Names on a Map

by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

  “I never learned how to do that kind of work.”

  “Octavio—”

  “Don’t, Lourdes, please.” He took her face and held it between the palms of his hands. “I’ll call the doctor. Then I’ll call the funeral home. Then I’ll call Rosa and Sofia. They’ll call the others.

  Then—” He stopped in mid-sentence. “I’m good at chores.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with that, amor.”

  He nodded and almost smiled. “She was a good woman.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why can’t I love?”

  There was nothing she could do to stop him from punishing

  himself. She sat for a while, silent, watching him. She did not know how long she sat there.

  She did not even notice when she left the room. Later, she

  was surprised to find herself in the kitchen.

  xo ch i l

  Just after she died, I tried to crawl under her bed. It’s an odd confession to make but that’s what I tried to do. It was as if my body were reaching back to the past. History delivers us to the present but there are fingerprints all over us and they are there forever, irremovable, fossilized on your body. Waiting for future archaeologists to come along and dig us up.

  Crawl under her bed. That’s what Gustavo and I used to do

  when we were small. We’d visit her and Tata Enrique and we’d

  play a game of hide and seek. We were always the hiders. She

  was always the seeker. We would search everywhere for a place

  to hide and after running up and down the house and entering

  the basement and every closet, we’d always wind up hiding under her bed.

  Sometimes we waited there for what seemed like hours. There

  was something frightening about that wait. What if she never

  came? What if she never found us? Would we be lost forever?

  xo ch i l l 195

  But there was something beautiful about the waiting too, be-

  cause I was with Gustavo. And Gustavo always knew when I was

  afraid. He was at his best when he sensed I needed him. That’s when he and I would tell each other secrets. Sometimes Gustavo would even sing to me. He had a beautiful voice, deep and soft and kind and every note he hit was perfect.

  He could make you cry when he sang.

  Gustavo would stop singing when we heard Grandma Rosie

  coming. She would have a broom with her when she came into

  the room. And she would say out loud, “I think I’ll sweep under the bed.” And Gustavo and I would laugh and yell, “No, no, we’re here! We’re here!” We’d laugh and come out from under the bed

  and she would embrace us like we were sponges and she was

  squeezing all the water out of us, kissing and kissing us, saying,

  “Oh, I’ve been looking for you. I’ve been looking for you everywhere.” Sometimes, I was so happy that I would cry and Gustavo would comfort me, saying, “Don’t cry, don’t cry.”

  I tried to crawl under the bed. That’s exactly what I tried

  to do.

  Maybe Gustavo would come and sing.

  Maybe my grandmother would rise up, a broom in her hand.

  But it was all so futile. Everything was gone, the hiding and

  finding, the songs, the broom.

  I sat there with Grandma Rosie and I began whispering her

  name, Maria del Rosario Espejo Zaragosa. I remembered the story about how her father had dragged her to a convent. I wanted to tell her about Jack, the boy I loved and hated. Jack, the boy my body wanted and my mind rejected.

  Instead, I reached for a book of poems by Lorca. Why speak

  to your grandmother about a boy named Jack when you could

  read her a poem by a poet she loved.

  I knew which poem to read, a poem she had read to me many

  times, a poem we had talked about and analyzed, a poem I never

  196 l a n d t h e w o r l d d i d n o t s t o p fully understood despite all our talking and analysis. I picked up her worn book and read it softly, whispering, whispering, until I got to the last two stanzas. I read those last two stanzas in the same way she’d taught me. I pronounced each word just so,

  breathed in each syllable—then breathed it out. I wanted to hear her voice in mine. . . .

  Tú sólo y yo quedamos.

  Prepara tu esqueleto para el aire.

  Yo sólo y tú quedamos. . .

  I remember thinking she was smiling as I read to her. But,

  of course, the dead don’t smile—they’re done with smiling and

  laughing and crying and all of the rest of those tiring and emotional expressions of want and need and pleasure. But I needed to think of her in that way in that moment—her smiling at me

  as I finished reading that poem. That poem by that beautiful and tragic Spanish poet who never lived to be old, that Spanish poet whom the world killed, that poet she learned to love because of my mother.

  Right then I found a moment that was quiet and still and very

  nearly perfect.

  That moment belonged to us. To Rosario and Xochil.

  charl ie

  The warmth of the concrete on our front porch.

  Me and my brother talking about music.

  A letter from the draft board.

  Gustavo’s absence.

  Mr. Rede (who, as it happened, died of a massive heart attack

  that same evening).

  My Grandma Rosie whispering my mother’s name and fi-

  nally letting go of her tired body. (That particular scene I made up in my head, but I swear to God it happened.)

  My mother’s dignified grief.

  My father’s reserve, an unwelcome confusion just beneath the

  surface of his calm. The feel of his unshaved face against my cheek as he kissed me, the last time I was ever to receive that gift.

  Gustavo’s absence.

  My mother’s moment of madness. (The undignified side of

  198 l a n d t h e w o r l d d i d n o t s t o p her grief. Later she told me that grief was a kind of insanity. “Like love,” she said.)

