Woman Hollering Creek (26 page)

For weeks I lived with those two regrets like twin grains of sand embedded in my oyster heart, until one night listening to Carlos Gardel sing,
“Life is an absurd wound,”
I realized I had it wrong. oh.

Today the Weber kettle in the backyard finally quit. Three days of thin white smoke like kite string. I’d stuffed in all of Flavio’s letters and poems and photos and cards and all the sketches and studies I’d ever done of him, then lit a match. I didn’t expect paper
to take so long to burn, but it was a lot of layers. I had to keep poking it with a stick. I did save one poem, the last one he gave me before he left. Pretty in Spanish. But you’ll have to take my word for it. In English it just sounds goofy.

The smell of paint was giving me headaches. I couldn’t bring myself to look at my canvasses. I’d turn on the TV. The Galavisión channel. Told myself I was looking for old Mexican movies. María Félix, Jorge Negrete, Pedro Infante, anything, please, where somebody’s singing on a horse.

After a few days I’m watching the
telenovelas
. Avoiding board meetings, rushing home from work, stopping at Torres Taco Haven on the way and buying taquitos to go. Just so I could be seated in front of the screen in time to catch
Rosa Salvaje
with Verónica Castro as the savage Rose of the title. Or Daniela Romo in
Balada por un Amor
. Or Adela Noriega in
Dulce Desafío
. I watched them all. In the name of research.

I started dreaming of these Rosas and Briandas and Luceros. And in my dreams I’m slapping the heroine to her senses, because I want them to be women who make things happen, not women who things happen to. Not loves that are
tormentosos
. Not men powerful and passionate versus women either volatile and evil, or sweet and resigned. But women. Real women. The ones I’ve loved all my life.
If you don’t like it
lárgate,
honey
. Those women. The ones I’ve known everywhere except on TV, in books and magazines.
Las
girlfriends.
Las comadres
. Our mamas and
tías
. Passionate
and
powerful, tender and volatile, brave. And, above all, fierce.

“
Bien
pretty, your shawl. You didn’t buy it in San Antonio?” Centeno’s Mexican Supermarket. The cashier was talking to me.

“No, it’s Peruvian. Think I bought it in Santa Fe. Or New York. I don’t remember.”

“
Que
cute. You look real
mona
.”

Plastic hair combs with fringy flowers. Purple blouse crocheted out of shiny yarn, not tucked but worn over her jeans to hide a big stomach. I know—I do the same thing.

She’s my age, but looks old. Tired. Never mind the red lips, the eye makeup that just makes her look sad. Those creases from the corner of the lip to the wing of the nostril from holding in anger, or tears. Or both. She’s the one ringing up my
Vanidades
. “Extraordinary Issue.” “Julio Confesses He’s Looking for Love.” “Still Daddy’s Girl?—Liberate Yourself!” “15 Ways to Say I Love You with Your Eyes.” “The Incredible Wedding of Argentine Soccer Star Maradona (It Cost 3 Million U.S. Dollars!)” “
Summer by the Sea
, a Complete Novel by Corín Tellado.”

“Libertad Palomares,” she said, looking at the cover.

“Amar es Vivir,”
I answered automatically as if it were my motto. Libertad Palomares. A big Venezuelan
telenovela
star. Big on crying. Every episode she weeps like a Magdalene. Not me. I couldn’t cry if my life depended on it.

“Right she works her part real good?”

“I never miss an episode.” That was the truth.

“Me neither.
Si Dios quiere
I’m going to get home in time today to watch it. It’s getting good.”

“Looks like it’s going to finish pretty soon.”

“Hope not. How much is this? I might buy one too.
Three-fifty! Bien
’spensive.”

Maybe once. Or maybe never. Maybe each time someone asks,
Wanna dance
? at Club Fandango. All for a Saturday night at Hacienda Salas Party House on South Mission Road. Or Lerma’s Night Spot on Zarzamora. Making eyes at Ricky’s Poco Loco Club or El
Taconazo Lounge. Or maybe, like in my case, in my garage making art.

Amar es Vivir
. What it comes down to for that woman at Centeno’s and for me. It was enough to keep us tuning in every day at six-thirty, another episode, another thrill. To relive that living when the universe ran through the blood like river water. Alive. Not the weeks spent writing grant proposals, not the forty hours standing behind a cash register shoving cans of refried beans into plastic sacks. Hell, no. This wasn’t what we were put on the planet for. Not ever.

Not Lola Beltrán sobbing
“Soy infeliz”
into her four
cervezas
. But Daniela Romo singing
“Ya no. Es verdad que te adoro, pero más me adoro yo.”
I love you, honey, but I love me more.

One way or another. Even if it’s only the lyrics to a stupid pop hit. We’re going to right the world and live. I mean live our lives the way lives were meant to be lived. With the throat and wrists. With rage and desire, and joy and grief, and love till it hurts, maybe. But goddamn, girl. Live.

Went back to the twin volcano painting. Got a good idea and redid the whole thing. Prince Popo and Princess Ixta trade places. After all, who’s to say the sleeping mountain isn’t the prince, and the voyeur the princess, right? So I’ve done it my way. With Prince Popocatépetl lying on his back instead of the Princess. Of course, I had to make some anatomical adjustments in order to simulate the geographical silhouettes. I think I’m going to call it
El Pipi del Popo
. I kind of like it.

Everywhere I go, it’s me and me. Half of me living my life, the other half watching me live it. Here it is January already. Sky wide as an ocean, shark-belly gray for days at a time, then all at once a
blue so tender you can’t remember how only months before the heat split you open like a pecan shell, you can’t remember anything anymore.

Every sunset, I find myself rushing, cleaning the brushes, hurrying, my footsteps giving a light tap on each rung up the aluminum ladder to the garage roof.

Because
urracas
are arriving by the thousands from all directions and settling in the river trees. Trees leafless as sea anemones in this season, the birds in their branches dark and distinct as treble clefs, very crisp and noble and clean as if someone had cut them out of black paper with sharp scissors and glued them with library paste.

Urracas
. Grackles.
Urracas
. Different ways of looking at the same bird. City calls them grackles, but I prefer
urracas
. That roll of the
r
making all the difference.

Urracas
, then, big as crows, shiny as ravens, swooping and whooping it up like drunks at Fiesta.
Urracas
giving a sharp cry, a slippery rise up the scales, a quick stroke across a violin string. And then a splintery whistle that they loop and lasso from that box in their throat, and spit and chirrup and chook.
Chook-chook, chook-chook
.

Here and there a handful of starlings tossed across the sky. All swooping in one direction. Then another explosion of starlings very far away, like pepper. Wind rattling pecans from the trees.
Thunk, thunk
. Like bad kids throwing rocks at your house. The damp smell of the earth the same smell of tea boiling.

Urracas
curving, descending on treetops. Wide wings against blue. Branch tips trembling when they land, quivering when they take off again. Those at the crown devoutly facing one direction toward a private Mecca.

And other charter members off and running, high high up. Some swooping in one direction and others crisscrossing. Like marching bands at halftime. This swoop never bumping into that.
Urracas
closer to earth, starlings higher up because they’re smaller. Every day. Every sunset. And no one noticing except to look at the ground and say, “Who’s gonna clean up this
shit
!”

All the while the sky is throbbing. Blue, violet, peach, not holding still for one second. The sun setting and setting, all the light in the world soft as nacre, a Canaletto, an apricot, an earlobe.