Caramelo (5 page)

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.

Aunty Light-Skin’s real name is Norma, but who would think to call her that? She’s always been known as la Güera even when she was a teeny tiny baby because, —Well, just look at her.

The Awful Grandmother is the one whose name ought to be the Parrot because she talks too much and too loudly, who squawks from the courtyard up to the second-story bedrooms, from the bedrooms down to the kitchen, from the rooftop all through the neighborhood of La Villa, the hills of Tepeyac, the bell tower of la Basílica de la Virgen de Guadalupe, the twin volcanoes—the warrior prince Popocatépetl, the sleeping princess Iztaccíhuatl.

Father’s name is el Tarzán, Tío Tarzán to my cousins, Uncle Tarzan, even though he doesn’t look like Tarzan at all. In his bathing suit he looks like an Errol Flynn washed up on the beach, pale and skinny as a fish. But when Father was a little boy in Mexico he saw a Johnny Weissmuller movie at the neighborhood movie theater, The Flea. From that moment on, Father’s life was changed. He jumped from a tree holding a branch, only the branch didn’t hold. When his two broken arms were set and his mother cured from the fright she asked, —
¡Válgame Dios!
What got into you? Were you trying to kill yourself, or kill me? Answer!

How could Father answer? His heart was filled with so many wonders there were no words for. He wished to fly, he wanted to shout with the voice of the wind, he wanted to live in the sea of trees with the monkeys,
satisfied picking each other’s lice, glad to be shitting on people below. But how can one say this to one’s mother?

Forever after Father was nicknamed el Tarzán by his
cuates
. Inocencio took his nickname in stride. El Tarzán was not so bad. Inocencio’s best friend since the first grade was el Reloj, the Clock, because he was born with his left arm shorter than his right. At least Inocencio was not as unlucky as the neighbor who lost an ear in a knife fight and was, from that day till his death, called la Taza, the Cup. And what about the
pobre infeliz
who survived polio with a gimp foot, only to be named la Polka.
Pobrecito
el Moco, the Snot. El Pedo, the Fart. El Mojón, the Turd. Life was cruel. And hilarious all at once.

Juan el Chango. Beto la Guagua because he could not say “
agua
” when he was little. Meme el King Kong. Chale la Zorra. Balde la Mancha. El Vampiro. El Tlacuache. El Gallo. El Borrego. El Zorrillo. El Gato. El Mosco. El Conejo. La Rana. El Pato. El Oso. La Ardilla. El Cuervo. El Pingüino. La Chicharra. El Tecolote. A whole menagerie of friends. When they saw each other at a soccer match, they’d shout, —There goes el Gallo over there. And instead of shouting, —Hey, Gallo!—they’d let loose a rooster crow
—kiki-riki-kiiiiiiii
—which would be answered by a Tarzan yell, or a bleat, or a bark, or a quack, or a hoot, or a shriek, or a buzz, or a caw.

^*
Before Jiminy Cricket, there was Cri-Crí, the Singing Cricket, the alter ego of that brilliant children’s composer Francisco Gabilondo Soler, who created countless songs, influencing generations of children and would-be poets across
América Latina.

9.

Aunty Light-Skin

      A
unty Light-Skin sleeps like a drowned lady, so far away from the living. A tiny speck in the horizon. Her limbs heavy and soaked with salt water. A terrible effort to raise that waterlogged body from the bed. The Awful Grandmother must help her up each morning, button Aunty into her pink-quilt robe, lead her by the hand up the stairs and past the dining room where we are cracking little eggshell hats on our soft-boiled eggs.

—How did you sleep, Aunty?

—Like the dead, Aunty says. The Awful Grandmother leading the way to the bathroom, Aunty Light-Skin with her eyes closed letting herself be led.

Aunty Light-Skin wears metallic thread cocktail dresses to work, tight skirts with a kick pleat in the back and matching
bolero
jackets with cloth buttons. Beaded sweaters, grasshopper-green silk blouses with mandarin collars, or sleeveless crepe de chine. Crocodile-skin stilettos and crocodile handbag. Brown suede with leopard collar and leopard gloves. Pillbox hats with rhinestones on the veil. Aunty always looks elegant. Because she doesn’t shop at El Palacio de Hierro or Liverpool like the other office girls. Her clothes are from Carson Pirie Scott and Marshall Field’s.

—Ay
, so much for just a little office job! Aunty Licha sniffs when the Grandmother and Aunty Light-Skin have left the room.

—How the hell does she afford such fancy duds? Aunty Ninfa adds. —I mean, Jesus Christ, with just a secretary’s salary? Nice work if you can get it.

