Cuento de Mi Id

“The Living”

They were talking again. Talking about the damned story. Morales knew he should say something, but he was tired. He had been working extra shifts at Great Lake Steel again and he really did not have the patience to sit here and listen to silly chatter while his whole body cried out for sleep. It was a quarter to nine and already he was hoping that the class would end early so that he could go home and catch a few moments of slumber before he had to start the graveyard shift. His mother would probably still be up when he got home; she usually was, no matter how late he came home. But with luck, he would be able to catch a quick nap, regardless.

And yet the voices kept yammering.

Morales felt the need to scream but he knew that if he gave in, he would never hear the end of it from his guidance counselor. Besides, if he said something, he might get into trouble, and he already had enough problems at home without seeking them here at school as well.

So instead he forced himself to listen.

“The ending,” said the blonde girl ahead of him. “It was so sad.”

“Yeah,” said a red-headed guy across from her. “Just think about it. That poor boy just singing in the snow. Just dying for want of love.”

You think that's sad, Morales thought, try listening to some of the real-life stories I could tell you. The father who died of a heart attack when his youngest son turned thirteen. The older brother who died of appendicitis because there was no money to take him to a doctor until it was too late. The other older brother whose first wife and son died of tuberculosis while he was at work.

But the people in the classroom didn't want to hear stories like that. They wanted to hear happy stories about people just like them. People who had no real problems save philosophical ones. Sad, rich people who had a hundred servants to do their bidding and yet wept quite frequently because they lived in such a sad, sad world.

He knew he was being unfair now. He knew that some of his fellow students were on scholarships too, and probably came from families just as poor as his.

But he was too tired to be fair. He just wanted to go home so that he could grab a few hours of sleep.

The teacher was talking now. Talking about the difference between dying young and not dying young. As if that issue really required a lot of thought.

To deliberately die young like the boy did in the story was stupid. A smart person avoids it if he can and he is certainly not dumb enough to go out and seek it on purpose.

Only the well-off glamorize death, he thought. Only the rich could afford to cry crocodile tears over cute young Irish lads who die way before their time because they're too stupid to come in out of the snow. Only the rich could afford to spit on those who are not dumb enough to die young and who prefer to show their love by staying healthy and sharing their good fortune with their beloved for many years instead of offering one brief and stupid romantic gesture for the sum of one night.

Such folk were never appreciated by the rich because the rich do not want to appreciate such folk. They hate being reminded of what it's like to be poor -- actually poor -- and while they will weep forever over some imaginary person's troubles, they generally could be counted on to do damned little to help out a real person.

But then they have no real idea what it is like to be not rich. To not have money. To have to work so hard and to earn so little and to never have enough of anything.

He thought of his widowed mother who was waiting at home this very moment and the many times she had reminded him and his siblings about the life she had known before she had been dispossessed by the Revolution. Whenever one of them would bring home a bottle of wine to celebrate a birthday, their mother would say, “When I was a little girl, we used to celebrate with champagne, not wine.” And then she would say nothing else.

Somehow he got the feeling that she would have liked the story the class was talking about.

But he never would.

The yammering was continuing and he tried to ignore it by telling himself that it was just a story. No more important than the stories his co-workers would tell on lunch break or even the stories his mother would tell of her own girlhood. He did not have to agree with the others about it. In fact, he was better off ignoring it.

Then he noticed the silence.

“Anything to add, Mr. Morales?” the teacher asked.

Morales blinked. The class was looking at him and the teacher kept staring at him as if expecting something. Morales knew he should say something neutral but instead he said, “This story is stupid.”

He relished the shocked look on his classmates' faces as they cried “What?” in unison and then he continued.

“The woman in the story -- she spent all those years in love with this dead guy she didn't even like at first and yet she had no love for the spouse who had worked for years to put food on her table and a roof over her head. In my mind, that's a stupid story.”

The teacher just smiled. “I'm sorry you have so little appreciation for great literature, Mr. Morales. Perhaps when you're older and you know more about life, you will appreciate it more.”

There was so much more Morales could have said at that moment yet he stayed silent. Somehow he didn't see himself having the words to make either the teacher or the class understand. Perhaps no one had such words. But especially not him.

Instead he just waited silently for the dismissal bell to ring. When it did, he quietly gathered up his books and walked out into the winter cold.

Cuento de Mi Id

“Blanca”

Blanca is knitting another sweater for me tonight. She knits something new every night yet she never finishes any of them.

Sometimes I joke with her that her mother should have named her Penelope. But she just smiles and glances at me with those ebony eyes of hers.

Arabic eyes, I call them. After five centuries, the long-dead Arabs of Spain still live on in a young woman’s eyes. Blanca’s eyes. The eyes of the prettiest woman in San Narciso.

