Bulletproof Vest (20 page)

“Wow, you really hit the ground running, kid,” Professor Stuart says, resting his arm on my shoulders when we are finished.

I feel as if I've cracked something open, like I've uncovered a secret that was hidden within me all along. If I can make a living doing this, I will never need therapy, especially if Mathew's prediction comes to pass. If I wake up one day and realize that I'm fucked up, acting might just be the thing that saves me.

 

14

HOUSE OF SCORPIONS

 

 

THE BOLT STRIKES
against metal and the bars exhale as they slide open.

“Jose Venegas,” the guard calls out. He sits up on his cot.

“You might want to bring your things,” says the guard.

“Why? Where are we going?”

“You can ask your attorney that when you see him,” the guard says. “He's downstairs.”

He grabs the black plastic bag that hangs near the foot of his bed, his heart already racing, and then he is moving quickly and deliberately as he goes to the sink and, with a single swipe of his hand, brushes his toothpaste, toothbrush, and bar of soap into the bag—could this really be it? One of his daughters had visited him recently, and he had told her about the account his parents had set up for him, about the money they had gotten for the house with the pink limestone arches. The money had dwindled, but there was still enough there. He only needed a few thousand dollars more to complete the fee, and if she could do him the favor, loan him the money, he'd pay her back in no time at all. She had sat on the other side of the bars listening to him, but had agreed to nothing.

He lifts his cot, grabs his baseball cap, socks, extra underwear, and drops everything into the bag, then he's rolling up his wool blankets, not worrying about making them neat, not breaking his momentum, afraid that if he stops moving, the bars might slam shut for good. His cellmate sits up, blinking sleep from his eyes. The poor devil has no one fighting for him on the outside. No money. No blankets. No lawyer. No hope of ever getting out of this place.

“Bueno, amigo.” He extends a hand to his cellmate. “Maybe one day I'll see you on the other side.” They shake hands. He turns to leave, but stops in his tracks. “Hay se las encargo,” he says, turning and handing the blankets to his cellmate.

He follows the guard down the stairwell, and even the sound of his footsteps descending the stairs has a different cadence. There's a lightness to them. He feels as if he's floating, feels like if he were to let go of the rail, he just might drift away. His attorney is standing in the front lobby, and he smiles wide when he sees him, hands him a piece of paper. He takes it and reads it fast, searching, skipping over every other word, until his eyes stop on that word that practically makes him weep—released. It's been three years since he was sentenced, but now he's holding a certified letter from the court stating that his involvement in the death of Manuel Robles was not rightfully proven, and that effective immediately, Jose Manuel Venegas is to be released. He and his attorney give each other a brisk hug before stepping outside. Even the sun on his skin feels different now that he's a free man.

He returns to La Peña, to the same place where he was born and raised. The house has been abandoned for several years, and when he arrives he finds it infested with scorpions. His father had left behind that house and several other properties. Had he been in prison any longer, perhaps his sister would have sold off all their patrimony. She had been burning through the land his father had left like a wildfire, had already sold off practically everything else, including La Mesa, and not long after he's released, he's riding back home from the ranch when he notices a man on La Mesa. He observes the man from a distance, watches him working diligently—measuring and digging. A man on his property is not in itself unsettling, but a man he's never seen before digging around on his land is. He rides up behind the man and asks what it is he thinks he's doing.

“The owner of this property hired me to install a barbed-wire fence for him,” the man says, wiping a bit of sweat from his brow.

“The owner?” Jose coughs. “And who might that be?”

“El señor Márquez,” the man says. Jose knows who Luis Márquez is, he owns a few businesses in town.

“Well, you can tell el señor Márquez that the rightful owner of this land has returned, and if he has a problem with that, he can feel free to come have a word with me.”

He gives the man an hour to clear off the site, saying that he doesn't have any issue with him, but if he ever catches him on his property again, well, that will be as far as the man makes it.

