Literature Essay on gender and sexuality representations in selected Juiot Diaz's and Sandra Cisneros' short stories
Sandro Cisneros
s\N0n tu $
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0ther Stories
V I N T A C E C O N T E M P O R A R I E S
VINTAGE BOOKS
A DIVISION OF RANDOM HOUSE, INC.
NEW YORK
FIRST VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES EDITION' MARCH r99z
Copyright @ ry9r by Sandra Cisturos
All righrs reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions'
Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc.,
New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited,
Toronto. Originally published in hardcover by Random House, Inc., New York,
i n t99 t .
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission
to reprint previously published material:
ARTE puBLtco PREss: "Mexican Movies" by Sandra Cisneros was
frrst published in the Anuricas Rniew, Volume 16, No. 3-4'
Reprinted by permission.
TRADITION MUslc coMPANY: Excerpt from the song "Ay Te Dejo en
San Antonio" by Santiago Jimenez. Copyright @ by Tradition Music Co. (BMI).
Reprinted by permission.
Some of the stories in this work were originally published in Anteicas Review,
Crsnd Street, Humanizsrte, Los Angeles Times Magazitu, The Saguaro, Story and
Tlw Village Voice Uterary SuVplement'
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cisneros, Sandra,
Woman hollering creek and other stories / Sandra Cisneros'-lst
Vintage contemporaries ed.
p, cm,-(Vintage contemPoraries)
"Originally published in lrardcover by Random House, Inc., New
York, in t99r"-T.p. verso.
ISBN o-679-73856-8
r. Mexican Americans-Fiction. z. Mexican-American Border Region-
Fiction. I. Title.
IPS t : t i . 178W66 Ie92 ]
813 ' ,54 -dczo 9 r -58ooz C I P
Book design by Susan Shapiro
Manufactured in tlu United Sutes of America
c987654
For my mama,
Elvira Cordero Anguiano,
who gave me the fierce language.
Y paramipapd,
Alfredo Cisneros Del Moral,
quien me di6 el lenguaje dc la ternura.
Estos cucntitos se los dcdico
con todo tni corazin.
r 3 6 . T H E R E W A S A M A N , T H E R E \ | / A S A W O M A N
lost between anguish and forgetting. And now if I dissolve my tears in dissipation, know, my queen, only you are to blame. My fragile heart will never be the same.
Providence knew what was in store, the day I arrived innocently at your door. Dressed in my uniform and carrying the tools of my trade, without knowing destiny waited for me, I knocked. you
opened your arms, my heaven, but kept your precious heart locked.
Ir coa wills it, perhaps these words of sentiment will convince you. Perhaps I can exterminate the pests of doubt that infest your house. Perhaps the pure love I had to offer wasn't enough, and another now is savoring your honeyed nectar. But none will love you so honorably and true as the way Rogelio velasco loved you.
Ttr.y say of the poet and madman we all have a little. Even my life I would give for your exquisite treasures. But poor me. Though others may lure you with jewels and riches, all I can offer is this humble measure.
Alon., all alone in the world, sad and small like a nightingale serenading the infinite. How could a love so tender and sweet become the cross of my pain? No, no, I can't conceive I won't receive your precious lips again, My eyes are tired of weeping, my heart of beating. If perhaps some crystal moment before dawn or twilight you remember me, bring only a bouquet of tears to lay upon my thirsty grave.
Tan TAN
Bien Pretty ^=^^
Ya me voy,
ay te dcjo en San Antonio. -Fleco Jr*rfxEz
He wasn't pretty unless you were in love with him. Then any time
you met anyone with those same monkey eyes, that burnt-sugar
skin, the face wider than it was long, well, you were in for it.
His family came from MichoacSn. lJl chapandtos, every one of
them-short even by Mexican standards-but to me he was perfect.
I'm to blame. Flavio Munguia was just ordinary Flavio until he
met me. I filled up his head with a million and one carifritos. Then
he was ruined forever. Walked different. L,ooked people in the eye
when he talked, Ran his eyes across every pair of ruIgas and chichis
he saw. I,am sorry.
Once you tell a man he's pretty, there's no taking it back. They
think they're pretty all the time, and I suPpose, in a way, they are.
It's got to do with believing it. Just the way I used to believe I was
pretty. Before Flavio Munguia wore all my prettiness away'
r 3 8 . T H E R E \ v A S A M A N , T H E R E W A S A W O M A N
Don't think I haven't noticed my girlfriends back home who got
the good-lookers. They all look twice their age now, old from all the coraje.s exploding inside their hearrs and bellies.
