“I love her. I respect her.”
“If you say another fucking word, I swear I’ll go for you, you motherfucking bastard.”
“Gustavo, stop it. Just stop.”
“Are you coming?”
“I’m coming. Can you—can you give me one minute? Just one
minute, Gustavo, that’s all I’m asking.”
“One minute, Xochil. You get one minute. After that, I’m
gonna go mental on you. I swear I am.” He walked up the block, far enough away so that he wouldn’t have to listen to whatever they were saying to each other. He looked away, then tried to
concentrate on his cigarette. He took in a deep drag—then let
it out slowly—then did it again. He closed his eyes. He opened them again as he felt Xochil’s hand on his shoulder. “Don’t be mad. Please don’t be mad.”
“I don’t know what to say,” he whispered. “What if Mom and
Dad had caught you? They could have caught you. They could
have. They’d kill you.”
“Mom wouldn’t kill me.”
“She wouldn’t exactly be thrilled—her daughter going all the
way with some warmongering gringo—”
“Don’t talk like that.”
“Which part didn’t you like? The part about the daughter go-
ing all the way? Or the part about the warmongering gringo?”
He felt the slap, the sting, the burning, as if his face were a match being lit. He felt dizzy, numb, the strange pain but the pain was somewhere else, not in his cheek, but somewhere closer to the center of his body and he suddenly felt sick. He found
himself sitting on the curb of the street and the strange tears falling and everything felt so far, even Xochil, who was sitting beside him, clinging to him and begging, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Gustavo, forgive me, forgive me.
g us t avo. xo ch i l . l 351
• • •
She sat and listened to his sobs. He wasn’t that way, didn’t cry, didn’t like to show you his sorrows, which to him were always private. But the last few days, he was different. They were all different.
When his sobs subsided, she took his hand. “You have to say
you forgive me.”
He nodded.
“You have to say it.”
He nodded. “I forgive you.” He looked up, “And you?”
“Me what?”
“You forgive me?’
“Are you trying to make me cry too?”
“There’s a lot of that going around at our house these days. I think it’s a disease we’re all catching.”
She kissed his cheek. Where she’d slapped him.
“When I made love to him—”
“Don’t, Xochil—”
“I have to say this.”
“Okay.”
“Making love to him. It was my way of saying good-bye.”
“It’s a very generous way of saying good-bye.” He grinned—
then laughed. And then they were both laughing, unable to stop, until they were almost crying again. He pulled her up. “Let’s go home.”
She nodded. “I love him.”
“I know.”
“But it’s over. That’s what I meant by saying good-bye. I mean, for him it meant hello. But for me it meant good-bye.”
“Does he know that?”
“He doesn’t want to know it. I think he thinks that he’ll go off to war—then come back and marry me. And we’ll have a house
full of coyote kids.”
352 l a n d t h e w o r l d d i d n o t s t o p
“Why not?”
“You know why not.”
“Tell me.”
“Because I’m not Barbie.”
“That’s for fucking sure.”
She smiled. “Do you think I’m a whore?”
“Course not.”
“Really?”
“I swear.”
“Good. Because you’re not exactly a virgin.”
“That’s true. But I’m a guy.”
“Which makes you a close relative to the dogs who roam the
streets.”
“Funny.”
“Then laugh.”
“Nope.”
“ You are a close relative to the dogs who roam the streets. You’ve slept with four girls.”
“Who told you that?”
“I know things. And you only loved one of them.”
“Who’s counting?” He shrugged. “Two of the four I really
liked. And I could’ve slept with a lot more but didn’t. And, like you said, one of them I loved, I really loved.”
“You’re practically a saint.”
“That’s Charlie’s area.”
“Gustavo?”
“That’s my name, don’t—”
“Wear it out.” She reached over and gave him rabbit ears.
“Smile for the camera.”
He grinned.
“I’m sorry I slapped you.”
“It hurt.”
“I made you cry.”
g us t avo. xo ch i l . l 353
“Don’t get a big head.”
“Gustavo?” She seemed to be searching for the right word—
and then found it. “When?”
“Soon,” he whispered.
“Soon?”
“Yes.”
She nodded. “You’ll tell me, won’t you?”
“Of course.”
“Don’t say of course. Just say yes.”
“ Yes.”
“Give me a cigarette.”
“I don’t like it when you smoke.”
“Just give me a cigarette and shut up.” She reached into his
shirt pocket and pulled out his cigarettes. “You have only two left.”
“I smoked a bunch tonight. Waiting for you to come back. I
even made an excuse for you—just in case.”
“Just in case?”
“I didn’t want you to catch hell.”
“Even though I was with Jack?”
“It’s not you I hate.”
“I don’t really think you hate Jack, either.”
“I think I’d know.”
“What was the excuse?”
“I told Charlie to tell them we went for a walk.”
“Because that’s what we do.”
“Because that’s what we’ve always done.”
