Caramelo (30 page)

Order. He relied on his military upbringing to create some kind of discipline, some kind of affection with his children.

—Sergeant Inocencio, are these my troops?

—They are, my general.

It had been a long time since he played with his children. He no longer knew how to play.

So when Inocencio brought home mediocre grades, Narciso shouldn’t have blamed anyone but himself. Of course, it was not himself he blamed. He hoped his son could have the opportunities he did not. Inocencio was coerced into applying to the national university, but unfortunately, he did not apply himself to his studies.

One semester later, Inocencio’s final grades terrified him into realizing he’d spent more time with women than with books. What could he do? His father was a strict man who came home seldom and who was seldom understanding. Narciso had already run off Fat-Face for being
un burro
, and now Fat-Face was vagabonding the U.S.

—You’re nothing but a
burro
, you’ll never amount to anything, Narciso had too often said to Fat-Face, and because the power of words spoken
by those we love is so strong, they stung Fat-Face’s heart. If he was never going to amount to anything, why bother trying, right? Fat-Face hopped on the back of a flatbed truck filled with corn husks and shivered all the way through the Desert of the Lions until he found his way to the border, and meandered through the United States.

Inocencio admired his younger brother’s audacity. Inocencio had always been the good boy, while Fat-Face had been the adventurer. Now that Inocencio was in trouble, he chose to take to the road and join his brother Fat-Face hitching trains and picking up women. At least this is how Inocencio imagined it.

And so, Inocencio Reyes set off with Chicago as his eventual goal. He had relatives there. The sons of Uncle Old. It would only be for a few months, he reasoned. —When Father calms down, he promised his mother, —I’ll come right home.

^*
During World War II, a squadron of Mexican fighter pilots
, Escuadron 201,
helped liberate Luzon and Formosa. Created by Mexican president Manuel Ávila Camacho in 1944, the squadron of 38 fighter pilots and 250 ground personnel serving under U.S. orders logged 59 missions and 1,290 hours of combat flight time
.
   
For a super-sentimental story of Squadron 201, see Indio Fernández’ splendid
Salon México,
a classic. Note the Mexican matriarchy scene between the injured returning pilot and his angelic mother. This scene alone will explain everything
.

46.

Spic Spanish?

      T
he old proverb was true. Spanish was the language to speak to God and English the language to talk to dogs. But Father worked for the dogs, and if they barked he had to know how to bark back. Father sent away for the Inglés Sin Stress home course in English. He practiced, when speaking to his boss, —
Gud mórning, ser
. Or meeting a woman, —
Jáu du iú du?
If asked how he was coming along with his English lessons, —
Veri uel, zanc iú
.

Because Uncle Fat-Face had been in the States longer, he gave Father advice. —Look, when speaking to police, always begin with, “Hello, my friend.”

In order to advance in society, Father thought it wise to memorize several passages from the “Polite Phrases” chapter. I congratulate you. Pass on, sir. Pardon my English. I have no answer to give you. It gives me the greatest pleasure. And: I am of the same opinion.

But his English was odd to American ears. He worked at his pronunciation and tried his best to enunciate correctly. —Sir, kindly direct me to the water closet. —Please what do you say? —May I trouble you to ask for what time is? —Do me the kindness to tell me how is. When all else failed and Father couldn’t make himself understood, he could resort to, 
—Spic Spanish?

Qué
strange was English. Rude and to the point. No one preceded a request with a —Will you not be so kind as to do me the favor of …, as one ought. They just asked! Nor did they add —If God wills it to their plans, as if they were in audacious control of their own destiny.
It was a barbarous language! Curt as the commands of a dog trainer. —Sit. —Speak up. And why did no one say, —You are welcome. Instead, they grunted, —Uh-huh, without looking him in the eye, and without so much as a —You are very kind, mister, and may things go well for you.

47.

He Who Is Destined to Be a Tamale

      L
ike the Mexican saying goes, he who is destined to be a
tamal
will find corn shucks falling from the sky, and Inocencio is one lucky
tamale
. In Little Rock Inocencio is finally recognized for the royalty he is. He’s not a wetback. He’s a Reyes. Mr. Dick understands this.