Because a pretty man is like a too-fancy car or a real good stereo
or a microwave oven, Late or early, sooner br later, you're just
asking for it. Know what I mean?
Flavio. He wrote poems and signed them "Rogelio Velasco." And maybe I would still be in love with him if he wasn't already married
to two women, one in Tampico and the other in Matamoros. Well,
that's what they say,
Who knows why the universe singled me out. Lrrpe Arredondo,
stupid art thou amongst all women, once I was as solid as a sailor
on her sea legs, the days roll ing steadily beneath me, and then- Flavio Munguia arrived.
Flavio entered my life via a pink circular rolled into a tube and wedged in the front gate curlicue:
g sppcrar $
LA cucARACHA Apll"ftTiilDA pEsr coNrRoL OVER IO YEARS OF EXPERIENCE
If you are Tired of noacsrs and Hate them like many people
do, but can't afford to pay alot of Money $$$$ to have a house Free of RoAcHES RoACHE' noacsns!!! we wil l treat your
' kitchen, behind and under your refrigerator and stove, inside your cabinets and even exterminate your living room all for only $zo.oo, Don't be fooled by the price. Call now. ,rr-zo4g or Beeper #SSS-Sgrz. We also kil l spiders, beetles, scorpions, ants, f leas, and many more insects.
! lSo Don' t Hesi tate Cal l Us Now!l You'll be glad you did call us, Thank you very much.
Your cucARAcHes wil l be DEAD (.$S.oo extra for each additional room)
A dead cockroach lying on its back followed as illusrration.
It's because of the river and the palm and pecan trees and the
a r E N P R E T T Y ' I 3 9
humidity and all that we have so many palmetto bugs, roaches so
big they look Pleistocene. I'd never seen anything like them before.
We don't have bugs like that in California, at least not in the Bay.
But like they say, everything's bigger and better in Texas, and that
holds especially true for bugs.
So I live near the river in one of those houses with wood flmrs
varnished the color of Coca-Cola. It isn't mine. It belongs to Irasema
Izaura Coronado, a famous Texas poet who carries herself as if she
is directly descended from Ixtaccfhuatl or something. Her husband
is an honest-to:God Huichol caratfuro, and she's no slouch either,
with a Ph.D. from the Sorbonne.
A Fulbright whisked them to Nayarit for a year, and that's how
I got to live here in the turquoise house on East Guenther, not
exactly in the heart of the historic King William distrisl-i1'5 qn
the wrong side of South Alamo to qualify, the side where the
peasantry lives-but close enough to the royal mansions that attract
every hour on the hour the Pepto Bismollink tourist buses wearing
sombreros.
I called La Cucaracha Apachurrada Pest Control the first month
I house-sat Her Highness's home. I was sharing residence with:
(8) Oaxacan black pottery pieces signed Diego Rivera monotype upright piano star-shaped pifiata (5) strings of red chile lights antique Spanish shawl St. Jacques Majeur Haitian voodoo banner cappuccino maker lemonwood OIinalS table replica of the goddess Coatlicue life-size papier-mich6 skeleton signed by the Linares family Frida Kahlo altar punched tin Virgen de Guadalupe chandelier bent-twig couch with Mexican sarape
cushions
r 4 o ' T H E R E W A S A M A N , T H E R E \ I / A S A W O M A N
seventeenth-century Spanish retablo tree-of-life candlestick Santa Fe plate rack (z) identical sets of vintage Talavera Mexican dishware eye-of-God crucifix knotty pine armoire pie safe death mask of Pancho Villa with mouth slightly open Texana chair upholstered in cowskin with longhorn horns for
the arms and Iegs (7) Afghan throw rugs iron bed with a mosquito net canopy
Beneath this veneer of Southwest funk, of lace and silk and
porcelain, beyond the embroidered pillows that said DUERME, Mr
AMoR, the Egyptian cotton sheets and eyelet bedspread, the sigh
of air that barely set the gauze bedroom curtains trembling, the
blue garden, the pink hydrangea, the gilt-edged tea set, the abalone-
handled silver, rhe obsidian hair combs, rhe sticky, cough-medicine-
and-powdered-sugar scent of magnolia blossoms, there were, as well, the roaches.
I was afraid to open drawers. I never went into the kitchen after
dark. They were the same Coca-Cola color as the floors, hard to
spot unless they gave themselves away in panic.
