Let Their Spirits Dance (15 page)

“Did he find it—Aztlán?”

“No…not that I know of. North of the Gulf, in a marshy land, the land of the herons…all kinds of things are said about Aztlán, even that it was a mythical island or that it went all the way up to Wisconsin!”

“Give me a break!”

“We came from somewhere, Espi. We had to have had a home somewhere. According to legend, we left a land flowing with milk and honey and journeyed south to what is now Mexico City.”

“Kicked out of the Garden of Eden, huh?”

“Maybe, with an angel and a flaming sword. An angel who said, ‘Out!' Wonder what we did wrong?”

“
We
? Maybe they just ran out of water.”

“With the Río Salado and Río Grande running full blast? No, it had to be something else. Didn't I ever tell you—Don Florencío saw Jesse in the flames of his campfire outlined like a warrior on the day he was born. Can you imagine? The old man saw him as a warrior, and Jesse had barely been born!”

“This is getting spooky! Do you believe in all this?”

“Who knows? My mom heard something in the house at Christmas, but she didn't see anything. She said it was Jesse and his friends talking. Don't you believe in spirits, Espi?”

“I believe in God. He's a spirit. A keeper of spirits too, I guess. Can you imagine if somebody heard us talking like this, Teresa? They'd say we've gone off the deep end.”

“So what's new? They said the same things about Don Florencío. Places change, but people stay the same. Nothing's sacred. Ray was like that, too. After he quit marching with la raza, he started criticizing everything. I told him, he'd regret it when his own kids forgot where they came from.”

I'm driving slowly now, turning the last curve of the road where I know we can get off and walk up the rocky incline.

“Hope the car doesn't pick up any nails,” Espi says. “All we need out here is a flat. I can just hear Tommy saying I tempted God.”

“So, that's where all the gray hairs are coming from. Tommy better loosen up!”

I stop the car. All I want to do is run up the small hilly rock way and find Don Florencío sitting on his old wooden chair with the straw seat stuck together with twine, smoking his ironwood pipe with the little sculpted faces on the stem. The sun is to our left, midway up the sky. Don Florencío would say it's not a new sun, but one that woke up and is headed for the trillionth time to its appointed place in the center of heaven, a notch below God's throne. You can't look on its brightness for very long without hurting your eyes. Has anyone looked at the face of God and lived?

“You're right, Espi, they've made a mess of this place. Where's Don Florencío's mesquite tree?”

“
His
mesquite tree? He didn't own this land, Teresa. He just thought he did.”

“He owned it all, Espi. Him and his ancestors.”

“What did you see in that old man? What?” Espi's standing at the bottom of the small hill, and I'm at the top already looking to my right for La Cueva del Diablo stuck in the gray, rocky mountain ridge. Its dark, yawning mouth is boarded up with signs—
NO TRESPASSING—DANGER
! I remember Don Florencío's vision the night Jesse flew to Vietnam. Bats, he said, scattering wildly, screeching, following the trail of blood to Vietnam.

“You'll get trapped up there, Teresa! Get down! Somebody could find us.”

Espi's voice is echoing off the rocks. I'm good at ignoring her. I know she'll get back in the car, lock all the doors, and wait for me.

The mesquite tree is gone but not its fragrance. My pores open in the warm morning air. My skin remembers the smoke drifting from Don Florencío's small wood stove. I take in a deep breath not minding the faint grimy smell coming from the landfill close by.

There it is, what's left of it. Don Florencío's adobe shack. The door facing east is hanging on one hinge. The tin can doorknob is gone. Where? Who took it? He was so proud of it. Three walls remain and one is completely gone, the one facing La Cueva del Diablo. Maybe the bats ate through it, snatched up what they could of the old man sunk deep in
the adobe bricks. Maybe they did it on purpose, because he knew them, knew what they wanted that night.

There is silence all around me. It's spring, but there aren't any birds singing in the trees. We're far enough away not to hear the rush of traffic. I can see the Black Canyon Freeway in the distance, a concrete snail splitting El Río Salado in two. I sit on the crumbling adobe wall, and I want to start the wail again, the wail that Don Florencío said was the song of my soul weeping.
Pray for me, tlachisqui, pray that I'll do what God wants me to do. I'm afraid. It's always this way with me…my heart broken by men. My father, El Ganso, Jesse, Paul, Ricky, Ray…pray for me, pray for me
.

