by John Rechy
Now that was funny, Amalia admitted. It never failed to amaze her how many Mexicans had religious names, like Concepción. There were also Asunción, Incarnación, Milagros. Milagros—Miracles. That struck her now as the oddest; the name sounded different today. Quickly, she checked in her purse to see whether she still had the address Milagros had written down for her the day she’d learned that Rosario had “disappeared.” It seemed now to Amalia that Milagros had definitely indicated she knew more about what had really happened to Rosario. She longed to see her friend from the sewing factory, talk with her again—today! She found the worn paper with the address on it. Perhaps she would visit Milagros—not far away—to find out what she knew. The prospect of locating Rosario brightened her.
The hefty woman in line before the Red Cross trailer was repeating her story about the woman named Concepción who had gone into labor, “right here.”
Gloria, Amalia added to her list of religious names. Of course Rosario—rosary. And Consuelo—hope; Dolores—pain. But those weren’t necessarily religious, were they? And Salvador—
And Angel—
His eyes had been on hers, last night in his room, as if to be granted permission to do what he did. Did she nod? Perhaps, but only slightly. He bent to kiss her mouth. She closed her lips, to render the kiss innocent, as it must be. Then he did this, so softly, so soundlessly that she was not jarred, not frightened: He closed the door that had remained open. He stood before her then and slowly, very slowly—yes, ready to stop if she forbade it—he drew the dress from her shoulders and kissed them gently.
Yes, and she let him. Because—Because—
Because he had done it with such caring and tenderness, the way it had never been done before, not clumsily, not angrily, no, but the way it must be, the way he was now removing her dress, her clothes, so lovingly, the way it should be, the way it should have been, the way it would be now—and then she realized he had removed his own clothes, realized it only when she glimpsed his body—briefly, because she had never seen a man look so naked, so—Yes, she had felt embarrassment, wanted to cover herself—but that was natural, clean embarrassment. He stared at her breasts as if in awe, studied them, so closely that she felt his eyelashes brush her nipples. “Linda, linda Amalia,” he breathed the words. Oh, was it possible this was a first time for him?—and it felt as if it were for her, as if she were returning to a time that had gone wrong, was being righted now, cleansed, clean desire …
“—went into labor, right here.” The hefty woman was telling her story to a prim old man and old woman who had just extended the line. “And do you know what her name was?” The laughing woman stopped her story abruptly.
Amalia felt a slight trembling of the earth.
The old man and the old woman grabbed each other and would have fallen if the Anglo young man had not caught them.
“Is it—?” Amalia could hardly speak.
“It’s not an earthquake,” the “doctor” called out to them from the Red Cross trailer.
“Our motor has to be generated every so often,” the “nurse” explained the continuing vibration. “Everyone’s so jittery about earthquakes,” she laughed. “They’ve been with us since the beginning of time.”
Nevertheless—Amalia hoped the subject would end there.
“When the Big One comes—” The prim old man shook his head.
“It won’t come for thirty years,” the woman who had witnessed Concepcióon going into labor dismissed.
Amalia was always encouraged when she heard that repeated estimate. Still, within thirty years included tomorrow … or today. “There isn’t going to be an earthquake,” she said assertively. Faith was forceful, wasn’t it? And if faith could move mountains—She backed away from that thought, not appropriate now.
“Yes, there is going to be, a huge one, it’s going to be an eight-point-five,” the old man said. His wife clenched her purse, as if the earthquake would threaten it first.
You couldn’t get away from this talk! Amalia thought testily. This old man probably figured he’d die before anything else could happen, and that accounted for his pleasure. “Maybe—if there is one—something heavy will fall on you,” she told him, to shut him up.
“Not on me,” the man said with assurance. “Maybe on her” He indicated his wife. He seemed delighted at the prospect of an enormous disaster that would leave him as sole survivor. “I’m prepared with bottles of water. You should be prepared, too,” he directed at Amalia. “You can’t rely on miracles.”
