Caramelo (55 page)

The man down there is gone. Like if he’d never been there.

A
t 6
A.M.
the reveille and drum from the soldiers in el Zócalo raising the Mexican flag.

Ernesto and I tumble and toss and bury ourselves under blanket and pillows till they quit, an unbearably long time it seems. In my half sleep, I hear the ticking motor of a van and think it’s Father. Then I remember where I am. Father’s miles from me.

We fall into a delicious half-sleep just as the city is waking, revving up to go, and the main heart of the revving is right here at the center of the universe …

El Zócalo. The Mexico City Monte Carlo Grand Prix.
Vroom-vroom
. Cars howl, VW taxis the color of M&M’s
putt-putt
, a police siren yowls, brakes squeal, motors grunt, a stalled engine whinnies but won’t turn, the first few notes of “La Cucaracha” play on a fancy car horn, motorbikes bleat, horns
toot-toot
an impatient trumpet tap, motors flubber, blurt, fart, hiccup, belch, rumble in the screech of a left-hand turn, a heat rises, the light in the room bright even with the curtains closed, a truck gurgles, growls, an endless roar of engines heaving and pulling in a great wave like the ocean, a coughing, sputtering, gargling of motors and wheels, while a hubcap pops and flips and rattles to a stop like a drum finale.

Then the bells of
la catedral
begin to clang, all twelve of them, one at a time, like a woman banging on the bars of her cell demanding to be let out.

Above us, the horrible grating of iron chairs being dragged across tiles, the restaurant opening for breakfast. There’s so much racket reaching room 606 it’s laughable. Just when I fall back to a lukewarm sleep, I dream this dream. Ernesto kissing the instep of my foot. When the door clicks shut, I wake up, and I’m alone.

On the bedside table, a gardenia in a toothbrush glass; a half-smoked Cuban cigar; five snuffed votive candles to la Virgen de la Macarena, the Virgin of the matadors; and a plate with half a cantaloupe rind. When I get up to pee, I find a note written on the mirror with soap—
WENT TO MASS
.

I go back to bed. On the opposite wall, the little plaster angel frowns
at me. It looks like the little angel under la Virgen de Guadalupe. In fact, it
is
the same angel.

The plaster angel starts it:

—Your grandmother’s
rebozo
. And with the Church as witness. And that man who could’ve been your father watching. You should be ashamed.

—I
should
be ashamed … How come I’m not?

—Válgame, San Rafael
, says the little angel. Then he begins with his you-oughts and you-shoulds, and that’s when I get really mad.

—Shut up! But when he won’t, I throw my sandal at him. That makes him quit, and I feel better.

—Pain in the ass, I say, opening the French windows. The morning breeze plumps open the white sheer curtains, the heat and the noise of el Zócalo comes in even stronger. The light powdery like silver dust. There are no volcanoes in sight under all the smog, only the merciless Mexico City light.

I watch the world below going about its business, crisscrossing, a speaker blasting a fuzzy version of “Waltz of the Flowers,” brilliant masons lining up for work, beggars begging, women selling pink meringue cakes, vendors of cream of abalone, emery board sellers, students, clerical workers. Everything has always been here, will always be here. Millions of citizens. Some short and stocky, some lean and tall, some charming, some cruel, some horrid, some terrible, some a pain beyond belief, but all of them to me beautiful. In fact, the most beautiful in the world.

I think about walking over to La Villa, just to see what my grandmother’s house looks like, just to walk around the neighborhood, but I can’t move. I write in my journal. I lounge around wearing Ernesto’s T-shirt and tell the housekeeping maid to go away. I order breakfast
flautas
and eat these in bed with the wind blowing the white sheers in and out, puffing them up, whipping them out, a mouth exhaling, inhaling.

Every once in a while I stand at the balcony and take it all in. I’m so happy I feel like shouting, but what would I say? There aren’t enough words for what I’m feeling. I consider writing a song and fill eleven pages in my journal with babbling, a tiny knot of handwriting so tangled and tight it looks like crocheting. Maybe hours go by, maybe minutes, I don’t know or care.

When I hear the key scratching at the lock, my heart spirals. I swallow
Ernesto with my arms and my legs and my mouth. I want to dissolve him inside me again. I want to be him and for him to be me. I want to empty myself and fill myself with him.

