Labyrinths in Smoke
by Jennifer Givhan
Bianca locked the truck doors, checking twice they all locked, then pulled her strappy black high heels off, letting them drop to the floor mat, and propped her sheer nyloned feet beneath her. Wrapping her sparkling silver sweater over her black chiffon cap-sleeve dress and shiny beige lycra knees, which she’d curled up to her chest, she began waiting in the front seat of Gabe’s green truck. She turned the key in the ignition halfway so she could turn the radio on. All that came in here were Spanish stations, and she was tired of loud music, but then she found a Spanish love song station, leaned back against the headrest, crossed her arms over her chest, and blinked back the tears stinging her eyes. Outside on the curb, a man puked into the gutter, wiped his face with his sleeve, and staggered off with his brown-paper-bagged bottle. Behind the truck, half a block down, squatted a silver cart beneath a tent strung with white Christmas lights and red and green plastic flags, selling little foil wrapped tacos on doubled corn tortillas, your choice of trays of carnitas, carneasada, lengua, carne adovada, diced onions, cilantro, radish slices, pico de gallo, lime wedges, and salsa.
Her stomach lurched, head reeled. She’d been drinking all night and wanted to go home and sleep, but Gabe’s primo didn’t want to leave yet. She was scared to close her eyes, sitting out there in the car parked on the Mexicali night street alone, wanted to call her mom and dad again, like she’d done months before, raging drunk, dry heaving into Esme’s bathroom sink, screaming out to Esme, “I lost the baby, Esme. Did you know that, did you know? I lost her” while Gabe was hollering at her to shut the hell up. But she didn’t get cell reception here, and, anyway, she didn’t want to scare them. Not again. They’d driven down to bring her home that once, the day after she’d called. To stop this foolishness. To let go. And she’d told them she couldn’t. But could they buy her a dog so she wouldn’t be so lonely at night? She’d taken an ad for Boxer puppies in the classifieds at the Imperial Valley Press where she worked, and could they get one for her? So they’d left her there, in their empty old house still for-sale with a brown floppy-eared boxer who sprawled on the carpet with her, howling as she cried.
Useless moon, too beautiful to waste. Sandra Cisneros, you are no help to me tonight, she thought. Sometimes a woman needs a man who loves her ass. Sometimes a woman needs a man who won’t let her wait in the car alone, in the cold, in the dark, with the taco man and the puking drunk on the sidewalk. Sometimes a woman needs a man who won’t promise to take her dancing then drag her instead to a strip club because his cousin wasn’t having fun. Sometimes, a woman doesn’t know what she needs. Especially when she’s nineteen, drunk, and sad as a useless moon.
“My cousin’s in town, let’s go dancing in Mexicali. Do you have any friends you could call to come with us?”
“I don’t really talk to anyone here anymore. Lily has a boyfriend and wouldn’t go anyway. My coworkers all have kids and most of them are engaged or with someone, and I don’t talk to anyone from high school. I don’t really even know who’s still down here. I had one friend in El Centro, Yliana, from when I interned at the Imperial Irrigation District last year. I think I still have her number. We partied together in San Diego once, and she was cool. Maybe I could call her, but I don’t know if she still lives here or not because she was supposed to be going back up to San Diego State.”
“Yeah, call her. I’ll pick you up tonight around ten, okay?”
* * *
Bianca had mixed feelings about Mexicali where they all went to party since the drinking age was eighteen and it was less than an hour away. Once, the summer she came back from Vanguard, she’d just turned eighteen so she drove out there with a bunch of friends; on the way there, Jose drove, Luis sat in the front seat, Eloisa, Chanelle and Bianca sat in the backseat. On the way back, Luis sat next to Bianca, copping feels the whole way home. Gabe’s old friends from San Bernardino were at the club; she’d met them once before when she stayed in his dorm one weekend for a visit. They’d all been friends of Katrina’s, from Holtville, the same town as her. Because they were friends of Gabe’s, Bianca trusted them. They offered her cigarettes, and she smoked. Dancing, drinking, having a good time. On the way home, she couldn’t stop crying when Jose put a Dixie Chicks song on the CD player about how the singer’s husband cheated on her and left her and their two kids and how she had to take down all their wedding pictures and how she always wakes up in the middle of the night screaming his name because that bitch who stole him from her took his heart away. And the other girls in the car were singing along, and even Jose was singing, but Bianca couldn’t stop crying. And she’d let Luis touch her thighs and her breasts. They’d been friends since high school and between all the break-ups with Gabe they’d had little flings at backyard parties. She’d often ended up in cars with him, making out. So that night, after a Jack-in-the-Box taco run for the guys, Jose took her back to his place where she crashed with Luis in Jose’s roommate’s bed. She and Luis didn’t do anything, she didn’t think, though he’d wanted her to suck his dick. He’d wanted her to do even more than that, but she’d said she didn’t feel good because she was on her period. And anyway, she couldn’t even have sex because she was bleeding. Fine, he’d responded, rolled over and fell asleep.
The next morning, Luis had already driven her back to her house when she realized that she’d driven to his house in the first place and had left her car there. She begged him to take her back to pick up her car even though he wanted to drive home already because she didn’t want to have to explain to her mom what her car was doing at Jose’s house. Her mom didn’t know Jose. “Please,” she’d asked.
“Yeah, ok.” When he dropped her at her white Cavalier, he stopped her. “Hey, Bee. Sorry about last night,” he’d mumbled. “I was drunk. Don’t tell my girlfriend, yeah?”
“I won’t.”
Her mom was in the house, drinking her coffee before getting ready for work.
“Hey baby,” she’d called. “How was your night? You spent the night with Eloisa?”
