Caramelo Read online

  All the same, we are too familiar with the roadside crosses and the stories they stand for. The Awful Grandmother complains so much, her sons finally give in. That’s why this year Uncle Fat-Face, Uncle Baby, and Father—el Tarzán—finally agree to drive down together, although they never agree on anything.

  —If you ask me, the whole idea stinks, Mother says, mopping the kitchen linoleum. She shouts from the kitchen to the bathroom, where Father is trimming his mustache over the sink.

  —Zoila, why do you insist on being so stubborn? Father shouts into the mirror clouding the glass. —Ya verás. You’ll see, vieja, it’ll be fun.

  —And stop calling me vieja, Mother shouts back. —I hate that word! I’m not old, your mother’s old.

  We’re going to spend the entire summer in Mexico. We won’t leave until school ends, and we won’t come back until after it’s started. Father, Uncle Fat-Face, and Uncle Baby don’t have to report to the L. L. Fish Furniture Company on South Ashland until September.

  —Because we’re such good workers our boss gave us the whole summer off, imagine that.

  But that’s nothing but story. The three Reyes brothers have quit their jobs. When they don’t like a job, they quit. They pick up their hammers and say, —Hell you … Get outta … Full of sheet. They are craftsmen. They don’t use a staple gun and cardboard like the upholsterers in the U.S. They make sofas and chairs by hand. Quality work. And when they don’t like their boss, they pick up their hammers and their time cards and walk out cursing in two languages, with tacks in the soles of their shoes and lint in their beard stubble and hair, and bits of string dangling from the hem of their sweaters.

  But they didn’t quit this time, did they? No, no. The real story is this. The bosses at the L. L. Fish Furniture Company on South Ashland have begun to dock the three because they arrive sixteen minutes after the hour, forty-three minutes, fifty-two, instead of on time. According to Uncle Fat-Face, —We are on time. It depends on which time you are on, Western time or the calendar of the sun. The L. L. Fish Furniture Company on South Ashland Avenue has decided they don’t have time for the brothers Reyes anymore. —Go hell … What’s a matter … Same to you mother!

  It’s the Awful Grandmother’s idea that her mijos drive down to Mexico together. But years afterward everyone will forget and blame each other.

  * The original Maxwell Street, a Chicago flea market for more than 120 years, spread itself around the intersections of Maxwell and Halsted Streets. It was a filthy, pungent, wonderful place filled with astonishing people, good music, and goods from don’t-ask-where. Devoured by the growth of the University of Illinois, it was relocated, though the new Maxwell Street market is no longer on Maxwell Street and exists as a shadow of its former grime and glory. Only Jim’s Original Hot Dogs, founded in 1939, stands where it always has, a memorial to Maxwell Street’s funky past.†

  † Alas! While busy writing this book, Jim’s Original Hot Dogs was gobbled up by the University of Illinois and Mayor Daley’s gentrification; tidy parks and tidy houses for the very very wealthy, while the poor, as always, get swept under the rug, out of sight and out of mind.

  3.

  Qué Elegante

  Pouring out from the windows, “Por un amor” from the hi-fi, the version by Lola Beltrán, that queen of Mexican country, with tears in the throat and a group of mariachis cooing, —But don’t cry, Lolita, and Lola replying,

  —I’m not crying, it’s just … that I remember.

  A wooden house that looks like an elephant sat on the roof. An apartment so close to the ground people knock on the window instead of the door. Just off Taylor Street. Not far from Saint Francis church of the Mexicans. A stone’s throw from Maxwell Street flea market. The old Italian section of Chicago in the shadow of the downtown Loop. This is where Uncle Fat-Face, Aunty Licha, Elvis, Aristotle, and Byron live, on a block where everyone knows Uncle Fat-Face by his Italian nickname, Rico, instead of Fat-Face or Federico, even though “rico” means “rich” in Spanish, and Uncle is always complaining he is pobre, pobre. —It is no disgrace to be poor, Uncle says, citing the Mexican saying, —but it’s very inconvenient.

  —What have I got to show for my life? Uncle thinks. —Beautiful women I’ve had. Lots. And beautiful cars.

  Every year Uncle trades his old Cadillac for a brand-new used one. On the 16th of September, Uncle waits until the tail of the Mexican parade. When the last float is rolling toward the Loop, Uncle tags along in his big Caddy, thrilled to be driving down State Street, the top rolled down, the kids sitting in the back dressed in charro suits and waving.