The man never returns, as he and everyone in that town are well aware of his reputation. And it's precisely because of his reputation that six months later, while having a drink at a local joint, the waitress seems to know exactly who he is.

“You're El Cien Vacas, aren't you?” she says when she drops off his drink.

He eyes her with a mixture of suspicion and intrigue. How is it that she knows not his name, but his nickname? A nickname he's had ever since he was a boy because when he was seven years old, he had taken to bragging that he had one hundred cows up at his father's ranch.

“How do you know who I am?” he asks.

“Your reputation precedes you,” she says. The last time he had been there, after he had left she'd overheard her boss saying something about how that was El Cien Vacas. How he had just spent three years in prison for killing a man, hell, he'd killed several, some on this side of the border and some on the other, word around town was that he was a dangerous man, a cold-blooded assassin. She had asked her boss if he would introduce her to this Cien Vacas next time he came in, but no introduction had been necessary. The minute he came through the door earlier, she recognized him. “Word around town is that you've made a few heads roll,” she says.

“Is that so?” He's shocked by her bluntness. He glances up at her, and she does not avert her gaze. She's easily half his age and it's obvious that she's a full-blooded indigenous woman. She stands roughly five feet tall, her hair is thick and so black that it almost has a blue sheen to it. Though she has relinquished the traditional garb, has traded the brightly colored blouses and floor-length skirts that the women of her tribe wear for jeans, blouses, and cowboy boots, her features betray her. Clearly there isn't a single drop of Spanish blood in her gene pool to lighten her complexion. She is cut from the same unmistakable fabric of the Cora people—an indigenous group that still thrives in the farthest reaches of the mountains. A group that still speaks its own dialect, many refusing to learn Spanish even, viewing mestizos like himself as half-breeds—those whose veins will forever flow with the blood of the oppressor and the oppressed, both the Spaniards who invaded that land, bringing Catholicism and guilt with them, and the indigenous with whose blood and sweat the Spaniards built sprawling haciendas.

“Where are you from?” he asks.

She grew up in the sierra, she tells him, tending goats since she was practically a child.

“Goats?” Already he's making connections between the goats and his cattle, because where there are goats, there is milk, and wherever there is milk, there is moneymaking potential. He describes his four-hundred-acre ranch, complete with the freshwater spring and the two waterfalls, tells her that during the rainy season everything is vibrant, green, and beautiful. Though he doesn't mention that two hundred of those acres belong to Antonio, his older brother, but since Antonio has been living on the other side for years, and hadn't even bothered to return to Mexico for his own father's funeral, he has commandeered the entire ranch that his grandfather had left to his father.

“Do you really have a hundred cows?” she asks.

“Why don't you come out and see for yourself? We could ride out there tomorrow, if you'd like,” he says, taking a swig of his beer. “Do you know how to ride a horse?”

She stifles her laughter. Tells him that not only does she know how to ride a horse, she's broken several by riding them bareback.

“Bareback, huh?” He takes another swig. “What time is your shift over?”

“At seven.” She turns and glances past her boss, who is wiping down the bar, at the clock that hangs on the whitewashed wall above the dusty bottles. It's nearing three in the afternoon. “Not for another four hours.”

“Can I take you out to eat?” he asks.

She smiles big, tells him to come back and pick her up at seven.

“Come back?” he says, and now it's he who is trying not to laugh as he pushes away from the table and makes his way to the bar. He tells the owner to put the drinks on his tab and that he's taking the waitress out to eat, but not to worry, he'll have her back in no time at all.

“Está bien, Jose,” the owner says, giving him a nod.

“What's your name, anyway?” he asks, once they're in his truck. Her name is Rosario, and she has a five-year-old daughter named Alma. Alma's father went off to work on the other side and she never heard from him again.

At the restaurant, while watching her wash down her meal with an ice-cold beer, he propositions her. He's got a few cows that just had calves; if she can lend him a hand with the milking, she can use the milk to make cheese and they can split the profits down the middle. She doesn't say yes, one way or another, and after they finish their meal, he stops at a liquor store and picks up a bottle, and then they're flying toward La Peña.

