LA MORENITA, Chapter 21

Araceli read what she had written so far. Was it true? Was it accurate? She thought it might be. In an effort to learn more, she riffled though old picture albums and asked her parents about the photos. Her mother resisted giving details, but her father, whose memory seemed pleasantly jogged , told her quite a bit. As a result, the words began rolling off the tip of her pen almost as quickly as she could think them up.
#
After that, N and M dated at least once a week, usually on Saturday or Sunday. The dates consisted of a drive in the red Impala along scenic hillsides near the outskirts of town after sunset. N found this exhilarating, but it frightened M. She knew how ugly the scene could get if the wrong persons spotted them. Yet there was something she admired about his naive courage, his desire to defy anyone who challenged his right to be with her.
After the third week, she took him to the small adobe house where she and her family lived. N instantly liked M’s father, a wiry little man with gnarled hands and a dark, leathery face. The man spoke no English and said only a few words in Spanish, but the words he did say were soft, musical and spoken with a smile. M’s mother spent most of her time translating N’s words for her husband, who usually nodded afterwards. Other than that, she never addressed anybody directly unless she was asked a question. Mostly, she stayed only long enough to bring drinks or food to the table and clear the table after everyone was done. M told N that her father was a gardener and her mother worked as a maid. “They like you,” she whispered. N found out later that M’s mother had a recurring dream in which a man with golden hair married M, took her away and cared for her the rest of his life.
“You act as if that’s a bad thing,” N said.
“It is,” M replied. “Mexicans and gringos just don’t get together.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” he said. “I see Mexicans and whites hanging out together all the time.”
“What you see is the patron talking to his hired hands. Or gringos who are so poor they live on the same neighborhood as poor Mexicans. And you always see Mexican and gringo men or Mexican and gringo women in a group, but never the men and women together.”
N tried to call up a memory to refute M’s assertion, but he couldn’t.
“I am sorry my parents like you so much,” she said. “But I’m glad my sisters don’t like you.”
N thought about what she said. It was true. The first time he met M’s three older sisters, he had stared intently at each of them, trying to discern what features they had in common with M. They were husky, big-boned girls who, in spite of favoring M in small ways, seemed to have no real beauty of their own. It was as if all three were failed prototypes: clunky Edsel station wagons to M’s classy Mustang sports coupe. He thought the two older ones looked like Indians while the other was darker with Negroid features. Perhaps the sisters sensed his aversion, since they boldly glared back at him, their fierce and silent gazes daring him to articulate any reason why they should view him in any light other than skepticism. The silence had filled the room like an odor even after they left.
“How can you say that?” he asked. “Why do you feel that way?”
“I keep hoping,” she said, “that someday I’ll outgrow you.”
Over the course of their dating life, N developed a special way of looking at things. In his mind there were the two older groups—the Mexicans and the Anglos—with neither group having much in common with or any attraction for the other. Then there was he and M, who were strongly attracted to each other for no logical reason he could figure out. He took it on faith that this was the reason he and M should be together and told her he wanted to build a relationship on something other than race. “Look,” he said. “I know you don’t want to be German, and I don’t want to be Mexican. But we’re both Americans, so that’s who we are.”
“But what does that mean?” she said. “We didn’t come into the world by ourselves. We both have families, and our families have their own prejudices.”
“And what does that mean?” he asked.
“We just can’t face the world by ourselves, as if nothing went on before us.”
“Why not?”
“Why are we still dating? What’s to come of this?”
“I don’t know. I know I don’t want to break it off.”
“What do your parents say?”
“Nothing. I haven’t told them.”
“Then what’s the point?”
He couldn’t tell her what the point was. He knew he wanted her and her alone. Not her parents. Not her sisters. Not anything Mexican but her. He thought of their moments together as something that existed outside of time and reason. He liked this feeling. “Please don’t walk away from me,” he said quietly. “I really care about you.”
“How long are you going to care about me when you realize you can’t keep hiding me all the time?” she asked.
“If I could wear you on my shirt like a badge of honor, I would. But you’re the one who doesn’t like to see me get in fights.”
“You’re just saying that. If you really cared about me, you’d introduce me to your family.”
“I’m not introducing you because I do care about you,” he said. But even as he said this, he knew he would have to introduce her to his parents. The next day, N dialed the number and waited for his mother to answer.
“Hello.”
“Hi, Mom. It’s me.”
“Well. Your father and I were wondering if you were still alive. Why are you calling? Do you need money?”
“There’s this nice girl I’m dating. I really like her, and I want you to meet her.”
“That’s nice. What’s her name?”
“I think I want to change her name.”
“That’s interesting. What did you say her name was?”
“M.”
“Are you joking?”
“No, Mom. I’m not joking. What is that supposed to mean?”
“Whatever happened to that nice German girl you dated in high school, Adelaide Schultz?”
“I think she’s a prostitute, Mom.”
N’s mother was losing patience. “You don’t want to marry this M girl, N.”
“Tell Dad, I’m bringing M to Waco next Sunday so you can both meet her.”
“Is there any way we can get out of it?”
“Actually, Mom, there isn’t.”
He hung up.
