Woman Hollering Creek (23 page)

I sent a Polaroid of the Woolworth’s across from the Alamo to Beatriz Soliz. A self-portrait of me having the Tuesday–Chili Dog–Fries–Coke–$2.99–Special at the snakey S-shaped lunch counter. Wrote on the back of a Don’t-Mess-with-Texas postcard:
HAPPY TO REPORT AM WORKING AGAIN. AS IN
REAL
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 PAINTING. EVERY OTHER SUNDAY. KICKING
NALGA
LOOKS LIKE. OR AT LEAST TRYING.
CUÍDATE
, GIRL.
ABRAZOS
, LUPE

So every other Sunday I dragged my butt out of bed and into the
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 bedroom 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, sugared 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.
Turn here. Turn there.
What street are we on?
It doesn’t matter—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 Cheyenne, Wyoming. They stayed there fourteen years.

Fito died in 1935 of cancer of 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 infinite 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 without 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
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. American time is running alongside the calendar of the sun, even if your world doesn’t know it.”

Then, to add sting to the blow, raised his beer bottle to his lips and added, “But what do I know, right? I’m just an exterminator.”

Flavio said, “I don’t know anything about this Tao business, but I believe love is always eternal. Even if eternity is only five minutes.”

Flavio Munguía 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 film by Carlos Saura.

Over dinner I talked about how I once had my aura massaged by an Oakland
curandera
, Afro-Brazilian dance as a means of spiritual 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. Flavio talked about how Alex El Güero from work had won a Sony boom box that morning just by being the ninth caller on 107 FM K-Suave, how his Tía Tencha makes the best tripe soup ever no lie, how before leaving Corpus he and Johnny Canales from
El Show de Johnny Canales
had been like this until a bet over Los 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 than Mil Mascara’s, and is there an English equivalent for the term
la fulana
?

I served Jerez and played Astor Piazzolla. Flavio said he preferred “pure tango,” classic and romantic like Gardel, not this cat-howling
crap. He rolled back the Afghan rug, yanked me to my feet, demonstrated
la habanera, el fandango, la milonga
, and explained how each had contributed to birth
el tango
.

Then he ran outside to his truck, the backs of his thighs grazing my knees as he edged past me and the Olinalá 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.

“
Violín, violonchelo, piano, salterio
. Music from the time of my
abuelos
. My grandma taught me the dances—
el chotis, cancán, los valses
. All part of that lost epoch,” he said. “But that was long long ago, before the time all the dogs were named after Woodrow Wilson.”

“Don’t you know any indigenous dances?” I finally asked, “like
el baile de 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?”

“It’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. “I
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
be
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.” It wasn’t even the word I’d meant to hurl.