Carry Me Like Water (7 page)

“Actually,” Diego wrote, “American Sign Language is the superior language.”

She nodded, but her nod was polite—without conviction—and Diego did not mistake her gesture as a sign of agreement. She didn’t believe what he had just written. She never did. “So Dieguito, when do you think they’re going to stop all this nonsense about borders?”

He shook his head and wrote: “About the time the river freezes over, which will be about the same time my boss gives me a raise.”

Luz laughed. “Look at that river. It’s dirty and small. They’ve taken all the fight out of it. I bet it was strong and beautiful once.” She laughed. “Strong and beautiful once—like me.” Sometimes, even Luz could not hide the sorrow she held within her like the root of a cactus held water. This is not what she had planned—this is not what she had wanted. Her mother had told her that her looks would save her from a common life—but her looks had not saved her from anything.

Diego watched her as she spoke of the river, her face sad and distant because she was not only speaking of the river, but of her own life, a life where more weeds had grown than flowers, a life with few choices, a life of too many regrets.

“… Oh, Diego I wish for so many things.” She stopped speaking
and shook herself as if she were an old rug full of dust. “That poor goddamned river. You know, mi amor, I wish
I
understood why I loved it. It’s not a line on a map, you know. And it isn’t a border. You call this poor excuse for a river a border? Ha!”

He wanted to tell her not to be sad. But she always picked herself up. “Keep fighting, Luz, just keep—”

She looked at him and smiled. She stared at his pad.

“I’ve heard they might build a wall,” he wrote.

“You’re deaf—you couldn’t have heard a damn thing.”

“Don’t be so literal, Luz.”

“I just like to argue with you, amor. And you shouldn’t be listening to talk about walls.”

“But I read about a ‘Tortilla Curtain.’”

“Tortilla Curtain my brown ass, Dieguito. The gringos like to talk. If they built a wall, they couldn’t chase us down anymore. They’d have to find a new sport.”

“You should never never underestimate la migra. If they want a wall someday, they’ll build it.”

She looked at Diego’s pad and laughed. “You’re damn smart, my Diego. Maybe you’re right. But if the time ever comes, we’ll just have to fight them.”

“With what?”

“With out bodies, with our voices, with our prayers.”

Diego smiled at her and nodded. “You’re crazy if you think anyone’s ever going to listen to our prayers.”

“We’ll make them listen. And you’re right, I’m crazy—damn crazy. So what? All the sane people I know are bores, do you hear me, Diego? My mother told me never to trust a sane man. ‘Get rid of those kinds of men,’ she said, ‘they’re not good for nothing—not even sex.’ She said that sanity was like happiness: Nobody knew what it was.”

“Your mother sounds like she read Hemingway,” he wrote.

She threw her head up and cackled. “No, she never read that stupid American. You’re the only one I know who has time to read that stuff, Dieguito. You and your library. You should stop all that bullshit, Dieguito. Books aren’t good for you. What the hell do they teach you? I’ll tell you what they teach you: they teach you to want
things you can’t have …” Diego smiled to himself as she spoke. He knew she herself had her own small library in her house. Sometimes she was all show. “… No, Dieguito, books aren’t good for you. Stick to work on your suicide letter. Are you almost finished?”

“I’m thinking of throwing out the part about my mother.” She watched his hands glide across the paper.

“No, no, no, Diego, you got it all wrong. No seas pendejo, leave your mother in. She deserves some credit, you know? The women always get left out. Do we need to grow dicks to get a good part in people’s stories?”

“It’s not a story, Luz, it’s a letter.”

“It’s all the same thing, Diego, trust me. Give your mother her due. She gave you life, no?”

“I don’t think she’d like what I wrote about her. It’s not the kind of credit she would have wanted.”