The worst thing about them wasn't their size, nor the crunch
they gave under a shoe, nor the yellow grease that mzed from their
guts, nor the thin shells they shed translucent as popcorn hulls,
nor the possibility they might be winged and fly inro your hair, no.
What made them unbearable was this. The scuttl ing in the
middle of the night. An ugly clubfoot grate like a dead thing being
dragged across the floor, a louder-than-life munching during their
cannibal rites, a nervous pitter, and then patter when they scurried
across the Irish-linen table runners, Ieaving a trail of black drop- pings like coffee grounds, sticky fieet rustling across the clean stack
E r E N P R E T T Y ' I 4 I
of typewriter paper in the desk drawer, my primed canvasses, the
set of Wedgewood rose teacups, the lace Victorian wedding dress
hanging on the bedroom wall, the dried baby's breath, the white
wicker vanity, the cutwork pillowcases, your blue raven hair
scented with Tres Flores brilliantine.
Flavio, it's true. The house charms me now as it did then' The
folk art, the tangerine-colored walls, the unaca.s at sunset. But what
would you have done if you were me? I'd driven all the way from
northern California to central Texas with my past pared down to
what could fit inside a van. A futon. A stainless-steel wok. My
grandmother's molcajete. A pair of flamenco shoes with crooked
heels. Eleven huipiles. Two rebozndc bolita y dc seda. My Tae
Kwon Do uniform. My crystals and copal. A portable boom box and
all my Latin tapes-Rub6n Blades, Astor Piazzolla, Gipsy Kings,
Inti lllimani, Violeta Parra, Mercedes Sosa, Agustin Lara, Trio
[.os Panchos, Pedro Infante, Lydia Mendoza, Paco de Lucia, [,ola
Beltrin, Silvio Rodriguez, Celia Cruz, Juan Pefra "El Lebrijano,"
L,os [,obos, Lucha Villa, Dr. loco and his Original Corrido Boogie
Band.
Sure, I knew I was heading for trouble the day I agreed to come
to Texas. But not even the I Ching warned me what I was in for
when Flavio Munguia drove up in the pest-control van.
=^A
"TEX-as! WIut are you going to do thcre?" Beatriz Soliz asked
this, a criminal lawyer by day, an Aztec dance instructor by night,
and my closest comailre in all the world. Beatriz and I go back a
long way. Back to the grape-boycott demonstrations in front of the
Berkeley Safeway. And I mean the frst graPe strike.
"l thought I'd give Texas a year maybe. At least that. It can't
be that bad. "
"A yearlll Lupe, are you crazy? They still lynch Meskins down
| 4 2 ' T H E R E W A S A M A N , T H E R E W A S A W O M A N
there, Everybody's got chain saws and gun racks and pickups and
Confederate flags. Aren't you scared?" "Girlfriend, you watch too many John Wayne movies."
To tell the truth, Texas did scare the hell out of me. All I knew
about Texas was it wasbig. It was hot. And it was bad. Addedto
this was my mama's term teja-NO-te for tejano, which is sort of
l ike "Texcessive," in a redneck kind of way. "lt was one of those
teja-No-tes that started it," Mama would say. "You know how they
are. Always looking for a fight."
I'd said yes to an art director's job at a community cultural center
in San Antonio. Eduardo and I had split. For good. C'esrfizis. End
of the road, buddy. '\dios y suerte. San Francisco is too small a town
to go around dragging your three-legged heart. Caf6 Picaro was off
limits because it was Eddie's favorite. I stopped freguenting the
Caf6 BohEme too. Missed several good openings at La Galeria. Not
because I was afraid of running into Eddie, but because I was
terrified of confronting "la otra." My nemesis, in other words. A
financial consultant for Merrill Lynch. A blonde.
Eddie, who I'd supported with waitress jobs that summer we
were both struggling to pay our college loans and the rent on that
tiny apartment on Balmy-big enough when we were in love, but
too small when love was scarce, Eddie, who I met the year before
I started teaching at the community college, the year after he gave
up community organ izingand worked part-time as a paralegal. Ed-
die, who taught me how to salsa, who lectured me night and day
about human rights in Guatemala, El Salvador, Chile, Argentina,
South Africa, but never said a word about the rights of Blacks in
Oakland, the kids of the Tenderloin, the women who shared his
bed. Eduardo. My Eddie, That Eddie. With a blonde. He didn't
even have the decency to pick a woman of color.
a I E N P R E T T Y ' r 4 3
A month hadn't passed since I unpacked the van, but I'd already
convinced myself San Antonio was a mistake' I couldn't understand
how any Spanish priest in his right mind decided to sit right down
in the middle of nowhere and build a mission with no large body
of warer for miles. I'd always lived near the ocean. I felt landlocked
and dusty. Light so white it left me dizzy, sun bleached as an onion.
