There is only one bed in the entire Hotel Majestic that isn’t a single. Can you believe it? Una cama matrimonial is what Ernesto asks for, and una cama matrimonial is all there is, literally. The Hotel Majestic makes its money on Mexico City tourists, not honeymooners. Lucky for us, that one bed is ours. Room 606, a corner room on Madero and the main plaza—el Zócalo, a little noisy, the desk clerk warns, because of the rooftop cafe, will we mind? We won’t.
Ernesto’s Monterrey cousin gets us the room. He’s a travel agent and has connections with the “O-tel Ma-yes-tic.” That’s how we get a cheap deal for the week, and the no-questions-asked about my lack of a visa. Papers? Andrew Jackson’s face on a twenty.
Room 606. The most beautiful room in the world! Our cama matrimonial crowned with an iron headboard as elegant as a Picasso. Candelabra sconces on either side too. A little plaster angel on one wall. And tall French windows wearing a crooked pair of nubby curtains, and white sheers that look great when the wind blows through them. Because of Mexican Independence Day, buildings are draped with strings of colored lights, and strands of the green, white, and red climb like a spiderweb along the whole facade of the Hotel Majestic, including room 606.
Perfect. I try to memorize everything so I’ll never forget it the rest of my life. And to top it all off, there’s a huge mirror on one wall, so big you wonder how the workmen ever got it upstairs without laughing. As soon as the bellhop disappears, Ernesto and I jump on the bed like little kids, leap at each other, happy as dolphins.
The ceiling with its scrolled molding like frozen cream pies.
—Did I ever tell you, Ernesto, how we always had to share food? When you have nine people in a family, you can never buy luxury food like Lucky Charms cereal. You get cornflakes. Like that. You could never get anything just for yourself. But once in a while, if Father went shopping with us for groceries, he’d buy something deluxe, like a Morton frozen pie. Except after we divided it among so many people, we only got a tiny sliver, a piece from four to five o’clock, hardly enough to satisfy you. Once I saved up my money and bought a whole pie, just for me. Strawberry, I remember it was. I ate a wedge as wide as twelve o’clock to seven. Then I was satisfied, and only then did I offer any to my brothers. That’s how I feel here in this room. Like I got the whole pie.
Viva’s right, about destiny I mean. About helping it along sometimes. I feel like I’m in a movie, my arm against the pillow, Ernesto’s shoulder against the sheets. Me living my life, and me watching me live my life. Like some great movie. Better than a cheesy movie, because I’m in it.
It’s wonderful to lie on a bed after sleeping on a bus for two days. I unpack the caramelo rebozo and drape Ernesto in it. When I rummaged the walnut-wood armoire for my birth certificate just before leaving, I grabbed the Grandmother’s rebozo on an impulse. “Good lucky.” Ernesto looks beautiful in it, I’m not kidding. That boy body of his, hairless and smooth, the candy stripes against his skin. A real sin men don’t wear rebozos.
Ernesto pulls me toward him, but I push him away, so I can look at him a little longer. Whenever Father eats anything especially delicious, he always force-feeds me a bit. —Prueba, try it, he says, holding something so close to my face I can’t see it. Ernesto’s like that, pushing himself so close to me, I can’t stand it. And I almost wish he’d shut his eyes so I could watch him without having him watch me.
—Lalita, he says, calling me by my baby name. —Lalita.
All the parts of me coming back from someplace before I was born, and me little and safe in the warmth of that name, well loved, myself again. The syllables making me arch and stretch like a cat, roll over with my belly showing, preen. And laugh out loud.
—Once I’m pregnant, then they’ll have to give us their blessing, your ma and my father, I mean. Then they won’t be able to say anything, and we can get married.
—Will you forget about them for now, Ernesto says, gathering my face in both hands as if I’m water.
We’re thirsty, thirsty. We’re salt water and sweet. And the bitter and the sad mixes with the dulce. It’s as if we’re rivers and oceans emptying and filling and swelling and drowning one another. It’s frightening and wonderful all at once. For once, I feel as if there’s not enough of me, as if I’m too small to contain all the happiness inside me.
