When he left he slammed the door. AJ always slammed the doors, punched things, yelled; the kind of things young men do when they’re still trying to convince themselves that they’re men. And when he slammed doors and yelled and punched the walls, she screamed back. She screamed and cried and the baby, as if not wanting to miss out on all the fun, screamed and cried too – which made both of them scream and yell and slam doors even louder.
Beatriz sat in the aftermath of the most recent fight. She was in the living room. AJ had been gone less than five minutes and he’s sucked all the anger out of everything when he left. It was always that way. There wasn’t as much to clean up this time, at least. There was very little left that could be broken, except the television, and AJ would NEVER do that. The television was his escape. He spent more time with that black box than he did with Beatriz and her nineteen month old son Colin, or even his friends. He worked, he slept, he drank and got stoned, and he watched TV. Beatriz took care of Colin, cooked, and tried to get AJ’s attention.
She wiped the remainder of the tears away and went upstairs to check on Colin. He was standing in his crib, smiling. Beatriz picked him up, kissed his cheek, checked his diaper, and laid him back down. She was grateful Colin wasn’t a colicky baby; even when the fighting was bad, Colin went back to sleep pretty easily. She rarely had to do more than give him a pacifier and wrap him in the gray blanket her mama had made for him before he was born.
With Colin settled, Beatriz went back downstairs, lit a cigarette, and turned on the ceiling fan. She wanted to call her mama; she didn’t like being alone. She didn’t like silence. She didn’t like to think AJ wasn’t coming back, even though he always did. Eventually. He’d gone somewhere to blow off steam. She knew he at the bar next door, the Oasis; he didn’t like there – said it was all old men, Aqua Velva aftershave, and watered down beer. All that meant, Bea knew, was that there weren’t any pretty girls there for him to ogle and try to pick up. That was what he did when they had a fight – which was becoming more and more common. When he came home, he’d stink of beer and half-assed apologies.
“Come on, Mamasita,” he’d say, giving her a hug so she could smell the cheap perfume and pussy stank on him. “Let’s not fight, ok?”
Mamasita. He thought it was cute whenever he abused the Spanish language. Beatriz hated it, but he did it anyway. He only knew a few of words and he butchered them all. She supposed she could learn to tolerate it; but he also tried to speak Spanish whenever he talked to her family. And that only made them hate him more. When she tried to explain that to him he just dismissed her. “Una mas cerveca por favor, he said. Only it came out “Oo-na mass sir-vay-sa, pour fay-vor.”
“Son of a bitch,” she hissed under her breath. She had to compose herself. Sometimes he was gone for twenty minutes and sometimes he was gone for three days. Regardless, it was always the same. He’d hug her and kiss her and tell her he loved her. Then he’d expect sex. If she was on her period, he’d expect a blow job. She only denied him once; and when that happened, he left again and returned with the whore’s lipstick still on his dick. The time after that she gave in and right as he came he held her head so she had no choice but to swallow. While she vomited afterward, she could hear him chuckling.
Beatriz finished one cigarette and lit another. She wanted to quit, but she was afraid of getting fat. That happened to her sister, Consuela. She quit smoking and started eating peppermints and her old man left her for a skinny bitch he’d fucked in middle school. And they were actually MARRIED. She and AJ weren’t married and she knew he wouldn’t hesitate to leave if she gained more than a few pounds. He found girls easy enough when they fought. And while he claimed to love Colin like the boy was his, he never really spent time with the boy, or even held him; so it wasn’t as if he would feel any responsibility to stay.
She cleaned up. It was only a few pictures, broken frames, and magazines. No plates. No spilled beer. All of her little trinkets – the tiny figurines her grandmother left her – had gradually been broken over the course of many fights, so there were none left. When she was done she poured herself a Pepsi and called Mama. She seemed to know exactly what was going on.
“So you two fought again, eh?”
“Yes, Mama. But…”
“Did he leave?”
“Yes.”
“You should changed the locks while he’s gone.”
She sighed. “I can’t DO that, Mama. We RENT this dump. Remember?”
“Then call the landlord. Even dumps have landlords. Tell HIM to change the locks.”
Why do I always call her? She always says the same fucking thing. “I can’t do that, Mama. And they wouldn’t just change the locks. I’d have to pay for them. And they probably still wouldn’t. And even if they did, it wouldn’t be tonight.”
“You know he’ll come back, right?”
“Yes, Mama. I know.”
“I told you, hija,” she was scolding now. “I told you to get away from that white boy. Nothing but trouble.”
“They’re not all like that,” Bea defended. “You can’t just say that based on…”
“YOUR white boy is nothing but trouble. He’s a bad example for your son. I told you about him before you decided to move in with him.” Mama huffed. “Living in sin. He don’t go to church. He don’t make you his wife. He treats you like a whore…”
“Mama!”
