The Flowers

by Dagoberto Gilb

  * * *

  I might have been walking now and I might have been running. White was coming out from the back of my head where the eyes saw and where the tongue tasted and the ears heard and white was inside my legs and in my feet and on my hands and the words and the shapes and lines in my mind and it pulsed my heart and was my blood. It wasn’t like the soupy black that dreams played in, the black that everything pushed through and out of like Josep’s river. This white was like a headlight before it hit on a street and what came at it dissolved. It was white but not the color white. It was inside me but there was no behind it, no where it came from, and it was coming through me. It shut down darkness and I didn’t need to see. I was so far away on the street, in the night, I didn’t need to hear or taste either. My legs were moving and they were in the white. My arms were moving and they were in the white, and when my hands rubbed my face, making sure, the white coated me like sweat.

  At the driveway I turned without looking into the picture window of #1 and I went up the stairs. I was like way up there, not touched, not touching.

  “You got all? That you need?”

  I saw her blue tears in the gold-framed mirror.

  “No,” I said. “You can’t, you can’t. Not now.”

  She stopped herself. Like that. She bent away from the mirror and picked up two athletic bags. I got to their phone, where I called the emergency number—it’s what I had figured out to do. I told the operator there was a baby alone at the address, in a building called Los Flores, apartment #4, and I hung up. As soon as I did that, it seemed like another wrong thing, but it was done too and this was all dreaming.

  She followed me to my Bel Air. Out on the boulevard, voices were whooping and they were more than fire trucks or fires or police and they almost made us stop walking, Nica and me together, like first-date-close together, almost holding hands. I even opened her side of the car for her and then we were both inside it together—nothing like this had ever happened. I didn’t even remember about apartment #1, I didn’t look, I didn’t remember it already. It wasn’t there. It didn’t exist. She wasn’t crying and she kept watching me. Into the eyes, carefully. She looked and she saw me and then she looked out, at the boulevard, at the voices and fires and police. It was what she was leaving, what I was taking her from, where she wasn’t going to live. She looked at me again. Like I was good. She made me feel like I was good too. Maybe she was talking and I couldn’t hear her because the engine kicked right over and was under my foot. I had the Bel Air in first and I let out the clutch and it jerked up and down and bounced horrible. But there were no cars in front of me close and I steadied it and got into second and maybe I didn’t go fast but I didn’t want to go fast. I mean I did but I couldn’t. At least we were moving, and that is what I wanted, and nothing like this had ever happened before, nobody like us, nobody but us, and nothing like this ever. I only knew one way to get to the bus depot and so that’s how I was going, no matter, and I turned right. Thank God no cars were around because I couldn’t make it stop and then I turned again, no cars around again, and then I was at the boulevard where I pushed the brake pedal and the clutch to the floor. The Bel Air stalled. The boulevard was empty of cars except the way we weren’t going, where it was fire trucks and lots more people around them. Nica might have been talking and not only crying. I started the Bel Air right up again, and it jumped a little less this time when I let out the clutch, and on the boulevard I shifted to second. That’s when something hit the side of the car and more started hitting it too. People were coming off the sidewalks as I drove and then the back side window got busted, and Nica screamed but very far away from my ears. I was afraid to shift and the engine was roaring like it would explode while lots of rocks and chunks were pounding the car on every side and black people came at us to beat it with sticks and fists as we passed them. Nica screamed when a bat splashed into the windshield and she held her head like the outside was dripping on her. I held on to the steering wheel and once we got past this, in front of us was a stack of police cars. No man, I just turned the wheel around them and let them yell at me too and didn’t stop. I thought for sure they would follow me for real. I was driving steadier, straighter, waiting for them. This stretch of boulevard was empty: no one, no cars, every business closed, no police in front or behind. I kept the same speed. I was getting better even if I was driving slow, and I gripped the wheel hard, afraid to shift out of second gear. When I stopped at a light I left it in second gear and let the clutch out from there. Nica was sounding like she’d been hurt but she wasn’t hurt. I could stop at the signals now. I could make the turns now too, and I’d learned the clutch and brakes.

