He’d see himself starve before he’d gather with them under the elm tree at dawn, drinking coffee, laughing at the mishaps of others, swearing to the truth of their half-true stories, lying about how their scars happened, rehashing their journeys with terrifying escapes and point-blank near-deaths, telling how they’d been robbed by thieves and swindled by friends, how new acquaintances proved false, while stamping cold from their work boots, their eyes shiny with the day’s promise that they might be hired on, eager to work as someone’s slave.
Vito scorned their martyrdom, their playing naive and powerless spectators to their own suffering. Hustlers stacked the deck, shuffled and reshuffled and cut, then dealt each a sucker’s hand, and each lost until they had nothing left but their sweaty T-shirt and muddy boots. Field rows offered nothing but the joker’s card; the peppers and leaves scoffed at their stupidity, each card in the marked deck ridiculed their lives, chuckled and mocked their wretchedness.
23
February 2004
The curse had followed Casimiro all these years, the accidental bullet fired from the chamber was packed with the gunpowder of his dreams when it ripped through the man’s suit, punctured his flesh, shattered bone, and pummeled into the heart meat. The bullet killed his own hope to live a life with integrity. It cursed every breath and every act from that point on.
Yes, the curse’s jarring hum droned within every thought, as now, thinking of himself as a hypocrite for going along with Miller to send Vito away two years back, when he, Casimiro, was guilty of much worse.
Nothing could lessen the menace that haunted his sleep each evening, tightening the curse-vise one more turn on his bones. He spit when he felt its kiss grinding on his lips. It gripped him with such gloom that not even the river breeze shaking pheasants from the river grass could blow it away. All he could do now was stare at the water, blame himself as he felt the curse oozing from his pores.
I’ll go away he had said at the time, almost twenty-five years ago, but the crime returned with an intensity that grew ever more harrowing. He was fifteen when the man from Mexico City arrived one day on his porch. He had an air of gentrified leisure, holding an alligator-skin briefcase, wearing a dark suit with a white shirt, blue suspenders, and ankle-high black boots.
His politeness belied his intent. Casimiro overheard the man talking to his parents at the door. He informed them that he had been sent from the mortgage company in Chihuahua to collect five months’ back payments or they’d have to repossess the house. His father had borrowed money from the mortgage company promising to make full payment within three years and the note was now due.
That evening was the first time Casimiro had ever seen his father cry—head down, moaning and broken. He regretted borrowing the money and blamed his predicament on the owners who had closed the coalmine months ago and put him out of work. That night he heard his mother praying behind the bedroom door, pleading with God to save their home.
That a stranger could arrive and take their house seemed impossible. Doesn’t he know Papa’s been looking for work? That he’s been taking anything he can find?
The next morning, Casimiro found the man in his hotel room enjoying room service. “Here’s some of the money,” he said, extending his hand and an envelope with the money he had saved up for years.
The man humored the boy. “Well, let’s see what you have.” The man gave a chuckle, dabbed his mouth with the napkin stuffed in his collar, and motioned his hand at him, “Come.”
He looked in the envelope and said, “This is very honorable of you, son. Looks like about ten dollars and change. It’s an admirable gesture and you probably did this on your own. But there is nothing I can do. It is a lot of money your parents owe and my hands are tied. I was only sent to handle this. I’m not taking your house, the mortgage company is, for a loan your father took out against the house. He has not paid it back. You don’t understand the situation, and I’m sorry, but you must go now.”
But Casimiro did not budge.
The man wiped his hands and considered the situation while fingering his tobacco pipe that had sat on the table next to a dish with a half grapefruit. He felt threatened by the boy now and, thinking the boy might try to harm him, he demanded, “Out!”
Casimiro ordered his feet to move and his body to follow, and perhaps it was shock but he was paralyzed and couldn’t do anything but stare at the man, who suddenly reached out and seized him by the shirt.
“Now, out!” Bits of fried egg speckled his lips.
