Gringa (16 page)

The bed was narrow and carefully made. On a table were a hot plate and tins of cocoa and evaporated milk. She took his tidiness as a good sign. On a shelf were paperback books in English. “I was wondering how you speak such good English,” she said.

“I took lessons. For seven years. I spent all my money except to have a room and to eat, for lessons. I am going to go to live in Acapulco, and get a job with the tourists.” He was quite earnest as he said, “I'll be very good with the gringas.”

Sylvia Britton was forgotten between them.

She laughed at him and put her hands in his hair. He pulled her close, then onto his lap, and kissed her. His mouth was open and wet; he took too much for granted. She wanted to kiss stingily so that there would be more to come. But he wouldn't know anything about lovemaking. He was sure to know only about fucking.

He shoved her off his lap and stood up. He took off his shirt and pants and stood naked. She waited for him to come to her. She sat unmoving, her eyes locked on the fullness of him, wanting suddenly not to do this, not to be like this, like Sylvia Britton, wanting to lie alone under clean sheets in Claude's apartment. She remembered that she didn't have her diaphragm. She imagined her belly swelling like yeasty bread, imagined an Indian baby. If anything could live inside her. He was impatient. “What kind of artisan are you?” she asked, ignoring his look. She really did want to know. “Do you work in silver? Leather?” She wanted to know who he was.

“I make cabinets!” he said in a loud angry voice. “For kitchens.” He yanked her up to her feet and tugged at her waistband. She shoved his hand away. “I'll do it,” she said angrily. She couldn't leave; he would never let her go now. The doors that closed behind her, that had closed behind her for years now—those doors never opened up again. There can only be so many doors. That was what the American girl had learned. That was what Adele feared, for all her talk about goodness and purpose. We are only allowed so many doors, she thought.

The decision had been made for hours, back when he had stayed beside her in the dance hall, instead of running away. Back when she had showed him her money. There was no reason to think of it anymore. She slid her skirt down her legs and it lay around her feet. “I don't want to do this, you know,” she said quietly, and then she stepped out of her panties. It was important that she tell him that. This one liked to brag about the gringas. How they came to him, paying his way.

Her hands hung at her sides. His nipples were brown and tiny, he had smooth tight skin. Touching him would be pleasure; she wished he were brown marble. She stepped toward him and smelled something unpleasant and sharp, like cheese; he wasn't altogether clean. She thought of creamy sludge where his testicles met his abdomen.

“I don't want to,” she said. It was his cue.

He shoved her down roughly and lay on top of her, bruising her mouth with his. He was pressing against her, she knew he would want it in now, that it would be over for him quickly. He would think that his pleasure was the measure of everything. He would not dream that to lie beneath him was anything less. Someone would have to tell him about women if he was to go to Acapulco. He will have to see if he has the talent to go with his looks.

She asked him to go down on her. He raised his arm and looked at her. Seven years of English, and he didn't understand. “Down there,” she said. “Kiss me there.” He was horrified.

“Down there,” he said, “I put my cock.”

“Not yet!” She pushed hard at his chest. He sat up on his heels. She put her finger on her clitoris and moved it cruelly against the numbness; beneath the numbness something stormed. He panted. He held his hand around his penis like a bun. He didn't know what it was she was touching, he almost made her laugh! She wanted to feel, to be alive!

He couldn't wait, or didn't want to. He positioned himself and she saw that he would plunge into her, arrogant, urgent, hurting. She felt so tightly closed against him, she was afraid of the pain. She flattened herself against the bed, spread-eagled; she raised her legs high and opened herself with her fingers for him. Then she dropped into a dark chasm between sensation and knowing.

Afterwards he was wonderfully solicitous. He wiped himself with his shirt and handed it to her. He felt fine. Surely she did too? “I make you feel good?” he grinned. He rubbed his hands on his chest and tucked them, crisscrossed, in his armpits. He was the stupidest man she had ever met. Hah. He was a prize.

She knew her life was against the rules. She thought she might have killed her heart, if it ever lived. Angel, observing her silence, perhaps thinking it was satisfaction that made her quiet, was suddenly generous. He caressed her breasts, licked her nipples, then lay back contentedly. He touched her sore, swollen clitoris. “Gringa girls,” he said lazily. She put her hands across his mouth. “Not gringas!” she said. “Me.” He didn't understand. “Me! me!” she said, her finger pointing at her chest. “What about me?”

