TUESDAY NIGHT, Diego spent the evening alone. He was tired, but he tried to keep himself from falling asleep. He was afraid of the dreams, but he wasn’t strong enough to fight sleep. He saw his mother: She was young and was wearing a turquoise cotton dress and her long, dark hair was shining in the sun. In the dream, she had Indian features but white skin. She was holding his sister in her lap. They were yelling and looking for someone. He felt himself in the dark, almost as though he were in a coffin. “I’m right here!” he yelled. “Do you see me? I’m right here!” His voice never reached beyond the darkness. His mother and sister kept looking for him, asking for him, yelling for him. He could see their moving lips. “We’re over here! We’re over here, Diego!”
He woke up with a headache. The sun was coming up and the shadows in his room were cold and unfriendly. He filled the tub with hot water and soaked himself, feeling the wet heal against his skin. He remembered how pretty his sister had looked when she wore her dark red dresses. It made her skin look as gold as the color of cognac. He remembered she once smelled like the rain. He saw a face, a little girl, saw how she looked at him, felt sorry for him because he was different. And then he remembered how she used to tell him to go to his room and hide when her friends came over. He saw himself looking in the mirror when his sister led him to his room. He knew she was playing with her friends. Diego looked in the mirror to see if he was ugly, and the little boy he saw was ugly. He saw his mother’s face—crying. She sent him to a school where everyone was nice, and he had friends. They learned to talk with their hands and look at people’s lips. His teacher was so beautiful, and he wanted her to be his mother. He felt bad because he knew his mother knew what he felt, and he never looked at her in the same way ever again. Their faces wouldn’t go away. They covered him like the hot water in the tub, and he wondered if he had ever loved them.
All day Diego thought of his mother, and his sister. He wondered what city his sister lived in—maybe Chicago, maybe El Paso. He pictured her face at their mother’s funeral—accusing him. He pictured the casket, the flowers, remembered everything as it was except that he could not remember how she died. Maybe she had just died. Diego didn’t remember. He was nineteen when it happened. He should remember—why couldn’t he remember? He felt the steam clean his body; he washed himself and stuck his head in the water and wanted to stay there. Fragments of Mary’s clothes kept appearing before him like pieces of glass. He was afraid of cutting himself.
Diego got out of the tub and made some hot coffee. He dressed himself and shaved in front of the mirror; he looked at himself tike the little boy he remembered. But I’m not ugly, he thought, maybe I was never ugly.
He took a cup of coffee to his desk and stared out at the purple Juárez mountains. He tried to erase the memories. He concentrated on the colors and shadows in the mountains. “They’re really brown,” he thought to himself, “they’re not purple—it’s just the sun that makes them look that way.” He tried to think of nothing. He finished his coffee and filled his cup again. He emptied the dreams out of his thoughts, out of his room. Diego left his building and walked to the bridge; he sat where Luz used to meet him and tried not to cry. He wanted to cry for Mary because they killed her; he wanted to cry for his sister because he had learned to hate her; he wanted to cry for his mother and for himself because he couldn’t remember how she died and because he was thirty and was still afraid. He saw the river, and it seemed to him to be the same color as the inside of Vicky’s Bar. He saw himself jumping off the bridge, and wanted to jump, but stopped himself. I still have a funeral to attend. He walked by Sacred Heart Church and stared at it. The outside was still the same, but inside it was nothing but black dust. The church was gone.
Diego wandered around the city. He sat on a bench at the plaza and waited for the sun to set. When it got dark, he went to bed. He saw a car coming down the street. He saw the space where his mother’s face was supposed to be. The space looked at him. He saw the car. He heard a scream. The car tried to stop, couldn’t stop—his mother was gone. He woke up. He didn’t want to go back to bed. It was four o’clock. He made coffee and lit a cigarette to help him stop trembling.
He put the hot cup of coffee to his lips, and looked up. His mother’s broken body was standing in front of him. He dropped the cup on the floor. His mother was gone again. He remembered, saw her throwing herself in front of that car. It happened in the spring. She did it right in front of him, threw herself down on the street. He put his face between his hands: It wasn’t my fault, he thought, not my fault. But he knew his sister would always blame him, and he would never find either of them again. He thumbed through the pages of his suicide note, and wished his mother had left him a letter.
Diego went back to bed and stayed there all day. He was cold and the dreams, Mary, his mother, his sister, covered him like blankets making him colder. He felt he would never be warm again. Thursday morning he woke up, was lost, and the coffee was more bitter than usual.
