Gringa (10 page)

Sage wrote in a few weeks. He had seen his children in Houston but hadn't taken the time to go camping. He was nervous about the ranch, and he had come back to problems.

I don't like it. I'm a careful man. Things are going wrong that I can't control. There's a maverick wildcat that has come down several times. He's killed two steers. My two maids had a quarrel, over one of the cowboys, and one stuck a paring knife in the other's arm. I took the one to the hospital, and sacked them both. Then I hired the hurt one's mother because I knew she would be grateful and work hard. She is fat and ugly; aren't you glad? Oh, Abilene, I'm feeling tired. I'm going to see the kids again and try to have a good time. Are you thinking of us?

Abilene couldn't think how to answer. Other things were going on. She felt less desperate; maybe it was because of Adele, and all the people around her. She did start a letter.

Things have always happened to me just because they did. I never felt like I had that much to say. I feel I'm in the middle of something and I can't see past it. I don't think it's Tonio. He seems vague right now. Maybe it has to do with my body, with things being done to me, with getting well. I need to get a feeling for myself. Most days I think it doesn't matter how I feel, as long as I stay afloat.

I see Isabel, remember her from the tienta? She had the good hash. Here she's a businesswoman, very organized.

I hope you have a good time with your children on your white island. Does it not have trees, either?

She didn't know how to close the letter. She didn't know what to say. She signed her name and sent the letter to Tampico. She stopped thinking about him. She tried to pay attention to what was going on where she was.

Abilene was fond of Isabel, and glad for her company. Isabel's amiability, generosity, and love of a good joke were endearing. At the ranch she would make a good time when none seemed in the offing. She had a ready zest for cards or fishing, for scary midnight rides in the jeep, for a good loud drunk or a silly high. Tonio scoffed at her behind her back and called her a city tramp, but Abilene had seen Isabel make him laugh. Isabel had known Tonio a long time. She remembered when he was part of a club of silly rich men who outfitted themselves in opulent costumes to ride in parades, and then vacationed in Acapulco, harvesting pretty girls like fruit from a tree. She remembered his crush on a famous American movie star, older than he, who said—in public!—that he was too short and wore his pants too tight. When Isabel told Abilene that, she laughed until the tears ran. She said that when the actress spurned Tonio, he courted her daughter, until the girl went home with him one night. There he cajoled her into his bed (“He had a mink bedspread then! He had mirrors on the ceiling!”) where, as the scene grew intense, she suddenly screamed in pain, and had to be taken to the hospital to have her appendix removed!

Isabel always had a story. She said it was forbidden to be a free woman, as she was, in Mexico. She would never make a good marriage. “But someday I will have a little boutique in a quiet zone, selling American jeans and sexy tops. I'll have handsome boys who work for me until they get too smart and I have to get new ones fresh from the country.” Isabel winked, talking about that. “I'm in charge of my life, Abby, don't worry.”

Abilene went along on Isabel's dizzying round of collections. She watched her get her money from a delinquent vendor, while Abilene carved her nail into a lime, releasing the warm sharp smell into the drenched market air. She went with Isabel into a church where Isabel lit candles. “One for my mother, who is pious, and one for me, if I should die without absolution.” Abilene said nothing; she thought Isabel was strangely serious.

Now they rode in Isabel's little yellow Fiat, rattling and bouncing through the streets toward the university. They were going to fetch Isabel's little sister Ceci, who made their mother worry when she did not come home at night.

“I tell my mother it is nothing,” Isabel was saying. “Ceci likes to stay near the campus in the Tlatelolco development. It's a long way home by bus. She stays with my mother's cousin Ofelia. Her apartment looks down on the Plaza of Three Cultures. Lots of students live there with their families. Across the way there are government offices.

“My sister likes it out there because it is noisy and smelly and busy, and our house is stuffy and quiet. The other night Ceci and my mother quarreled, and my mother said, ‘You girls are not like we were,' and Ceci said, ‘I hope not. You sat around in chaperoned rooms teasing and promising, and then you kissed in the corners, on the sly, for deceit, and not for fun.' She made my mother cry. Why are we so cruel when we are young? It's bad enough that Ceci sings songs in English, like ‘Fool on the Hill,' and ‘Bye-by Love.' Now, my mother thinks, Ceci will ruin herself as I did, and nobody will want her. Ah, my mother knows so little about the modern world.”

