The Guardians (12 page)

“Did you know I fought in the Second World War?” I asked la reina. Of course my grandson knew. “I was married by then,” I said. “After I came back, we moved in with my jefitos. Later, when my wife and I were able to afford the materials, we set out to build a nice lil house for ourselves, right next door. That's how we were in those days, señorita, always staying close to our people. Nowadays, kids grow up y poof. They're living in Australia or some such place on the other side of the world, like they don't owe nobody nothing.

“Anyway, I know this house is falling apart and don't look like much now. But in its time it had its chiste. And I know it's pretty small but we all fit. In those days we didn't complain. We were glad to have our own
casita. If I had not been kicked out of el army maybe we could have done better. Pero … bueno, one can't sit around all the time regretting everything. ¿Pa'qué? Ain't that right, Mikey?”

“That's right, Abuelo,” my grandson said, chewing on something, like always.

“This is my home, where I was born and where I will die. Hopefully no one will be foolish enough to take me to a hospital, where they'll kill me before my hour.” I paused as if I needed a moment to contemplate my ever-so-nearing death, but the fact of the matter was that I heard what I took to be la reina's petticoats rustle. Most likely women weren't wearing petticoats nowadays. It was something else, rustly moving against what had to be a pair of fine and shapely legs, as she made herself comfortable on the rickety chair.

Híjole, hombre.

A man could die happy just hearing sounds like that in the same room. Maybe I had already died and gone to heaven.

“Go on,” Mikey said, interrupting my bliss.

I drew in a deep breath. He didn't have to worry none. I had all the time in the world. Thinking about Regina's missing carnal, I got to recalling how long the United States had been giving Raza—los meji-canos—a hard time. I said to the woman, “You know, back when I was a kid, just a mocoso, besides the poverty of the people it was even more harsh during the Depression. I got pretty sharp at making ends meet. For example, this city used to have a few, how would you say, houses of ill repute. Bueno, when I was a boy I was the one who used to run errands for the women. They'd give me coins, sometimes silver, sometimes gold. And now and then they'd even give me food. Sometimes they'd give me a peek. But as a bonus. I'd always say no, I want my pay first. Because I would hand it all over to mi jefita to help out.”

I stopped to roll me up un cigarrito. I been smoking since I was about twelve, believe it or not. After a good puff, I started up again. “I didn't go to school. I never liked it. Segregation of los Mexican kids ended about that time but there was still a lot of racist attitudes. From the teachers, too. Calling us ‘dumbbells,’ ‘niggers,’ and ‘dirty Meskins.’ Sending us to shower. ‘Don't be speaking Spanish; ‘You got lice …’ This. That. I got in too many fights. You see me old, all shriveled up, today, but once I was a big strong guy. At least I saw myself as big and strong. Ha-ha. Until someone bigger and stronger came along and gave it to me good, because I wasn't afraid of nobody. No, ma'am.”

And it used to feel real good, not to be afraid of nothing.

“The Border Patrol got started up in
1924
, the year I was born. That's when Mexicans got to be fugitives on our own land. Whether you lived on this side or that side, all Mexicans got harassed. Sometimes the police would come knocking on your door and pull you out. It didn't matter if you were born over here or not. When I went to fight in Germany I'd tell people, Here los Anglos are fighting the Nazis. Over there, where I live, they treat us Mexicans as if they were the Nazis. One of my superior officers heard me one time. ‘How dare you say that?’ he told me. ‘How dare you compare the great Americans to our enemies? We don't put people in camps.’

“ ‘The hell you don't,’ I said, putting my chin up against his, remembering how los chinos y los japoneses had been treated, how los indios americanos had been treated and how los mexicanos were being treated.

“ ‘Everyone in the United States has the same opportunity’ he said. He was a gringo, much bigger than me. Muy grande.

“I didn't care. I didn't shut up. I said, ‘Bull …’ I won't say what I said but you get my drift. ‘Right this very minute while I am here fighting for you to go back and have a good life, the United States is importing braceros to do the dirty work for me until I return.’