Amalia looked at the sky.
The young woman who looked like a born-again said, “There’s no such thing as miracles.”
“Just catastrophes,” her companion laughed.
Well, they weren’t born-agains, Amalia reached for small consolations.
“Yes, miracles have ended,” the old man announced. “You want me to tell you why? Because God thought—” He deepened his voice into the authoritative voice of God: “Why should I give them my miracles when they’ve changed everything?” In his own voice, he said, “Look at what people used to do to prove their love of God.”
“Yeah,” said the young man, “slicing up lambs—”
“—and offering children for slaughter,” said the young woman.
“I’m not talking about that,” the old man dismissed. “I’m talking about weddings. They used to be beautiful. That’s why people stayed together. I’ve been with her”—he gave a stern nod in his wife’s direction—“fifty-four years.” He went on to describe his wedding that had honored God with days of singing and lots of crying.
Like Teresa’s—days of celebrating in her white dress, with its full skirt, yards of material, all white, all pure, Amalia thought. She had never even felt married, ever. She had never felt courted until—
Last night. With Angel …
She had felt his hands lightly on her breasts. He didn’t crush them, didn’t squeeze them. He cupped them as if they were precious—and they were, the way a girl’s full breasts are precious, and beautiful. “Sweet, sweet,” he sighed. Her body quivered, a warm quivering that spread. This was how it was supposed to feel, she knew, now, with this man, this young man, this Angel—who still wore his holy amulet about his neck. She was aware of a new excitement, the excitement of first exploration, an excitement that should have occurred before rape and accusations and anger and deaths. She glanced to one side, to a chair. She imagined that a white veil that had swirled in a breeze rested there….
Bastard, bastard, bastard! Amalia banished Angel—again—from her thoughts.
“And if they won’t have beautiful weddings with music, I’ll give them earthquakes!” The old man had deepened his voice into God’s again.
Enough! By now her pressure would have soared beyond the instrument’s ability to record. Amalia left the line…. It wasn’t true, what those people had said. Miracles did happen, several a week, according to that tabloid at the grocery store. Of course, most of them didn’t sound right—like the story about those teenagers in Europe, six boys and girls, who claimed the Blessed Mother visited them regularly and insisted they wear expensive clothes so the “youths of the world” would look up to them, and that if—
“‘Amá!”
She thought she heard her son calling to her, just as he had when he was alive. That’s how powerfully she imagined it when it occurred, as it had now, at unexpected times. She might be at work or at home—or talking or even laughing—and she would hear his familiar: “‘Ama, ‘Amita!” and she would answer in her mind: M’ijo! All she could do then was to clasp her hands in order to control the pummeling sadness that followed, and then—increasingly now—there would often seep into that sadness an additional sorrow, for Juan, for Gloria, and all she could do was sigh.
Amalia sighed now.
She hurried briskly along Sunset Boulevard, away from her memories. She saw a Mexican bakery with the large L that proclaimed the sale of Lotto tickets. She went in, to buy one, to occupy her
mind. She would still not check last week’s drawing.
“How many tickets?” the large Mexican man asked her.
“Just one is all it takes to win.” That’s what Raynaldo always said when he bought his, although he’d end up buying several—“and one more for the road,” he would add if there were others there to laugh. She remembered that fondly now…. She chose her lottery numbers carefully, a combination of her age, the year she arrived in Los Angeles, the year of Manny’s birth.
“If you win, that’ll keep you off welfare—at least for a while.”
“What did you say to me?” Amalia clenched the ticket the man had just sold her.
“A joke. I tell that to all my Hispanic customers.”
His careless remark had thrust her into the memory of the time the welfare woman had come to investigate whether she was living with a man, right after Manny was born. “You are despicable,” she told the man.
“It’s a joke I tell all my Hispanic—”
“Coyote!” She yelled back at him the harshest name she could think of, that of the men who prey on their own people.
