Carry Me Like Water

by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

  They watched the people coming and going. Luz ate her homemade bread and pointed at a woman swimming across the river. “Swim!” she yelled. “Look at her, Dieguito, an Olympic star! Swim!” she yelled. “Swim before the migra comes back from their goddamned coffee break!” Diego clapped his hands. Luz gave him a kiss on the cheek.

  At noon, he left her there watching the river people. He laughed to himself as he thought about how she loved people who had no respect for borders. “Bring your letter with you the next time you come,” she yelled. Diego nodded. He thought she was beautiful, beautiful because she refused to be beaten, refused to be humble, refused to say yes when she meant no.

  He took a last look at her. From a distance she looked like a broken old woman. He looked down at the river and wondered what it sounded like. Sometimes, he wanted to hear the river speak his name, speak it, and then spell it out one letter at a time. Most of the time, he could imagine what things sounded like, but the river was silent. So very silent.

  9

  JOAQUIN’S BREATHING was heavy and thick as he slept on the couch, his black hair shining in the light of the late morning sun, Jacob thought it was a sad and tired sun that fought vainly to break through the San Francisco fog. He stared out the window. The fog had finally begun to burn away, but Jacob knew it would return. He looked away from the window and stared at Joaquin; he tried to picture his lover’s dreams as he sat and watched him from the dining room table. He wanted Joaquin’s breathing to go on and on and never stop. “Can’t it stay like this—perfect and warm and quiet?” He put down the newspaper he’d been trying to read for the last half hour. “Have to stop talking to myself. Gonna make myself crazy. Just be normal.” He laughed at himself. Nothing in his life had been normal yet he could not exile that word from his vocabulary. He looked at his watch, then looked at the mess around him. “Damn!” The house looked like a college dorm room, clothes everywhere. “Have to pick up this dump, have to go to the grocery store—maybe Joaquin will be up for a movie or a night out at a quiet restaurant—no, it’s better that he rest—but …” Everything in their lives had become maybe: “Maybe we’ll make it to that party, maybe we’ll have people over for dinner, maybe we’ll sleep an entire night, maybe we’ll have a good day, a peaceful day, an entire day when we don’t think of our bodies and all the things that are going wrong with them.” They were no longer in control of their lives, no longer able to utter simple nos or yeses to the questions they were asked. But it was getting harder and harder for Jake to exist in that doorway, that uneasy, liminal place of permanent maybes, the floor constantly shifting under him as if the house had been built on an endless moving walkway that provided no place to exit. He rolled up the newspaper in his fists. Tighter and tighter and tighter. At least Joaquin doesn’t cry anymore, he thought. He made himself believe his rage had subsided—at least the rage in his stomach, in his throat, the rage that coated every goddamned word that came out of him with a film that disgusted even him and everyone around him—that rage—that rage had left him. At least that part was over. Everything was calmer. He wanted to believe the rest would be easier than what they had been through already, wanted to believe that the rest of their pain would be purely physical, as if there was such a thing as purely physical pain.

  He wanted to hold on to all the good things he’d ever had—and yet even now there were days he simply wanted to let go. If he could let go, then he could walk into the place of eternal nos—no light, no breath, no body, no Joaquin, and no maybes.

  He watched his lover sleep. He smiled. He wanted to whisper something that would make Joaquin feel better; he wanted to hold him in his arms. He wanted to be his father, his mother, his brother, a great being whose only purpose was to protect. He had felt the same way toward his younger brother—but he had been unsuccessful in protecting him just as he was incapable of protecting the man who’d shared the only part of his life that was good. As he watched Joaquin, thoughts of his little brother came to him. His open palm clinched into a fist—a reflex. He wondered if it was sheer coincidence that his lover was his younger brother’s exact age. He had always asked himself if he wasn’t trying to obsessively recover his younger brother through every lover he’d ever had—all of them having his brother’s features: dark, thick hair with boyish good looks. All of them, every damn one of them, had seemed a little sad and far away—until they smiled. But when they smiled it was as if they had never come near to anything in life that resembled sadness. They had all been hopelessly scarred to the point of selfdestruction or melodrama, just as he had been predictably unable to cope with their confusion. He wondered if he and all of his lovers were helplessly sick, wondered if there was a cure for any of them—even Joaquin had not cured him. But Joaquin had brought calm into his life, and had taught him to bear himself. It was something. It was something. So now he had Joaquin and the memory of his brother, but he did not think of that memory as something intangible. For him, the past was something solid and hard and tangible as flesh. His younger brother consistently stepped into his house—unannounced—like an old friend who always showed up at the worst possible moment but was somehow welcome just the same.