Mother says, —Well, if you ask me she must be very, very good at what she does.

The daughters-in-law burst out laughing.

Aunty Light-Skin has to dress up because she works for a very important man. Señor Vidaurri.

Señor Vidaurri of the pearl-gray suits and pearl-gray hair. Señor Vidaurri of the handsome fedoras. Señor Vidaurri of the big black car. Señor Vidaurri who drives our pretty Aunty Light-Skin to his construction company every day and delivers her home each evening. Señor Vidaurri whose skin is as dark as my mother’s.
That
Señor Vidaurri gives our cousin Antonieta Araceli her
domingo
, her Sunday allowance each week, he never forgets, even though he is not her grandfather. It’s because he’s Aunty’s boss and has too much money.

When Mother and the Aunties are not discussing Aunty Light-Skin, or Señor Vidaurri, or the Awful Grandmother, they like to talk about Aunty’s husband, the one she divorced so long ago Antonieta Araceli doesn’t even remember him, whose name no one is supposed to mention because Aunty will have fits.

—Yeah, well, if you want my two cents there wasn’t a divorce, because there wasn’t a marriage, Mother says. —Know what I mean?

—How could there be a marriage? He was still legally married to two others, Aunty Ninfa whispers too loudly.

—¡No me digas!
Aunty Licha says.

—One in Durango and one in Tampico. That’s why she had to leave him, Ninfa continues. —That’s the way I heard it.

—¡A poco!
What a barbarity! says Licha.

—I’m just telling you what I heard.

We are already finished with breakfast, wiping away the milk mustaches with our napkins when Aunty Light-Skin reemerges from the bathroom, her little eyes bright apostrophes, her mouth a tangerine heart, hair finger-combed into wet waves. She is rushing about asking someone to zipper her into an aqua dress with spaghetti straps and pink sequins, she is stumbling into black patent leather stilettos that crisscross at the ankle, tossing things hurriedly from last night’s silver sequin clutch to this morning’s black envelope bag, her high heels grating along the corridor tiles.

From the courtyard Aunty’s voice sounds almost like the parrot voice of the Awful Grandmother.

—Oralia, move the rubber tree into the sun, and make sure you water it thoroughly. Mamá, ask for three tanks of gas this time from the gas
man, don’t forget. Antonieta Araceli,
mija
, the money for the flowers for the dead nun, look on my dresser, I left it knotted in a handkerchief. Oralia, have Amparo iron my silk blouse, the one with the embroidered flowers, not the white one, the other one. And have her take care not to scorch it. Mamá, can you have my things picked up from the cleaners? Don’t wait to have supper with me, I’m eating out tonight. Antonieta Araceli, stop chewing your fingernails. You’ll only make them worse. Use a nail file.… Ask your
abuela
to find you one. ¡Antonieta Araceli! ¡Oralia! ¡Mamá! ¡Oralia!

She doesn’t stop yelling until the
tán, tán, tán
of Señor Vidaurri’s car horn. The green iron gate slamming shut with a reverberating
clang
.

10.

The Girl Candelaria

      T
he first time I see anyone with skin the color of a
caramelo
I am walking behind the Grandmother and step on the Grandmother’s heel.

—Clumsy! Look where you’re going!

Where I am looking is the rooftop laundry room where the girl Candelaria is feeding clothes through a wringer washer. Her mother, the washerwoman Amparo, comes every week on Monday, a woman like a knot of twisted laundry, hard and dry and squeezed of all water. At first I think Amparo is her grandmother, not her mama.

—But how could a girl with skin like a
caramelo
have such a dusty old mother?

—¡Hocicona!
the Awful Grandmother says, calling me a big-mouth. —Come here. And when I am within reach,
thwacks
me on the head.

The girl Candelaria has skin bright as a copper
veinte centavos
coin after you’ve sucked it. Not transparent as an ear like Aunty Light-Skin’s. Not shark-belly pale like Father and the Grandmother. Not the red river-clay color of Mother and her family. Not the coffee-with-too-much-milk color like me, nor the fried
-tortilla
color of the washerwoman Amparo, her mother. Not like anybody. Smooth as peanut butter, deep as burnt-milk candy.

—How did you get like that?

—Like what?

But I don’t know what I mean, so I don’t say anything.

Until I meet Candelaria I think beautiful is Aunty Light-Skin, or the dolls with lavender hair I get at Christmas, or the women on the beauty contests we watch on television. Not this girl with too many teeth like
white corn and black hair, black-black like rooster feathers that gleam green in the sun.