Outside, she paused, saddened and angered, on the hot street, wondering where to go next. Oh, if only she had thought of something insulting to say to Angel last night.
Last night—
She had lain back in his bed, last night, and he leaned over her, his head just slightly bowed. As if honoring her initiation into clean desire, she had thought. Then with his hands he touched her body slowly, all of it, desiring it, not assaulting it, touching every part of it, lingeringly, as if he wanted to ensure she was feeling all these wondrous sensations—sensations which had been killed by Salvador and had remained dead with the others; bringing her body back to life.
In the muted light he had left on—“so I can see all of you, pretty Amalia”—she saw her body as if for the first time, saw her breasts, lush, yes, hued a deeper brown in this light, the nipples just darker, saw her hips, sensual in their fullness, allowed herself to see the abrupt velvet-darkness between her thighs, which extended the sinuous line of her hips. All of this—and his body, beautiful, too, taut, just lightly brushed with a film of hair—was right in its nudity, not dirty for abuse, but clean for desire and love.
She slid her hand over her breasts, down her stomach, to her thighs, to assert that this responding flesh was hers. She let the same hand glide over Angel’s shoulder, to affirm that he was with her—and now he had become for her a knowledgeable initiating groom, who had realized that it was—truly—a first time, the way it should have been. She reached up to touch the gardenia in her hair. Even if it had begun to wilt, it would appear fresh, in this light, lustrous.
He held her hands and raised his face to her lips, which he brushed, just brushed this time, with his. Then his mouth moved over her breasts. His tongue circled them, narrowing on her nipples. He sucked them lightly, paused, studied them, sighed, resumed licking them. He laid one of his hands, softly, between her thighs, so softly she was aware of her own sensation before she was aware of his hand. She touched that hand, and—She felt an intrusive anxiety, the sharp edge of fear inherited from the past. She rejected it, with the memory of Salvador, yes, and of the others who had only taken her body, the way Raynaldo took it, grasping….
Angel kissed her stomach. He parted his lips slightly so that as they slid down, down, they left on her flesh a moist warmth, a warmth that radiated from his lips and over her body, into her body—there—warmly, warmly, and she felt his aroused member pressed against her, not yet entering, not shoving, not demanding, not forcing. She was aware of a stirring she welcomed, did not welcome, welcomed—yes, welcomed as her whole body awakened…. That disturbed her—no, it excited her—no, it—Yes.
Her body trembled, and she sighed. Gratefully, she looked at Angel as he knelt before her.
There was a twisted smile on his face. She heard his voice, a stranger’s harsh voice:
“Yes, like that, pretend it’s your first time, play it real good for me.”
Pretend! The dim light in the room exploded into ugly brightness, exposing her utterly naked body in a stranger’s room. She turned away from this man, not only from his naked body but from his naked eyes—and from the holy amulet on his chest, which in that moment had glinted like the edge of a knife. “Don’t,” she was able to whisper.
“Don’t what?” He held her thighs and his mouth pushed roughly between her legs. Then he looked up at her, still holding her thighs. “Say it. Say, ‘Don’t eat my cunt, don’t fuck me.’ I want to hear you tell me not to. Act like it’s your first time.” He spoke in English so that the words sounded coarser to her, and there was a new drawl in his voice.
As if he was pretending to be a gringol Amalia wanted to pull back—from him, from Salvador, from memories even fouler now. But she could not because his hands clasped her more tightly. You made me feel clean! she wanted to scream at him, but all she could say to protest the violent change was: “Where did you learn such ugly words?” She was trying to remind him of all he had told her, of his recent arrival in this country, the dangers that had aroused her pity.
“From a good puta, a bitch,” he said.
“Puta!” The most despised word a woman can be called. Worse than just “whore.” “I am not a whore!” Her voice was hardly audible to her. In a moment she would not be able even to speak. Fear was crawling over every inch of her being.
