Caramelo Read online

  Churches the color of flan. Vendors selling slices of jícama with chile, lime juice, and salt. Balloon vendors. The vendor of flags. The corn-on-the-cob vendor. The pork rind vendor. The fried-banana vendor. The pancake vendor. The vendor of strawberries in cream. The vendor of rainbow pirulís, of apple bars, of tejocotes bathed in caramel. The meringue man. The ice cream vendor, —A very good ice cream at two pesos. The coffee man with the coffeemaker on his back and a paper cup dispenser, the cream-and-sugar boy scuttling alongside him.

  Little girls in Sunday dresses like lace bells, like umbrellas, like parachutes, the more lace and froufrou the better. Houses painted purple, electric blue, tiger orange, aquamarine, a yellow like a taxicab, hibiscus red with a yellow-and-green fence. Above doorways, faded wreaths from an anniversary or a death till the wind and rain erase them. A woman in an apron scrubbing the sidewalk in front of her house with a pink plastic broom and a bright green bucket filled with suds. A workman carrying a long metal pipe on his shoulder, whistling fffttt-ffffttt to warn people—Watch out!—the pipe longer than he is tall, almost putting out someone’s eye, ya mero—but he doesn’t, does he? Ya mero, pero no. Almost, but not quite. Sí, pero no. Yes, but no.

  Fireworks displays, piñata makers, palm weavers. Pens, —Five different styles, they cost us a lot! A restaurant called —His Majesty, the Taco. The napkins, little triangles of hard paper with the name printed on one side. Breakfast: a basket of pan dulce, Mexican sweet bread; hotcakes with honey; or steak; frijoles with fresh cilantro; molletes; or scrambled eggs with chorizo; eggs a la mexicana with tomato, onion, and chile; or huevos rancheros. Lunch: lentil soup; fresh-baked crusty bolillos; carrots with lime juice; carne asada; abalone; tortillas. Because we are sitting outdoors, Mexican dogs under the Mexican tables. —I can’t stand dogs under the table when I’m eating, Mother complains, but as soon as we shoo two away, four others trot over.

  The smell of diesel exhaust, the smell of somebody roasting coffee, the smell of hot corn tortillas along with the pat-pat of the women’s hands making them, the sting of roasting chiles in your throat and in your eyes. Sometimes a smell in the morning, very cool and clean that makes you sad. And a night smell when the stars open white and soft like fresh bolillo bread.

  Every year I cross the border, it’s the same—my mind forgets. But my body always remembers.

  5.

  Mexico, Our Nearest Neighbor to the South

  Blacktop. If you stare at the center stripe ahead, a patch of water rises and disappears before you catch up to it, like a ghost going to heaven. The car swallowing the road, and the white stripes coming and coming, quickly quickly quickly, like the stitches on Father’s sewing machine, and the road making you sleepy.

  It’s Memo’s turn to sit up front, between Mother and Father. Every once in a while Memo leans over and Father lets him help with the steering wheel, and every once in a while, just for a few seconds, Father lets go of the wheel and Memo’s driving! Until Mother yells, —Inocencio!

  —Just playing, Father says, chuckling, his hands on the wheel again. —Excellent road, he says, trying to change the subject. —Look how pretty this road is, Zoila. Almost as good as the ones in Texas, right?

  —A hell of a lot better than the old Pan American Highway, Mother adds. —Remember when we had to drive through the Sierra Madre? What a headache!

  —I remember, I say.

  —How could you remember? You weren’t even born yet! Rafa says.

  —Yeah, Lala, Tikis adds. —You were still dirt! Ha, ha!

  —I do so remember. Honest!

  —You mean you remember the stories somebody told you, says Mother.

  One time on the old highway through the Sierra Madre, Rafa and Ito threw half the clothes from our suitcases out the window just to see them whoosh out of their hands. T-shirts flagged on the spikes of the magueys, socks tangled in the dusty scrub brush, underwear worn like party hats on the flowering nopalitos, all the while Mother and Father were looking straight ahead, worried about what was in front and not behind them.

  Sometimes the mountain roads are so narrow the truck drivers have to open their doors to see how close they are to the edge. Once a truck fell off and rolled down the canyon in slow motion. Did I dream it or did someone tell me the story? I can’t remember where the truth ends and the talk begins.

