A So-Called Vacation (20 page)

“A little excitement is good for your work. Got his juices going.”

“Maybe that's what my brothers need. On second thought, a rat snake might just end up eating them.”

“At any rate, that boy probably gave the Borrados a run for their money. At least until he ran out of adrenaline.”

“Actually, no,
mi amor.
The boy barely picked anything afterward. He was terrified another snake might turn up. The women even convinced his mother to take him to the camp
curandera
.”

“Wow, people here have nothing better to do than gossip and meddle,” said Gus. “That's how boring this place is.”

Their father gave an exasperated sigh. “First you say the camp's dangerous. Now you say it's boring.”

“It's both. There's nothing to do so some of the kids hang out by the canal. And then what happens? Two of them turn up bloated.”

“Oh, yes,” said their father, “the drunks. Well, if the other boys invite you along, just say no. You've never had a problem telling
me
that.”

“So what do I do instead?” He gestured toward the pegboard wall. “Watch our giant TV set?”

“Find other things to keep you busy. Look at your brother. He's sitting outside, nice and quiet, listening to music.”

“Even the music here sucks.”

Gabriel was still listening to the distant accordion when Paula and his mother brought out an empty laundry basket. “Don't get close to the poles,” Señora Serenata called out. “There's still lightning.”

But a moment later, even though she had nothing to bring in from the clotheslines, she approached their mother and began a hushed conversation.

Almost immediately Paula rushed over to Gabriel and reported what she had overheard. “The woman told Mom.”

“About what?” But since she was Victor's mother, he already knew the answer.

“That you jumped into a river and almost drowned. Now Mom's all stressed out. She'll be here any second, as soon as the woman stops yacking.”

“What river? It was just a stupid canal.”

“Drowning is drowning, Gabi, whether it's in six feet or sixty. And speaking of stupid …”

“Look, I didn't drown, did I?”

“No, but now she convinced Mom you lost your appetite and you're acting quiet because you have
susto
.”

“What the hell is that?”

“It's the same thing the kid who picked up the snake got treated for. Haven't you heard grownups talk about it?”

He didn't remember his parents ever using the phrase, but his grandmother had mentioned it once or twice. “I think Abuelita said
susto
was a shock. You get it after something scares you. I'm fine, though.”

“Then how come you're all moody?”

“Listen, if anyone got the crap scared out of them it was Gus and Victor. They thought they'd have to bring my body back to camp and face the music.”

“Whatever. But now Mom wants to take you to that woman at the other end of camp. The one the camp calls the Green Lady because she's always dressed in green.”

“Is she …” He had heard the word a moment ago but could not remember.

“A
curandera
? The camp thinks so, so I suppose that makes her one. It's not like she has a degree or anything.”

“I don't believe that stuff, curing people with plants and prayers. So why should I go?”

“Because if you don't, then Mom will tell Dad what happened. He'll cure your
susto
for sure. Either that or make it ten times worse.”

He didn't realize his terror was so obvious until Paula pointed out, “Wow! Talk about your hairs standing on end. One thing's for sure. If you didn't have
susto
before, you definitely have it now.”

That same evening, he let his mother take him to the
curandera
, on the condition that she would wait outside. He entered the shack expecting something spooky, yet without knowing precisely what. Instead the woman's calm demeanor immediately put him at ease. She glanced at him and said without hesitation, “You're my second boy with
susto
today.”

She used the same gentle tone when she glanced at a little boy in the room and asked, “Would you mind waiting outside and joining this young man's mother on the porch?”

The child left without protest and with total trust, and soon Gabriel heard him chatting with his mother.

The Green Lady turned up a kerosene lamp, dimmed another and lit a votive candle. Then she started reciting religious phrases and sweeping his body with soft branches. At one point she called out, “
Espíritu de Gabriel, regresa
.” Intuiting that he was a newcomer, she cued him with a whisper: “
Ya vengo
.” She repeated the exchange, this time draping him with a child's sheet that made him feel more energized. Finally she tapped the top of his head to indicate the ritual was complete.

She snipped off two smaller branches from the branch she had used. “Have your mother brew some tea from the leaves. Drink a cup each night, for three nights in a row. It's bitter, but don't sweeten it.”

He put his denim jacket back on and realized that he did feel more at ease, but he also could attribute it to the fact that he had avoided facing his father's inquisition.

Yet soon he realized that the ritual had been a rite of passage and also an affirmation that he had survived the worst of the summer. He gazed around the camp and understood that he was part of it.

He joined his mother under the glow of an outdoor lamp as she talked to the
curandera
's neighbors. For a moment he imagined the worst, that his mother had mentioned his being treated for
susto
and that they might find it old-fashioned and superstitious. He realized he no longer minded in the least. As they both walked back the people called out, “
Que pasen buenas noches
,” with the familiarity of old neighbors.

Both replied, “
Hasta mañana
.”

As he stumbled with the phrase, a part of him understood that although there were many differences between them, there was a link that tied them. It had been there all along but became evident only when he accepted that he was a migrant too, even if just for that summer.

It occurred to him that perhaps Gus might feel differently about his stay at the camp if he underwent the same ritual. “Maybe we should bring Gus along,” he told his mother. “The whole thing in the canal shook him up, too.”

She considered it and concluded, “No, he's too much like your father.”

As they walked back to the shack she shared that she had been cured of
susto
countless times.