“Morning mom.” She felt like shit. She was a horrible daughter. “It was fine. Sorry I didn’t call to let you know that I’d spend the night.”
“Mmm… you going back to bed?”
“We stayed up watching movies, so I didn’t get much sleep. I’ll talk to you later, ok? Love you.”
“Sleep tight, baby girl. Love you.”
That afternoon Gabe called her, mocking her in a deep, sarcastic voice, “So, did you have fun last night?”
“I guess, it was all right.”
“Hmm, that’s not what I heard,” his voice was cold, flat, “I heard you had a blast getting high.”
“I didn’t get high. I don’t even do that, you know that.”
“Did you smoke?”
“Yeah, just the cigarettes your friends Mundo and Eduardo gave me. Why?”
“Those weren’t cigarettes, stupid. That was marijuana. Why’d you take it from them? Couldn’t you even tell the difference?”
“What? Are you serious? How do you know?”
“Katrina told me. They all had a laugh that you got high and acted stupid in Mexicali, all over all the guys. So what, now you’re a slut and a pothead too?”
“Gabe, leave me alone. I didn’t know, ok. I thought they were your friends. Why are you listening to Katrina anyway?”
“Look, I was only joking with you. I thought you knew what you were doing. You’re so naïve. God, who knows what you could let happen to you. I wish you would think.”
“I don’t feel good. Can we talk about this later?”
“Yeah, whatever. See ya, punk.”
Another time, for their anniversary, Gabe had taken her out to dinner at a bar and restaurant in Mexicali he had gone to with his co-workers and Katrina’ brother, his boss, for a party. There’d been this singer there, he said, who was really nice. She sang well, and Bianca would like it there.
That night, Bianca had gotten dressed up, and Gabe had given her a necklace with a bumblebee on it.
The singer, a stunning woman like the ones in Gabe’s Maxim magazine or on his Budweiser posters, with large red lips and thick jet-black hair tumbling down her shoulders, came up to their table, and Gabe chatted with her in his broken Spanish.
“¡Oye, muchacho.” She’d called warmly and given him a hug. He redenned.
“¡Hola.” he responded, his whole face smiling.
“Recuerdo que tú vinestes la otra noche. ¡Tú estabas aquí con un grupo de compañeros de trabajo. ¡Muchachos camorristas.” She and Gabe laughed. “¡Guau, tú puedes beber. ¿Y quién es esta muchacha bonita que tú has traído aquí contigo esta noche?”
“This is my girlfriend, mi novia.”
“¿Ella es tan bonita, sí? ¿Tú eres un muchacho afortunado, si o no?”
“Gracias. Sí, soy.”
“¿Quieras que cantara para ti? ¿Qué canción te gusto de la otra noche? Oh sí, te gusto la canción en ingles que hago. Dile a tu novia que está es para ella.”
“Sí, gracias. Nice to see you.”
“Y tú, muchacho.” She smiled and winked. “Y una cosa más, muchacho. Cuidala, ¿sí? ”
“I will.”
A minute later, she began singing Linda Ronstadt’s version of Blue Bayou, the microphone pressed against her red pouty lips, the obsidian of her eyes, glowing in the spotlight.
I feel so bad, I’ve got a worried mind… I'm so lonesome all the time… Since I left my baby behind on blue bayou.
“Hey Bee. I’ve been thinking.” He looked over at Bianca, who was watching the singer. He continued, “I feel selfish all the time. Wondering, what am I doing? Is this right for you? Am I hurting you? And the baby. She didn’t ask for this. She doesn’t deserve this.”
Saving nickels, saving dimes. Working til the sun don’t shine. Looking forward to happier times on blue bayou.
“You’re a good father. She loves you, and she’ll see that.”
“But doesn’t she deserve a family?”
“She has one. She has so many people who love her and take care of her. Look at your mom. She gives her enough attention for three children!” Bianca checked to make sure he knew she was being playful. He did.
“Yeah, my mom goes a little overboard sometimes, doesn’t she? But see, that’s what I mean. She’s trying to make up for how much I screwed up. I screwed everything up. For you. For Leila. For Katrina.” He put his hand on hers atop the table. “I know this necklace isn’t a ring, but it will be, someday. I promise. I just need to get this all straightened out. I need to figure out what I’m doing. I don’t want to get us stuck down here. Katrina already feels trapped down here. I’ve told her a thousand times she can go back to school, that I’d help with the baby, that she doesn’t have to be here. But she needs her mom’s help, she says. She can’t leave. She doesn’t want to take Leila away from Manuela or my mom. I understand that. But I don’t wanna be here, and I sure as hell don’t believe you wanna be here.”
“I want to be with you, and with Leila, wherever that means, Gabe. I’m sticking with you. God only knows why!” She squeezed his hand and winked.
He was in rare humor. Maybe it was the music. The beer. The food. Whatever it was, he was open to her that night, didn’t shut her down right away. Didn’t bite her tongue.
“Bianca, you deserve so much more than this. You should be out having the time of your life. Writing. Traveling. Having adventures. You have so many dreams. What are you going to do here, with me?”
“I can write here.”
I’m going back someday. Come what may to blue bayou. Where the folks are fine and the world is mine on blue bayou.
“No. You know what? Let’s get out. Let’s leave. I’ll still come back for Leila as often as possible. I’ll come back all the time. But we’ve got to get out of here. We at least have to try. Remember at Vanguard? Newport beach? It was so beautiful over there. I really liked it. I wish you’d stayed there. I would’ve liked to end up there.”
