—Look, I kiss the cross I’m telling the truth, Aunty says, kissing her thumb and index finger. The little green dial from the alarm clock bright. The wall fanned with light every once in a while from the headlights of passing cars. Aunty Light-Skin anchored in her twin bed, me in the other. Soft hiss of rain, and the windows filled with rain, too. On the wall the shadows of raindrops skittishly falling, as if the walls are crying.
Aunty has just clicked off an old black-and-white movie. —Not an old movie, Aunty corrects. —A movie from my times. Tin Tán in Chucho el remendado. And it wasn’t that long ago.
Aunty putting her nightgown on with her back to me. Mexican women never dress or undress unless they have their back to you and the room is dark. The shape of Aunty’s body like a mermaid. On the swan of her spine, a big black mole as lovely and perfect as an elevator button. When I was little I once asked if I could touch it. How is it ugly things can be so beautiful?
—So there we were, it was 1950, and he and I finally married. Aunty Light-Skin calls him “he” or Antonieta Araceli’s father. She never says his name. No one says his name. Ever. To say his name would wake the grief asleep inside her heart and cause too much pain. To spare Aunty, we don’t mention him either. That’s why I never ask. Tonight, without asking, Aunty is telling her story.
—I’m telling the truth. May the Devil come and yank my feet tonight if I’m lying. We were legally married. Married. I have a ring and papers to prove it. Lalita, you believe me, don’t you? We weren’t married by the Church, of course. Because he was married in a church the first time, understand, so we couldn’t marry in a church. But we were married by the court before we started to live together. We weren’t like the young people now, do you follow me? In those days a woman wouldn’t think of being with a man just like that.
Those times were different. Even to go out in the day a woman had to be accompanied or it wasn’t proper. Your Uncle Baby would always come up with some plan so I could escape and enjoy myself a little. If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t have gone anywhere. But, ay, what vagabonds we were, your uncle and I. We lived to visit los shows. It was all very divertido. And sano. Healthy and innocent fun, not like now.
Aunty brightens remembering the names of the clubs, the performers from her times. La Carpa Libertad, where she saw first saw Tin Tán.
—You mean the little guy we just saw on TV?
—The very one. Before he became famous. And Cantinflas, Pedro Infante, Jorge Negrete, and who can forget the unforgettable Toña la Negra with her beautiful night orchid voice. Veracruz, rinconcito donde hacen sus nidos las olas del mar …
—Hey, Aunty! I didn’t know you could sing. You’re pretty good.
—Once maybe, but not anymore.
—But what does this have to do with Antonieta Araceli’s father?
—Wait, I’m getting to that part. There were carpas all along the streets of San Juan de Letrán and las Vizcaínas back then, tents with gaudy painted backdrops, just rows of hard benches for seats, like a poor man’s circus. But a lot of the big stars got their big break there and moved up to the fancier theaters like el Lírico and el Follies, el Tívoli, el Teatro Blanquita. It was at el Blanquita that I met … him.
She almost says his name, but then she doesn’t say it.
—He said that when he saw me he knew. That’s what he said, I don’t know. I didn’t see him in that way at first, but he says he knew the instant he saw me, I was el amor de sus amores.
Aunty looks both thrilled and embarrassed when she says this, and to see her so “emotioned” makes me feel sad for her. When the man whose name no one is allowed to mention used to telephone, Aunty would take the phone into the closet under the stairs to talk to him. That’s how the Grandmother knew she was talking to a man.
—Who do you think introduced us? Guess!
—Tongolele!
—The shimmy dancer from the movie?
—The same. The Tongolele. You can’t imagine!
But I do imagine. A grainy black-and-white movie. The spotlights swirling across a smoky nightclub, the conga drums drumming when Tongolele enters dancing barefoot.
—Rumberas and exotic dancers came and went, Aunty adds. —Kalantán, Rossy Mendoza, María Antonieta Pons, Ninón Sevilla, Rosa Carmina. But after Tongolele, Tahitian dances became the rage.
—Coming to you direct from Papeete!
