After Mom called him un hijo de puta they’d call each other all the bad things they could think of. He’d grab her wrists and press her down, probably telling himself that she’d shut up if he could only keep her down. And when I’d see him on top of her like that, I could see it in his eyes, the way he looked at her. He didn’t want to hit her. He just wanted her to stop fighting. But she’d call him names and hit him across the head and when he couldn’t take it anymore he’d use the back of his hand. She’d yell with tears over her cheeks. “¡Eres un hijo de puta! ¿Me oyes?”
In the kitchen the next day, she’d be at the stove making eggs, not wanting to turn around. Then finally she’d turn around and we’d see Band-Aids on the sides of her eyes. Estrella would try to help her with the dishes, but she’d brush her away like if she were some fly.
Whenever they’d fight we’d go to our room because it was safer there. Sometimes watching them would make us feel like throwing up. I can’t remember the first time it happened but I remember when he knocked over the table and we ran to our room like cockroaches when a light is turned on.
We locked the door and held each other like if we were waiting for an earthquake, afraid the ceiling might cave-in. A chair would slam against the wall and we’d flinch. Glasses would break. The walls would tremble. They’d scream so loud it felt like wolves were tearing up the house, saying words that didn’t even make sense anymore, and the sounds that did come out of their mouths were like dogs.
We’d stand in our room staring at each other until it ended. Because that was the game, to see who could last the longest listening to the furniture being thrown without running away. But there’d be a note in Mom’s voice that would mark her breaking point, when she couldn’t take it anymore, and the way we could tell was by the sounds being pushed out of her body. Because when he’d kick her in the stomach or hit her across the face they were different kinds of sounds. And when those sounds would alternate, Estrella would lose.
“Let’s go,” she’d say. Her mouth would tighten and she’d try to hold it in but she’d crawl out of the window and look at me, asking me with her eyes, “What are you doing? Are you stupid?” I’d stand there not saying a word, like a statue, thinking, no, I’m not stupid. I stayed until it was over. Sometimes I’d sit on the floor and deal the cards because looking at the cards would help me forget. I’d tell myself the riddles to keep me from hearing them scream:
The one who dies with a hook in its mouth. El Pescado.
A lamp for the ones in love. La Luna.
Something identical to the other. La Bota.
I stayed in case something happened, in case I’d have to call someone.
After a long stillness, I’d hear them walking around in the living room, neither of them saying anything, putting furniture back where it belonged. The sound of Three’s Company on television.
One time during the quiet that usually came afterward, I crept into the hallway to check whether or not they’d killed each other, because I couldn’t hear them and a long time had passed. But from the hallway I saw Papi holding Mom from behind, leaning over the kitchen table with his hand over her face and her cheeks pulled down. I could see the whites of her eyes and he was banging the table like if he were trying to move it, but it wouldn’t move, and I could hear her sighing. It reminded me of when we’d go hunting and have to twist a deer’s neck after we shot it in case it hadn’t died. Something turned in my stomach and I ran to my room, but even there, with the door closed, and the door locked, I could see him banging her over the table and I wondered if it was my fault, because of that time he’d pushed me down the stairs and I’d broken my hand. Mom said she’d never forgive him for that. And from then on that word puta would start everything. I don’t remember them fighting before my wrist broke or before Papi called me putita. Maybe throwing it in his face was Mom’s way of fighting back, defending me somehow. Or maybe she was mad at me because of what I’d done, and she was taking it out on him, blaming him somehow. Or they were taking it out on each other and really they should’ve been beating me, banging me against the table until I was sighing like a dying dog.
That time I saw them over the table, I crawled out the window and ran down the street to the corner store and stole pieces of chewing gum and put them all in my mouth at one time. I chewed so fast my cheeks burned, and they burned so much that I told myself I was crying because of the sting, not because they were fighting.