*************************************************************************************************************

How I first met Blanca, I shall not say. Suffice it to say that as it is with many men of Mexican descent, it was a female relative of mine who saw her first and eventually introduced us. No paseo scene for me. The minute I first saw her entering her mother’s pharmacy, I fell in love with her. And I like to think that eventually she will fall in love with me. In time.

Our first meetings were at best platonic. I would visit her house and say hello to her mother and her younger siblings. Her younger brother would fetch me an apple which I would not eat and a Coke which I would not drink and after a while, we would go upstairs to the living room to talk. Of course Blanca’s brother was always coming up to check on us and I would like to think that in some ways, the little twelve-year-old relished the role of chaperone he was playing. Blanca, for all her beauty, did not look like she dated much, and at her age (27), she seemed an obvious candidate for Mexican spinsterhood. After all, most Mexican women married at far younger ages than Blanca -- even in the States. To make matters worse, three of her younger sisters were already wearing engagement rings. So, needless to say, my courtship of Blanca seemed a welcome event.

Yet Blanca herself seemed strangely reluctant to talk of marriage. Of parties and weddings, yes, but only if they were someone else’s. As for herself, she seemed content to do little more than knit and make small talk.

This frustrated me. I knew by all the framed diplomas on the wall of Blanca’s room that she was not a dumb person, and indeed, she had talked many times of all the sights she had seen when she had visited a married cousin living in San Francisco. Clearly, she was not the type of woman to be content spending the rest of her life in a small town. But she acted like it. Moreover, I knew that she liked me.

However, she always changed the subject whenever I spoke of marriage.

Yes, she was willing to think of a more serious relationship, she would say, but not now.

Had I met her back home in the States, I might have suspected that there was another man involved, but in truth, I seemed to be the only male non-relative involved in her life. Which puzzled me eventually. Could it be that for all her talk of marriage and children, Blanca did not really want to get married. And if so, why not?

A number of unflattering hypotheses came into my mind, but I rejected every one of them, one by one. Blanca showed no signs of romantic interest in her own sex. Nor did she seem destined for the convent. Her mother talked long and admiringly about my computer job in the States, so there were no objections on that front. As for her father, he had passed away about three years ago. Even the novios of her younger sisters seemed to like me. So what was the problem?

I made up my mind to ask Blanca about this one night when we were walking home from a party.

Her brother had come with us as a chaperone, but like most males, he was smart enough to walk a yard or two ahead of us -- enough room to give us privacy without compromising his sister’s virtue too much.

So as we passed through the deserted streets of downtown San Narciso, I gathered the courage to ask Blanca the fatal question: Why?

She glanced at me.

Then she glanced into the windows of a jewelry store.

“What lovely rings they have,” she said in Spanish.

I glanced at her.

“Please don’t change the subject,” I said in the same language.

She glanced at me, then at her brother, still a yard or two ahead of us. “We must not talk about it.”

“We must.”

“No, we must not.” She paused to glance at me, then she continued. “I -- I like you very much, Anton, but I cannot be engaged to you.”

“But why?” The words sounded much more anguished in Spanish.

“I -- I just cannot.”

She glanced into another store window.

“Did anyone in my family ever tell you about my first boyfriend?”

“I didn’t even know you had a first boyfriend. Aside from me, of course.”

She smiled. “This was long ago. When Papa was still alive. Papa never really liked him. In fact, he nearly threw him out of the house one time. He was a real bad sort.” She did not say to whom she was referring.

“So?”

“My boyfriend wanted me to elope with him. He had friends in Guadalajara, and if that did not work, we could always stay with his relatives in Morelia or San Luis Potosí. But I did not do that, of course.”

“Why not?”

She glanced into another store window. “I did not want to leave my family. I was the oldest, of course. And the oldest always has certain responsibilities. So he left without me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. A few months later, he tried the same thing with a girl in a nearby town. Her mother was one of those jealous sorts and had chased away one would-be novio with a gun. I hate to tell you what she did to my boyfriend.”

She smiled and then continued. “As for me, I really did not have much to say about the matter. I got very sick that year and spent much of that fall in bed. At one point, my parents even called in a priest and had him give me the last rites.”

She turned toward me with a smile and pointed to a small circular scar on her forearm.

“But I am much better now.”

“I’m glad to hear that.”

“Don’t be. I nearly died.”

“I’m sorry. I once nearly died too.”

“Yes, I know,” she said. “You have told me about the heart operation you had when you were a child. This was different. I really did almost die. Only my father saved me at the last minute.”

“He did? How?”

“With a silver coin. He heated it in an open fire and then placed it on my arm. If he had not done that, they would have buried me.”

“My God!”

“All these years, I’ve always wanted to pay him back for saving my life. But I never got the chance. And he never really forgave me for it either.”

“He never forgave you? But why? It was not your fault. You just said you were sick.”