“I hated that school. It was full of hypocrites. I told you about that night at karaoke when that guy and his friend, who’d been, I don’t know, a bit slow I guess, not all there, were singing a rock and roll song. For everyone else, all the popular kids, people clapped and cheered. Even when they sucked. This one guy was singing Mariah Carey, and everyone thought it was hilarious, cheering him on. But for those two guys, they booed them offstage and cut their music. Just like that. I overheard the friend, the one I think was kind of slow, you know, tell his buddy, ‘Not everyone likes rock and roll.’ I felt terrible. What, because they were kind of funny looking? Because they weren’t cool? They were having fun. They should’ve at least let them finish the song! I was so angry, I ran back to my dorm room, crying, kicking my desk, the trashcan, my bed. I hated those kids. They prayed and helped the homeless, sure, but they didn’t care about people’s feelings.”
Where those fishing boats with their sales afloat, if I could only see. That familiar sunrise. Those sleepy eyes. How happy I’d be.
“You’re so sensitive, Bee. It was just karaoke. People get booed off sometimes, it’s no big deal. You take everything so seriously.”
“You don’t understand, I guess. You should have seen their faces. They were confused. They were hurt.”
“Uh-huh. Well, I just mean, give people a break. Not everyone’s perfect.”
“What are you saying?”
“Just that you’re hard on people. We all screw up sometimes, Bee. You’re no saint. Haven’t you ever hurt anyone?”
“I never claimed to be a saint,” Bianca muttered, shutting down again. Even here, even with the food and the music and the cerveza, Gabe didn’t want to hear her.
“I was only trying to say that I want us to go back to Newport…”
“Back to the pier…”
“Yeah, something like that.”
Well I’ll never be blue. My dreams come true. In blue bayou.
* * *
“It sucks your friend couldn’t come,” Gabe said close to Bianca’s ear, his hands on her waist. Cumbia rock blaring on the speakers, she leaned in close against his legs where he was propped against a high stool at the bar chugging another bottle of beer while she sipped her whisky sour, the only thing she actually enjoyed. Every other alcohol, she gulped down, scrunching her face, shutting her eyes, but whisky sours, she liked the taste. His breath hot and acrid against her face and neck, she loved him best when he was a little buzzed. He treated her nicest this way. But she knew how quickly it could turn. How quickly she’d be upside-down again, pacing the hallways as if standing on her head, stomach aching, calling out for her mama. Her mama whose room she was now sleeping in. Her mama, who prayed her rosary every night, Hail Mary full of grace, keep my daughter safe. Keep my daughter safe. But Bianca couldn’t hear her mama praying.
“Yeah, sorry. Can’t he meet someone here?”
“Nah, he’s not like that. Look at him, he is miserable.”
“I wanted to dance.” Bianca pouted.
“I know…” he said, kissing her mouth and squeezing her ass.“Let me go talk to him real quick though and make sure he’s okay.”
Bianca swayed with the music, recalling the cumbias she had learned at Quinceañeras and high school dances. Suavamente, besame. She never really knew the steps but caught on quickly from the girls around her. The washing machine, shaking her hips. Some moves were kind of like the pony her mom had taught her, stay on the pads of your feet, heels up high, even in high heels. One two three, one two three. Like the waltzes she had performed in recitals, only more shaking. Her favorite was when she and Gabe would crisscross bodies together, forming scissors with their hips and legs, hips locked together, each with one arm extended up, elbow bent, hands clasped together, the other arm hung around the other’s waist, feet apart, his knee between her crotch, and they’d swing, back and forth, round and round, fast and bouncing.¡La quebradita!
He sauntered back to Bianca, pulled her tight, dancing in time with her, his pelvis tipped toward her hips, his head close to hers. For a minute, they reminded Bianca of the old couples dancing at the Chili Cook-Off fiesta, outside the rodeo arena. Or of his parents dancing in the backyard. At a wedding. For a minute, his hair grayed, covered by a wide-brimmed Stetson, his DC skater shoes replaced by shuffling cowboy boots. And her high heels morphed into closed-toed pumps, her nylons thickened into stockings.
“Sorry, Bee. My cousin wants to leave. We’re going to Miau Miau instead,” he apologized, still holding her close.
“Are you serious? I don’t want to go...” Bianca’s pulse quickened, stomach flip-flopped.
“We came out here for him. He came all the way from L.A., and I promised him a fun time. Besides, it won’t be bad. Come on, you’ll see.”
“Gabe, I really don’t like Miau Miau. Can’t we hang out here? Please?”
“Look, this is your fault anyway. You should have brought a friend for him; then we could have danced like you wanted. We’re leaving. Let’s go.” He pulled away from her, motioned toward his cousin to head to the exit doors, and tugged on Bianca’s arm, leading her away from the cramped dance floor beside the bar.
At the door of the strip club, a fat baseball-capped bouncer checked her driver’s license. This club was darker and smelled of vinegar and even stronger of cigarettes. Gabe draped his arm around her shoulders. “It’s fine, Bee. We’ll just order some drinks and stay here a few minutes so my primo can get his kicks, then we’ll leave. I promise.”
She hated this kind of thing. In high school, a bunch of them had gotten together to watch American Beauty at Eloisa’s, and, even though everyone claimed it was such a good movie and she’d heard what critical acclaim it received, she’d hated it. Thought it was kind of disgusting and perverted. She guessed that was the point. Everyone had a twisted side. Everyone had alligators in the swamp. She’d read Stephen King’s essay, first published in the eighties in Playboy, in an English class at I.V.C. All you need is love, he quoted Lennon. True. As long as you kept the gators fed. In this world, some men do fantasize about teenage girls. For all she knew, most men did. Fathers jacked off in the shower. For all she knew. But she didn’t want to see it. It was enough to know it existed. She’d stopped reading Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things for a few weeks when she’d gotten to the scene in which the Orangedrink Lemondrink Manin the theater lobby puts his warm, hard flesh into the little boy Estha’s hand. Estha who’d been kicked out of the talkies theater for singing Maria’s parts in The Sound of Music.Who couldn’t stop singing even the lobby. Estha who went back to his Ammu and had to be led out of the theater to rush to the bathroom where he was held over the dirty toilet to vomit. Bianca felt this. She was there with him, in the lobby. She wanted to scream out, don’t go behind the drink man’s cart. Don’t take the sweets he’s offering you. Go back to your mama. Turn around, little Estha.or at Ammu, Look what he’s done to your boy. Slice his neck, Ammu. Call the police. Take it back. Take it back into you. Take Estha back to where he’ll be safe.
