The Brick People

by Alejandro Morales

  “I want that desk,” a ten-year-old said.

  “No! That one is mine!”

  “But I’m taller!” a thirteen-year-old girl insisted.

  “Let’s not argue. Please! I will decide who gets a desk and who doesn’t,” Miss Haylock shouted after realizing why the children were upset.

  One small child grabbed at the two hands that pinched his cheeks and forced his mouth to open. Miss Haylock studied the boy’s angered posture.

  “Now don’t get upset; this is for your own good.” She pushed the boy forward and reached for the next child.

  Her words sounded familiar but did not settle fittingly, snugly into the niches of understanding in the child’s brain. He still had the sensation of being shoved on his shoulders, and his cheeks hurt. He turned, rubbed his cheeks and left ear, and watched Miss Haylock grab at the other children as they entered the classroom. He heard sounds, but moved through the room not grasping their significance. Some words he heard as hollow and empty; others were perforated and spelled out a foreign feeling. He understood none wholly. The words spoken by Miss Haylock were occidental and not appropriate for the ancient Mexican teachings he inherited and felt at this moment. The boy’s mother followed the others, and in the furthest recesses of his mind a sensation of pain slowly emerged.

  That September day in 1907, the children of Simons began their American education.

  From the evening when Walter had met Sarah at the party honoring his father and mother, Reuben Simons had relentlessly deteriorated. Three years had passed without anyone ever seeing a smile on Reuben’s face. In the last year he often started to strangle when he lay on his back; consequently his life was now spent sitting in a chair. His life became constant non-active rest. He had lost physical control of body functions and his mind had hardened to senility and regressed to infancy. His wife Melissa struggled alone with him, refusing help. She had declared to her sons and written to her daughters that it was undignified for her husband to be seen unclad by anyone else but her. Nonetheless, as Reuben’s condition worsened, his body became heavier until finally she could not budge him.

  Reuben was gradually transfigured into brittle rock. He recognized no one. He blurted nonsensical words and phrases, seemingly conversing to whoever stood before him. He elucidated flashbacks, and he verbalized in clear and beautiful descriptions the places, people and situations of his past.

  Once in a great while, in stances of clarity, he recognized the people who loved him. He would call their name, but before a dialogue could be established he was gone. He would surface in infancy where he entertained himself with wooden beads, blocks and dolls. When dinner was brought to him he would gulp it down with his hands. No matter what the food was, he would use only his hands. He ate as if he had no fill and was probably capable of eating himself to death. The brain did not receive the message of fullness or hunger. He ate automatically when food was placed in front of him. Reuben Simons had been transformed into a helpless infant at the mercy of all human beings. He had no function and members of his family wished him a speedy death to save him from the horrible and humiliating agonies of decrepitude.

  Joseph, who had been with him during his last moments, sat in the parlor of his parents’ home waiting for the guests to pass through and express the socially expected words of condolence. On a couch next to him sat his mother and Orin Elmer, who was the most visibly shaken by his father’s passing. Standing at the window watching the visitors come and go that afternoon, Walter had said nothing to any of the family members. A sense of resignation and relief reigned over the persons in the room. In a few hours the elaborate coffin would be taken to the Christian’s Presbyterian Cemetery in Pasadena to be lowered into a pit, covered with earth, and separated from the world of the living. Next to the coffin sat Laura, nine-year-old James and Sarah, waiting for the men from the cemetery to take the coffin. Outside, when the coffin was being lifted onto the wagon, Orin Elmer screamed and sobbed.

  “Why must they bury him so deep!” Orin Elmer repeated on the way to the cemetery.

  As the family entourage arrived at the gravesite, Melissa Simons broke down, praying out loud and crying for the beloved one. There was no preacher to say the last words. The family and friends said goodbye in their own private way.

  “Reuben, I’m so afraid of being alone!” Melissa called to the coffin as it was being lowered.

  Mr. and Mrs. Bolin went to Melissa and led her away. The women of the family followed. The three Simons brothers stood around the mouth of the grave.