—But that’s not true, Aunty says. —She arrived Yolanda Montez from Oakland, California, but how would that sound? Yolanda Montez direct from Oakland, California! It doesn’t have chiste. They invented all kinds of stories about Tongolele. That she was Cuban. That she was Tahitian. But that was just puro cuento. She was like you, Lala, a girl born on the other side who speaks Spanish with an accent.
—I didn’t know you knew any movie stars, Aunty. How come you’ve never taken me to see her movies?
—Movies? You mean churros, Aunty snorts. —Not movies. Just excuses for a movie. But, oh, to have seen her dance!
I imagine a Mexican fifties musical like the one we just saw, a good thirty minutes devoted to Tongolele’s cabaret scene, lots of smoke rising through the silver spotlight, and the unforgettable body of Tongolele to save the cheesy film. Cardboard palm trees on a big blank stage with dancers in silhouette, the stage too huge to be believable, drinks called “highballs” wearing paper umbrellas, and the tropical nightclub decorated with bamboo wallpaper, sparkly beaded curtains, tables with soft little lamps, and here and there African masks, even though this is supposed to be Polynesian, because that’s just how movies are. In a black-and-white bikini with a chiffon train, the young Yolanda Montez with a face like my first Barbie doll—slanted eyes, heavy eyeliner, and a big waterfall of a ponytail. Hair dyed a hard black except for her trademark white streak above her right eyebrow.
—Yolanda Tongolele was just a teenager, only a little older than you are now, Lala, when she first came to Mexico, climbed up on a conga drum and danced her way to fame and fortune in a leopard-skin bikini.
—For real? Only a little older? Maybe there’s hope for me after all.
—The night they took me to see her, Aunty continues, —Tongolele was already famous and had been dancing for years, even though she was still just a kid. I was una escuincla too, nothing but a kid. That was during the times when brassieres were pointy, because the night I saw Tongolele’s show at el Blanquita, I was wearing one of those pointy brassieres with circles stitched round and round like a bull’s-eye. I remember this detail because I was so young I didn’t have anything to fill them up with but air. I had to be extra careful no one hugged me.
Your Uncle Baby and one of his girlfriends took me. If it hadn’t been for your uncle I don’t think Mother would’ve let me go. “Why do you want to go there? Don’t you know a lot of Indians hang out at el Blanquita, they vomit in the aisles and throw stockings filled with sand and urine, and oh, who knows what, well, why do I even tell you?” But finally your uncle, who was a real lambiache with Mother, always, “Ay, Mamá, you look so beautiful with your hair permed,” and, “How young that dress makes you look,” this, and this, and that, you can’t imagine how terrible Baby was! So finally your uncle gets her to let me go.
—I thought Grandmother was only strict with us. So what did you wear, Aunty?
—I was estrenando, wearing a new outfit, a beautiful painted skirt with sequins, a night scene of Taxco, black with purple and green sequins. I still have that skirt, remind me to show it to you. Unbelievable. No, sweetness, I can’t fit into it anymore.
But let me tell you! The night we went to see Tongolele there was a riot! No, I mean inside the theater, with chairs being smashed and bottles breaking and everything. It was delightful! Well, not at the time, but now thinking back.
—God, I wish exciting things happened to me.
—Imagine a wave. No, an ocean of people pushing and shoving. And to make matters worse, some bruto taking advantage of the situation and rubbing himself on your behind. Well, that was me. How ugly! ¡Fuchi! That part of the story I don’t even like to think about. But, oh! Imagine, this sea of madness rushing to get at Tongolele.
—And then what happened?
—What do you think? They climbed up on the stage and stormed through the curtains.
—You’re lying!
—They did! They were like cannibals, that crowd. The theater stank, I remember, from so many bodies pressed together. Like Japanese peanuts, like stale cigarette smoke and Tres Flores hair pomade, like the sour tears from armpits and groins and feet, like the sweet gas of someone who has eaten too many chicharrones, fried pork rinds. A stew of stinks. They just went wild, clambered up on the stage, yanked down the velvet curtains, and roared all the way to her dressing room. All this happened while I was waiting backstage for Tongolele to autograph my ticket.