Bianca wondered for a long time what art was for. To show us what we needed to see, dim and dirty in this world, or to imagine something other, some Pan’s Labyrinth where little boys aren’t sexually abused and little girls aren’t killed by stepfathers, and women don’t dance nude for drunken men out of economic necessity.
Frida impaled with a bus rail. Frida sprawled on a blood soaked Detroit hospital bed, her little Diguelito, pink and perfectly formed, dead, snail and machine and wilting purple orchid strung in the sky like balloons, held in her hand on the bed by veins deeply red. Frida, a broken column. Or Remedios Varos’ long strange figures sailing the Orinoco River in giant goldfish teacups, women gliding along passageways on their hair, hovering above the checkered tile on tiny pointed toes. Labyrinths in smoke. Séances and floating objects.
Neither, Gabe would tell her. Both, she wanted to shout.
Gabe ordered her a beer, and she sat, mouthwashing it, watching. She didn’t even like beer.
“They’ve got nothing on you, babe,” Gabe whispered, clutching Bianca’s waist.
“It’s not that. It just seems sad.”
“Most of them are ugly anyway,” he observed, pointing out a woman with jet-black hair sweeping the small of her back, her red bra and panties already on the platform, one black stiletto high in the air, one wrapped around a pole. She didn’t have any other body hair that Bianca could see. She wondered if she shaved it every day or waxed. She could never wax her pubic hair. She’d tried a little once, and it had tugged at the soft, stretchy skin where her thigh met her pelvis, ripping a strip off and leaving her chafed and limping for days. When she’d shaved, she itched like crazy, her panties become torture devices. As a little girl, showering with her mama, she’d seen the fuzzy dark patch regularly and thought that’s just what women have. Dark splotches on their private and wide, dark brown stains on their chichis called nipples.
“She’s not ugly. She was probably a beautiful dancer at one time, the way she can arabesque like that.”
“She’s haggish, if you ask me. Her skin pudgy in the middle, you can tell she’s had kids. I’ll bet, if you looked closely, she’s all stretch marked.”
“What the hell? I have stretch marks and a pudgy stomach, and I haven’t had kids! And anyway, so what? So what if she has stretch marks? Most women do. Cabrón. You’re such a chauvinist. What am I even doing here with you?”
“Oooh, someone’s drunk! Getting feisty there with the cuss words. Getting all tough in Spanish.” Bianca stayed quiet. Sipped her beer. She couldn’t even taste it anymore. “Anyway, calm down. I was just trying to point out that they’re not all perfect. Sexy, sure, but not perfect. Most of them probably even have children at home.”
My body has never been stretched with new life, though it bears the marks. My breasts have never flowed with milk, though they hang in triumph. Bianca thought.
“At least they’re bringing home money for food. At least their children have clothes and shoes. At least they’re not selling their children.” She snapped back, aloud.
“Spitfire drunk, Bee, that’s what you are. Ready to sting. Ready to attack.” Bianca hated when he patronized her.
Onstage, the woman with jet-black hair was squatting down at the edge of the platform to collect folded up bills from the men crowding around cheering her and whistling. English or Spanish, catcalls sound the same. Bianca looked away.
“I thought that wasn’t allowed,” she asked, referring to what some of the men were paying to do, one after the other, to the woman with jet-black hair. “Like that rap-song you had on, that one you explained to me, no sex in the champagne room?”
“It’s not illegal to touch and tongue pussy here in Mexicali,” he said, no longer looking at Bianca.
“It’s disgusting. They’re like deer at a salt lick.” Bianca’s head reeled again. “I don’t feel good. Can we leave now?”
“Stop it, Bianca. My cousin’s barely having a good time. Close your eyes then and go to sleep if you’re sick. Stop being such a baby.”
“I don’t want to be here!” She insisted, loudly. The bartender looked up, motioned to the bouncer who came over to the table.
“¿Hay problema?” He asked.
“No, lo siento. Mi novia esta loca, es todo.”
“Fine,” he said. “I don’t want any problems here. ¿Entiendes?”
“Yeah, sorry.” When he’d walked away, Gabe pinched Bianca’s thigh. “Shut the hell up, stupid. You wanna get us in trouble? Look, if you don’t like it here, just go wait in the car then.”
“Give me the keys.”
“Are you serious?” He asked, incredulous. She stared at him straight though her vision was beginning to blur.
“Yes. Give them to me,” she insisted.
“Whatever. Suit yourself. You’d better not try going anywhere. You’re too drunk to drive. Just stay there and sleep it off.”
She scooted out of the circle booth from underneath the table, almost tripping on the step, then stumbled out the door. He did not follow her. Behind her, she heard cheering and whistles.