  And as for beautiful women, Aunty Licha must be afraid he is thinking of trading her, too, and sending her back to Mexico, even though she is as beautiful as a Mexican Elizabeth Taylor. Aunty is jealous of every woman, old or young, who comes near Uncle Fat-Face, though Uncle is almost bald and as small and brown as a peanut. Mother says, —If a woman’s crazy jealous like Licha you can bet it’s because someone’s giving her reason to be, know what I mean? It’s that she’s from over there, Mother continues, meaning from the Mexican side, and not this side. —Mexican women are just like the Mexican songs, locas for love.

  Once Aunty almost tried to kill herself because of Uncle Fat-Face. —My own husband! What a barbarity! A prostitute’s disease from my own husband. Imagine! Ay, get him out of here! I don’t ever want to see you again. ¡Lárgate! You disgust me, me das asco, you cochino! You’re not fit to be the father of my children. I’m going to kill myself! Kill myself!!! Which sounds much more dramatic in Spanish. —¡Me mato! ¡¡¡Me maaaaaaaatoooooo!!! The big kitchen knife, the one Aunty dips in a glass of water to cut the boys’ birthday cakes, pointed toward her own sad heart.

  Too terrible to watch. Elvis, Aristotle, and Byron had to run for the neighbors, but by the time the neighbors arrived it was too late. Uncle Fat-Face sobbing, collapsed in a heap on the floor like a broken lawn chair, Aunty Licha cradling him like the Virgin Mary cradling Jesus after he was brought down from the cross, hugging that hiccuping head to her chest, murmuring in his ear over and over, —Ya, ya. Ya pasó. It’s all over. There, there, there.

  When Aunty’s not angry she calls Uncle payaso, clown. —Don’t be a payaso, she scolds gently, laughing at Uncle’s silly stories, combing the few strands of hair left on his head with her fingers. But this only encourages Uncle to be even more of a payaso.

  —So I said to the boss, I quit. This job is like el calzón de una puta. A prostitute’s underwear. You heard me! All day long it’s nothing but up and down, up and down, up and down …

  —Don’t tell stories like that in front of the children, Aunty scolds, though she says this while she is laughing, dabbing her Cleopatra eyes with the tip of a twisted paper napkin.

  But it’s our Uncle Baby and Aunty Ninfa who live like movie stars. Their apartment smells of cigarettes and air-conditioning; ours of fried tortillas. For a long time I think of air-conditioning and cigarettes as the smell of elegance. From her hi-fi Aunty’s favorite records are playing: “Exodus,” “Never on Sunday,” Andy Williams singing “Moon River.” Everything smells like cigarettes in Aunty’s house, curtains, rugs, furniture, the poodle with the pink-painted toenails, her teased beehive, even her kids. Except for the girls’ bedroom with the princess beds, which smells like pee because Amor and Paz still wet the bed.

  —Shut up, stupid.

  —I’m telling. Ma, Amor told me “shut up, stupid.”

  —Jesus! Will you girls shut up and let me hear my music or do I have to make you shut up!

  Though their apartment itself is little, the furniture is big. Iron kitchen chairs with high backs like thrones. Bedroom sets that poke out beyond the door frames and keep the doors from shutting completely. A thick wedge of clothes on hangers behind every door. It’s hard to walk. Whenever someone wants to pass, someone else has to sit down; when someone wants to open a door, someone else has to stand up. In the kitchen a life-size portrait of an Italian street beggar
bending over to take a drink from a fountain. —We bought it because she looks just like our little Paz. Wall-to-wall shag carpeting covered with plastic floor runners and area rugs. A marble coffee table like a coffin lid. Speckled Venetian blown-glass knickknacks—a rooster, a tropical fish, a swan. Onyx ashtrays. My favorite is a gold swag lamp of the Three Graces laced with strings of real water like a fountain. Even our Carmen Miranda lamp with the night-light, maraca hiss, and rotating stand can’t compete.

  In our own flat, things of beauty are not forever. The little birds perched around the birdbath candy dish fly away and disappear. The porcelain twin boxer puppies attached by a gold chain to the mama boxer somehow escape and can’t be found. The Japanese geishas in the shadow box are missing their paper parasols even though the shadow box is high and hard to reach. Who knows where they’ve gone? Once the marble coffee table at Uncle Baby and Aunty Ninfa’s was ours, till too many of us cracked our heads on it. That’s how it is with beauty.

