We got in the truck and drove to the hospital next to the highway. But the throbbing didn’t stop and I could hear the beating in my ears. It didn’t stop in the waiting room or when the doctor looked at it, or when they wrapped it and told us to come back the following day so they could fix it. It didn’t stop until later, much later, after I closed my eyes and passed out from whatever they gave me to kill the pain.
LA SIRENA
Whenever La Sirena was called, I’d look at her above the water with her arms down by her side and her long, wavy hair, wishing I was her. Not because she was pretty or grown-up but because wherever she lived nothing and no one could touch her and she could swim wherever she wanted.
I waited until everyone was inside, always at night when they were sitting on the couch watching late-night television at Tencha’s house. She lived a block away from us. I’d wrap two towels around my legs and overlap them to cover my feet, then tie string from my ankles to my knees before rolling into her pool from the shallow end. It was a shitty pool that came with the house she rented, but it was five feet deep and enough to get lost in. The towels would soften around my legs and the extra material that fell over my feet would feel like the fins from a goldfish. I’d wiggle from one side of the pool to the other, humming a song with my eyes wide open, not knowing whether I was crying or not because I was underwater, and I’d dare myself to stay there for as long as I could.
EL BORRACHO
None of us knew how to play instruments. I took guitar lessons for a year but quit because my teacher smelled like tomato soup. Estrella liked to sing but when she’d open her mouth Papi said there was no use in trying because she didn’t have a good ear. Mom would sing Rocío Durcal when she was cleaning the house or making dinner, and sometimes Papi would join her, singing the part of Juan Gabriel in “Déjame vivir.” Together they’d sing, moving their shoulders and blowing kisses at each other—¡Así es que déjame y vete ya!
But if I heard cumbia, especially Selena, then I’d start dancing. When we were at wedding receptions everyone on the dance floor would stand back in a circle and cheer me on. At home I’d turn up the volume and make up dances in the middle of the living room with the coffee table pushed against the wall. I’d drag Estrella from the kitchen and ask her to be my partner, but she said she couldn’t because she had two left feet. She was either flipping through magazines or writing notes to her friends.
There was a movie about a girl who wanted to be a dancer and I learned the solo that came at the end. I ran to the front yard wanting to do the gymnastic moves, but then I was too chicken to try them, even on the grass.
When Papi sang in the backyard I’d dance to whatever song he sang. He’d be a little drunk under the light of the porch, and for every four sips he took, I took one. I’d put on one of Mom’s aprons too big for me and grab it with my hands, then throw it back and to the sides like a flamenco dancer, like Lola Flores. I’d mouth the words. “¡Otra, hombre!” the way she does and Papi would laugh because I was acting grown-up, pretending to be Lola Flores with my lips pushed together. None of the neighbors cared about the noise. On one side there was an old couple short as midgets and partly deaf, so it didn’t matter. And on the other side there was a younger couple without any kids. I caught the lady who lived there peeking at us from a window one night, but she didn’t say anything. Maybe she liked the music. Maybe she was mouthing the words. We were all Mexican in Magnolia Park.
Papi and I sang and danced until I got dizzy. Then later, in bed, in some dream, I’d be black and white, all grown-up with brown hair and big lips, dancing in the middle of all these men and women watching me, playing their instruments, guitars, accordions, and trumpets, singing, “¡Olé! ¡Olé!” And my hands would be on my hips and my chest would be out. My lips pushed together like Lola Flores.
EL ARPA
They used to pinch me when I’d say something wrong. Not a bad word, not a maldición. Just a word that came before another, one that turned something into either a woman or a man. La something or El something. As if the moon weren’t Romeo one night and Juliet another.
They’d pinch me if I called something a boy instead of a girl, or the other way around. Why is it la mano instead of el mano? I can think of Papi’s hands and think they’re masculine, then think of Mom’s and think they’re feminine. If we were talking about the hands of a clock it could go either way. The hands of a clock could be bi.
Once I asked Estrella what a bisexual was and she glared at me like if I’d asked her if she’d ever kissed a boy. “Where did you hear about bisexuals?” she asked. “Where did you?” I asked. “From Angélica, she told me Luis Miguel is bisexual. That he spends time with women in front of cameras but at night in hotel rooms he spends time with hombres.” “What!” “Yeah,” she said. “He’s gay!”
“But you just said he’s bisexual.”
Why isn’t a harp female? I’ve only seen the one in Lotería. Every time we play on Sundays at Buelita Fe’s house they give me a chance to deal, and so when it comes I throw it down on the table and call it out with confidence, “¡La Arpa!” But Estrella laughs at me, and then everyone else does too.
“Why is everyone laughing?”
Papi says to me, as if he’s my guidance counselor, “El arpa, mija. Not La arpa.”
“How are you supposed to know?” I ask them.
They say the same thing all the time, that if a word ends in “a” it’s probably a feminine word. And if it ends in anything else it’s masculine. But that’s not always the case. Sometimes a word that ends in “a” is masculine, and other times, it’s feminine. How am I supposed to know what is woman and what is man simply by the arrangement of letters? It’s like at school when they teach you the rules of how to speak, then later teach you how to break those rules. Like you can’t say, “Look what the cat drug in.” You say, “Look what the cat dragged in.” Stupid verbs, stupid rules. But the point you’re trying to make is there, right there in front of you as you stand and stare at it. Pointing. La luna. El luna.
The moon!
LA MUERTE
I didn’t go to breakfast today so by nine-thirty there was a knock on the door. I didn’t answer but the door opened and Julia’s head popped in. “What are you doing?” she asked. “What does it look like I’m doing, pendeja?” That’s what I wanted to say, but I didn’t. I was at my desk with the Lotería deck in front of me and La Muerte turned over. My journal was tucked under my mattress, but I was trying to think of what to write. I turned to her and opened my hands, like if to say, “What the hell do you think?”