Amigoland

11

She curled over onto her side, toward the wall, tossing the covers away from her. Just beyond the bedroom door, she heard him flush the toilet. The curtains were drawn and, except for a bit of light slipping in beneath the sheet of aluminum foil that covered the windowpane, the bedroom seemed dark enough for it to be the middle of the night and not the middle of the afternoon.
Socorro used to think his queen-size mattress was so big. Growing up, she had spent years sleeping on the sofa so her four brothers could have the bedroom. Her first real bed had been the one she shared with Rogelio. But this was only a full-size mattress and it was impossible to move without entangling herself with his body, which on most nights she wanted to avoid, especially after she suspected he was lying down in another bed. When she started cleaning houses and saw her first king-size mattress, she assumed it was two beds pushed together. She couldn’t imagine why a husband and wife would need such an enormous bed. It seemed a couple could lie there and never touch each other the whole night, as if they had been arguing about something just before falling asleep and had each grabbed his own blanket and rolled over on his side with his back to the other. And if that was the case, then what was the point of sleeping in the same bed with your husband?
Though she had been married before, she felt as if she knew very little about how to be with a man. A few years earlier, while cleaning a lawyer’s house, she found a stack of magazines with men and women together in bed and other places where she’d never imagined people would want to be together in that way. She didn’t want to look at first, but she couldn’t help herself, no more than she could turn away when she saw a newspaper photo of a dead person found somewhere in Matamoros. She would close the magazine, feel some shame for what she had just done, swear she wouldn’t open it again, but then open the one right beneath it. Almost all the men in these photos were americanos, but the women were all different, some americanas, some negras, others chinas, and others mexicanas. They had them on the carpet, in the shower, on the kitchen table, on the hood of a car, in the swimming pool, in a stable. She finally forced herself to put the magazines away, but now she knew people had other ways of being together. The few years she’d been married to Rogelio, she had done what he told her to do, and that was to lie down with him in a normal bed, where married people lie down. But even this way she could remember only one time when she had ever actually enjoyed being with him.
They had gone to church at noon — something he rarely did, but he had agreed to this one day to make her happy — and later spent the afternoon in the plaza. It was a beautiful day, with all the families sitting on the benches and children chasing one another around the bandstand. A group of musicians, older men with brass instruments and a woman singer, were getting ready to perform. She and Rogelio sat on one of the benches under the trees and shared a fruit cup. After they sat there a few minutes, a pretty little girl came up to Rogelio and handed him a white balloon. She couldn’t have been more than two, and she was playing with him in the way little girls do when they want attention from little boys. He accepted the balloon and then offered it back to her. She accepted it, then a few seconds later offered it back to him. Rogelio asked her who’d given her such a big balloon. But when she opened her mouth, they couldn’t understand her garbled words. After a while Rogelio said the little girl looked like her. Socorro couldn’t see how, but he insisted that she must have looked like her when she was that age. Maybe so, she said. No maybe, he said. He became very serious and said this was how their baby would look. Socorro smiled. The little girl was pretty. And then he said he wanted to go back to the house and make a little baby, a beautiful one just like her. He threw away the rest of the fruit cup and they left for the house.
But it was as if she couldn’t walk fast enough. Everything had to be right away with him. Already more than a year had gone by and still there was no sign of a baby. She’d heard his mother asking him why it was taking so long. They were lucky that when they got to the house his family was still away, buying groceries. He had his pants down below his knees before she could pull the green shower curtain that covered the entrance to his bedroom. But after this he slowed down, slower than she could remember him ever going. She started feeling something funny that she hadn’t experienced before. At first she wasn’t sure if she was supposed to feel this way and she wanted him to stop, but the more she let him, the more she didn’t want him to stop. She imagined they were creating their baby, their little girl, and she was being made from their love. It was as if they were swimming just above the bed, the baby floating between them and the whole time she and Rogelio feeling the same exact thing. They breathed together, they moved together, they made the same sounds. But somehow through all this she heard the front door. She whispered to him that his family was home, in the next room. This had been a problem, living in the same small house, but usually they waited until late at night or early in the morning, before anyone else woke up. She could hear their voices, their shoes on the floor. Stop, she told him. She wanted to get up, except he was holding her down. He was her man and she wanted to be with him, but not this way, with his family right there. She couldn’t stop breathing so rapidly, but now she felt nothing. She just wanted to stop what they were doing. They could stay lying there, as long as he stopped making his sounds and pushing the bed against the back wall. Por favor, Socorro begged him. Por favor, Rogelio. But he put his hand over her mouth. She felt as if she were suffocating. She was trying to get up, but he pushed harder. Out of the corner of her eye she thought she saw something move, and later when she looked again one side of the curtain was pulled open and his father was watching them. He smiled back at her because he knew there wasn’t anything she could do. Rogelio kept pushing.