Jennifer Givhan was a 2010 PEN Center USA Emerging Voices Fellow, as well as a finalist in the 2011 St. Lawrence Book Award Contest through Black Lawrence Press. Her work has appeared widely, most recently in Rattle, The Los Angeles Review, Stone Telling and The Southwestern Review. She teaches composition at The University of New Mexico and is working on her first novel In the Time of Jubilee, from where this story is taken. You can visit Jennifer online at http://jennifergivhan.com.
by Jennifer Givhan
Bianca locked the truck doors, checking twice they all locked, then pulled her strappy black high heels off, letting them drop to the floor mat, and propped her sheer nyloned feet beneath her. Wrapping her sparkling silver sweater over her black chiffon cap-sleeve dress and shiny beige lycra knees, which she’d curled up to her chest, she began waiting in the front seat of Gabe’s green truck. She turned the key in the ignition halfway so she could turn the radio on. All that came in here were Spanish stations, and she was tired of loud music, but then she found a Spanish love song station, leaned back against the headrest, crossed her arms over her chest, and blinked back the tears stinging her eyes. Outside on the curb, a man puked into the gutter, wiped his face with his sleeve, and staggered off with his brown-paper-bagged bottle. Behind the truck, half a block down, squatted a silver cart beneath a tent strung with white Christmas lights and red and green plastic flags, selling little foil wrapped tacos on doubled corn tortillas, your choice of trays of carnitas, carneasada, lengua, carne adovada, diced onions, cilantro, radish slices, pico de gallo, lime wedges, and salsa.
Her stomach lurched, head reeled. She’d been drinking all night and wanted to go home and sleep, but Gabe’s primo didn’t want to leave yet. She was scared to close her eyes, sitting out there in the car parked on the Mexicali night street alone, wanted to call her mom and dad again, like she’d done months before, raging drunk, dry heaving into Esme’s bathroom sink, screaming out to Esme, “I lost the baby, Esme. Did you know that, did you know? I lost her” while Gabe was hollering at her to shut the hell up. But she didn’t get cell reception here, and, anyway, she didn’t want to scare them. Not again. They’d driven down to bring her home that once, the day after she’d called. To stop this foolishness. To let go. And she’d told them she couldn’t. But could they buy her a dog so she wouldn’t be so lonely at night? She’d taken an ad for Boxer puppies in the classifieds at the Imperial Valley Press where she worked, and could they get one for her? So they’d left her there, in their empty old house still for-sale with a brown floppy-eared boxer who sprawled on the carpet with her, howling as she cried.
Useless moon, too beautiful to waste. Sandra Cisneros, you are no help to me tonight, she thought. Sometimes a woman needs a man who loves her ass. Sometimes a woman needs a man who won’t let her wait in the car alone, in the cold, in the dark, with the taco man and the puking drunk on the sidewalk. Sometimes a woman needs a man who won’t promise to take her dancing then drag her instead to a strip club because his cousin wasn’t having fun. Sometimes, a woman doesn’t know what she needs. Especially when she’s nineteen, drunk, and sad as a useless moon.
“My cousin’s in town, let’s go dancing in Mexicali. Do you have any friends you could call to come with us?”
“I don’t really talk to anyone here anymore. Lily has a boyfriend and wouldn’t go anyway. My coworkers all have kids and most of them are engaged or with someone, and I don’t talk to anyone from high school. I don’t really even know who’s still down here. I had one friend in El Centro, Yliana, from when I interned at the Imperial Irrigation District last year. I think I still have her number. We partied together in San Diego once, and she was cool. Maybe I could call her, but I don’t know if she still lives here or not because she was supposed to be going back up to San Diego State.”
“Yeah, call her. I’ll pick you up tonight around ten, okay?”
* * *
Bianca had mixed feelings about Mexicali where they all went to party since the drinking age was eighteen and it was less than an hour away. Once, the summer she came back from Vanguard, she’d just turned eighteen so she drove out there with a bunch of friends; on the way there, Jose drove, Luis sat in the front seat, Eloisa, Chanelle and Bianca sat in the backseat. On the way back, Luis sat next to Bianca, copping feels the whole way home. Gabe’s old friends from San Bernardino were at the club; she’d met them once before when she stayed in his dorm one weekend for a visit. They’d all been friends of Katrina’s, from Holtville, the same town as her. Because they were friends of Gabe’s, Bianca trusted them. They offered her cigarettes, and she smoked. Dancing, drinking, having a good time. On the way home, she couldn’t stop crying when Jose put a Dixie Chicks song on the CD player about how the singer’s husband cheated on her and left her and their two kids and how she had to take down all their wedding pictures and how she always wakes up in the middle of the night screaming his name because that bitch who stole him from her took his heart away. And the other girls in the car were singing along, and even Jose was singing, but Bianca couldn’t stop crying. And she’d let Luis touch her thighs and her breasts. They’d been friends since high school and between all the break-ups with Gabe they’d had little flings at backyard parties. She’d often ended up in cars with him, making out. So that night, after a Jack-in-the-Box taco run for the guys, Jose took her back to his place where she crashed with Luis in Jose’s roommate’s bed. She and Luis didn’t do anything, she didn’t think, though he’d wanted her to suck his dick. He’d wanted her to do even more than that, but she’d said she didn’t feel good because she was on her period. And anyway, she couldn’t even have sex because she was bleeding. Fine, he’d responded, rolled over and fell asleep.
The next morning, Luis had already driven her back to her house when she realized that she’d driven to his house in the first place and had left her car there. She begged him to take her back to pick up her car even though he wanted to drive home already because she didn’t want to have to explain to her mom what her car was doing at Jose’s house. Her mom didn’t know Jose. “Please,” she’d asked.
“Yeah, ok.” When he dropped her at her white Cavalier, he stopped her. “Hey, Bee. Sorry about last night,” he’d mumbled. “I was drunk. Don’t tell my girlfriend, yeah?”
“I won’t.”
Her mom was in the house, drinking her coffee before getting ready for work.
“Hey baby,” she’d called. “How was your night? You spent the night with Eloisa?”
