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The King and Queen of Comezón
By Denise Chávez UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS
Copyright © 2014 Denise Chávez
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8061-4715-4
CHAPTER 1
The Enchanter Struts a Hello
Arnulfo Olivárez stood in front of the Plaza kiosco, looking directly into the descending sun. He was bejeweled, a silverthreaded sombrero from Juárez on his head, his black charro suit nearly bursting at the seams, the buttons nestling like luminescent fish in the ever-changing light. His enormous belly quivered with the force of his hearty voice: "¡Buenas Tardes, Caballeros y Damas! ¡Damas y Caballeros! ¡Bienvenidos a la Fiesta!"
The still-strong sun caused Arnulfo to squint. He was caught off guard and shaded his eyes from the uncontrollable glare. Behind him the Lágrimas Mountains alternated colors—now crimson, now cerulean blue. His weak eyes adjusted to the enormous beauty that spread out before him. It was one of those sunsets that made his heart ache.
As he turned his face away, his lumpish profile was highlighted in what had now become the glimmering violet of the sky. Like the sunset of his desert land, he was moody, never to be taken for granted. Without warning, his phlegmy cough came up hard from the ancient depths as a great gurgling to remind him, despite his forced gaiety, how bad off he really was.
He extended his arms to address the growing crowd that was beginning to gather in front of the kiosco stage as his mirrored suit drew the light of the sun and flared out in front of him in random pockets on the heated pavement. It was good to know that he, the present King of Comezón, was the extension of that magical spirit light. For a brief moment, in its sudden and surprising beauty, Arnulfo Olivárez forgot his pain.
To strangers, Arnulfo Olivárez appeared to be a jovial old man.
To those who knew him, he was that viejito atrevido pendejo más que cabrón who thought he was better than anyone else. To himself, he was a man wasted with that comezón of longing and with the fragile, futile urge to live. What had happened to his bravado? What had become of his wayward and lusty joy? All he knew as he stood there in the hot sun for another pinche Cinco de Mayo Fiesta was that he was overheated and could barely stand.
Sadly, the King knew that the day was nearly done, his time was nearly spent, and soon the darkness would envelop him.
Arnulfo looked warily at several young men who wandered past, unsmiling, unsure, dumb with unknowing. No one knew he was dying of lung cancer. He asked himself how much longer he'd be able to stand in the middle of the Plaza and talk to these fools, babosos todos, the drooly-mouthed ones who never listened. The greatest mistake in his life was that he always ended up talking to people who never understood what he said. Sometimes they listened politely, sometimes not, and if they did pretend to hear him, they never really followed or finally grasped his intention. ¡Ay, que chingada es la vida, esta vida arrastrada!
A moment of wheezing uncertainty was followed by the same dark heaviness in his chest, a dread that spread out just underneath his throat and then traveled down the lower left side of his right lung, finally ending up on the numbed toes of his large right foot encased in the scrolled leather boot. Hell, his callo was killing him. The corn on the side of his big toe was as hard as the hoof of an old horse. With a wistful sense of impending finality, Arnulfo looked around to see his daughters, the half and the whole.
Juliana sat nearby in her wheelchair by the side of the Plaza closest to the church and tugged at her large drooping black bows. Velvet in May—what was anyone thinking? She leaned her twisted flesh into her metal throne, a blue scapular to the Immaculate Heart of Mary wound twice around her neck. She straightened the scapular while secretly running her forearm over her lush right breast. In the background, the bell of Santa Eulalia summoned errant worshippers to the 5:30 P.M. Saturday Mass. The church was named after a thirteen-year-old Spanish virgin and martyr who had been subjected to thirteen forms of torture, including being placed in a barrel with knives or glass—it was uncertain which—and with the barrel then rolled down a street. She was also subjected to the cutting off of her breasts, a crucifixion on an X-shaped cross, and finally a decapitation. Only the most heinous of tortures were remembered, but no doubt the rest were equally vile. They had to be. Sainthood came at a price. At the moment of her death, a white dove flew out from either her throat or her mouth. There was also some dispute among the citizens of Comezón, New Mexico, as to whether the Santa Eulalia they honored was the Spanish Santa Eulalia from the persecution during the reign of Emperor Diocletian or the Mexican Santa Eulalia from Mérida. Did it matter? Yes, it did. The overwhelming vote was for knives, her mouth, and México.
The Church of Santa Eulalia was a fitting place to meditate on the fragility of life. Throughout its dark history, the church had been host to a gaggle of Spanish priests who attended to their errant Mexican flock.
Few enough people would be found in the quiet interior of the ancient adobe that evening, and El Padre Manolito Rodríguez knew it as he peeked out the heavy wooden door to see what stragglers would be wandering in. Somehow his impatience at the lack of his parishioners' faith was heightened at times like this. Maldita fiesta. Malvada gente. Miserable celebración. Cinco de Mayo, bah! ¡Coño, me cago la leche! I shit sperm! Spain was the first to conquer this vile land and could vanquish it again if it chose. The French weren't the first to come to this godforsaken New World and see that it was inferior. El Padre had been exiled too long to this outback post and longed to return to his hometown of Madrid. At least there people knew how to speak. This desolate and heathen land may once have been México, but the language and the roots of this so-called culture were a porquería that wasn't this or that. Just to see Olivárez out there dressed up like a prancing monkey made his pure Spanish blood boil. Aunque la mona se vista de seda, mona se queda. ¡Coño! Even if the monkey is dressed in silk, it is still a monkey, he thought as he crossed himself in preparation for the Holy Mass.
