Gringa

by Sandra Scofield

  She moved her hunter’s eyes around the room, looking at the preening boys, their pencil moustaches, slick hair and compact bodies. One boy had an attractive Zapata moustache, but his pants hung too low on his hips; when he raised his arm, his shirt rode up and hung sloppily. These weren’t poor boys, everything could not be forgiven them, but they weren’t the rich ones, either. The ones with money went to clubs with cover charges, to hotel bars. The Mexican boys liked color, and wore their pants like skin. Like peacocks they loved their own looks. They expected the girls to love them too. They didn’t often get to strut for gringas, not in a place like this. She would be a nice surprise for one of them.

  Across the floor she saw a gorgeous Indian, all sinew and bones, with black shaggy hair. He was vain; he was smoothing his hair. He glanced around for approval, and Abilene thought: I know him! She thought for a moment and then, of course! it was the waiter who had brought food to the apartment with Constanzia, wasn’t it? He was standing near the toilets. Between songs, she walked across the floor, conscious of her hips, her stride, the slope of her back. At first she angled away from him, and then at the last moment changed her course and walked right by him. She knew her hair was shiny in the light, that her small breasts jutted out. She knew he had watched her dancing with Jorge. At the last possible moment, she looked at him boldly and stopped. He had been watching her all along; when she realized that, a gush of pleasure shot up her body.

  And then she saw that he was the young man who had met with Adele at the Piñeda’s hotel, not the waiter.

  “I see your dance,” he said in English.

  “What did you think?” She felt a sudden amazement at the ease, the predictability of this encounter. She felt like an expert fisherman. He was a strutter now, his hand in his belt, his chin up. He wasn’t begging now. He was beautiful, with dark eyes and a well-formed mouth. “I think a good dancer like you needs to dance with me,” he said cockily.

  She thought he was right. The dance: she needed it very much.

  She danced without shifting her gaze from him except when she turned expertly. They were the same height, and this made her conscious of their hips as they came toward one another, their thighs brushing, their hands touching. The music buoyed her up, she floated out of herself. She knew what her dancing told this Indian boy, and she knew it was not a lie.

  He took her arm and moved her to the bar where he bought her beer. She asked his name. He said it was Angel. He was an artisan.

  “You don’t remember me, do you?” she asked.

  He was now guarded, waiting.

  “I met you at the hotel,” she said. “I was with the friend who asked you about the dead gringa.”

  He looked very young, and skittish. Perhaps he thought she had somehow followed him, looked for him?

  “That’s not important,” she said. She was afraid he was going to take off. “What’s important is dancing.” She waited a long moment, while he considered this. She was excited. She glanced around and saw Isabel watching her. Isabel knew exactly what was going on. She had talked about what the rules were in Mexico, but she broke them, too. One of these days, she warned, you will find out what macho means.

  “I’m going to tell my friends I ran into you—that I know you, understand? Then we can get out of here.”

  He waited for her. He said he knew a better place, the disco with American rocky roll. But it cost more. “I’d like to go,” he said, “but I only have the admission.” He took his money out of his pocket for her to see.

  “I’ll buy drinks,” she said. She opened her bag and showed him her money. When their eyes met again, they both laughed.

  At the disco they danced close together. He pressed his ample genitals against her thigh. She thought: Mexican boys are never embarrassed! When a Rolling Stones record came on, they pulled apart to dance. It was serious now; they were spelling things out for one another. I know you danced with a girl who’s dead, she was saying. I know you wonder if I hurt her, he was saying. His dark eyes did not frighten her; they were curious and greedy, that was all. Yet she was astonished to feel that she was afraid. It was in her neck: a tight feeling, someone’s hands, squeezing. She pushed the feeling away with her dancing.

  Then she said, “I’ll pay for the taxi.”