As Diego sat on the steps of his house dressed in his tie, yellow shin, and imitation gray fedora, Mundo came by in a parade of three cars. Mundo’s car led the way, a canary yellow ‘57 Chevy with gleaming chrome rims. A deep blue ‘65 Mustang followed and the third car, a ‘71 cherry red El Camino revved its engine as it came to a stop. The cars sparkled, newly painted, as clean as anything Diego had ever seen. The cars were full of dark-faced young men dressed in white shirts and dark hats, young men who looked as if they were going to a wedding. As the cars reached a full stop, Mundo jumped out of the first car, “What do you think? The streets got style when we travel.” He took out a handkerchief from his back pocket and polished the car he was driving. “Gotta treat these babies right.” He took a good look at Diego, puckered his lips; and whistled. “Now we’re cookin’ with gas, man—now we’re lookin’ good. Any woman you want is yours, man—I know what I’m talkin’ about.”
Diego smiled. “You like the hat?”
“It does something for you. All you need now is to grow a mustache, and then you’re gonna be one mean man. They’re gonna call you El Vato de Sunset Heights—I’m serious, ese.” He clenched his fist and thrust it in the air. He motioned his friends, nine of them in all, to get out of the cars. All of them moved toward Diego and Mundo—slowly. Graceful. Diego thought they all looked like dancers. Mundo looked them over and began introducing them.
“This guy,” he said pointing to a dark, hazel-eyed youth with a gold chain around his neck, “his name’s Kiki, but they call him El Guante. He’s got big hands and he used to play baseball—great hands.” El Guante stuck out his hand and gave Diego the handshake of his life.
“You ever hurt anybody with those hands of yours?” Diego wrote.
El Guante looked at Diego’s note strangely. “I don’t like to hurt no one, but sometimes it can’t be helped, you know?” He nodded seriously.
“El Guante’s gonna make a great pallbearer,” Mundo said. “He’s got the most experience of any of us. He’s been a pallbearer seven times.”
El Guante smiled.
“Maybe you should stop hanging around him, Mundo,” Diego wrote, “all his friends are dying.”
Mundo laughed and turned to the guy standing right next to him. “And this guy, this here’s El Kermit. His little sister says he talks like the frog on Sesame Street.” El Kermit smiled and tipped his hat.
A small guy with rough hands and tattoos all over his arms moved forward and shook Diego’s hand. “Indio,” he said, “sometimes they call me Apache.” His muscular arm rippled as he shook Diego’s hand.
“And this guy, here, is El Güero. He looks like a gringo, but he’s all right. He doesn’t like to talk English because of the way he looks.” El Güero cocked his head toward Diego and took a drag off his cigarette.
“And this guy,” Mundo said nodding to the driver of the blue Mustang, “is El Romeo. His last name’s Romero. The women love his ass.” He looked very plain to Diego, but his skin was dark and smooth. El Romeo shook Diego’s hand and took his shoulder with the other. “Sorry about your girlfriend,” he said. His eyes were black and intense and looking at them Diego knew why they called him Romeo.
“The rest of these guys just came along for the ride.” Mundo pointed to three guys leaning on the El Camino. “I thought you’d want to meet the pallbearers—I picked the most experienced guys. We’ve all done this before—last year I did it twice, but like I say, El Guante’s the best, but all of us are good. I got the best for La Mary.”
Diego smiled and shook Mundo’s hand. “You guys got some weird hobbies,” Diego wrote. El Güero stretched his neck out to read the note Mundo was reading. He tried to keep from laughing, but couldn’t control himself.
As they were getting into the cars, Mundo took him over to the side. “They like you, I mean it. El Güero doesn’t laugh at too many things.” Diego stuck out one of his thumbs in the air and cocked his head. As soon as Diego got in the front seat of the car that Mundo was driving, the engines roared and the cars drove slowly toward the funeral home.
The man in the dark suit stared at them in a controlled manner. He eyed Mundo carefully. Diego handed him a note. “We’re here to accompany Mary Ramirez’s body to the church. We’d like to view the body.” Mundo looked over his shoulder as he wrote.
“Hey,” Mundo whispered to Diego, “you got a real smooth way of saying things. You could be a writer.”
The man in the dark suit stared at them.
“He’s deaf,” Mundo said.
The man’s expression remained the same. “Are you next of kin?”