She should have died caping that stupid cow. It would have been silly, just what she deserved.

“You'll be my novia,” he said, perfectly serious. “I'll take you all around.”

“Go downstairs and find me a taxi,” she said. “Make him say how much before I go with him.” She knew the drivers were greedy and malevolent this time of night. A woman at large was prey. A gringa was a beggar. Once a cabdriver showed her his open switchblade, swinging it around like a conductor's baton until she begged to be let out. She had to say it over and over again: please, oh please.

And if he hadn't let her out? She saw it so clearly: The driver pulls into a dark alley and jerks her by the hair until she dangles over the front seat. See! he says. He has undone his pants; his penis taps the steering wheel. See! he says, and pulls her over the seat, his knife at her throat as she does what he says.

Angel wrote his name and address on a piece of paper and she put it in her shoulder bag. He wanted her address, too, but she would only say the street nearest it, that intersected Reforma. “Tell the taxi that street,” she said, pretending not to understand what he wanted. He insisted, though. “I see you again,” he said. She said he couldn't come to the place she was staying, certain other people were there. He thought he understood; it made him feel sly. “So then I'll meet you,” he said. “Yes,” she agreed. “Friday, at the same cantina.” Now he believed her. While he went ahead of her to get the cab, she laid some money on his bed.

Later she wondered if he just wanted her to want to see him. He might not have let her leave if she had not agreed to meet him again. She had to want to see him again.

He won't show! she thought resentfully, as if she cared.

ABILENE WENT to Dr. Reyles for a checkup. He said her face was healing beautifully. He touched the skin under her eyes with the soft pad of his thumbs. “Maybe, in a year, we do it again, to make it perfect.”

Abilene said, “I know it's better now. I know you did a good job and I'll always be glad we did it. But I don't ever want to be under like that again if I don't have to be. I remember them rolling me from the room to the elevator, and then I remember waking up so swollen.” She saw that Reyles was listening closely. “I lost part of my life that way. It scared me.”

Reyles nodded gravely. She knew he only thought to postpone the suggestion, but she was through with fixing her face. There was one thing, though.

“It's still hot a lot of the time. I'm glad I'm here and not in the country.”

Reyles considered the statement a moment and said, “Is Velez wanting you to return, then?”

She nodded. Her eyes started to fill.

“Well,” he said, bringing his hands together, not quite a clap. “It's much too soon! The high cool air is better for you. I'll tell him myself.”

“You'll call him?”

“Why no, he'll call me, chica. He checks on you.”

She felt better. Things could stay as they were for the time being.

To leave was too bold an act, but to stay away—perhaps, she thought, she could manage that.

She thought more about boldness, and wrote to Sage in Tampico.

If I went back to the Tecoluca, would you come and get me? Would you take me away? Is that what you meant when you were here?

Sage wrote back the next week.

It's not for me to take, it's for you to go. Tonio can't stop you. Why do you want to put it off on me? This isn't the age of chivalry, or duels, Abby. You're free to do what you choose.

Maybe you should decide. My lease is expiring and Tonio won't renew. Well, there's a lot of world outside the Huasteca, and maybe my life will be better out from under that pompous asshole.

I'm enclosing my brother's address in Houston. I don't know how long it will take me to wrap things up. My brother and I are looking at ranches in Costa Rica. Why do you need to come back to the Tecoluca at all? You don't have a lease, now do you?

She lay on her bed in Claude's apartment all afternoon. She tried to remember Sage's face, and the feel of his hand on her breast, but the room was filled with images of Tonio. He floated around her, softened by the haziness of reverie. She dozed. It was a pleasant sensation, she was dissolving.

She had cross words with Isabel, over the cantina incident. She tried to joke about it, to make it sound like a good time, but Isabel was in no mood for jokes. “One of these nights they'll find you on the street, chiquita,” she warned. Abilene shivered. Isabel went away, too busy, she said, for chitchat.

Abilene didn't have the energy to look for Hallie. She went to Adele's, but only Pola was home. Adele was busy all the time now.

What did you talk to a thirteen-year-old about?

“Tell me about your father,” Abilene said. She struck a chord.

“He's a brilliant man,” Pola said. “They use his films in the film schools. He gets prizes.”

“I know. But your mother doesn't like his films. She says they're—bloody.”