  He had two spare decent rooms in an old house that had been divided into apartments in an old quarter not far from the disco. She had stopped being surprised at the way the shabby apartments sat among finer buildings. Deterioration was borne on the air like pollen, landing anywhere. At the end of Angel’s street there was a dead end. It was cluttered with cardboard boxes and sheets of metal piled against one another. She saw someone moving among the boxes, and a glow, not quite a light, maybe charcoal in a can. “Who are they?” she whispered. Angel said they were squatters. “They appear, they disappear. Maybe the officials come to run them out, maybe not.” He shrugged. “Sometimes hundreds of them appear on vacant lots, or on the street. They live in caves, on the hills below the Lomas neighborhood. They come in the night. You get up in the morning and there they are. They are called parachutists. They fall from the sky to make lost cities.” He ushered her up to his rooms.

  The bed was narrow and carefully made. On a table were a hot plate and tins of cocoa and evaporated milk. She took his tidiness as a good sign. On a shelf were paperback books in English. “I was wondering how you speak such good English,” she said.

  “I took lessons. For seven years. I spent all my money except to have a room and to eat, for lessons. I am going to go to live in Acapulco, and get a job with the tourists.” He was quite earnest as he said, “I’ll be very good with the gringas.”

  Sylvia Britton was forgotten between them.

  She laughed at him and put her hands in his hair. He pulled her close, then onto his lap, and kissed her. His mouth was open and wet; he took too much for granted. She wanted to kiss stingily so that there would be more to come. But he wouldn’t know anything about lovemaking. He was sure to know only about fucking.

  He shoved her off his lap and stood up. He took off his shirt and pants and stood naked. She waited for him to come to her. She sat unmoving, her eyes locked on the fullness of him, wanting suddenly not to do this, not to be like this, like Sylvia Britton, wanting to lie alone under clean sheets in Claude’s apartment. She remembered that she didn’t have her diaphragm. She imagined her belly swelling like yeasty bread, imagined an Indian baby. If anything could live inside her. He was impatient. “What kind of artisan are you?” she asked, ignoring his look. She really did want to know. “Do you work in silver? Leather?” She wanted to know who he was.

  “I make cabinets!” he said in a loud angry voice. “For kitchens.” He yanked her up to her feet and tugged at her waistband. She shoved his hand away. “I’ll do it,” she said angrily. She couldn’t leave; he would never let her go now. The doors that closed behind her, that had closed behind her for years now—those doors never opened up again. There can only be so many doors. That was what the American girl had learned. That was what Adele feared, for all her talk about goodness and purpose. We are only allowed so many doors, she thought.

  The decision had been made for hours, back when he had stayed beside her in the dance hall, instead of running away. Back when she had showed him her money. There was no reason to think of it anymore. She slid her skirt down her legs and it lay around her feet. “I don’t want to do this, you know,” she said quietly, and then she stepped out of her panties. It was important that she tell him that. This one liked to brag about the gringas. How they came to him, paying his way.

  Her hands hung at her sides. His nipples were brown and tiny, he had smooth tight skin. Touching him would be pleasure; she wished he were brown marble. She stepped toward him and smelled something unpleasant and sharp, like cheese; he wasn’t altogether clean. She thought of creamy sludge where his testicles met his abdomen.

 
“I don’t want to,” she said. It was his cue.

  He shoved her down roughly and lay on top of her, bruising her mouth with his. He was pressing against her, she knew he would want it in now, that it would be over for him quickly. He would think that his pleasure was the measure of everything. He would not dream that to lie beneath him was anything less. Someone would have to tell him about women if he was to go to Acapulco. He will have to see if he has the talent to go with his looks.

  She asked him to go down on her. He raised his arm and looked at her. Seven years of English, and he didn’t understand. “Down there,” she said. “Kiss me there.” He was horrified.

  “Down there,” he said, “I put my cock.”

  “Not yet!” She pushed hard at his chest. He sat up on his heels. She put her finger on her clitoris and moved it cruelly against the numbness; beneath the numbness something stormed. He panted. He held his hand around his penis like a bun. He didn’t know what it was she was touching, he almost made her laugh! She wanted to feel, to be alive!