  The towns with their central plazas, always with a bandstand and iron benches. The smell of the countryside like the top of your head on a sunny day. Houses now and then painted the colors of flowers, and now and then sprouting on the shoulder of the road, roadside crosses to mark where someone’s ghost walked away from his body.

  —Don’t look, says Mother when we drive past, but that only makes us want to look even more.

  In the middle of nowhere, we have to stop the car to let Lolo out to pee. Father lights a cigarette and checks the tires. We all tumble out to stretch our legs. There isn’t anything in sight, only hills of cacti, mesquite, sage, that tree with white flowers like little hats. The heat rippling the blue-purple mountains in the distance.

  When I turn around three barefoot kids are staring at us, a girl sucking the hem of her faded dress and two dusty boys.

  Father talks to them while he checks the tires. —Is that your sister? Remember to take good care of her. Where do you all live? Where over there?

  Talking and talking like this for what seems a long time.

  Just as we are about to leave, Father takes my rubber doll from the car and says, —I’ll buy you another one.

  Before I can say anything, my baby is in the arms of that girl! How can I explain, this one is my Bobby doll, two fingers missing on his left hand because I chewed them off when I was teething. There isn’t another Bobby doll like it in the world! But I can’t say this fast enough when Father hands the girl my Bobby.

  Lolo’s and Memo’s Christmas Tonka trucks disappear too.

  The three kids clamber off into the hills of dust and loose gravel with our toys. We can’t take our eyes off them, our mouths open wide, the backseat filled with our howls.

  —You kids are too spoiled, Father scolds when we drive away.

  Over the shoulder of the running girl do I imagine or do I really see the rubber arm of my Bobby doll, the one with three fingers, raised in the air waving good-bye?

  6.

  Querétaro

  Because we’re kids, things happen and someone forgets to tell us, or they tell us and we forget. I don’t know which. When I hear the word “Querétaro,” I start to shudder, hope everyone won’t remember.

  —Cut it.

  —All of it? Father asks.

  —All, the Grandmother says. —It will grow back thicker, you’ll see.

  Father nods and the beautician obeys. Father always does whatever the Grandmother orders, and in two surprised snips I am turned into a pelona.

  Snip. Snip.

  The twin braids I’ve had since as far back as I can remember, the ones so long I can sit on them, now lie like dead snakes on the floor. Father wraps them in his handkerchief and tucks them in his pocket.

  Snip, snip, snip. The scissors whisper mean things in my ears.

  In the mirror an ugly wolf-girl is howling.

  All the kilometers to Mexico City.

  Especially because the brothers laugh and point and call me a boy.

  —Oh, brother! What a chillona you turned out to be. Now what? Mother asks.

  —What could be worse than being a boy?

  —Being a girl! Rafa shouts. And everyone in the car laughs even harder.

  At least I’m not the oldest like Rafa, who one day doesn’t come home with us on one of our trips from Mexico.

  —We’ve forgotten Rafa, stop the car!

  —It’s okay, Father says. —Rafa is staying with your grandmother. You’ll see him next year.

  That’s true. It is a year before we see him. And when he comes back to us in a clean white shirt and with hair shorter than we’ve ever remembered it, his
Spanish is as curly and correct as Father’s. They made him go to a military school just like the one the Little Grandfather had to go to when he was a boy. When Rafa comes back with a class photograph of himself in his military school uniform, when he comes back to us taller and quieter and strange, it’s as if our other brother Rafa was kidnapped and this one sent back in exchange. He tries talking to us in Spanish, but we don’t use that language with kids, we only use it with grown-ups. We ignore him and keep watching our television cartoons.

  Later when he feels like it and can talk about it, he’ll explain what it’s like to be abandoned by your parents and left in a country where you don’t have enough words to speak the things inside you.

  —Why did you leave me?

  —It was for your own good, so that you’d speak better Spanish. Your grandmother thought it for the best …

  It was the Awful Grandmother’s idea. That explains it.

  The Awful Grandmother is like the witch in that story of Hansel and Gretel. She likes to eat boys and girls. She’ll swallow us whole, if you let her. Father has let her swallow Rafa.