“You should have heard her after she saw the last one! Light on the Hills.” She giggled. “They didn't call it that in Spanish. They called it Dark Revenge. Because, you see, it was about revenge.” The girl's face was animated; she was pleased with the conversation. “I saw it when I visited him, at his house. He said if it bothered me we could turn it off at any time. But I loved it! It was about a girl a little older than me. She is taken out of her village and carried away into the mountains. The revenge is over that.”

Abilene wondered if Adele would mind this discussion.

“The blood was beautiful,” Pola said. She moved her arm in an arc. “Like this, in slow motion.”

“Have you ever seen a bullfight, Pola?”

Pola made a face. “Oh yes, but I didn't like it.”

“All that blood.”

Pola tossed her head. “Don't trick me just to prove you're grown up.”

“Sorry.”

“You're the only one of Mommy's friends who isn't full of herself. Like Elena, who wants to be a star and has a long way to go. And Simon. Did you know his wife was an actress who once stabbed him? Her name was Hespera. Isn't that a fantastic name! Simon took Mommy and me to see her play Lady Macbeth last year. Mommy was very prissy about it. She said, ‘You might not understand all of it, it's Shakespeare, but there will be wonderful spectacle in the production.' Does my mother think I'm stupid? When Lady Macbeth held up her hand and tried to rub away the blood—who wouldn't understand that? And why is Shakespeare all right with blood and death but Yannis not? What does my mother have against him?”

“Maybe your mother sees a lot of real troubles in the world, and she hasn't any patience for the made-up ones in movies.”

“Did Yannis make the world crazy? Is it all his fault?”

Abilene shrugged. She tried to remember what was on her mind at thirteen.

“He's so cool, you know,” Pola said.

“Tell me what you mean.”

“He watches everything. You can tell he knows a lot. He doesn't get mad, but people know not to cross him.”

Abilene wondered if Pola had been reading movie magazines.

“At least Adele lets you visit him.”

“He's my father!”

“But you're in another country. She could make it hard.”

“Hah. He sends her money!”

“Where does Yannis live?”

“In Malibu, by the ocean. I love to go there. I can lie in bed at night and hear the sea. When I was there last year he took me all over. Into the canyons, and along the beaches. He took me out into the valley—I can't remember the name—and a big wind was blowing in. It's called a Santa Ana. Yannis said we were near the very place where it begins. Did you ever think of that? Of wind being born?”

“There's a place near the ranch where a river is born. It comes up out of the earth, out of a cave.”

“That's neat!”

“Wind, I don't know. I grew up in West Texas and I guess I had my fill of it.”

“Oh, but this was a terrific wind, Abby! I had to hold onto my father. We were gasping, it was so fierce, and holding on to each other. When we got back in the car, he said he thought I had always looked like my mother, but now he could see I looked a lot like him, too.”

“Pola. You didn't tell Adele?”

Pola shook her head and then raised her chin. “I'm not a little girl anymore. I don't tell my mother every little thing. I have secrets.”

“From everyone, or only from Adele?”

“I'll tell you.”

Abilene, surprised, leaned back involuntarily. Then she moved closer again to Pola. She couldn't help herself. “What, Pola? What's such a big secret?”

“My father is going to make a movie next year. He said he had to start looking for a star. He said to me, ‘In a year you'll be old enough.'”

“He's going to put you in a movie?”

“He didn't say that. He just meant he wanted a girl my age. But he doesn't know I'm getting breasts now. He doesn't know I can act.”

“Can you?” How could she possibly know?

“When I'm fourteen I can live with either one I choose,” Pola said. “That's the secret. That I know it.”

“Oh, Pola.”

“She can't stop me. When he sees me next time, he'll find out I can do it. He'll put me in a movie.”

“All his movies are so—dangerous.” So Adele said.

Pola smiled, almost a girl again. “But it's all make-believe. He explained to me. He said people like to feel that danger has just missed them. They like to think: It could have been me.”

“I think you should talk to your mother more.”

“You won't tell!”

“No, but it's wrong to shut your mother off.”

“It's my mother that does the shutting. She lies in bed at night and whispers to Daniel about murder and arrests and all sorts of awful things. She doesn't care what I do—”

“I'm sure that's not true.”

“She doesn't care what any of us do, only Daniel.”

“She cares a lot! She's going all over the city asking people to tell her their stories, because she cares.”

“Oh that. It has to do with politics. All her boring friends ever talk about—except you.”

“I don't think any of it concerns me,” Abilene said.

“And you've got time to talk!”

