Amigoland

16

There was an old lady she knew by the name of la se?ora 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 se?ora 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 se?ora 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.
“For weeks I have been telling Celestino that I wanted to come visit,” she finally thought to say.
“Sometimes my little brother likes to pretend he’s going deaf, but I can imagine he would have to listen to such a pretty girl.”
Don Celestino shook his head as he sat on the edge of the bed.
“Do you like the way your brother cut your hair?” she asked.
“He did a good job,” Don Fidencio replied, running his fingers along the hairline in the back. “The women who work here, the helpers, they were still talking about it this morning when they gave me my shower.”
Socorro smiled. The old man sat up a little in the chair and tugged on his shirt collar. “I could bathe myself — better than they can wash me — but here they won’t let me do it alone — nothing, not take a shower, not serve my own food, not walk unless I push this thing around.” He kicked the walker aside.
“How nice that you are still healthy and strong at your age.”
“That’s what I have been trying to tell my brother, that I’m strong enough to be living somewhere else besides here in this prison. Only because I got sick one time, for that they left me here. But this was in the past and not anything so serious, just what happens when you get old.”
“If you get sick, this is a better place for you to be, where they can help you,” Don Celestino said.
“Yes, help me, even if I don’t want the help anymore. And what if nothing happens to me and I just continue this way forever?” the old man said, and then turned to the girl. “Tell me the truth: do I look sick to you?”
She hesitated, first looking up at Don Celestino and then back at the old man.
“To me, you look fine,” Socorro said. “But my mother also has days when she feels good and later she gets sick on us.”
“But at home?”
She nodded.
“You see?” Don Fidencio said. “That’s what I mean, that I’m well enough to be living at home. And then if I get sick, he can bring me back. He can leave me there at the curb if he wants, not even get out of the car.”
“Ya,” his brother said. “She didn’t come to hear your complaints.”
Don Celestino was afraid this might happen and had called earlier that morning to tell him that they would be stopping by to visit but that he didn’t want to hear him begging to come to live with him. He explained all the reasons why, again, including that he himself wasn’t in the best of health. The old man seemed to accept this, though at the time Don Celestino understood that his brother would pick and choose what he wanted to remember.
“I was only talking about my health,” Don Fidencio said. “A man should be able to talk about his health if he wants to.”
“You look good to me.” Socorro noticed he had shaved that morning but had missed a spot just below his chin.
“And really the one thing I have trouble with is my memory, but the other day some things came back to me.”
“About your life?”
“He thinks he can remember his first haircut,” Don Celestino said.
“This one doesn’t believe me, but it happened that way. And then more came to me last night.”
“I remember a lot from when I was a little girl.”
“Wait until you get to his age.”
“Only because he was not there,” the old man snapped. “Because he didn’t spend time with our grandfather like I did. That’s why he refuses to believe what I say. He thinks he has to be there for the world to continue. But I know what I am saying. I was with Papá Grande and I remember everything he told me.” He used his index finger to tap on the side of his head. “For weeks he had been promising that he was going to take me for my first real haircut — no more putting a bowl on my head and cutting around it, the way my mother liked to do.” He pretended he had a pair of scissors in his hand and was cutting his bangs. “‘Ya, you are getting to be a man,’ he would say, even if I was only four years old. But he said if he was going to take me, I had to promise not to cry the way he had seen other little boys do. If I was going to cry, then it was better to wait until later. ‘Real haircuts are for men, not for little boys.’ I said I wouldn’t cry, but what did I know if I had never had a real haircut in a barbershop? When it was my turn, the barber put a board across the chair and I climbed on.”
“The other day you told me there were animals carved into the arms of the chair,” Don Celestino said. “How would you know that if there was a board across the top?”
The old man stopped to look at his brother and then over at the girl. He felt disoriented as he glanced about the room, as if he had been roused earlier than usual from his afternoon nap. His brother was always doing this to him, making him question what he knew to be true, what he had lived. Last night in bed, he had gone over and over what he would tell them this morning when they came to visit, how he would say it to them to make it all sound more believable, so his brother wouldn’t always be doubting him and would finally take him at his word.