Nothing's the same. Don Florencío's not here, and Jesse's been gone forever. I stare at a bunch of old rags in a corner. Don Florencío's? I go check, barely touching the rags with my fingers. But, no, it's a pair of trousers, something too modern for the old man, and a blanket, something bought at a secondhand store, now torn and ragged, but not the old man's. His table is gone, the chair, his wood stove, his old cot, whatever it was that held his body or that he touched with his hands. I look up at the sun shining in through the missing tin slabs of the roof and breathe in the smell of mesquite. My nose tries to recapture the distinct fragrance of copal. I pick up a handful of dirt and pretend it's sacred meal. I throw it into the wind, spinning round and round.

“What are you doing?” Espi yells. “Are you crazy? Come down from there!” She's waving her arm, motioning for me to come down.

 

• I
RETURNED
a few days later to the house on East Canterbury with Manuel to move the rest of Lisa and Lilly's things to my mother's. Cisco was at one of his wrestling matches, and Ray had disappeared off the face of the earth; not even his buddy Steve, the fumigating con artist, could tell me where he was.

“I'll close shop, Teresa,” Manuel said to me. By that, he meant he'd let his daughter Maria run his accounting business for a while. Manuel still wears glasses, wireless rims now. He's got less hair on his head, and a belly that hangs over his belt. His eyes still remind me of Orphan Annie's. He looks like he's searching for someone he lost in a crowded mall, and the whites of his eyes look bigger than his pupils. Regina's gone, his ex-wife, living with a mail carrier she ran away with. Manuel says they were meeting behind his back for years.

“You look as good as you did in high school, Teresa. Ray must be crazy!”

“Don't even mention his name. He's as good as dead to me, him and his girlfriend.” Manuel is staring at me. The white part of his eyes looks even with the dark part for the first time ever.

“Been waiting for you, all these years.” He winks, then smiles and opens his arms to me. It feels good to be held by Manuel, although I know holding me will only frustrate him. I know he'll never hurt me, I'm sure of it. Power between me and Manuel has always been in my favor. The only time it was different was the day Mom quit singing.

M
y mother's body was soft in the middle where she hid us as babies in her womb. I wanted her to live a hundred years and comb her hair in two white ponytails with a perfect part down the middle. I wanted to protect her as she stood leaning on the vinyl-covered rail that extended the length of the choir loft at our Saturday practice. She was poised like a little statue, holding tight for the first note of “Bendito.” After Jesse left for Vietnam, Mom went on singing. It was her way of doing the same thing she did before he left, her way of clinging to the ordinary. She was in demand as a soloist for masses, weddings, quinceañeras, and whatever else was next on the agenda at St. Anthony's.

Mom's voice was so good she could have done a solo with the Two Doors Gospel Choir the night we went to see Brother Jakes. Her voice, full and luxurious, rose one note above the noisy organ at St. Anthony's Church. It jiggled the old-fashioned chandeliers and drifted up to the rafters of the church seeking out the cool, dark places where mother pigeons fed their young. Then it cascaded down like water dripping off a huge umbrella to bounce off candles, benches, people and the huge, carved altar where the priest served mass. The only reason the saints didn't smile and clap their hands was that they were made of clay.

Stand up straight. Catch your breath from deep down, under your ribs, not from your chest. That's singing. In through your nose, all the
way down, let the air tumble out at your lips, easy, without straining. All you do is mouth the vowels, the air will do the rest. Your cheeks will tingle from the vibrations. Afterwards, your throat won't hurt. Will I ever learn? I practiced in front of a mirror watching my profile to make sure the air was going into the right places, pressing my hands on my cheeks to feel the vibrations.

On Saturdays, Yolanda Escalante looked closely at me, her big, moony face smiling. She was encouraging in her own way. She climbed the wooden steps spiraling up to the choir loft every Saturday afternoon to play the organ for our weekly choir practice. I'm surprised she didn't get caught in the narrow passage. She tested the ancient bench before she sat on it. Were the wooden legs as strong as they were last Saturday? If so, they would last through Sunday. “That's it, Teresa. Yes, you're learning, just like your mother.” She was lying. I never sang like my mother. The most I could do was croak out a fight song with the other cheerleaders at Palo Verde High's football games. Priscilla could sing, but she never joined the choir.

It was six months after Jesse had left for Vietnam, June 6, 1968, when my mother quit singing. That Saturday afternoon Yolanda sat at the organ pounding out the chords of “Bendito,” my favorite Spanish hymn. Yolanda was immense in her black skirt and flowered blouse. Standing at the balcony rail, my mother held sheets of music in one hand. Her lace veil lay back over her head, the last row of stitched roses barely touching her shoulders. She couldn't read music so she followed along by noticing the ups and downs of the squirming notes and memorizing all the pauses, the soft brushes of tones and the notes that painted a bold splash in the air. I marveled that she could move air from the middle of her body to her throat with the same precision Nana used to thread her silver needle.