“All I have is time,” Abilene said. When Pola reached out to hug her, she kissed her cheek. She thought, how different the smell of a girl is. How different from a man.

“Don't tell!” Pola said.

“Cross my heart.”

“Then I'll tell you more.”

Adele was frantic. Pola was two hours late coming home from school.

“Make us some coffee. Tell me about your work,” Abilene said. What else was there to discuss?

“I went to see my friend, the artist Georgia Azuela,” Adele said. “I spent the morning in her studio, away from ‘my work.' I thought we would talk about her painting, but she was full of talk about the movement too. Her husband owns a pottery factory. The union is talking about coming out with a statement in support of the students. Georgia is working on plans for a mural on a new government building. Little indios, waifs with big eyes. She says it's a silly thing to paint in these circumstances.”

“If you were involved, it would be hard not to worry.”

Adele dropped a spoon to the floor and stood, staring at it, as if it had sprung from her hands to taunt her. “I should go back to my fashion assignments,” she said. “I am getting too full of student rhetoric.” She finished preparing the coffees and set them on the table. There were dark circles under her eyes. “I'm not paying enough attention to Pola, am I?”

“She thinks—I mean, she knows you are busy.”

“She thinks what?”

“That you are preoccupied, that's all. She's a girl. She doesn't look at big pictures. Neither do I.”

“Where is she?”

At that moment Pola burst in, happy and full of news. “The most exciting thing!” she shouted when she saw them. “You can take my story!” she said to her mother, apparently sincere. There was color in her cheeks, a brightness to her eyes.

“Pola!” Adele said sharply. Abilene nudged Adele and interrupted.

“I'll make cocoa for you if you want,” she said to Pola.

“Soda, please,” Pola said. She pulled up another chair.

“I guess you better tell us about it,” her mother said.

“I was leaning out of the window of the school room, flirting with some boys passing by. The teacher had gone down the hall. The boys are from the voc ed school nearby. One of my classmates knew them; her brother goes to school there. They had been out begging money to make posters for Cuba Day. ‘Come and help us!' they kept yelling. ‘We need some artists.' Then the teacher was coming. The last thing we heard them say was, ‘We're going to the market at Tacuba!'” Pola had been talking to them both, but now she kept her eyes from her mother and looked at Abilene. “I went to the bathroom with Cleo, and we slipped away.”

“Pola!”

“I had to!” Pola defended herself. “Don't you know it's going on all over the city!”

Adele said wryly, “This I know.”

“The boys were doing a play in the market. The Tacuba market is right across from the police station. In the play, some of the boys were the army, marching into a village and throwing Indian claims around—they had these little red balls they tossed in the air and then to one another—and some other boys who played the peasants sang, ‘We have no water, we have no life.'” Pola was very intense. “Do you realize that the revolution was supposed to give back land to the peasants, and yet there are still huge ranches, big landowners who have all the best land?”

Adele smiled. “I know.”

“Some of the boys played guitars and sang about workers in prison. Soon there were lots of people—a hundred! Maybe two hundred. Oh I don't know! They were throwing pesos onto the ground in front of the students. Some people yelled out rudely. ‘You are spoiled brats who ought to be locked up!' They were awful! But there were only a few, and everyone shoved them and made them go away. Then a man who could really play the guitar came along and began to sing songs that everyone could sing to.

“Then the police came. They shouted at all of us that we were lazy good for nothings. They had clubs.”

“Dear God,” Adele said. Abilene could see the fear on her face. She reached over to pat Adele's hand. “Look,” she said, “here she is.”

Pola didn't seem to notice Adele's reaction. She was full of her story. “Now here's the good part, you two. The bystanders picked up whatever they could find and threw it at the police. They pelted the cops with ripe tomatoes, chiles, rolls and bananas. And the police got out of there fast!”

Adele jumped up from the table and began pacing around the living room. “Don't you ever—” she began, and stopped. She turned to face Pola. “Don't you know I am scared? Don't you know there are dangerous things going on?”

Pola ran to her mother and threw her arms around her. Then, stepping back, she said, “I thought you would be so pleased. Don't you see? Now I know what you're talking about!”

Over Pola's shoulder Adele looked at Abilene beseechingly. What could she think Abilene could say or do?

“What did you think you were doing?” Adele said again. She began to weep, putting her face into her hands. “It's babies like you who'll get trampled in the rush. Don't you do this ever again. Never never!”

Pola's disappointment was turning sullen. “I thought you would be pleased.”