They emerge from his house the following day and drive into town. After picking up her daughter and a few groceries, they head back to La Peña.

Two months after Rosario and Alma move in, his mother comes for a visit and she can barely contain her disgust, refusing to even taste the cheese that the indígena has made. Though Belén's own lineage was easily traceable to the Huicholes, another indigenous group that still lived in the sierra, it was a lineage she had refuted her whole life, claiming instead that she was a direct descendant of the Spaniards and that the only reason her skin was so dark was because of the garish sun. In order to prove her European ancestry to her grandchildren, she had gone as far as to remove her shoe, to show them her foot as proof of how white she actually was.

Belén is so offended with the concubine that she leaves and never returns to La Peña. It's as though she had seen the future go up in smoke before she even had a chance to protest. What if her son were to impregnate the indígena? It would be she and her bastard offspring that would inherit the house and the ranch and all that she and her husband had themselves inherited. Not long after that visit, Belén's health takes a turn for the worse and, within a month, she passes away. Perhaps she had held on just long enough to carry out her husband's final wish—to see their son set free. And who would carry out her final wish? The biggest humiliation of her life had been that due to the struggle in the shack, she had been unable to wed in a proper white dress.

“Who's the bride?” the woman at the boutique asks Jose's sister when she goes to pick up the dress.

“It's for my mother,” she says. “For her funeral.”

They laid her to rest in the plot above her husband's grave, and so she will remain—hovering over him in her white wedding dress for eternity. Where there were two crosses, there are now three.

His mother hasn't been in the ground a month, even, when already people are warning him.

“Jose, maybe you should leave this place,” one of his neighbors tells him. “You've created too many enemies around here,” he says, because already some men have been asking questions around town.
Where does Jose live? Which taverns does he frequent? What kind of car does he drive?

“I'm not going anywhere,” he says. He may have been released from prison, but he will never be free of his past, and he knows better than anyone that in a country where judges are easily bribed, people often take the law into their own hands, make their own justice. “If anyone has a debt to settle, they know where to come find me.”

 

15

COWBOY MOUTH

 

 

THE LIGHTER FLICKS
and sparks a small flame, but before the flame touches the candle's wick, it dies and the room is dark again. The sound of feet shuffling, chairs creaking, and the occasional cough fills the space. The audience is growing restless. Again, I slide my thumb over the rough surface of the nozzle repeatedly, and nothing but sparks shoot from the lighter. I grip the candle, digging my nails into the wax, unsure of what to do. We didn't rehearse for this—for what to do in case of a faulty lighter. It's opening night, there is a critic from
The Chicago Reader
in the audience, and I'm not about to let a plastic gadget ruin the show I've spent the last two months putting together.

The play is called
Cowboy Mouth
; I stumbled upon it while browsing through a compilation of Sam Shepard plays at the Harold Washington Library a few months back. After college, I moved to Chicago, and though I was working full-time at the Apparel Center, I had continued taking acting classes in the evenings. Soon, I started going on auditions, though it didn't take long to realize that most of the roles available to Latina actresses were painfully stereotypical—the main ones being the maid, the prostitute, and the drug dealer's girlfriend. And though I didn't have an accent, I was often asked to speak with one.

“What type of accent are you looking for?” I asked, as there were vast variations, depending on the character's background: Puerto Rican, Dominican, Argentinean, Cuban, Colombian, or Mexican.

“You know,” they responded. “Just give us a generic Latina accent.”

A generic Latina accent? What the hell would that even sound like? I felt like I was being asked to perpetuate a stereotype with which I had never identified—the illiterate Latina. The only time I had any trace of an accent was when I got nervous; then one of two things happened: either a faint accent appeared or I started saying “like” after every other word—it was as though the white girl and the Mexican girl in me were at odds with each other, the “cheerleader” and the “gang leader” battling it out until one rose to the surface.