“We started fighting right then and there. Who knows who threw the first punch, but I was the one thrown into the stockade. After a while, they sent me home. What did I care? I came back. We won the war. Nothing changed for us around here.”

I stopped to put out my cigarrito when Miguel interrupted again. “Tell Regina about your negocio, Abuelo,” getting ahead of me, as usual. “Regina's got a dream to get her own business going someday.”

“Well, it's true I've tried a lot of things,” la reina said timidly, “but not with too much success… .”

I shook my head out of sympathy. There was still so much to tell in between, but I obliged my nieto. “When I got back from the war with a dishonorable-mention discharge—not that I was proud of it, pero what could I do about it?—work was hard to find. There were millions of braceros, maybe not millions but maybe thousands, working over here thinning sugar beets and weeding cotton. Haciendo de todo. Many of them knew how to farm because they came from ranchitos in México. That wasn't the first guest worker program they set up here to get cheaper labor. Los obreros signed away all their rights. They didn't even know what they were signing since everything was in English. And who was
going to explain nothing to them, anyway? Desgraciada gente. They couldn't even go back if they wanted to unless it was an emergency and only with permission from the growers who hired them. They were promised all kinds of things, too. They thought they'd get pensions. They got nothing, señorita, just a big kick in the trasero back to México when they weren't needed no more.

“Where would this país be without the labor of the obrero, especially in agriculture, but in the railroads, factorías, and canneries, too, I ask you, señorita? Up in el Norte, 'onde hace tanto frío, in the steel mills and stockyards, too. That was before your time, I'm sure.”

“Yes …” la reina started to say.

I was all wound up and couldn't stop myself from cutting her off. “Anyway, I came back, and since I was never good at taking orders and needed to be my own boss, I opened up my own business. Right here in downtown El Paso. It was just a cantinita, un lil hole in the wall, you could even say. But I'll tell you what, it made me a good lil profit most of my life—between los braceros, las cantineras, and the gringos looking for a good time, my lil bar stayed open every day except Christmas. I even opened on Easter Sunday. My old lady never liked that, pero ni modo. She liked that our hijos always had shoes on their feet. She liked that we never went hungry, I'd tell her. In any case, I myself never drank. I always saw how tonto people got in my establishment and I'd laugh … all the way to the bank, as they say.”

I stopped to catch my breath. All you could hear was a steady tick tock, tick tock. I brought that old cuckoo clock back from Germany. It still runs like new.

“Okay, so you want me to say that I made my living working in a cement factory or in the mines blackening my lungs? So I wasn't a cobbler making boots for the gringo military like ese Tony Lama or with a lil barbershop, where half the time you'd have caught me sitting on my own barber chair waiting for someone to come in. Maybe my business wasn't what you could call the most respectable, especially for a family man, but I'll tell you what—I never stood around waiting for a customer. People like to drink and it ain't my fault if they do. At least it's nothing like what makes money today. Now all you hear about are these mafiosos who don't care about nobody or nothing. All they care about is making a lot of money selling drugs. It's blood money. That's all. What kind of life is that, I ask myself. Always looking over your shoulder, afraid that una rata bigger than you will eat you up if you don't watch out.”

Híjole, I thought to myself as I said that, if my visita only knew what went on around my barrio these days, they'd go running. The things I could hear with my half-deaf oídos—coming from the alleys, entrando por las walls, coming just in the night air … pero, bueno. What could anybody do?

“I wasn't a greedy man and never did nothing illegal,” I said, reaching the end of my story, “but I was never no santo. I did have an eye for the pretty ladies.”

Who was I kidding? Even blind, I had an eye for them.

