Amigoland (2 page)

He had given up trying to remember everyone’s name. The night he had passed out in the front yard had left his brains scrambled
up so much that it was difficult for him to keep things straight in his head. Instead he had come up with a special name for
everyone, usually having to do with some dominant feature, but then kept these names to himself because he still had enough
sense left to know that The One With The Flat Face probably wouldn’t like being told she had a flat face. Really, it was more
her nose that was flat, but once he came up with a name he rarely changed it, so The One With The Flat Face it was. Besides,
there was already The One With A Beak For A Nose and he didn’t want to get them mixed up. He might have remembered The Gringo
With The Ugly Finger’s name if he hadn’t kept waving his crusty finger at him every chance he had. The One With The Worried
Face had a name that reflected his disagreeable nature and yet was different from the strained and troubled face of the old
man known as The One Who Always Looks Constipated. During mealtime there was The One Who Likes To Eat Other People’s Food,
who would scoot up in his wheelchair if Don Fidencio was taking too long to eat his Jell-O or some other tasteless dessert.
“So are you going to eat that or not?” he’d ask, then wait around to make sure he did. Some of them Don Fidencio didn’t see
because they stayed in their rooms, like The One Who Cries Like A Dying Calf, who lived somewhere down the hall, but as loud
as he was he might as well have been in the same bed.

The women residents he knew as The Old Turtles. There were so many of them he mainly remembered them collectively, though
a few did have special names. The Friendly Turtle sat in her wheelchair near the front door and waved at all the visitors
whether she knew them or not, whether it was the first or the fifth time the person had walked in that day. The Friendly Turtle’s
friend, who also sat by the door but didn’t wave, was The Turtle With The Fedora because of the felt hat she wore, even if
it made her look less like a Turtle and more like an old man sitting around with nothing better to do. The Turtle Who Never
Bends Her Legs leaned back in a larger wheelchair with a cushiony footrest that extended out like a recliner on wheels. The
Turtle Who Doesn’t Like To Talk sat in her wheelchair next to her husband, The Loyal One, who came by every day to sit with
her and massage her right leg and then the stump where the left one used to be. The Turtle With The Orange Gloves said her
hands were always cold and took off her coverings only when it was time to eat. The Turtle Who Should Be An Operator sat in
her wheelchair next to the nurses’ station, yelling “¡Teléfono!” anytime the phone rang.

The Gringo With The Ugly Finger sat up a little straighter when The One With The Flat Face pushed her cart up to the table.

“The doctor plain-out told me, ‘Sorry, son, there was no saving the tip of your pointer finger. But there is absolutely no
reason in the world that you can’t go back to work once you heal up and from then on live a perfectly normal life.’”

Don Fidencio pretended the chatter was no different than the mumbles and gurgles he could hear coming from The Table Of Mutes
along the far wall, where no one did more than moan and hum to himself and then every so often shout “Macaroni?” or “Bunco!”
He could hear his belly tightening and he was thinking that he might have been hungrier sometime between when the Depression
hit and the year he went off to the CCC camps.

The One With The Worried Face finally let go of his cheeks so The One With The Flat Face could strap on the cloth bib that
covered the entire front of his shirt. The Gringo With The Ugly Finger puffed out his chest as if she were decorating him
with a medal.

Don Fidencio raised his hand when she came around with his bib.

“I already have one.” He picked up the end of the paper napkin he had stuffed into his shirt collar when he’d first sat down,
ready to eat.

The One With The Flat Face leaned in close to him. “Papi, you know you have to wear one of these.”

“For what?” he said, shrugging. “If I have my own.”

“That one isn’t big enough, papi. Your shirt’s going to get dirty.”

“I’m not your papi.”

“Yes, all right, but you still have to wear the bib.”

“No food is going to fall on my shirt.”

“How do you know that, Mr. Rosales?”

Don Fidencio looked away and shook his head. “How do
you
know?” he said, and in this instance wished that he could remember her real name — Josie, Rosa, Vicky, Yoli, Alma, Cindy,
Lulu, Flor, whatever the hell it was — just to toss it in there for emphasis.

