Amigoland Page 9

  “Very good, Mr. Rosales. Getting stronger every day.”

  The Filipina Who Looks Like A Boy moved his bent leg slowly backward, stopping when she saw him straining, then extended it a ways and bent it forward only slightly. He liked the way she smelled, the scent of her hair, even if it was cut so short like a boy’s. After a while he relaxed a little more and allowed her to move his body through the exercises.

  It wasn’t Petra who had touched him last, that he knew. She barely got next to him and didn’t so much as sleep in the same bed those last few years she was in the house. He couldn’t say exactly when this had started, though he had an idea it had something to do with one woman or other he’d been seeing so long ago that it shouldn’t have mattered anymore. She never actually caught him, only suspected or heard talk of him here or there. He wanted to remember being with a woman who lived near the highway, on the 78520 side. Earlier he’d had her up on the kitchen counter, until this wasn’t working for him, and he had carried her that way, his work pants still caught between his ankles, so they could get down to the carpet on the living room floor, where after a few minutes he finished with a furious thrust that made her scream out and then laugh loud enough to be heard in the next trailer.

  “And that?” Petra asked later that night.

  “I fell walking up some steps.” He had just taken off his pants and tossed them on the chair.

  “Did you get hurt?” She came to take a closer look, but he turned as if he needed some privacy to pull up his pajamas. Even after washing himself off again in the restroom at the post office, he knew he couldn’t be too careful around her.

  “It was nothing, just a little scrape.” He yanked back the covers and climbed into bed.

  “To both knees, and it was nothing?”

  “Leave it already.”

  “Why won’t you show me?”

  “I need to go to sleep.”

  “You’re acting like you do when you want to hide something.” She was still standing at the foot of the bed.

  “Yes, Petra, I am always hiding something from you. That’s why I get up at six o’clock every morning, to hide things from you.”

  “Then tell me how you could fall and not get hurt.”

  “Turn the light off and come on to bed.”

  “And not just one knee.”

  “You try walking around all day carrying the bag, see if you don’t fall down sometimes. I wish you could, just so you would know. Maybe one of these days I’ll pull you away from the sofa so you can come see what I do all day, what I like to hide from you.”

  “You never fell before.”

  “And how do you know?”

  “You never said anything.”

  “Y qué, I have to report this to you? ‘Petra, today I fell because a big dog was chasing me and I couldn’t run with the bag.’ ‘Petra, today I fell because they sent out the Sears catalogs.’ Like that, is that what you want?” He shook his head at her ideas.

  She turned off the light and climbed into bed. He rolled onto his side, away from where she was fluffing up her pillow. Finally some peace, he thought. He reached down under the covers and felt where he had scraped the skin off his knees. Tomorrow morning, while she was still asleep, he would rub some ointment on the burns and in a few days they would heal up like new. By then she would let it go. He rolled back over, squinting, when the light came on again. Petra was standing next to the chair, holding up his uniform as if presenting a piece of evidence to the jury.

  “He falls, scrapes both knees, but somehow he doesn’t tear his pants,” she said, and turned off the light.

  Never mind that he had walked mile after mile, year after year, and always come home with his paycheck, for her, nobody else. And after paying the bills, she could spend it however she wanted. With nobody looking over her shoulder, asking so many questions, as she did to him. She chose to forget that part when she finally went to live with their daughter. Afterward he wondered if she had ever been happy, maybe at least for the first few years. He would have asked her, but he was afraid of what she might say, and then the next time he saw her was years later at her funeral.

  “Eh?”

  “I said, ‘This far is very good for a man your age, Mr. Rosales.’” The girl was moving his leg up and down, up and down, like she was changing a flat with a tire jack. “These exercises are going to help with your flexibility.”

  Maybe it was one of the young waitresses at the cafés he used to go to after he retired. They were tricky, that he remembered. It wasn’t so easy knowing which of them might be interested and which were talking to him, patting him on the shoulder, letting their hands linger a bit, only so they might get a more generous tip. He wanted to recall being parked to one side of a café, around from the grease disposal, and she still being in her uniform and scooting over next to him. He’d gone to the flea market to buy a gold-plated bracelet and have her name engraved on it, as a way of getting her to come outside during her break. What her name was, what she looked like, what she smelled like, what her mouth tasted like, how she kissed him or undid his pants or what might have happened after that, or if anything did, was lost to him now. He must have been still in his sixties, before women started treating him as if he were a harmless old creature and what he had once carried between his legs had now shriveled up and fallen off, which was only slightly better than those who avoided him altogether, as if his advanced age were contagious.

  Don Fidencio closed his eyes and tried to think of what he could do to fill the rest of the day. It was still another two hours until lunch, which was long enough that he could easily fall asleep for a nap. He didn’t like wasting his day in bed, though. Maybe he could go sit on one of the sofas near the nurses’ station. If he dozed off there, at least he wasn’t in bed. There were some days that the mail came in before 10:30, the time when everyone started moving toward the mess hall for lunch. He was waiting for the day when they would switch mail carriers and get one with a more pleasant nature who wasn’t always rushing off and didn’t mind sitting for a while to talk.