  He couldn’t wait, or didn’t want to. He positioned himself and she saw that he would plunge into her, arrogant, urgent, hurting. She felt so tightly closed against him, she was afraid of the pain. She flattened herself against the bed, spread-eagled; she raised her legs high and opened herself with her fingers for him. Then she dropped into a dark chasm between sensation and knowing.

  Afterwards he was wonderfully solicitous. He wiped himself with his shirt and handed it to her. He felt fine. Surely she did too? “I make you feel good?” he grinned. He rubbed his hands on his chest and tucked them, crisscrossed, in his armpits. He was the stupidest man she had ever met. Hah. He was a prize.

  She knew her life was against the rules. She thought she might have killed her heart, if it ever lived. Angel, observing her silence, perhaps thinking it was satisfaction that made her quiet, was suddenly generous. He caressed her breasts, licked her nipples, then lay back contentedly. He touched her sore, swollen clitoris. “Gringa girls,” he said lazily. She put her hands across his mouth. “Not gringas!” she said. “Me.” He didn’t understand. “Me! me!” she said, her finger pointing at her chest. “What about me?”

  She should have died caping that stupid cow. It would have been silly, just what she deserved.

  “You’ll be my novia,” he said, perfectly serious. “I’ll take you all around.”

  “Go downstairs and find me a taxi,” she said. “Make him say how much before I go with him.” She knew the drivers were greedy and malevolent this time of night. A woman at large was prey. A gringa was a beggar. Once a cabdriver showed her his open switchblade, swinging it around like a conductor’s baton until she begged to be let out. She had to say it over and over again: please, oh please.

  And if he hadn’t let her out? She saw it so clearly: The driver pulls into a dark alley and jerks her by the hair until she dangles over the front seat. See! he says. He has undone his pants; his penis taps the steering wheel. See! he says, and pulls her over the seat, his knife at her throat as she does what he says.

  Angel wrote his name and address on a piece of paper and she put it in her shoulder bag. He wanted her address, too, but she would only say the street nearest it, that intersected Reforma. “Tell the taxi that street,” she said, pretending not to understand what he wanted. He insisted, though. “I see you again,” he said. She said he couldn’t come to the place she was staying, certain other people were there. He thought he understood; it made him feel sly. “So then I’ll meet you,” he said. “Yes,” she agreed. “Friday, at the same cantina.” Now he believed her. While he went ahead of her to get the cab, she laid some money on his bed.

  Later she wondered if he just wanted her to want to see him. He might not have let her leave if she had not agreed to meet him again. She had to want to see him again.

  He won’t show! she thought resentfully, as if she cared.

  Chapter 6

  ABILENE WENT to Dr. Reyles for a checkup. He said her face was healing beautifully. He touched the skin under her eyes with the soft pad of his thumbs. “Maybe, in a year, we do it again, to make it perfect.”

  Abilene said, “I know it’s better now. I know you did a good job and I’ll always be glad we did it. But I don’t ever want to be under like that again if I don’t have to be. I remember them rolling me from the room to the elevator, and then I remember waking up so swollen.” She saw that Reyles was listening closely. “I lost part of my life that way. It scared me.”

  Reyles nodded gravely. She knew he only thought to postpone the suggestion, but she was through with fixing her face. There was one thing, though.

  “It’s still hot a lot of the time. I’m glad I’m here and not in the country.”

  Reyles considered the statement a moment and said, “Is Velez wanting you to return, then?”

  She nodded. Her eyes started to fill.

  “Well,” he said, bringing his hands together, not quite a clap. “It’s much too soon! The high cool air is better for you. I’ll tell him myself.”

  “You’ll call him?”

  “Why no, he’ll call me, chica. He checks on you.”

  She felt better. Things could stay as they were for the time being.

  To leave was too bold an act, but to stay away—perhaps, she thought, she could manage that.

  She thought more about boldness, and wrote to Sage in Tampico.

  If I went back to the Tecoluca, would you come and get me? Would you take me away? Is that what you meant when you were here?

  Sage wrote back the next week.