Sometimes she wondered if not always enjoying her time with him had made her a bad wife or made it so that they never had a baby, but she also knew that, aside from that one time, she had never told him no whenever he’d wanted to be together — as she did now with Don Celestino. At least she could say he made her feel something again and that she simply wanted to be closer to him, though now after almost three months she wanted to know if he felt anything similar or if she was still only the girl who cleaned his house and then stayed around after her work was done. Somehow she had imagined a man his age would be proud, maybe a little boastful, to have a young woman and to want to present her to his family and friends. Wasn’t this part of what all men were looking for?
She could hear him brushing his teeth now. At first she found it difficult to stay interested when they were only starting and Don Celestino would suddenly stop and say he needed to go to the bathroom. A couple of times she had fallen asleep waiting. Then one morning she was cleaning around the medicine chest when she found some pills inside a plastic sandwich bag tucked behind a bottle of talcum powder. It seemed strange to her because he kept his medicines in a daily dispenser that stayed on the kitchen table next to the salt- and pepper shakers. When she asked him about them, he told her that they were vitamins, if she had to know, but that he wasn’t asking her about everything she carried in her purse. Socorro apologized and said she was just curious. Another week went by and she found the same plastic bag in the bathroom cabinet, this time wedged behind the hot-water bottle. He must have thought he had hidden it well enough, but he forgot that she’d been cleaning houses long before they had become intimate and there were few places a cleaning woman didn’t look. All this time she had assumed his trips to the bathroom had to do with a sudden urge to relieve himself, as a man his age might need to do. But now she noticed how he came back more eager than before he left and somehow he seemed to have as much or more energy than a man half his age. And then she remembered the little blue pills — his vitamins.
Socorro was facing the wall when he opened the bedroom door.
“Still awake?”
She stayed in the same position and adjusted the pillow. While she was still wearing her skirt and blouse, he’d come back from the bathroom in only his briefs.
“Sometimes it can be hard to fall asleep alone,” he said.
She mumbled something back.
“What was that, mi amor?”
“Nothing.”
“Tell me.”
“Nothing, just talking to myself.”
“Saying what? Tell me.”
She inched away when she felt his bare chest against her back.
“I said, ‘You act like you know what it is to be alone.’”
“I was alone for almost half a year before I found you,” Don Celestino said. “That wasn’t long enough?” He kissed her along the shoulders, as he had been doing before he excused himself.
“I thought it was.”
“Then?”
“Maybe other people would think it was.”
“What people?” He nuzzled up and set her hair to one side so his lips could reach her neck.
“Your brother, maybe he would think it was a long time.”
“He’s been alone already for years.”
“So then he knows what it’s like.”
“Only because she left him.” He moved his hand across her hip and then down toward the little rolls of skin near her belly, but she moved her arm in a way that blocked the rest of his path.
“Then his alone is different from your alone?”
“They were separated, she didn’t want to see him.” Socorro turned to face him. “And you think you know everything that happens between a man and his woman?”
“No, I just know they were not together and for years not even in the same town. Why do I need to know the reasons?”
“He was still married to her, Celestino. He was still her husband.”
He liked how she said his name more intimately now, without the “Don” attached to it, and sometimes it was difficult to remember when it had been any other way between them. He was savoring the moment when he realized she was still looking at him, waiting for a response.
“Why do you want to talk about other people right now?”
“Your brother.”
“Yes, I know who he is.”
“Then maybe you can tell him that we’re friends… more than friends.”
“Please, Socorro.” He reached for her as she pulled away.
“What would it hurt to at least call him?”
“Please, no more,” he whispered to her. “Can we just stop talking?”
She thought about this for a moment, then twisted back around, leaving a space between their bodies.
“Is that what you really want, for me to be quiet?”
“Yes, please, no more.” He kissed her on the shoulders as he had earlier. He tried to inch over and get past the pillow she was holding.
“Then maybe we should just take a nap,” she said.
“How do you mean?”
“You know, a nap, when you close your eyes and sleep and then wake up later feeling rested. That’s one of the other things people do in bed.” She turned over with the pillow now between her legs.
Don Celestino looked at her back and wondered what it would take for her to turn around. A couple of minutes later, he rolled over and gazed at the ceiling-fan blades, which continued to whirl about with no regard as to what was occurring a few feet below them on the bed.
Socorro could hear him sighing behind her as if he might be exhaling his final breath and only she could save him. She had no intention of turning around, though. He could stay awake the rest of the afternoon, and with that rolling pin between his legs to keep him company. He was lucky she didn’t go flush the rest of his vitamins down the toilet.