  My sister, Xochil, rocking my mother in her arms as I squeezed my father’s hand.

  The smell of my aunt Sofia’s perfume.

  The fact that it rained.

  The smell of my Grandma Rosie’s room when they took her

  body away.

  My sister Xochil’s tears.

  Gustavo’s absence.

  The fact that it thundered.

  All my father’s relatives arriving at our house, tears in their eyes, memories dripping out of them as if they were broken fau-cets, old and tired, dripping out water, one drop at a time, water, sweet water and everyone so thirsty, all my relatives clutching me as they arrived, whispering things into my ear, though really they were talking to themselves.

  I remember things by keeping a list.

  The problem with trying to recover the past is that a list is like a deck of cards. In time, the cards get reshuffled, and the order of things loses its shape. All that’s left are scenes. I take out each scene—almost out of context. I don’t know why, but the thought has come to me more than once that holding on to these scenes

  makes me feel poor. Poverty comes in many forms. Sometimes it

  comes in the form of the lists you keep. This makes sense to no one—except to me.

  I could see past my mom’s poise as she and my father spoke

  quietly in the living room, almost whispering. They were in the middle of something. Private and painful, too, I think, and I

  got the sense that they were both grateful for my interruption. I hugged my father awkwardly and wanted to say something, but

  nothing came out, and just when I thought he was going to break down and sob, he kissed me. And then he pushed me away. Gen-

  charl ie l 199

  tly. He was always afraid to hurt me, though he didn’t suffer from t
hat particular fear when it came to Gus.

  I remember sitting down on the couch and watching my

  mother, who was completely focused on my father, studying him

  like an artist studying a model’s pose, or a photographer waiting for just the right moment to click the camera, or a psychiatrist trying to decide if his patient was stable enough to be left alone.

  My father picked up the phone and dialed. I didn’t really pay

  any attention to who he was talking to, but the tone of his voice was quiet and somber and controlled and his voice was as distant as it had ever been. Everything seemed dull and muffled, the

  light, the voices, even the aromas of the house. I swear I could almost touch my mother’s grief, though she was trying desperately to hide it. She was good at hiding her pain. In that way, she was a lot like my father. Except that my mother hid her pain because she was busy taking care of other people. My father hid his pain because he was trying to pretend it wasn’t there. Even at that moment, even at thirteen, I was addicted to analyzing my parents.

  But I swear above the din of my own cluttered thoughts, my

  mother’s sorrow soared. Her sorrow, a bird in flight who had lost his sense of direction.

  We sat there, my mother and her pain and me, and we watched

  my father make phone calls. I don’t think either one of us was really listening. We were just waiting. That’s what people did after someone died. Maybe not really waiting, just taking a breath.

  Maybe that was it. Without even realizing it, my eyes were glued to my father’s movements. It was like I was watching some kind of ballet in slow motion. Distant as he was, my father was very graceful in those few moments.

  I don’t even remember my mother leaving the room.

  lourde s

  She was once your enemy.

  Now you see them taking her away, dead and frail, more bones

  than flesh, more skeleton than woman. Once, her voice took aim at you, hurling stones of disapproval. A shallow beauty, that is what she called you. With a shallow brain to match. No money, no history to your name. She thought worse of you than that. And you remember, too, how that voice grew soft, forgiving, tender.

  Once, in November, you sat in the backyard, watching the snow

  of leaves as they were torn from their trees in the wind. You sat and watched, the both of you. She kissed your hands and called them lovely. She became your closest friend, an ally, a blanket of sympathy. You fought and loved, resented and embraced for more than twenty years. Twenty years of loss and grief. You held her bent and breaking frame as she pushed against your breast the

  day her husband died.

  lourde s l 201

  Now there is nothing but her memory. What is a memory

  compared to a life?

  You see them taking her away. It is only her body. That is

  what you tell yourself. Why should you look to a lifeless body?

  Let them take it. Let them take the fleshless bones. Let them

  take the heart that’s ceased to beat.

  You see the men dressed in black suits who have learned to

  comport themselves formally, respectfully, solemnly. Men who

  speak in whispers and know the dead but do not know the living.

  Why are they allowed to carry her body away? Why should they

  have that honor, these mercenaries, these men who did not know, did not love her? Why?

  You feel yourself running toward the hearse where they are

  placing her. No, she will be cold. You see yourself attacking them, calling them names. You hear yourself yelling, Rosario! Rosario!

  Your shouts become demands, Give her back! Give her back to me, you bastards! Give her back! Bastards! Bastards! Give her back!

  You feel your fist on the funeral director’s chest. You pound and pound, but he is a locked door that will not open. You feel your daughter’s hand, grabbing your fist, stilling your storm to an unsettling quiet. You hear her voice, “Mama, shhhhh, Mama, shh-

  hhhh.” You feel yourself sobbing, the cruelty of grief slapping at your bare and exposed heart, your heart, the heart you thought was callused only to discover that it was still a soft and tender bone. You feel the pitiless ache of Rosario’s death, Rosario, Rosario, your sobbing, your sobbing, the succumbing, your surrender to your daughter, to the strength of her arms. You are falling into her breast and you are in awe of her voice, “Shhhhh, Shhhhhh.”