  And then I saw we were there, that I did it! I braked, I turned off the engine in a parking slot, and we could see inside the small lit-up depot. There were two older people with taped suitcases and cardboard boxes sitting in the waiting area. There was a uniformed clerk behind a counter. Nica was still sobbing but it was weak. I think I probably was shaking.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” she said after we sat there breathing again. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  “You’re going back home.”

  “But you aren’t going?”

  “Me? With you?”

  She slid over to me. She pushed against me, and her body made me ache.

  “You want me to go with you?” I asked.

  “I thought you were going too,” she said.

  I didn’t think of it. I never thought of it before.

  “Why aren’t you going?” she asked.

  I didn’t know. I kissed her eyes, wetting my lips. She rubbed her head into me and that made a color I’d never seen before and I didn’t know what to say for so long I think because of that.

  “Where do you go again?”

  “Xico. Above Xalapa.”

  What did I know?

  “Sonny, I don’t have any money.”

  “No no, you have money. You don’t have to worry. I have money, it’s your money.”

  The people inside, the couple waiting for the bus too, they were Mexicanos.

  “I don’t know exactly how you get there,” I said, “only that you can take a bus from here.”

  We were against each other for so long in quiet that didn’t exist. It was quiet no one anywhere had ever heard before, this never existed before, this was the first time ever.

  “No,” she said. It was her who didn’t want to stop. “Come with me.”

  I pulled out the hundreds. “We have to put this away.” She didn’t even look. Maybe she was crying but there was only the tears. “Please,” I said. She stopped like before and got one of the bags. “Do you have pants in there?” She found some and I put the ten hundreds in a pocket and folded the pants. “Don’t forget.” She didn’t ask what it was or why and it was that she didn’t care. I opened the car door and she came out my side. I wanted this to go fast now, I wanted this part over.

  Inside the depot, so many cities in Mexico listed on a handwritten board. I took her here, but I really didn’t know anyone could really get to Veracruz on a bus.

  “I can’t believe we’re still running the schedule,” the clerk said, “but the driver’s en route here now and then he goes to downtown where you gotta make a transfer. Guess the world ain’t gonna just stop.”

  “Just one,” I said, paying him.

  “You get it right over there. Can’t miss it. It’s as big and noisy as a bus.”

  We went back to the car and I gave her the rest of the other money I had.

  “I wish that you would go with me,” she said, “because I love you, Sonny.”

  We were kissing and I felt sick with want, but as good as I felt, I didn’t have anything else to tell her. I didn’t know enough Spanish to say more, or anything really, but I didn’t know the English now either.

  “Je t’aime,” I said. And it made me smile. ’Cause I didn’t know what else to say or how, and that’s what finally came to me. It did
n’t make me laugh but it did make me feel better, and it made her smile so much. It always worked, no matter what!

  I asked her, “Est-ce que tu m’aimes?” and she laughed hard!

  “It means Do you love me?” I explained to her. “So, Tu m’aimes?” I asked her again, and she laughed and giggled all over me.

  “Te amo, Sonny,” she told me. “Ya te quiero.”

  I loved kissing her and I wanted her and we kissed and, better than that, she kissed me on the lips, on the cheeks, on my neck. She wanted to kiss me and be next to me. She wanted me to touch her everywhere and in every way. I didn’t want her like that, as much as I did, and anyways then there was the bus and its loud air blowing and sucking and its horn and squeaks and bells and stairs.

