Woman Hollering Creek (24 page)

You have, how do I say it, something. Something I can’t even put my finger on. Some way of moving, of not moving, that belongs to no one but Flavio Munguía. As if your body and bones always remembered you were made by a God who loved you, the one Mama talked about in her stories.

God made men by baking them in an oven, but he forgot about the first batch, and that’s how Black people were born. And then he was so anxious about the next batch, he took them out of the oven too soon, so that’s how White people were made. But the third batch he let cook until they were golden-golden-golden, and, honey, that’s you and me.

God made you from red clay, Flavio, with his hands. This face of yours like the little clay heads they unearth in Teotihuacán. Pinched this cheekbone, then that. Used obsidian flints for the eyes, those eyes dark as the sacrificial wells they cast virgins into. Selected hair thick as cat whiskers. Thought for a long time before deciding on this nose, elegant and wide. And the mouth, ah! Everything silent and powerful and very proud kneaded into the mouth. And then he blessed you, Flavio, with skin sweet as burnt-milk candy, smooth as river water. He made you
bien
pretty even if I didn’t always know it. Yes, he did.

Romelia. Forever. That’s what his arm said. Forever Romelia in ink once black that had paled to blue. Romelia. Romelia. Seven thin blue letters the color of a vein. “Romelia” said his forearm
where the muscle swelled into a flat stone. “Romelia” it trembled when he held me. “Romelia” by the light of the votive lamp above the bed. But when I unbuttoned his shirt a bannered cross above his left nipple murmured “Elsa.”

I’d never made love in Spanish before. I mean not with anyone whose
first
language was Spanish. There was crazy Graham, the anarchist labor organizer who’d taught me to eat jalapeños and swear like a truck mechanic, but he was Welsh and had learned his Spanish running guns to Bolivia.

And Eddie, sure. But Eddie and I were products of our American education. Anything tender always came off sounding like the subtitles to a Buñuel film.

But Flavio. When Flavio accidentally hammered his thumb, he never yelled “Ouch!” he said “
¡Ay!
” The true test of a native Spanish speaker.

¡Ay!
To make love in Spanish, in a manner as intricate and devout as la Alhambra. To have a lover sigh
mi vida, mi preciosa, mi chiquitita
, and whisper things in that language crooned to babies, that language murmured by grandmothers, those words that smelled like your house, like flour tortillas, and the inside of your daddy’s hat, like everyone talking in the kitchen at the same time, or sleeping with the windows open, like sneaking cashews from the crumpled quarter-pound bag Mama always hid in her lingerie drawer after she went shopping with Daddy at the Sears.

That
language. That sweep of palm leaves and fringed shawls. That startled fluttering, like the heart of a goldfinch or a fan. Nothing sounded dirty or hurtful or corny. How could I think of making love in English again? English with its starched
r
’s and
g
’s. English with its crisp linen syllables. English crunchy as apples, resilient and stiff as sailcloth.

But Spanish whirred like silk, rolled and puckered and hissed. I held Flavio close to me, in the mouth of my heart, inside my wrists.

Incredible happiness. A sigh unfurled of its own accord, a groan heaved out from my chest so rusty and full of dust it frightened me. I was crying. It surprised us both.

“My soul, did I hurt you?” Flavio said in that other language.

I managed to bunch my mouth into a knot and shake my head “no” just as the next wave of sobs began. Flavio rocked me, and cooed, and rocked me.
Ya, ya, ya
. There, there, there.

I wanted to say so many things, but all I could think of was a line I’d read in the letters of Georgia O’Keeffe years ago and had forgotten until then. Flavio … did you ever feel like flowers?

We take my van and a beer. Flavio drives. Watching Flavio’s profile, that beautiful Tarascan face of his, something that ought to be set in jade. We don’t have to say anything the whole ride and it’s fine, just take turns sharing the one beer, back and forth, back and forth, just looking at each other from the corner of the eye, just smiling from the corner of the mouth.

What’s happened to me? Flavio was just Flavio, a man I wouldn’t’ve looked at twice before. But now anyone who reminds me of him, any baby with that same cane-sugar skin, any moonfaced woman in line at the Handy Andy, or bag boy with tight hips carrying my groceries to the car, or child at the Kwik Wash with ears as delicate as the whorls of a sea mollusk, I find myself looking at, lingering over, appreciating. Henceforth and henceforth. Forever and ever. Ad infinitum.

When I was with Eddie, we’d be making love, and then out of nowhere I would think of the black-and-white label on the tube of titanium yellow paint. Or a plastic Mickey Mouse change purse I once had with crazy hypnotized eyes that blinked open/shut, open/shut when you wobbled it. Or a little scar shaped like a mitten on the chin of a boy named Eliberto Briseño whom I was madly in love with all through the fifth grade.

But with Flavio it’s just the opposite. I might be working on a charcoal sketch, chewing on a pinch of a kneaded rubber eraser I’ve absentmindedly put in my mouth, and then suddenly I’m thinking about the thickness of Flavio’s earlobes between my teeth. Or a wisp of violet smoke might rise from someone’s cigarette at the Bar America, and remind me of that twist of sinew from wrist to elbow in Flavio’s pretty arms. Or say Danny and Craig from Tienda Guadalupe Folk Art & Gifts are demonstrating how South American rain sticks work, and boom—there’s Flavio’s voice like the pull of the ocean when it drags everything with it back to its center—that kind of gravelly, charcoal and shell and glass rasp to it. Incredible.

Taco Haven was crowded the way it always is Sunday mornings, full of grandmothers and babies in their good clothes, boys with hair still wet from the morning bath, big husbands in tight shirts, and rowdy mamas slapping rude children to public decency.

Three security guards were vacating my window booth, and we grabbed it. Flavio ordered
chilaquiles
and I ordered breakfast tacos. We asked for quarters for the jukebox, same as always. Five songs 50 cents. I punched 132, “All My. Ex’s Live in Texas,” George Strait; 140, “Soy Infeliz,” Lola Beltrán; 233, “Polvo y Olvido,” Lucha Villa; 118, “Mal Hombre,” Lydia Mendoza; and number 167, “La Movidita,” because I knew Flavio loved Flaco Jiménez.

Flavio was no more quiet than usual, but midway through breakfast he announced, “My life, I have to go.”

“We just got here.”

“No. I mean me.
I
must go. To Mexico.”

“What are you talking about?”

“My mother wrote me. I have compromises to attend to.”

“But you’re coming back. Right?”

“Only destiny knows.”

A red dog with stiff fur tottered by the curb.

“What are you trying to tell me?”

The same red color as a cocoa doormat or those wooden-handled scrub brushes you buy at the Winn’s.

“I mean I have family obligations.” There was a long pause.

You could tell the dog was real sick. Big bald patches. Gummy eyes that bled like grapes.

“My mother writes that my sons—”

“Sons … How many?”

“Four. From my first. Three from my second.”

“First. Second. What? Marriages?”

“No, only one marriage. The other doesn’t count since we weren’t married in a church.”

“Christomatic.”

Really it made you sick to look at the thing, hobbling about like that in jerky steps as if it were dancing backward and had only three legs.

“But this has nothing to do with you, Lupe. Look, you love your mother
and
your father, don’t you?”

The dog was eating something, jaws working in spasmodic gulps. A bean-and-cheese taco, I think.

“Loving one person doesn’t take away from loving another. It’s that way with me with love. One has nothing to do with the other. In all seriousness and with all my heart I tell you this, Lupe.”