“
My poor wife. She knew it, too. But back then, it was expected of a man to have, well, you know, a life outside his home. And the kind of business I ran I can't tell you how many muchachas used to go in there. Mostly, they were looking for un jale. Working gals, we'd call them. Anyway, that was all a long time ago. Everyone I ever knew is dead now. Except for my children, gracias a Dios. Even though they never come to visit. Only this boy, el Mikey” I reached over and he let me scruff up his greñas. “When you going to cut off that girlie ponytail, anyway?” I asked. Then I said to la reina, “El Mikey's mother was my favorite.” I said it because it was true. Too bad mi'ja married into the military—a colonel, at that. “You know, señorita, you should never force your personal beliefs on your children. The first chance they get, they go off and do just the opposite of what you wished for them.”

REGINA

What was going to be a quiet celebration with only me and my sobrino turned into a barbecue party one Saturday, thanks to Miguel, who had started out by inviting himself to celebrate with us and then took over. Taking over might be just his nature but it's not hard to see why a woman divorced him.

Gabo hadn't wanted a party. I wouldn't have known how to organize one, anyway. And with no word from Rafa so far, neither of us was in a mood for a fiesta. But Miguel said, “Sixteen is a big deal, guys,” and before we knew it, we had a barbecue planned. The invitation list was mostly left to my nephew since he was the one having a birthday, but like other cambios about him that I am noticing, you just couldn't predict who that might be. So there were a couple of people I anticipated being there and a few others I most definitely had not.

To top it off, Miguel invited people of his own, too.

El Abuelo Milton, for one. He was already there when we arrived at Miguel's traila. That's where he stays since his divorce. He's in a traila and across the street is his family in a nice big house. The old man was sitting outside in the yardita, if you could call a fenced-in empty lot that, at a patio table under the shade of its big umbrella. The patio furniture really stood out in contrast to its surroundings, where there was no grass, just weeds and dirt. But across the street, at his family's house and all down that side of the street, the yarditas had flower gardens and neat lawns.

“VEN. COME SIT BY ME, MI'JA
”—the old man acted like we were longtime amigos—"
SO I CAN HEAR YOU BETTER.
” I used to take care of ancianos, not to mention my mother, so I understand how desperate for
company they get. But the second time el abuelo let his veiny hand plop down on my lap like the frisky paw of a wolf pup, I jumped up and made myself busy.

We had a taste that day of the hot spring ahead by two in the afternoon, when, like they say, you could have fried an egg on the pavement. We weren't frying eggs but grilling chicken and steaks on Miguel's brand-new gas grill and drinking down pitchers of limonada as fast as we could make it. Meanwhile, Miguel was directing the whole event. His need to take charge was getting to me—I can't lie. I'm a woman who's been on her own a long time. Then I said to myself: He might have control issues but I got problems of my own. My problems started way back. “Oye, muchacha,” my mother used to say. “Now what are you up to? Why don't you do something? Like stitching your calzones or cleaning out los frijoles.” That woman never left me alone.

Sometimes, when Gabo's not home, I grab a hairbrush and pretend I am at a karaoke bar lip-synching to Isabel Pantoja. I shake my hair loose and everything about me feels all loosened up. I always idolized Isabel Pantoja. She was a beauty, so talented and a long time ago was even married to a famous bullfighter. That was until he was killed in the arena. Besides both having loved ones killed by mean bulls, Isabel and I had something else in common. We were both widows. In the living room, pretending that I am doing Isabel Pantoja in karaoke, I also imagine I have the entire nightclub mesmerized. It's pathetic, I know—pretending about pretending. That's why I keep it to myself. But what harm does it do? Still, I look over my shoulder now and then like my mother is going to come out of nowhere and start on me.

That's why I say I've got my own issues.

The funny thing is, when I realized Miguel was reminding me of my bossy mother, something inside clicked—not quietly, neither. It started happening since turning fifty “The Big Five-oh,” Mrs. Martínez at work called it. She and a few of the staff surprised me after school on that birthday. They all pitched in and gave me a walker as a gag gift. What this click was trying to tell me was:
Everything is going to be okay.
It came in handy, like when Miguel's ex showed up.