We fall asleep to the noise of el Zócalo, the rush of traffic. The green, white, and red lights draped across our window blink on and off, casting shadows in the room. When we wake, our room is dark, the bulbs have quit their flickering. Trash tumbles across the empty square. Here and there a few stragglers wander home. Ernesto comes up from behind and presses himself against me, me and him leaning out on the balcony taking in the Mexico City night.
A huge Aztec moon rises above the Presidential Palace.
—Man, Lala, just think! Everything happened in this square. The Ten Tragic Days, the Night of Sorrows, the hangings, shootings, the pyramids and temples, the stones taken apart to build the mansions of the conquistadores. It all happened right here. In this Zócalo. And here we are.
But I’m thinking of the women, the ones who had no choice but to jump from these bell towers not so long ago, so many they had to stop letting visitors go up there. Maybe they’d run off or been run off. Who knows? Women whose lives were so lousy, jumping from a tower sounded good. And here I am leaning on an iron balustrade at the holy center of the universe, a boy with his hands under my skirt, and me with no intention of leaping for nothing or nobody.
Some old guy in a fedora cuts a diagonal across the plaza, and just when he gets to the the circle of light of a fluted lamppost beneath our window, just stands there and looks up, as if he can see us on the sixth floor of the Majestic leaning out the balcony of room 606. He’s a thin man wearing clothes from the time of before, wide tie, big-shouldered, double-breasted suit like an old gangster movie. He bends down to tie his shoe but doesn’t take his eyes off me. He looks like my father. He looks as if he’s pissed. As if he knows. But he can’t really see what we’re doing, can he?
And just when I’m beginning to worry, the bell towers begin to clang. Midnight. The witch’s hour. That man down there just looking up at me, lighting a cigarette, taking his time standing there, and I want to push Ernesto away, and I want Ernesto to stay, and the bell towers of the church clanging and clanging in alarm, in protest, holding in a howl that could shake all the bats from el Zócalo. That dizzy joy, so when the moment rises and shivers and passes, and the church quits its riot, there’s only me laughing my witch’s laugh.
The man down there is gone. Like if he’d never been there.
At 6 A.M. the reveille and drum from the soldiers in el Zócalo raising the Mexican flag.
Ernesto and I tumble and toss and bury ourselves under blanket and pillows till they quit, an unbearably long time it seems. In my half sleep, I hear the ticking motor of a van and think it’s Father. Then I remember where I am. Father’s miles from me.
We fall into a delicious half-sleep just as the city is waking, revving up to go, and the main heart of the revving is right here at the center of the universe …
El Zócalo. The Mexico City Monte Carlo Grand Prix. Vroom-vroom. Cars howl, VW taxis the color of M&M’s putt-putt, a police siren yowls, brakes squeal, motors grunt, a stalled engine whinnies but won’t turn, the first few notes of “La Cucaracha” play on a fancy car horn, motorbikes bleat, horns toot-toot an impatient trumpet tap, motors flubber, blurt, fart, hiccup, belch, rumble in the screech of a left-hand turn, a heat rises, the light in the room bright even with the curtains closed, a truck gurgles, growls, an endless roar of engines heaving and pulling in a great wave like the ocean, a coughing, sputtering, gargling of motors and wheels, while a hubcap pops and flips and rattles to a stop like a drum finale.
Then the bells of la catedral begin to clang, all twelve of them, one at a time, like a woman banging on the bars of her cell demanding to be let out.
Above us, the horrible grating of iron chairs being dragged across tiles, the restaurant opening for breakfast. There’s so much racket reaching room 606 it’s laughable. Just when I fall back to a lukewarm sleep, I dream this dream. Ernesto kissing the instep of my foot. When the door clicks shut, I wake up, and I’m alone.
On the bedside table, a gardenia in a toothbrush glass; a half-smoked Cuban cigar; five snuffed votive candles to la Virgen de la Macarena, the Virgin of the matadors; and a plate with half a cantaloupe rind. When I get up to pee, I find a note written on the mirror with soap—WENT TO MASS.
