Gringa

by Sandra Scofield

  She knew, before she had finished, that he had lost interest. “It’s going to be fine, fine,” he said absently. He unbuttoned the first buttons of her shirt and slid his hand over her breast. “No change here,” he whispered. His first touch chilled her; the sensation raced down her spine and down her arms, like the dye before an X ray. She felt the smooth small strokes of his fingers as he plucked at a nipple idly, looking her over.

  “I missed you,” she ventured in a moment. He smiled and pinched her nipple hard. “Ow!” she yipped. She thought he must have meant something by it, he had pinched too hard to be playful, but she was bewildered, and now cautious. He withdrew his hand, and straightened the sheet over his thighs.

  “I hear you’ve been busy. Made new friends.”

  “Not really. I’ve known Adele for years. Of course I’ve only just met her husband.” She had no idea what Tonio meant.

  “I don’t want you out at the university. The place is going crazy. There is going to be trouble.” Just for a moment she was surprised, and then she thought: Of course, he would know.

  “Why would I go there?” she demurred. One part of her wanted him to go on, to warn her and threaten. He was so wise; he could see what was coming. He knew everything. But it was like a smile across the cantina floor: You had to go at your own speed. You had to find your own way. The time, the tension, was everything. For dance, or love, or fear.

  “Students are babies,” he said sharply. “They know nothing of government or politics or economics. They don’t understand that Mexico can thrive only if it is stable. They don’t understand the function of the political process, of elections.”

  She smiled, amazed at his ferocity. She tried to imagine him in a room with students.

  “I’m not playing word games with you, Abby. I’m telling you that this was once a country under barbaric rule and now it is one of the most rapidly developing countries in the world. You don’t understand, any more than those silly students do, and why should you? What do any of you know about growth rate and inflation and debt ratio? All you need to understand is that if our economy is unstable the world dismisses us. You don’t even need to know that, only that this government will not stand for anything that threatens order. Students! What do they want but to take money out of investments, where the promise is, to stuff into the pockets of the poor? What will that give us but a short generation of full bellies, and a carcass of an economy?”

  He paused, glaring at her. She didn’t know what he was talking about. He knew what she was good for.

  “None of that means a thing to me, Tonio. It’s gay talk, like bears dancing in Chapultapec. It’s all so much noise.”

  “So stay out of it.” He seemed to mean for the conversation to be over. Then he said, “Felix said you moved abruptly.”

  “I was there for weeks! I was worried he had no place to take his girlfriends.” She gave Tonio a sly look, but he was not provoked. With less conviction, she said, “I was uncomfortable.”

  Tonio used the hem of the sheet to buff a thumbnail. “You know I don’t like Claude Girard.”

  She said nothing, afraid to make it worse. She did not want him to ask about Sage. It was not the time for it.

  She knew she would never talk to him about Sage. If she went with Sage, it would have to be away from Mexico; she would simply disappear, without explaining. She could never argue anything with Tonio. It was inconceivable. And to run away with Sage? It was an adolescent’s foolish fantasy. Running away from home.

  “Come to the ranch soon.”

  “Reyles says I shouldn’t get too hot.”

  “Stay indoors.” He was sparring with her. “You can turn on all the air conditioners. You can sleep all day.” He spoke with exaggerated boredom. She thought: That is exactly what there is to do at the ranch! In three sentences he had summed up a lot of the last five years of her life!

  “Actually I’ve been thinking you should learn to ride,” he said. “I’m going to assign someone to work with you every day. And my girl at the packing house is trying to learn English. She needs someone to practice with her. You can go over there several times a week. Make yourself useful.

  “Also, I was wondering if you would like to invite your new little American friend to the ranch. I was thinking, if she is pretty, that we could have a good time.”

  Abilene stared, incredulous. She would have got off the bed, but Tonio had grasped her arm, hard.

  “I’d like to see the two of you together, like two sweet fillies—”

  “You’re crazy!”

