“But she passes the time there with you, no?”
“She comes to clean the house.”
“A cleaning woman? You want to leave your only brother locked up in this place so you can be alone with the cleaning woman?
She must have told you not to bring me around.”
“It would be the same if she wasn’t around,” Don Celestino said. “And anyway it was her idea that I go see you.”
“Only her idea?”
“I was already thinking about it,” Don Celestino said, combing back his brother’s hair. “Now tell me how you want it.”
“The usual way.”
“Ten years later, and you want me to know what the usual way is?”
Don Fidencio stared into the mirror. Tufts of wispy gray-and-white hair were bunched up around his ears, joining up with his
broad and unruly sideburns. Though his hair was thin, the strands reached from the top of his forehead to beyond his crown.
In the back, his hair had curled into ringlets that fell to just above his shirt collar. He wondered how he had let himself
get to this point. Maybe this was why his brother didn’t want him inside his house. He should have done a better job of taking
care of himself. A barber came once a week and set up in the room where The Turtles got their hair done; Don Fidencio had
stopped by once or twice when he saw the other old men parked along the wall in their wheelchairs. After a while he looked
up again and found his brother standing behind him in the mirror.
“Just make it look good again.”
Don Celestino started by combing the sides, just to have some idea of how much he needed to cut. The top was long, but he
planned to trim just an inch so the hair maintained some of its weight. The sideburns looked worse than they really were;
the trimmer would take care of them in no time. The back seemed to be the area that needed the most work. The curls reminded
him of how wavy his brother’s hair had been when he was a young man.
He was surprised at how nimble his fingers were after not cutting hair for a couple of years. When he sold the barbershop,
he figured he would never cut hair again. He had brought his barber tools home in the tackle box and stored them in the hall
closet next to his shoe-shine kit. Every time he polished his shoes, he thought about bringing out some of his tools, but
he knew this would only make him miss what he had left behind. Eventually he pushed the box to the back of the closet, where
it wasn’t always in the way when he was looking for something else.
Yesterday, when Socorro was over at the house, he had opened the box on the dresser so she could see his barber tools. Other
than his driving her past the shop, she’d never really seen this part of his life. He pulled out the first pair of shears
from its velvet sheath and let her hold it for a second. Then he took back the shears and, after placing her hand over his,
showed her just how rapidly he was still able to move his fingers, all while his little finger remained delicately unfurled
as if he were sipping tea in the middle of the afternoon. Later he told her a story about when he was in barber school and
how one night four pachucos cornered him, wanting to rob him or worse. This happened in an alley downtown, near the cathedral,
where he had to either fight or try to outrun them in the opposite direction. Instead he took off his jacket, wrapped it tightly
around his forearm to protect himself, and flipped open the straight razor he had started carrying in the front pocket of
his shirt. He stood up from the bed to show her exactly how he had held the straight razor above his head, in plain sight
for all of them to see. “So who’s going to be my first customer?” he had called out. It took only a few convincing slashes
for the pachucos to move aside and for him to continue on his way home.
“And you weren’t afraid?” Socorro asked.
“What was there to be afraid of, if none of them were barbers?” he said.
She seemed impressed with his daringness, and he took the opportunity to recount some of his other adventures as a young man,
hoping she would trust that he still possessed the same courage today. If for no other reason than to share this part of his
life with her, he was thankful there had been an excuse to bring out his barbering equipment. When they finally went to bed,
he felt more confident than he could remember being since they had started spending afternoons at the house.
Now he wanted to tell his brother the story about his fight with the pachucos, but the old man had fallen asleep with his
head tilted forward. Don Celestino turned off the clippers and tapped him on the shoulder.
“I finished with the back part. You need to keep your head up now.”
Don Fidencio glanced down at the clumps of silver-and-white hair on the floor. “Are you sure you’re not cutting it too short?”
“Since when did you get so particular about your hair?”
“My ears already stick out too much.”