“Morning mom.” She felt like shit. She was a horrible daughter. “It was fine. Sorry I didn’t call to let you know that I’d spend the night.”
“Mmm… you going back to bed?”
“We stayed up watching movies, so I didn’t get much sleep. I’ll talk to you later, ok? Love you.”
“Sleep tight, baby girl. Love you.”
That afternoon Gabe called her, mocking her in a deep, sarcastic voice, “So, did you have fun last night?”
“I guess, it was all right.”
“Hmm, that’s not what I heard,” his voice was cold, flat, “I heard you had a blast getting high.”
“I didn’t get high. I don’t even do that, you know that.”
“Did you smoke?”
“Yeah, just the cigarettes your friends Mundo and Eduardo gave me. Why?”
“Those weren’t cigarettes, stupid. That was marijuana. Why’d you take it from them? Couldn’t you even tell the difference?”
“What? Are you serious? How do you know?”
“Katrina told me. They all had a laugh that you got high and acted stupid in Mexicali, all over all the guys. So what, now you’re a slut and a pothead too?”
“Gabe, leave me alone. I didn’t know, ok. I thought they were your friends. Why are you listening to Katrina anyway?”
“Look, I was only joking with you. I thought you knew what you were doing. You’re so naïve. God, who knows what you could let happen to you. I wish you would think.”
“I don’t feel good. Can we talk about this later?”
“Yeah, whatever. See ya, punk.”
Another time, for their anniversary, Gabe had taken her out to dinner at a bar and restaurant in Mexicali he had gone to with his co-workers and Katrina’ brother, his boss, for a party. There’d been this singer there, he said, who was really nice. She sang well, and Bianca would like it there.
That night, Bianca had gotten dressed up, and Gabe had given her a necklace with a bumblebee on it.
The singer, a stunning woman like the ones in Gabe’s Maxim magazine or on his Budweiser posters, with large red lips and thick jet-black hair tumbling down her shoulders, came up to their table, and Gabe chatted with her in his broken Spanish.
“¡Oye, muchacho.” She’d called warmly and given him a hug. He redenned.
“¡Hola.” he responded, his whole face smiling.
“Recuerdo que tú vinestes la otra noche. ¡Tú estabas aquí con un grupo de compañeros de trabajo. ¡Muchachos camorristas.” She and Gabe laughed. “¡Guau, tú puedes beber. ¿Y quién es esta muchacha bonita que tú has traído aquí contigo esta noche?”
“This is my girlfriend, mi novia.”
“¿Ella es tan bonita, sí? ¿Tú eres un muchacho afortunado, si o no?”
“Gracias. Sí, soy.”
“¿Quieras que cantara para ti? ¿Qué canción te gusto de la otra noche? Oh sí, te gusto la canción en ingles que hago. Dile a tu novia que está es para ella.”
“Sí, gracias. Nice to see you.”
“Y tú, muchacho.” She smiled and winked. “Y una cosa más, muchacho. Cuidala, ¿sí? ”
“I will.”
A minute later, she began singing Linda Ronstadt’s version of Blue Bayou, the microphone pressed against her red pouty lips, the obsidian of her eyes, glowing in the spotlight.
I feel so bad, I’ve got a worried mind… I'm so lonesome all the time… Since I left my baby behind on blue bayou.
“Hey Bee. I’ve been thinking.” He looked over at Bianca, who was watching the singer. He continued, “I feel selfish all the time. Wondering, what am I doing? Is this right for you? Am I hurting you? And the baby. She didn’t ask for this. She doesn’t deserve this.”
Saving nickels, saving dimes. Working til the sun don’t shine. Looking forward to happier times on blue bayou.
“You’re a good father. She loves you, and she’ll see that.”
“But doesn’t she deserve a family?”
“She has one. She has so many people who love her and take care of her. Look at your mom. She gives her enough attention for three children!” Bianca checked to make sure he knew she was being playful. He did.
“Yeah, my mom goes a little overboard sometimes, doesn’t she? But see, that’s what I mean. She’s trying to make up for how much I screwed up. I screwed everything up. For you. For Leila. For Katrina.” He put his hand on hers atop the table. “I know this necklace isn’t a ring, but it will be, someday. I promise. I just need to get this all straightened out. I need to figure out what I’m doing. I don’t want to get us stuck down here. Katrina already feels trapped down here. I’ve told her a thousand times she can go back to school, that I’d help with the baby, that she doesn’t have to be here. But she needs her mom’s help, she says. She can’t leave. She doesn’t want to take Leila away from Manuela or my mom. I understand that. But I don’t wanna be here, and I sure as hell don’t believe you wanna be here.”
“I want to be with you, and with Leila, wherever that means, Gabe. I’m sticking with you. God only knows why!” She squeezed his hand and winked.
He was in rare humor. Maybe it was the music. The beer. The food. Whatever it was, he was open to her that night, didn’t shut her down right away. Didn’t bite her tongue.
“Bianca, you deserve so much more than this. You should be out having the time of your life. Writing. Traveling. Having adventures. You have so many dreams. What are you going to do here, with me?”
“I can write here.”
I’m going back someday. Come what may to blue bayou. Where the folks are fine and the world is mine on blue bayou.
“No. You know what? Let’s get out. Let’s leave. I’ll still come back for Leila as often as possible. I’ll come back all the time. But we’ve got to get out of here. We at least have to try. Remember at Vanguard? Newport beach? It was so beautiful over there. I really liked it. I wish you’d stayed there. I would’ve liked to end up there.”