“You too, Mom? I never knew.”

“That's because I never told you. You kids think we're old-fashioned as it is.”

“So how did it happen? You kept jumping into canals?”

“No, nothing that dramatic. Let's see, the first time I must have been about five, at a camp a lot like this one. I was trying to corner a snake when my older brothers saw me and ran off screaming for help. Funny, but I wasn't
scared of the snake. It was my family's yelling that frightened me.”

“And after that?”

“After that it was everything and anything. It wasn't until years later, as a teenager, that I outgrew it. So you see, it runs in the family.”

“So I have you to blame.”

A moment later she added, “When I heard what nearly happened to you I felt my own insides freeze. I almost asked her to cure me too.”

“You should have, Mom.”

“Maybe another night.” She glanced up at the shimmering stars. “Maybe I can bring your father for a
barrida
.”

“What's that?”

“It's a sweeping ritual, similar to what you had. It's supposed to get rid of your negative energy.”

“Good luck trying to get Dad to agree. Besides, he creates some of that bad energy himself. Gus says he needs therapy.”

“Your father says the same thing about Gus.” They walked awhile and she added, almost to herself, “Still, it might help if your father saw The Green Lady.”

“It might,” he admitted absently. “They do have something in common.”

“What do you mean?”

Before he realized it he said, “Well, she sort of lets people think she's a doctor …” He let the comment trail off, but it was too late.

“What do you mean?” she asked again. Yet even as she asked, she realized they both knew.

“Well … just like Dad's not a real mechanic.”

She said nothing for a moment. “Did he tell you himself?”

When he lied with a slight nod, she seemed relieved that the truth had come straight from his father.

“He's gone through a lot of things in his life, starting with his own father's absence. And in the past few years he's had some setbacks. He's had to compete with younger guys at the shop who are better educated. That's why he could never get the certification, even though he can take a car apart and put it back together blindfolded.” Her seriousness melted into a resigned shrug. “And of course that sharp tongue of his doesn't help.”

He didn't dare tell her the truth, how he had discovered his father's secret one day after school. He had stopped by the shop to ask his father for permission to stay at a friend's house and had approached a new supervisor to help find him.

“He's one of the mechanics,” Gabriel had said.

“I know who he is. But he's no mechanic. He's just a grease monkey.”

The supervisor had finally tracked him down, and as his father approached, wiping his hands on a red shop rag, Gabriel feared that the man might repeat the remark. He had not, and Gabriel never mentioned the incident to anyone.

When they reached the shack he remained outside, listening to the same accordion he had heard earlier. He focused on the playful riffs until almost everyone was asleep. Then another insomniac accordionist even farther away, perhaps as far as from a neighboring camp, began a melancholy accompaniment. For a time, the animated accordion seemed to answer the sober notes of the second with lively flourishes and rejoinders. But as they continued their musical duel, the sadder notes began to soothe the jumpier notes until subduing them completely. By the time Gabriel retired he could hear low thunder in the distance,
as the accordionist who remained standing continued the barely audible monologue.

He lay alongside Gus and thought about the music back home. He could understand why his brother found this music so foreign. He did too, despite the fact that it was Tex-Mex. But back home, although their entire neighborhood was Chicano, one would never guess as much from the music the kids played. No sooner did a new mainstream song appear than the parents themselves were out looking for it, bending over backward to help their kids become bona fide Americans.

Everything was in English, incessantly so, and it was not just music. He and his friends turned their backs on the trite Tex-Mex songs with their insipid lyrics, only to embrace the monotonous rhythm of hip-hop.

Of course many of the migrant kids were also fans of hip-hop and mainstream music. Yet their parents kept listening to their own songs in Spanish, without apologies. Perhaps what bothered Gus and Gabriel about the camp was the same thing that bothered them about their father. It was not only the camp's music and the surroundings, but the parents' skeptical view of American popular culture.

Whenever their father pointed out the complicated, split-second clicks on an accordion keyboard, they both cringed, partly because it sounded corny and old-fashioned, but also because it struck so close to home. They realized, through his insistence on advertising his origins, that no matter how much they pretended otherwise, their world was but one generation removed from his.

T
he next day Gabriel and Gus reached a dubious milestone in the field. They finally overtook a Borrado. Unfortunately, it was the original, Don Pilo himself, who was falling behind to start a conversation with a young woman in the next row. Her boyfriend, working just ahead, barely paid the chatter any mind and neither did she. Soon she moved on, leaving Don Pilo to fidget with his upper shirt buttons and find someone else to engage.

Gabriel was trying to ignore him by pretending to concentrate on his row when the youngest Borrado rushed past and startled the exhaustion out of Gus and him. Without wasting a word, the scrawny boy looked up at his father and began opening and closing his mouth like a starving baby sparrow.

“Time for your treat already?” Don Pilo squinted and glanced up to check how high the sun had climbed. Then he reached inside the pouch that always dangled from his belt. He noticed the brothers' curiosity and explained, “I can't keep anything in my pockets because it melts.”

In the meantime the boy kept his beak raised and wide open, with the mute urgency of a chick too famished to peep. As his Adam's apple bobbed visibly, his father sorted through his pouch and kept him at bay with a warm cola. The Borrado peeled back the tab without caring that the can had been tossing in the pouch all day. As a result, the drink spewed a long arc that soaked his shirt and that dried on his hands almost at once, adding another veneer of stickiness to his skin.