“Stop worrying,” he said. “You act like this is your first time ever getting a haircut.”
Don Fidencio stayed quiet for some time, looking into the mirror and watching his brother work, though later he seemed to
be gazing at something more distant. Then his brother came around to the front so he could check how far some of the longer
hairs reached onto his forehead. When Don Celestino moved again, the old man was still staring into the mirror.
“I can remember some of it.”
“Some of what?” Don Celestino asked, brushing the hair off his brother’s shoulder.
“My first haircut.”
“You barely remember that I called you on the phone last night.”
“It was a tiny barbershop in Reynosa, only one chair in the whole place. This barber’s chair was made of wood and the arms
were carved with different figures — with horses and bulls, and on the other one, a rooster. The footrest I remember had the
name of the barbershop carved on it — Primos. But there was only one other place to sit if you were waiting to get a haircut,
and that was on a wooden crate. Papá Grande told the barber exactly how he wanted his hair, and later he did the same when
it was my turn.”
“You were maybe only four or five years old, Fidencio.”
“Did he take you for your first haircut?”
“He could barely walk by the time I was old enough to go.”
“Then you see why — you weren’t born yet,” Don Fidencio said. “I was there. I was the one named after him, I was the one he
would take everywhere with him, I was the one who was there with him when he died. Me, not you.” He kept staring at his brother
until the other finally turned away.
“This first time he took me was when we lived on the ranchito up the river, close to Hidalgo. We went in the wagon and I sat
next to him all the way there, just me and him. The only time we got off was when we reached the ferryboat so we could cross
to the other side. One of the boys pulling the ropes was too young to be working, maybe only twelve years old, and I remember
Papá Grande got behind him and helped him pull.”
“Are you sure that wasn’t our father?” Don Celestino asked. “I remember we used to cross that way sometimes.”
“You think I would confuse him with my grandfather?”
“Just because they named you after him doesn’t make him only
your
grandfather.”
“I know what we used to do together, what me and him talked about.”
“I was just saying, if he was really helping to pull.”
“Already I told you it was Papá Grande,” he said, and brought his hand out from under the gown and made a tight fist. “He
was still strong in those days.”
Don Celestino held his brother’s thin hair and trimmed the very tips, then whisked away the remains with his comb. There was
no point in arguing with him. He came around the chair to get a better look from the front. The left sideburn needed a little
more adjusting. He cupped his brother’s chin and turned his head a few degrees to the left, then back toward the center, and
then ever so slightly to the right. The only thing left to do was snip some of the hairs along the rims of his ears and growing
out from his nostrils. After he finished he reached into the bottom of his tackle box for a small oval mirror. Then he swiveled
the chair around so the old man would have his back to the larger mirror hanging from the closet door.
“Tell me if the back looks good, the way you like it.” He handed him the oval mirror but ended up holding it himself when
his brother had trouble keeping his hand steady enough.
Don Fidencio peered into the small mirror, trying to make his eyes focus on the reflection of his image. He felt confident
that his brother had done a good job with the back, the same as he had with the front and sides, but he wanted to see this
for himself. He stared into the mirror and turned his head this way and that way, as if he were really examining the finer
details of his brother’s work and not the cloudy image of what appeared to be the back of a man’s head, though not necessarily
his own.
“So, what do you think?” Don Celestino turned the chair back to its original position. “Is it good that way or you want me
to cut a little more?”
“IF IT WAS ME, I WOULDN’T LET HIM TOUCH ANOTHER HAIR.”
They turned around to find The One With The Hole In His Back sitting up in bed. The Gringo With The Ugly Finger and two nurse’s
aides were also watching from the doorway.
“¡Qué guapo!” The One With The Flat Face said. “Mr. Phillips, don’t you think he looks handsome with his new haircut?”
“It might surprise you ladies to know, but I had a very similar haircut when I was working for Pan Am,” The Gringo With The
Ugly Finger answered. “Back then, I was what they used to call ‘a looker.’ ”
Don Fidencio turned toward the larger mirror again and kept gazing into it until he could see the faint traces of a face he
had almost forgotten.