“Very neat handwriting,” she said, “very bold—like a true American.” She clapped her hands and laughed. When she’d finished laughing she wrinkled her forehead and looked at Diego seriously. “Look, about your mother, well forget your mother, Diego. Stop your worrying. Why are you worried about what your mother will think? Dios la tenga en paz, but she’s dead.” She crossed herself and though her lips did not move, it seemed to Diego that she was smiling. “Ay, Dieguito! You don’t know by now that mothers aren’t perfect? You feel sad for yourself because your mother wasn’t a copy of some idea you got in your head? You think there’s a perfect mother out there who behaves like the Virgin Mary? Not even the Virgin acted like men think she acted. You think you were cheated because your mother was human? You’re like my sons, you really are, my Diego. Well, you’re a man—you can’t help it—and once you discover that your mothers had sex in order to have you, then you turn around and look at us like we’re all whores. ¡Pendejos! Forgive your mother for whatever she did, Dieguito, forgive her—and leave her in your letter. It’s the way you feel, so just leave everything the way it is.”

Diego nodded, and wondered who taught her to see things so clearly. It was not a gift he had been bom with.

“So when are you going to finish the letter, my Diego?”

“When they move the Statue of Liberty to the Rio Grande.” He smiled at her.

“Well,” she nodded, “then you have some time. Have you thought about how you’re going to end it?”

“The letter or my life?”

“
Your life
, not the letter. To hell with the letter.”

He nodded and wrote: “Maybe I’ll throw myself off this bridge.”

She let out a cackle. Diego stared at her face and could tell she was laughing hard—even for her. “Pendejo. You have an American sense of humor. You think you’d die from jumping off this bridge? I’ll tell you, Dieguito, they have real bridges in California, but this bridge here ain’t shit—it isn’t high enough for suicide.”

“I don’t intend to break my neck,” he wrote, “I intend to drown.”

“Diego, you think you’d drown in this river? Nothing could drown down there. You don’t even have to be Jesus Christ to walk across it. You might as well drown in your bathtub. And besides that, the Border Patrol would save your brown ass. Those green uniforms would be all over the river saving your worthless life from drowning even though they don’t give a devalued peso for your soul. They’d save you just so the whole damned city could see what good Joes they are, and there you’d be, making them look like heroes. And believe me, my Diego, with your luck you’d wind up breaking all your fingers and wouldn’t even be able to write. What would you do then?”

Diego smiled at her. “Maybe, But I’d be dead by the time the migra found me. I’d drown before they could reach me and make it look like they hadn’t tried hard enough to save me. It’s worth a try.” He was writing faster than usual. “I might even make the newspaper and get my letter published or something. And besides, it would make an interesting grave—the river—don’t you think?” His hand moved across the note pad, smoothly, evenly, each letter, perfect.

“It’s already a grave.” She threw her head up and laughed.

Diego smiled. He wondered to himself if she really believed all of the things she said. Maybe she just wanted to believe them. Diego loved watching her lips and reading what she had to say, but it made him sad because he felt people would always find a way of
stepping on each other. Nothing would ever change. But he needed Luz, and he needed to read her lips, and he was glad she liked to fight.

They watched the people coming and going. Luz ate her homemade bread and pointed at a woman swimming across the river. “Swim!” she yelled. “Look at her, Dieguito, an Olympic star! Swim!” she yelled. “Swim before the migra comes back from their goddamned coffee break!” Diego clapped his hands. Luz gave him a kiss on the cheek.

At noon, he left her there watching the river people. He laughed to himself as he thought about how she loved people who had no respect for borders. “Bring your letter with you the next time you come,” she yelled. Diego nodded. He thought she was beautiful, beautiful because she refused to be beaten, refused to be humble, refused to say
yes
when she meant
no.

He took a last look at her. From a distance she looked like a broken old woman. He looked down at the river and wondered what it sounded like. Sometimes, he wanted to hear the river speak his name, speak it, and then spell it out one letter at a time. Most of the time, he could imagine what things sounded like, but the river was silent. So very silent.

