The Secret Story of Sonia Rodriguez

by Alan Lawrence Sitomer

  “¿Sí?” answered Rodrigo. “Well, once you get to know me better, you’ll see that I do a lot of things that are kinda cute.”

  He laughed. She laughed. Then they both laughed at the fact that they were both laughing. Was this stewardess flirting with him?

  Ugh. I was gonna puke.

  “De nada, señor,” she said in a sexy voice as she put my tip money into her uniform.

  “Por supuesto,” Rodrigo answered. The look in his eyes said it all: MILE HIGH CLUB. I looked in the seat pocket in front of me for an air-sickness bag. Vomiting suddenly became a real possibility.

  After watching the stewardess wiggle away, Rodrigo turned to me and raised his glass. “To Mexico!” he said, clinking plastic cups with me in a toast. As much as I didn’t want to go on this trip was as much as he did.

  Ten minutes later, Rodrigo ordered another Coke and rum. I paid for the second one too, but this time I didn’t give the stewardess a tip.

  A half an hour later, Rodrigo ordered a third.

  “¡Escúchame! I’ll jump out of this plane without a parachute before I’ll pay for another one of your drinks, me entiendes, Rigo?” I said to my brother with a glare. But he was already drunk, so he just laughed at me. To him, the whole summer would be nothing but smiles and alcohol and trying to sex up Mexican girls who he had fooled into thinking he was rich.

  When we got off the plane we were picked up by one of Abuelita’s neighbors, a ranchero who took us on a three-hour drive to the middle of nowhere. And in Mexico, when they say the middle of nowhere, they really mean the middle of nowhere.

  Rodrigo called “Shotgun!” and jumped into the front seat before I even realized there wasn’t enough room for us to sit up front, so I was forced to sit in the back next to the luggage, a big tractor tire, and a dog that hadn’t been washed since the Mexican Revolutionary war.

  “Back there I have to sit?” I said. My biggest concern about sitting in the back was the wind making a total mess of my hair, because I wanted to look good when I first met Abuelita. After all, I hadn’t seen her in years and she was so old that I was sure a few smiles, a few hugs, and a few fake conversations about how I was being a good girl back in the United States would be all I’d need to keep her off my back. No doubt she had heard all sorts of lies about me. A good first impression would be important.

  “Sorry, no room up front for three,” answered the ranchero as he went to load our bags into the back.

  I turned to Rodrigo with eyes that begged him to allow me to trade seats with him. My brother looked at me, smiled, and reached for the door.

  So he could lock it.

  “Should have been quicker, lame-o.”

  “But, Rigo, my hair.”

  “Hey, I got hair too,” he said, lifting his baseball cap.

  “Thanks,” I said, climbing into the back of the truck. The ranchero finished loading our suitcases and then climbed into the driver’s seat.

  “Aren’t you going to let the lady ride in the front?” the ranchero asked my brother. In old-world Mexico, being a proper gentleman was still a big deal.

  Rodrigo shrugged his shoulders. “I offered,” he said. “But she told me she prefers to ride in the back.” Rodrigo turned to me and smiled. “She likes the wind.”

  “Oh, bueno,” said the ranchero, satisfied with my brother’s answer. “Well, she’ll get plenty of it.” A minute later we pulled away.

  As we bumped along through the countryside, my rear end bounced up and down on the hard, metal floor as if my butt were made of stainless steel. And wind blew through the truck as if I were in the middle of a hurricane. Stupid Rodrigo, I thought. I tried to sit in a corner where the tornado wasn’t so bad, but no matter what I did, it was pretty much no use. I was in the middle of a cyclone.

  As we drove along, I noticed hills and trees and pueblitos. However, the thing that stuck out the most for me was the litter. Bottles, cans, hamburger wrappers, Styrofoam containers, you name it, lay scattered by the side of the road. Even as we moved farther and farther away from the city, it was still very polluted. Most of the items, I noticed, were American products. Pepsi and Burger King seemed to be the favorites, but there were a lot of beer bottles as well.

  About twenty minutes into the trip, I started to hear a strange noise.

  Slrrrp! Slrrrp!

  What the…? I thought.

  At first I thought we were getting a flat tire, but as we drove on I realized the sounds were coming from inside the truck, not outside. I looked around but could not find anything.

