by John Rechy
Raynaldo was not her husband, although—of course—she had told her children he was. Gloria was fifteen, and Juan seventeen. They slept in what would have been a small living room, Juan in a roll-out cot, Gloria on the pull-out sofa. When Teresa, Amalia’s mother, was alive, she occupied the small other “bedroom,” a porch converted by Raynaldo. The last time he was out of jail, Manny, Amalia’s oldest son, shared it, sleeping on the floor next to his grandmother’s cot. Now the improvised room was vacant, surrendered to two deaths.
On a small table in Amalia’s room were a large framed picture of Our Lord and one of his Blessed Mother, next to a small statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe on a bed of plastic flowers. There, too, was a photograph of President John F. Kennedy. When he was murdered in her home state, Amalia and her mother—her father was on a binge and cried belatedly—went to several Masses and wept through the televised funeral, the only time Teresa did not resent “Queen for a Day” being pushed off the black-and-white television.
Amalia made her slow, reverential morning sign of the cross toward the picture of Christ, hands outstretched, his bright red Sacred Heart enclosed in an aura of gold; and she extended her gesture to the Blessed Mother, resplendent in her blue-starred robe. They would certainly understand why it was necessary that she tell her children Raynaldo was her husband, to set a moral example, why else?
Almost beefy and with a nest of graying hairs on his chest nearly as thick as on his head, Raynaldo was not the kind of handsome man Amalia preferred, but he was a good man who had a steady job with a freight-loading company, and he helped generously with rent and groceries. He had been faithfully with her for five years, the only one of her men who had never hit her. Once he had paid a mariachi—who had wandered into El Bar & Grill from East Los Angeles in his black, silver-lined charro outfit—to sing a sad, romantic favorite of hers, “A Punto de Llorar”; and he led her in a dance. God would forgive her a small sin, that she pretended he was a handsome groom dancing with her one more time before their grand church wedding.
Amalia pulled her eyes away from the picture of Christ and the Holy Mother because she had located the place on the wall where the plaster had cracked during a recent earthquake. She had felt a sudden trembling in the house and then a violent jolt. As she always did at the prospect of violence, she had crouched in a corner and seen the crack splitting the wall. Now every time the house quivered from an idling truck, she thought of rushing out—although she had heard repeated warnings that that was the worst thing to do. But what if the house was falling on you? She wished the talk of earthquakes would stop, but it seemed to her that constant predictions of a “Big One” were made with increasing delight by television “authorities.”
My God! It was eight-thirty and she was still in bed. On weekdays she might already be at one of the pretty houses—and she chose only pretty ones—that she cleaned. She preferred to work at different homes in order to get paid daily, and for variety. Too, the hours provided her more time with her children, although now they were seldom around. She was well liked and got along with the people she worked for, though she felt mostly indifferent toward them. She always dressed her best, always wore shimmery earrings; one woman often greeted her with: “You look like you’ve come to visit, not work.” Amalia was not sure how the remark was intended, but she did know the woman was not “lush.” Lately Amalia had begun to feel some anxiety about her regular workdays because “new illegals”—Guatemalans, Salvadorans, Nicaraguans without papers—were willing to work for hardly anything, and one of her employers had laughingly suggested lowering her wage.
Amalia sat on the edge of her bed. A strap of her thin slip fell off her brown shoulder. Had it really happened, in the restaurant-bar, after Raynaldo left and that young man came over? Amalia pushed away the mortifying memory.
She walked to the window. One side of her bungalow bordered the street. At the window she did not look at the sky.
Daily, the neighborhood decayed. Lawns surrendered to weeds and dirt. Cars were left mounted on bricks. Everywhere were iron bars on windows. Some houses were boarded up. At night, shadows of homeless men and women, carrying rags, moved in and left at dawn. And there was the hated graffiti, no longer even words, just tangled scrawls like curses.