  “How does that feel, Mr. Rosales?”

  He opened his eyes, and the girl was gently lowering his leg, cradling his calf in her little hand.

  “Good, it feels good,” the old man said, straining to make out the name on her scrubs.

  PART III

  14

  He had been reading the morning paper in his chair when he dozed off and before long his head slumped over onto his chest. It wasn’t his favorite way to take a nap, but it happened often enough that he was used to it by now. It was hardly worth all the sacrifice it took for him to change into his pajamas and crawl into bed, and then call so one of the girls could come raise the bed railing. These naps never lasted long anyway. Whether it was on the hard bed or in the stiff chair, he usually woke up feeling just as weary and like he needed another nap. Only this time when he opened his eyes, The Stranger With The White Hair was standing at the closet door and opening his #3 shoe box.

  So now it had come to this. He couldn’t rest his eyes for a few minutes while he sat in his chair, not five feet away from where he kept the last of his belongings in this world, because somebody was liable to sneak in and try to rob him. Never would he have imagined this would happen with him in the room, that they’d be so brazen as to do this under his nose, as if he were already stiff in the chair and only waiting for them to roll him out the back door.

  Except that The Stranger With The White Hair was wearing a maroon guayabera, short-sleeved, with tan slacks, pleated and cuffed, and not the loose-fitting scrubs that would have given him away as one of the nurses or aides he had been waiting to catch in the act. So maybe he was a guest of one of the other residents, not that many of them had guests, except on Mother’s or Father’s Day, which they were aware of only because someone had finally shown up. Or maybe he belonged to The One With The Hole In His Back and had wandered over to see what he could make off with. At least if Don Fidencio had one of his ca
nes, he would have a way to stop him, defend himself if it came to this.

  “And who the hell are you?”

  “I thought you were asleep,” The Stranger With The White Hair said, turning around. “You didn’t answer me when I called your name.”

  “That gives you the right?” The old man began to stand up, until he realized how much effort this might take and finally sat back. Then he shifted in the chair, but only so he could adjust his pants.

  “I didn’t want to wake you.”

  “I prefer to be woken up than have my things stolen.” He used his shirt cuff to wipe a trace of spittle from one of the crevices where his face drooped the most.

  “Do you recognize me, Fidencio?”

  The old man blinked a couple of times. He hadn’t heard his own first name in months, however long it had been now since he’d arrived in this place. With the helpers it was “Mr. Rosales” and “sir”; with the other ones it was whatever they could remember, Filemón, Fernando, Fausto, Fulano, as if he cared; with Amalia it was Daddy or My Daddy; and with The Son Of A Bitch it was nothing because he never came around except to say, “Your father needs more assistance.” But here The Stranger With The White Hair had said his name as if they knew each other or they had worked together, which seemed unlikely given his look. Then again maybe so, if he had worked only at the station, sorting the letters and whatever else they did back there all day, because this man wasn’t out delivering, that Don Fidencio could guarantee. Even if the man had somehow avoided wearing the hat, which would have been hell during the summer months, he never would have been able to get his hair to stay in place the way it was doing now. It seemed to rise up like a frothy white wave and then eventually ebb toward the back of his head. There was only one other time he could remember seeing hair like that.

  “You look like a brother I used to have,” the old man said. “The younger one, Celestino.”

  “You remembered my name.”

  “I’m old, not stupid,” he said.

  They looked at each other for a moment, both unsure what to do next. Don Celestino noticed that the man on the other side of the retractable curtain was in bed asleep, but his head kept twitching as if he were dreaming.

  “I thought you might still be mad,” he said, “because of our disagreement.”

  As if he hadn’t heard him, his brother gazed at the ceiling for a moment, then leaned back. “And what disagreement was that?”

  Don Celestino only looked at him, wondering if he should remind the old man of what had happened in the barbershop and, if he did, what good it would do. “It doesn’t matter anymore,” he said finally, then took a seat at the edge of the bed. “I can hardly remember myself, already after so many years.”

  “Sometimes it takes me a long time to remember what I used to know.”

  “You look strong, the same as always.”

  “And getting stronger each day,” Don Fidencio replied, tapping his palms on the armrests of the chair. He tried to calculate exactly how long he had been here. The calendar on the wall said it was December, though he was pretty sure Christmas had come and gone.

  “You used to be a barber, didn’t you?”

  “For many years I had my own business.”

  Don Fidencio stared at him now, as if he might have mistaken him for someone else. “And where was that exactly, this barbershop of yours?”

  “Close to the stadium.” He pointed out the window, in the general direction of the shop, as if this might jar his memory.

  “Where your boy used to play football?”

  “Yes, not far from there.” He motioned again with his hand. “You used to come on Saturday mornings for your haircuts, before work.”

  “Forty-two years I delivered the mail.”

  “People knew you all over Brownsville.”

  Don Fidencio adjusted himself in the chair and looked out the window. An attendant paused in the doorway and then continued pushing a laundry hamper down the hall.