“But you can’t take our house, it’s ours,” was all he could manage to say.
“It’s not my doing, I simply work for the mortgage company and I have my instructions.” He stood up from the table. “Now, out!” and he shoved him into the hallway and closed the door.
Casimiro stumbled out the hotel door and into the street. He was shaken and dazed by the confrontation and needed to calm down.
He decided to visit Concha, the old crone who sold cheap corn whiskey to anyone. After drinking more than he should have, he roamed aimlessly in the streets and within the hour found himself back at the man’s door, opening it without knocking. The room smelled of cologne and tobacco smoke. The roomservice cart was gone and the man had changed clothes and now wore a green suit that shimmered like silk with the light shining through the window; his briefcase lay open on the bed and he was arranging papers, banknotes, and pesos.
He turned when he heard the door, reached inside his jacket, and pulled a revolver from his breast pocket. “I thought I told you to go away.” Their eyes narrowed on each other and Casimiro lunged at the man.
He didn’t know what else to do, it was pure instinct and self-defense and he was just as alarmed as the man was.
The man knocked Casimiro down with the pistol and Casimiro curled up on the floor to protect himself from the kicks and slaps to his shoulders and face. “I warned you. You think I’m someone to toy with?”
Casimiro sprang up, feeling a surge of violence arise in him, and clutched the man’s neck, squeezed his thumb and middle finger into the man’s throat until his mouth drooled foam. The man’s face turned red and his eyes bulged as he clawed at Casimiro. Then he raised the gun.
They wrestled and Casimiro didn’t remember ever touching the pistol but there was a loud report that made his ears ring, followed by an absence of sound. The man gulped for air, swirled the huge orbs of his terrified eyes around the room, and collapsed.
Casimiro never told anyone about this incident but, as though by divine retribution, a poultry virus struck the village and wiped out half its inhabitants, including his parents. Infected houses were burned and soon after the last of the victims were buried, he left the village before authorities could arrive from Mexico City and investigate the murder.
It was hard for him to think the word “murder,” much less admit that he had committed such a horrendous crime. But he was an accursed murderer and he was convinced that those he loved had been taken away from him as the result of that evil brand. He never understood how so many things could be affected by one dishonorable act.
Sitting under a tree in his wheelchair, gazing at Lorenzo in his worn jeans and a patched plaid shirt as he walked down the row, urging pickers to pick up the pace, Casimiro recalled how in the summer they would plant their own little garden behind the Pullman car. The joy in his son’s eyes when Lorenzo pulled up his first onion and first radish had made an impression that had fossilized in his heart. The same thing had happened when he would fill the livestock trough with water and watch his sons splash giddily inside it for hours.
And despite the fact that when Lorenzo was born they had no running water or electricity, and although they boiled their drinking water and never dreamed of a pediatrician visit or immunization shots, they were all healthy and happy.
Casimiro’s heart smiled now as he remembered how Lorenzo had called Nopal’s breast Nanu, and how, with a ferocious appetite, he’d muster up all his energy to suckle
every last drop of milk and frighten yard chickens from woodpiles and scatter prairie doves from trees as he cried, “Nanu! Nanu! Nanu!” content only when he was nuzzled up against Nopal’s warm breast, guzzling at the nipple.
Nopal had sung Lorenzo to sleep, composing songs about his first smile, first rollover, first step, first time he said ma ma, her husky-hot voice in his own head now like thunder in the mountains.
Lorenzo was now a man but still doing the same old thing as when he was a small boy, in the rows around the plants. At the end of these rows were more rows and more rows, a labyrinth that would never free them. The rows went on forever, taking them deeper; every row picked turned into miles of rows unpicked.
Casimiro dozed off and woke confused, the reality beyond his eyes fuzzy as he slowly emerged from the depths of his dream, surprised to find himself sprawled on the ground on his back, humiliated when he noticed he had peed his pants. How could he live like this? Constantly needing the help of others to perform the simplest tasks, a decrepit invalid, even a toddler could work more than he could. It was because of the curse that he could no longer rely on his two feet.
