I found Beatriz in her garden behind casita number 1. She did not recognize me until I spoke. Beatriz had a round face and slanted eyes like an Eskimo. I remembered her as young, but now like me she was not so young. She smiled at me and touched my waist with her wrist. In her company was a big dog, half St. Bernard, half pit bull, a giant barrel-chested, stumpy-legged orange and white lummox who looked like something out of Tolkien or Where the Wild Things Are. His name was Carlito and it was plain that he did not like me. He growled and lowered his head and showed his teeth. Beatriz smacked him on the head and said, “Ya ni la haces, pulgiento.” He continued to growl at me, so she pointed and said, “Vete, cabron, desgraciado” until he slunk away, cowing but still looking back to glower at me, his muzzle flickering with hatred. I knew that he’d kill me given the chance and I formulated a plan to brain him with a fireplace poker the next time I saw him.
Beatriz only shook her head as I explained my situation. I blurred but did not directly lie about my reasons for being here, explaining that my psychiatrist had released me against the will of the administrators and that my father had given his blessings on a cabin for a few months. All of this seemed a painful subject for her, and I knew that due to lack of food and attention I did not look well, so I asked her about her six children. They were all gone, she said sadly, scattered across the country. The closest was her daughter in Temple City. There was a son in the siding business in Mendocino, another a policeman in San Antonio, a daughter in Gilroy who was a real estate agent. She didn’t see them as much as she liked. I asked her why she stayed here and she said she did not know, but I thought out of loyalty to my father and as a maternal influence over the migrantes who flowed through here in their various labor circuits.
“Apareces muy cansado,” she said, and I said that, yes, I was quite tired. She smiled thinly and touched me again at the waist with her wrist, then went inside to get me the key to number 7.
While I waited for her return I strolled the grounds. This miniature barrio was composed of seven casitas arranged in a circle around a central orange tree that had doubled its size since I’d seen it last. The tree was loaded with sparrows and fruit and the sharp citrus aroma sent me back. Each small bungalow was identical, with a small deck and the long troughlike metal barbeque pit they called a parilla in front of it. All the residential units were stained brown, the color of cabins in the woods, but each was decorated differently: one had a hammock, another a basketball hoop, several had hanging pots or porch swings or saints in the windows or flower boxes or glittering broad ceramic planters with geraniums. Two of the casitas had Familia Catolica plaques above the door. Another had a Chivas El Mejor Equipo Del Mundo sticker in the window. They were all uninhabited except for Beatriz’s and mine.
My cabin was furnished in the style of the 1970s, cracked vinyl sofa with matching wing chair, swanky tasseled ottoman, round-shouldered refrigerator with a handle like a slot machine, braided hippie rugs, and an ancient plaid dinette set. The wallpaper was yellow with rainbows. An old JCPenney stereo record player stood in the corner with a row of Tito Puente and Celia Cruz albums in the cabinet below. In the kitchen was an old black rotary telephone that weighed four pounds and still worked. There were a few paintings on the walls, a tarnished oceanscape, a woodland scene with deer looking up startled from a stream, an amateur’s crude blue velvet portrait of a high-collared Elvis. In the kitchen cupboards I found a bottle of malt vinegar, a cellophane bag of japones chiles, a half-wrapped chunk of Abuelita chocolate, a bottle of crystallized fish sauce, a jar of cajeta, some stale sesame crackers, a blue box of Don Pedrito herbal remedy, and an unopened can of cashews. In the fridge was a crusty bottle of Valentina, a package of old tortillas, a pair of wrinkled limes, half a bottle of white wine, and a cheesecloth-enveloped ball of queso fresco. I recognized it as the kind that Beatriz made, too salty and tasting slightly of unwashed feet, but good with beans or sprinkled like parmesan on noodles. I was happy to find not only a coffeemaker but a big blue can of Maxwell House coffee beside it.
The mattress on the bed was queen-sized, wide as a battleship, and the sheets though dusty were fresh with the scent of marshmallows and wound all around me like kelp around the ankles of a man washed up exhausted on a deserted shore. I slept for three days, maybe it was four. Beatriz brought meals, that lentil dish with the dried corn that I liked and stacks of warm tortillas that I ate with the queso fresco. I could hear the ocean far off and the occasional pounding of hooves. Carlito, that colossal butterscotch splotch of a malevolent beast, stood under the orange tree and scowled at me through the window.
8.Dr. Seuss in the Sky
WHEN MY LAST HALDOL INJECTION WORE OFF I DECIDED NOT TO take anymore. What is the purpose of liberty if you are chained to a chemistry set and jerking around spastically like a marionette on the strings of an evil puppeteer? Just say no to drugs: echale ganas. If I started