When she had first moved here, the court looked better than now. The three bungalows sharing a wall in common and facing three more units were graying; and in the small patches of “garden” before each, only yellowish grass survived. At the far end of the court, near the garage area taken over by skeletons of cars that no longer ran, there remained an incongruous rosebush that had managed only a few feeble buds this year, without opening. Amalia continued to water it, though, hating to see anything pretty die.
Still, she was glad to live in Hollywood. After all, that was impressive, wasn’t it? Even the poorest sections retained a flashy prettiness, flowers pasted against cracking walls draped by splashes of bou-gainvillea. Even weeds had tiny buds. And sometimes, out of the gathering rubble on the streets, there would be the sudden sweetness of flowers.
There were far worse places inhabited by Mexicans and the new aliens—blackened tenements in downtown and central Los Angeles, where families sometimes lived in shifts in one always-dark room, tenements as terrible as the one Amalia had been born in—at times she thought she remembered being born within the stench of garbage—Still other people lived in old cars, on the streets, in the shadows of parks.
As she stood by the window of her stucco bungalow, Amalia did not think of any of that. She was allowing her eyes to slide casually across the street to a vacant lot enclosed by wire—and then her eyes roamed to its far edge, past a row of white oleanders above which rose jacaranda trees with ghostly lavender blossoms. Even more slowly, her eyes glided toward the tall pines bordering the giant Fox Television Studio that extended incongruously from the end of the weedy lot to Sunset Boulevard; and then her gaze floated over the huge HOLLYWOOD sign amid distant hills smeared with flowers, crowned with beautiful homes. Finally, she looked up into the sky.
The cross was not there!
Of course not—and it had never been there. And yet—
Yet the impression of the silver cross she had wakened to had altered the morning. Amalia was startled to realize that for the first time in her recent memory she had not awakened into the limbo of despondence that contained all the worries that cluttered her life, worries that would require a miracle to solve.
Trying not to feel betrayed, she turned away from the sky. She heard the sound of tangling traffic on the nearby Hollywood Free-way, heard the cacophony of radios, stereos, televisions, that rampaged the bungalow court each weekend.
Amalia touched her lips with her tongue. Last night’s extra beer had left a bitter taste. No, it was the memory of it, of that man she allowed to sit with her last night at El Bar & Grill. Released with a sigh, that thought broke the lingering spell of the morning’s awakening and her worries swarmed her.
Worries about Juan!—handsomer each day and each day more secretive, no longer a happy young man, but a moody one. He’d been looking for work but what kind of job would he keep?—proud as he was. He had made terrible grades that last year of Manny’s imprisonment. Was he in a gang? She had fled one barrio in East Los Angeles to keep him and Gloria from drugs and killings and the gangs that had claimed her Manny. Now, students carried weapons in school and gangs terrorized whole neighborhoods. Yesterday she thought she had seen bold new graffiti on a wall. The placa of a new gang? That is how cholo gangs claim their turf. And Juan was coming home later and later—recently with a gash over one eye. He had money. Was he selling roca—street crack?
And who wouldn’t worry about Gloria? So very pretty, and wearing more and more makeup, using words even men would blush to hear. What had Gloria wanted to tell her the other morning when she hadn’t been able to listen because she was on her way to work and came back too late to ask her? Gloria had turned surly toward Raynaldo, who loved her like
a father all these years. Did she suspect they weren’t really married?… Amalia was sure God knew why she had to live with Raynaldo, but she wasn’t certain He would extend His compassion, infinite though it was, to a sullen girl.… What had she wanted to tell her that morning?
Something about her involvement with that Mick?—that strange young man who rode a motorcycle and wore a single earring that glistened against his jet-black long hair? Although he was Mexican-American, he had a drawly voice like those Anglos from the San Fernando Valley, and he wore metallic belts and wristbands. What had Gloria wanted to tell her?
And Raynaldo! If he didn’t come back—but he would—there would be mounting bills again, constant threats to disconnect this and that. There was still the unpaid mortuary bill—Teresa had demanded that there be lots of flowers at her funeral. Amalia could afford this bungalow, small and tired as it was, only because of Raynaldo. Had his jealousy really been aroused last night so quickly because the man staring at her at El Bar & Grill was young and good-looking? Or had he used that as an excuse for anger already there, tension about Gloria’s—and, increasingly, Juan’s—abrupt resentment of him?