Down below, the huge, ornate altar lay in shadows with hundreds of glowing candles reflecting off glass pictures and the shiny brass railing at the altar. Some candle wicks burned furiously like fervent prayers, undaunted by the darkness. Others sputtered tiny bits of light, old prayers dying, burning down to their glass bottoms. Jesse had written me, asking me to light a candle for him. One of those tiny flames belonged to him.

The altar harbored a collection of life-size statutes. There was Christ with a crown of thorns around his heart and Our Lady of Sorrows, His Mother, dressed in black, with a dagger piercing her heart, so sad, so
wounded, and there was nothing I could do to help her. Men carried her statue on a platform in processions on evenings of Holy Week, marking the end of the Lenten season. Around the church she went, past el barrio that looked like it was suffering as much as she was. She swayed and lurched behind the big cross of Jesus that other men carried on their shoulders. Every woman wanted to suffer like she did, stoically, taking it all, not being chillonas, crybabies who wimped out with a little pain. Every man wanted to suffer like Christ did, carrying the cross until his shoulder ached from the burden. Then the man carrying the cross passed it on to another man who was waiting impatiently for the privilege of feeling the pain Christ felt on his way to Calvary.

The passion flower growing outside my mother's bedroom window unfolded in front of my eyes, white, purple, nails, crown, thorns, whips with blossoms that stuck out in every direction, crying out the pain of Christ. Christ stripped of his garments, half-naked rose on the cross in front of us common sinners, hopeless wretches who lit candles, pounded our chests, and burned smoky trails of incense His way. Were we afraid to suffer as He did? Was pretending enough for us? We ate no meat, we gave up gum, candy, dancing, cussing, thinking nasty things. Then on Easter Sunday, we went back to everything and decorated the altar with white lilies, self-inflicted sufferers, we had distracted ourselves for forty days not knowing that real suffering was with us every day. We were conquerors of a few discomforts, patting ourselves on the back, aligning ourselves with Christ and Our Lady of Sorrows. We were cheap imitations of the young mother who had watched her son die a brutal death.

Angels stood on either side of the altar, St. Michael with a hoofed and tailed devil at his feet and Gabriel ready to blow his trumpet. Stained glass windows sparkled with the images of St. Therese the Little Flower, St. Francis, St. Joseph, St. Martin de Porres, St. Ann, San Juan Caballero, solemn figures watching over the congregation from their lofty perches.

Above the figures of Mary and Jesus stood a statute of St. Anthony, patron saint of the church, holding the Baby Jesus in his arms. St. Anthony was famous for helping us find lost articles and bringing us sweethearts. I don't know how the saint bore responsibility for both, but he did. There were times I'd ask him to help me find a lost shoe or bracelet or ring and before long, there was the item, right in front of my eyes. Finding a sweetheart was something else. You had to be serious on that account. One woman got so frustrated praying for a sweetheart she
threw the statue of the saint headfirst out her window, only to find that it hit her future fiancé on the head and knocked him out cold! The saint proved himself again, the caretaker of love affairs.

I was trying to capture music notes in my head that afternoon. Maybe if I thought about them hard enough, they would come out right. We were sweating. The electric fan barely moved the air around us. Father Ramon didn't like turning on the swamp cooler just for choir practice. Under my veil, my hair stuck to my scalp. I squished into my seat as I plopped down on the worn-out vinyl chair when we weren't singing. Yolanda blinked away sweat from her eyelashes. I looked around at the six girls and two boys standing in the shadows. None of the church lights were on, except Yolanda's lamp over the organ. The air smelled like smoky candle wax. Next to me, Espi was dripping sweat, pulling at her blouse and blowing down her neck when we weren't singing. “It's good I cut my hair,” she said, showing me the back of her hair clipped above the neckline. I didn't have the heart to tell her the hairdo looked like a lopsided pancake on her head. Espi's nose curved into a smooth, brown knob. Her eyes were dark centers, set close together.

Tommy and Manuel, the only boys in the choir, looked like caricatures of grown men, dripping sweat after a hard day's work in the sun. Beads of sweat outlined Manuel's upper lip and mustache. I knew Manuel was there only because I was, and Tommy was there for Espi. Every few weeks, Tommy's face erupted with pimples. I told her he probably used rubbing alcohol to dry up his pimples. Espi didn't have much choice when it came to boyfriends. After she gained weight, Tommy was the only boy who really looked at her.