  “They come clean your room every day?” Don Celestino asked.

  “Only because of The Son Of A Bitch.” The old man slammed his palm on the armrest. “The one my daughter lies down in bed with every night!”

  “¿QUE FUE?” The One With The Hole In His Back stirred out of his sleep. “WHO THE HELL IS OUT THERE? COME OUT LIKE MEN, SHOW ME YOUR FACES!”

  “Maybe we should talk outside the room,” Don Celestino suggested.

  “Ignore him.” Don Fidencio flicked his hand in the direction of the retractable curtain. “He wakes up and then thinks his dreams are real.”

  “YOU THINK I CARE WHO SENT YOU? COME OUT HERE LIKE REAL MEN! TRY AND SEE IF YOU CAN HANG ANOTHER INNOCENT ONE.” The One With The Hole In His Back banged his bedpan on the bed railing. “LET ME SEE HOW MANY OF YOU COWARDS THEY SENT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT TO KILL ME!”

  “See what I told you?” He twirled his index finger near the side of his head. “Ignore him, he’s just another prisoner.”

  “That part of you hasn’t changed.”

  “And can you tell me where you live?”

  “In the same house as always.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yes, alone,” he answered. He wasn’t exactly sure how he was supposed to mention Socorro.

  The old man turned toward the window.

  “Sometimes I think God forgot about me.”

  “God doesn’t forget people.”

  “I’m not talking about other people. I said that He forgot about me, Fidencio Rosales, the one in this room, that He left me here with all these strangers. That wherever it is that He writes down all the names, my name has been forgotten or erased, something. That by now he should have taken me.”

  “So now you want to complain because you haven’t died?”

  “How do you explain that I am here, almost ninety-two, and still giving people trouble, so much trouble that nobody wants me in their house? My time should have come years ago. This morning they had eight dead ones listed in the newspaper. Guess how many were as old as me?”

  Don Celestino kept looking at his brother.

  “Don’t break your head trying to guess.” He held up his hand and slowly bent one arthritic finger after another until he managed to curl his thumb and forefinger into a zero. “You remember Dr. Hernandez?”

  “I heard that he had been sick.”

  “He was thirty years younger than the old man you see here. He came to the hospital the last time I was so sick. He talked to Amalia, and I heard them just outside the room. They thought I was asleep, but even with my eyes shut I could hear them. And he told her, ‘At his age, your father is like a candle, his life is only flickering to stay alive.’ He said it, I heard him. And now look where he is and look where I am and tell me, tell me that God hasn’t forgotten me.”

  “Still, that you are alive doesn’t mean God has forgotten about you, Fidencio.”

  “You can say that because you don’t live here, because you have your own house, because you think you know how it is to live here, where you cannot walk two paces beyond the door without somebody coming to take you back inside by the arm. They tell you everything: how to walk, when to eat, when to watch television, what time to go to sleep, the days to take a shower, when to make cacas.”

  “There must be some who like it here.”

  “I DON’T CARE WHO SENT YOU DOWN HERE — YOU HEAR ME? THIS LAND HAS ALWAYS BELONGED TO MY PEOPLE!”

  “Yes, like this one!” He motioned toward the other bed. “You should take me to live with you. Take your brother from this prison. If you have space for another person, why not?”

  “And how do you think I would take care of you?”

  “I don’t need nobody taking care of me. I can take care of myself, same way I used to. I still could, if they would let me. Take me, and I will prove it to you.”

  “And if something happens? You think I’m so young that I would be able to help you?”

  “But that’s what I am trying to tell you, th
at if something was going to happen, it would have happened already. But here you see me, no different from the first night they came to leave me in that bed right there. All they want is to keep me alive for another fifty years. Tell me, tell me why it is nobody wants me, but nobody wants me to die either. Answer me that one.”

  “They must have had a reason,” Don Celestino said. “So these people could take care of you and nothing happens.”

  “Yes, exactly! That is exactly what is happening to me — nothing! Every day a little more of nothing is happening to me! Tell me how much longer I have to go on this way. Even something bad would be better than more of nothing!”

  “Mr. Rosales?” The One With The Flat Face was standing at the door.

  “These other ones, they don’t know what happened to them! But I know, I know where I am, where they left me!”

  “BRING THEM TO ME! WATCH HOW THEY RUN AFTER I SHOOT THE FIRST ONE!”

  “Mr. Rosales, you need to be quiet,” The One With The Flat Face said. “You woke up Mr. Cavazos, and we can hear both of you all the way to the nurses’ station.”

  “See, what did I tell you?” He cocked back his head. “They send this girl to tell me when I can talk.”

  “You can talk as much as you like, Mr. Rosales, just in a quiet voice, for inside.” She raised her finger to her lips. “Shh…”

  “Now you tell me, when was the last time they sent a young girl to your house to tell you, ‘Shh’?” He wiped the corner of his mouth with his cuff, then turned away and looked out the window.

  Don Celestino stood up from the edge of the bed and patted his brother on the shoulder. “We can talk more later, whenever I come back for another visit.”