LA PERA
Late one night there was a phone call and Papi told us to get dressed and get in the truck. He drove to the hospital near Majestic Harbor and kept saying that Pancho Silva was on the third floor. When the elevators opened, I saw a row of seats at the end of the hallway lit from above with green fluorescent lights. Everyone was there, sitting next to each other with their heads down. Buelita Fe was holding a handkerchief in her hands, twisting it around her fingers, and Gastón stood between Tía Elsa’s knees eating a pear like if he were at a picnic. I peeked into the room where Pancho was lying down and saw Tía Hilda holding his hand. It was quiet and no one said a word. I pulled on Mom’s sleeve and mouthed, “What’s wrong?” She tapped her chest three times. Like if that was supposed to tell me. “¿El corazón?” I asked, and she nodded. Luisa made trips back and forth to the vending machines on the first floor, but she never came back with anything.
After awhile, Tía Hilda called everyone into the room. We walked inside looking at the floor, and stood in a semicircle around the bed holding hands. Mom stood behind me and Papi stood behind Estrella. We looked at Pancho and held hands as Tía Hilda said a prayer. His eyes were closed and his head was tilted back like if there were something crawling up his neck.
I don’t remember what happened after that because all I can remember is wanting to go home.
After he died I was with Estrella a lot of the time. Neither of us knew what to do or how to act. It was like we both had a secret but we didn’t know how to keep it. She’d look through a Sears catalog when we were at home, or cut out pictures from teen magazines while I spent time building a house of cards. Sometimes when I’d build one three stories high, I could hear her go quiet. “Careful, careful,” she’d say, as I put another card on top of the house. But always when she looked, it’d fall.
One day I was sitting on the couch watching television. She walked inside from the garage door and, like all the times she came home, I expected her to walk to our room and shut herself in. But she put her backpack down and walked around the couch and sat down next to me. I wasn’t sure what she wanted, but she put her arms around me and hugged me for a long time. And we just sat there, like a statue of two girls trying to do the right thing.
EL DIABLITO
Tencha’s toes are purple and she has veins the color of green lizards crawling up her legs. Her feet would ache and swell after a day of walking in the market on Alexander Street getting ingredients for tamales. She’d point to the Vaseline in her cabinet and tell me it was because of her sickness, the diabetes. She needed circulation.
Once, she was on the couch in front of the television watching a telenovela and I was rubbing her feet. She dozed off, and I got pissed because I couldn’t stop rubbing until she told me to stop. It took a lot of rubbing to get the blood going, she said. So I pressed hard with my thumbs.
In the desk drawer by the telephone she kept needles for injections. Insulina, she called it. I went and grabbed one, smaller than a safety pin, and took off the plastic wrapping then held it between my fingers. Tencha’s hands were over her stomach and her head was tilted to the side. For a second I thought I should leave her alone. She looked peaceful and hadn’t even noticed I wasn’t rubbing her anymore.
But the needle was in my hand, so I poked her in the foot.
“¿Qué haces?” she yelled, looking scary and scared at the same time. Her fingers were spread open trying to reach for her foot. I started laughing because she couldn’t reach, and I hadn’t poked her that hard, just enough for the needle t
o stick in, like a splinter. “¡Luz! ¿Qué chingao?”
I took it out and ran out of the house and climbed the pecan tree that was in the backyard. She came out screaming for what felt like an hour, telling me it hurt. And would I like it if she poked me when I was sleeping? She told me how insensitive I was to take advantage of una enferma that couldn’t even work today. She had all these tamale orders she had to finish, but she couldn’t stand for very long, which meant she couldn’t push down with the weight the masa needed in order to be done right. If I didn’t respect my elders, Diosito would punish me! “You better pray hard,” she said, asking what was wrong with me. What happened? What’s gotten into you? She yelled until she tired herself out, then walked inside. I heard her change the channels on the television before I climbed down and found her sleeping again, snoring with her mouth half-open and her socks and slippers over her feet. She went back to where she was, in some dream, some other place, and I sat across from her as I heard her say, “Insensitive,” over and over again. How can you be so insensitive, mama? You’re not like that. What’s gotten into you? That’s not who you are. What’s wrong with you? Talk to me, what’s going on?