  Slrrrp! Slrrrp!

  Finally the sound was driving me so crazy, I got to my knees so I could figure out where the stupid noise was coming from. Wind and dust screamed through my hair as I sat up in the back of the truck. We hit a bump, and I was nearly tossed overboard, like a person on the rail of a cruise ship.

  But what the heck was that strange sound, I kept wondering.

  I climbed up a bit higher and peeked behind the tractor tire. That’s when I found the source of the noise. The dirty dog was licking his balls.

  Slrrrp! Slrrrp!

  “Stop that,” I said.

  Slrrrp! Slrrrp!

  “Stop! You’re grossing me out.”

  The dog raised its eyes with a stupid look on its face and paused. He had big, swollen testicles.

  “No more,” I commanded. “You freak.”

  The dog lowered its leg and stopped. I sat back down, mad about the fact that my hair had gotten even more messed up, but happy that I had at least put an end to the disgusting sound. After all, we still had another few hours in the back of the truck together.

  The bumpy ride continued. Some roads were paved, others were not.

  Slrrrp! Slrrrp!

  “Stop!” I shouted.

  The dog stopped. Minutes later it started again.

  We argued back and forth for forty-five minutes. Every time I would climb to my knees and take a face full of dust and wind, the dog would show me his balloon balls then lower his leg and stop licking his crotch. And every time I sat back down and huddled away from the screaming wind, the dog would start to slurp his nuts again. Finally I gave up and realized I had been wrong about Mexico. It wasn’t all polluted. How could I even think that when I was sharing the back of a pickup truck with a dog who had the cleanest huevos in all of North America?

  When we arrived at Abuelita’s house I thanked the ranchero for the ride, though I don’t know why. The way my butt hurt from all the bouncing on hard metal, being dragged the whole way by my thumbs would have been more comfortable.

  “Gracias, señor.”

  “My pleasure; you were nice guests. Weren’t they nice guests?” the ranchero asked the dog in a silly, singsong voice. “Yes, you’re a good boy. Good boy.”

  The dog started licking the ranchero’s face, smothering his owner with doggy kisses.

  Ugh.

  “Yes, Good boy. Good boy. Do you want to give your new friend a kiss good-bye?” the ranchero asked the mutt.

  “Uh, gracias,” I said quickly, walking away before Señor Huevos had a chance to lick me.

  After a few more doggie kisses, the ranchero climbed back into his truck, waved good-bye, and drove away. A dust cloud rose from his back tires as he left the property.

  Rodrigo turned to me. I expected him to say something like, “Well, we’re here,” or “Home, sweet home.” Instead, with his usual charm, he informed me of something different.

  “I gotta dump.”

  “You’re gross,” I answered.

  “What? All that bouncing around stirred up my stomach.”

  He thought his ride was bumpy?

  “Can’t you wait till we say hello to Abuelita?” I said.

  Rodrigo farted. “Nope.” He started to walk away.

  “Where are you going?” I asked, noticing that he was walking away from, and not to, the house. “Don’t go in the bushes.”

  “I’m going to the bathroom, dummy,” he said as he pointed t
oward a wooden shed.

  Oh no, I said to myself. I totally forgot…the outhouse. Abuelita didn’t have an indoor bathroom. Rodrigo opened the door to the wooden shed, and a frog the size of a rabbit hopped out.

  “Get! Go on, get out of here,” he said as he closed the door behind him. “I gotta poop.”

  Great, I thought as I watched the toad hop away. Wild Country Safari Toilet, just like home.

  “Estoy aquí,” a voice called out from around the side of the house. “Ven, ven,” it instructed. “Come here.”

  I put my things down and quickly tried to fix my hair, but it was no use, the wind had made me look like a tornado victim. I might as well have stuck my finger in an electrical outlet.

  “Around back,” called the voice.

  “Coming,” I said, and turned the corner, pushed my bangs to the left, and got ready to offer up my biggest “Hi there!” smile. Then I froze.

  In front of me stood a four-hundred-year-old woman with skin like a wrinkled alligator. She had one tooth, an index finger that was bent sideways as if permanently dislocated, and boobs that drooped to her knees.