Of course, of course, Amalia missed Teresa—who wouldn’t miss her own mother?—dead from old age and coughing at night and probably all her meanness, thrusting those cruel judgments at her own daughter. Who would blame her for having slapped her just that once? Certainly God would have wanted her to stop the vile accusations she was making before Gloria and Juan during those black, terrible days after Manny’s death. And who could blame her for having waited only until after the funeral to pack away the old woman’s foot-tall statue of La Dolorosa, the Mother of Sorrows?… Of course, however you referred to her, she was always the Virgin Mary, whether you called her Blessed Mother, the Immaculate Conception, Our Lady, the Madonna, Mother of God, Holy Mother—or Our Lady of Guadalupe, the name she assumed for her miraculous appearance in Mexico to the peasant Juan Diego, long ago. Still, Teresa’s La Dolorosa, draped in black, wrenched in grief, hands clasped in anguish, tiny pieces of glass embedded under agonized eyes to testify to endless tears, had always disturbed Amalia, had seemed to her—God would forgive her this if she was wrong—not exactly the Virgin Mary whom she revered, so beautiful, so pure, so kind in her understanding—and so miraculous!
Yes, and now there wasn’t even her trusted friend, Rosario, to turn to for advice, crazy as her talk sometimes was when they both worked in the “sewing sweatshop” in downtown Los Angeles. That tiny, incomprehensible, strong woman was gone, fled—where?—had just disappeared among all those rumors that she was in trouble with the hated “migra,” the Immigration, for helping the illegals who tore her heart.
And Manny—
Manny
Her beloved firstborn. His angel face haunted her. A year after the blackest day of her life, she still awoke at night into a stark awareness of his absence. Did he hear the guards approaching along the desolate corridor toward his isolated cell? Did he recognize them in the gray darkness as the two he had broken away from earlier, the one he had hit across the face with handcuffs? Did he know immediately what they were going to do to him?
The horror of it all would push into Amalia’s mind. She saw the guards tightening the shirt around his neck. Did he cry out to her as he had each time he was arrested?… What were his last thoughts?—that he would never see her again, about his love for her, of course.
No, she would not even open the letter that had arrived yesterday from the public attorney. She knew what it would say. More investigations! She could not go through any more pain, listen to any more filthy cop lies. Let her son rest!
And then last night—
She cursed the extra beer that allowed last night to happen. She had said yes when the young man offered it to her, but only in defiance—the Blessed Mother would attest to that—because Amalia was a moral woman who had never been unfaithful to any of her husbands, nor to a steady “boyfriend.” She spat angrily now. The hot humiliation of last night grasped her—Raynaldo stalking out of the bar, accusing her of flirting with that young man, who had kept staring at her. And so—
“Yes, I will have that beer,” she had told him. He joined her in the “family” section of the restaurant-bar. He brought his own beer and a fresh one for her. Yes, he was good-looking—why deny what everyone could see? He had dreamy dark eyes, smooth brown skin, and he wore a sacred cross on a tiny golden chain on his chest. He was from Nicaragua, his family displaced; where?… Like her he spoke English and lapsed into Spanish. She was sure he thought she was younger than she was. She attracted all types of men, after all, and she was wearing one of her prettiest dresses, watery blue, with ruffles—and her shiniest earrings, with golden fringe.
“Bonita Amalia,” he had said.
“How do you know my name?” She was not flirting, just asserting that it was he who was interested in her.
“I heard the man you were with.” Then he told her his name: “Angel.”
Angel! Amalia had a weakness for handsome men with holy names. Her first husband’s name was Salvador, savior; her second was named Gabriel. She hated it when “Angel” was mispronounced by Anglos as “Ain-jel.” It was “Ahn-hel.” … The holy cross on his chest, the sadness about his family, his beautiful name, and his eyes—and Raynaldo’s unfair accusation—that’s what had goaded her …
Amalia drank the extra beer with him, and then—
In her bedroom now, Amalia’s eyes drifted toward the window. It would be a beautiful summer-tinged spring day, she told herself. Yet a sadness had swept away the exhilaration of this day’s beginning.