Along the streets, the buildings shone as sun struck stone like mirrors. Isabel chatted for miles, telling about her mother's cousin, Ofelia, and her daughter and grandson who lived with her, and her son, Jamie, in Lecumberri.

“Lecumberri. What is that?”

“The old prison.” A drop of sweat ran a path down the side of Isabel's nose and fell onto her upper lip, where it clung like dew on the dark hairs. She was driving very fast, playing the traffic like a taxi driver. “The granaderos, the riot police, picked him up for painting a slogan on a wall. People, Open Your Eyes. He was good in math, and a draftsman. He was supposed to be studying engineering, but all he could think about was the movement. He's very earnest! Now, for eight months, he sits in Lecumberri, and his mother paints his slogans for him, and forgives him the lost opportunity. She says to everyone, “Look around! Open your eyes.”

“You talk like he's dead—for painting a sign?”

“It is an article in the penal code. If you disturb the peace with threats of violence, the granaderos can take you off the streets. A snap of the fingers, and there goes another foolish student.

“They say the Revolution was a joke, and they're right. But what will change? Leftists will never win over the country. Antonio Velez' wealth will never be redistributed. Look at me. I dream about a boy's tight bum and my own shop. These children dream about democracy. Bah.”

The excursion had seemed jaunty. Now Abilene turned her head toward the window and wished Isabel would stop talking. She had a hard, unfamiliar feeling in her stomach, a kind of fear. It was as though Isabel was driving her somewhere, not for Isabel's purposes, but for hers. Taking her to a place she ought to be, a terrible place where she deserved to be. She realized she was thinking of the murdered girl. Sylvia, if that was her name. Sometimes terrible things happened because you looked for them.

She turned her head sharply, to listen again to Isabel.

“Ceci loves the boys, the excitement. She talks politics and boils coffee. She talks about Puebla and Juarez and Tabasco, to prove that the movement is spreading. Then she rides around in the nice cars of her girlfriends, putting up posters. Afterwards they go to coffeehouses to flirt.

“My mother doesn't believe me when I tell her Ceci is safe, and my mother is right, but for the wrong reasons. Ceci isn't interested in sex. She's in love with the rhetoric about opening up the university and the government. She doesn't understand the consequences of the games they are playing. She doesn't know she's in the middle of it. What will her virginity be worth in jail?”

Abilene rode the rest of the way in silence. The city belched and sputtered. The sky hung close in a sodden fog of bus exhaust, factory smoke, and the wetness of the imminent afternoon squall. Abilene thought, the city has a pulse, a desperate feeling to it. She thought maybe that was all she wanted, to hear the rhythm of the city, and maybe then to dance.

She followed Isabel into the building. Immediately they were assaulted, in the dark hallways, with the rich fetid smells of people, food, and wastes.

All I've ever been is a tourist, she thought.

What did she know about how people lived?

Ofelia's apartment was cramped. They went into a room with no window, a room crowded with makeshift cooking arrangements, a cot, a table, some benches. A woman scuttled out, pulling her scarf along the side of her face. Isabel embraced her aunt and patted Ceci's cheek with her palm. Ceci introduced a young woman, an American art student, as “Alley,” or so it sounded. The girl laughed and said, “I'm Hallie Livaudias, what about you?” Abilene was hard for Mexicans, too. Sometimes, she said, they called her Abelita.

Posters lay in neat piles under the cot. FREEDOM FOR POLITICAL PRISONERS, one said, and another, PEOPLE UNITE DON'T ABANDON US. And Jaime's message, OPEN YOUR EYES. Ofelia looked at Abilene. “Are you a student, too?” she asked.

Abilene shook her head. “A tourist.”

Isabel began to scold Ceci. “You must come home. I promised Mama you would be there for supper. She is making a molé for you. You can't disappoint her.”

Ceci shrugged. “I'll go, but I'm coming back in the morning. We've got so much to do. Soon it is the anniversary of the Cuban revolution. We're making banners.” She stared at her sister boldly. “You must come. You must think more about politics, about your country.”