I go back to bed. On the opposite wall, the little plaster angel frowns at me. It looks like the little angel under la Virgen de Guadalupe. In fact, it is the same angel.
The plaster angel starts it:
—Your grandmother’s rebozo. And with the Church as witness. And that man who could’ve been your father watching. You should be ashamed.
—I should be ashamed … How come I’m not?
—Válgame, San Rafael, says the little angel. Then he begins with his you-oughts and you-shoulds, and that’s when I get really mad.
—Shut up! But when he won’t, I throw my sandal at him. That makes him quit, and I feel better.
—Pain in the ass, I say, opening the French windows. The morning breeze plumps open the white sheer curtains, the heat and the noise of el Zócalo comes in even stronger. The light powdery like silver dust. There are no volcanoes in sight under all the smog, only the merciless Mexico City light.
I watch the world below going about its business, crisscrossing, a speaker blasting a fuzzy version of “Waltz of the Flowers,” brilliant masons lining up for work, beggars begging, women selling pink meringue cakes, vendors of cream of abalone, emery board sellers, students, clerical workers. Everything has always been here, will always be here. Millions of citizens. Some short and stocky, some lean and tall, some charming, some cruel, some horrid, some terrible, some a pain beyond belief, but all of them to me beautiful. In fact, the most beautiful in the world.
I think about walking over to La Villa, just to see what my grandmother’s house looks like, just to walk around the neighborhood, but I can’t move. I write in my journal. I lounge around wearing Ernesto’s T-shirt and tell the housekeeping maid to go away. I order breakfast flautas and eat these in bed with the wind blowing the white sheers in and out, puffing them up, whipping them out, a mouth exhaling, inhaling.
Every once in a while I stand at the balcony and take it all in. I’m so happy I feel like shouting, but what would I say? There aren’t enough words for what I’m feeling. I consider writing a song and fill eleven pages in my journal with babbling, a tiny knot of handwriting so tangled and tight it looks like crocheting. Maybe hours go by, maybe minutes, I don’t know or care.
When I hear the key scratching at the lock, my heart spirals. I swallow Ernesto with my arms and my legs and my mouth. I want to dissolve him inside me again. I want to be him and for him to be me. I want to empty myself and fill myself with him.
—No, don’t. Don’t, don’t, don’t … Ernesto says, pulling me off him by the wrists. —Don’t, he keeps saying over and over.
His mouth shaking. A little tree before rain.
—What’s the matter? Hey, don’t, Ernesto, please. Don’t cry.
But it’s hopeless to talk him out of it. His face crumples, and he hiccups into a long uncomfortable seizure. I don’t know what to do. It’s like he robs the tears from me. And now I have to fish a crumpled Kleenex from the bedside table and hand it to him.
—Here, I say. —It’s not too dirty. He bugles away.
Too late. No use getting words out of this one. I watch and wait and wonder.
Then he tells me a story so unbelievable you’d think I made it up.
—Lala, you and I, we can’t … Ernesto says between sniffles. —I can’t marry you.
My mouth crimps like if he’d hit me with a stick. —What are you talking about? I try to sound tough, but it comes out thin and squeaky. I look at him carefully, like if I’d never seen him before, and in a way, I haven’t. He’s radiant, glowing, like if he’s emitting light. I try to sit close to him, on top of him even, but he’s the one pushing me away this time.
—Now just let me talk, Ernesto says seriously, without looking me in the eye, almost as if he can’t look me in the eye. He moves to a chair opposite the corner of the bed, like a lawyer about to deliver bad news. —I went to mass across the street, and before mass they were hearing confession. And then the next thing I know I’m talking to this priest. About how we came to be here, me and you. And how my mother doesn’t know where I am right now. And he got me thinking.