  Once Nica stepped up, I rushed back to the Bel Air and watched the bus roar off, sunlight rising and its rays making little twisting rainbows, all the colors that ever were inside the broken lines of the cracked windows. Maybe if I drove better I could keep it close for a while. Instead it got smaller and turned, gone, was already not here—and that was it except that I could have told her I loved her better. I said it in French, it’s that I only said it in French, you know, and I should have told her so she knew I meant it. I should have told her in Spanish. I just should have told her, no French smiling through me. No. Non. That made a smile. I liked that I smiled and that I wasn’t scared. What I wanted was to feel like I could smile, just like that, anytime I ever wanted, especially when I went back there. Je t’aime, Nica!

  A GROVE PRESS READING GROUP GUIDE

  THE FLOWERS

  DAGOBERTO GILB

  ABOUT THIS GUIDE

  We hope that these discussion questions

  will enhance your reading group’s exploration

  of Dagoberto Gilb’s The Flowers. They are

  meant to stimulate discussion, offer new viewpoints,

  and enrich your enjoyment of the book.

  More reading group guides and additional information,

  including summaries, author tours, and author sites for

  other fine Grove Press titles, may be found on

  our Web site, www.groveatlantic.com.

  QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

  1. The large city sprawl that serves as the backdrop for The Flowers can be seen as a major character in the novel, changing by day and night, acting as a catalyst for the hopes and desires of its inhabitants. Begin your discussion of the novel by considering the importance of this urban landscape. How are the characters affected by the unremitting noise, sounds, and smells of the street? How does this constant buffeting affect Sonny? Consider especially the sounds that sweep in from the boulevard at night. Does he try to escape the noise, or does he use it as a way to escape from his own life and those of lives around him?

  2. “I was more watching how the people lived, imagining how it would be in their house. … Go, How would I be if I lived here?” (pp. 1–2) In our first introduction to Sonny Bravo, the novel’s young protagonist, he describes the way in which he used to break into houses. As a reader, what was your first reaction to his admission? Consider how quickly we are drawn inside his head and how much we learn about him from these opening pages. How would you describe him? Talk about the dichotomy between his actions and his feelings, about these actions and what it tells you about Sonny. What is your response to him? Does it change over the course of the novel?

  3. From the novel’s outset, it is evident that the way the story is told will be as important as its story. Talk about your reactions to Sonny’s raw street talk peppered with untranslated Spanish. Does it draw you closer into his world with its straightforward honesty or did you find it somewhat alienating? Comment on the poetic beauty that flashes throughout the narrative and lights up the often harsh reality of the character’s lives. Compare Gilb’s raw lyricism with the way in which Sonny often moves beyond his present world into another world in his mind. “What would finally come were colors and lines busting through, flying out and off and cutting in, crazy fires and sparks …” (p. 2)

  4. How far would you agree that Gilb’s novel works like a poem, in the way that he focuses on the small details of his character’s every day lives to comment on larger, universal themes of love, race, and cultural identity?

  5. As a fifteen-year-old Mexican American, living in an undefined large city (probably Los Angeles), Sonny Bravo undergoes his coming of age carrying with him the weight of age-old racial and sexual stereotypes. To what extent does Sonny view himself as a Mexican American, and how does this affect the ways in which he spends his days? What about the way he is viewed by some of the other characters—his stepfather, Cloyd, Bud, the Zunigas. How does he break racial and cultural stereotypes of Latin male machismo?

  6. The theme of work can be seen as central to Gilb’s fiction, and it plays an important role in The Flowers. Analyze the place of work in Silvia Bravo’s life, and the changes wrought by a remarriage that takes away her financial need to work. How is Sonny’s relationship with his stepfather defined by the work he does for him? Why does Sonny choose to work instead of staying in his room? Is it a kind of escape for him? Talk about the parallel theme of boredom—Cindy begs Sonny to stay with her. “I’m broke, I’m lonely, I’m bored.” Consider the irony of the similar ways in which the characters escape from the hard grind or the boredom of their lives. Comment also on the way that Sonny seeks out solitude for himself, spending little time with friends or family members, flitting between the neighbors. Why does he do this?