I n t h e B a y , w h e n e v e r l g o t d e p r e s s e d ' I a l w a y s d r o v e o u t t o
Ocean Beach. Just to sit. And, I don't know' something about
looking at water, how it just goes and goes and goes, something
about that I found very soothing. As if somehow I were connected
to every ripple that was sending itself out and out until it reached
another shore.
But I hadn't found anything to replace it in san Antonio' I
wondered what San Antonians did'
I was putting in sixty-hour work weeks at the arts center' No
time left to create art when I came home. I'd made a bad habit of
crumpling into the couch after work, drinking half a corona and
earing a bag of Hawaiian potato chips for dinner. All the lights in
the house blazing when I woke in the middle of the night, hair
crooked as a broom, face creased into a mean origami, clothes
wrinkled as the citizens of bus stations'
The day the pink circulars appeared, I woke up from one of these
naps to find a bug crunching away on Hawaiian chips and another
pickled inside my beer bottle. I called La Cucaracha Apachurrada
the next morning.
=::^
So while you are spraying baseboards, the hose hissing, the gold
pump clicking, bending into cupboards, reaching under sinks, the
leather utility belt slung loose around your hips, I'm thinking'
Thinking you might be the perfect Prince Popo for a painting ['ve
had kicking around in mY brain' ^ ^
llli ili iit
| 4 4 ' T H E R E W A S A M A N , T H E R E W A S A W O M A N
I'd always wanted to do an u$ated version of the Prince Po-
pocat6petl/Princess Ixtaccihuatl volcano myth, that tragic love story
metamorphosized from classic to kitsch calendar art, like the ones
you get at Carniceria Xim6nez or Tortillerfa la Guadalupanita.
Prince Popo, half-naked Indian warrior built like Johnny Weiss-
muller, crouched in grief beside his sleeping princess Ixtaccfhuatl,
buxom as an Indian Jayne Mansfield' And behind them, echoing
their silhouettes, their namesake volcanoes.
Hell, I could do better than that. It'd be fun. And you might be
just the Prince Popo I've been waiting for with that face of a sleeping
Olmec, the heavy Oriental eyes, the thick lips and wide nose, that
profile carved from onyx. The more I think about it, the more I
like the idea.
"Would you like to work for me as a model?"
"Excuse?"
"l mean I'm an artist. I need models. Sometimes. To model, you
know. For a painting, I thought, You would be good. Because you
have such a wonderful. Face. "
Flavio laughed. I laughed too. We both laughed. We laughed and
then we laughed some more, And when we were through with our
laughing, he packed up his ant traps, spray tank, steel wool, clicked
and latched and locked trays, toolboxes, slammed van doors shut,
Laughed and drove away.
:
There is everythingbut a washer and dryer at the house on East
Guenther. So every Sunday morning, I stuff all my dirty clothes
into pillowcases and haul them out to the van, then drive over to
the Kwik Wash on South Presa, I don't mind it, really. I almost
like it, because across the street is Torres Taco Haven, "This Is
Taco Country. " I can load up five washers at a time if I get up
early enough, go have a coffee and a Haven Taco-potatoes, chile,
B r E N P R E T T Y ' I 4 5
and cheese. Then a little later, throw everything in the dryer, and
go back for a second cup of coffee and a Torres special-bean,
cheese, guacamole, and bacon, flour tortilla, please'
But one morning, in between the wash and dry cycles, while I
ran out to reload the machines, someone had bogarted my table,
the window booth next to the jukebox. I was about to get mad and
say so, until I realized it was the Prince'
"Remember me? Six eighteen on Guenther"'
He looked as if he couldn't remember what he was supposed to
remember-then laughed that laugh, like blackbirds startled from
the corn. j
"still a good joke, but I was serious. I really am a painter."
,,And in reality I am a poet," he said. "De poetn y loco todos
tanernos un poco, 2no? But if you asked my mother she would say
I'm more loco than poetl. Unfortunately, poetry only nourishes the
heart and not the belly, so I work with my uncle as a bug assassin' "
"Can I sit?"
"Please, please. "
I ordered my second coffee and a Torres Special. A wide silence'
"What's your favorite course?"