And not only that, but Olivárez was the cause of his daughter Juliana's dangerous predilection to evil that was causing her to backslide in her Holy Faith. He'd observed her hesitation lately in confession to tell him everything she was experiencing. As her counselor and confessor, it was his sacred duty to know everything about her life—from those late-night religious inquietudes to the early morning moral lapses of the flesh—which in her case were mostly imagined. Were they? But invented or not, as he looked at her—a pretty, dark-haired young woman with a full, firm figure, a woman in her mid- to late twenties, albeit with crippled legs—well, her spiritual needs were paramount, and who, if not he, was her buttress in all things holy?
Lately, for some reason, he had felt a terrible foreboding sensation when he saw her. His throat tightened up and his hands became damp and hung thickly by his side, weighted down by a torpid uncertainty about something. Surely he was transmuting some kind of evil force that had surrounded her? Perhaps a demon had entered her body? No, he wouldn't think about that. It wasn't possible. She was as pure as a child. Wasn't she? He wasn't sure, but he knew how to keep an observant eye on this situation. Too many exceedingly attractive young women's souls had been lost through inattention. God grant him the grace, it was his sacred duty to guard this one errant lamb. ¡Dios en los Cielos! Juliana Olivárez would have been here at Mass if it weren't for her father, that madman Arnulfo Olivárez, standing out there in the middle of the Plaza dressed up like a weary clown in a much too small flea-bitten mariachi costume.
El Padre Manolito closed the heavy wooden church door and crossed himself three times in a very grandiose manner as he sighed out loud, hoping someone would hear his exasperation. Lorenza Tampiraños slid through the door just in time, with her long black rosary wound around her right hand, and chirped a hello. Ay, Lorenza! She was forever running late, forever smacking her pinched lips with who knows what swirling around those fractured, barely clinging yellowed dentures of hers. How dare she arrive at this hour for the Sacred Repast and with mortal food in her harlot red mouth! ¡Coño!
He had repeatedly scolded her about eating just before Mass. What would it take for her to remember? She was a cook and around fast food all day. Why hadn't she eaten earlier at that grease pit of a restaurant she worked at, La Reina Mexicana, the most popular drive-in restaurant in Comezón? He avoided it entirely. He might accept an invitation for lunch or dinner from his friend Don Clodimoro Balderas, or from the women from the Altar Society at another local place called La Única where he ordered the sirloin steak rare with as many Riojas as he could to ferment that slightly less inferior food in its juices. The food in Comezón gave him gas. It was a greasy fare that the natives enjoyed, lard being one of the main food groups. It was just another of the hardships he endured in this rural outpost. What could he do to teach these people how to cook?
He noted that Lorenza was sipping from a Sprite bottle. She always had it nearby and would slip it in and out of the old brown purse that she carried. What did she have in there? Maybe it was more than soda. He would make sure she wouldn't be allowed to take the Sacred Host this evening.
El Padre Manolito was known for locking the church doors minutes before the Mass began. If you weren't seated in your pew or kneeling in holy prayer in front of the tabernacle by the time he locked the door, you were jodido equally by the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
Lucinda, the festival queen, sat nervously on her throne on the raised stage in front of the kiosco. Without regard to who might be watching, she rearranged the inescapable metal wires that held up her strapless white satin queen's dress. The itchy tulle cut into her tender breasts, but that wasn't the worst of it. It was her time of the month, and she was afraid that her usually heavily clotted menstrual blood would seep through the layers of that rich, slick, very white cloth. But there was nothing she could do, at least not right now. She had layered one Kotex atop another like two conjoined tacos and pulled on an old, tired, and muchstained girdle that her mother, Mamá Emilia, had given her. She hoped it would pin down and hold the hated sanitary napkin in place, which wasn't so sanitary or so napkin-like. She didn't want the Kotex sliding halfway up her back like it usually did, like a misplaced shoulder pad.
And on top of it all, you had to use a girdle to keep the panty hose up, and even then they got all hüango and pooched unpleasantly at the knees. The girdle didn't help with the saggy knees, but it did cut the slack and irritating elongation of the hose that stretched with every movement. Lucinda used her girdle at just these times to hold her tamales in place, even though she was as thin as a matchstick and hated the feeling of being bound and trussed down there. But it was better to be safe, after all.
