Caramelo (35 page)

The Grandmother waits for someone to ask her what she saw, but nobody directs a word toward her except a fly buzzing near her face.

—And did
you
see things, Father? In the war, I mean, I ask.

—Well, yes, but no. That is. Not much.

—Like what?

—Like abuses.

—What kind of abuses?

—Abuses of women.

—Where?

—In Japan and in Korea.

—By whom?

—The barbarians.

—Who?

—Los norteamericanos
.

—But why didn’t you do anything?

—Because that’s how it is in war. The winners do what they like.

—But why didn’t you stop them? Why didn’t you, Father, if you’re a gentleman you’re supposed to, right?

—Because I was just a
chamaco
, he says, using the Mexican-Aztec word for “boy.” —I was just a
chamaco
then, he says.

—But why did you enlist, Father, if you weren’t a U.S. citizen? Toto asks. —Did you feel it would make a man out of you?

—It’s that they took me.

—Who?

—Well, the police.

—Here we go again, Mother mutters, slumping in her seat and crossing her arms.

—But how did the police take you, Father?

—Look, I was working in Memphis, and since there were hardly any young men about who weren’t in uniform, they spotted me right away and took me with them to the enlistment office.

—But what were you doing in Memphis, Father? Weren’t you living in Chicago with Uncle Snake?

I look at Father with his face from Seville, Fez, Marrakech, a thousand and one cities.

—On my way I stopped and worked when I could find work, Father says. —In Memphis they were hiring at a casket company. They needed upholsterers to sew the satin linings of the coffins, and I needed bus fare to Chicago. “Do you have any experience upholstering?” “Yes, sir, at my Uncle’s shop in Chicago I practically run the whole business.” “Well, show us what you can do.”

At that time I was just beginning, understand? But the dead must not care if the sewing looks like you did it with your feet. “Okay, you’re hired.” So that’s how it was I was working in Memphis when the police picked me up and escorted me to the enlistment center. When I got to my
destino
, to Chicago, a letter was waiting for me from the government. Report here and here and here. So you see, I was obligated to serve as was my duty as a gentleman. After all, this great country has given me so much.

—Great country, my ass! If they ever get to Toto’s number, I’m taking him personally to Mexico, Mother says, disgusted. —You don’t know it, Ino, because you never pick up a newspaper, but believe me, all the brown and black faces are up on the front line. If you ask me it’s all a government conspiracy! You can’t pull the wool over my eyes, I listen to Studs Terkel!
^‡

Memo and Lolo start singing
“Mi mamá me mima …
” to tease Toto, who is mother’s favorite.

—Quit it, morons! Toto says. —I said shut up already!

—What are you going to do? Memo asks. —Demote us to donkey-privates?

—Wait till you guys get shipped to Vietnam, then we’ll see who’s laughing!

—Fat-Face is to blame for everything, the Grandmother says, not having understood a word of Mother’s rantings because Mother said it all in English. —I don’t know how he does it, but Fat-Face has always convinced your father to do horrible things!

—What kind of horrible things, Grandmother?

—Yeah, what kind of horrible things?

—Like running away from home, and then sending for Baby to go north too. That’s how they all wound up so far from me, getting involved in business that was none of their business in my opinion.

Mother just snorts, but the Grandmother doesn’t notice, or pretends not to.

—I was working here and there, Father explains. —Philadelphia, Little Rock, Memphis, New York City. Shelling oysters, wiping tables, washing dishes …

—Why he’s never even washed a dish in his own house! the Grandmother adds as if boasting.

—You can say that again, Mother says in English.

Father just laughs his letter “k” laugh.

—But why didn’t you stay in Philadelphia, or Little Rock, or Memphis, or New York, Father?

—Because it wasn’t my
destino
.

And I wonder if he means “destiny” or “destination.” Or maybe both.

—And then what? Tell more
cuentos
of your life, Father, go on.

—But I keep telling you, they’re not
cuentos
, Lala, they’re true. They’re
historias
.

—What’s the difference between
“un cuento”
and
“una historia”
?

—Ah! … now that’s a different kind of lie.

^*
During the Vietnam War, a draft lottery based on birthdates was instituted beginning in 1969. It aired on national TV. Whole families watched this lottery of death in terror, as 365 Ping-Pong balls came down the chute and announced if you were a “winner.” The birthdates of men between eighteen and twenty-six were drawn and posted in order of sequence. If you were one of the first 200, it was almost certain Uncle Sam would call on you
.

^†
Burrola and Don Regino Burrón are characters from the excellent Mexican comic book
La familia Burrón,
a chronicle of Mexico City life created by Gabriel Vargas. In a country where books are expensive and often out of reach for the masses, Mexico’s comic books and
fotonovelas
are aimed primarily at an adult audience, among them Mexican Mexicans and American Mexicans, as well as Mexican Americans and some ’Mericans trying to learn Mexican Spanish
. La familia Burrón
is remarkable because of its longevity. It began in 1940 and is still sold today in kiosks across Mexico. Every Tuesday—or is it Thursday?—a new issue appears on the newstands, but if you
don’t get there early, you’re out of luck. Copies of
La familia Burrón
are sold in Mexican grocery stores throughout the U.S., though the issues are not as current. Thus, a popular request to someone venturing south is to bring back the latest issues of
La familia Burrón!

^‡
—Lies! All lies, Mother says. —Nothing but a bunch of lies. He doesn’t exist
.
 
—Who doesn’t exist?
 
—God, Mother says
.
   
She’s staring at stacks of her precious magazines she’s piled in a plastic laundry basket
.
   
—I can’t believe I saved this shit, she says
.
   