“You think about politics,” Isabel replied grumpily. “I will think about the money we need.”

“I don't like molé,” Ceci grumbled, but with her chin tucked down.

Isabel asked Ofelia, “Has she gone to her classes?”

“Of course! History and philosophy—that is your schedule, yes, Cecita?”

Ceci lifted her head again and stuck her chin out like a defiant child. “I ask questions. I challenge the professors. My philosophy professor said to me today, ‘Can't you get a summer cold, Senorita, and give me a break?' He was joking. Don't you think it is good to be in a class with a professor who has a sense of humor?”

Isabel was neither amused nor impressed. “If that is what it takes to teach you, let them all be clowns,” she said. Abilene sensed that Isabel was tamping down her annoyance only because of her aunt's presence. It was a side of Isabel Abilene did not know. “You have no right to miss classes,” Isabel said. “We are not rich people, you cannot be idle.”

“I told you I go!” Ceci's impatience colored her cheeks and made her eyes sparkle. She was much prettier than her plump older sister. “I have free time,” Ceci said. “I am not a slave to my studies! And it is my business if I spend it here, doing what needs to be done.”

Isabel pointed to a pot of paint. “Do you know that this is serious business?”

“Of course!” Ceci pointed to her aunt. “How could we not know, think of Jaime. It is the most important business of all,” she said, with the absolutism of the young.

Hallie said quickly, “Can I have a ride back to the Zócalo or the Zona? I'll get my things—?” As soon as she was out of the room Ceci turned to Isabel. “You are not my mother! You have no right to order me around!”

Isabel had regained her composure. “I am your sister, and I pay your expenses, do not forget that. That is enough authority. Now we need to go.” Isabel gave Ceci a hard look, and Ceci tossed her head this way and that like a tethered pony. Isabel went over to sit by Ofelia and put her arm around her.

“I brought you fruit and candy, and dried beef,” she said, pointing to a bag she had laid on the floor. “And I have a treat for little Jorge, where is he?”

“Downstairs, playing in the plaza.”

“We'll see him on our way out,” Isabel said. Ofelia seemed enormously pleased. “You are so good to us,” she said. At that, Ceci looked away. As they all stood to embrace good-bye, Ofelia said to Abilene, “You must favor us again to come; you can help us. Americans, they have such good health and so much strength. It comes from your good food, no?”

Abilene put her hand out to shake Ofelia's hand. In the hot room, the woman's cool palm was a surprise. Abilene felt alien, as though her green scales had not been peeled away. Hallie returned with a stuffed shoulder bag. Behind Abilene, on the stairs, she spoke quietly. “It's been a hell of a year, hasn't it?” she asked. Abilene said nothing. “Losing Kennedy. That almost did me in,” Hallie went on. Abilene didn't say how late she had been to know about the murder. Felix had brought her a magazine with Robert Kennedy on the cover: Second Son Shot.

In the sunlight Hallie touched Abilene on the shoulder. “How long have you been in Mexico? Where are you from?” Abilene recoiled, reminded of all the times she had been interrogated by other Americans on beaches, in shops and lobbies. No one had been interested in her in Texas.

“I've been here a long time. I'm not much in touch with the news.” She took a long step and they were on the plaza. “I'm from Texas,” she added, trying to be pleasant. She put her hand up to shade her eyes.

“There's Jorge,” Ceci said, waving violently. A little boy of seven or eight ran toward them.

“I left something with Grandmother for you,” Isabel said. “But you must give her a special kiss before you ask.” The boy looked disappointed. Isabel, laughing, reached into her purse and held out her hands, juggling her bag. Fists closed, she asked the child, “Which hand?” It was an old joke with them. He brightened immediately and tapped both fists. The hands opened to reveal bright jewels of sugar. When he smiled, Abilene saw that he had a new tooth coming in. He ran back to his friends, a candy in each cheek.

The three women stood in the sun for a moment, disoriented. There was a dreary, worn-out feeling to the plaza. The trees seemed to have relinquished their color to the drabness of the government buildings. Abilene gazed at the ancient church of Santiago Tlatelolco, and at the doors of a shabby convent nearby. One edge of the plaza was ragged, dropping to ancient stones, the cropping up of antiquity.