  “I thought about bringing her here today—”

  He was frightening her. He was capable of anything. His hand was biting into her arm. His eyes shone like cold blue marbles. “If you like,” he said, “we can invite the American rancher, to make it another couple. Four of us—would you like that? Would that be fun for you?”

  She looked down at her arm, where his hand was making a red mark on her skin. She looked at the arm as if it did not belong to her. As soon as she did this, he let go. Letting go showed how much in control he was. He bent over and licked the place where he had marked her skin. His tongue darted over her shoulder and neck and then into her mouth. A brief kiss. To tease.

  “When you came to Acapulco that first time with Mickey—When I first met you. You thought you were such a bad girl, didn’t you? But there are bad girls everywhere! For all the times you had spread your legs, you were innocent, you were a baby. You looked sixteen.”

  “I’d been raped,” she said nastily. Her courage came back in a flood of anger. “I’d made love in the back seats of cars.” How disgusting it was to think of it all.

  “I know all that! But you never gave anything away, did you? You never tried to please them. But me—” He shifted tones crazily. “You’ve nothing to give another man now, Abby. I’d never be jealous, because I’d know how stupid he’d be to think—but don’t make a fool of yourself. Don’t try to make a fool of me, I warn you—”

  There was silence, except for their breathing, and then, in an instant, he was suddenly boyish. “Go ahead, Abby,” he purred. He lay back on his pillows. “Suck me off. I’m sleepy still.” He curled his body, his buttocks slightly away from her, his knees tucked. One shoulder arched. “It’s been too long for us, it makes me grumpy,” he said sweetly.

  How false his seduction was, how it centered on the picture he made in his own mind. She had always known it; she had always done what he wanted. She had been a bad girl, and he had made her the bad woman she was meant to be.

  She closed her eyes and pretended that she loved him. She pretended that this was the first time. The last. She longed to be high. Tonio caressed her hair at the nape of her neck. She laid her cheek for a moment along the inside of his thigh.

  “After the revolution,” he said in his most amused voice, “we won’t have the time for this. There’ll be sugar harvests and political meetings.” He got up, laughing. It had taken so little time.

  While he showered she went into the kitchen and washed her face and mouth in the sink. She lay on the couch blank as sky, waiting for him to dress. He came out wearing a pale blue silk shirt and gray pants. There were pleats below the waist; the pants were so tight the pleats lay pulled open. He put his hand over for her to fasten a gold bracelet on his wrist. He had taken the time to dry his hair. She brought her arms up to fasten the catch of his bracelet; they were heavy as rope.

  “I meant to take you to supper somewhere, but you had a nice lunch, didn’t you? And I’m not hungry now. I have an appointment later, I might as well go to the office now.”

  He was dismissing her. Her arms lay at her sides. He went into his bedroom and returned with a beautiful soft leather case. She watched him from the couch, marvelling at the weight in her arms and legs; if she were dropped into the sea, she would plunge to the ocean floor. Tonio handed her some bills. �
�You go and eat without me,” he said.

  She took the money and laid it on her belly, saying, “I’m not hungry either.” She pretended to miss his cue; she knew he was ready for her to go. She thought he had now put all of it out of his mind, his display of arrogance and witchery, his all-knowingness, his cruelty, he had put her back in place.

  “Close the door behind you,” he said. The sound of his voice pricked her like a nettle. She wanted the argument she might have had. She felt sick with suppressed anger. She wanted to scream, to exchange blows and yells, to fall to the floor. Just once she wanted to shout and make a terrible scene! She wanted to accuse him, of caprice, of being everything that is hateful: smug, rich, safe. She wanted anger to bring back the heat. Her breath was already coming harder.

  “Don’t wait for me to go to the ranch,” he was saying coolly. “Do take your friend if you like. But I want you to be there when I’m there next week. I like it when you come out to meet my plane, looking for all the world like a boy; it makes me horny to see you in my jeans.” Tonio moved nearer her, his weight forward on his near leg. He was a vacuum sucking her in. Oh why was she like this, lying on her back while he stood over her? Why wasn’t she on her feet, clawing his eyes out! “Oh God Tonio!” she bleated. “For God’s sake, let me go!” Tears spurted down her cheeks, a wash of humiliation and fury.

