Caramelo (39 page)

All the while Aunty is enjoying herself. She’s having a wonderful time. Life is marvelous! Tossing her head back. Laughing with all of her teeth.

—Suddenly Tongolele aims those twin panther eyes on me and asks, “Excuse me, who are you?”

How can Aunty tell her she isn’t anybody? How can Aunty hold out a dog-eared ticket stub and a leaky pen and say, “I’m one of your fans, I was waiting backstage to shake your hand and congratulate you with my brother Baby,” because by now Uncle is gone, left behind in that roiling sea of lust called the audience of el Blanquita.

But what does Uncle Baby care? He’s used to this. To him, this is nothing. He hangs out at the clubs that have signs that say,
GENTLEMEN, KINDLY REFRAIN FROM DROPPING LIT CIGARETTES ON THE DANCE FLOOR
,
THEY BURN THE LADIES
’
FEET
, as well as the other kind with signs in the bathroom that bark,
PLEASE DO NOT VOMIT IN THE SINK
. Wherever Uncle Baby is, he’s not worried about his sister.

—So what did you do, Aunty?

—What did I do? I did what any woman would do in my place.

—You made up a story?

—No. Well, not yet. First I started to cry. The story came later. I don’t know why, but when Tongolele asked, “Who are you?” I just started to tremble. By then everyone in the car had stopped talking and realized I wasn’t anybody. “
Who
are you?” she says, just like that.

The tears wanted to come out of my eyes, Lala, I swear to you. I’ve always been such a fool like that. Whenever I’m excited or anyone shouts at me, I just start crying. There’s no stopping me for hours. And I could feel the shame rising in my throat and in my eyes with everybody staring at me and waiting, and the car suddenly very quiet, quiet, quiet. And me in a panic, because that’s what it was, Lala, an absolute panic for a
moment. Just as I’m about to hiccup into tears, a voice says, “She’s with me.”

It was a soft voice for a man, even though the body was big, husky, a big-shouldered man like a gorilla, but such a kind voice. All I could see was the back of his hat and the big man-shoulders of his top coat, because I forgot to tell you, he was sitting in the front seat next to the driver.

“She’s with me,” he says.

“With you?”

“Sure. With me. Isn’t that right, my soul?”

I nodded. Then everyone started yakking again, and he looks back at me and smiles and winks. That wink that says, “I know it’s a lie, and you know it’s a lie, but let’s just keep it to ourselves, right?” I go back to being invisible to everyone but him. It’s as if I was always invisible until that moment. Until he said, “She’s with me,” I didn’t have a life, right?

With all the pushing and shoving to get out of that theater alive, half the sequins on my painted skirt fell off, and the cones from my brassiere looked like a map of Oaxaca, but I didn’t care. I was so happy.

When we pulled up to Café Tacuba, he helps me out of the car and takes me by the arm, but very gently, eh? As if to say to all the world, “She’s with me.” And well, ever since then, ever since then …

But she doesn’t have to finish.

—He was divine, divine, divine. Of course, he behaved very correctly. That first night I couldn’t look him in the eye, he couldn’t look me in the eye, without feeling … how do I explain?
Ay
, Lalita, the hairs on my arms stand up even now after all these years.

—So how was it he was in the Cadillac that night with Tongolele?

—Well, Tongolele had musicians that played with her, drummers, and so on. And there was a certain
conguero …

—So Antonieta Araceli’s father played the
congas
?

—No. He wasn’t the
conguero
. He was the
conguero
’s cousin. But he was every bit the artist. And the gentleman.

—For real? What did he do?

—He was a tire salesman. But that’s only how he made his living. The talent God gave him was as a dancer. And as a
payaso
, a real clown. I think that’s the way to a woman’s heart, don’t you? By making a woman laugh and by dancing with her. You can tell a lot about someone by the way he moves you about the dance floor.

But to finish telling you the story, it was 1950 and there we were, so in
love and wanting to get married, except I was too afraid to tell my parents. Your grandfather was very strict, because of the military, but your grandmother, what was her excuse? You think she was bad by the time you knew her, but back then, well, you have no idea, and why should I even tell you, but believe me, she was strict. That’s why
he
said, “Normita, you know better than I your parents will never give us permission to marry.” This was because he’d already been married, and
lo más triste
, in a church. Plus he was a lot older, almost twenty years older than me, and to make matters worse he was a bit chubby and much-too-much-too Indian for Mother to approve. She was always concerned with
el que dirán
, the what-will-they-say.