  It’s because Aunty Ninfa is from Italy, that’s why she’s used to fancy things. Uncle Baby met her in a Laundromat on Taylor Street and fell in love with her voice, sexy and sad as a trombone in a smoky cafe.

  —My family didn’t want me to marry Baby because he ain’t Italian, but I married him anyways … maybe because they said don’t.

  Is she ever homesick for Italy?

  —I don’t know, honey, I’ve never been there.

  Everything in Aunty’s home is white or gold and looks like a wedding cake, like Marie Antoinette. A couch with lots of buttons. Brocade bucket chairs that swivel with tufted backs and fringed bottoms. Footstools shaped like cupcakes. Uncle Baby made them. He made the plastic covers, too. And the draperies and quilted cornices are Uncle Baby’s work. Above the dining room table, a porcelain chandelier with porcelain roses and porcelain vines brought back one summer from Guadalajara. Their dining room table isn’t Formica, but a thick sheet of glass held in an iron frame with curly white iron rosettes climbing up the legs and chairs. Every room has several ashtrays, even the kitchen and the bathroom—a pair of white women’s hands cupped palms up; a crystal basket; a naughty lady lying on her back, her legs up in the air swaying back and forth, a fan in her hand fluttering. There are huge mirrors in lumpy gold frames. There are lamps with giant silk shades, still wrapped in cellophane, shaped like a lady’s corset. The living room carpet a champagne color covered with plastic floor runners. Mirrors, and glass, and figurines. Things that are a lot of work to keep clean.

  That’s why you have to make sure you wear your good socks when you visit. And have washed your feet. Because you must take your shoes off and leave them in the hall. Everyone walks about in their socks, except the yellow poodle with the rusty eyes.

  Aunty Ninfa’s apartment is so clean we don’t like to visit. —Don’t touch anything. Watch you don’t run, you might break something. Be careful not to touch the mirrors when you switch on the bathroom light. Honey, that chair’s not to sit on. Never sit on Aunty’s bed, sweetie, or it might bring on one of her asthma attacks. Put all the throw pillows back exactly like you found them when you leave, okay? Baby, would you like some candy? —No, thank you, while at home we would’ve sat there eating and eating, even picking up the crumbs.

  Our own home is made up of furniture on loan, mismatched Duncan Phyfes and Queen Annes, Victorian horsehair settees, leather wing chairs with shoulders like Al Capone. Anything left over, abandoned, or sitting in storage at the shop winds up at our house until reupholstered and reclaimed. Could Father’s customers ever imagine us sitting on their fancy furniture while drinking strawberry Nestlé’s Quik and watching the Three Stooges? Once Father found a real pearl in the folds of one of these couches, a silver-blue pearl that he had made into a tie pin because the color matched his favorite suit. We wedge our hands into the cracks between the cushions searching for buried treasure better than Father’s blue pearl, but only come up with a leather button, two pennies and a Canadian dime, a handful of dog hair, the yellow moon of a fingernail.

  Sometimes if we’re lucky, a customer will forget a piece of furniture, and then we get to keep it, which is how we got the orange Naugahyde La-Z-Boy, Father’s favorite and my bed at nighttime. Once it belonged to a dentist, but he never came back for it. Would he pull someone’s tooth and suddenly remember? Too terrible to think about. Father loves his La-Z-Boy. Whenever he suffers one of his famous migraines, he asks for one of Mother’s nylon stockings and ties it around his forehead Apache style. Mother serves him his dinner in the living room on a metal TV tray while he sits on his La-Z-Boy watching the Mexican telenovelas. —¿Qué intentas ocultar, Juan Sebastián? ¿Qué intentas ocultar?* We pull up the footrest, and Father falls asleep like a W for a while, his mouth open, before rolling to his side and curling into a question mark and calling out, —Tápame. We bring a blanket and cover him, even his head because that’s the way he likes to sleep.

  All the rooms in our house fill up with too many things. Things Father buys at Maxwell Street, things Mother buys at the secondhand stores when Father isn’t looking, things bought here to take to the other side and things bought on the other side to bring here, so that it always feels as if our house is a storage room. Gold cherub lamps with teardrop crystals, fine antiques and Aunt Jemima dolls on top of a stack of photo albums, souvenir Mexican dolls, an oversized table lamp bought when a hotel went bankrupt and liquidated all its furnishings, a pink plastic tree in a plastic pot, a beautiful down-filled chaise lounge covered with a Mexican poncho, a tiger-skin love seat covered in a floral sheet, Bugs Bunny, five mismatched dining room chairs, a huge 50’s stereo, a broken drapery rod, and everywhere, halls, walls, sheets, chairs—florals, florals, florals at war with each other.