After the first round of applause Baby says, “Let’s go backstage.” The audience is stomping its feet and whistling and yelling and practically pulling down the building, because they want more, they can’t get enough. They think an hour of dancing isn’t enough. But you should’ve seen her, la pobre, she was covered with sweat, as slippery as a fish plucked from the sea, but oh, so stunning. I was fascinated. I’d never seen anybody dance like that. You have no idea what a beauty she was, Lala, she was divine. Those eyes of hers. Sensational. Jungle-green. Green as the wings of a parrot. That green-green like an avocado. As green as peridot, I think. A brilliant green like … like that Jarritos soda you like to drink. Don’t laugh, I’m not lying to you. But I was telling you about the riot. What an escándalo, Lalita, like you can’t imagine.
But I do imagine, Aunty. Everything shot in deep shadows, high contrast, plenty of profiles and silhouettes. A black-and-white churro of a movie with one hair on the lens flickering on the screen. Tongolele is a tropical rainstorm, a steamy jungle, a black panther in heat. Her dressing room door inhales and exhales from the pressure of 3,129 Mexican men pushing to devour, sink their teeth, lap up blood, swallow her heart whole. Ton-go-le-le! Ton-go-le-le! Ton-go-lee-leeeeeeeee!
The door dissolves into dust!
Tongolele barely has time to escape, running barefoot out a stage door accompanied by sixteen soldiers and twelve police officers down avenida San Juan de Letrán on a motorcade. The siren wailing like a baby squalling at the movies.
Aunty says, —And so, there I was backstage with my ticket in one hand and Baby’s fountain pen in the other. Tongolele was wearing a gorgeous fur coat that smelled of expensive perfume and chewing gum, and on her feet she was wearing snakeskin shoes, the kind that were in style back then, open-toed with straps that crisscrossed at the ankle. I remember I was admiring her gold-painted toenails when the mob came shoving down the narrow corridors roaring like a herd of wild elephants.
“Jeepers! Not again!” Tongolele says.
I remember I was so frightened, I just clung to her like a monkey and found myself squeezed into the backseat of a big maroon Cadillac with Tongolele and a bunch of her friends, imagine! There wasn’t time to explain. Nobody even noticed I was there until Tongolele asked, “Do you like tamales?” Before I could even answer, she says, “Let’s all go to Café Tacuba.”* “Wherever you command, my queen,” the driver says. The sequin crown from the Corona beer billboard on avenida San Juan de Letrán glittering in the rearview mirror.
All the while Aunty is enjoying herself. She’s having a wonderful time. Life is marvelous! Tossing her head back. Laughing with all of her teeth.
—Suddenly Tongolele aims those twin panther eyes on me and asks, “Excuse me, who are you?”
How can Aunty tell her she isn’t anybody? How can Aunty hold out a dog-eared ticket stub and a leaky pen and say, “I’m one of your fans, I was waiting backstage to shake your hand and congratulate you with my brother Baby,” because by now Uncle is gone, left behind in that roiling sea of lust called the audience of el Blanquita.
But what does Uncle Baby care? He’s used to this. To him, this is nothing. He hangs out at the clubs that have signs that say, GENTLEMEN, KINDLY REFRAIN FROM DROPPING LIT CIGARETTES ON THE DANCE FLOOR, THEY BURN THE LADIES’ FEET, as well as the other kind with signs in the bathroom that bark, PLEASE DO NOT VOMIT IN THE SINK. Wherever Uncle Baby is, he’s not worried about his sister.
—So what did you do, Aunty?
—What did I do? I did what any woman would do in my place.
—You made up a story?
—No. Well, not yet. First I started to cry. The story came later. I don’t know why, but when Tongolele asked, “Who are you?” I just started to tremble. By then everyone in the car had stopped talking and realized I wasn’t anybody. “Who are you?” she says, just like that.
The tears wanted to come out of my eyes, Lala, I swear to you. I’ve always been such a fool like that. Whenever I’m excited or anyone shouts at me, I just start crying. There’s no stopping me for hours. And I could feel the shame rising in my throat and in my eyes with everybody staring at me and waiting, and the car suddenly very quiet, quiet, quiet. And me in a panic, because that’s what it was, Lala, an absolute panic for a moment. Just as I’m about to hiccup into tears, a voice says, “She’s with me.”