  His brother had been born when he was eleven, and he remembered his mother telling him it was his job to protect him. He remembered holding him. The first time he had held that strange and fragile being in his arms, he had understood what love was, what it meant, and he had understood for the first time that he was capable of something more than fear. He had never fell any warmth for his parents: they were not the sort of people who inspired tenderness, not the sort of people who required affection from the people around them—not even their sons. Those two beings who had fathered and mothered him had always kept him at a distance, and his brother was the only warm thing that had ever entered his house. It had been over twenty years since he’d seen him, and as he watched Joaquin get sicker and sicker, he thought of his brother more and more. He knew he would never see him again and he couldn’t help mourning that fact, though he did not want to mourn. At times his self-pity was stronger even than his anger. I should have looked for him. I should have looked—he kept his picture in the living room, and he often stared at it. His brother’s seven-year-old face smiled into the room. The photograph had become a kind of holy card, an amulet, Jacob’s most precious possession. He all but lit candles to it.

  Lately, he had begun to regret that he had not attended his parents’ funeral. If he’d gone, he could have spit on their graves; if he’d gone, he could have danced around the polite high church Episcopalian crowd, spewing all the family secrets; if he’d gone, he would have seen his brother. At the time, he hadn’t thought of his brother, hadn’t thought of anything. He had gone completely insane, completely unconscious. His body had taken control because his mind had left—left, perhaps, because it could not handle the weight of a life it was supposed to rule, and unable to rule it, had opted for the painlessness of chaos. When he heard the news of his parents’ death, he felt a surge of exhilaration, a kind of orgasm that left a smell and an aftertaste of having made love to someone repulsive and detestable and irredeemably ugly. That smell was still a part of his own body—and sometimes he could still detect its faint odor. He suddenly felt free of the people who had brought him into the world and raised him. The only thing that prevented him from yelling out his joy was the rage of having been born their son. Sometimes, he could hear their voices in the words he spoke. He remembered reading about their deaths in the newspaper: HEIRESS KILLS SLEEPING HUSBAND, KILLS SELF. He Could Still picture the headlines; they had become a part of him just as that ink had become a part of that newspaper. He drank for days, weeks, months. He had no memory of how he had survived. It was as if he had died and been raised back to life. An old friend had found him lying on the street, an old friend who, by chance and in a moment of compassion, looked down at his blank and anonymous body and had miraculously seen a man with a name and commanded him back to the fields where people worke
d and played and laughed. After his mind had come back, he had locked his parents in the part of him that could not make words, the part of him that no one was allowed to see or touch—except Joaquin. Joaquin had touched every part of him—even the part where he kept his parents. When Joaquin died, he knew that his final days or weeks or months would be heavy and inconsolable and his days would be without light. Maybe he would take to the bottle again and walk out into a cold and barren field that was far away from everyone and praise it for its solitary existence—and cut himself until he bled rivers.

  Joaquin opened his eyes and stared blankly around the room. He sat up slowly.

  Jacob smiled at him. “Tired?”

  “Not as tired as yesterday. I had a dream.” There was still sleep in his voice.

  “You wanna talk about it?” he whispered.

  “I don’t remember exactly. Someone was chasing me.”

  “Jesse Helms.”

  Joaquin laughed. “No—someone I knew.” He thought a moment, and Jacob could see he was trying to piece his dream together. He shook his head. “I can’t remember. It doesn’t matter, does it, Jake?”

  “No. It doesn’t matter.”