And so he said to me, “Normita, there’s only one way for us to marry; that’s for me to steal you.” And I said, “Well, all right, steal me.” And so I let myself be stolen and that’s how it was we married finally.

—Stolen! Like kidnapped? All for love, that’s too cool, Aunty. Your life would make a terrific
telenovela
. Did you ever think about that?

—And so, I was married, but what good did that do me when your grandmother found out? “What, are you stupid or just pretending to be stupid?” My own mother said this to me, can you believe it? “What, are you stupid or just pretending to be stupid? As long as his first wife is still alive, your marriage is just paper. You may think you are married, but in the eyes of God you’re nothing but a prostitute.” Those words, they hurt me even now, Lalita.

—Wait, Aunty. I’ll get us a box of Kleenex.

—Gracias, mija
. But I was telling you, I went to live with my husband, right? Except it was as if I went to live by myself, because my husband’s work as a tire salesman took him all over the republic. Sometimes he was gone for weeks at a time. And it was after one of his work trips that everything went from bad to worse.

We’d been quarreling. It was one of those stupid arguments that begins with, “And your family …” “But what about
your
family!” A fight without end. He had just come back from out of town. He’d left mad and came back worse. There was something odd about him that night. Something. Almost as if he deliberately wanted to fight with me. A woman can sense these things, believe me. By the end of the night neither of us was talking, and he just threw himself on the bed like a pile of laundry and started to snore. He worked so hard. I felt terrible after a while, seeing him sleeping like that, so completely exhausted,
el pobre
.

It filled me with love to see him sleeping so soundly, I just wanted to make up with him, so I lay down and put my hands like this, under his T-shirt, just so I could rub his back and say, “I’m here,
corazón
, I’m here.” And what do I feel on his back but scratches, big welts. I turn on the lights and pull up his shirt, and ask, “And this?” But he couldn’t say a thing, could he?

What a howl I let go! Like if they’d put a pin through my heart. I broke everything that was breakable and cursed and cried, and how could he bring another woman’s scratches to our bed, and I don’t know what. The neighbors must’ve enjoyed that fight. He was so upset he left. For days he didn’t come home, and then I get a note saying he was staying with his family in Jalisco. I went a little crazy. Oh, I suffered, Lala. I was all right in the day. In the daytime it was easy to be brave. It was when I lay down to sleep, that’s when I’d let myself cry.

—Why is it sadness always comes and gets you when you lie down?

—Maybe it’s because we talk too much in the day, and we can’t hear what the heart is saying. And if you don’t pay attention, then it talks to you through a dream. That’s why it’s important to remember your dreams, Lala.

That’s why when I started to dream the dreams about a telephone ringing, I took it as a sign that I should call and forgive him. I even went to
la basílica
to ask la Virgencita for this strength, because by then my heart was as knotted and twisted as those rags the faithful wrap around their legs to walk to church on their knees. I lit a candle and prayed with all my soul, like this, “Virgencita, I know he’s my husband,
pero me da asco
, he disgusts me. Help me to forgive him.”

And I know this sounds crazy, but it was as if a big rock rolled off my heart in that instant, I swear it. I walked home from La Villa like an angel, as if I had wings and was flying. When I got to the corner where we lived, I was practically running, I knew I had to telephone him. He was supposed to be staying with his family, right? But every time I called, guess what. He wasn’t there. And again, “Oh, he’s not here.” Each time I called his relatives, they wouldn’t let me talk to him. “Well,
fíjate
, he’s not here right now.” “Oh, how is it he’s not there?” “Well, he stepped out.” And like that, and like that. Of course, I was worried. Till finally one night I got it in my head to call the only hotel in that wretched town and ask for my husband at the registration.

Oh, Lala, never phone a man in the middle of the night unless you are
brave enough to know the truth. You can always tell when a man has a naked woman lying next to him. Don’t ask me how, but you can. There’s a way men have of talking to you, or, rather, of not talking. The silences. It’s what they
don’t
say that’s the lie.

“Are you alone? Is there someone there with you?” “Well, of course not, my life.” But, Lala, I could hear sounds in the background.

—Like what kind of sounds?