It was a soft voice for a man, even though the body was big, husky, a big-shouldered man like a gorilla, but such a kind voice. All I could see was the back of his hat and the big man-shoulders of his top coat, because I forgot to tell you, he was sitting in the front seat next to the driver.
“She’s with me,” he says.
“With you?”
“Sure. With me. Isn’t that right, my soul?”
I nodded. Then everyone started yakking again, and he looks back at me and smiles and winks. That wink that says, “I know it’s a lie, and you know it’s a lie, but let’s just keep it to ourselves, right?” I go back to being invisible to everyone but him. It’s as if I was always invisible until that moment. Until he said, “She’s with me,” I didn’t have a life, right?
With all the pushing and shoving to get out of that theater alive, half the sequins on my painted skirt fell off, and the cones from my brassiere looked like a map of Oaxaca, but I didn’t care. I was so happy.
When we pulled up to Café Tacuba, he helps me out of the car and takes me by the arm, but very gently, eh? As if to say to all the world, “She’s with me.” And well, ever since then, ever since then …
But she doesn’t have to finish.
—He was divine, divine, divine. Of course, he behaved very correctly. That first night I couldn’t look him in the eye, he couldn’t look me in the eye, without feeling … how do I explain? Ay, Lalita, the hairs on my arms stand up even now after all these years.
—So how was it he was in the Cadillac that night with Tongolele?
—Well, Tongolele had musicians that played with her, drummers, and so on. And there was a certain conguero …
—So Antonieta Araceli’s father played the congas?
—No. He wasn’t the conguero. He was the conguero’s cousin. But he was every bit the artist. And the gentleman.
—For real? What did he do?
—He was a tire salesman. But that’s only how he made his living. The talent God gave him was as a dancer. And as a payaso, a real clown. I think that’s the way to a woman’s heart, don’t you? By making a woman laugh and by dancing with her. You can tell a lot about someone by the way he moves you about the dance floor.
But to finish telling you the story, it was 1950 and there we were, so in love and wanting to get married, except I was too afraid to tell my parents. Your grandfather was very strict, because of the military, but your grandmother, what was her excuse? You think she was bad by the time you knew her, but back then, well, you have no idea, and why should I even tell you, but believe me, she was strict. That’s why he said, “Normita, you know better than I your parents will never give us permission to marry.” This was because he’d already been married, and lo más triste, in a church. Plus he was a lot older, almost twenty years older than me, and to make matters worse he was a bit chubby and much-too-much-too Indian for Mother to approve. She was always concerned with el que dirán, the what-will-they-say.
And so he said to me, “Normita, there’s only one way for us to marry; that’s for me to steal you.” And I said, “Well, all right, steal me.” And so I let myself be stolen and that’s how it was we married finally.
—Stolen! Like kidnapped? All for love, that’s too cool, Aunty. Your life would make a terrific telenovela. Did you ever think about that?
—And so, I was married, but what good did that do me when your grandmother found out? “What, are you stupid or just pretending to be stupid?” My own mother said this to me, can you believe it? “What, are you stupid or just pretending to be stupid? As long as his first wife is still alive, your marriage is just paper. You may think you are married, but in the eyes of God you’re nothing but a prostitute.” Those words, they hurt me even now, Lalita.
—Wait, Aunty. I’ll get us a box of Kleenex.
—Gracias, mija. But I was telling you, I went to live with my husband, right? Except it was as if I went to live by myself, because my husband’s work as a tire salesman took him all over the republic. Sometimes he was gone for weeks at a time. And it was after one of his work trips that everything went from bad to worse.
We’d been quarreling. It was one of those stupid arguments that begins with, “And your family …” “But what about your family!” A fight without end. He had just come back from out of town. He’d left mad and came back worse. There was something odd about him that night. Something. Almost as if he deliberately wanted to fight with me. A woman can sense these things, believe me. By the end of the night neither of us was talking, and he just threw himself on the bed like a pile of laundry and started to snore. He worked so hard. I felt terrible after a while, seeing him sleeping like that, so completely exhausted, el pobre.
It filled me with love to see him sleeping so soundly, I just wanted to make up with him, so I lay down and put my hands like this, under his T-shirt, just so I could rub his back and say, “I’m here, corazón, I’m here.” And what do I feel on his back but scratches, big welts. I turn on the lights and pull up his shirt, and ask, “And this?” But he couldn’t say a thing, could he?