She stood up to face the day. She could hear Gloria and Juan talking in their “bedroom.” They were so close she sometimes felt left out of their lives.… And why shouldn’t they sleep in the same room? After all, they were brother and sister, weren’t they?—and of the same father. Soon one of them would be moving into Teresa’s room, where Manny had slept—and they had adored their reckless half brother. They were avoiding moving into that room, Amalia knew, but there was just so long that you could avoid things, and that’s what she must tell them.
She dressed quickly. Now she would leave this room with its aroused worries. She would allow no more, none, not about Juan—Hiding what with his new moodiness? Was he using drugs? Who was that Salvadoran boy he had let sleep in the garage; hiding from what?… No more worries! Not about Gloria. She had thrown up recently. Was she pregnant by that odd Mick with his colorless eyes and dark, dark eyebrows? What had she wanted to tell her that morning? … No more worries! Not about Raynaldo, either—What was really bothering him? Would he come back? No more worries!
And she was not going to give one more thought to the white cross—no, it had been silver!—that she had seen—thought she had seen this morning … although it had been so beautiful.
And certainly no more about last night!
Last night—
“Una florpara la bonita Amalia.” Angel had said that last night.
“What?” She had wanted to hear it again.
“A flower for pretty Amalia.” He had already called to the girl selling flowers in the bar-restaurant. He placed the bud in her dark hair, as if he had known her for long, from her girlhood, yes, and he had made her feel the way she had wanted to feel as a girl, and that’s why she said yes to him when he asked to join her, because—
Because—
Because he had given her a gardenia, the color of the pearl-white wedding dress she had never worn because at fifteen she had already aborted one child by a man who raped her and whom she was forced to marry.
2
MOST PEOPLE have regrets. Amalia knew that. She had been surrounded from birth by the sighs of Mexican women who wept often and muttered pained prayers, the same prayers, it would come to seem to her, that they sobbed at weddings, births, christenings, burials; and she remembered women who draped themselves triumphantly in mourning, celebrating the death of someone close, somber st
ark presences, all sinister blackness and grief and sighs; and there were the beatas who crawled on their knees to the foot of altars, shouting sorrowful gratitude for God’s infinite mercies; and—more clearly recalled as she grew older—there were the Mexican men whose forlorn cries and curses of lament were released by anger and beer, and then they, too, sighed and wept and shouted regret over some enormous loss, something they had once had—before they had “come to this”—something left unnamed, recognized only as lost; and, as if it occurred simultaneously—or so it seemed at times to Amalia when she remembered it later—over it all, over all the sighs, were romantic, sentimental ballads that poured out constantly from loud radios, the same ballads that bands of mariachis played and sang at celebrations and in bars; and even the ballads of love and good times and loyalty to God and the Holy Mother were punctuated by those long, sustained sighs that bruised the words of happiness. Later, Amalia heard those same sighs at the sewing factory she worked in, and on the buses she rode with other maids to work. And she would hear them as she stood in line outside the Hall of Justice with other women waiting to visit their sons in jail. But she heard them first, those sighs of regret, from her mother and her father. So she knew early that most people have regrets. But she, Amalia, had none.
Not that her life was so fulfilling, it was not, and God and the Holy Mother would not blame her for observing that. It was only that she could remember no missed opportunity to regret. She could not remember a time when a desirable choice had been presented to her, something she would look back on and even suspect that it might have altered the lines of her life. Nothing. Without possibility to resist what was sure to come, she moved from crisis to crisis, which, finally, formed one, her life. “Change” was an intensification of the same worries. So she lived within the boundaries of her existence, and that did not include hope, real hope. She felt that any choice she might have made would have led her to the exact place, the same situation—finally to the decaying neighborhood threatened by gangs in the fringes of Hollywood.