"Art HistorY." ,,Nono nono nono nono NO," he said the way they do in
Mexico-all the no's overflowing quickly quickly quickly like a
fountain of champagne glasseS. "Horse, not Course," and whinnied'
,,oh-horse. I don't know. Mr. Ed?" stupid. I didn't know any
horses, But Flavio smiled anyway the way he always would when
I talked, as if admiring my teeth. "So. What. Will you model? Yes?
I'd pay you, of course."
"Do I have to take off mY clothes?"
"No, no. You just sit. or stand there, or do whatever. Just pose.
I have a studio in the garage. You'll get paid just for looking like
vou do."
t 4 6 . T H E R E W A S A M A N , T H E R E W A S A \ I / O M A N
"well, what kind of story will I have to teil if I say no?" He wrote his name for me on a paper napkin in a tight tangle of curly black letters. "This is my uncle and aunt's number I 'm giving you. I l ive with them. "
"what's your name anyway?" I said, twisting the napkin right side up.
"Flavio. Flavio Munguia Galindo," he said, "to serve vou."
^:^
Flavio's family was so poor, the best they hoped for their son was a job where he would keep his hands clean. How were they to know destiny would lead Flavio norrh to corpus christi as a dishwasher at a Luby's Cafeteria.
At least it was better than the month he'd worked as a shrimper with his cousin in Port Isabel. He still couldn'r look at shrimp after that. You come home with your skin and clothes stinking of shrimp, you even start to sweat shrimp, you know. your hands a mess from the nicks and cuts that never get a chance to heal-the salt water gets in your gloves, stinging and blistering them raw. And how working in the shrimp-processing factory is even worse-snapping those damn shrimp heads all day and the conveyor belt never ending, Your hands as soggy and swollen as ever, and your head about to split with the racket of the machinery.
Field work, he'd done that too. cabbage, potatoes, onion. po-
tatoes is better than cabbage, and cabbage is better than onions. Potatoes is clean work. He liked potaroes. The fields in the spring, cool and pretty in the morning, you could think of lines of poetry as you worked, think and think and think, because they,re just paying for this, right?, showing me his stubby hands, not this, touching his heart.
But onions belong to dogs and the Devil. The sacks balloon behind you in the row you're working, snipping and trimming whiskers
B r E N P R E T T Y ' , | 4 7
and greens, and you gotta work fast to make any moneY, You use
very sharp shears, see, and your fingers get nicked time and time
again, and how dirty it all makes you feel-the taste of onions and
dust in your mouth, your eyes stinging, and the click, click, clicking
of the shears in the fields and in your head long after you come
home and have had two beers.
That's when Flavio remembered his mother's parting wish-A
job where your fingernails are clean, mi'jo. At least that. And he
headed to Corpus and the Luby's.
So when Flavio's Uncle Roland asked him to come to San Antonio
and help him out with his exterminating business-You can learn
a trade, a skill for life. Always gonna be bugs-Flavio accepted.
Even if the poisons and insecticides gave him headaches, even if
he had to crawl under houses and occasionally rinse his hair with
a garden hose after accidentally discovering a cat's favorite litter
spot, even if now and again he saw things he didn't want to see-
a possum, a rat, a snake-at least that was better than scraping
chicken-fried steak and mashed potatoes from plates, better than
having to keep your hands all day in soapy water like a woman,
only he used the word vieja, which is worse.
I sent a Polaroid of the Woolworth's across from the Alamo to
Beatriz Soliz. A self-portrait of me having the Tuesday{hili Doh
Fries4oke-$z.ggSpecial at the snakey S-shaped lunch counter.
Wrote on the back of a Don't-Mess-with-Texas postcard: HAPPY
TO REPORT AM WORKTNG AGAIN. AS IN &EAL WORK. NOT THE JOB
THAT FEEDS MY HABIT_EATING. BUT THE THING THAT FEEDS THE
spIRIT. COME HOME RAGGEDY-ASSED, MEAN, BUT, DAMN, I'M PAINT-
ING. EVERY OTHER SUNDAY. KICKING NALGA LOOKS LIKE. OR AT
LEAsr rRyINc. cvtotrn, cIRL. ABRAzos, LUPE
So every other Sunday I dragged my butt out of bed and into the
t 4 8 ' T H E R E W A S A M A N , T H E R E W A S A W O M A N
garage studio to try to make some worth of my life. Flavio always
there before me, like if he was the one painting me.
What I liked best about working with Flavio were the stories.