“Charlie can’t lie worth a damn.”
“Neither can you, Xochil.”
“Yes I can.”
“Only if you keep quiet. If you don’t say anything—no one
can tell what you’re thinking. Except me. But Charlie, he’s too sweet.”
354 l a n d t h e w o r l d d i d n o t s t o p
“I like him that way.”
“Me too.” He watched her smoke. Like a real pro.
“Are you scared?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t look scared.”
“Good.”
They stood in front of the house. It was late and the house
was quiet, all the lights still on. Most everyone had left—except for his four uncles and their wives. They could hear the women cleaning up, the sound of plates clattering, the muffled sounds of conversation. Xochil squeezed her brother’s hand. “Can’t we stay like this forever?”
g us t avo
He could never come back. Not if he left. Never. The word hit him like a stone, striking him right in pit of his stomach. He heard their voices, his mom’s, Xochil’s, clear, pure, easy—like a song.
“How old were you, when you met him?”
“I was seventeen. I lived in one of the smallest houses in the neighborhood and your father used to walk in front of the house almost every day. Skinny, your father. Beautiful. He was graceful and awkward all the same time. One day he finally knocked at
the front door. And he just stood there staring at me.”
He heard Xochil laughing, th
en his mother laughing, and he
wished he could laugh too. But there wasn’t any laughter in him.
He looked at his mother as he put away the last of the dishes.
He moved toward her and kissed her on the cheek.
She looked at him, studying him. Always studying him. “You
must be tired.”
356 l a n d t h e w o r l d d i d n o t s t o p
“Tired?”
“You never kiss your mother anymore.”
“Is that true? That’s not true.”
Xochil nodded. “Yes, that’s true.”
“I’m out of character. If you’re not careful, I’ll give you a kiss too. Today, no charge. Free.” He felt the tears, right there where the stone was, in his stomach. He knew he had to leave the room, had to leave. Now. He felt Xochil’s kiss. He felt himself smile at her. He felt himself whisper, “I’m going to bed.”
When he found himself in his room, he took a breath, then
another.
The tears did not come.
He lay there in the dark. He listened to Charlie’s breathing. His breathing was like a clock that kept time. He thought he might want to listen to his brother’s breathing forever.
When the house was dark and silent, he slowly, quietly, took
out his backpack from under the bed. He tiptoed down the hall
and out the back door. He walked across the yard and through
the door to the garage. He reached for the flashlight that his father hung next to the door, then flipped it on. He looked for a hiding place for his backpack—then saw the perfect place. There, behind the big tin trashcan where his father kept leftover pieces of wood. No one would see it.
Tomorrow, he could just grab it and go out the garage door
that opened onto the alley.
No one would see him.
And he would be gone.
a b e
I was a Marine.
Not a maggot, not a lady.
A Marine. I felt like I was walking down the street with the
biggest, meanest fucking dog in the world. No one would fuck
with me. That’s just how I felt. It makes me smile to think about it now. And I’m not making fun of myself either.
I hardly remembered who or what I’d been.
I remembered seeing myself that first day at boot camp. A
little on the skinny side. You know, I didn’t feel like an ugly fuck anymore. I was bigger. I was in shape. I had confidence. I’d never had that before, not really, didn’t know what it was like to feel good in my own fucking skin. Graceful, that’s how I felt.
I wasn’t a boy. Not anymore. I was focused. I had some disci-
pline. I’d become what I’d always wanted to become. I was fucking proud. I felt like I could do anything. I can still see myself,
358 l a n d t h e w o r l d d i d n o t s t o p young, ready, tough as hell. I thought I was bulletproof. Shit, I was bulletproof.
I had the guts. I was gonna be a badass. I was gonna make a
fucking difference. I wasn’t gonna sit on the sidelines. I wasn’t gonna let other people fight my fight, fight my war.
Every generation gets a chance to make their mark. You’re
either gonna be a part of something or you’re just gonna fucking stay behind and be nothing. Not me.
I went straight to the staging battalion at Camp Pendleton.
Six weeks later, I was on my way to Vietnam.
I remember we got on this chartered plane. A whole fucking
plane full of Marines. You know, since I left the service, I’ve never been on another goddamned chartered plane. Hell, for fucking
years, I didn’t fly at all.
So there I was on a plane full of Marines. I don’t remember
being scared. I mean, hell, I know we were going to war, but, I don’t know. I just don’t think I was scared. Maybe I didn’t know any better. Anyway, fear would come. It sure as fuck would. But the thing about being scared, it never kept me from doing my
job.
Being scared is nothing. I never gave being scared the fucking time of day.
I sat on that plane, smoked, and just listened to guys talk. I just listened. Some guys were talking about their last lays. Some guys were spilling out their life stories. Some guys were telling the stupid fucking dirty jokes they’d perfected. Some guys were just like me. They just watched. Those of us who watched, we’re the ones who made it.
