Caramelo (47 page)

In my ears, that saying I’ve heard Father say so many times I don’t hear it. God gives almonds to those without teeth.

64.

Sister Oh

            —
S
hould one be a virgin when one marries?

Who’s asking is a Sister Odilia. Eyes like a magnum. Steely blue. Shark bullet blue. Serious, let’s-get-down-to-business, obsessed-with-sex Oh-dilia. Odilia. Oh. Say oh. Thumb and point finger curled into a circle, her mouth inside that roundness and … —Say Oh. Oh-DEE-lee-ah. That’s right.

The school year begins with mass assembled in the gym so that the entire student body can join in. The Goody Two-shoes strumming on their hootenanny guitars. It’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” or songs from
Godspell
, or
Jesus Christ Superstar
, or if we’re lucky, that song “Suzanne.” When they get to the nasty part, well, all of us up in the bleachers just about piss in our pants.

After mass they break us into “rap groups” made up with students from every level. No guys from next door invited. Pretty boring if you ask me, until Sister Oh revs up with her sex survey questionnaire.

—Should one be a virgin when one marries? What about one’s partner? Do you expect your husband to be a virgin on your wedding night?

Viva Ozuna rolls her eyes and hisses, —Same stupid-ass questions. Only thing that changes is your mind depending when they ask. Freshmen: “Definitely a virgin. No way would my husband want me if I wasn’t. And I don’t want him to have fooled around either. Yuck. Who wants somebody’s leftovers!!!” Sophomore: “I think I should be a virgin I think. But maybe he doesn’t have to be. I mean somebody has to know what they’re doing.” Junior: “I’m not sure.” Senior: “Who the fuck cares?”

Bozena Drzemala raises a hand. —On my wedding night I’ll just let nature take its course.

—Everyone knows she’s never been a virgin in her entire life! Viva adds for the information of anyone seated around us, followed by a lot of snickering.

Xiomara Tafoya, a collar of fat hickeys around her neck, “I call them love bites,” pretty eyes and fuzzy mustache: —It’s not something a lady discusses.

Wilneesa Watkins, two years younger than us because she was double promoted: —Y’all make me sick.

Almost an hour of interrogation. Sister Odilia is worse than the FBI. If she calls on me I haven’t a clue what I’ll say. Pretend like I’m a
puta
or pretend I’m la Virgen de Guadalupe. Which is worse? Either way, everybody’s sure to laugh.

I decide to say I haven’t decided, which isn’t a lie.

—It’s important you not go too far in teasing a young man, Sister Oh is saying. —For a man to stop when he’s already … impassioned … is very difficult. It’s different for women. That’s why it’s up to you as young women to make sure you don’t venture too far. It’s enormously difficult for a man to stop once he’s started. It takes an awful, awful, awful lot of control. Why, it’s even painful for him.

And here she winces as if she’s caught a finger in a car door.

I’m a virgin. I’m fourteen years old. I’ve never kissed a boy, and nobody’s kissed me. But one thing I know for sure—Sister Odilia doesn’t know shit.

65.

Body Like a Raisinette

            —
H
ey, Wilneesa. You look great! You look like you finally had an orgasm! No other student at Immaculate Conception dares to talk like this but Viva Ozuna, a shorty in wobbly platform shoes. She’s the only senior in our freshman algebra class because she has to make up the course she failed in her first year. —Because that fucking nun hated my fucking guts, she says. Now there’s a new algebra teacher, Mr. Zoran Darko, one of the first lay teachers hired at Immaculate Conception and a fool for Viva’s flirting. She calls him Zorro, and he lets her! Mr. Darko is nothing but a stocky boxer in need of a shave. A real loser. Viva flirts just for the hell of flirting, I guess.

During class, Viva passes me notes with all the words written in small letters like e. e. cummings and with little “o”s dotting the “i”s.
do you mind sharing the answers with me? i’ll owe you a favor big time. please
.

She has the walleyed
chichis
of a chihuahua, struts shamelessly about the locker room half naked, like a white girl. —Cause I’m half white, Viva says laughing. —The top half, can’t you tell?

When classes let out, Viva knots her uniform blouse at the midriff and rolls her skirt up even higher, her ass cleaved in two like a plum. She’s swaybacked, so her butt sticks out even more, a pouty, child’s body like a pinto bean or a raisinette.