What a howl I let go! Like if they’d put a pin through my heart. I broke everything that was breakable and cursed and cried, and how could he bring another woman’s scratches to our bed, and I don’t know what. The neighbors must’ve enjoyed that fight. He was so upset he left. For days he didn’t come home, and then I get a note saying he was staying with his family in Jalisco. I went a little crazy. Oh, I suffered, Lala. I was all right in the day. In the daytime it was easy to be brave. It was when I lay down to sleep, that’s when I’d let myself cry.
—Why is it sadness always comes and gets you when you lie down?
—Maybe it’s because we talk too much in the day, and we can’t hear what the heart is saying. And if you don’t pay attention, then it talks to you through a dream. That’s why it’s important to remember your dreams, Lala.
That’s why when I started to dream the dreams about a telephone ringing, I took it as a sign that I should call and forgive him. I even went to la basílica to ask la Virgencita for this strength, because by then my heart was as knotted and twisted as those rags the faithful wrap around their legs to walk to church on their knees. I lit a candle and prayed with all my soul, like this, “Virgencita, I know he’s my husband, pero me da asco, he disgusts me. Help me to forgive him.”
And I know this sounds crazy, but it was as if a big rock rolled off my heart in that instant, I swear it. I walked home from La Villa like an angel, as if I had wings and was flying. When I got to the corner where we lived, I was practically running, I knew I had to telephone him. He was supposed to be staying with his family, right? But every time I called, guess what. He wasn’t there. And again, “Oh, he’s not here.” Each time I called his relatives, they wouldn’t let me talk to him. “Well, fíjate, he’s not here right now.” “Oh, how is it he’s not there?” “Well, he stepped out.” And like that, and like that. Of course, I was worried. Till finally one night I got it in my head to call the only hotel in that wretched town and ask for my husband at the registration.
Oh, Lala, never phone a man in the middle of the night unless you are brave enough to know the truth. You can always tell when a man has a naked woman lying next to him. Don’t ask me how, but you can. There’s a way men have of talking to you, or, rather, of not talking. The silences. It’s what they don’t say that’s the lie.
“Are you alone? Is there someone there with you?” “Well, of course not, my life.” But, Lala, I could hear sounds in the background.
—Like what kind of sounds?
—Well, like a zipper zipping. Like coughing, like water, like what do I know? Like someone. But I just knew. There’s some things you just feel right here, you know. Right here I got a sick feeling, like if my heart was a limón being squeezed. ¡Pom! And I just knew.
“Do you love me?” “Of course I do.” “Do you? Then say it.” “… Why?” “Just say it. Say you love me. Say it, canalla. Say you love me, say it!” “… I love you.” “Now, say my name. Say, I love you Normita.” “… I love you, Normita.” And me laughing a little laugh like a witch, a hee-hee-hee from I don’t know where. And at that moment I was a witch, wasn’t I?
Everyone knew how the story was going to end except me. Isn’t that always the case with love? He’d been hanging out with too many güeros. That’s where he got such foreign ideas. So that after we broke up he wanted to keep calling me, can you believe it? “Can’t we just be friends?”
“Friends? What do you think I am, una gringa?” That’s what I told him, Lala. “What do you think I am, una gringa?” Because that’s how los gringos are, they don’t have any morals. They all have dinner with each other’s exes like it’s nothing. “That’s because we’re civilized,” a turista once explained to me. What a barbarity! Civilized? You call that civilized? Like dogs. Worse than dogs. If I caught my ex with his “other,” I’d stab them both with a kitchen fork. I would!
When I went back home to live with my parents with their terrible I-told-you-so’s, the first thing I did was get rid of anything and everything he had ever given me, because I didn’t want any part of him contaminating my life, right? When we were novios we had our names written on a grain of rice by one of those Zócalo vendors over by the cathedral. It was just a cheap gift, but it had meant a lot to me then.
I put that grain of rice inside my pocket, and the next Sunday when I went to the Alameda I fed it to an ugly pigeon. That’s how mad I was. Oh, seeing that pigeon swallow that rice gave me a pleasure like I can’t tell you.