—No, don’t. Don’t, don’t, don’t … Ernesto says, pulling me off him by the wrists. —Don’t, he keeps saying over and over.

His mouth shaking. A little tree before rain.

—What’s the matter? Hey, don’t, Ernesto, please. Don’t cry.

But it’s hopeless to talk him out of it. His face crumples, and he hiccups into a long uncomfortable seizure. I don’t know what to do. It’s like he robs the tears from me. And now I have to fish a crumpled Kleenex from the bedside table and hand it to him.

—Here, I say. —It’s not too dirty. He bugles away.

Too late. No use getting words out of this one. I watch and wait and wonder.

Then he tells me a story so unbelievable you’d think I made it up.

—Lala, you and I, we can’t … Ernesto says between sniffles. —I can’t marry you.

My mouth crimps like if he’d hit me with a stick. —What are you talking about? I try to sound tough, but it comes out thin and squeaky. I look at him carefully, like if I’d never seen him before, and in a way, I haven’t. He’s radiant, glowing, like if he’s emitting light. I try to sit close to him, on top of him even, but he’s the one pushing me away this time.

—Now just let me talk, Ernesto says seriously, without looking me in the eye, almost as if he can’t look me in the eye. He moves to a chair opposite the corner of the bed, like a lawyer about to deliver bad news. —I went to mass across the street, and before mass they were hearing confession. And then the next thing I know I’m talking to this priest. About how we came to be here, me and you. And how my mother doesn’t know where I am right now. And he got me thinking.

Ernesto pauses here like he’s having a hard time putting his thoughts into words. Then he just delivers his blow: —So we’re a sin, Lala. You and me. We can’t just run off and then expect to marry and make it all better. Sex is for procreation only. The Church says so. And we’re not married yet. And the fact is, I can’t marry you; you’re not even Catholic.

—It’s your ma, right? Your ma’s behind all this. Your ma and that twisted religion that thinks everything’s evil.

—Don’t make fun of my faith, Ernesto says, getting mad. —Anyway,
Ernesto continues, pulling himself together and looking at his hands, —the
padrecito
made me realize … understand stuff.

—Like what kind of stuff? I say, trying not to flinch, because by now I can feel my face getting hot.

—Stuff I’d been feeling. Been mixed up about, only I didn’t want to scare you, Lala. And what he made me see is this. My mother is like la Virgen de Guadalupe, and I’m her only son, and now I’ve hurt her. I just understood everything. Then when I asked for forgiveness, it’s like I’ve become myself again. I decided to maybe think about religion first. Practice celibacy maybe.

—Like become a priest?

—Well, no, yes, maybe. I don’t know. But at least for now. I made a vow to quit putting unholy things inside me, like pot and shit.

—Or putting yourself into unholy things, like me, right?

Ernesto shakes his head. —You just don’t get it, Lala. You just don’t want to get it, is all.

—Oh, I get it, all right. You just had to get God’s permission to get you off the hook. You’re scared. You’re too chickenshit to think for yourself and become a man. So you have to ask the Church to tell you what’s right and wrong. You can’t brave listening to your own heart. That would cost you too much. After all, we wouldn’t want to upset your mother.

—That’s what I mean, Ernesto says angrily. —We don’t have the same spiritual values. How can we get married if we don’t even believe in the same things? Don’t you see? It’s just a disaster waiting to happen, Lala. Look, I still care about you …

—Care! I thought it was love a few hours ago.

—Okay, I still love you. Look, this room’s already paid for till the end of the week. We can, I can still stay here with you, if you want me to. Do you want to? As friends?

—Friends? What’s that?

He holds me in a strange awkward way, without our pelvis touching. I feel like laughing except I feel like crying. And I do cry, all day and all night, a hot oozing, like a wound that’s draining. Ernesto wakes up every now and then and hugs me and cries too. We sleep twisting and turning all night, like a bad mattress commercial, and that God that I saw when he touched me flies out of the room, and the little angel on top of the bed seems to smirk and is full of it.

It’s only later, weeks, I’ll realize those tears, they’re the only honest thing he ever said to me.