  “Sarah is pregnant,” Walter announced, facing Joseph.

  “My God, Father would have been so happy. Another grandchild soon to arrive,” Joseph said, extending his open hand.

  “I hope you two will stop fighting. Do it for him!” Orin Elmer dropped a carnation into the pit.

  “Let’s go home.” Joseph guided Orin Elmer to the wagon. Walter remained by the grave.

  “Come on, Walter,” Orin Elmer insisted from the top of the wagon.

  “No, I want to stay. I’ll walk,” Walter said as the wagon pulled away.

  Moments later, two Mexicans came and began to shovel dirt down into the pit. The dirt clods thudded on the coffin. The Mexicans padded down the soil of the mound they had shaped.

  “A nice cool bed,” Walter said softly.

  “Sí, patrón, bonita cama,” one of the Mexicans repeated while the other pulled out a cigarette and lit up, then offered one to Walter who took it and waited until the other took one.

  Walter lit the man’s cigarette and then his own and walked away, leaving footprints and ashes on his father’s grave.

  The night was magic. Voices from forty years past came to him and danced as he looked out from the window of his second nuptial chamber in the National Palace, searching for the long brilliant tail of light traveling through the clear night of the western sky. Was the world really going to end? Not according to his consultants. The Golden Age would never end. Halley’s Comet was a sign of everlasting power that represented another one hundred years of reign for the Coming Man.

  He had ruled with a strong hand, guiding his people to the promised land, a land of tranquility, for until now there had been peace in his country for twenty-five years. His enemies accused him of being an irresponsible despot and those voices began to speak against him. But he would pay them back; he would be glad to return the favor. To pay his opponents the respect they deserved he had organized his urban Bravi, a private army that he could count on to destroy any person or organization who dared to challenge his authority.

  The Bravi did away with whatever Don Porfirio Diaz deemed an obstacle to his government. He controlled the Bravi by offering it a free hand to obtain all the human blood it needed to satisfy its unquenchable thirst. He was a master at offering bread and the club. In the provinces he set up the national police, the Rurales, who decided life or death for the peasants. Their murders went unquestioned for thirty years. Don Porfirio Diaz gave bread to the Bravi, Rurales, army, bureaucrats, foreigners and the Catholic Church, and to the common Mexican in the cities or the countryside he reserved the club which he used mercilessly.

  He thought of himself as the father of all Mexicans. In his dreams he held and stroked his fatherly, enormous penis which he lay throughout the land. He had given birth to railroad lines that stretched north and south, to the silver, gold, copper, lead, zinc mines, to the coffee, sugar, banana, and henequen plantations and to the exportation of Mexico’s natural resources. Porfirian sperm impregnated the country with foreign economic interest which exploited Mexicans and Mexico. The United States, England, France, Germany and other countries positioned their economic virgins for Don Porfirio’s rich penis. He gave them everything they desired and in return they gave him simple sensual pleasure. In Don Porfirio Diaz’s logic, Mexico was not getting fucked but was the one doing the fucking. He smiled and patted himself on the back for what he considered one of his greatest accomplishments.

  Th
e people who surrounded the great barbarian began to believe in his immortality and so they decided that the city in which a forever god dwelled must be clean of filth and human hideousness. The capital was cleaned up and modernized. Electric lights illuminated the boulevards and glimmered and sparkled on the new streetcars that circulated through the city’s main thoroughfare. On orders of Don Porfirio, large marble edifices were built for the god to behold. To house his selected entertainment he constructed the fabulous Palace of Fine Arts. The building was as foreign as the way of life Don Porfirio modeled. The only authentic element of Mexico at the time was the enslaved masses considered no better than beasts. The aristocracy praised the dictatorship for it brought in a golden age, the neofeudal system on the haciendas and the Rurales to keep the peace.

  If any peon or poor Mexican complained of the aristocracy’s considerations, the Rurales arrested him, and when the Mexican attempted to escape, he or she was shot, according to la ley de fuga. Indians, the majority of Mexicans, were Don Porfirio Diaz’s favorite targets. Yaquis and Mayas he enslaved and slaughtered by the thousands. His generals boasted that in his delight to kill Indians he was matched only by the best American cavalry.