With his good left hand he hit the ground repeatedly, wishing only to get up. He rolled in the dirt like a demented animal shot through the head, groaning in shame, cursing with humiliation, his good hand clawing the ground, blowing through his nostrils to clear a circle of sand as he grunted, unable to move, on the ground. For the first time he truly wished for death; it would be better than enduring this disgraceful groveling.
Two hours later, workers rescued him and set him back in his wheelchair. As he watched them return to work, he thought of the thousands over the past sixteen years who had worked in these fields and he promised himself that before his own body devoured him, he would see his son free of the rows.
24
September 1983
Nopal had a dream on the morning of her fifteenth birthday, a dream so powerful it woke her and made her sit up in bed. She listened to the bells from the Guadalajara cathedral next to the mercado where she worked selling huaraches. They rang at 5:00 a.m. and woke her parents, who were downstairs shuffling around in the kitchen. She snuggled under the blankets again and slowly spiraled back into sleep.
The dream reflected what was happening in reality. In it, she saw drug lords confiscate peasant lands, forcing the poor who remained to cultivate coca plants and poppies for heroin. The homeless were everywhere. Thousands poured into the city, toting bed-sheet bundles containing all they owned. They huddled on sidewalks and under freeway overpasses, curled on park benches, clustered in alleys, and grouped in rag and cardboard settlements in tree groves, sewer ravines, and run-off culverts. The beaten down, the hopeless, and the elderly begged at intersections as the young were kidnapped and sold as sex slaves in broad daylight.
When she woke from the dream she did what she had been planning to do. She wrote a note to her parents, telling them not to worry and that she loved them. She took the money she had saved for two years selling sandals in the market, packed a few clothes in her backpack, slung her guitar over her back, and left.
She loved and hated Mexico, she thought, as she walked her normal route through the city of bells. Part of her was sad to leave her beautiful city, which boasted more cathedrals, churches, and chapels than any other city in the world, and yet she was happy that she was finally going pa’l norte.
As if bidding her good-bye, the bells rocked the cobblestones beneath her leather shoes and rippled up her thighs. She smiled at newlyweds exiting chapels holding hands, rice and flower petals raining on them. Couples strolled and others lounged on benches, buying flowers from vendors and posing for photographers. Some lingered on cathedral steps waiting their turn before the priest.
She glimpsed a carnival on a side street, barrios celebrating one of their many holidays. She paused to let it pass—an array of unbelievably skinny horses pulling field carts clip-clopped by. She was amused by the children, some as young as two and three, dressed as scraggly cornstalks, bouncing up and down around their parent’s knees—worker children with soiled faces and bodies smeared with coal dust. And then the extraterrestrial creatures: groups of men and women with wire wings towered on stilts above the heads of the spectators, each masked spirit representing good or evil. Masked faces painted in angelic or grotesque features excited the crowd pressing shoulder to shoulder, thronging both sides of the street, until Death appeared—a white-skinned man on hairy cloven-hoofed stilts. Then, the children scattered, screaming and frightened women followed suit. It unsettled Nopal as she watched it all, thinking that maybe it was a bad omen for her trip to the land of whites.
Nopal hurried, moving through a long corridor of palm trees waving good-bye, the breeze whipping the fronds back and forth. She turned a corner and thought how much she would miss the museum. She slowed to peer in the door at the pre-Columbian art and saw and heard the jade jaguar head growl farewell as the turquoise eagle slashed the air with lightning from its alabaster rock wings and the crocodile splashed around obsidian boulders.
She read a plaque beneath one of the statues outside the building: When enough spirits from the departed have entered us, only then will we come to life again and join you.
Farther on, past the art museum, Diego Rivera’s and José Clemente Orozco’s murals freed themselves from the walls and crowded the doorways, thick-ankled and broad-shouldered women carried bundles of freshly picked lilacs and revolutionaries’ machetes waved her luck.