But right then, it felt good, to sit there. I belonged to these guys. This is the way it was supposed to feel.
We flew from San Francisco to Anchorage to Japan to Da
Nang.
The first thing I remember is that the guys who picked us up,
a b e l 359
hell, they all smelled like shit. I never smelled anything like it.
And I’m thinking, Don’t these guys ever take showers? I mean, they really smelled like shit. And then I learned real quick that everyone smelled like shit. I mean, it turned out that it was shit. Buffalo shit, to be precise. It’s what the Vietnamese women used to dry our clothes off base—dried buffalo chips for the fire. We weren’t allowed to go off base unless, of course, we were on patrol. Our clothes got sent out, and well, our uniforms came back smelling like Vietnamese buffalo shit. Hell, in the end, that smell didn’t matter a damn. It was like having a dime in your pocket. A dime was nothing. It wasn’t even worth keeping.
Monsoons. That was more than a fucking dime. I’d take the
smell of buffalo shit any day over the fucking monsoons.
Rain. Day after day after day, week after week, month after
fucking month.
Nothing the Marines taught you in basic training could pre-
pare you for that kind of rain. When we’d go out on perimeter
defense or on security patrols, you know, for convoys and shit like that, when we did that sort of ground patrol during the monsoons, it was my idea of hell.
It didn’t help that I was from fucking El Paso, Texas. I was
sort of addicted to the sun.
God, I was cold. Always, always cold. It was pretty temper-
ate really, but when you were basically wet all the time, well, that could make a guy shiver. Even a guy like me.
We’d huddle together to sleep in our ponchos and, hell, if
the enemy didn’t kill us, the fucking rain would. I hated ground detail. I fucking got to hate it.
I remember these things called bouncing Betties. They were
a kind of antipersonnel mine. They were loaded on a spring, and you could hear the spring and a click when you stepped on one, you know, like one of those toy guns you spring-loaded when
you were a kid. They shot up about five feet then exploded. They
360 l a n d t h e w o r l d d i d n o t s t o p could kill you easy—either that or slice you up pretty damned bad.
And they always, always slowed us down.
When a Betty went off, that meant one of our guys was down.
We’d move in, help him out if he wasn’t dead, then we’d have to radio for help. So basically the damn things took two or three guys out of commission for a while. Really slowed us down.
Bouncing Betties. There’s a fucking memory.
You know, when I was in Nam, all my dreams were of home.
When I came home, all my dreams were of war.
xo ch i l
I woke up early that morning, the house still dark, the sun about to rise, the house creaking softly as if it were afraid to wake us with its quiet, chronic angers. I wasn’t tired but I should have been. I could still smell Jack on my skin, even though I’d showered before going to bed.
I didn’t mind his smell.
I felt sad and happy.
I could explain the sad. The sad was about knowing my grand-
mother was dead. The sad was about knowing that Gustavo was
going to leave—though a part of me still hoped he’d find
an-
other way. But what other way was there? I’d thought about it—it was either jail or Canada or Mexico or Vietnam. Those were his choices. Either way he would be leaving. The house would never be the same.
But the happy, that part, that was harder to explain. I felt free somehow. Free of Jack. Because I wasn’t carrying him around
362 l a n d t h e w o r l d d i d n o t s t o p anymore. I know what they mean by baggage. I do. That’s what
Jack was. I’d been carrying him around and now it felt like I didn’t need to do that anymore.
The first time, it was me who had made love to him.
The second time, it was he who had made love to me.
But we didn’t make love to each other at the same time. It
wasn’t so bad, knowing that. It made me happy.
I sat on my bed and watched the sunlight as it floated into the room. Sometimes the light was like a knife. It sliced the room, almost shredding it. But that morning, the light seemed to float in. I sat there a long time, studying the harsh shadows in the room. I remembered that Gustavo had once told me that he lived in the dark places, in the parts of the room where the sun never reached. He said it was Charlie who lived in the light. He said I lived in between, half in the shadows, half in the light. I didn’t want to think about all the things Gustavo ever said to me. I
finally placed my feet on the cool wood floor.
The house was so serene, everyone still asleep, and when I
walked into the kitchen, I was surprised to see my mother sit-
ting there, perfect and soundless, already dressed for the funeral.
She didn’t say anything, almost as if she were afraid to break the silence. She poured me a cup of coffee and we sat there in the kitchen. She reached over and combed my hair with her fingers.
And then she took my hand and led me into my grandmother’s
room. “Your aunts and cousins will all want something of hers.
I’m giving you first choice.” She was half whispering.
I looked around the room. “That picture,” I said.
She nodded.
I reached for the photograph and took it off the wall. It
was a picture of my grandmother holding me and Gustavo. We
couldn’t have been more than a week old. I looked up at the wall and smiled to myself. “Someone’s already taken a photograph,” I said.
xo ch i l l 363
My mother nodded. “I know which one.”
“Me too,” I said.
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