“When you were with Manny, at least…”
“I’m not with Manny anymore. Ok? And I’m not gonna go back with him. Understand?”
“You throw out your son’s father,” Mama went on, “and replace him with a pinche’ California Beach Boy.”
“Mama…”
“Has he brought home any diseases yet?”
“Mama!”
“What do you WANT me to say, Beatriz?” Mama’s voice softened, though to anybody outside the family the change would’ve gone unnoticed.
Tell me I can come home, Bea thought. Tell me you love me. Tell me everybody makes mistakes.
Losing Manny was no great loss as far as Beatriz was concerned; but Mama only saw that Manny was Mexican (actually he was half; his mother was Brazilian) and that his family had a house in Veracruz. It wasn’t even near the beach – those spots were for tourists – but the fact that it was in Veracruz was enough for Mama. Beatriz left Manny after he told her he was going on the road with his band. From anybody else, Mama would have never forgiven such a thing; but Manny hypnotized her with his big brown eyes and flawless smile and his descriptions of the beaches of Veracruz. Besides, he was Colin’s father. That countermanded all her common sense. When Manny informed her of his decision, Beatriz knew what it really meant. It meant whores in different towns. It meant her being stuck at home. It meant him getting to have life while she didn’t have anything. So he left with his band and she found AJ. He didn’t have rock star dreams. He had a regular job as a baggage handler at the airport. He didn’t mind Colin. He didn’t fuck as good as Manny – but that was something she could deal with.
The conversation with Mama wasn’t going anywhere, and it was only making Beatriz feel worse. She sat through a few more seconds, then begged off telling Mama that Colin was crying. She hung up while Mama was in the middle of a sentence and tossed the cell phone on the couch. So pointless. She felt herself starting to cry again, but she fought the urge. She didn’t want to cry when there wasn’t anybody around to see it. AJ would come home eventually; she decided to save it for him when he stumbled in drunk and wanting sex. “Then,” she told herself and the empty room, “then I’ll cry.”
After smoking another cigarette, she picked up her Pepsi to take a drink; then she thought better, set it back down, walked over to the fridge, and got out one of AJ’s beers. It was cheap American shit, but it was cold and would notice its absence. Manny had always bought Dos Equis or Modelo Negra. She’d tried to get AJ to drink it, but he said he didn’t trust the water. “I’m not gonna get the shits,” he declared, “and pay extra for the privilege.”
Colin had been asleep for about an hour; as long as there was nothing to wake him, he generally slept through the night. And with AJ gone, there was nothing to wake him up. Colin was a good boy, even if he was a little needy. He’d end up a mama’s boy, Beatriz thought, just like her older brother Hector. Hector could knock up half the whores in Nogales and come home with every disease known to man; but their mother would still pat him on the head, cook him huevos con chorizo, wash the stank out of his clothes, and say another prayer to Mary to keep him safe. Sometimes Beatriz saw this developing weakness in her own son and she hated it. Sometimes when he clung to her leg and wanted to be held, she just yelled at him; but the minute he started crying she would always pick him up and tickle his belly until he laughed. Guilt and love, she supposed, weren’t all that different.
“Maybe I could sneak out,” she spoke aloud. She started to feel excited at the prospect. She couldn’t go far, that’s true; but there was the bar next door –The Oasis with all its fat old men and watered down beer. That might be just what she needed. She flounced into the downstairs bathroom, flipped on the light, and surveyed herself in the mirror. She was still young and firm. Child bearing made her boobs grow in even bigger and when she was done with nursing they hadn’t diminished. She’d managed to lose the baby weight, and except for a few stretch marks, her stomach was flat. She knew that men noticed her – especially the fat old variety that would be sitting next door. she enjoyed the feeling of their eyes scoping out her body, following her across a room, taking her in head to pedicured foot. She wasn’t a cheater, so she had no intention of fulfilling some limp old man’s fantasy about young senoritas in the moonlight; but the attention would give her the jolt she needed.
She thanked God everyday that she took after her aunt instead of her mother. Mama was short and squat, like a linebacker, with skin like worn leather, a large jowly face, and tired bitch tits. Her aunt, for whom she had been named, was skinny and shapely and fair skinned. She’d moved away, too; all the way to California to be a model and an actress. Beatriz knew she would have been successful, too, if she hadn’t been mistaken for a prostitute and killed on the way home from her job as a waitress. When Beatriz told her mother she was moving to Phoenix, Mama cried and screamed and prayed to Mary. She lit candles and said novenas and hid all of Beatriz’s clothes. But in the end, Beatriz went anyway. She was going to go to school and be somebody someday. She was going to have a life besides being a Nogales breeding factory. She’d only been in the city for a month when she met Manny. By her 21st birthday she was six months pregnant. She was going to get an abortion, but Manny talked her out it. And even though Manny refused to marry her, Mama loved him like she was her own son. She loved Manny more than she had ever loved her own daughter.