  7. Silvia Bravo is an important presence at the center of the novel. Analyze her relationship with her son and consider how it changes. What are her hopes for him? From the beginning of the narrative, even through Sonny’s eyes, we are aware of her as a sexual object “I was always seeing how men looked at her … How pretty she was in the way men are flipping through pages of dirty magazines” (p. 10). Do we ever get another view of her? Dissect your feelings about Sonny’s mother, and consider whether you pity her, judge her, or admire her. What do you think she hoped for in her marriage to Cloyd? Why did she think that her marriage could ever have worked? How far would you agree that her marriage and situation seem almost archetypal, repeated in apartments throughout Los Flores and across the city in which they live.

  8. Expanding upon the last question, discuss the ways in which the novel touches upon and explores many different forms of love. Talk about the ways in which the characters are bound together by love. Consider in your discussion the examples of parental love that we are shown. Has anybody at Los Flores found happiness? Does anyone still have dreams?

  9. Take a look at the main female characters in the novel—Silvia, Cindy, and Nica. Talk about the similarities and differences between Cindy and Silvia’s situations. For whom do you predict the brighter future? Cindy and Nica are both young girls, not too distant in age but universes apart in terms of their experiences of life and love. What are your feelings toward Cindy—do you see any hope for her in the future, any way out of her situation? What about Nica? To what extent would you agree that, in some ways, these females seem almost Dostoyevskian in their representation of the “saint” and “whore,” and yet Gilb imbues them with such realism that they could never be viewed as stereotypes. What do the girls represent to Sonny? Is it easy for him to step from the world of one to the other?

  10. Compare Bud and Cloyd taking into account ways in which they resemble each other, the ways in which they differ. Many of the male characters seem to be domineering and overbearing, trapping their wives or daughters in subservient lives. Are there any males—other than Sonny—to whom this does not apply?

  11. One of the sweetest moments in the novel takes place when old Mr. Josep tells his love story to Nica and Sonny, a tale about the uncertainty of young love, of how easily it can be destroyed. “The dog is dead, yet I am lucky because I am in love and I feel as a man full of his strength.” How far do you think this feeling could apply to some of the characters in the novel,
that despite everything in their lives, love—or the hope of it—can change things for the better? How far does it parallel Sonny and Nica’s story?

  12. Los Flores can be viewed as a microcosm for the greater macrocosm of the world of the city in which it is situated and for that of American society itself. Take a look at the way Cloyd separates his potential tenants into ethnic groups—he romanticizes Mexican women and the Mexican work ethic while his intense prejudice toward blacks manifests itself in a refusal to accept them into his apartment complex. Consider Bud’s hatred of blacks and Mexicans, but his sexual attraction toward Silvia. Talk about the irony of Pink’s act of rebellion against Cloyd. The tensions that exist at Los Flores are expanded upon and paralleled as race riots flare across the city. What do you think Gilb’s view of race and race relations in America is?

  13. Cloyd romanticizes Silvia’s Mexican heritage, boasting about her cooking. Consider the irony of her serving him canned salsa and passing it off as her own, and analyze what Gilb might be saying on the nature of cultural authenticity.

  14. What do the twins, Joe and Mike, represent? Think about the ways in which they romanticize Sonny’s life, calling him “our pre-conquest warrior hero.” What does Sonny see in them? He affectionately considers them as stupid, these straight-A students with college dreams. In which ways might he be correct in his judgment? Discuss the scene in which the twins are sent by their father to witness the riots. “He was like, are my sons male? If they don’t want to go do any street violence, shouldn’t they want to see it?” Consider how it fits into themes of cultural and racial identity touched upon throughout the novel.

  15. There are moments when Sonny commits violent or dishonest acts, e.g., beating up an old drunk and stealing his wallet, throwing the stone at the “sickie” who has been stalking him, stealing Cloyd’s money. Discuss whether your feelings toward him evolve or waver at any time. Does he gain your respect for being able to navigate a world that throws so much at him?