“I hated that school. It was full of hypocrites. I told you about that night at karaoke when that guy and his friend, who’d been, I don’t know, a bit slow I guess, not all there, were singing a rock and roll song. For everyone else, all the popular kids, people clapped and cheered. Even when they sucked. This one guy was singing Mariah Carey, and everyone thought it was hilarious, cheering him on. But for those two guys, they booed them offstage and cut their music. Just like that. I overheard the friend, the one I think was kind of slow, you know, tell his buddy, ‘Not everyone likes rock and roll.’ I felt terrible. What, because they were kind of funny looking? Because they weren’t cool? They were having fun. They should’ve at least let them finish the song! I was so angry, I ran back to my dorm room, crying, kicking my desk, the trashcan, my bed. I hated those kids. They prayed and helped the homeless, sure, but they didn’t care about people’s feelings.”
Where those fishing boats with their sales afloat, if I could only see. That familiar sunrise. Those sleepy eyes. How happy I’d be.
“You’re so sensitive, Bee. It was just karaoke. People get booed off sometimes, it’s no big deal. You take everything so seriously.”
“You don’t understand, I guess. You should have seen their faces. They were confused. They were hurt.”
“Uh-huh. Well, I just mean, give people a break. Not everyone’s perfect.”
“What are you saying?”
“Just that you’re hard on people. We all screw up sometimes, Bee. You’re no saint. Haven’t you ever hurt anyone?”
“I never claimed to be a saint,” Bianca muttered, shutting down again. Even here, even with the food and the music and the cerveza, Gabe didn’t want to hear her.
“I was only trying to say that I want us to go back to Newport…”
“Back to the pier…”
“Yeah, something like that.”
Well I’ll never be blue. My dreams come true. In blue bayou.
* * *
“It sucks your friend couldn’t come,” Gabe said close to Bianca’s ear, his hands on her waist. Cumbia rock blaring on the speakers, she leaned in close against his legs where he was propped against a high stool at the bar chugging another bottle of beer while she sipped her whisky sour, the only thing she actually enjoyed. Every other alcohol, she gulped down, scrunching her face, shutting her eyes, but whisky sours, she liked the taste. His breath hot and acrid against her face and neck, she loved him best when he was a little buzzed. He treated her nicest this way. But she knew how quickly it could turn. How quickly she’d be upside-down again, pacing the hallways as if standing on her head, stomach aching, calling out for her mama. Her mama whose room she was now sleeping in. Her mama, who prayed her rosary every night, Hail Mary full of grace, keep my daughter safe. Keep my daughter safe. But Bianca couldn’t hear her mama praying.
“Yeah, sorry. Can’t he meet someone here?”
“Nah, he’s not like that. Look at him, he is miserable.”
“I wanted to dance.” Bianca pouted.
“I know…” he said, kissing her mouth and squeezing her ass.“Let me go talk to him real quick though and make sure he’s okay.”
Bianca swayed with the music, recalling the cumbias she had learned at Quinceañeras and high school dances. Suavamente, besame. She never really knew the steps but caught on quickly from the girls around her. The washing machine, shaking her hips. Some moves were kind of like the pony her mom had taught her, stay on the pads of your feet, heels up high, even in high heels. One two three, one two three. Like the waltzes she had performed in recitals, only more shaking. Her favorite was when she and Gabe would crisscross bodies together, forming scissors with their hips and legs, hips locked together, each with one arm extended up, elbow bent, hands clasped together, the other arm hung around the other’s waist, feet apart, his knee between her crotch, and they’d swing, back and forth, round and round, fast and bouncing.¡La quebradita!
He sauntered back to Bianca, pulled her tight, dancing in time with her, his pelvis tipped toward her hips, his head close to hers. For a minute, they reminded Bianca of the old couples dancing at the Chili Cook-Off fiesta, outside the rodeo arena. Or of his parents dancing in the backyard. At a wedding. For a minute, his hair grayed, covered by a wide-brimmed Stetson, his DC skater shoes replaced by shuffling cowboy boots. And her high heels morphed into closed-toed pumps, her nylons thickened into stockings.
“Sorry, Bee. My cousin wants to leave. We’re going to Miau Miau instead,” he apologized, still holding her close.
“Are you serious? I don’t want to go...” Bianca’s pulse quickened, stomach flip-flopped.
“We came out here for him. He came all the way from L.A., and I promised him a fun time. Besides, it won’t be bad. Come on, you’ll see.”
“Gabe, I really don’t like Miau Miau. Can’t we hang out here? Please?”
“Look, this is your fault anyway. You should have brought a friend for him; then we could have danced like you wanted. We’re leaving. Let’s go.” He pulled away from her, motioned toward his cousin to head to the exit doors, and tugged on Bianca’s arm, leading her away from the cramped dance floor beside the bar.
At the door of the strip club, a fat baseball-capped bouncer checked her driver’s license. This club was darker and smelled of vinegar and even stronger of cigarettes. Gabe draped his arm around her shoulders. “It’s fine, Bee. We’ll just order some drinks and stay here a few minutes so my primo can get his kicks, then we’ll leave. I promise.”
She hated this kind of thing. In high school, a bunch of them had gotten together to watch American Beauty at Eloisa’s, and, even though everyone claimed it was such a good movie and she’d heard what critical acclaim it received, she’d hated it. Thought it was kind of disgusting and perverted. She guessed that was the point. Everyone had a twisted side. Everyone had alligators in the swamp. She’d read Stephen King’s essay, first published in the eighties in Playboy, in an English class at I.V.C. All you need is love, he quoted Lennon. True. As long as you kept the gators fed. In this world, some men do fantasize about teenage girls. For all she knew, most men did. Fathers jacked off in the shower. For all she knew. But she didn’t want to see it. It was enough to know it existed. She’d stopped reading Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things for a few weeks when she’d gotten to the scene in which the Orangedrink Lemondrink Manin the theater lobby puts his warm, hard flesh into the little boy Estha’s hand. Estha who’d been kicked out of the talkies theater for singing Maria’s parts in The Sound of Music.Who couldn’t stop singing even the lobby. Estha who went back to his Ammu and had to be led out of the theater to rush to the bathroom where he was held over the dirty toilet to vomit. Bianca felt this. She was there with him, in the lobby. She wanted to scream out, don’t go behind the drink man’s cart. Don’t take the sweets he’s offering you. Go back to your mama. Turn around, little Estha.or at Ammu, Look what he’s done to your boy. Slice his neck, Ammu. Call the police. Take it back. Take it back into you. Take Estha back to where he’ll be safe.