Manuel was taking classes at Phoenix College, where Jesse had been attending until he quit and made himself an open target for the draft. Manuel wasn't an altar boy anymore, except on special occasions when he joined the priest during High Mass at Easter. Manuel wore black horn-rimmed glasses. Sometimes light from the lamp reflected over one or both lenses, making Manuel's pupils disappear. He stared at me and smiled, and all I could see were two tiny spotlights for eyes. Manuel reminded me of a railroad man who waves at you and smiles when the train is rolling by, but never gives you a chance to take a good look at him. I never really looked at Manuel until that day, then it was all I could ever do to forget him.

That Saturday afternoon I was singing, but I was really waiting. It started then, and it hasn't ended yet. I'm still waiting. Back then, I was waiting for my mother to release the first vowel of “Bendito” into the
empty church before all the statues and stained-glass saints. Everything stayed in my mind, a photograph I've carried in my soul; the heat and darkness of the church, my mother in her navy blue dress, facing the altar, Yolanda swaying over the keyboard, the light from the lamp holding us tight, and my mother's voice exploding on the first note of “Bendito,” hushing the pigeons cooing under the eaves of the rooftop. Her voice was so beautiful, I swallowed hard and listened.

This was the chorus. We sang it together. My mother sang the verses by herself. I was feeling a rush of pride, because my mother was a soloist for the church, but her voice was really mine. Mine when she sang in the kitchen, mine when she sang soft little lullabies nights I couldn't sleep. In the dim church, her voice searched out God's ear, yet something was crouching low, waiting to pounce like a jaguar snarling. I could sense it moving in the shadows. A chill went up and down my arms.

We knew Jesse's company had been ambushed. We had received the news on Tuesday in a telegram an Army representative brought over to the house. They called to make it clear Jesse was still alive, maybe wounded, but still alive. Nothing more had been sent, nothing. The information stopped abruptly. We called the office in Phoenix, no, nothing else from Vietnam. The veladoras at home flickered on the big oak dresser before El Santo Niño de Atocha and La Virgen de Guadalupe, waiting for Jesse to come home. El Santo Niño was known to walk from place to place in his little brown sandals performing miracles for the faithful. Sometimes people left tiny shoes for Him to wear to replace the ones worn out by His travels. My mother believed He could bring Jesse back. Bring our Jesse back from the other side of the world. Use your power to keep him safe. Keep him alive, Santo Niño. We didn't want to say “Don't let him die!” out loud, so we secretly shouted it in our minds, in our hearts.

The Vietcong had struck in all the major cities in Vietnam during the Tet offensive. Jesse's company, part of the 1st Infantry Division, was
stationed outside Saigon at Bien Hoa. The news on TV was filled with pictures of wounded American soldiers. Magazines and newspapers were filled with photos of Vietnamese villages burning and children napalmed by American troops. I reached for Espi's hand and squeezed it hard. She shook it out. “What's wrong with you?” She looked at me, angry that I had caused her pain. I looked down at the altar and wondered why I had hurt her. “Sorry,” I said. She turned away.

My mother's voice led the first verse of the song. Warmth exploded inside me. Her voice searched for me in the dark, making vibrations erupt between my shoulder blades and travel down my arms.

Yes, God, we praise you, don't let me think of the ambush. The electric fan blew my hair. The rest of my body was one sweaty, sopping mess. My hands got cold, and I breathed into them like I was freezing to death. Espi looked at me, her eyes opening wide. “You're cold?” I only shrugged my shoulders.

The telegram sent my mother into a panic, even though the messenger made it clear that it was not a death notice. Jesse's words scrambled around in my head,
I don't think I'm coming back, Teresa. Take care of Mom
. I was waiting, every nerve in my body held taut by Jesse's words racing through my mind like a flashing neon sign. What would I say to my mother if Jesse was killed? That I knew and didn't tell her? Kept it from her, didn't watch Paul close enough and he fell off a tree, scared her half to death almost drowning in the Salt River and she lost Inez, then El Ganso died at the Jones's Granary all because of me. Am I a hex, la
muerte herself? Did Nana know? She had asked me what Jesse said to me as she looked at us through the rearview mirror on our way to the airport. “Un secreto? What did Jesse say to you, mija?” “Nothing, Nana, nothing important, just something about Chris.” But I could see the truth in Nana's eyes. She knew. Nana had learned how to glide through the debris of life, floating through still waters, bumping shoulders with brambles and thorns, letting them sting her arms, her legs, then gliding away.