#
N and M left San Antonio just before two and pulled up in front of N’s parents’ home around five o’clock. He took her by the arm and walked her to the door. He rang the doorbell five times. After the fifth ring, a tall, balding man with a beer-belly paunch and wisps of hair the
color of corn silk, answered the door. The man wore a dirty tee shirt and a pair of overalls. As he opened the door, a startled expression appeared on his face.
“Didn’t Mom tell you we were coming?” N asked.
N’s father grunted. He stepped away from the door and motioned for them to come in. “You’ve got company,” he said to N’s mother as he turned his back and headed into the kitchen. He kept on going until he disappeared out of the back door.
N’s mother, wearing a gauzy white apron over her Prussian blue church outfit, came rushing out to greet them. “Hello,” she said, extending her hand. “You must be M.”
“I must be,” M said.
“So where did Dad go?” N asked.
“He’s got work to do out back,” N’s mother said.
“Mom, he’s a pump mechanic. Unless he’s got a five stage submersible unit back there, he’s not working on anything.”
“Well, everything’s expanding on his job, dear. They’ve got him in the office now, doing estimates.”
N bolted for the back door. “I’ll be right back,” he said.
N’s mother turned to M. “So. Tell me about yourself, M.” M could hear the uneasiness in her voice.
“There’s not much to tell really,” M said. “I work as a waitress at a cantina near San Antonio, and I like your son a lot.”
“How do your parents feel about N?”
“They like him fine. They think he’s a real gentleman.”
“Are you and N serious about each other?”
“I think we might be.”
“Serious enough to think about marriage?”
“I don’t know. That’s a pretty big step.”
“It certainly is. Especially since N’s a Baptist.”
“Oh, that’s not a problem. He’d said he’d convert.”
N’s mother was too stunned to reply.
As N entered the back yard, he heard the sound of a shop vacuum coming from the garage. He walked over, opened the door, and saw his father vacuuming an already spotless garage floor. Scattered across the surface of the work bench on the opposite wall were bits of gears, vanes, diaphragms, gaskets, and springs. Next to all these pump parts was an open bottle
of Lone Star beer. His father turned in his direction. “Don’t you ever knock?”
N smirked, then went back to the open door and knocked.
“Very funny,” his father said. He waved his hand at a cooler on the garage floor. “Want a beer?”
“What I want,” N said, “is an explanation of why you acted the way you did just now.”
“Your mother said I had to be on my best behavior.”
“That was your best behavior?”
“Have a beer.”
N grabbed a beer from the cooler and popped the cap by slamming it down against the hard edge of the work bench. He turned around and walked out of the garage. His father grabbed his open beer and followed him out.
“You serious about her?”
“Yes.”
“You gonna marry her?”
“Maybe.”
His father shook his head.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“If you’re going to go ahead and do whatever-the-hell you damn well please, why do you even bother to bring her here?”
“She wanted to meet you two.”
His father snorted and took a long pull from his beer.
“I can’t read your mind,” N said. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
“You got your undies in a bunch over this one little hot tamale, and you think you want to marry her. That’s what I think.”
“It’s more than that.”
“I can’t believe it, N. You always do what you want on the spur of the moment, regardless of the consequences.”
“It’s not like that this time.”
“It’s exactly like that. You always do what you want to do when you want to do it. And when the novelty wears off, you quit.”
“This time’ll be different.”
“She’s Mexican, for God’s sake! Mexicans are nothing more than brown niggers, for Christ sake! What do you see in her?”
“What did you see in Mom?”
N’s father sighed a heavy sigh, then he drained the contents of his beer bottle.
“Go on,” N said. “Say what’s on your mind.”
“You’ve got a pattern going, N. You quit football in high school. Then you quit high school. You got your G.E.D. in the Marines, and you went on to North Texas State for a year. Now you’re working construction in order to make ends meet, and it’s the longest you’ve ever stuck to anything. If you marry this Mexican girl, which do you think you’ll quit first? Your marriage or your job?”
N took a long sip from his beer and pretended his father wasn’t there.
“Your sophomore year of high school,” his father went on, “your football coach told me you had the talent to become the best running back he ever coached. Later he told me that if you’d stayed at North Texas State, you could’ve become their number one running back.”
“Dad,” N said. “The coach didn’t tell you that my sophomore year. That was several years later when you were both drunk.”
“Are you telling me your coach is a liar?”
“Damn right I am. I wasn’t even first string in high school.”
“That’s because you didn’t apply yourself.”
“Yep. You’re right about that. I didn’t give a shit about football. I played it just to make you happy. And all that happy horseshit about college ball? I wasn’t even the fourth best running back on the freshman squad.”
“Because you didn’t apply yourself.”
“What does all this football crap have to do with anything anyway?”
“Come on, N. You’re always doing self-destructive things. Dropping out. Quitting. Running off. Now you want to marry this little Mexican tramp.”
“Don’t talk about her like that, Dad.”
“It’s my house. I’ll talk about her any way I damn well please.”
“I knew this was a bad idea.” N set his beer down and turned to go into the house.
“Don’t you turn your back on me. “I’m not done with you yet.”
“It doesn’t matter. “I’m done with you.”