  It was also his wish that the Indians and leperos who begged on the Paseo de la Reforma an other elegant avenues and boulevards of the capital be kept away permanently. The thousands of dismembered bodies that were later discovered along the country roads and open fields outside Mexico City were explained as leprous corpses that fell apart because of the disease. The rich accepted without question the official explanation and the poor had no choice but to bury the remains. Don Porfirio’s immortality grew on the mountains of the bodies of dead Mexicans in the cities and in the country.

  On an occasional Sunday he would parade in an elegant carriage drawn by beautiful, high-stepping coursers down the Paseo de la Reforma to the magnificent home of one of his trusted científicos. There they would chat about the latest French style, the best French schools that their sons and daughters attended. The women compared the dernier cri and commented on the absolutely inferior quality of the Spanish mantilla. Throughout the conversation the aristocrats injected a French word or two. How they lamented the horrible barbarism of their country. How they prided themselves for collecting French objects. How they bragged and pointed proudly to the imported French artifacts which decorated the entire house and with a sense of accomplishment, told Don Porfirio Diaz: “¡En ésta su casa no hay nada mexicano!”

  Within his circumference, Don Porfirio saw nothing but white faces at the parties he attended. At his meetings with his chosen and faithful government administrators there stared back at him only white silent faces ... Era verdad, no había nada mexicano en Mexico ... he thought as he circulated through the crowds of praising international well-wishers. Don Porfirio carried his penis in his left hand and his beautiful wife Doña Carmen Rubio on his right arm. But for the very poor, Mexico had become the mother of foreigners and the stepmother of Mexicans. Three times a week Don Porfirio held audience for international dignitaries who came to shower the immortal one with gushes of flattery and foreign decorations, which he loved. For don Porfirio Diaz’s people, international interest offered systematic exploitation and slow death.

  The man who was born into a poor mestizo family, who was an illiterate guerrillero, who fought and stopped the French in the rugged mountains of Oaxaca, who suddenly found himself the immortal dictator of Mexico, who, as he gained power and strength in political office, married—after his first wife died under mysterious circumstances—Doña Carmen Rubio, a young, beautiful and forceful creole woman, he gradually underwent a metamorphosis. He began to turn white.

  This strange phenomenon was first noticed when a French painter, commissioned by Doña Carmen, unveiled a portrait of Don Porfirio at a public audience which the immortal one gave once a year. His consagrados, his caballada, high ranking Bravi, Rurales, and the illustrious científicos were present. Immediately after the revealing of the portrait, a murmur overtook the great hall at the Palace of Fine Arts, followed by thunderous applause. When Don Porfirio and Doña Carmen Diaz stood in front of the portrait they saw his exact image, except that the face was that of a white man. Don Porfirio and Doña Carmen agreed that they were white. The dictator called for a mirror and reviewed his mestizo face and arms. Of course he was white, and when he raised his white arms above his head the applause came again. From that moment, Don Porfirio and every member of his family and all other people who wanted his favor began to use a white talc to whiten their faces. A sickly pale shine was the look of the time.

  Don Porfirio kept searching the evening sky for the white tail of Halley’s Comet. He realized that his detractors would say that the white of his face was caused by fear and cowardice. He touched his face with the fingers of both hands and slowly pulled them down and contemplated the contrasting white smudges on the fingertips with the dark of his wrinkled hands.

  Far to the north, Malaquías de León wiped the mud off his dark face. He had been forced, like many others, to pass through a large area of mud which led to the international boundary. Malaquías cleaned his bags and clothes, for he had taken a head-first fall into the slime. Malaquías spat out mud as he crossed the border into the United States. He saw Halley’s Comet and walked away from it to Simons, California.