“No, I did not.”

“But you just said -- ”

“I said I got sick. From taking too many sleeping pills from my parents’ pharmacy. Now do you understand?”

I glanced at her. Surely in this day and age, she could not be that Catholic. And yet something in the way she held her head seemed to warn me. Between her black hair and her light brown skin, she seemed to almost merge into the darkness behind her.

I suddenly realized that her brother was no longer in sight of us. I looked around for him.

“Don’t bother,” she said. “He’s gone home.”

“But why?”

“We have been courting long enough for him to trust us. And he knows that you are a most respectable man.”

“Then why did he accompany us tonight?”

“Because I asked him to. In case I was tempted.”

She walked on a bit. “I can’t ever come back to Dallas with you. And you could never be happy in San Narciso. So it would be best for you to forget me. Go home and find yourself some nice American girl. I am not worth it.”

“But you are,“ I said. “You are very beautiful.”

She laughed. “It takes more than beauty to make a marriage.”

“I know. That is why I want to marry you. Because I do not want just another mindless beauty. I want someone I could spend my entire life with. I want you.”

She looked at me again. “I do believe you are serious.”

“I am.”

She smiled.

“Blanca,” she said, as if quoting. “The woman with a name like snow.”

She smiled again. “My boyfriend made that up.”

“I see.”

“No, you do not. You do not know me that well, Anton. If you did, you would not dream of me. Must I deny you three times before the cock crows? Very well. I’ll show you why you must go back to Dallas and forget me. I will show you right here... right now.”

From out of her purse she took two knitting needles. She held them up before her so that their sharp tips gleamed in the moonlight, then plunged them into her left hand. She never so much as flinched.

“Do you understand now?”

“No. I do not.”

She drew out the needles. There was blood on their tips. Already her hand was bleeding.

I reached over to cover it with a handkerchief.

She pushed me back.

“You are a fool, Anton. A well-meaning fool, but a fool nonetheless. I can never love you. You know that as much as I do.” And with that, she wiped off the needles with a piece of old cloth she had and placed them all back in her purse. Then she drew out a multicolored handkerchief. She covered her hand with it and then disappeared into the darkness.

“You are a fool, Anton,” she kept saying as she disappeared. “You are a fool.”

*************************************************************************************************************

I wish I could say that I went back to the States right after that and forgot her. But as I have pointed out, she is with me now even as I speak.

While I could not influence her, I could influence her mother, and Blanca, as always, was the type of good Catholic girl who always obeyed her mother.

So she sits in the corner of our bedroom, knitting like she always knits, the sun illuminating the side of her face to the point that she almost looks Anglo.

I kiss her every now and then and murmur, “Te adoro.” But she never murmurs “te adoro” back. She is determined to stay with me and be a good girl, but she will not pretend she enjoys it.

If that were the worst element of our life together, I would not object. For aside from her knitting, Blanca has made remarkably great progress in her adjustment to Dallas. Too great.

Every now and then, I see her wear a short-sleeved dress and witness the nail marks on her arms. I think of how few cats I have seen in the neighborhood and of how many pet-owning families have moved out of the neighborhood in the last year or so.

She keeps swearing that she will change, but I swear that her resolutions, alas, are all too much like her sweaters -- easily begun but never quite capable of holding her interest.

This worries me.

For lately, you see, she has begun to talk about children.

She has begun to talk about children a lot.

Cuento de Mi Id

“The Mourning After”

He hadn’t wanted to attend the funeral, and already he regretted the fact that he had.

His bedroom smelled like something had died there, and his skull was afire with the granddaddy of all hangovers. Evidently he had gotten drunk last night. But what happened afterward was still blank.

He remembered seeing John there at the church and blaming him silently for the miscarriage which had taken Maggie’s life. After all, it should have been him that Maggie married, not John, and if John had not gotten her pregnant, she would have eventually changed her mind.

Instead she had been stolen by the ultimate suitor, and all his years of waiting were wasted. There was no divorce from the Grim Reaper. Not even a trial separation. And it was all John’s fault.

He knew he shouldn’t think that way. After all, thoughts could be as real as bullets. His father had told him that. But then his father had also believed in the mal de ojo, the Mexican evil eye. If that was real, John would have been dead by now.

The smell grew stronger in his bedroom. Then he turned and noticed a shape beneath the sheets on the other side of the bed. Evidently, he had gotten lucky last night. How ironic.

He had started to reach for his companion when his fingers brushed against a cold, dirt-covered hand bearing a familiar ring.

It was then that he remembered what he had done last night.

He closed his eyes and screamed. He did not wish to remember any more. It was just an illusion; Maggie wasn’t really there. When he opened his eyes, she would be gone.

But when he squeezed her cold hand involuntarily, she was still there. And that was not the worst part.

The worst part came when she squeezed back.