  It’s not for me to take, it’s for you to go. Tonio can’t stop you. Why do you want to put it off on me? This isn’t the age of chivalry, or duels, Abby. You’re free to do what you choose.

  Maybe you should decide. My lease is expiring and Tonio won’t renew. Well, there’s a lot of world outside the Huasteca, and maybe my life will be better out from under that pompous asshole.

  I’m enclosing my brother’s address in Houston. I don’t know how long it will take me to wrap things up. My brother and I are looking at ranches in Costa Rica. Why do you need to come back to the Tecoluca at all? You don’t have a lease, now do you?

  She lay on her bed in Claude’s apartment all afternoon. She tried to remember Sage’s face, and the feel of his hand on her breast, but the room was filled with images of Tonio. He floated around her, softened by the haziness of reverie. She dozed. It was a pleasant sensation, she was dissolving.

  She had cross words with Isabel, over the cantina incident. She tried to joke about it, to make it sound like a good time, but Isabel was in no mood for jokes. “One of these nights they’ll find you on the street, chiquita,” she warned. Abilene shivered. Isabel went away, too busy, she said, for chitchat.

  Abilene didn’t have the energy to look for Hallie. She went to Adele’s, but only Pola was home. Adele was busy all the time now.

  What did you talk to a thirteen-year-old about?

  “Tell me about your father,” Abilene said. She struck a chord.

  “He’s a brilliant man,” Pola said. “They use his films in the film schools. He gets prizes.”

  “I know. But your mother doesn’t like his films. She says they’re—bloody.”

  “You should have heard her after she saw the last one! Light on the Hills.” She giggled. “They didn’t call it that in Spanish. They called it Dark Revenge. Because, you see, it was about revenge.” The girl’s face was animated; she was pleased with the conversation. “I saw it when I visited him, at his house. He said if it bothered me we could turn it off at any time. But I loved it! It was about a girl a little older than me. She is taken out of her village and carried away into the mountains. The revenge is over that.”

  Abilene wondered if Adele would mind this discussion.

  “The blood was beautiful,” Pola said. She moved her arm in an
arc. “Like this, in slow motion.”

  “Have you ever seen a bullfight, Pola?”

  Pola made a face. “Oh yes, but I didn’t like it.”

  “All that blood.”

  Pola tossed her head. “Don’t trick me just to prove you’re grown up.”

  “Sorry.”

  “You’re the only one of Mommy’s friends who isn’t full of herself. Like Elena, who wants to be a star and has a long way to go. And Simon. Did you know his wife was an actress who once stabbed him? Her name was Hespera. Isn’t that a fantastic name! Simon took Mommy and me to see her play Lady Macbeth last year. Mommy was very prissy about it. She said, ‘You might not understand all of it, it’s Shakespeare, but there will be wonderful spectacle in the production.’ Does my mother think I’m stupid? When Lady Macbeth held up her hand and tried to rub away the blood—who wouldn’t understand that? And why is Shakespeare all right with blood and death but Yannis not? What does my mother have against him?”

  “Maybe your mother sees a lot of real troubles in the world, and she hasn’t any patience for the made-up ones in movies.”

  “Did Yannis make the world crazy? Is it all his fault?”

  Abilene shrugged. She tried to remember what was on her mind at thirteen.

  “He’s so cool, you know,” Pola said.

  “Tell me what you mean.”

  “He watches everything. You can tell he knows a lot. He doesn’t get mad, but people know not to cross him.”

  Abilene wondered if Pola had been reading movie magazines.

  “At least Adele lets you visit him.”

  “He’s my father!”

  “But you’re in another country. She could make it hard.”

  “Hah. He sends her money!”

  “Where does Yannis live?”

  “In Malibu, by the ocean. I love to go there. I can lie in bed at night and hear the sea. When I was there last year he took me all over. Into the canyons, and along the beaches. He took me out into the valley—I can’t remember the name—and a big wind was blowing in. It’s called a Santa Ana. Yannis said we were near the very place where it begins. Did you ever think of that? Of wind being born?”