  Chapter 6

  In the distance appeared white, red and purple smudges to the left of the tracks. Nana de León pushed her face against the glass so she would not lose the colors from her sight. She glanced over to her Uncle Mario and implored him silently to open the window. Beautiful brick buildings with red tile roofs grew in her vision. Her sister Paquita climbed on Nana’s shoulder and looked at a man waiting alone at the Simons depot. Now the white, red and purple areas had turned into flowers that decorated the oblong depot located in front of the general store. Nana could see people going in and out of the other nearby buildings.

  The train slowed; few people stopped to watch who would get on or off. Uncle Mario stood and got everybody ready to get off. Nana noticed a slight smile as he took his wife’s hand. Nana understood that smile as a sign of happiness that the journey was at last over and that they all had arrived healthy.

  “Simons!” a conductor yelled as he walked to the iron steps of the door to their car. Nana watched him grab an iron handle and swing his body over the gravel. He waved his arm and the train stopped.

  The man whom she had seen from faraway now stood in front of a delicate iron bench. He waited at the door. Two years had passed since she had seen her father. Paquita and Nana recognized him immediately. Their two-year-old baby sister didn’t recognize Malaquías de León, for he had left El Barral just days after her birth. They all pushed through the door to step on permanent soil and hear some word from the silent man who seemed to hug them with his eyes.

  Malaquías de León reached out to shake hands with his brother-in-law Mario. He smiled and thanked him for accepting the responsibility of guiding Lorenza and their three daughters through the perilous trip north. Lorenza quietly waited for some kind of acknowledgement from her husband. He finally went to her and gently embraced her. Then he hugged his oldest daughter, then Nana, and took the baby Jesus in his arms.

  “I am grateful that you have arrived healthy. Now follow me,” he said.

  The two sisters walked side by side, observing the new buildings and houses that had recently been constructed. Everything was so new and modern. Simons was a marvelous and beautiful place, a mysterious city full of strange machines and sounds. As they advanced with their father, men passed into the center of the brickyard from where polyphonic sounds originated and from where men emerged with faces and clothes covered with red dust and mud. The people seemed to have a destination and Nana wondered where her father’s might be. She hoped it was one of those beautiful white houses with potted flowers at the edges of the little front porches she saw on Vail Avenue. These were wonderful and beautiful places compared to the h
ouse in which they had lived in El Barral.

  Now Nana walked alone behind her father, turning and exploring the town. She hoped that he would take them to one of those white houses where she promised herself she would take care of the flowers. There were only three more houses on the street they traveled. Nana’s face revealed disappointment as her father led the family away from the last one. Ahead a small grocery store appeared in their path. Malaquías opened a wooden gate next to Acacio Newman Delgado’s grocery store. He entered a small fresh garden of ferns and exotic flowers. Connected perpendicularly to the back of the store was the Delgado residence. It was much larger than the other houses in Simons. On the porch was a small loveseat swing on which Nana and Paquita immediately sat. Malaquías knocked and moved Jesus to his left shoulder. From the side of the house a happy voice said hello.

  “Your family has come, Malaquías! The rooms are ready. Come with me, señora. Here you will stay until they finish the new houses. It will be a matter of two weeks at the most. Those carpenters work very fast. Isn’t that right, Malaquías?” Maria Delgado said, almost screaming and speaking rapidly.

  Malaquías did not attempt to interrupt and gestured to Lorenza not to try.

  “Come on in, please. What beautiful little girls. They will be very happy here. There is a lot to do and they also have school. I brought you extra blankets for the girls. The two beds are big and comfortable. I think you will be fine. Food is served to our guests at seven in the morning, at twelve and at six in the evening, every day, of course.”

  Maria Delgado opened the door to one of the rooms in the back of the house which she rented to single men. Malaquías had stayed with the Delgados for two years since his arrival in Simons. He had asked them for an extra room for his family until he was given a house. Gonzalo Pedroza had promised him one of the new houses constructed in Simons. Suddenly Malaquías and Lorenza realized that Maria Delgado’s rapid talking voice was no longer present. She had left as fast as she had appeared. Malaquías laughed with his wife and daughters.