  We’d been to Querétaro for the day. For lunch and walking around looking at old buildings and, at the very last minute, the Grandmother suggests she have her hair done, because it’s cheaper in small towns than it is in the capital. A sign says so as we are walking off our lunch, and that’s how it is that Father, the Grandmother, Mother, and me find ourselves in the beauty parlor, the boys bored and waiting outside in the plaza.

  Because I don’t understand, they cut my braids off before I can say anything. Or maybe they don’t even ask me. Or maybe I’m daydreaming when they tell me. I only know when the braids let themselves go and fall on the tiles, it takes my breath away.

  —As if they’d cut off your arms! the Grandmother scolds. —It’s just hair. You should’ve seen the terrible things that happened to me as a girl, but did I cry? Not even if God commanded it.

  —We’ll have them woven into a hairpiece for when you grow up, Father says when we’re in the car. —You’ll like that, won’t you, my queen? I’m going to throw a big party with everyone in gowns and tuxedos, and I’ll buy a big, big cake, bigger than you are tall, and a band will play a waltz when I take you out to dance. Right, my heaven? Don’t cry, my pretty girl. Please.

  —Quit babying her, Mother says, annoyed. —She’ll never grow up.

  Querétaro 33 kilometers. As soon as the word is said, I hope everyone won’t remember, but they never forget, my brothers.

  —Querétaro. Hey, remember that time they cut off Lala’s hair!

  Then they’re on me again with their laughter like sharp teeth.

  Querétaro. A chill like scissors against the neck. Querétaro. Querétaro. The sound of scissors talking.

  7.

  La Capirucha

  —We’re almost there, he keeps saying. Ya mero. Almost. Ya mero.

  —But I have to make pipí, Lolo says. —How much longer is almost?

  —Ya mero, ya mero.

  Even though we still have hours to go.

  Father is already ignoring the rest of the scenery, watching the roadside signs that tell us how many kilometers more. How many? How many? Imagining driving through the green iron gates of the house on Destiny Street, the hot supper and the bed. The sleep that will come when the road ends and his right leg stops throbbing.

  Green Impala, white Caddy, red station wagon. We hobble forward, each car filthier than the next—inside and out—dust and dead bugs and vomit. The road crowded with buses and big trucks lit like Christmas trees as we get closer. No one even tries to pass each other. Kilometers, kilometers …

  Then, all at once, after we’ve forgotten ya mero …

  —¡Ay, ay, ay, ay, ay! There it is!

  A silence in the car. A silence in the world. And then … The rising in the chest, in the heart, finally. The road suddenly dipping and surprising us as always. There it is!

  Mexico City! La capital. El D.F. La capirucha. The center of the universe! The valley like a big bowl of hot beef soup before you taste it. And a laughter in your chest when the car descends.

  A laughter like ticker tape. Like a parade. People in the streets shouting hurray. Or do I just imagine they are shouting hurray? Hurray when the giant Corona beer billboard appears with its silver spangles. Hurray when the highways turn into avenues and boulevards. Hurray when the Mexico City buses and taxis glide alongside us like dolphins. Ya mero, ya mero. The shops with open doorways brightly lit. Hurray the twilight sky filling with stars like twists of silver paper. Hurray the rooftop dogs that welcome us. Hurray the smell of supper frying in the streets. Hurray la colonia Industrial, hurray Tepeyac, hurray La Villa. Hurray when the green iron gates of the house on Destiny Street, number 12, open, abracadabra.

  In the belly button of the house, the Awful Grandmother tossing her black rebozo de bolita crisscross across her breasts, like a soldadera’s bandoleers. The big black X at the map’s end.

  8.

  Tarzan

  We come in all sizes, from little to big, like a xylophone. Rafa, Ito, Tikis, Toto, Lolo, Memo, and Lala. Rafael, Refugio, Gustavo, Alberto, Lorenzo, Guillermo, and Celaya. Rafa, Ito, Tikis, Toto, Lolo, Memo, y Lala. The younger ones couldn’t say the older ones’ names, and that’s how Refugito became Ito, or Gustavito became Tikis, Alberto—Toto, Lorenzo—Lolo, Guillermo—Memo, and me, Celaya—Lala. Rafa, Ito, Tikis, Toto, Lolo, Memo, y Lala. When the Grandmother calls us she says, —Tú. Or sometimes, —Oyes, tú.

