up an entire hallway!”
“Yeah, but they’re, you know . . .” Chad gestures vaguely, imitating his mother, appropriately confused. “Off hidden to the side.”
Miguel bolts. This is his job—husbands fetch cars while their wives wait under restaurant canopies in the rain, and so this will be his fate, too. He will go fetch Chad’s socialite mother who, perhaps so offended by the port-a-potties, has swooned and is lying on the inclined hallway like a damsel. He’d like to kick her ass.
At the port-a-potties, he stands outside the row of shut doors, clearing his throat. “Elaine? We’re ready to start, uh—are you—Chad wanted me to check and see if we should go ahead without you.”
No reply. Miguel begins to knock on plastic doors, and, when that fails, to fling them open. Empty. Paranoid, he runs toward the main entrance to glance outdoors and make sure she has not taken off—Cinderella amid the bums and club-goers on Broadway—having decided this was all a huge mistake after all. But once in the main lobby he glimpses, at the very top of the stairs next to the entrance for balcony seating, a door marked LADIES. Clearly Elaine—being Elaine—would have imagined that the port-a-potties would be in the ladies’ room—that would be the only civilized thing! Taking off, he tackles two stairs at a time. But at the top of the grand stairway, the door to the ladies’ room will not budge. Who knows what manner of rubble lies inside—like the crazy heaps of broken rocks and wood that obstruct the historic wood floors of Chad’s buildings—who can guess what bones and flecks of old skin inhabit this place? Downstairs, Pacabel’s Canon comes to an end. The pianist waits, a palpable pause, then begins Chopin’s Etudes—thank God. Miguel sinks to the floor to clear his head.
He sees her shoes first. Under the curtain that closes off the balcony: a red, cigarette-burned velvet curtain that does not reach the floor.
Miguel hops to his feet and flings it back—shit, has Elaine signed up on the sex list?—and gapes, eyes traveling the bent bump of ass, beige tweed gathered, garter tops visible, as Elaine Please Merry lets loose a stream of steaming urine that scatters dust. Drizzles a mist upon his wing tips.
“This cannot be happening.”
In the shadows, the back of her tailored mother-of-the-bride blazer convulses. Sobs rise to greet him alongside wet dust and ammonia. Miguel approaches cautiously: she is of a different breed than he; will she attack? But that is what he does when cornered—suddenly her arms burst around him, clutching the back of his tux, nose buried into his shoulder. They are the same height. Miguel wills his hand from investigating what he is fairly certain is a piss stain on his arm—instead, that hand, soon to bear a plain gold band, rubs an invisible circle on the back of his mother-in-law. Instead his voice soothes, “It’s OK. We didn’t start without you—everyone’s waiting downstairs.”
“It was horrible.” She has not yet looked up, speaks drippily into his collar. I had to . . . urinate so badly, and I couldn’t find those port-a-contraptions anywhere. The door to the ladies’ room was locked, or barricaded, and I started to—oh, after forty, the body falls apart, you just aren’t the same. It’s so humiliating . . . I’ve ruined my—”
“I can’t see anything on your skirt,” he offers quickly. “The tweed’s thick. Just get rid of your underpants—look, toss them here.” On impulse: “So many people are going to be having sex up here later, nobody will ever know it was you.”
Her eyes meet his: water and desperation staining blue irises. “But,” she says, her grip on his lapels suddenly hopeful, conspiratorial, “Darling, won’t they all be men?”
“Oh, lots of them wear lingerie,” he promises, and with his lie feels the nausea of treason, the instant revocation of his queer-advocacy card. What do you call a fag who reinforces a stereotype he’s spent his life fighting against, just to make his enemy feel better? Elaine beams, tickled. What do you call a man who chooses enmity over trust?
Backing away enough so the steam off their nervous bodies floats between them, his mother-in-law straightens his tie. “Chad is waiting.” Her voice has grown thick, huskier than her son’s. “We mustn’t disappoint him—chop chop, Miguel, let’s go.”
