Читать книгу Give It To Me - Ana Castillo - Страница 19

13

It was September, but global warming brought heat to the Windy City as murderous as Albuquerque’s desert. Palma Piedras was waiting in front of Abuela’s grave at the Calvary Cemetery north of the city. A warm wind picked up, coming in from Lake Michigan, and she pushed down her size-two printed frock. It was just above the knee, this side of bad taste for a forty-plus-year-old. (Whatever side the open-toed, red-soled, patent-leather stilettos were on hardly mattered as long as Chi-Town Joe appreciated them.) She bought Abuela flowers from the Jewel’s market. When alive, Abuela would have scolded her for wasting money. There were blessings from her grandmother being dead. One was the silence.

Mexican workers were mowing nearby and one brought over a holder he pulled up from another grave with a thick wire you could stick in the ground. Tenga, señorita, he said. (Señorita. Right.) Señorita Palma caught sight of Pepito, now Joe-the-suit salesman, coming toward her. In dress slacks he acquired a kind of Denzel Washington stride. He was wearing a cashmere, short-sleeved shirt. The Silverman Brothers Suits for Men Store, established 1943, had given the lil ex-con cous’ a makeover. As he grew near she saw he wore a better watch, a gold chain, and what looked like diamond-post earrings. He also cut his hair. He could have been walking out of an Esquire photo shoot. The Native American special issue. Good Lord, where were her vapors? Pepito was swinging a garment suit box in one hand, the way she might have carried a Whitman’s Sampler box. He kissed her right on the mouth, running a tongue oh-so-briefly over her lips. Palma let go of his neck and collected herself, knowing six landscapers’ eyes and a whole lot of dead were watching. I like them shoes, Pepito whispered.

What’s that? Palma asked, smoothing out her dress crunched by the thug hug. It’s for you, he said. Don’t open it ’til Christmas. He laughed a low heh-heh and handed it to her. In silver, swirly letters the top read: Silverman Brothers. It was weighty. Is it a suit for me? Palma joked. Yeah, I got us matching double-breasted tuxes, he smiled.

Pepito reached into his pocket and pulled something out. It was a lock of hair. His ponytail. The Silverman Brothers’ best salesman looked over his shades, and the landscapers pushing equipment in the heat, tongues dragging, lumbered away. The pair walked over to Abuela’s grave holding hands. She could hardly walk on the misogynous spikes as they sunk into the soft graveyard grass. (If she ever became a fashion designer Palma Piedras would start a stiletto line for men called Vendettas.) They scooted down, said an Our Father, and made a sign of the cross. Then Pepito reached into his back pocket and pulled out a Swiss Army knife. He started digging in the dirt until he made a hole deep enough to bury his chongo, which he’d let grow while in prison. It was for Abuela. She used to come visit me, her lil cous’ said. Dabbing the inside corner of one eye, he then readjusted his glasses. Down state? Palma asked. How’d that old woman get there?

Abuela took the bus, Pepito said. The idea of their grandmother going that far from her neighborhood was as unlikely as Palma flying a plane. Abuela went to places besides church, sure. She headed downtown now and then. Sears on special occasions. The lawyer’s office that one time. When did she come see you? Palma asked, as they made their way out slowly toward the street where she left the rental. The old woman had never even visited any of Palma’s apartments in Chicago over the years. She’d never met Rodrigo. She wouldn’t have liked him, in any case, but the point was she didn’t bother. Bother? Yeah, bother was the right word.

When they got to the economy car from Avis parked right outside the ironwork gates, she asked, Can I drop you back at work? He nodded, opened the back door, tossed the garment box in the backseat, and then got in the passenger side. Palma was about to go around when he caught her wrist and drew her to him. You’ve lost more weight, he said, arranging her on his lap and pulling the door closed. You don’t weigh nothing. Are you even here? His voice was heavy in her ear, like the smell in the humidor with don Ed. Pepito was not don Ed, or anyone else before or after, as he gave such wet besos all over she thought he’d suck up her labia through the inside, all the way up and right into his mouth.

Are you even here? Had spoken to her slight frame, but also to the ten years—a lifetime—of his longing for her. Palma’s thong, barely there anyway, was pushed aside and he was in. For a second Palma thought she had a silent stroke. Pepito’s penis had made its way up to her ghost ovaries. The two remained still—very. Abuela, forgive me, she thought. Palma felt his mouth on her neck. He was actually giving a grown woman a hickey. Send us a baby, Abuela, she said. Palma didn’t like babies. She’d hardly liked her abuela. She had no uterus but she might have gotten pregnant then and there. Pepito’s hands were clutching her peach halves and after a few throbbing thrusts she knew he had sent his troops off to infertile territory. She started to come when a cop siren went off, and the squad car pulled up and stopped next to the car. The rest, as they said in Chi-Town, was brown history. Or if they didn’t, then someone should.