You’re supposed to love your mother. You’re supposed to think good thoughts, hold holy her memory, call out to her when you’re in danger, bid her come bless you. But I never think of Mother without dodging to get out of her way, the whoosh of her hand quicker than the enemy’s machete, the pinch of her thumb and index finger meaner than a carnival guacamaya.
It’s Toto’s fault. On the first warm day of the season, when the sky is blue again and the wind so mild we can shut the space heaters off and open the windows, he comes home pleased with himself for finally coming up with something original. —Guess what! I’ve enlisted.
Can you beat that? Mother’s Toto has turned conservative on us. They take him in June, the week after he graduates from Resurrection. And Mother’s been a terror ever since. Forget about running to Mexico, Toto won’t hear it. Toto says he’s cut out for the military. —I’ve never met anyone as pigheaded as you, Mother screams, disgusted, not realizing where he gets it from. What can you say to Toto after all and everything? He’s eighteen. He’s made up his mind already. He doesn’t want to be a mama’s boy forever.
I don’t blame him. Viva’s right, sometimes you’ve got to help your destiny along. Even if it calls for drastic measures. Father says the army will do Toto good, make a man out of him and all that shit. But what’s available to make a woman a woman?
If I could, I’d join up with something, too. Except I don’t know who would have me. I’m too young to belong to anything except the 4-H Club, and forget about that.
Look, I don’t mean to spook anybody, and you can believe whatever you want to believe, but I swear this is true. Every time I so much as step in the Grandmother’s bedroom off the kitchen, the smell of fried meat just about knocks me out. Mother says I’m imagining it, and the boys say I’m just telling stories.
That’s why I go back to sleeping on the living room couch, and how it is Toto nabs the room as his. Lolo warns me it’s his after Toto moves out this summer, and I tell him no problem, he can have it.
I don’t care. I don’t care about anything anymore. I don’t go to the thrift stores with Viva or Mother, and I don’t hang around downtown after school. Viva makes me sick. And Mother. Mother’s never been on my side about anything.
I can’t explain it except to say they don’t even know who the hell I am. This is what hurts me the most. Viva too wrapped up in Zorro, and Mother too wrapped up in Toto. I don’t mean to come off sounding like Eeyore, but it’s the truth. Father would like to think me and Mother are friends, but what kind of friend can’t hear you when you’re talking to her? I’m tired, that’s all.
I blame Mother with her crazy projects. Mother who insists we fix the back apartment and get it rented, but who’s going to fix it? Father’s in his shop, the boys busy with their after-school jobs. That leaves me and Mother battling dust and decay. The house, like a big bully taking our puny blows, watching and laughing at us.
I can’t live like this is all I’m saying.
When I don’t expect it. When I’m alone. When I don’t want it to. The Grandmother comes and gets me. When I shut my eyes. A furious heat behind the sockets, deep inside my head, from somewhere I can’t even pinpoint. Like light, or a dance, or a tattoo needle, because there’s no name for what I’m naming. And it’s like a doorbell or a fire alarm without a sound. It comes, and if I will it not to, it rolls in even stronger like a wave.
I know when I open my eyes, she’ll be there. As real as when she was alive, or, if you can imagine this, even more alive now that she’s dead. Her. The Grandmother. With her stink of meat frying.
The first time I realized it was that day I ran across the interstate, and since then the Awful Grandmother just keeps appearing. She drops cleanser in the tub from behind the plastic shower curtain when I’m peeing. She clears her throat and coughs when I swear. Her chanclitas flip-flop behind me from room to room. Leave me the hell alone!
Mother says that when her mother was alive, she used to tell a story about the day all the pots in the kitchen sang. Every pot and pan, glass and dish crashed and banged and rattled one morning. This was when all the kids were at school and her husband at work, and she was home alone in bed with the baby. What was she to think? A thief in the house? And if so, what could she do? After what seemed like forever the crashing stopped as sudden as it had started. When she was brave enough to get out of bed, she and the baby finally peeked into the kitchen, expecting to find a mess. But look—everything was in its place. The glasses and cups on their shelf, every skillet and pot hanging still from its nail. She looked about—nothing. She checked the doors and windows—locked. Then she remembered the recent death of her brother. Is that you, Serapio? Do you want me to pray for you? Because over there they believe if somebody dies but hasn’t settled his business on Earth, their spirit hangs around tied to the world of the living, rattling dishes or leaving a door open just to tell you they’ve been there.
That’s why I think the Awful Grandmother, who couldn’t let go of everyone else’s life when she was living, can’t let go of this life now that she’s dead. But what does she have to do with me?
—Vieja metiche, I hear myself muttering like my mother. —¡Vieja metiche! I shout good and loud sometimes. I don’t care who hears me.
It was bad enough when she was alive. But now that she’s dead, the Awful Grandmother is everywhere. She watches me pee, touch myself, scratch my butt, spit, say her name in vain, watched me with my scarf come loose and one shoe untied running across Interstate 35. My clothes fluttering in the wind. And I should’ve kept running. I should’ve let a fender take me. ¡Te llevo de corbata! Take me already!
At meals, I space out, staring at the Mexican calendar that’s been hanging on the kitchen door since 1965. A charro carrying off his true love, a woman as limp as if she’s sleeping, a sky-blue rebozo draped around her shoulders, the charro wearing a beautiful woolen red sarape, the horse golden, the light glowing from behind his sombrero as if he’s a holy man. If you look close, you can see the silver trim on his trousers, hear the creak of the tooled-leather saddle. The night sky cold and clear. Behind them a dark town they’re running away from, maybe. The moment before a kiss or just after, his face hovering above hers. El rapto. The Rapture. And for a moment, I’m carried out of here on the back of that horse, in the arms of that charro. Until somebody yells, —Pass me the tortillas—and snaps me back to reality.
To wake up sad and go to sleep sad. Sleep a place they can’t find you. A place you can go to be alone. What? Why would you want to be alone? Asleep and dreaming or daydreaming. It’s a way of being with yourself, of privacy in a house that doesn’t want you to be private, a world where no one wants to be alone and no one could understand why you would want to be alone. What are you doing? That’s enough sleep. Get out of there. Get up now. People drag you like a drowned body dragged water-sodden from a river. Force you to talk when you don’t feel like it. Poke under the bed with a broom till they scuttle you out of there.
—What’s wrong with you? Mother asks.
—I’m depressed.
—Depressed? You’re nuts! Look at me, I had seven kids, and I’m not depressed. What the hell have you got to be depressed about?
—Since when do you care? I say to Mother. —All you ever worry about is your boys.
And for the first time I think Mother is about to slap me. But instead she starts yelling. —You spoiled brat, selfish, smart-mouthy, smart-alecky, smart-ass, I’ll teach you. There are tears in her eyes that she won’t let out of her eyes. She can’t. She doesn’t know how to cry.
It’s me who winds up crying and running out, the screen door banging like a gun behind me.
—Come back here, crybaby, Mother shouts good and loud. —Where you going? I said come back here, huerca. I’m talking to you! When I catch you I’m going to give you two good conks on your head with my chancla. You hear me! Do you hear! Then you’ll know what depressed means.