“I know because I saw it before he put the board down,” he responded. “And because that wasn’t the only time I went to that barbershop. Later he took me again and I sat in the chair without the board.”
Don Celestino seemed less than convinced, but he let him continue.
“At first I was all right and not nervous, but it was when they put the sheet over me that I started getting scared, like I didn’t know what the barber was going to do with those sharp scissors. My mother had put a sheet over me, but this barber wasn’t my mother. Papá Grande was standing by the chair and he kept talking so he could distract me.”
“Saying what to you?” Socorro asked.
“Nothing to me, really. He liked to talk to the barber and the rest of them who were waiting for their haircuts.” The old man glanced around the room again and this time closed his eyes and lolled his head.
Socorro sat back in her chair. Now she wished she hadn’t asked the question and instead just let him keep talking. “The important thing is that you can remember how he took you,” she said. “Most people would never be able to, already so many years ago.”
Don Fidencio blinked a few times before fully opening his eyes. “And later when the barber had finished with my hair, he asked him if he had cut enough. Papá Grande told him to cut just a little more in the front, but ‘not too much,’ he said, ‘because one time I saw an Indian scalp a man.’”
Don Celestino shook his head at this.
“No, what?” his brother asked.
“No, not those made-up stories.”
“So now an old man is not allowed to talk about one of the few things that has stayed with him.”
“The only ones who believed the story were little children,” Don Celestino said, then turned toward Socorro. “Our grandfather used to tell us that when he was a little boy growing up in Mexico, some Indians attacked the ranchito where he lived with his family. The Indians killed most of the adults and took off with some of the children, kidnapped them and rode off to the north. And he used to claim that that was how he got over to this side of the river.”
“It sounds like something from a book or movie,” Socorro said. “Even a novela.”
“This was one of those kinds of stories.”
“If he said that the Indians took him, then the Indians took him,” Don Fidencio said. “He saw them kill his mother and father. What more proof do you want? Tell me why would he make up something like that, about riding all night with the Indians and the Mexican army chasing them.” The old man stopped to wipe the spittle from the corner of his mouth. “Not only that, but you forgot to tell her that the man they scalped was still alive.” He used the edge of his hand as if he were slicing back his own scalp, the same as his grandfather would do when recounting the story.
She made a face as she pulled away in the chair.
“Our grandfather was a little old man who liked to talk.” Don Celestino sat back near the corner of the bed. “He thought that because the stories happened so long ago and over there, on the other side, that people would believe whatever he said. Everything was more dangerous back then, everything was more exciting back then. The men were different, the women were different. Always, always with the way things were.”
“You say that only because you were born over here. How would you know how things were back then, if you hardly spent any time with Papá Grande? I was the one who would go spend days with him. It was the last story he ever told me. By then he had told it to me hundreds of times, but I let him tell it one last time. He told me like he had only just arrived here. It mattered to him that other people remembered the story, even those who would never believe it. He told me that if he had one regret in his life, it was that he never went back, at least to see if anyone had survived or what was left of the ranchito. Then he said to me, ‘Tocayo,’ because we were both Fidencio, but he hardly ever called me by my name. ‘Tocayo, someday when you are older you should go back and see how things are now, what there is of my ranchito. Tell them I always wanted to go back.’”
“At least he had you there with him,” Socorro said.
“He died that night in his bed. Later I thought about going back like he said, but I was always working or busy with something else, and by the time I could go, I had forgotten what he said, until last night when it came back to me.”
“And now you want to go back,” Don Celestino said, crossing his arms. “And you want me to take you.”
“What’s so wrong with that, if you have the time?”
“That I’m not here to do your errands,” his brother said. “I wasn’t the one he told to go looking for the ranchito.”
“And why not,” Don Fidencio asked, “if this is our grandfather?”
“Why do I need to go searching through Mexico for something that never happened? And this is only because you made a promise ages ago and then forgot about it until now.”
“How can you be so sure it didn’t happen?”
“And how can you be so sure it did?”
“You were the only one who never believed the story. What would it hurt you to help an old man with his last wish?”