—Well, like a zipper zipping. Like coughing, like water, like what do I know? Like someone. But I just knew. There’s some things you just feel right here, you know. Right here I got a sick feeling, like if my heart was a
limón
being squeezed.
¡Pom!
And I just knew.

“Do you love me?” “Of course I do.” “Do you? Then say it.” “… Why?” “Just say it. Say you love me. Say it,
canalla
. Say you love me, say it!” “… I love you.” “Now, say my name. Say, I love you Normita.” “… I love you, Normita.” And me laughing a little laugh like a witch, a hee-hee-hee from I don’t know where. And at that moment I was a witch, wasn’t I?

Everyone knew how the story was going to end except me. Isn’t that always the case with love? He’d been hanging out with too many
güeros
. That’s where he got such foreign ideas. So that after we broke up he wanted to keep calling me, can you believe it? “Can’t we just be friends?”

“Friends? What do you think I am,
una gringa
?” That’s what I told him, Lala. “What do you think I am,
una gringa
?” Because that’s how
los gringos
are, they don’t have any morals. They all have dinner with each other’s exes like it’s nothing. “That’s because we’re civilized,” a
turista
once explained to me. What a barbarity! Civilized? You call that civilized? Like dogs. Worse than dogs. If I caught my ex with his “other,” I’d stab them both with a kitchen fork. I would!

When I went back home to live with my parents with their terrible I-told-you-so’s, the first thing I did was get rid of anything and everything he had ever given me, because I didn’t want any part of him contaminating my life, right? When we were
novios
we had our names written on a grain of rice by one of those
Zócalo
vendors over by the cathedral. It was just a cheap gift, but it had meant a lot to me then.

I put that grain of rice inside my pocket, and the next Sunday when I went to the Alameda I fed it to an ugly pigeon. That’s how mad I was. Oh, seeing that pigeon swallow that rice gave me a pleasure like I can’t tell you.

“Normita, you’re better off,” everyone said to me. “You’re young, you find yourself another to erase the pain of the last one; like the saying goes, one nail drives out another.” Sure, but unless you’re Christ who wants to be pierced with nails, right?

For a long time after, I’d just burst into tears if anyone even touched me. Sometimes it’s like that when somebody touches you and you haven’t been touched in a long time. Has that ever happened to you? No? Well, for me it was like that. Anybody touched me, by accident or on purpose, I cried. I was like a little piece of bread sopped with gravy. So when anything squeezed me, I started to cry and couldn’t stop. Have you ever been that sad? Like a donut dunked in coffee. Like a book left in the rain. No, never? Well, that’s because you’re young. Your turn will come.

One of my girlfriends said I needed to see
un curandero
. That would cure me. “Look, you need to go somewhere by yourself and have a good cry,” he told me. “It’s that I don’t have any privacy,” I said. “Well, why don’t you go to the forest?” That’s when I realized how unaware men are about the world women live in. The forest? How could I go there? A woman alone. Because that’s what I was, more alone than I’d ever been in my life. I was alone, and the person who loved me was a piece of red thread unraveling. Thank you, good-bye. And when I die, then you’ll realize how much I loved you, right? Yes, of course. That’s how it always is, isn’t it? I dreamt a dream; I opened my wallet, but instead of money, there was a row of starched handkerchiefs, and I knew I had a lot of tears to spend.

I just wish
he
would’ve said, “I hurt you, Norma, and I’m sorry.” Just that, I don’t know, I don’t know. If only he’d said that. Maybe that’s why I still hate him!

—But if you hate him so much, Aunty, what’s the point? Why does it even matter?

—Look, I wouldn’t hate him if I didn’t love him. Only people you love drive you to hate, don’t you know that yet, Lalita? The ones you don’t give a cucumber for, who cares what they think, right? They’re not worth the bother of being upset. But when someone you love does something cruel,
¡te mata!
It can kill you or drive you to kill,
¡te mato!
You know that
pobrecita
who came out on the cover of
¡Alarma!
magazine, the one who made
pozole
out of her unfaithful husband’s head?
Qué coraje, ¿verdad?
Can you imagine how mad she must’ve been to make
pozole
out of his head? That’s how we are, we
mexicanas, puro coraje y pasión
. That’s
what we’re made of, Lala, you and me. That’s us. We love like we hate. Backward and forward, past, present, and future. With our heart and soul and our
tripas
, too.