—I saw Janis Joplin in concert last year at the HemisFair, Viva says, flicking her hair off her shoulders. —Got two free tickets from Radio KONO. I’m going to be a songwriter. Got notebooks and notebooks of songs. Soon as I turn eighteen, I’m out of here. Moving to San Francisco.

—Why don’t you just move to Austin? I say. —It’s cheaper.

—Shit, you can’t get famous in Texas. Not until you leave. Don’t you know nothing?

Viva has the kind of thin hair that lies flat on her scalp, like if she just climbed out of a swimming pool. Still, she’s real pretty, except she tweezes her eyebrows into mean arches like the movie stars in the black-and-white movies. I know; I watch her do her makeup all the time. In algebra, in study hall, the bathroom, at the cafeteria table, wherever. It’s a ritual for her. Layers and layers of mascara till her eyelashes are furry. Gobs of lip gloss. Sparkle blush. Eye shadow. Foundation and powder. The works. Even in the daytime. She wants to be a makeup artist, she says. —I thought you said you were going to be a songwriter? —I could be both, why not? She thinks she’s going to do a makeover on me, but she’s not touching my face, that’s for sure! No way!

I meet Viva at our after-school job, straightening up the rows of desks in the study hall. This is the job I land after the housekeeper’s gig doesn’t work out. A bunch of girls work at our school, some in the cafeteria, some after school like me. Thank God nobody sees me skulking in here after class. No one knows I’m one of the poor girls except for the other poor girls, like Viva.

The first time I see her, Viva Ozuna is holding court seated halfway out the study hall window, smoking a cherry-flavored cigar, blowing the smoke outside, all the while chatting up a storm about her favorite subject. Sex.

—He’s this wide, Viva says making a fist. —Mexi-size, and he ain’t even Mexican.

—But I thought it was length that was important, I say.

—You stupid virgin! Somebody just made that up so as not to hurt her boyfriend’s feelings. Listen, you can’t feel nothing unless a man’s thing is as wide as a baby’s head. Push or pull, it’s the width that’s gonna make you howl. Width, honey, remember.

I wonder about her name, and one day when I get to know her better, ask her.

—How come your parents named you Viva? Did they want you to live long, or because of a paper towel, or what?

—Stupid! My name is Viviana. And they named that friggin’ paper towel after me! Honest to God, you don’t know shit.

It’s true. I don’t know a thing. I mean, compared to Viva. At least until we talk about Mexico.

—I wouldn’t know, I’ve never been there, Viva says.

—No way! You’ve
never
been to Mexico?

—Only to Nuevo Laredo. My family’s from here. Since before.

—Since before what?

—Since before this was Texas. We’re been here seven generations.

I can’t even imagine staying in one place for seven years.

I like Viva. She spits cuss words out like they’re watermelon seeds and knows where the best thrift stores are. We buy old painted Mexican skirts. The cotton ones and the velvet sequin ones with scenes of Taxco or Aztec gods. The longer ones are mine, because my legs are too thick. The little girl skirts Viva claims, the shorter the better she says. If we’re lucky we hit Thrift Town on the south side and hunt around for vintage cowboy boots. I found a pair of black Noconas, the pointy ones with the slant heels, for only six dollars! And Viva has a pair of Acmes and a real cute shorty Dale Evans pair. We make Father sew us halter tops out of bandanas and vintage tablecloths—sexy! At least we think so. Father complains we look like ranch people, but what does he know about fashion?

To pay me back for helping her pass the last algebra exam, Viva invites me to her house for dinner. Everything in her house looks like it’s been around forever, including her parents. The smell of things soft and worn and faded. Every chipped bowl, nicked tabletop, bent fork, scuffed rug, nubby bedspread, saggy couch, dusty window fan, polka-dotted kitchen curtain remembers, and in remembering has a place here, in this house, home. The smell is everywhere, hallway, closets, towels, doilies, even Viva. Like the smell of boiled hot dogs.

At first I find myself breathing out of my mouth when I’m there, but now I’m so used to it I don’t even smell it anymore unless I’ve been away for a while. People’s houses are like that. Nobody who’s a member of the family can smell it, name it, or recognize it, unless they’ve been gone a long, long time. Then when they come back, a whiff of it just about makes them cry.