Sometimes while he was posing we'd have storytelling competitions. "Your Favorite Sadness." "The Ugliest Food You Ever Ate." "A
Horrible Person." One that I remember was for the category "At
Last-Justice. " It was really his grandma's story, but he told it
well.
My grandma Chavela was from here. San Antonio I mean to
say. She had five husbands, and the second one was called Fito,
for Filiberto. They had my Uncle Roland who at the time of this
story was nine months old. They lived by the old farmers' market,
over by Commerce and Santa Rosa, in a two-room apartment.
My grandma said she had beautiful dishes, an antique cabinet,
a small table, two chairs, a stove, a lantern, a cedar chest full
of embroidered tablecloths and towels, and a three-piece bed-
room set.
And so, one Sunday she felt like visiting her sister Eulalia, who
lived on the other side of town. Her husband left a dollar and
change on the table for her trolley, kissed her good-bye, and left.
My grandma meant to take along a bag of sweets, because Eulalia
was fond of Mexican candy-burnt-milk bars, pecan brittle, su-
gared pumpkin, glazed orange rind, and those pretty coconut
squares dyed red, white,-and green like the Mexican flag-so sweet
you can never finish them.
So my grandma stopped at Mi Tierra Bakery. That's when she
looks down the street, and who does she see but her husband kissing
a woman. It looked as if their bodies were ironing each other's
clothes, she said. My grandma waved at Fito. Fito waved at my
grandma. Then my grandma walked back home with the baby,
packed all her clothes, her set of beautiful dishes, her tablecloths
and towels, and asked a neighbor to drive her to her sister Eulalia's.
E r E N P R E T T Y ' r 4 9
Turn here. Turn there. WIut steet are we on? lt doesn't msttsi-
just do as I tell you.
The next day Fito came looking for her at Eulalia's, to explain
to my grandma that the woman was just an old friend, someone he
hadn't seen in a while, a long long time. Three days passed and
my grandma Chavela, Eulalia, and baby Roland drove off to Chey-
enne, Wyoming. They stayed there fourteen years.
Fito died in 1935 of cancer o[ the penis. I think it was syphilis.
He used to manage a baseball team. He got hit in the crotch by a
fastball.
I was explaining yin and yang. How sexual harmony put one in
communion with the infrnite forces of nature. The earth is yin,
see, female, while heaven is male and yang. And the interaction
of the two constitutes the whole shebang. You can't have one with-
out the other. Otherwise shit is out of balance. Inhaling, exhaling,
Moon, sun. Fire, water. Man, woman. All complementary forces
occur in pairs.
"Ah," said Flavio, "like the mexicano word 'sky-earth' for the
world. "
"Where the hell did you learn that? The Popul Vuh?"
"No," Flavio said flatly. "My grandma Oralia."
^^^
I said, "This is a powerful time we're living in, We have to let
go of our present way of life and search for our past, remember our
destinies, so to speak. Like the I Ching says, returning to one's
roots is returning to one's destiny. "
Flavio didn't say anything, just stared at his beer for what seemed
a long time. "You Americans have a strange way of thinking about
time," he began. Before I could object to being lumped with the
r 5 o ' T H E R E W A S A M A N , T H E R E W A S A W O M A N
northern halF of America, he went on. "You think old ages end,
but that's not so. It's ridiculous to think one age has overcome
another, Amr:rican time is running alongside the calendar of the
sun, even if ' 'rour world doesn't know it."
Then, to add sting to the blow, raised his beer bottle to his lips
and added, "l lut what do I know, right? I 'm just an exterminator."
^^=^
Flavio said, "l don't know anything about this Tao business, but
I believe love jis always eternal. Even if eternitv is only five minutes. "
Flavio Munguia was coming for supper, I made a wonderful paella
with brown rice and tofu and a pitcher of fresh sangria. Gipsy Kings
were on the tape player. I wore my Lycra mini, a pair of silver
cowboy boots, and a fringed shawl across my Danskin like Carmen
in that f i lm by Carlos Saura.
Over dinner I talked about how I once had my aura massaged
by an Oakland anrandcra, Afro-Brazilian dance as a means of spi-
ritual healing;, where I might find good dim sum in San Antonio,
and whether a white woman had any right to claim to be an Indian
shamaness, F'lavio talked about how Alex El Giiero from work had
won a Sony boom box that morning just by being the ninth caller
on'ro7 FM lK-Suave, how his Tia Tencha makes the best tripe
soup ever no llie, how before leaving Corpus he and Johnny Canales
from El Shou, dz Johnny Cannles had been like this until a bet over
[.os Bukis left them not speaking to each other, how every Thursday
night he works out at a gym on Calaveras with aims to build himself
a body better rthan Mil Mascara's, and is there an English equivalent
for the term lc fularu? I served Jerez and played Astor Piazzolla. Flavio said he preferred
"pure tango," classic and romantic like Gardel, not this cat-howling
B I E N P R E T T Y ' I ' I
crap. He rolled back the Afghan rug, yanked me to my feet, dem-
onstrated la lubanera, el fatdango, Ia milonga, and explained how
each had contributed to birth el tango.