There are volumes of
Reader’s Digest, McCall’s, Good Housekeeping,
and a year’s worth of
National Geographic,
a gift subscription from her sister Aurelia. “Apollo 15 Explores the Mountains of the Moon.” “Those Popular Pandas.” “Lady Bird Johnson’s White House Diary.” “Julia Child/28 Great New Vegetable Dishes.” “The Skirt-Length Problem/Ten Ways to Solve It!” “Do-It-Ahead Holiday Ideas/Food, Fashion, Beauty, Gifts, Needlework.” “Ralph Nader/Are Baby Foods Safe?” “A Guide to Christmas Gifts under Twenty Dollars.” “The Kahlil Gibran Diary.” “Adorable Animals to Crochet and Decorate.” “Fifteen Ways to Trim That Tummy.” “Twenty Scrumptious Dessert Recipes.”
   
—You, Mother says to me in her that’s-an-order voice, —help me get this junk outside
.
   
The laundry basket is filled to the top and bulging, too heavy to pick up. We have to slide it to the back door, then thump it down two flights of porch steps to the backyard. I thought Mother meant to haul everything to the alley, but she heads for the garage, unlocks the padlock, and wheels out the Weber kettle she bought at the Wieboldt’s with her S&H green stamps. Mother feeds the Weber the first batch, douses it all with lighter fluid, and, with a little sigh, lights a match
.
   
It takes a while before the fire catches. The magazines are thick and let loose a pale, ashy smoke that makes you cough. Satisfied, Mother puts the lid on and then goes back inside. She makes her bed, washes the breakfast dishes, starts several loads of laundry, before we sit down to egg and hotdog
tacos.
Every once in a while she plucks the kitchen curtains aside and makes me go outside to feed the kettle more magazines. Mother isn’t satisfied till she can see the smoke unspooling steadily from the lid, a thin gray string
.
   
—Cripes, she mutters while peeling potatoes
.
   
When the boys come home later that evening they ask, —What’s burning?
   
—My life, Mother says. Every time she talks like that, kind of crazy, we know to leave her alone
.
   
Memo wants to go out and take a look, but our mama grabs him by the hood of his sweatshirt. —Oh, no, you don’t. You eat your dinner, boy, and finish cleaning up your room, she says. And by the time he’s finished, he’s forgotten about the Weber kettle
.
   
There are unfinished embroidery projects she’s abandoned. There are paint-by-number sets. There are plants to repot and television shows to watch. But Mother doesn’t feel like anything. Nothing. Not even lying on her back and staring at the ceiling
.
   
It all started when December 20th popped up on a Ping-Pong ball, number 137 in the draft lottery, Toto’s birthday. Mother stops putting on her makeup, gives up setting her hair and plucking her eyebrows. She lets the Burpee seed catalogs pile up with the
Chicago Sun-Times,
and then throws them all out. She gains weight once she stops doing her daily exercises. Nothing interests her
.
   
Until the older boys bring home their college textbooks. She reads Freire, Fromm, Paz, Neruda, and later Sor Juana, Eldridge Cleaver, Malcolm X, and Chief Joseph. She begins a subscription to
Mother Jones
and
The Nation.
She tears out pages of political poetry and tapes them to our refrigerator. She listens faithfully to Studs Terkel on WFMT and pastes Spiro Agnew’s face on our dartboard. Mother clips the slogan of a national ad campaign and tapes it on the bathroom mirror: “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.”

53.

El Otro Lado

      T
he Little Grandfather died on a Tuesday in the time of rain. He had an attack of the heart while driving on the
periférico
and crashed into a truck filled with brooms. The Grandfather’s face looked startled. This was not the death he had imagined for himself. An avalanche of plastic brooms of all colors spilling onto the windshield like crayons. The
thwack
of brooms under car wheels. The
thunk-thunk
of their tumbling on metal. Brooms twirling in the air and bouncing. The Grandfather, who never lifted a broom in his life, buried under a mountain of plastic brooms, the ones Mexican housekeepers use with a bucket of sudsy water to scrub the patio, to scrub the street and curb. As if Death came with her apron and broom and swept him away.

At first the family thinks they can outrun Death and arrive in time to say their good-byes. But the Little Grandfather dies in his automobile and not in a hospital room. The Grandfather, who paid so much attention to being
feo, fuerte, y formal
in his life, backed up traffic for kilometers; a
feo
diversion, a
fuerte
nuisance for the passing motorists, a sight as common as any yawning Guanajuato mummy, as
formal
as any portrait of Death on the frank covers of the
¡Alarma!
scandal magazine.

When they dug him out from under the brooms, they say he mumbled a woman’s name before dying, but it was not the name “Soledad.” A garbled swamp of syllables bubbled up from that hole in his chest from the war. That’s what the
periférico
witnesses said. But who can say whether it was true or simply a story to weave themselves into that day’s drama.

He had a bad heart, it will be explained when explanations can be
given. —It’s that we have a history, we Reyes, of bad hearts, Father says. Bad hearts. And I wonder if it means we love too much. Or too little.

The brothers Reyes hurry to make their reservations south. In our family it’s Father and me who fly down for the funeral. Father insists I go with him even though it’s almost the end of the school year and the week of my finals. Father talks to the school principal and arranges for me to make up my exams later, so I can be promoted to the eighth grade. I’ll miss the end-of-the-year assembly where my class is to sing “Up, Up, and Away.” —I can’t go without Lala, Father keeps saying. Father and me on an airplane again, just like in the stories he likes to tell me about when I was a baby.

The Grandmother is already beyond grief by the time we get there. She busies herself making great pots of food nobody can eat and talking nonstop like a parrot that has bit into a
chile
. When she’s exhausted her stories with us, she talks on the telephone to strangers and friends, explaining again and again the details of her husband’s death, as if it was just a story that happened to someone else’s husband and not hers.