“But that’s what I want—to turn you into a puta while you pretend it’s your first time.” He waited for moments, kneeling before her, holding her thighs. Then he released her, shrugged, stood up.
That was what allowed her to grasp for her clothes. She lifted them from the floor, pressed them against her body, to cover the sudden nudity.
Glaringly naked now, he stood before her in the light that seemed to flood the room. “Relax. I’m not going to force you.” He spoke in Spanish. “That’s not what I wanted.”
She understood—he had wanted another humiliation, not physical violence; and so she was able to put on her clothes, each intimate item pulling her into a new awareness of how naked she had been. She realized only now that, for the first time ever, she had been unfaithful to a man she lived with. She had been unfaithful to Raynaldo. She twisted into her dress, put on her stockings, shoes.
Angel went to a small refrigerator, brought out a beer, flipped it open, drank from it. He leaned back, watching her. “I thought it’s what you wanted, too. I was going to give you a good time.”
His words deepened her shame. Fully dressed, she stood up. She saw the withered gardenia on the floor. She stepped on it. Then she walked to the door, opened it, ready to leave this despised room.
He aimed his most deadly words at her. He said, “A woman like you …”
On Sunset Boulevard—not yet noon and so hot!—Amalia refused to allow the rest of Angel’s words from last night to enter her mind. She needed a distraction, right away, anything! She saw, ahead, a small boy, about ten, black, waving a long strip of bright-yellow plastic paper along the street. She caught up with him.
“What’s that?” she asked cheerfully. She needed to hear something happy; that he had been to a birthday party decorated with paper ribbons; that he had—
“Police tape,” the boy said. Pants much too large for him drooped over ragged tennis shoes. He brought the plastic paper to his mouth. He held it there for moments.
“What?” And what was he doing alone on Sunset Boulevard? Amalia wished now she had chosen someone else to talk to.
“My sister was shot last week, right on our porch. Killed. I was with her, seen it all. Cops roped off the porch with tape to keep other people away. I kept this piece to remember her. She was nice.” He eyed Amalia with enormous brown eyes, as if baffled that she would have to ask.
“I’m—”Before she could finish, try to console him—she had wanted to hold him, he seemed so lost—the boy disappeared along the street, waving the police tape, which didn’t flutter in the st
ill air, just dragged behind him on the hot pavement.
Who had killed her? A gang? The police?… Feeling sadder, with something more to push away from her thoughts, Amalia decided she would go to El Bar & Grill, to find out about Raynaldo.
One of several such places in the area—they evolve into “neighborhood bars”—El Bar & Grill was once Elmer’s Bar & Grill, frequented by movie stuntmen. The last letters of Elmer’s name blurred. The clientele changed to Mexican. The bar became El Bar & Grill, although the grill had long been gone. Now, at night and on weekends, when it opened early, a woman from East Los Angeles delivered delicious homemade tamales, kept hot throughout the day.
Before she could change her mind, Amalia entered the bar. All bars look harsh in daylight, and El Bar & Grill certainly needed a good painting.
Raynaldo was not there.
But Andy, last night’s bartender, was. He eyed Amalia as he always did. Three other men sat at the bar, drinking beer.
Amalia went to a table, one of only two in the immediate bar area; the others were in the “family section.” Avoiding the droopy look he fixed on her—which he apparently considered attractive—Amalia told Andy, before he could reach her table, that she wanted two tamales. After all, she hadn’t really eaten that hamburger earlier—and she didn’t want to plunge carelessly into her reason for being here.
“Chicken or pork?” Andy was now hovering over her.
“One chicken, one sweet.” She would have preferred pork instead of chicken, but she had to think of her health. She waited tensely at the table. When Andy placed the steaming tamales before her, she began to eat quickly, to banish him. Hmmm, delicious. American food just couldn’t compete, no matter how they kept trying.
“That man you were talking to last night after Raynaldo left is a coyote.” Andy had leaned over and said that to her.