It’s during the time Inocencio is shucking oysters. He works in a big seafood restaurant called Crabby Craig’s Crab Kingdom with a neon crab opening and closing its pincers. It’s a step up to be shucking oysters. In Waco he’d been a dishwasher, in Dallas a busboy. In San Antonio he had coughed up dust and sneezed black for weeks after collecting pecans. And now here he was in a nice white jacket, almost as nice as his own tuxedo hanging in his closet at home.

For a time Inocencio enjoys his job shucking oysters. But after a while his hands sting from the nicks and cuts. The ice doesn’t help. The wounds keep getting irritated from the lemon juice. Inocencio takes to wearing white cotton gloves, and Mr. Dick, the boss, is impressed by this added touch, which he mistakes for elegance instead of practicality.

Inocencio
is
very elegant in his white jacket and black bow tie, his white cotton gloves and his face of a young Errol Flynn. He could be el Catrín in the Lotería cards, the Mexican bingo. He could be Claude Rains with his pencil-thin mustache. He could be the debonair Gilbert Roland with his wavy dark hair and dark eyes. When he opens his mouth and asks, —May I serve you? he says it in such a charming way, the women customers are sure to ask, —Are you French? Or, —I’ve got it—you’re Spanish, right? They don’t say “Mexican,” because they don’t want to insult Inocencio, but Inocencio doesn’t know “Mexican” is an insult.

At the end of the day, before Inocencio walks back to the room he rents at the hotel around the corner from the bus station, he announces to the Puerto Rican busboy, —Today I worked
como un negro
, which is what they say in Mexico when they work very hard. When a white man says, —I worked like a black man, he means he hardly worked at all. But Inocencio is not a white man, although his skin is white. Today I worked like a black man, to the one other white man who is not white—the Puerto Rican busboy.

Mr. Dick and his wife take a special liking to Inocencio. Mrs. Dick thinks it a shame Inocencio has to go home each night to that awful transient nest full of riffraff, a young man of such good manners. —You come with us, you don’t belong there. And so Inocencio goes home with Mr. and Mrs. Dick and he lives with them for a time almost like a son. —Thank you, Inocencio, says Mrs. Dick, patting his hand with her speckled twig of a hand when he brings her her gin and tonic. —With pleasure, Inocencio says. —Yes, truly a good man, says Mr. Dick when Inocencio lights his cigarette. Inocencio cannot believe his good fortune and is grateful to excess, polite as a Mexican ought to be, famous for his compliments and grandiosity.

Once when Inocencio is serving highballs, Mr. Dick says, —The Mexicans know how to live. Do you think they care who is president or what is going on outside their small villages? These people live for the now. The past and the future mean nothing to them. They are a people who live in the clouds and are better off for it.

—Sir, I am of the same opinion, said Inocencio. He could not think what else to say. And even if he had, he couldn’t say it.

—Let’s drink to you, Inocencio, said Mr. Dick. —And to your happy race.

—You are very kind, sir. If Inocencio had had a
sombrero
, he would’ve taken it off and bowed.

48.

Cada Quien en Su Oficio Es Rey

      U
ncle Old was already dust by the time Inocencio tumbled off a Greyhound bus in downtown Chicago, and with many please, most kind, and very thank-yous, arrived finally at the address of his Uncle Snake’s upholstery shop on South Halsted. Chubby, Curly, and Snake had all inherited their father’s trade, but only Snake had inherited his father’s business. Uncle Snake, like Uncle Old before him, was only too ready to take in lost kin and to offer him all he had, even if all he had was not much.

It was the same storefront where Inocencio’s father had stayed when the country was gripped in an earlier world war, and the shop was just as dirty as ever. The smoky windows were covered with pieces of fabric scraps, and in a rustic shelf unit were bolts and bolts of grimy old material stacked like scrolls in an ancient library. Overstuffed chairs shaped like grandmothers in flowered Sunday dresses, couches huge and rotund as fighter airplanes, cupcake footstools, and fringed chaise lounges all were piled one on top of the other like Aztec pyramids. But unlike his fussy father, Inocencio found the chaos of his uncle’s shop an opportunity; something for him to improve and, therefore, make himself useful.