“All I know is you have to wear the bib. That’s the rules, Mr. Rosales.”

She brought the long white cloth toward him, but he pushed her hands aside.

“Already I told you to take it away!”

The One With The Flat Face stepped back, hands on her plump hips, and glared at the old man.

“I’ll be back in a little bit, sir,” she said, as if this were supposed to scare him.

When he turned around, the other men at the table were staring at him. The One With The Worried Face shook his head in a disillusioned
sort of way; The Gringo With The Ugly Finger looked as dazed as if something had just happened to one of his other fingers.

“What?” Don Fidencio said to both of them. “What are you looking at, eh?”

The One With The Worried Face turned his attention toward the vase of plastic flowers on the table. The Gringo With The Ugly
Finger stroked the frayed edge of his bib.

Don Fidencio tugged a couple of times on the paper napkin, making sure it was secure. He knew what he was doing; he didn’t
need some young girl telling him things. She must have been blind to think he needed one of those towels hanging from his
neck. Maybe from now on he would call her The One With The Flat Face Who Is Also Blind.

He sulked back in his chair. His stomach growled as if he hadn’t eaten in days. The memory he felt churning inside his belly
had taken place in those early days of the Depression. He had found work close to the river, picking tomatoes with some other
men, including a couple of hoboes from up north who spent their time complaining that it was too damn hot for a man to be
working so hard. They were making so much noise that no one heard when the agents drove up. Before he knew it, they were rounding
everyone up but the hoboes, who by then had put down their bushels and were taking a cigarette break. It didn’t matter where
he lived or for how many years. “Looks Mexican to me,” the agent said when he protested. And how was he supposed to explain
to the agent that because his parents had crossed over to look for work, he was born in Reynosa, just on the other side of
the river, but almost all his life he had spent on this side? Another week and he would have been born in the U.S., same as
the rest of his family. Yes, even if he had relatives on both sides, really he was American now and had been for many, many
years. Later that same night he was crammed into a boxcar with the others — some Mexican citizens, some just unlucky enough
to look it — until the train arrived down in Veracruz. It was his first time so far beyond the other side of the border. He
and a few of the men stuck together as they traveled the more than six hundred miles back to Texas. None of them had much
money. Over the next two weeks they walked and asked for rides when they could, but mainly walked. And if he could recall
any more of this, he would probably say it was the hungriest he had ever been.

The metal doors to the kitchen swung open and two dining room attendants rolled out the food carts, starting at the far end
of the room, where most of The Turtles gathered. Of the eighty or so residents eating in the dining room today, only two had
guests. One was a tall man with a long stringy ponytail who was sitting with his mother while she chewed her fried fish. The
second guest was a woman in her early fifties with slightly tinted hair and a pair of gold-lined teeth. She sat with her much-older
husband at almost every meal, sometimes ordering a tray of food for herself.

Alongside the window that looked onto the patio, one of the aides stood in the center of a U-shaped table and uncovered trays
for three residents, all of them twitching in their reclining wheelchairs that were more like upright gurneys. She took a
spoonful from the first tray and fed a dark-haired woman not more than sixty, and then a second later the aide had to recover
the yellowish dollop that had seeped onto the woman’s chin.

Don Fidencio tried not to look around the room as much as he had his first two months. For what? He hadn’t seen anyone he
remembered or who might remember him, which seemed odd given that he had lived and worked in the same town for most of his
life. Where the hell is everyone? he kept asking himself. Strangers, all strangers, they had taken everyone he knew and replaced
them with strangers. This is where they had sent him to die, with strangers. The gray-haired daughter of one of The Turtles
had said she recognized him as the man who used to bring the mail to her mother’s house, a white one with light-blue trim
that had a large banana tree in the front yard and that stood on the corner near the entrance to the compress. Don Fidencio
didn’t recall the house, though he remembered a chow biting him near the train tracks, leaving him with a dozen or so stitches
on his backside. When the woman said it wasn’t their dog, he lost interest in whatever else she had to say.