She remembered when her friend Elora's blood came on unannounced in the middle of her Quinceañera and how two of her madrinas had to dramatically escort her, one in front of her, the other behind, like female bodyguards except dressed in pink velvet, as they made their way to the women's restroom at the Salón Tres Reyes—make that the former B and B Body Shop on the east side of town—a lo todo made over to look like a fancy salon de baile, except it wasn't. The owner and former head mechanic, El Gancho Gutiérrez, was standing out there in what had once been the lube pit, looking all Moctezuma Reincarnated dressed in a 3-for-$10 black sleeveless muscle shirt from a Korean store on El Paso Street in El Chuco, with his huge hairy arms splayed out a good foot from the trunk of his body. He was that beefed and buffed, his rug-like sobacos in full glory as he waved to a Chrysler full of tittering viejitas, motioning to them where they should park. The gaggle of pouffed, trussed, overheated, and overperfumed women made their way to the back of the salón. Outside, Elora's mother was sitting shotgun as one of the madrinas drove the poor unfortunate home to change, but not before El Gancho helped them back out and sent them on their way with a booming "Vuelven!" Like hell. The Party was over. Que Salón de Baile ni que Salón de Baile. Salón Tres Reyes smelled like old pee and wet dog fur.
Lucinda didn't want this to happen. Who would she find to shield her from prying eyes, she thought, looking around furtively. Who would wrap herself around her and her steaming telltale chorro of blood that couldn't be hidden on white satin? Chingao. Better to wear a damned old-woman's girdle in this heat with a hot, thick pañal between your legs like a grown-up baby than to live the endless shame of seeping blood in front of strangers.
Lucinda looked over to Juliana. Worse it was to be paralyzed from the waist down and have to have someone like Isá, face like a metate, the family's long-term servienta, to clean your woman's juices. No other way to say it. Isá was a servant, and at her advanced age she accepted the calling fully. She had no place to go, and why should she go anywhere? She'd never been outside of Comezón and didn't miss the travel. What was there to see that she hadn't seen in the Olivárez household? Uúuuuquela! And what was she lacking? She had a nice warm room with a nice warm little bed and a nice warm colchón she'd knitted herself with little almohaditas, her soft little pillows that she'd made from fabric scraps, and a nice warm little flannel nightgown and store-bought slippers from La J. C.—Penney's, that is—that La Patrona, Doña Emilia, had given her pa' Crismes. It was all very nice if it weren't for Juliana.
Ay, pero ni modo, everyone's hot meal comes at some price. And hers, may God remember this when she got to Heaven, or Hell, it could go either way at this point in her life, was the care of a crippled young woman who was coja from the waist down—make that the panochita up—because she had to clean that too. And she was heavy for someone with such little deformed bones and the legs of a newborn calf, aguados y sin fuerza.
Pobrecita, thought Isá automatically. And yet she felt little pity and certainly no mercy for Juliana. Better it was to be Lucinda, the adopted daughter, la Consentida, the chosen, spoiled one, the one Isá doted on and loved. Like her, Lucinda was an outcast, and because of this Isá became her protector and confidante. Ay, but everyone was smitten by the Julianas of the world, and though they seemed to revere and honor the Lucindas, it was truly the Julianas they adored. Juliana was the imperfect statement of her parents' life and so-called love, and everyone knew it. But it didn't matter. Only Isá knew that underneath Juliana's frail exterior lay a woman with an immovable heart and a will that would never be tamed.
Let's get this over with, over with, over with, more than one person thought as the sun finally began to set in the west.
Both sisters eagerly awaited the darkness, as did their father, Arnulfo Olivárez, who intoned his endless, tireless, monotonous litany of welcome thank you goodbye.
"Welcome to Comezón! That's right, Comezón. Itch, New Mexico. Homeplace of living history ... birthplace of legends ... this was México before the signing of the Gadsden Purchase, yes it is, or it was. You are standing on Tierra Sagrada, Sacred Earth. ¡Qué Viva México, nuestra patria pa' siempre! And don't let them tell you otherwise. This is México, and it will always be México! I'm a Mexican first and an American second. Except on the 4th of July, and then it's ¡Qué Viva Los Estados Unidos! A que la chingada, ¿qué pasó con el micrófono? El mic went off, el pinche micrófono se apagó! Can somebody help me? Luisito, ¿'onde 'stas cabrón?"
Juliana sat in her wheelchair atop the scrubby yellow grass just to the right of the kiosco with the smile of a contented cherubim. Arnulfo gesticulated wildly and yelled to his assistant, Luisito Covarrubias, a mirthless man of indeterminate age with a dark furrowed face who was already very inebriated. Luisito darted from behind the kiosco like a confused crab, tucking a small waddedup paper bag that held a small bottle of Ripple wine under a battered poncho. He crept up behind one of the wooden posts, between the folds of green, white, and red streamers that cascaded down from the top of the wooden bandstand. Unsteadily, but with gathering courage, he weaved his way to center stage, nearly tripping over Juliana's wheelchair to get to Arnulfo's side. He checked the microphone as best he could without knowing anything at all about microphones. He lifted it up and down. Dead, it was dead, and good thing, too, as the echo of his formidable and resonating belch could be heard. Arnulfo pushed Luisito away with irritation and waved to the crowd as if to say, "Ignore this pendejo. We'll be right back."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The King and Queen of Comezón by Denise Chávez. Copyright © 2014 Denise Chávez. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS.
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