Having a child was the most beautiful experience of my life. But it seems they are never satisfied.
For example, Arnulfo. When they found that I was going to have a child, right away they assumed that I would marry the father.
“Linda,” they said. “Have you thought how Arnulfo and you can live? What will become of you, both of you so young and still in school?” Actually my mother said everything. My stepfather knows to keep his mouth shut tight. I taught him what she didn’t about that. He has no right when it comes to me.
“Who said anything about that?” I asked her. “Arnulfo. I don’t love him. He’s just a kid.”
“I see. Then what are you thinking, may I ask?” She is already old, worn out. She doesn’t dye her hair yet, but she might as well.
“What do I have to think. I’m going to have a child. It will be my child. That’s what I’m thinking.”
“Not in this home. Not with Sonia and Teresa looking up at you, you with no husband. Not in my home.”
It came as no surprise. I knew she would flip out. She worries all the time about the neighbors. She doesn’t know them, but she worries about them.
Arnulfo flipped out too, of course.
“Linda, you’re my life. You’re carrying my life. God wouldn’t let this happen if He didn’t mean it to be.” We were in the back row at the A&W with his hand up under my sweater. They were already big, and he liked the way they felt. So he brought God into the picture. If God meant Arnulfo to marry me, He would give him a car of his own, instead of his cousin’s broken down old Fury with the sponge rubber coming out of the seats all over my wool skirt.
“Linda, you must marry me. You can’t raise my child by yourself. I’ll get a job. My brother can get me on at the garage. You can’t deprive me of my son.”
Can’t, Don’t, Not Allowed. That’s all you hear. I get so tired of it. Finally, to get him off my back, I said, “Your child? What makes you so sure it is your child?” So he cried, then, and got off my back. Of course, I am pretty certain it is his child, but if people will not let you alone, sometimes you have to teach them.
So I had my child from my real father’s home, where my mother sent me after I told her I wasn’t going to marry Arnulfo.
Actually, there is a possibility that my child’s father was Arnulfo’s brother. He is such a handsome, heavy dude, a major dealer, major. I knew he would never marry me. He just saw me around and liked my tits. He can have about any woman he wants, though, so why should he want to tie himself down?
Having a child was a beautiful experience. It made me a woman. But try to tell them that.
The minute I am home from the hospital, after my girlfriends have all left, my real father’s wife starts in. Pick up this, pick up that, please. Help with these dishes, please. She only says “please” because she thinks it makes it look like she isn’t ordering me around. Hey, I tell her, I just had a baby, I’m still recuperating, give me a break, okay?
“Linda, honey, I know you just had a baby. I’ve had babies too. The best thing for you to do is to stay on your feet as much as you can. Otherwise that weight will just stay on.”
She is whizzing around the apartment from here to there. She is one of those compulsives.
That first time, I just looked at her. Not in the eyes. I just looked her in the thighs, you might say. So you want to talk about my figure? Later on, I started letting her hear me call her “hippo hips” when I was talking on the phone. She couldn’t say anything about it unless she wanted to admit she was listening in on me.
I suppose I was supposed to hang around that dinky apartment the way she does, busting my rear end to serve the papacito when he comes up for lunch with grease all over him, or smelling like some sewer from the toilets he goes out to fix. Papacito, the toilet fixer. King of Flushes.
That’s her business, if she wants to do that. That’s his business, if he wants to go out and mess around in other people’s stink. What I want to do, that’s my business. But try to tell them that. He’ll be sitting there at their excuse for a table, stuffing his face full of chorizo.
“Linda, where were you out to last night so late? Bea had to get up twice to feed your baby.”
“Oh, you know, just riding around with my girlfriends.” Goofed out of our heads on some angel dust Arnulfo’s brother laid on me, among other things. She knows it, too. I ran into her in the bathroom. I was standing there, trying to figure out where my bed would be, and I forgot to turn out the lights. There she is in the doorway, hands on those hips.
“Linda, what’s with you, anyway? You have every light in the place burning. Banging around in here, waking up your baby – don’t you have any consideration at all? I mean, what’s with you, girl?”
I knew better than to try to answer her. You don’t know what’s going to come out of your mouth when you’re goofed up. So I just got by her and went for my bedroom, except I guessed wrong and ran into something in the living room that fell, and had to turn around and come by her still standing there in the bathroom doorway.
She knew I was goofed up. She isn’t any fat little angel like she pretends to be. But he doesn’t know from anything but cerveza, and what is she going to tell him about me? Hey, man, your darling baby daughter is a crazy drug freak? Uh-uh. She can’t tell him. He would go crazy, and she knows it. So I was riding around with my girl friends. Talking.
But then she starts in on me, shooting around from the table to the sink, sink to the table.
“Look, Linda, something I want to talk to you about while your father is here.” The water is splashing in the dishpan, the dishwasher sounding like a cement-mixer, the baby starts crying, you can hardly hear what they’re saying on One Life to Live. Naturally, she has another criticism. Everybody has the right to criticize, it seems.
“If you want to wear something of mine, I would appreciate it if you would just ask me, you know?” She goes into her hands-on-hippo-hips position. “And maybe, just once in a while, you could put a few of your dirty clothes – my dirty clothes – in the hamper, huh?” She looks at the papacito. “Is that asking too much, do you think?”
I nearly lost it. “Too much, too much, too much! What am I around here, the maid? Don’t I ever get a night off, huh? I’m the slave?” I grab the trapo off the table where she left it and drop down on the floor. “Do you want me down on my knees? Is that what you want?” I start scrubbing the floor, the legs of the table. I’m screaming. “Here! Now you got what you want? Here! On my knees, just the way you like to see me. A slave, a servant in my father’s house!”
Papacito is making it for the door, still chewing his last piece of chorizo, trying to get it down.
“Now, you ladies get this worked out,” he says around the chorizo. “We don’t need this fighting all the time.” And he is out the back door. She breaks down crying with her head bouncing up and down on the table from the jiggle of the old, rackety dishwasher.
God, I feel that I am in prison. I don’t know what they want from me. Everything, I guess. They just want everything. They just want a slave.
I sit in my room until I can’t stand it. Through my head, like a song, the words keep going, “Land of the free, home of the brave, you want me, to be your slave,” over and over again. I hear the door slam. She has gone out. Left me with the baby, trapped. You want me, to be your slave.
I get out my stash from inside my hollow owl statue and roll up a number. I need to settle down. After a while, I am settled down.
The telephone is in the kitchen. The dishwasher is still grinding and bouncing away. On the television, Doctor Morris has finally gotten around to putting the make on his brother’s wife.
“Arnulfo. Can you come by and pick me up, baby? We could go out to Silver Lake and get high. I’ve got something I want to talk about. I think you could be a very happy man, my darling.”