The other reason he preferred to not look around was that he didn’t like thinking about his life, how it used to be, how it
was now, and what it would likely become, if God didn’t do him the good favor of taking him soon. No matter how much he had
lost, or they thought he had lost, he was still alert and understood what was happening to him. How long could it be before
they moved him over to the U-shaped table where the aides would be feeding him? When would he not be able to dress himself
anymore and have to wear his pajamas all day? One of these nights would there really be a need for them to keep the plastic
lining on his mattress?

“Is there a problem, Mr. Rosales?” The One With The Big Ones was standing next to the table. The One With The Flat Face lingered
to one side of his wide frame.

“Yes, there is,” Don Fidencio said, cocking back his head. “I’m hungry already. Tell them to hurry it up with the trays.”

“The food is almost here, sir, but Miss Saldana tells me that today you don’t feel you have to wear your bib like everyone
else.” The One With The Big Ones crossed his arms, which in his yellow polo shirt only formed a deeper cleavage. “This isn’t
true, is it?”

“For what?” he said, and then lifted his napkin. “Look!”

“That paper napkin is not going to be sufficient, Mr. Rosales.”

“How do you mean, not sufficient?”

“We have rules and procedures here, sir. And the rules and procedures state that every resident must wear a bib during mealtime.”

“Look what I have here,” he said, holding up the napkin again. “Are you blind, like the girl?”

The One With The Big Ones glanced back at The One With The Flat Face, who only raised her eyebrows as she waited to see how
he might respond to the comment. The dining room attendant, a younger man with homemade tattoos on his knuckles and forearms,
had just rolled the serving cart up to the table. The One With The Big Ones signaled for him to hold off and then turned back
to continue his conversation.

“There’s no reason to be belligerent, Mr. Rosales.”

“Don’t you be calling me names.”

“Belligerent means to be hostile, to be insulting, like saying someone is blind because they don’t agree with you. Miss Saldana
is only trying to do her job and follow the rules and procedures. Don’t you want to follow the rules and procedures?”

Don Fidencio waited for him to finish. Not only was he forced to argue with the man about his bib but he had to do this in
English, which for him meant stopping to think of the right words before he could open his mouth. A building full of old people
who spoke mainly Spanish and no longer had any use for English, if they ever had, and this was the one they had sent to run
the place.

“I’m just saying the truth. This is a napkin and it works just the same as that horse blanket she wants to put on me. Look
at it, and if you don’t see it, then maybe you both need to go have your eyes checked. Get in the van and go together if you
want. What’s so insulting about that?”

The One With The Big Ones squatted by holding on to the edge of the table and the handlebar on the walker.

“Mr. Rosales, the rule is that everyone has to wear a bib.” He was now eye-to-eye with the old man. “What you have there is
a paper napkin, not a bib.”

“And who made the stupid rule?”

“Those are just the rules. It was like this before I started working at Amigoland. I’m just following the rules. Don’t you
want to follow the rules?” He motioned with his head, stretching his jowls to glance over his shoulder. “Look at how Mr. Phillips
and Mr. Gomez are cooperating.”

The Gringo With The Ugly Finger sat up when he heard his name. The One With The Worried Face shook his head as if he couldn’t
believe the misfortune Don Fidencio was tempting.

“Why do you want to cause such problems?” He dropped his forehead into the palms of his hands. He looked up a few seconds
later. “Why?”

“I used to pack a lunch pail back when I was with Pan Am.”

“Not now, Mr. Phillips,” The One With The Big Ones said, keeping his eyes fixed on Don Fidencio. Then he told the attendant
to go ahead and serve the two other men at the table.

“And me?”

“I want to give you your food, so does Miss Saldana, but first you need a bib, sir.” The One With The Big Ones leaned on the
edge of the table in order to stand up again. “I can’t serve you until you cooperate.”

“I have one.”

“Sir, I’m not going to argue with you about your paper napkin. If you want to eat, you have to follow the rules.” The One
With The Big Ones glanced over at The One With The Flat Face, who nodded back at him.