  And in her left hand she held a machete that was dripping blood.

  “Bienvenida,” she said.

  Suddenly she grabbed a chicken that was standing next to her, twisted its neck with a loud crrr-ack, and BAM! chopped off its head.

  The chicken went running. Well, at least its body did. Its head just rolled onto the ground with one eye looking out to see what had happened. Blood spurted everywhere.

  “¿Tuvieron un buen viaje?” the old woman asked me, inquiring if I’d had a good trip.

  I stared in horror as the body ran helplessly in circles, searching for a way to reattach its head. Red liquid spouted from the open pipe in its neck while the eye on the ground looked directly at me as if I was the one who had done this to it. Finally, the headless body ran into a fence, bounced off like a pinball, and fell to the ground. Without a brain, it was unable to get up.

  But it twitched.

  After five or six convulsions, the body died, but I still wasn’t sure about the head. Since chickens don’t have eyelids, the eyeball just stared and stared and stared at me.

  “I hope you’re hungry,” said my grandmother in Spanish as she picked up the bird by its feet and tossed it onto a pile of dead chickens. “Because tonight,” she continued as she started to kick the sliced-off chicken head like a soccer ball into a pile of other sliced-off chicken heads, “we’ve planned a grand fiesta.”

  I stood there frozen, as if my feet had been nailed to the ground.

  “Hola, Abuelita,” said Rodrigo, walking up to my grandmother to give her a hug. The next moment, I heard a crunch.

  “Ooh, sorry…”

  Rodrigo raised his foot and discovered he had just stepped on a chicken head. Without the slightest bit of concern, Rodrigo scraped an eyeball off the bottom of his shoe.

  “You look good, Abuelita,” Rodrigo said. “Like a teenager.”

  Abuelita smiled. “Come, get your things and join us inside. I’ll introduce you to your cousin.”

  Rodrigo picked up his bag, scraped a few last remaining bits of chicken brains from his foot, then followed inside. There was only one thing I could say.

  “Sí, Abuelita.”

  chapter dieciocho

  Lots of people came for dinner at my grandmother’s house that night because in small villages, the first night a relative comes in from El Norte is always a big deal. There were first cousins. There were second cousins. There were third cousins. There were even a few fourth cousins. When you’re a Mexican, it seems like everyone is a cousin. We call them primos.

  Fourteen relatives sat down and began to enjoy the feast. I realized that even though I had been to this casa before, I didn’t remember that much of it. It had been a long time since I last visited this part of Mexico, and even then it had been for only a few days, back when I was a little girl. Little kids ran around. Old people sipped Dos Equis. I didn’t know who was who or what was what. A plate was passed my way.

  “Toma,” said the man to my left. I paused.

  “Go ahead,” he continued in Spanish, offering me the plate. “It’s Abuelita’s famous chicken.”

  I hesitated, not sure what to do. In the United States, our chicken comes in neatly wrapped packages, not straight out of the backyard, still clucking before some one-tooth warrior with a machete slices off its head. The meal, for me, seemed a little too…I don’t know, fresh.

  “No, gracias,” I said. The man paused and gave me a strange look. I think he was some sort of second uncle on my mother’s side.

  “Soy vegetariana,” I said in a low voice. I figured that telling him I was a vegetarian would explain why I didn’t want to eat the chicken.

  “¿Una qué?” the man asked with a puzzled look.

  “Una vegetariana,” I quietly repeated, not wanting to call attention to myself. For some reason he seemed to have no idea what I was talking about. I guess they didn’t have vegetarians in this part of Mexico.

  I tried to explain again.

  “Yo soy una…”

  “Pocha,” a voice rang out from across the table. Everyone laughed at the comment. I looked up. It was mi prima Maria.

  “La pocha feels bad for the chicken,” my cousin continued. “Perhaps she thinks we should have set it free so that it could build a new life for itself in El Norte?”

  Maria took a bite of a drumstick and continued. “Just wait till she sees the feast we will throw her when she leaves,” she added as she chewed her food. “She might need to call immigration.”

  The table laughed again, this time louder. My cousin Maria was around my age and around my height. I would have said she was pretty, too, if she weren’t such a raging bitch.