Don Celestino stood up when he saw both of them looking at him, waiting for a response. “Who knows, maybe one of these days we can go,” he said, hoping this would satisfy the old man until he forgot about it, as he usually did with most things.
“One of these days?” He flicked his wrist and turned toward the window. “You say it like I have so many left.”
“Why don’t we talk about something else, eh?”
Don Celestino glanced at his watch, then over at Socorro, but she seemed in no hurry to leave.
“Your room is quiet,” Socorro said. “It must be good when you need to rest.”
“Only when this neighbor of mine isn’t yelling in his sleep.”
“Every night that way?”
“No, but still last night it was hard because I had to go four times to make water.” He held up the appropriate number of fingers to show her. “Four — I counted. And then another because I thought it was time to make number two.” He held up a pair of fingers on the other hand.
“Fidencio, nobody wants to talk about being sick. Please find something more pleasant to talk about?”
“She was the one who asked me. And anyway, that’s how it happens when people get old — nothing works anymore and then one day they wake up dead.”
“Ya, stop talking like that.”
“Why not, if it’s only the truth?”
“Nobody wants to think about getting old and dying,” Don Celestino said.
“Bah, and just because you don’t want to think about getting old, you think this will make it go away?” The old man sat back. “Maybe I should stop thinking about being constipated.”
“You know what I mean.”
“And now I can’t talk about my own health?”
“Sometimes my mother goes the whole night without sleeping,” Socorro said.
“But when I was finally able to rest, I had a dream that I was working again, delivering the mail. Imagine going to sleep and all you do is walk from house to house.”
“Still, after so many years?”
“This one is the same dream over and over,” Don Celestino said. “He keeps delivering the mail, even if they don’t pay him anymore.”
“Yes, but this time nobody had mailboxes.”
“How do you mean, no mailboxes?”
“No mailboxes, no mailboxes, how much more simple do you want it? Houses with no mailboxes. Like pants with no pockets.”
“And where were they?”
“Somebody took them.”
“All of them?” Socorro asked.
“Why should that surprise you? We live in a town where people steal whatever they can — cars, lawn mowers, dogs out of the backyard. The other day some idiota walked into a store and tried to steal a stereo by putting it inside his pants.”
“And then what else?”
He stayed looking at her for a few seconds.
“With the mailboxes?” she said.
“Yes, so there were no mailboxes,” he said. “If I had found them, maybe I would have slept better. But no, I had to keep walking all over town for someplace to put my letters. The sun was hot and my bag felt like it was full of bricks.
“At first I didn’t know what to do with so many letters and no mailboxes, but then I knocked and a young boy answered. He must have been nine or ten years old. He had hair down to his shoulders and eyes like a chinito. I asked for his mother or father, but he said they were gone, that it was just him. Then I asked him, ‘What happened to all the mailboxes?’ But he just shook his head like I was a crazy man. I asked him if he wanted the letter, maybe it was for his mother and father. But he said no, for me to keep it.”
“But to do what with it?” she asked.
“That, he didn’t tell me. I guess I was just supposed to keep carrying all the letters but for no reason.”
“And then?”
“And then nothing. I woke up and stayed there in bed, waiting until it was time to go for my breakfast.”
There was a knock at the door and they all turned to see The One With The Flat Face leaning halfway into the room. “Mr. Rosales, you need to get ready for lunch,” she said before she continued down the hall.
Socorro glanced at her watch and it was only a couple of minutes past eleven.
“What else is there to do here?” Don Fidencio said. “It takes time to get all these old people into one room and ready to eat.”
It seemed as though he wanted to say more but then was unsure what that might be. He gazed out at the archway where The Turtle With The Fedora was being lowered from the special van used to transport the residents to their doctor’s appointments. The lift had stalled and he was waiting to see if her wheelchair might roll forward.
The point was, he had talked to his brother and the girl enough already. He had to go eat his lunch now; this was where he lived and slept and took his meals. His brother and the girl were nice to come visit him. It was nice of the girl to ask him questions like she was interested in his life. Tomorrow it might be different. Tomorrow they might not be coming around. Taking time out of their busy days to come visit an old man who couldn’t remember the half of what he knew. And really, he wondered if he could blame them.