  * —¿Qué intentas ocultar?

  —¿Por qué eres tan cruel conmigo?

  —Te encanta hacerme sufrir.

  —¿Por qué me mortificas?

  Say any of the above, or say anything twice, slower and more dramatic the second time ’round, and it will sound like the dialogue of any telenovela.

  4.

  Mexico Next Right

  Not like on the Triple A atlas from orange to pink, but at a stoplight in a rippled heat and a dizzy gasoline stink, the United States ends all at once, a tangled shove of red lights from cars and trucks waiting their turn to get past the bridge. Miles and miles.

  —Oh, my Got, Father says in his gothic English. —Holy cripes! says Mother, fanning herself with a Texaco road map.

  I forgot the light, white and stinging like an onion. I remembered the bugs, a windshield spotted with yellow. I remembered the heat, a sun that melts into the bones like Bengay. I remembered how big Texas is. —Are we in Mexico yet? —No, not yet. [Sleep, wake up.] —Are we in Mexico yet? —Still Texas. [Sleep, wake up.] —Are we … —Christ Almighty!!!

  But the light. That I don’t remember forgetting until I remember it.

  We’ve crossed Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas singing all the songs we know. “The Moon Men Mambo” from our favorite Rocky and Bullwinkle album. Ah, ah, aaaah! Scrooch, doobie-doobie, doobie-do. Swing your partner from planet to planet when you dooooo the moon man mamboooo! The Yogi Bear song. He will sleep till noon, but before it’s dark he’ll have ev’ry picnic basket that’s in Jellystone Park … We sing TV commercials. Get the blanket with the A, you can trust the big red A. Get the blanket made with ACRYLAN today … Knock on any Norge, knock on any Norge, hear the secret sound of quality, knock on any Norge! Years from now you’ll be glad you chose Norge. CoCo Wheats, CoCo Wheats can’t be beat. It’s the creamy hot cereal with the cocoa treat … Until Mother yells, —Will you shut your hocicos or do I have to shut them for you?!!!

  But crossing the border, nobody feels like singing. Everyone hot and sticky and in a bad mood, hair stiff from riding with the windows open, the backs of the knees sweaty, a little circle of spit next to where my head fell asleep; “good lucky” Father thought to sew beach towel slipcovers for our new car.


  No more billboards announcing the next Stuckey’s candy store, no more truck-stop donuts or roadside picnics with bologna-and-cheese sandwiches and cold bottles of 7-Up. Now we’ll drink fruit-flavored sodas, tamarind, apple, pineapple; Pato Pascual with Donald Duck on the bottle, or Lulú, Betty Boop soda, or the one we hear on the radio, the happy song for Jarritos soda.

  As soon as we cross the bridge everything switches to another language. Toc, says the light switch in this country, at home it says click. Honk, say the cars at home, here they say tán-tán-tán. The scrip-scrape-scrip of high heels across saltillo floor tiles. The angry lion growl of the corrugated curtains when the shopkeepers roll them open each morning and the lazy lion roar at night when they pull them shut. The pic, pic, pic of somebody’s faraway hammer. Church bells over and over, all day, even when it’s not o’clock. Roosters. The hollow echo of a dog barking. Bells from skinny horses pulling tourists in a carriage, clip-clop on cobblestones and big chunks of horse caquita tumbling out of them like shredded wheat.

  Sweets sweeter, colors brighter, the bitter more bitter. A cage of parrots all the rainbow colors of Lulú sodas. Pushing a window out to open it instead of pulling it up. A cold slash of door latch in your hand instead of the dull round doorknob. Tin sugar spoon and how surprised the hand feels because it’s so light. Children walking to school in the morning with their hair still wet from the morning bath.

  Mopping with a stick and a purple rag called la jerga instead of a mop. The fat lip of a soda pop bottle when you tilt your head back and drink. Birthday cakes walking out of a bakery without a box, just like that, on a wooden plate. And the metal tongs and tray when you buy Mexican sweet bread, help yourself. Cornflakes served with hot milk! A balloon painted with wavy pink stripes wearing a paper hat. A milk gelatin with a fly like a little black raisin rubbing its hands. Light and heavy, loud and soft, thud and ting and ping.