  She had been glad to see him! She had hoped for tenderness. What she wanted was love; what a fool she was.

  Tonio reached down to touch her breasts through her shirt. He touched her belly, and slid his hand toward her thighs, and then off of her, with a show of mild disgust. The money on her belly fell to the floor. He stood above her and spoke in his most neutral voice, as if he were reading a label. “Stay out of trouble.”

  It made her sick to think how she looked.

  “Don’t stumble in your new shoes,” he said.

  She jumped up as he shut the door behind him. She opened the door and shouted to him as he was stepping onto the elevator. “I’ll make my own life you sonofabitch! I’ll come and go how I want. Nobody would come to your stinking ranch! My friend has her own boyfriend! She’s going back to California! She wouldn’t like you!” She took a deep breath. “She’d never fuck you in a million years.”

  He held the elevator door long enough to tell her: “You’re red as an apple, chica. See you soon.”

  She wandered for most of an hour along the streets of the neighborhood, looking at meticulously kept houses, at dogs on leather leashes led by well-dressed women. She stopped in front of a large building of apartments. Through the window on the second floor she could see a pink light from under curly curtains. Someone was pacing back and forth, a small figure, gesturing grandly. She tried to think what might be happening. Someone telling a story. A woman arguing. An American had gotten in her way.

  She walked around, reciting the names of the streets: Mississippi (where Tonio’s apartment was), Danube, Eufrates, Tiber, Tamesis. She supposed Tonio chose his apartment to be close to his Niza Zone office and still be quietly residential. Abilene liked the river names, the suggestion of escape by water. Mickey had told her that there were small houses in the colonia owned by wealthy men with families in Lomas or Pedregal or Polanco, homes kept for beloved mistresses, for love children. Abilene saw no signs of such dramas, except for the single woman in the light of the lamp. If you loved me, she imagined the woman saying. If you loved me, you would come more. In Tonio’s apartment there was no drama. There was no drama in Tonio’s life. Drama came from conflict and uncertainty; like play it demanded tension and a suspension of control. Perhaps there was that between Tonio and the good bull. Perhaps that was why he fought, season after season, and not because the crowds adored him, their blond god. He cared nothing for the adulation of other people.

  On the Paseo de la Reforma, Abilene took a taxi to the Zócalo and got out. She sat on a curb and watched people moving around on the huge square. Across the way the National Palace stared down on her. It was a presence, like Tonio, making order, giving warnings, speaking of unity and the common good. She moved to a bench and watched the cars as they turned into streaks of light in the darkening dusk. The streets were wet, and the light made the water sparkle. It must have rained while she was with Tonio. It rained every day now.

  The students were talking of great demonstrations. Hallie said they could fill this square. Abilene’s eyes gleamed, thinking of it. She saw the excitement that was ahead: the square teeming with shouting people. Banners rippling above their heads.

  Hallie had said, “When the people come out, it is the most wonderful thing in the world to be there. To be where it is happening. Life.”

  Abilene tried to imagine it.

  She thought of the police with their guns drawn, billy clubs swung high and down. She thought of the weak trampled. Women thrown about, touched brutishly.

  Tonio was right. It was none of her business. She stuck her neck out as if it yearned for the hanging.

  He would not make her leave now.

  There was a moment, sharp and vivid and painful, when she saw that for her, connection was always an act of violence. The thought choked her with revulsion; she acknowledged a place in her where everything happened in the dark. She saw men in army clothes; she was on her back. They were coming for her, their clothes undone.

  Adele said that revolution is what happens inside you. She said Daniel was a documentor, that she, Adele, was an eye. She said, “Remember the cave men drew on stones. Someone always writes it down.”