Bianca wondered for a long time what art was for. To show us what we needed to see, dim and dirty in this world, or to imagine something other, some Pan’s Labyrinth where little boys aren’t sexually abused and little girls aren’t killed by stepfathers, and women don’t dance nude for drunken men out of economic necessity.
Frida impaled with a bus rail. Frida sprawled on a blood soaked Detroit hospital bed, her little Diguelito, pink and perfectly formed, dead, snail and machine and wilting purple orchid strung in the sky like balloons, held in her hand on the bed by veins deeply red. Frida, a broken column. Or Remedios Varos’ long strange figures sailing the Orinoco River in giant goldfish teacups, women gliding along passageways on their hair, hovering above the checkered tile on tiny pointed toes. Labyrinths in smoke. Séances and floating objects.
Neither, Gabe would tell her. Both, she wanted to shout.
Gabe ordered her a beer, and she sat, mouthwashing it, watching. She didn’t even like beer.
“They’ve got nothing on you, babe,” Gabe whispered, clutching Bianca’s waist.
“It’s not that. It just seems sad.”
“Most of them are ugly anyway,” he observed, pointing out a woman with jet-black hair sweeping the small of her back, her red bra and panties already on the platform, one black stiletto high in the air, one wrapped around a pole. She didn’t have any other body hair that Bianca could see. She wondered if she shaved it every day or waxed. She could never wax her pubic hair. She’d tried a little once, and it had tugged at the soft, stretchy skin where her thigh met her pelvis, ripping a strip off and leaving her chafed and limping for days. When she’d shaved, she itched like crazy, her panties become torture devices. As a little girl, showering with her mama, she’d seen the fuzzy dark patch regularly and thought that’s just what women have. Dark splotches on their private and wide, dark brown stains on their chichis called nipples.
“She’s not ugly. She was probably a beautiful dancer at one time, the way she can arabesque like that.”
“She’s haggish, if you ask me. Her skin pudgy in the middle, you can tell she’s had kids. I’ll bet, if you looked closely, she’s all stretch marked.”
“What the hell? I have stretch marks and a pudgy stomach, and I haven’t had kids! And anyway, so what? So what if she has stretch marks? Most women do. Cabrón. You’re such a chauvinist. What am I even doing here with you?”
“Oooh, someone’s drunk! Getting feisty there with the cuss words. Getting all tough in Spanish.” Bianca stayed quiet. Sipped her beer. She couldn’t even taste it anymore. “Anyway, calm down. I was just trying to point out that they’re not all perfect. Sexy, sure, but not perfect. Most of them probably even have children at home.”
My body has never been stretched with new life, though it bears the marks. My breasts have never flowed with milk, though they hang in triumph. Bianca thought.
“At least they’re bringing home money for food. At least their children have clothes and shoes. At least they’re not selling their children.” She snapped back, aloud.
“Spitfire drunk, Bee, that’s what you are. Ready to sting. Ready to attack.” Bianca hated when he patronized her.
Onstage, the woman with jet-black hair was squatting down at the edge of the platform to collect folded up bills from the men crowding around cheering her and whistling. English or Spanish, catcalls sound the same. Bianca looked away.
“I thought that wasn’t allowed,” she asked, referring to what some of the men were paying to do, one after the other, to the woman with jet-black hair. “Like that rap-song you had on, that one you explained to me, no sex in the champagne room?”
“It’s not illegal to touch and tongue pussy here in Mexicali,” he said, no longer looking at Bianca.
“It’s disgusting. They’re like deer at a salt lick.” Bianca’s head reeled again. “I don’t feel good. Can we leave now?”
“Stop it, Bianca. My cousin’s barely having a good time. Close your eyes then and go to sleep if you’re sick. Stop being such a baby.”
“I don’t want to be here!” She insisted, loudly. The bartender looked up, motioned to the bouncer who came over to the table.
“¿Hay problema?” He asked.
“No, lo siento. Mi novia esta loca, es todo.”
“Fine,” he said. “I don’t want any problems here. ¿Entiendes?”
“Yeah, sorry.” When he’d walked away, Gabe pinched Bianca’s thigh. “Shut the hell up, stupid. You wanna get us in trouble? Look, if you don’t like it here, just go wait in the car then.”
“Give me the keys.”
“Are you serious?” He asked, incredulous. She stared at him straight though her vision was beginning to blur.
“Yes. Give them to me,” she insisted.
“Whatever. Suit yourself. You’d better not try going anywhere. You’re too drunk to drive. Just stay there and sleep it off.”
She scooted out of the circle booth from underneath the table, almost tripping on the step, then stumbled out the door. He did not follow her. Behind her, she heard cheering and whistles.
Jennifer Givhan was a 2010 PEN Center USA Emerging Voices Fellow, as well as a finalist in the 2011 St. Lawrence Book Award Contest through Black Lawrence Press. Her work has appeared widely, most recently in Rattle, The Los Angeles Review, Stone Telling and The Southwestern Review. She teaches composition at The University of New Mexico and is working on her first novel In the Time of Jubilee, from where this story is taken. You can visit Jennifer online at http://jennifergivhan.com.