Hand in hand, Miguel lets himself be led.
Now, the procession begins.
Angelina and Becky march first. Arms linked like a shiny couple on a wedding cake, they saunter up the stairs. Becky wears black pleated pants; from behind, Miguel notes the breadth of her derriere as suitable for her future as a dyke. They should have included a more significant lesbian contingent among the guests—maybe Becky would get lucky. Or perhaps he is only wishing for the demise of a marriage the world is more supportive of than his own—how many guests are out there whispering, Well, I’ve seen everything now, into each other’s wrinkled ears? How many are here out of curiosity—a freak show—secretly laughing down the sleeves of their Carlisle and Armani suits at the Merrys and their absurd circus? As though three quarters of these guests don’t know they voted for George W.! Miguel feels a pang of pity, and though he is not sure who its recipient is, he puts his arm around Elaine’s disarmingly narrow shoulders and gives her an awkward squeeze. She brushes him off: “Don’t get nervous now! You’re next!”
Dignified by cummerbunds and bow ties, Miguel and Chad join arms and begin the arduous stairs. They have to time their steps together: a four-legged beast for life. Chad’s smile is blinding; Miguel glances at him, attempts eye contact, but in age-old bridal tradition, he is not even sure Chad sees him now. Lumps of bile push their way up Miguel’s throat as though he may begin to bawl—the sensation is almost foreign: panic grips him; his armpits prickle; his thighs slicken against his tux. Up front, Angelina is already weeping openly, her skinny face contorted, sage’s eyes squinty and childlike. Miguel recalls her as a baby—how Miriam would not kiss her good-bye, would not hold her. This, he remembers abruptly, so disorienting it reels him and he trips against Chad, is why they left. Heroic Miriam, who had sacrificed hersel
f for them, could not even look at her own child, so Mami thought it best if they took the baby to Chicago. Miriam has grown good at giving people up, good at being a martyr—now she will be God’s. Some history he can never access; some secrets lie outside the orderly moral universe of blame. Perhaps good-byes mean little to her anymore; perhaps a higher law, the possibility of redemption later, is all that can keep her from dying now. He will be her casualty, and her sacrifice will give her no peace, this he knows, but for a moment he truly wishes it would.
And then, Angelina is waving. From alongside the podium set up for the (flaming) Unitarian minister who will perform the ceremony, his Best Woman raises her black-gloved hand and beckons—and against his will, Miguel spins, almost knocking Chad down. He turns, and he expects to see her, his older sister, there in the last hour—she would not let him down. But instead Angelina is beckoning to Carlos. Chad spins, too, and squeezes Miguel’s elbow, whispers, “What’s he doing here all alone?”
But scurrying self-consciously over the stockinged legs of Winnetka WASPs, Carlos is heading toward a row of dark heads. Mami, Norma with her husband and son—and Abuela, a confused expression set into her wrinkled brow, too short to see above the head in front of her. The space next to Mami is empty; Carlos fills it. Miriam is nowhere to be seen. They are, all six of them, dressed in their very best, in the dresses and suits they do not even wear to church except perhaps on Christmas or Easter.
Mami is beautiful. In this sea of white she glows like the Black Virgin on a Barcelona mountaintop; dignity radiates from her polished skin, new epidermis covering layers of war wounds. Who can tell why she allowed one child to sacrifice herself for the others—weren’t mothers supposed to sacrifice themselves instead? Who can tell what brought her here, she and her tribe who will, once again after tonight, sink back into basement bingo games and prayer meetings and huddling around the Spanish soaps in the tiny house’s constant orange glow, the smell of beans and rice thick in the cheaply-constructed walls. Has he ever assured her that he would be proud to have her at his wedding—that she would not shame him? Did she need him to? Who can guess at the secrets of the human heart, ever capable of perilous renewal, ever susceptible to dangerous beauty, however scarred? Has he ever wished, amid the hideous gleam of his disgust for the Merrys, that they were his parents instead?
Slut Lullabies Page 5