Beatriz lost track of herself in the mirror, imagining what sexy outfit she should wear. She pressed her hands on her breasts and ran them down stomach and sides. She considered wearing one of her outfits that didn’t require a bra; that ALWAYS got her lots of attention. She replaced her hands firmly on her tits and felt her nipples harden. That sent rippling waves through her body. AJ’s hands were weak and sloppy. Sometimes when he played with her boobs during sex, it was all she could do not to laugh at him. She pressed her hands against herself firmly and squeezed the way Manny used to; she closed her eyes and for a moment imagined they were Manny’s hands, and that they were married and living on the beach in Veracruz, with Colin playing in the sand.
Her fantasy was interrupted by the sound of Colin crying.
Her eyes snapped open and she rushed upstairs to see what was wrong. When she stomped into his room, Colin was standing in his crib, crying. He wasn’t wet and he wasn’t hungry. She guessed maybe he had a nightmare. She scooped him up and he buried his face in her shoulder and hugged her. She spoke to him softly, desperately, and bounced him the way he liked. Then she sang him his favorite song. At that moment, she felt the weight of him and just how heavy he was.
Eventually, he went back to sleep; but she knew there was no guarantee that he wouldn’t wake up again. That meant one more night staying in. She laid him down carefully and covered him with his favorite blanket . The ugly gray one Mama had made; the one she made only after Beatriz told her she was giving birth to a boy.
Beatriz watched him sleeping, the steady rhythm of his breathing, and pondered how easy it would be to kill him. If I smother him, she thought, he wouldn’t cry anymore. He wouldn’t cling to me. He wouldn’t need me. I could even use Mama’s blanket. The thought made her smile just a little. Imagine how she would feel about that. Let the old bitch live with that. Manny was free. AJ was free. Why shouldn’t she? Why couldn’t she have her own life?
When she broke down and finally told Mama she was pregnant, Mama sat her down and informed her that to be a woman is to be cursed. “We are born,” Mama had said, “so that we can bear children. Our bodies are used up until men despise us and our children don’t want to look at us. But this is how we are born.”
Beatriz didn’t buy into Mama’s Old World Original Sin notions about the sexes and all the bullshit about Adam and Eve and the apple and the snake; but it was pointless to tell Mama that the world had moved on and that a woman could be whatever she wanted to be. But standing in front of Colin’s crib, surrounded by the vacuum left behind by AJ’s anger, she started to feel like she had been damned. And for no particular reason. She felt her chest tighten. She turned and left the room.
When her feet hit the bottom of the stairs, she felt herself starting to cry. Again. But she held onto her pride and refused because that was what Mama had told her women do. “We cry alone,” Mama had said, “so that the world of men can move forward.” The buildup tears was making Beatriz angry. There was no one to yell at, and she thought again of the look on Mama’s face if she used that ugly blanket to kill her only grandson.
Then she looked over at the TV. That had been the cause of the entire argument; this time, anyway. Beatriz had gone to the trouble of lining up a babysitter so AJ could take her out; she shaved and waxed (even her pubes because she knew he liked her bald) and gave herself both a manicure and a pedicure. She was planning on an outfit that would make her the most beautiful woman anywhere they went. But when he came through the door, he was drunk from being at the bar after work with his work buddies, and all he wanted to was keep drinking, smoke a bowl, and watch Dancing With The Stars. And he had the gall to ask her why dinner wasn't ready.
The TV was small, maybe seventeen inches, with rabbit ear antenna. Without really thinking about it, she walked through the living room, through the kitchen, and through the laundry room, and opened the back door that led to alley; that was the door he normally used. Then she walked back over to the TV, pulled the plug from the wall and picked it up. She immediately felt the weight of it; it was heavier than it looked. She hauled it out through the living room, through the kitchen, through the laundry room, and out into the alley. Then she heaved it as hard as she could against the sidewalk. The TV landed screen first; she heard the tube shatter with a loud popping sound. There, she thought. Whenever he DOES come home, let that be the first thing he sees.
After she walked back inside, shut the door, and locked the dead bolt, she walked over to the beer she hadn’t finished and chugged it. Then she got another out of the fridge, sat down on the couch, and started drinking that one. She looked at the empty space where the TV had been; she let the satisfaction wash all over her. Then she thought about how heartbroken Mama would be if her only grandson turned out to be gay. She’d probably writhe and moan and pray novenas to Mary, while Beatriz would then be the better mother. The supportive loving mother of a Mexican cock sucker. Beatriz drank her beer, meditated on how she could make Colin gay, and waited for AJ to come back home.