—Do you remember when my father came to live with your family, or were you too little, Uncle Snake?

—Remember? I’m the one who taught your father everything he knows. But he was never cut out to be an upholsterer. I tried, but he just didn’t have it in him. I hope to God you don’t take after him. Let’s see. Let’s look at your hands,
mijito
. Have you ever lifted a hammer before?

—I once demolished a chicken coop my mother wanted removed from the roof after all the chickens died. Does that count for something?

—Sure, why not. The important thing is to have
ganas
, and you’ve got necessity biting you on the ass, I can see that. Your father’s problem was he didn’t feel like learning a trade. Didn’t have any respect for upholstery. So how can you do a job right if you don’t respect it, right? Got to have pride in your labor, Inocencio. Put your heart and your soul into it. You don’t want to be famous for making junk, do you? After all, your work is your signature, remember that.

Uncle Snake lived in the upholstery shop because his wife wouldn’t let him come upstairs. She’d been angry at him since 1932. That’s the truth. Gradually he took to adapting his workspace into a home.

It began with cutting his nails with the upholstery scissors. Then a hot plate. Then a homemade shower rigged from a garden hose, a washtub, and an old screen. A jagged triangle of mirror above the sink to shave. And finally trimming his own hair and sucking away the clippings from his neck with the compressor.

—Well, no wonder I look like I do. He’d run his hand over his scalp, laughing.

He was not exaggerating. His hair looked like a coyote had chewed it. His joints and muscles sagged, slack and tired like an old mattress. And his clothes were as rumpled as if he’d slept in them. He had. Over everything, tufts of lint and pieces of string—hair, day-old beard, eyelashes and eyebrows, raggedy undershirt, baggy trousers, socks, even his shoes with the tips that curled up because they were too big for him.

—I’m turning into a chair, he’d say, and laugh.

—Upholstery is simple, Uncle Snake began. —It’s all a matter of getting the taste of it, see? A taste for the Italian twine when you lick it like so before threading the curved needle. The iron flavor of a handful of tacks in your mouth and the cold hammer pressed to your lips when you kiss it to pick up a tack. The dust fibers from the ripped batting swirling in the air and in your nose, the cotton stuffing, the fabric scraps, the endless sweeping up all day like a barber’s assistant, the bent tacks stuck on the soles of the shoes, the
crkkk, crkkk, crkkk
of scissors cutting fabric, the rolling Spanish “r” of the sewing machines. You’ve just got to get the taste of it, that’s all. In no time at all you’ll be a master upholsterer, Inocencio. Take my word for it. But first you’ve got to start at the bottom.

This said, he handed Inocencio the broom, and with the broom as partner, Inocencio Reyes began his royal profession.

49.

Piensa en Mí

      1945.
The holding tank. The Chicago police station, Homan and Harrison. Lights bright and blazing like a supermarket, chipped pea-green paint, benches too narrow to sit on and too crowded to sleep, a latrine in the center of the room stinking of urine and vomit and shit, cement floor as sticky as a movie theater’s. But worst of all, the echo of doors slamming shut.

—Lord, lord, lord, this place is a fucking hellhole. This place is a fucking hellhole. This place is a fucking hellhole.

—Would you please be quiet.

—Jeez! This place is a fucking hellhole. This place is a fucking hellhole. This place is a fucking …

—Can’t someone make that cat pipe down?

—Lordy, lord, lord. Hellhole, man. Fucking …

—You try. He’s been at it for over half an hour. Like the hiccups. He’s driving us all nuts.

—Fucking hellhole, my God. This place is a fucking fucking hell …

—Shut up already! a voice like a cartoon ordered from inside the latrine.

—Who said that?

—I did!

—Who? Ain’t no one in the stall.

—Me! That’s who, you big stupid! Me! A piece of turd, you piece of turd. It takes one to know one, and I said shut the hell up!

—!

A nervous laughter rippled through the room, a reflex like muscle twitching off a fly; it made everyone feel better, if only for a little while.