T
here was an old lady she knew by the name of la señora Jenny. Her daughter would drive by the bridge on Saturday mornings.
One Saturday Socorro would clean the large house where the old lady lived alone; the next Saturday she cleaned the daughter’s
house, where she lived with her husband. Then one Saturday they drove to la señora Jenny’s house, only she wasn’t there. Before
the daughter left for the day, she explained to Socorro that her mother had had an accident getting out of the bathtub. She
made a sign to indicate the old lady had broken her hip and then she winced as if it were happening to her there in the kitchen.
Socorro kept coming every other Saturday to clean la señora Jenny’s house, though obviously there wasn’t much cleaning to
do, considering no one had been in the house for the last two weeks. Still, she washed the unused sheets, swept the spotless
kitchen, vacuumed the untouched carpet, scrubbed the clean toilets, and dusted off what little dust there was on the furniture,
as if the old lady might show up at any moment. Eventually the daughter sold the house and told Socorro that her mother had
found a new home, where there were people who could take care of her. Up until now this had been Socorro’s only experience
with a nursing home.
Don Celestino found a space at the far end of the parking lot, near a narrow road used for deliveries. The one-story building
was made of tan-colored stucco that formed a long Spanish facade stretching out in either direction before its corners turned
sharply toward the back. They entered through the arched driveway and from there continued through a passageway surrounded
by wilting brown grass and thick palms. As they were approaching the lobby door, she noticed someone waving at them. The old
lady sat hunched in the wheel-chair, wearing a Philadelphia Eagles sweatshirt that hung off her like a green-and-silver gown.
Once they were inside the lobby, she seemed not to recognize them and adjusted her thick glasses as if she’d spotted someone
else at the far end of the passageway.
Don Celestino had to slow down when Socorro stopped to say hello to the old lady. Through the windowpane that separated the
lobby from the living area, he could see an old man in a wheelchair pumping his right leg up and down so he could pull off
his pajamas. The old woman next to him seemed oblivious to it all and was more concerned with licking the outside of a Kleenex
box. Don Celestino waited for an aide to dress the old man, then he tugged on Socorro’s hand.
“I have to go now,” she told the old lady.
“Yes, of course, go enjoy your visit. I have to wait here for my son.”
Around the corner from the lobby, they stepped aside for a one-armed man wearing a World War II cap who inched his wheelchair
down the middle of the hall. The closer they moved to the room, the harder it became to navigate around the old women parked
in their wheelchairs near the nurses’ station. Don Celestino tried to explain to her that they all liked to wave, but she
wasn’t listening. It continued this way until they arrived at the room and he knocked on the doorframe.
“Come in,” Don Fidencio called out. Though it took some effort, he insisted on standing to greet his two guests.
“Fidencio,” his brother said, “I would like to introduce you to Socorro.”
She leaned in to take his hand in both of hers and right away the old man noticed how nice she smelled, as though she’d taken
a shower just before they came to visit. And she was young! Much younger than he had imagined when he thought about his brother
spending time with the cleaning woman. A girl really, at least compared to the two of them, but given the chance to be out
of here with someone on his arm, he would take her at whatever age she came to him.
His brother walked to the other side of the room and brought her a chair.
“Please, sit,” Don Fidencio said. “I wish I had more to offer you.”
A faded newspaper photo of men playing baseball hung on the wall behind him. A white telephone sat at the edge of an overbed
table; two phone numbers were taped to the back of the receiver. The line was tangled around the bed railing and the cord
used to alert the staff at the nurses’ station. Socorro sat back but then leaned forward so it wouldn’t look like she was
too relaxed or uninterested. Here she had been asking to come visit his brother and now she didn’t know what to say to him
or how to sit properly. She was still trying to get her mind off the unpleasant smell coming from the other bed.