  Joaquin stretched his arms and grunted. “How come you let me sleep on the couch?”

  “You were tired. I didn’t have the heart to move you.”

  “I’d have rather slept with you.”

  “Who wouldn’t?” Jacob smiled. “Take your medicine.”

  Joaquin shook his head. “Jake—I can’t—not today.”

  “Joaquin—don’t. We’ve been through this a thousand times.”

  “That shit is poison. I’ll die of it.”

  “I can’t take this today. Let’s not do this—I can’t—” He covered his ears with his palms.

  Joaquin sat a moment and watched him. He walked over to the cabinet, showed his medicines to his lover, smiled, and took his daily dose. “Ummmmm. That was gooooood. Sabrosisimo. Are you happy now, gringo?”

  Jacob kept himself from smiling. He crossed his arms and locked his hands under his armpits. Joaquin walked up and stood behind the chair where he was sitting. He kissed the top of his head. “I know you’re dying to laugh.”

  “Am not.”

  “Are too.”

  “Am not.”

  “How old are we?”

  “Nine. We’re nine.”

  “Nine, Jake? Nine? I couldn’t get it up when I was nine. Can’t we at least be sixteen?”

  Jacob smiled. “Late bloomer, huh?”

  “Well, I made up for lost time when I reached sixteen.”

  “OK. We’re sixteen.”

  Joaquin kissed him on the top of the head again. “I’m going to hop in the shower.” He walked out of the room and down the hall. Jake stared at the couch where Joaquin had slept. He remembered the first time he saw him, just standing there by himself like a beautiful silk shirt hanging over an empty chair. He had wanted to reach out and touch. He had seen him many times before he had spoken to him. He had taken it for granted that Joaquin had noticed him, too—noticed him because everyone noticed him—at least noticed his looks, his body, his masculine presence. But if Joaquin had taken note of him, that fact was not detectable in his face. He’d asked him if he could buy him a drink.

  “No, gringo,” he said, “I don’t want a drink.”

  Jacob had immediately noticed his voice—a voice that was calm, comfortable, and free of any discernable rage. “You don’t drink? Or you don’t like gringos?”

  “Oh, I drink.”

  “But not with gringos?”

  “They’re too used to being liked—they expect it.”

  “Not all of us are that superior.”

  “No—but you are.”

  When he’d said that, something had shot through him, and he had wanted to strike out at him—to bust his jaw—to put a mark on his dark and perfect face.

  “I can practically taste your hate, gringo.”

  “I have a name, godamnit!”

  “So do I,” he’d said quietly. “My name is Joaquin.” He’d walked away. As Jake sat there remembering, all the confusing feelings came back, as if he had stepped back into the past. “You arrogant sonofabitch!” That’s what he’d yelled at him. Joaquin hadn’t even bothered to turn around and acknowledge his presence. He remembered how he’d just sat there and gotten drunk and picked some guy up and took him home—and forgot him almost as soon as their sex was finished.

  A week later, he had seen Joaquin sitting on a park bench, drinking a cup of coffee from a Styrofoam cup and smoking a cigarette. He pretended to himself that all he wanted to do was hit the sonofabitch. He walked by him, and pretended not to notice he was sitting there. “Hey, gringo,” Joaquin said, “want to get laid?”

  “What’s the difference between now and the other night?” he’d muttered.

  “The difference is that I need the money.”

  He’d walked away without answering. Joaquin had run after him, smiled at him, and laughed, “Gringo, how come you let people push your buttons?” He remembered grabbing him by the collar: “My name is Jake—you got that?”

  Joaquin had simply smiled, unafraid of the physical strength of the man that had him by the collar. Jake had grabbed him by the arm and pulled him home. He remembered undressing him, he remembered everything about the first time he’d held Joaquin’s body, and how he had wanted to be violent, but wound up touching him softly as if he were a rare and fragile thing, “How old are you?” Joaquin had asked him. “I’m thirty,” Jake said. “How old are you?” “Nineteen.” After a few weeks of endless sex and endless talk, Joaquin disappeared back into the city. After two months, Jacob had given up looking for him; he swore to himself that if Joaquin ever showed up on his doorstep again he’d kick his ass all the way back to Mexico. About six months later, Joaquin knocked at his door.

