After awhile, Tía Hilda called everyone into the room. We walked inside looking at the floor, and stood in a semicircle around the bed holding hands. Mom stood behind me and Papi stood behind Estrella. We looked at Pancho and held hands as Tía Hilda said a prayer. His eyes were closed and his head was tilted back like if there were something crawling up his neck.
I don’t remember what happened after that because all I can remember is wanting to go home.
After he died I was with Estrella a lot of the time. Neither of us knew what to do or how to act. It was like we both had a secret but we didn’t know how to keep it. She’d look through a Sears catalog when we were at home, or cut out pictures from teen magazines while I spent time building a house of cards. Sometimes when I’d build one three stories high, I could hear her go quiet. “Careful, careful,” she’d say, as I put another card on top of the house. But always when she looked, it’d fall.
One day I was sitting on the couch watching television. She walked inside from the garage door and, like all the times she came home, I expected her to walk to our room and shut herself in. But she put her backpack down and walked around the couch and sat down next to me. I wasn’t sure what she wanted, but she put her arms around me and hugged me for a long time. And we just sat there, like a statue of two girls trying to do the right thing.
EL DIABLITO
Tencha’s toes are purple and she has veins the color of green lizards crawling up her legs. Her feet would ache and swell after a day of walking in the market on Alexander Street getting ingredients for tamales. She’d point to the Vaseline in her cabinet and tell me it was because of her sickness, the diabetes. She needed circulation.
Once, she was on the couch in front of the television watching a telenovela and I was rubbing her feet. She dozed off, and I got pissed because I couldn’t stop rubbing until she told me to stop. It took a lot of rubbing to get the blood going, she said. So I pressed hard with my thumbs.
In the desk drawer by the telephone she kept needles for injections. Insulina, she called it. I went and grabbed one, smaller than a safety pin, and took off the plastic wrapping then held it between my fingers. Tencha’s hands were over her stomach and her head was tilted to the side. For a second I thought I should leave her alone. She looked peaceful and hadn’t even noticed I wasn’t rubbing her anymore.
But the needle was in my hand, so I poked her in the foot.
“¿Qué haces?” she yelled, looking scary and scared at the same time. Her fingers were spread open trying to reach for her foot. I started laughing because she couldn’t reach, and I hadn’t poked her that hard, just enough for the needle to stick in, like a splinter. “¡Luz! ¿Qué chingao?”
I took it out and ran out of the house and climbed the pecan tree that was in the backyard. She came out screaming for what felt like an hour, telling me it hurt. And would I like it if she poked me when I was sleeping? She told me how insensitive I was to take advantage of una enferma that couldn’t even work today. She had all these tamale orders she had to finish, but she couldn’t stand for very long, which meant she couldn’t push down with the weight the masa needed in order to be done right. If I didn’t respect my elders, Diosito would punish me! “You better pray hard,” she said, asking what was wrong with me. What happened? What’s gotten into you? She yelled until she tired herself out, then walked inside. I heard her change the channels on the television before I climbed down and found her sleeping again, snoring with her mouth half-open and her socks and slippers over her feet. She went back to where she was, in some dream, some other place, and I sat across from her as I heard her say, “Insensitive,” over and over again. How can you be so insensitive, mama? You’re not like that. What’s gotten into you? That’s not who you are. What’s wrong with you? Talk to me, what’s going on?
As I watched her sleep all those questions made me feel as if I’d melt right there all over the floor. What’s wrong? What’s gotten into you? Talk to me, mama.
EL CAMARÓN
Papi would get behind Mom when she was cooking and sway from side to side. She’d throw his hands off, and because she wasn’t easy he would push her forward and the skillet would clatter.
Then she’d get mad and be gone. Out the door and in her car. Off somewhere.
She used to say, forgive and forget, but I don’t think she believed it, because how can you forget about the things you feel?
Papi’s cabezón. Muy cabezón. He’ll break you in half, and I have a dislocated wrist to prove it. When someone notices my wrist, with the bone sticking out and the lump on top, I tell them, “My dad broke it because I jerked off my primo.” Like that, they know how cabezón he is. You’d think I hate him. But it doesn’t matter; it doesn’t mean I don’t love him.
One time Estrella talked back to him and he slapped her so hard she was knocked out for two minutes. When she woke up she ran to her friend Angélica’s house down the street with her face all sloppy. And maybe it was too hard, maybe it was too much. But once she was out of the house Papi did to himself what he did to me, like Pedro Infante in Nosotros los pobres. I watched him in the kitchen from the hallway and Don Pedro was on the table. I knew he needed some of it so he’d have the guts. I wanted to tell him he didn’t have to do it. The movie was just a movie and it wasn’t real. But I kept quiet and watched the whole thing, flinching every time he hit his hand against the wall. Once he was done, I went to the freezer and took out a bag of frozen shrimp so he could ice his hand. It was all purple and swollen. I grabbed a kitchen towel and rinsed it with warm water and cleaned the blood from his hand and from the wall. He didn’t say or do anything but keep his head down, embarrassed. “Cabezón,” I said. “Eres muy cabezón, Papi.”
That night I figured he fought us not because he didn’t love us but because he believed in right and wrong. There were right things and wrong things. And when you did a wrong thing, you got a chingaso. It wasn’t any different when it came to Mom. It wasn’t any different when it came to him.
LA GARZA
It was a morning after Papi had beaten her. He was still asleep in his bedroom and so was Estrella, in ours. I should’ve been asleep too, but I’d had some dream that woke me up. I opened my eyes and the sunlight was on my face. I went to the kitchen for some water and there was a loaf of bread on the table with a jar of peanut butter next to it. There wasn’t any coffee. I grabbed a glass and filled it with water when I noticed the garage door open from the kitchen window. I could see Mom’s skinny legs as she was putting something into a suitcase, or some bag.
I thought it’d be nice to go outside and surprise her, sing something. Estas son las mañanitas… sing a serenade even though it wasn’t her birthday. But it was early, so early I saw the sunlight over the kitchen floor. I looked at the clock in the living room. 6:43 a.m. How do I remember? 6:43. I made a pot of coffee because I wanted to go out with a fresh cup, hot, the way she liked. If she were organizing the garage, I’d help her. If she didn’t want to talk, I’d be there to make sure she was okay.