  A pocha is what “real” Mexicans who live in Mexico call Mexicans who live in El Norte. They say our Spanish isn’t as good, that we act in ways that are not like the old country, and that we’re arrogant and conceited because America is our home and we have so much more than they ever will. No, pocha is not a curse word, but it’s definitely insulting, especially when you are being called it over and over again on your first night in Mexico at a table that is supposed to be filled with familia.

  “Aquí, pocha… have some beans. Or maybe American girls don’t fart either?”

  The table laughed again. Maria was so funny, she should have been a stand-up comedian.

  “Well, I can’t speak for American girls, but I know American boys do,” said Rodrigo, and then he blew out an incredibly loud BRRRIIPPP! His fart rumbled like a thunder over a mountain range. For some reason the fact that my brother ripped a big one at the dinner table amused everyone greatly. I looked up and saw smiles all around.

  Rodrigo grinned with pride. Ever since we were little, he had always been able to pass gas on demand, like it was some sort of skill to be appreciated or something.

  “Ay, Dios mío,” said the lady seated next to my brother as she waved her hand in front of her nose. “He makes wind like a real Mexican. Almost causes my eyes to water.”

  Rodrigo smiled then farted again. The table laughed some more. I lowered my eyes and shook my head. I thought this was supposed to be a respectable meal.

  Though I’d only been at Abuelita’s for a quarter of a day, the urge quickly came over me to leave. It’s all I wanted to do. When my cousin Maria called me a pocha eight more times at dinner, I wanted to leave. When I took out the gifts I had brought from the United States, and Rodrigo followed me around the room as I handed them out, telling everyone, “These are from me, look what I brought you,” even though he hadn’t had a dang thing to do with buying or bringing them, I wanted to leave. And when everyone finally went back to their own homes, I wished more than anything that I could do the same. Sometimes Abuelita’s house slept fourteen, sometimes it slept two, but for this summer, it looked like there would only be four of us, just me and Abuelita, my cousin Maria, and Rodrigo, the farting wond
er boy. It was shaping up to be like some sort of bad reality TV show or something.

  “Me voy,” said Rodrigo, once the last guest had left.

  “¿A dónde vas?” I asked, wondering where in the world Rodrigo could be going.

  “To meet Carla,” he answered.

  I wrinkled my forehead. “Who’s Carla?” I said.

  “You know, from the airplane,” Rodrigo answered. “She invited me to a club. I’d invite you, but sorry, no Lame-os.” Rodrigo ran his fingers through his greasy hair and, satisfied that he looked good, dashed out the front door.

  “Hasta luego, Abuelita,” my brother said as he bounced off of the front porch. “Adios, Maria.” A moment later, Rodrigo disappeared into the black, desert night as if he had lived here his whole life. How did he even know where to go, I wondered.

  I slowly walked onto the front porch, unsure of what to do. Abuelita and my cousin Maria sat in rocking chairs sipping cafe and eating pan una concha, a dessert-style bread with sugar on top. Except for all the nature sounds, it was quiet. Now there were just three of us.

  “¿Quieres?” offered my grandmother. There was an empty chair next to her on the left.

  “No,” I answered. Unlike some females on this planet, I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life on a porch yapping my entire existence away.

  “Pero gracias,” I added, not wanting to be rude.

  “Are you sure, pocha? Maria asked. “It’s good.”

  “No,” I said, stepping off the porch. “I’m just going to use el baño and then go to bed. Been a long day.”

  “Suit yourself, pocha,” said Maria. I wished she’d stop calling me that.

  Abuelita didn’t push the point. And she hadn’t said a word to Rodrigo either when he left, even though he was dashing off into the middle of the night to do goodness-knows-what with goodness-knows-who. I guess after having had thirteen kids and forty-one grandkids, a person stops micromanaging everyone’s behavior. Maybe once upon a time Abuelita had been some sort of wise woman, but tonight all I saw in her was una vieja, an old lady who was completely out of touch.

  Abuelita reclined in her chair and lit a cigar. Not a cigarette. Not a cigarillo. A cigar. The smell of tobacco filled the air. She blew a smoke ring. I should have figured that she smoked cigars. For all I knew, Abuelita had a penis too. I headed off to the bathroom, thinking more and more about how much I wanted to go home.