Laborers rode high on cement sacks in the back of pickups; fruit cutters stood on corners; thousands of bicyclists, each carrying two or three riders, streamed by; skinny horses trudged past pulling rickety carts laden with barrels of water or heaps of vegetables; uniformed schoolgirls and schoolboys smiled at her; and the colorful birds in the trees perforated the silence with angelic voices as lush green plants entwined her feet unwilling to let her go, unwilling to release her from the city. A woman’s voice floated from an open window and she memorized one line from her song, “You will blunt the blades with your voice.”
She would miss these people but they would never really be absent. In the cellar of her heart, a mad angel mixed and brewed them into her songs—sultry and moody songs, calloused and perfumed and smelly, acidic and balmy, they were carried north, pa’l otro lado, with her backpack and guitar.
And as she walked, she thought of America and she felt a new language of hope birthing in her, she sensed a freedom within reach, to reshape her life. She was within reach of a dream, which was to sing and play her guitar.
Oh, these people, she thought as she stopped at a sidewalk shack to eat tacos, these people impulsively blowing their week’s wages on binges, partying on the truck tailgates under trees, blasting corridos, all proud in new jeans, boots, pearl-button western shirts, and leather belts stamped with MEXICO in green, red, and white, strutting about as the finest specimen of man on earth. They pocket the vows they muttered on their knees before home altars and, prayers forgotten, they drink—everyone understands why, enjoy it, laugh with them—they are not disrespected and when they pass out, friends carry them to bed.
She was drawn to them as the tongue and breath to the harmonica reed, drawn to their genuine love for life, their common sense, their desire to avoid trouble, their haughtiness, and their timid contempt for the privileged.
She would dream her new life into existence and the Mexicans and Chicanos of the north would teach her to trust fate and counsel her about how spirits bless you and how you must listen and follow and believe. Yes, she knew her songs would come from below, from the molten blood-lake of singers from ancient Mayas to Incas to Aztecs to Mexicans to present-day Chicanos, all believing that nurturing one pearl of dignity, planting one cornseed of hope, sunning one flower-seed of love was more longed for than all the power and money in the world.
She desired to know and name and call forth from lyrics a self-respect she had never known but could taste like fire on her tongue.
She would learn to sing for the sullen ones, for the ones who don’t talk, for the ones who are nervous and listless and indifferent and pretend not to hurt, for the spiritual ancestors and the spirits of trees and earth and water and air.
And as she walked toward the train station, lightning danced in her heart, giving her journey north an epic energy, a certainty of knowing what to say, how to feel, where to kneel and sleep and stand. She’d witness those with power—a perpetual air of patience about them—break down, weeping on their knees; she’d see passive ones strike out violently; she’d encounter in those who roamed the desert, cruel brutalities and lovely kindness existing side by side. She would not shame what was hidden in one’s heart, but turn regret into acceptance and reconnect their breathing to that which had once brought them close to God.
A voice in her heart sang above the death cough of a catfish in a dry ditch, it belted out above pain, singing beyond it, blind to the fire in her joints. And if blood were to pour through her ears and nose, she’d let it pour because she had work to do, rows to pick, plants to cut; she had to keep the hoeing going and the singing hot. If the body gives up, goes down, can’t stand, there is still work to do, chores to attend, mending and bending and walking and carrying, and she would celebrate it all in song.
That’s what her heart told her as she reached the train station and hopped a cattle train with other Mexicans going north to America. And it kept telling her that, into the next evening, when she was already halfway to the border and the train stopped at a cattle yard in a small town and a man jumped into the boxcar.
He sat by her, said he was from Culiacán, and he seemed friendly enough. They exchanged a few words sitting next to each other and then he stood by the open cattle-car door adjusting himself and brooding on the passing landscape until darkness fell. Nopal was exhausted and she dozed off but was startled awake with a gasp.
A Glass of Water Page 7