  Elvis, Aristotle, and Byron are Uncle Fat-Face and Aunty Licha’s. The Grandmother says to Uncle Fat-Face, —How backwards that Licha naming those poor babies after anyone she finds in her horoscopes. Thank God Shakespeare was stillborn. Can you imagine answering to “Shakespeare Reyes”? What a beating life would’ve given him. Too sad to think your father lost three of his ribs in the war so that his grandchild could be named Elvis … Don’t pretend you don’t know!… Elvis Presley is a national enemy … He is … Why would I make it up? When he was making that movie in Acapulco he said, “The last thing I want to do in my life is kiss a Mexican.” That’s what he said, I swear it. Kiss a Mexican. It was in all the papers. What was Licha thinking!

  —But our Elvis was born seven years ago, Mother. How was Licha to know Elvis Presley would come to Mexico and say such things?

  —Well, someone should’ve thought about the future, eh? And now look. The whole republic is boycotting that pig, and my grandchild is named Elvis! What a barbarity!

  Amor and Paz are Uncle Baby and Aunty Ninfa’s, named “Love” and “Peace” because, —We were happy God sent us such pretty little girls. They’re so evil they stick their tongues out at us while their father is saying this.

  Like always, when we first arrive at the Grandparents’ house, my brothers and I are shy and speak only to one another, in English, which is rude. But by the second day we upset our cousin Antonieta Araceli, who is not used to the company of kids. We break her old Cri-Crí* records. We lose the pieces to her Turista game. We use too much toilet paper, or at other times too little. We stick our dirty fingers in the bowl of beans soaking for the midday meal. We run up and down the stairs and across the courtyard chasing each other through the back apartments where the Grandparents, Aunty Light-Skin, and Antonieta Araceli live, and through the front apartments where we stay.

  We like being seen on the roof, like house servants, without so much as thinking what passersby might mistake us for. We try sneaking into the Grandparents’ bedroom when no one is looking, which the Awful Grandmother strictly forbids. All this we do and more. Antonieta Araceli faithfully reports as much to the Awful Grandmother, and the Awful Grandmother herself has seen how these children raised on the other side don’t know enough to answer, —¿Mande usted? to their elders. —What? we say in the horrible language, which the Awful Grandmother hears as ¿Guat? —What? we repeat to each other and to her. The Awful Grandmother shakes her head and mutters, —My daughters-in-law have
given birth to a generation of monkeys.

  Mi gorda, my chubby, is what Aunty Light-Skin calls her daughter, Antonieta Araceli. It was her baby name and cute when she was little, but not cute now because Antonieta Araceli is as thin as a shadow. —¡Mi gorda!

  —Mama, please! When are you going to stop calling me that in front of everybody?

  She means in front of us. Antonieta Araceli has decided she’s a grown-up this summer and spends all day in front of the mirror plucking her eyebrows and mustache, but she’s no grown-up. She’s only two months younger than Rafa—thirteen. When the adults aren’t around we shout, —¡Mi gorda! ¡Mi gorda! until she throws something at us.

  —How did you get named Antonieta Araceli, what a funny name?

  —It’s not a funny name. I was named after a Cuban dancer who dances in the movies wearing beautiful outfits. Didn’t you ever hear of María Antonieta Pons? She’s famous and everything. Blond-blond-blond and white-white-white. Very pretty, not like you.

  The Awful Grandmother calls Father mijo. Mijo. My son. —Mijo, mijo. She doesn’t call Uncle Fat-Face or Uncle Baby mijo, even though they’re her sons too. She calls them by their real names, —Federico. Or, —Armando—when she is angry, or their nicknames when she is not. —Fat-Face, Baby! —It’s that when I was a baby I had a fat face, explains Uncle Fat-Face. —It’s that I’m the youngest, says Uncle Baby. As if the Awful Grandmother doesn’t notice Uncle Fat-Face isn’t fat anymore and Uncle Baby isn’t a baby. —It doesn’t matter, says the Awful Grandmother. —All my sons are my sons. They’re just as they were when they were little. I love them all the same, just enough but not too much. She uses the Spanish word hijos, which means sons and children all at once. —And your daughter? I ask. —What about her? The Awful Grandmother gives me that look, as if I’m a pebble in her shoe.