Then he ran outside ro his truck, the backs of his thighs grazing
my knees as he edged past me and the OlinalS coffee table. I felt
all the hairs on my body sway as if I were an underwater plant and
a current had set me in motion. Before I could steady myself he
was popping a cassette into the tape player. A soft crackling, Then
sugary notes rising like a blue satin banner held aloft by doves. "Violih, violonclrcIo, piano, saltcrio. Music from the time of my
abuelos. My grandma taught me the dances-e I chotis, cancdn, los
valses. All part of that lost epoch," he said. "But that was long long
ago, before the tinle all the dogs were named after Woodrow
Wilson. "
"Don't you know any indigenous dances?" I finally asked, "like
eI baile dc los viejitos?"
Flavio rolled his eyes. That was the end of our dance lesson.
\^
"Who dresses you?" "Silver. "
"What's that? A store or a horse?"
"Neither. Silver Galindo. My San Antonio cousin." "What kind of name is Silver?"
"lt 's English," Flavio said, "for Silvestre."
I said, "What you are, sweetheart, is a product of American
imperialism," and plucked at the alligator on his shirt.
I don't have to dress in a sarape and sombrero to be Mexican,"
Flavio said. "l know who I am."
I wanted to leap across the table, throw the oaxacan black pottery
pieces across the room, swing from the punched tin chandelier,
fire a pistol at his Reeboks, and force him to dance. I wanted to De
r r 2 . T H E R E W A S A M A N , T H E R E W A S A \ v O M A N
Mexican at that moment, but it was true. I was not Mexican.
Instead of the volley of insults I intended, all I managed to sling
was a single clay pebble that dissolved on impact-perro, "Dog." lt
wasn't even the word I 'd meant to hurl.
::'^
You have, how do I say it, something, Something I can't even
put my finger on. Some way of moving,,of not moving, that belongs
to no one but Flavio Mungufa. As if your body and bones always
remembered you were made by a God who loved you, the one Mama
talked about in her stories.
God made men by baking them in an oven, but he forgot about
the first batch, and that's how Black people were born. And then
he was so anxious about the next batch, he took them out of the
oven too soon, so that's how White people were made. But the third
batch he let cook until they were golden-golden-golden, and, honey,
that's you and me.
God made you from red clay, Flavio, with his hands. This face
of yours l ike the l itr le clay heads rhey unearth in Teotihuac6n.
Pinched this cheekbone, then that, Used obsidian fl ints for the
eyes, those eyes dark as the sacrif icial wells they cast virgins into.
Selected hair thick as cat whiskers. Thought for a long time before
deciding on this nose, elegant and wide. And the mouth, ah! Every-
thing silent and powerful and very proud kneaded into the mourh.
And then he blessed you, Flavio, with skin sweet as burnt-milk
candy, smooth as river water. He made you bien pretty even if I
didn't always know it. Yes, he did.
Romelia. Forever,
ink once black that
thin blue letters the
That's what his arm said. Forever Romelia in
had paled to blue. Romelia. Romelia. Seven
color of a vein. "Romelia" said his forearm
B T E N P R E T T Y ' r 5 3
where the muscle swelled into a flat stone. "Romelia" it trembled
when he held me, "Romelia" by the light of the votive lamp above
the bed. But when I unbuttoned his shirt a bannered cross above
his left nipple murmured "Elsa. "
=^ ^
I'd never made love in Spanish before. I mean not with anyone
whose frst language was Spanish. There was crazy Graham, the
anarchist labor organizer who'd taught me to eat jalapefros and swear
like a truck mechanic, but he was Welsh and had learned his
Spanish running guns to Bolivia.
And Eddie, sure. But Eddie and I were products of our American
education. Anything tender always came off sounding like the sub-
titles to a Bufiuel film.