By the next morning, Ernesto is gone, leaving enough money for food for a few days and a bus ticket back to San Antonio, asking me to take care of myself, making me feel terrible about having begged him to “steal” me, because, after all, this was my great idea.

I’m as evil as Eve. I feel sick and room 606 looks small and grimy, closing in on me. When I get up to pee, I realize my period has begun, and it’s as if my whole body has been holding its breath, and now it can finally release everything I’ve been holding inside. I gotta get out of here, I think.

I get dressed, tie the Grandmother’s
caramelo rebozo
on my head like a gypsy, and start sucking the fringe. It has a familiar sweet taste to it, like carrots, like
camote
, that calms me. I wander downstairs and out into the downtown streets of the capital, walking this way and that, till I wind up in the direction of La Villa. I don’t stop until I find myself in front of the house on Destiny Street. But everything’s changed. They’ve painted it an ugly brown color like
caca
, which only makes me feel worse.

The house on Destiny Street is ugly. A chubby woman walks hurriedly out the gate clutching a plastic shopping bag, but she doesn’t pay any attention to me. Those rooms we slept in, the patio where we played with la Candelaria, the street of our remembrances gone.

I walk over to the
basílica
. The streets turned into trashy aisles of glow-in-the-dark Guadalupes, Juan Diego paperweights, Blessed Virgin pins, scapulars, bumper stickers, key chains, plastic pyramids. The old cathedral collapsing under its own weight, the air ruined, filthy, corncobs rotting in the curb, the neighborhood pocked, overpopulated, and boiling in its own stew of juices, corner men hissing
psst, psst
at me, flies resting on the custard gelatins rubbing their furry forelegs together like I-can’t-wait.

The old church is closed. They’ve built an ugly new building with a moving escalator in front of Juan Diego’s
tilma
. Poor Virgen de Guadalupe. Hundreds of people ride the moving conveyor belt of humanity. The most wretched of the earth, and me among them, wearing my grandmother’s
rebozo
knotted on my head like a pirate, like someone from the cast of
Hair
.

I didn’t expect
this
. I mean the faith. I mixed up the Pope with
this
, with all
this, this
light,
this
energy,
this
love. The religion part can go out
the window. But I didn’t realize about the strength and power of
la fe
. What a goof I’ve been!

A wisp of a woman sweeping herself feverishly with a candle. A mother still in her apron blessing herself and blessing her daughters. A ragged
viejita
who walked here on her knees. Grown men crying, machos with their lips mumbling prayers, people with so much need. Help me, help me!

Everybody needs a lot. The whole world needs a lot. Everyone, the women frying lunch putting warm coins in your hand. The market sellers asking, —What else? The taxi drivers racing to make the light. The baby purring on a mother’s fat shoulder. Welders, firemen, grandmothers, bank tellers, shoeshine boys, and diplomats. Everybody, every single one needs a lot. The planet swings on its axis, a drunk trying to do a pirouette. Me, me, me! Every fist with an empty glass in the air. The earth throbbing like a field ready to burst into dandelion.

I look up, and la Virgen looks down at me, and, honest to God, this sounds like a lie, but it’s true. The universe a cloth, and all humanity interwoven. Each and every person connected to me, and me connected to them, like the strands of a
rebozo
. Pull one string and the whole thing comes undone. Each person who comes into my life affecting the pattern, and me affecting theirs.

I walk back to the hotel. I walk past pilgrims who have walked here all the way from their villages, past dancers performing with rattles on their ankles and great plumed headdresses, past vendors hawking candles and night-light Lupes. I walk through the Alameda, green oasis, and sit down on an iron bench. A man carrying a pyramid of cotton candy floats by as ethereal as angels. A pushcart full of sweet corn rolls past and makes my stomach grumble. A girl and her young lover neck hungrily across from me. They remind me of me and Ernesto. Seeing them so happy only breaks my heart.

And then what happened?
I hear my mother asking me. And then I felt as if I’d swallowed a spoon, like something had lodged itself in my throat, and every time I swallowed, it hurt.

Me duele
, I say softly to myself, I hurt. But sometimes that’s the only way you know you’re alive. It’s just like Aunty Light-Skin said. I feel like I’m soaked in sadness. Anyone comes near me, or just brushes me with their eyes, I know I’ll just fall apart. Like a book left in the rain.