After all the apartments and kitchens we’ve inherited, I’ve become an expert at detecting the smell of previous tenants. Usually I associate a family with a single food item they left behind. A gallon of apple vinegar. A bottle of mouthwash-green ice cream topping. A giant restaurant-size can of sauerkraut. Because we don’t know what to do with these things, they stay in our pantry for years until somebody’s brave enough to toss them out.

Viva’s mom had a stroke a few years ago. She’s all there, she just can’t walk around real good. Sometimes she gets stuck on one thought, like a record with a scratch in it, and says the same thing over and over. That’s why her dad cooks and everything. The mother just sits on the same kitchen chair and touches things with the one arm that still works. And she talks funny, like if her tongue is too fat for her mouth. But she’s real nice to me. Says hi and tries to get up and looks at me kindly with those sad, watery eyes of hers.

Viva’s got a grouchy older brother who was married once and maybe still is. He left his wife and came back home, and nobody knows when he’s leaving, except they wish he’d do it soon. He makes life hell for everyone, yelling and screaming. That’s why no one complains when he’s out. Where? Who cares.

How they talk to each other in Viva’s house is like this.

Viva’s mom reaches for an apple on the kitchen table. —Ha! How is it a tree can hold such heavy fruit?

—Viviana, you want me to heat the
tortillas
for lunch?

—It’s okay, Daddy. I’ll do it.

—How’s about the
tortillas, mija
. Want me to heat them now?

—No, Daddy, it’s okay, let me.

—Ha! How is it a tree can hold such heavy fruit?

—How’s about I heat them now, Viviana?

—Don’t bother yourself, I’m going to get to it in a little bit.

—Ha! How is it a tree can hold …

—Want me to get you another kitchen towel? How’s about this towel?

—No, thanks, Daddy, this one is fine. It’s clean.

—Ha! How is it a tree can …

—But that towel’s got holes. How’s about I get you another one? Want this one, Viviana, or that one?

—Don’t worry, Dad. This one’s fine.

—Ha! How is it a tree can hold …

—You want me to do that for you, Viviana?

By about this time, I just want to yell, —Gimme that! I’ll do it!

They make me so dizzy, I just have to hold on to the walls. In our house Mother ends every sentence with “quick.” —Pass me that knife, quick!

Viva says we can move to San Francisco together and be roommates.
How do you like that? And we can both write songs together and become famous and everything. It makes me laugh to think about us writing songs together like Lennon-McCartney. Ozuna-Reyes, I say to myself, and it sounds cool. Except all the songs Viva writes are full of cuss words, and all the ones I write are full of sad shit. Who’d want to buy that?

One day when we’re walking home from school, a red Corvette convertible starts following us. It scares me, but Viva acts like this happens to her all the time, and it probably does.

—You girls need a lift?

It’s Darko. Viva hangs on the door and talks for the longest time, and finally makes it understood, no, not this time.

They have a strange way of talking to each other, those two. A bunch of put-downs, and how it ends is with Darko saying something, I don’t even remember what, before he drives away. Something stupid really, like, —You’ll be sorry, you’re losing quite an opportunity.

Instead of just laughing, Viva shouts, —Fuck you, Zorro, as he roars away. Then she adds for good measure, —Your mother’s a man!

66.

Nobody but Us Chickens

            —
E
l cuarenta-y-uno
, Father shouts from his bedroom at one end of the house.

—No, el ocho
, the Grandmother counters from her room off the kitchen.

—Forty-one, Father keeps insisting.

Mother spent the day covering her rosebushes with plastic garbage bags and quilted moving blankets because of the freeze, and now that it’s nighttime, we have to leave every faucet in the house dripping so the pipes won’t burst. The kitchen sink, the bathroom sinks and tubs and showers, the ones in the little apartment in back, even the spigots outside. All that trickling and gurgling and
drip-drip-dripping
just makes me want to pee.

A norther has blown in.
Un norte
, which just makes me think of a tall Mexican in pointy boots and a cowboy hat, people like Mother’s family. But a norther here in Texas is a mean wind from up north. From Chicago. And in Chicago it means a wind from across Canada. And up in Canada it’s the North Pole wind, and who knows what people up in the North Pole call this. Probably summer.