  She combs and combs your hair. “Shhhhh. Shhhhhh.”

  Her voice is a sea, blue, warm. You want to bathe there, swim

  there, drown.

  a b e

  I go back there. To basic training. I don’t know why. I don’t like to think about those days. Maybe it’s easier for my memory to

  visit that place than it is to visit the war. But look, the war, I don’t have to visit it. The fucking war visits me.

  Someone asked me once what the difference was between

  boot camp and war. I fucking shook my head. What a question.

  “Look,” I said, “no one died in boot camp. Not a fucking soul.”

  Sometimes, I remember the rank smell of a bunch of sweaty

  guys smelling up a room. It’s a helluva perfume. God, sometimes that smell attacks me, beats the crap out of me.

  Sometimes I just see faces.

  Some of the faces want to talk.

  Some of the faces just look at you. Wordless and blank.

  Some of us were already a little mean when we got to San

  Diego. Some of us were aching to let that meanness out. That’s

  a b e l 203

  not a bad thing. Not for men who are about to be sent to war.

  At a dinner table you’re supposed to be nice. But war isn’t a

  fucking banquet. War has its own etiquette, its own rules, its own rituals.

  I learned to live with hate. That’s not a bad thing either. My DI, he taught me something about living with rage. I swear that guy was born in hell. Hell or Mississippi. This guy, Rogers, who bunked right next to me, he swore he’d rather be in hell than in Mississippi. He said he hightailed it out of that fucking state when he was fifteen, two dollars in his pocket. Rogers, he told me his life story in ten minutes. I swear. But after those ten minutes, all he ever said to me was “Hey.” Sometimes he asked for a cigarette.

  I remember Gonzalez. I studied the look on his face. He got

  meaner and meaner. I remember thinking it was too bad we were

  all gonna get split up after we left basic. I’d have liked to have that guy right next to me in a fucking battle.

  The DI, he owned us. No, that’s not quite right. The Marines.

  That’s who owned us. And we wanted to be fucking owned.

  We did what we were told.

  We didn’t ask questions.

  We didn’t offer editorial remarks.

  Hell, they even told us to write letters. Look, I wasn’t into

  letters, but there was a story that went around about a guy who didn’t write home. This guy’s mom, well, she’s a mom. She’s worried about her baby. And she knows someone who knows a sena-

  tor. The senator makes a phone call to some general and wants to know why the goddamned Marines aren’t letting their sons write home. Well, let’s just fucking say that when the word came down that some sorry-ass-would-be Marine wasn’t writing home to his mother, well let’s just fucking say, this guy and his whole platoon didn’t have a very good day.

  204 l a n d t h e w o r l d d i d n o t s t o p Yeah, I wrote home.

  I hated the writing. But it made me think. I’d think about

  what I was going to say to my family. But what the hell was there to say? Mom, I’m in hell. But I’m in fucking heaven too. You got that?

  charl ie

  The doctor and the sober, middle-aged men from the funeral

  home arrived almost simultaneously. They dressed alike, the doctor and the mortuary men, black suits, black
ties, black shoes perfectly laced and shined.

  My father did all the talking. He greeted them at the door,

  shook hands, offered them coffee. He led Dr. Muñoz into my

  grandmother’s room, the funeral director and his two assistants staying behind in the living room. My mother left them there,

  holding cups of coffee. Dr. Muñoz—like my grandmother—was

  among the last who still carried the memory of Mexico inside

  him, every sign of that burden in the way he walked. A memory

  could bend and break you. If you let it.

  He examined her, though the examination came to nothing.

  She was dead and he had been summoned to confirm that simple

  and inevitable fact. We all stayed in the room watching—me,

  Xochil, my mother, and my father. Where was Gus?

  206 l a n d t h e w o r l d d i d n o t s t o p The sober men from the funeral home who were waiting in

  the living room came in and took Grandma Rosie away. Their

  car was waiting out front, a black car that was as shiny as their shoes, a car designed especially for transporting bodies—with or without a casket. My mother lunged at them as they were loading her body in the car. She was like a hungry cat leaping at a lame bird. I stood and watched, unable to move. In an instant, Xochil was there, holding my mom like a child. She knew exactly what

  to do. Where did she learn that?

  She walked my mother back inside.

  And then the house was deadly quiet.

  Xochil disappeared. I knew she would emerge from her room

  with an unwounded air about her. She was like that. It’s not that she pretended she wasn’t hurt, it’s just that she carried her hurt with a kind of grace. You almost didn’t notice it was there. Unless you looked. And I was always looking.

  My mother, calmer now, went to the kitchen, my father fol-

  lowed her. Not knowing what else to do, I chased after them. My father whispered something into my mother’s ear. She placed her hand on his cheek. “I went mad,” she said. And then she laughed and in her laugh I thought I saw the girl she used to be. The one my father married. And I was crazy happy for the laughter.

  And me?

  I was lost.

  Everybody had gone to their own separate corners. My moth-