The Guardians (6 page)

But I held on to my dream of getting into a doctoral program, so the research kept piling up. As time went by the thesis morphed into something different. Now it'll be a full-fledged book. I got notes, clippings, magazines, stacks of articles I've been collecting for years. My trailer looks like the forgotten archives of every record on Latin America disclosed under the Freedom of Information Act—from the Reagan administration's intervention in Central America to what some of the School of the Americas's graduates who found themselves unemployed were doing with the highly specialized skills that the narco cartels found so valuable.

Now that I'm divorced and all, maybe I'll be able to get it done.

Crucita and me split up last year—that's when I moved into the trailer. Our kids stay with her. But I'm right across the street from my old house, where they still live. No, I'm not stalking my ex-wife. She and I get along better now than when we were married. Besides that, she's found religion. Jesus is in her life. Jesus and the evangelical minister she got involved with when we were still together.

To be fair, Crucita and I still share some of the ideals around social injustice that we cared about in college. She doesn't only look for potential converts to her church, she volunteers to help women in crisis on both sides of the border. She kind of freelances on that count and goes from one grassroots organization to another, as time allows. Crucita came from a family where the father was one of those cabrón types so it irks her to no end to hear of women being abused in their homes. Lucky for me that I respect women. Otherwise, after my ex took a class in self-defense a few years back, I'd have ended up in the hospital.

Anyway, we—Crucita and I—still try to do things with our kids. “It's all about maintaining family values,” she says.

“Whatever you say, hon,” I'll respond, to avoid the obvious contradiction in statements like that. So keeping up appearances was behind our going up to Cabuche last August to the kermis at the church.

And that was when I was struck by the thunderbolt, blindsided, dumbstruck. I'm talking about Regina.

I took a teaching job a couple of years ago up there. It's a colonia that needs good teachers and if nothing else, I'm a good teacher. I dig that sleepy town, although rumors that an Indian-owned casino is being set up there prevail. Other changes are coming, too. What with Las Cruces,
New Mexico, expanding south and El Paso, Texas, growing north, the surrounding farmland is getting bought up by developers faster than you can say, “Poor people, get out.”

Crucita was set on turning everyone she could into a born-again, so a bazaar sponsored by the Catholic Church seemed like an ideal place to find converts. At the kermis, which they held in the church parking lot on one of the hottest days that summer, my ex walked around with Little Michael. She's always favored our son, mostly because he's so sickly Xochi had just turned thirteen and Crucita was her new archenemy. My daughter didn't even want to be there but, since I was the lesser of the two evils in her life, she deigned to walk around with me.

There weren't that many people about, being as hot as it was and all. “This is pitiful,” Xochi said, typically bored. Everything was boring to her, except hanging out with her friends. But the bazaar actually was kind of pitiful. The booths were the usual church-fair variety—a cakewalk, darts, and shooting balloons with a popgun. The prizes, mostly kids’ toys, were used donations. There was no cotton candy or funnel cake but there was a deep-fried-gorditas-and-beer stand. Yeah, the church was selling beer.

I went over and got a beer for myself and a snow cone for Xochi. I looked around for Crucita and my son. They were already busy trying to make converts, or at least she was. That's when I spied the redhead from the middle school. She had a chamba. She was managing the ring toss booth. Mi'ja and I went and bought a roll of tickets to try our luck. Or try my luck, since my daughter said she'd have no part of such embarrassing displays.

The teens had set up a stage and were dancing to music spun by a DJ. “I'm gonna check out the music, Dad,” Xochi said and strolled over to watch. All kinds of old-school music came on—from “I'm Your Puppet” to “Achy Breaky Heart” and everything by Elvis. The most recent song I heard was “Macarena.” When it played, all the kids and their moms jumped on the stage to do it. Even for an old guy like me, Cabuche was retro.

Back at the booth, the sun drilling down on my head, I had no competitors. The object of the game was to get at least two out of three knitting rings around the necks of any of the two-quart plastic soda bottles set up on the ground. The prize was the bottle you snagged—grape, orange, strawberry, root beer, cream soda, or cola—all generic brands. The roll of tickets I bought actually paid for the sodas I ended up winning.
With scarcely a smile, the redhead would reach out and hand me the rings while staying in the shade in the corner of the booth. Every now and then Redhead would take out a hankie that was tucked inside the front of her white peasant blouse and pat her freckled chest and flushed cheeks. “This heat's insufferable,” I said, trying to start up a conversation to no avail, while I won bottle after bottle. The game was really set up for kids—with short arms.

I scored ten bottles before I finally had the nerve to ask her if she remembered me from school. “I think so,” was all she said. Then she looked away.

I'd never had much luck with gorgeous women. Cute ones—like my ex, sure. But not women who not only looked good but who probably rustled steer in their free time. You knew right away you'd better not mess with them.

Well, I had really remembered
her,
all right.

And that's why I made a fool of myself trying to get her attention.

“Come on, Dad,” called Xochitl, who is her dad's flower princess and has already made me promise to give her the biggest quinceañera Sun-land Park has ever seen. That wouldn't be hard, I figured, considering how small our town is. Still, Xochi and her mom are already making plans that could do a man's wallet a lot of damage. Mi'ja, up on the stage, wanted me to go and join the group doing the chicken dance. I knew the chicken dance. She and her brother had taught me at home. At home was one thing but in public was another. “Hey, Dad!” Michael called. He'd seen his sister up there and ran up, too.