Ernesto pauses here like he’s having a hard time putting his thoughts into words. Then he just delivers his blow: —So we’re a sin, Lala. You and me. We can’t just run off and then expect to marry and make it all better. Sex is for procreation only. The Church says so. And we’re not married yet. And the fact is, I can’t marry you; you’re not even Catholic.
—It’s your ma, right? Your ma’s behind all this. Your ma and that twisted religion that thinks everything’s evil.
—Don’t make fun of my faith, Ernesto says, getting mad. —Anyway, Ernesto continues, pulling himself together and looking at his hands, —the padrecito made me realize … understand stuff.
—Like what kind of stuff? I say, trying not to flinch, because by now I can feel my face getting hot.
—Stuff I’d been feeling. Been mixed up about, only I didn’t want to scare you, Lala. And what he made me see is this. My mother is like la Virgen de Guadalupe, and I’m her only son, and now I’ve hurt her. I just understood everything. Then when I asked for forgiveness, it’s like I’ve become myself again. I decided to maybe think about religion first. Practice celibacy maybe.
—Like become a priest?
—Well, no, yes, maybe. I don’t know. But at least for now. I made a vow to quit putting unholy things inside me, like pot and shit.
—Or putting yourself into unholy things, like me, right?
Ernesto shakes his head. —You just don’t get it, Lala. You just don’t want to get it, is all.
—Oh, I get it, all right. You just had to get God’s permission to get you off the hook. You’re scared. You’re too chickenshit to think for yourself and become a man. So you have to ask the Church to tell you what’s right and wrong. You can’t brave listening to your own heart. That would cost you too much. After all, we wouldn’t want to upset your mother.
—That’s what I mean, Ernesto says angrily. —We don’t have the same spiritual values. How can we get married if we don’t even believe in the same things? Don’t you see? It’s just a disaster waiting to happen, Lala. Look, I still care about you …
—Care! I thought it was love a few hours ago.
—Okay, I still love you. Look, this room’s already paid for till the end of the week. We can, I can still stay here with you, if you want me to. Do you want to? As friends?
—Friends? What’s that?
He holds me in a strange awkward way, without our pelvis touching. I feel like laughing except I feel like crying. And I do cry, all day and all night, a hot oozing, like a wound that’s draining. Ernesto wakes up every now and then and hugs me and cries too. We sleep twisting and turning all night, like a bad mattress commercial, and that God that I saw when he touched me flies out of the room, and the little angel on top of the bed seems to smirk and is full of it.
It’s only later, weeks, I’ll realize those tears, they’re the only honest thing he ever said to me.
By the next morning, Ernesto is gone, leaving enough money for food for a few days and a bus ticket back to San Antonio, asking me to take care of myself, making me feel terrible about having begged him to “steal” me, because, after all, this was my great idea.
I’m as evil as Eve. I feel sick and room 606 looks small and grimy, closing in on me. When I get up to pee, I realize my period has begun, and it’s as if my whole body has been holding its breath, and now it can finally release everything I’ve been holding inside. I gotta get out of here, I think.
I get dressed, tie the Grandmother’s caramelo rebozo on my head like a gypsy, and start sucking the fringe. It has a familiar sweet taste to it, like carrots, like camote, that calms me. I wander downstairs and out into the downtown streets of the capital, walking this way and that, till I wind up in the direction of La Villa. I don’t stop until I find myself in front of the house on Destiny Street. But everything’s changed. They’ve painted it an ugly brown color like caca, which only makes me feel worse.
The house on Destiny Street is ugly. A chubby woman walks hurriedly out the gate clutching a plastic shopping bag, but she doesn’t pay any attention to me. Those rooms we slept in, the patio where we played with la Candelaria, the street of our remembrances gone.
I walk over to the basílica. The streets turned into trashy aisles of glow-in-the-dark Guadalupes, Juan Diego paperweights, Blessed Virgin pins, scapulars, bumper stickers, key chains, plastic pyramids. The old cathedral collapsing under its own weight, the air ruined, filthy, corncobs rotting in the curb, the neighborhood pocked, overpopulated, and boiling in its own stew of juices, corner men hissing psst, psst at me, flies resting on the custard gelatins rubbing their furry forelegs together like I-can’t-wait.