Diego nodded.
Mundo pointed to his friends. “And these guys here are all the pallbearers.” He looked at them in a professional manner and smiled courteously. He handed a box of carnation boutonnieres to Mundo. “You may put these on, please.”
Mundo took the box and lined up the T-Birds like soldiers and pinned a flower on each guy as if he were giving out medals.
The man showed them to a small room with faded carpeting. Mary lay in a cheap, cardboard casket.
He looked at Mundo. “You have fifteen minutes before we’re scheduled to leave for the church.”
Diego knelt before the casket, took off his hat and made the sign of the cross. Behind him, Mundo nudged the T-Birds, and they all took off their hats, knelt on the floor and bowed their heads. Diego stared at Mary’s powdered face and wished he could see her eyes. Watching her face, he tried to pray, but he could do nothing, could not even remember his childhood prayers. He did not feel the tears falling down his face. Mundo stared at him, and watched him watch Mary.
The man came in and motioned to Mundo that it was time to go. He placed his hand on Diego’s shoulder, but Diego did not seem to notice his touch. He shook him gently until Diego looked up at him. “It’s time to go.”
El Guante, El Kermit, El Romeo, Indio, Mundo, and El Güero took the casket to the limousine. They followed the black shiny car in their bright yellow, blue, and red cars; the chrome wheels filling the streets with reflections of light.
The priest met them at the entrance to the church and sprayed the casket with holy water. “Baptized into Christ’s death,” he said. The T-Birds moved the casket up to the front of the church, moving slowly as if they were hearing music. Tencha and one of her friends were standing at the front of the church. Carolyn and Crazy Eddie were there, too. That was all. It was the best I could do for you, Mary, Diego thought, the best.
He stared at the flame of the Easter candle. The colors in the stained glass reminded him of the T-Birds’ cars. He watched the priest like he had watched other priests a thousand times before. He had their actions memorized.
Concordia Cemetery was full of weeds and trash delivered there by the El Paso wind. It looked more like a dump than a cemetery. It was only cleaned once a year when the prisoners from the county jail were let out to clean it, but that wasn’t until the summer, and it had been almost a year since its last cleaning—a year’s worth of old newspapers lying up against the gravestones. Diego watched the priest read the final prayers: “May the angels carry you to paradise; the saints rise up to greet you …” He handed Diego the crucifix. Diego clasped it in his hands, squeezed it so tight that it dug into his skin. Mundo and the T-Birds placed their carnations on top of Mary’s cardboard casket. Carolyn brought a rose.
Mundo helped Diego to the car and held him up. He would have fallen without him. On the way back to Diego’s house, they stopped and picked up two cases of beer. They went inside Diego’s room, and there they all drank. Carolyn brought in a basket of fruit, but she didn’t stay long. “Call me if you need anything,” she said.
Mundo pulled out a bottle of cognac and handed it to Diego.
“Just don’t ask me where I got it. Drink.”
Diego poured himself a glass and drank as he watched the T-Birds drink their beer. He made no real attempt to watch their lips. They’re like their cars, he thought. Mundo watched him out of the corner of his eyes as he laughed with his friends. When the beer was gone, they each shook his hand and left, “I’ll come by tomorrow,” Mundo said.
Diego was glad they had left. He was tired and fell asleep on the floor. He woke up in the afternoon and went to the store. He bought a can of spray paint and when he got home he opened the window and spray-painted his suicide letter so it couldn’t be read by anybody. He sat in his room and waited for the sun to set. When night came, he sat in the darkness and didn’t turn on the lights. Around midnight he walked over to the barrio and found a space on a wall. He sat in front of the space for a long time and howled into the empty streets. When he was too tired to cry anymore, he spray-painted a new sign: THE VIRGIN IS DEAD.
Mundo watched him as he wrote the words on the wall. He could read what Diego had written clearly—the streetlight burning right above them like a worn out, dying sun. He watched this strange, innocent, unreachable man howl in the street like an animal, like a wounded coyote separated from his pack. Diego’s voice was strong in its sorrow, as strong as any wind Mundo had ever felt. He was not so speechless after all, Mundo thought. Every man has to have his say. He followed his friend back home to make sure no one would harm him, followed him like a protecting angel. When Diego was back in his apartment, Mundo saw a light appear through the window. He walked back to the place where Diego had written his words. He traced the letters with his finger. “The Virgin is dead,” he said out loud. And then he screamed it.