But Flavio. When Flavio accidentally hammered his thumb, he
never yelled "Ouch!" he said "iAy!" The true test of a native Spanish
speaker.
iAylTo make love in Spanish, in a manner as intricate and devout
as la Alhambra. To have a lover sigh rri vida, mi preciosa, mi chi'
quitita, and whisper things in that language crooned to babies, that
language murmured by grandmothers, those words that smelled like
your house, like flour tortillas, and the inside of your daddy's hat,
like everyone talking in the kitchen at the same time, or sleeping
with the windows open, like sneaking cashews from the crumpled
quarter-pound bag Mama always hid in her lingerie drawer after
she went shopping with Daddy at the Sears.
TIut language. That sweep of palm leaves and fringed shawls.
That startled fluttering, like the heart of a goldfinch or a fan.
Nothing sounded dirty or hurtful or corny. How could I think of
making love in English again? English with its starched r's and g's.
English with its crisp linen syllables. English crunchy as apples,
resilient and stiff as sailcloth.
r 5 4 ' T H E R E W A S A M A N , T H E R E W A S A W O M A N
But Spanish whirred like silk, rolled and puckered and hissed.
I held Flavio close to me, in the mouth of my heart, inside my
wrists.
Incredible happiness. A sigh unfurled of its own accord, a groan
heaved out from my chest so rusty and full of dust it frightened
me. I was crying. It surprised us both.
"My soul, did I hurt you?" Flavio said in that other language.
I managed to bunch tny mouth into a knot and shake my head
"no" just as the next wave of sobs began. Flavio rocked me, and
cooed, and rocked me. Ya, ya,7a. There, there, there'
I wanted to say so many things, but all I could think of was a
line I'd read in the letters of Georgia O'Keeffe years ago and had
forgotten until then. Flavio . . . did you ever feel like flowers?
=^^^
We take my van and a beer, Flavio drives. Watching Flavio's
profile, that beautiful Tarascan face of his, something that ought
to be set in jade. We don't have to say anything the whole ride and
it 's f ine, just take turns sharing the one beer, back and forth, back
and forth, just looking at each other from the corner of the eye,
just smiling from the corner of the mouth.
:
What's happened td me? Flavio was just Flavio, a man I
wouldn't've looked at twice before. But now anyone who reminds
me of him, any baby with that same cane-sugar skin, any moon-
faced woman in line at the Handy Andy, or bag boy with tight hips
carrying my groceries to the car, or child at the Kwik Wash with
ears as delicate as the whorls of a sea mollusk, I find myself looking
at, lingering over, appreciating. Henceforth and henceforth. For-
ever and ever. Ad infinitum.
B T E N P R E T T Y ' I 5 5
When I was with Eddie, we'd be making love, and then out of
nowhere I would think of the black-and-white label on the tube of
titanium yellow paint. or a plastic Mickey Mouse change purse I
once had with crazy hypnotized eyes that blinked open/shut, open/
shut when you wobbled it, Or a little scar shaped like a mitten on
the chin of a boy named Eliberto Brisefro whom I was madly in
love with all through the fifth grade.
But wirh Flavio it's just the opposite. I might be working on a
charcoal sketch, chewing on a pinch of a kneaded rubber eraser
I've absentmindedly put in my mouth, and then suddenly I'm think-
ing about the thickness of Flavio's eerlobes between my teeth' Or
a wisp of violet smoke might rise from someone's cigarette at the
Bar America, and remind me of that twist of sinew from wrist to
elbow in Flavio's pretty arms. Or say Danny and Craig from Tienda
Guadalupe Folk Art & Gifts are demonstrating how South American
rain sticks work, and boom-there's Flavio's voice like the pull of
the ocean when it drags everything with it back to its center-that
kind of gravelly, charcoal and shell and glass rasP to it' Incredible'
=:^^
Taco Haven was crowded the way it always is Sunday mornings'
full of grandmothers and babies in their good clothes, boys with
hair still wet from the morning bath, big husbands in tight shirts,
and rowdy mamas slapping rude children to public decency.
Three security guards were vacating my window booth, and we
grabbed it. Flavio ordered chilaquilcs and I ordered breakfast tacos.
We asked for quarters for the jukebox, same as always. Five songs
io cents. I punched I32, "All My Ex's Live in Texas"' George
Strait; r4o, "Soy Infeliz," Lola Beltr6n; 233, "Polvo y Olvido,"
Lucha Villa; I 18, "Mal Hombre," Lydia Mendoza; and number
167, "La Movidita," because I knew Flavio loved Flaco Jim6nez.
Flavio was no more quiet than usual, but midway through break-
fast he announced, "My life, I have to go.'' =:^^