As I watched her sleep all those questions made me feel as if I’d melt right there all over the floor. What’s wrong? What’s gotten into you? Talk to me, mama.
EL CAMARÓN
Papi would get behind Mom when she was cooking and sway from side to side. She’d throw his hands off, and because she wasn’t easy he would push her forward and the skillet would clatter.
Then she’d get mad and be gone. Out the door and in her car. Off somewhere.
She used to say, forgive and forget, but I don’t think she believed it, because how can you forget about the things you feel?
Papi’s cabezón. Muy cabezón. He’ll break you in half, and I have a dislocated wrist to prove it. When someone notices my wrist, with the bone sticking out and the lump on top, I tell them, “My dad broke it because I jerked off my primo.” Like that, they know how cabezón he is. You’d think I hate him. But it doesn’t matter; it doesn’t mean I don’t love him.
One time Estrella talked back to him and he slapped her so hard she was knocked out for two minutes. When she woke up she ran to her friend Angélica’s house down the street with her face all sloppy. And maybe it was too hard, maybe it was too much. But once she was out of the house Papi did to himself what he did to me, like Pedro Infante in Nosotros los pobres. I watched him in the kitchen from the hallway and Don Pedro was on the table. I knew he needed some of it so he’d have the guts. I wanted to tell him he didn’t have to do it. The movie was just a movie and it wasn’t real. But I kept quiet and watched the whole thing, flinching every time he hit his hand against the wall. Once he was done, I went to the freezer and took out a bag of frozen shrimp so he could ice his hand. It was all purple and swollen. I grabbed a kitchen towel and rinsed it with warm water and cleaned the blood from his hand and from the wall. He didn’t say or do anything but keep his head down, embarrassed. “Cabezón,” I said. “Eres muy cabezón, Papi.”
That night I figured he fought us not because he didn’t love us but because he believed in right and wrong. There were right things and wrong things. And when you did a wrong thing, you got a chingaso. It wasn’t any different when it came to Mom. It wasn’t any different when it came to him.
LA GARZA
It was a morning after Papi had beaten her. He was still asleep in his bedroom and so was Estrella, in ours. I should’ve been asleep too, but I’d had some dream that woke me up. I opened my eyes and the sunlight was on my face. I went to the kitchen for some water and there was a loaf of bread on the table with a jar of peanut butter next to it. There wasn’t any coffee. I grabbed a glass and filled it with water when I noticed the garage door open from the kitchen window. I could see Mom’s skinny legs as she was putting something into a suitcase, or some bag.
I thought it’d be nice to go outside and surprise her, sing something. Estas son las mañanitas . . . sing a serenade even though it wasn’t her birthday. But it was early, so early I saw the sunlight over the kitchen floor. I looked at the clock in the living room. 6:43 a.m. How do I remember? 6:43. I made a pot of coffee because I wanted to go out with a fresh cup, hot, the way she liked. If she were organizing the garage, I’d help her. If she didn’t want to talk, I’d be there to make sure she was okay.
I folded a kitchen towel four times and grabbed the coffee cup. It was too hot, and hot enough. I filled it to the top and walked out the door, then three steps down and over to where she was, her back turned to me. She was choosing things from the boxes she opened, and I was about to sing when I saw her putting a photo album in a duffel bag filled with jeans and underwear.
“What are you doing?”
She turned quickly and I noticed the left side of her mouth was swollen. I’d seen parts of her like that before, but I never knew where they’d be. Not until she turned around. I held out the cup and forgot about the box, or suitcase, or duffel bag, and saw only her face. “You want some ice?”
When she realized I was staring at her it was like something changed. She pushed the duffel bag, a bag I’d never seen before, against the wall with her legs and started swallowing and wiping her nose with the back of her hand. I couldn’t tell whether she was about to cry or laugh, or both, but she sat there and covered her mouth like if a word was about to come out and she wanted to keep it to herself.