  “Where the fuck have you been?” Jake said. He was more hurt than angry—but no matter how much he tried, his hurt always came out as anger.

  “My mother was sick,” he said. “I went back to Mexico to see her.” Joaquin swallowed hard and looked down at the floor. “I had to bury her,” he whispered. He sat down on the stairway outside his house. When Jacob had reached out to touch him, he began to shake and say things as if he might die if he did not say them. Jake was not sure Joaquin was aware of the words that were coming out of his mouth: “As long as she was alive, Mexico was still mine—somehow it was still mine. Now, it’s not mine, but here is not mine either. So where do I go, gringo? Cuando uno está perdido ¿dónde se va? I used to send her money. Soy huérfano ¿sabes? Soy huérfano.” Jake had not understood what the word huérfano meant, but he understood that the word carried a weight and a sadness that he had also carried, and he understood that Joaquin was lost, and when he began to cry, he held him, and the young man in his arms howled as if he were nothing more than an animal, an alien being who, despite losing his capacity for speech, had not lost his capacity to feel pain. Jacob had carried him inside as if he were a baby, and when at last Joaquin had been able to speak, all he was able to say was: “Gringo, don’t hurt me.”

  They had been together for twelve years and Jake no longer knew what it was about Joaquin that had made him such a necessary part of his life—whether it was his lover’s body, his intelligence, his sense of humor, his awful pride. When they had met, he was still something of a boy—and he had remained something of a boy. He had never stopped attending Mass on Sundays, had refused to give God over to the straights and the gringos and the Protestants because he said, “They don’t own him—he is not theirs.” Jacob had never understood that side of him. Once, while watching his lover nurse a dying friend, it occurred to him that the man he had fallen in love with was good, was decent. He had never consciously thought about “good” until then, and since becoming aware of it, he began wondering about himself. He didn’t think of himself as being good. He understood pain and he understood pleasure, and he had decided that his life, wh
atever else it was or meant, was dedicated to the avoidance of pain, and the pursuit of pleasure. But as he sat in his house staring at the couch where Joaquin had slept all night, he realized he loved this man, and his love was no longer the mere pursuit of pleasure. He sat there remembering, remembering everything. It was good to have a memory. “J, I want to go first. Let me be the first to go.”

  La Jolla, California. 1968

  Jacob walked through the door of the living room and hung up his red letter jacket in the entryway closet. He ran upstairs and dumped out his duffel bag, his dirty football jersey and cleats falling on the floor. He lay down on his bed. He focused on his body. He was proud of it; he’d worked hard to sculpt a body that was perfect, and sometimes he could hardly believe it belonged to him. He rubbed his chest with his palm and reached for one of the magazines he kept under his mattress. He was surprised when he felt nothing there. He jumped out of the bed and lifted up the mattress. “Not there! Oh, shit! Oh shit!”

  He lay shaking in his bed the rest of the afternoon until it was time for him to go down to dinner. He relaxed a little when he remembered his parents were having company. If his parents had found his magazines, they would not bring up the issue in front of guests. He would excuse himself, and go out for the evening—and think of what to say, what to say?—but what was there to be said? The magazines, full of pictures of nude men, said everything simply and plainly. Maybe Esperanza had found them when she changed the sheets to his bed, maybe she had thrown them away without mentioning it to his parents. Maybe it would be all right. But he knew Esperanza would not have touched anything that did not belong to her.

  He made sure he went downstairs after the guests had arrived. His mother and father acted the same way they always acted when they had guests—they pretended to be fun and interesting and kind people. The only time his mother and father touched each other was when they had guests in the house. When they were alone, they either did not acknowledge each other or they argued. He found it odd that they became such strong allies whenever he challenged either one of them. They always jumped to each other’s defense. Jacob had decided that being married was like being in a club—and that he was a threat to that club—or, at least, that was the way his parents treated him.