  Abilene had thought of revolution as something in the hills. Glinty-eyed fanatics in fatigue pants. A real revolution would mean guns and blood, like a movie by Yannis. Even when she had seen the bulls go down, blood spurting, the distance had made the animals’ death unreal, a phantasmagoria, a dance. If the avenue were to run with blood, she would float on it like a flower at Xochimilco.

  She knew she was tired and depressed. She knew Tonio had taunted her to tease and not to threaten. She knew, but on a bench, in a square, in a city, she was so far from anything! She closed her eyes, she gave in to the longing she felt to shut out what was real.

  A child’s voice woke her. It was a boy of nine or ten standing in front of her.

  “Señorita, señorita!” he begged. He was holding a tiny gilded bird cage with a blue plastic bird inside. It dangled on a string from his hand. “A bird sings of love,” he said, already learned in his trade. She reached into her bag for the wadded bills Tonio had given her. She gave him the money and took the cage, then got up and walked away, toward the avenue. The boy held the money in front of his face and swore. He could not believe his luck. The crazy lady had given him a handful of paper money, a fortune for a bird.

  IT WAS ABILENE’S idea to try an Arab restaurant. She had heard of a place just off the Zócalo, in a neighborhood where cheap yard goods were sold. Isabel’s sister Ceci and her voluble student friends went along, knowing that Isabel would pay for everything. The students talked all through the meal, especially some boys majoring in geology. The girls were smarter, Isabel whispered to Abilene, and in better colleges than the boys, but now they posed and mewed. Like Ceci, the other girls dressed as North American as they could. One wore her kinky hair in a wild Afro style. Isabel and Abilene exchanged indulgent looks. They talked about the Olympics. The girls speculated on what they could make working as hostesses; they all spoke English and some spoke French, too. They dipped their fingers in couscous and flirted. Ceci was pouting. She would rather have talked politics, but her friends were less serious. She had asked them out to please Isabel. She knew what Isabel wanted: to divert her attention. It was a waste of time.

  It was also Abilene’s idea to go some place and dance. The students laughed and shouted and showed the way to a mariachi cantina. Girls in cheap bright clothes stood on the side, bouncing to the loud music, smoothing their rayon skirts and tortured hair, waiting on boys
to ask them to dance. The boys, who all seemed very young, walked around like buyers at a livestock show. “Are they whores?” Abilene whispered to Isabel. Isabel whispered back, “Not yet.”

  One of the geology boys asked Abilene to dance. The student, whose name was Jorge, was lithe. He danced from the crotch, and when he saw Abilene looking at him, he rolled his hips even more. They danced until perspiration ran down Abilene’s face and arms. Then the musicians stopped, suddenly, and left the room. Jorge led Abilene back to their table and the boys there said, “Hey! you’re a good dancer, man.” The girls looked at her with narrow secretive eyes. Business at the bar picked up, and all around the room people yelled for more music. Another band appeared. As soon as it began to play, Abilene looked to Jorge, expecting to be asked to dance again. Jorge asked Ceci instead. He stayed near the table, so Abilene could watch, she thought, but he never looked at her. He kept his undulating hips in her line of vision. The music was Afro-Cuban, great for dancing; it drove its beat hard, and throbbed. So did Jorge. He paid no attention to Ceci, his dance partner. He was just showing off.

  Abilene knew the show was for her, and she waited with suppressed eagerness for Jorge to come back to her. A familiar hum had begun in her. When she got up to dance she and Jorge were the center of attention. His teasing had worked; they danced like lovers sparring, a teasing sequence of approaches and retreats, and long moments dancing in place, eyes locked. When they went back to the table, Jorge put his arm across Abilene’s shoulders. His thumb slid along her back, a thumb that burned. “American girls really know how to dance,” he said slinkily. She walked out from under his arm, smarting from his categorical praise. He probably meant what he said, and probably meant to please her, but when he next asked her to dance, she said coldly that her feet were tired. He was confused for a moment, and then he collected himself enough to sneer. “Not mine!” he said.