The old church is closed. They’ve built an ugly new building with a moving escalator in front of Juan Diego’s tilma. Poor Virgen de Guadalupe. Hundreds of people ride the moving conveyor belt of humanity. The most wretched of the earth, and me among them, wearing my grandmother’s rebozo knotted on my head like a pirate, like someone from the cast of Hair.
I didn’t expect this. I mean the faith. I mixed up the Pope with this, with all this, this light, this energy, this love. The religion part can go out the window. But I didn’t realize about the strength and power of la fe. What a goof I’ve been!
A wisp of a woman sweeping herself feverishly with a candle. A mother still in her apron blessing herself and blessing her daughters. A ragged viejita who walked here on her knees. Grown men crying, machos with their lips mumbling prayers, people with so much need. Help me, help me!
Everybody needs a lot. The whole world needs a lot. Everyone, the women frying lunch putting warm coins in your hand. The market sellers asking, —What else? The taxi drivers racing to make the light. The baby purring on a mother’s fat shoulder. Welders, firemen, grandmothers, bank tellers, shoeshine boys, and diplomats. Everybody, every single one needs a lot. The planet swings on its axis, a drunk trying to do a pirouette. Me, me, me! Every fist with an empty glass in the air. The earth throbbing like a field ready to burst into dandelion.
I look up, and la Virgen looks down at me, and, honest to God, this sounds like a lie, but it’s true. The universe a cloth, and all humanity interwoven. Each and every person connected to me, and me connected to them, like the strands of a rebozo. Pull one string and the whole thing comes undone. Each person who comes into my life affecting the pattern, and me affecting theirs.
I walk back to the hotel. I walk past pilgrims who have walked here all the way from their villages, past dancers performing with rattles on their ankles and great plumed headdresses, past vendors hawking candles and night-light Lupes. I walk through the Alameda, green oasis, and sit down on an iron bench. A man carrying a pyramid of cotton candy floats by as ethereal as angels. A pushcart full of sweet corn rolls past and makes my stomach grumble. A girl and her young lover neck hungrily across from me. They remind me of me and Ernesto. Seeing them so happy only breaks my heart.
And then what happened? I hear my mother asking me. And then I felt as if I’d swallowed a spoon, like something had lodged itself in my throat, and every time I swallowed, it hurt.
Me duele, I say softly to myself, I hurt. But sometimes that’s the only way you know you’re alive. It’s just like Aunty Light-Skin said. I feel like I’m soaked in sadness. Anyone comes near me, or just brushes me with their eyes, I know I’ll just fall apart. Like a book left in the rain.
I get back to room 606 at the Hotel Majestic just as the sun is slanting, sending deep shadows along the downtown buildings, making the buildings along the other side of the hotel, the Presidential Palace and calle de la Moneda, glow like the paintings you see of Venice. But I’m too tired to appreciate the light.
I throw myself on the bed and fall asleep immediately. I sleep like I’ve been swept away by rain and river. And just before waking, I dream this dream. The night sky of Tepeyac when the dark is fresh. And in that violet ink, I see the stars tumble and nudge and somersault until they assemble themselves into the shape of a woman, into the shape of the Virgin. La Virgen de Guadalupe made up of stars! My heart floods with joy. When I wake up, the pillow is damp, and the sea is trickling out from my eyes.
Always remember, Lala, the family comes first—la familia. Your friends aren’t going to be there when you’re in trouble. Your friends don’t think of you first. Only your family is going to love you when you’re in trouble, mija. Who are you going to call?… La familia, Lala. Remember.
The twinkling lights strung outside the balcony are lit. In that carnival of darkness and light, I fumble for the phone and hear my voice ask for a long distance line, please, por cobrar.
—Do you accept?
—Yes, yes! I hear Father’s voice say desperately. —Lala! Lalita? Mija, where are you, mi vida?
My mouth opens as wide as a fatal wound, and I hear myself howl, —Papá, I want to come home!