“Normita, you’re better off,” everyone said to me. “You’re young, you find yourself another to erase the pain of the last one; like the saying goes, one nail drives out another.” Sure, but unless you’re Christ who wants to be pierced with nails, right?
For a long time after, I’d just burst into tears if anyone even touched me. Sometimes it’s like that when somebody touches you and you haven’t been touched in a long time. Has that ever happened to you? No? Well, for me it was like that. Anybody touched me, by accident or on purpose, I cried. I was like a little piece of bread sopped with gravy. So when anything squeezed me, I started to cry and couldn’t stop. Have you ever been that sad? Like a donut dunked in coffee. Like a book left in the rain. No, never? Well, that’s because you’re young. Your turn will come.
One of my girlfriends said I needed to see un curandero. That would cure me. “Look, you need to go somewhere by yourself and have a good cry,” he told me. “It’s that I don’t have any privacy,” I said. “Well, why don’t you go to the forest?” That’s when I realized how unaware men are about the world women live in. The forest? How could I go there? A woman alone. Because that’s what I was, more alone than I’d ever been in my life. I was alone, and the person who loved me was a piece of red thread unraveling. Thank you, good-bye. And when I die, then you’ll realize how much I loved you, right? Yes, of course. That’s how it always is, isn’t it? I dreamt a dream; I opened my wallet, but instead of money, there was a row of starched handkerchiefs, and I knew I had a lot of tears to spend.
I just wish he would’ve said, “I hurt you, Norma, and I’m sorry.” Just that, I don’t know, I don’t know. If only he’d said that. Maybe that’s why I still hate him!
—But if you hate him so much, Aunty, what’s the point? Why does it even matter?
—Look, I wouldn’t hate him if I didn’t love him. Only people you love drive you to hate, don’t you know that yet, Lalita? The ones you don’t give a cucumber for, who cares what they think, right? They’re not worth the bother of being upset. But when someone you love does something cruel, ¡te mata! It can kill you or drive you to kill, ¡te mato! You know that pobrecita who came out on the cover of ¡Alarma! magazine, the one who made pozole out of her unfaithful husband’s head? Qué coraje, ¿verdad? Can you imagine how mad she must’ve been to make pozole out of his head? That’s how we are, we mexicanas, puro coraje y pasión. That’s what we’re made of, Lala, you and me. That’s us. We love like we hate. Backward and forward, past, present, and future. With our heart and soul and our tripas, too.
—And is that good?
—It isn’t good or bad, it just is. Look, when you don’t know how to use your emotions, your emotions use you. That’s why so many pobres wind up on the cover of ¡Alarma! Me, I put my anger to good use. I used it to make a life for myself and Antonieta Araceli. You be careful with love, Lalita. To love is a terrible, wonderful thing. The pleasure reminds you—I am alive! But the pain reminds you of the same thing—¡Ay! I am alive. You’re too young to know what I’m talking about, but one day you’ll say, “My Aunty Light-Skin, she knew about life.”
—And you’ve never looked for him again, Aunty? Never?
—For what? A woman doesn’t want a man who is going to kill her with jealousy. Believe me, better to be lonely than jealous. Loneliness is one thing. I know about loneliness. But los celos, Lalita, for that there’s no cure.
But listen, I tell you in secret, Lala, after everything, after all these years, after all the humiliations, after everything, everything, everything, everything, I love him still. I’m ashamed to say it, I love him still … But, well, that’s ended now.
Now, my queen, time to go mimi.
—To sleep! But how, Aunty? You were going to tell me about … about him.
—Oh, another day, Aunty’s tired of telling stories. Come, kiss me, my treasure … Lalita. Understand, only to you have I told this story, because you’re la gordita de la perra, Aunty’s favorite, and una señorita now. But don’t tell the others or their feelings will get hurt, promise? Now, off to sleep with the fat little angels. Remember, only you have heard this story, my heaven. Sólo tú.
* The marvelous Café Tacuba on Tacuba, number 28, still operates today, serving traditional Mexican fare, including Mexican candy desserts hard to find anywhere else in the capital, though I always ask for the same thing—the tamales and hot chocolate. Señor Jesús Sánchez, of Oscar Lewis fame, once worked there as a busboy.