“Where are you going?”
“Nowhere,” she said.
I handed her the cup. Even with the kitchen towel underneath, it was burning my hand. “I made you some coffee.”
“Is there something you need?” she said, then set the cup down on the ground and covered her mouth.
“No,” I said. “Just made you some coffee. But why did you make peanut butter sandwiches?”
“What do you mean?”
“Did you make them for breakfast?”
“Can’t I make peanut butter sandwiches?”
“Mom?”
“What?” She stood up and turned around, lifting the duffel bag to the top shelf against the wall.
“You want some ice?”
She said she was reorganizing things. She pushed a box toward me and said, “Here, open this and see what’s inside.” It was a box filled with clothes from when we were younger.
“What am I looking for?”
“Just clean it! Okay? Can you do that, Luz?”
I shrugged like if I didn’t know.
We didn’t say anything after that. She drank her coffee little by little, in between stacking boxes on shelves, then pulled out two peanut butter sandwiches from the duffel bag she was filling. She gave one to me and I stopped looking for whatever I was supposed to be looking for. Then, right when I needed something to drink to wash down the peanut butter, I heard Papi at the back door. “¿Que chingao están haciendo?”
And I ran inside.
LAS JARAS
You know that feeling when you fall on your back and the wind is knocked out of you? Or when you’re underwater and you can’t hold your breath so you swim to the top? Or when you wake up sweating from a dream and can’t figure out what’s real and what’s make-believe? That feeling in your stomach when you’re caught doing something you’re not supposed to? Or when you discover something for the very first time? That feeling when you got on a roller coaster and you were only eight years old but you felt like a grown-up because finally you got on? Or when you’re in a car and it’s going so fast it feels like it’s going to flip at any moment? That feeling five minutes before you open your Christmas presents? That feeling like if snakes are inside your stomach and they’re trying to get out? Or that feeling after you’ve hurt someone? When you go over it again and again in your head, what you did and how it happened, how you hit her so hard the bruises proved how bad you were? Even if she didn’t bleed you knew she was hurting. Or that feeling when you’re on the road and your stomach drops because you drove ove
r a bump? When you’re looking at the clouds and out of nowhere it feels like something creeps up on you like a spider? That feeling when you walk up to a convenience store and see someone holding up the register with a gun? You back away and run to the nearest corner, or behind a fence, or a tree, or a mailbox, and wait to see what happens. That feeling when you’re holding a gun and it crosses your mind that you can kill someone? This thing in your hand can take someone? It comes and goes like a passing car in the middle of the night and you don’t even know where it came from. That feeling when you’re underwater and you start to wonder what it would be like if you stayed there and held your breath? You could stay there and deal with the panic and the not knowing whether or not you’ll shoot up like an arrow or stay where you are like a stone. That feeling when your body is not even yours anymore? You tell it to stop shaking, but it doesn’t. It keeps trembling like if you’re in some cold place and you don’t even have any clothes to cover yourself with. But it’s not the cold. It’s something else, something different. And you don’t even know where it’s coming from.
LA MANO
My fingernails would get black when we cleaned the house. Papi would do everything that had to do with the yard, and sometimes, in between scrubbing the tub and vacuuming the rooms, I’d go outside and pull the weeds.
Estrella would be in charge of folding underwear on the living room floor, and sometimes I’d help her. She’d sit Indian-style next to a pile of white and pink and blue, and the Bounce Mom would throw in the dryer would make me think it was what clouds smelled like.
Papi’s boxers were the easiest. Panties and bras weren’t. I sat with my legs open and sometimes Estrella would sit on her heels. I tried sitting that way but it was uncomfortable. We didn’t have the same hips. I had Papi’s hips and she had Mom’s. When I tried to lengthen my neck and sit up taller, because I felt short and round, it didn’t look the same, not like when Estrella sat up.
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