9

J
OAQUIN’S BREATHING
was heavy and thick as he slept on the couch, his black hair shining in the light of the late morning sun, Jacob thought it was a sad and tired sun that fought vainly to break through the San Francisco fog. He stared out the window. The fog had finally begun to burn away, but Jacob knew it would return. He looked away from the window and stared at Joaquin; he tried to picture his lover’s dreams as he sat and watched him from the dining room table. He wanted Joaquin’s breathing to go on and on and never stop. “Can’t it stay like this—perfect and warm and quiet?” He put down the newspaper he’d been trying to read for the last half hour. “Have to stop talking to myself. Gonna make myself crazy. Just be normal.” He laughed at himself. Nothing in his life had been normal yet he could not exile that word from his vocabulary. He looked at his watch, then looked at the mess around him. “Damn!” The house looked like a college dorm room, clothes everywhere. “Have to pick up this dump, have to go to the grocery store—maybe Joaquin will be up for a movie or a night out at a quiet restaurant—no, it’s better that he rest—but …” Everything in their lives had become maybe: “Maybe we’ll make it to that party, maybe we’ll have people over for dinner, maybe we’ll sleep an entire night, maybe we’ll have a good day, a peaceful day, an entire day when we don’t think of our bodies and all the things
that are going wrong with them.” They were no longer in control of their lives, no longer able to utter simple nos or yeses to the questions they were asked. But it was getting harder and harder for Jake to exist in that doorway, that uneasy, liminal place of permanent maybes, the floor constantly shifting under him as if the house had been built on an endless moving walkway that provided no place to exit. He rolled up the newspaper in his fists. Tighter and tighter and tighter. At least Joaquin doesn’t cry anymore, he thought. He made himself believe his rage had subsided—at least the rage in his stomach, in his throat, the rage that coated every goddamned word that came out of him with a film that disgusted even him and everyone around him—that rage—that rage had left him. At least that part was over. Everything was calmer. He wanted to believe the rest would be easier than what they had been through already, wanted to believe that the rest of their pain would be purely physical, as if there was such a thing as purely physical pain.

He wanted to hold on to all the good things he’d ever had—and yet even now there were days he simply wanted to let go. If he could let go, then he could walk into the place of eternal nos—no light, no breath, no body, no Joaquin, and no maybes.

He watched his lover sleep. He smiled. He wanted to whisper something that would make Joaquin feel better; he wanted to hold him in his arms. He wanted to be his father, his mother, his brother, a great being whose only purpose was to protect. He had felt the same way toward his younger brother—but he had been unsuccessful in protecting him just as he was incapable of protecting the man who’d shared the only part of his life that was good. As he watched Joaquin, thoughts of his little brother came to him. His open palm clinched into a fist—a reflex. He wondered if it was sheer coincidence that his lover was his younger brother’s exact age. He had always asked himself if he wasn’t trying to obsessively recover his younger brother through every lover he’d ever had—all of them having his brother’s features: dark, thick hair with boyish good looks. All of them, every damn one of them, had seemed a little sad and far away—until they smiled. But when they smiled it was as if they had never come near to anything in life that resembled sadness. They had all been hopelessly scarred to the point of selfdestruction
or melodrama, just as he had been predictably unable to cope with their confusion. He wondered if he and all of his lovers were helplessly sick, wondered if there was a cure for any of them—even Joaquin had not cured him. But Joaquin had brought calm into his life, and had taught him to bear himself. It was something. It was something. So now he had Joaquin and the memory of his brother, but he did not think of that memory as something intangible. For him, the past was something solid and hard and tangible as flesh. His younger brother consistently stepped into his house—unannounced—like an old friend who always showed up at the worst possible moment but was somehow welcome just the same.

His brother had been born when he was eleven, and he remembered his mother telling him it was his job to protect him. He remembered holding him. The first time he had held that strange and fragile being in his arms, he had understood what love was, what it meant, and he had understood for the first time that he was capable of something more than fear. He had never fell any warmth for his parents: they were not the sort of people who inspired tenderness, not the sort of people who required affection from the people around them—not even their sons. Those two beings who had fathered and mothered him had always kept him at a distance, and his brother was the only warm thing that had ever entered his house. It had been over twenty years since he’d seen him, and as he watched Joaquin get sicker and sicker, he thought of his brother more and more. He knew he would never see him again and he couldn’t help mourning that fact, though he did not want to mourn. At times his self-pity was stronger even than his anger. I
should have looked for him. I should have looked
—he kept his picture in the living room, and he often stared at it. His brother’s seven-year-old face smiled into the room. The photograph had become a kind of holy card, an amulet, Jacob’s most precious possession. He all but lit candles to it.