I looked at Redhead. I thought I saw her smile. That was all the encouragement I needed. I ran over to the stage and jumped on. I was the tallest chicken shaking his butt up there. She was looking, all right. And she was laughing, covering her mouth with her hand. Shy
and
gorgeous, man, I thought. What a sexy combination. I kept shaking my butt, moving with the crowd and smiling over at her. And she just kept laughing. By then, I couldn't be stopped. Next, we started doing the electric slide. This time, I saw that Redhead wasn't laughing anymore. In fact, she looked a little disturbed. That's when I knew I wasn't exactly impressing her.

Afterward, to hold on to the little pride I had left, I didn't bother collecting my sodas.

But Redhead and I were destined, as they say. Five months later, something happened. Something terrible on the one hand. On the other, it
turned out to be what changed the life of a guy whose heart needed some serious mending. She was wearing one of her homemade dresses, made of seersucker or something Mrs. Cleaver–ish. But she could make anything look good. Ms. Redhead came up to me just as I was leaving, to ask for help in a “highly urgent and personal matter.”

She took me totally off guard. And before she even explained what it was all about, I blurted out, “Don't worry, camarada,” like I was in the Partido Liberal Mexicano. The party had made its headquarters right in my hometown over a hundred years ago, just before La Revolución. Those guys were among my role models. “You can count on me,” I blurted out and all but saluted my new generala.

Whenever I talked like that, all Chicanoed out, using old-school,
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
jive, my ex used to say, “You want to be a revolutionary, Mike? Start with me. A social movement begins with one woman and one man at a time.”

It was too late for that woman to be Crucita. Standing in front of Redhead so close I could almost count the freckles across her nose and those that splashed down her biceps, I thought, Maybe it isn't too late for the too-late guy.

GABO

Santo and friend of God, thank you for listening to me,

My saludos to you and to the Lord, my Father in Heaven. Please ask Him to look down kindly on me—I am trying to be good.

Padre Pío, I know you do not measure faith by how much a person dedicates himself to reading scriptures but I want you to know I read not only the Bible but everything. It was no one's recommendation or insistence. Reading just came to me. That was how I learned English. I read it before I could pronounce it. When I first went to school en Los Estados, my tía Regina made them put me in the right year for my age. Because I was un chavito migrante they were ready to stick me in the first grade. I was eight years old. I was so quiet they figured I did not know anything. Two weeks later, they moved me up to the fourth.

By then I had read my papá's old copy of
The Communist Manifesto.
He used to carry it everywhere with him. I was only six years old when I first tried to read it. My father saw how hard I was struggling, so he started helping me.

My tía Regina taught me a little Latin. My bisabuelo Metatron believed in a classical education. Regina first learned to read with a teacher who stayed on the hacienda. She always says, “rancho,” but they raised cattle, so I imagine it was more than that. Father Juan Bosco has promised to teach me Latin but so far
nusquam.
I remember my papá would stay up with me, no matter how tired we were, and my mother calling, “Get to bed.” He would light una velita if we did not have electricity
and when the candle burned out, then it was time to sleep. By sunup we were all out there working in the fields.

My mother never learned to read and did not care about books. My older sister, Karla, was a lot like our mother. She was a hard worker, too, but unlike our mother, she never complained about anything. If my hermana had an extra piece of fruit or gum, she would share it with me. When I was little she was the one who would give me a bath, outside in a tina. Karla never had any toys, so I was her doll. Then she started getting a bosom. My sister was still a child, twelve or thirteen years old. She would get so embarrassed. She was upset all the time. She did not want to go to school anymore. The other labor-camp niños teased her. I have not seen my hermana in about four years, Santito. Please pray for her.

Mr. Vigil, my English teacher, said a serious young man like me who never smiles would probably appreciate the Russians. So he started me with Dostoyevsky's novels. I read
The Idiot
and el
Gambler. Crime and Punishment
was my favorite.

“Do you think that by Raskolnikov turning himself in, God forgave him?” I asked Mr. Vigil. My English teacher thought for a moment, then he said in that very slow way of talking that he has, like he is thinking of not just one book but all the books he has ever read, “I don't know, Gabriel.” He is getting ready to retire soon. I hope our next teacher brings us up to the twentieth century. This is no reflection on the Russians, just on Mr. Vigil, who only likes very long books with a lot of details. I stopped in the middle of los
Brothers Karamazov
because of my papá's disappearance. It is hard for me to concentrate on anything anymore besides that.

In el Padre Juan Bosco's library in his casita all he has are religious books. He said I could help myself to read anything I found interesting. He has a collection of Bibles. One is so old if you try to turn the pages the paper almost disintegrates, like dead moths’ wings between your fingers. He keeps it open to the Book of Psalms on a wooden bookstand on his desk. I had never been in a house where people owned their own books. I mean, so many. My tía Regina has a few. They are on the bookshelf next to the fireplace. I have read them all. I can stay up and read un libro entero in one night or at least by daybreak. If they are thick like Dostoyevsky's, then it takes me perhaps three nights. Afterward I must sleep. I sleep and sleep and then I start another book.