Happy Families_ Stories - Carlos Fuentes [29]
sticky sodas
the wheel turned and her boyfriend took advantage of the girl’s fear
to put his arms around her and tell her if you don’t kiss me I’ll throw you
out and to please him she opened his fly and
there were sticky candies there too
who pays for the fair?
don’t they pay you for Sunday?
I don’t have enough
oh well then find another cheaper boyfriend
don’tsqueezeit
mayyourotthere
what would happen to me without the fair on saturdays or without the sodas
the popcorn the tamales
how will you pay for the fair without money
wait for me love I’ll invite you to the fair don’t rush
put a hundred clips of drugs in your knapsack
you’ll sell them when school lets out
we’ll give you a hundred pesos for every hundred clips you sell and you’ll
give us three thousand
she goes out
we can go together to skate here in perisur mall away from the neighborhood
and the dusty streets and the whistle of drug
buyers and thieves when school lets out
some pickpockets stole my knapsack
it had the three thousand pesos I owed you
either you pay or we kill you
she covered everything but her head in blankets
if I don’t pay them they’ll kill me
they hit me all over look at the bruises papamama
they robbed me
they didn’t kill me
I killed myself
because if I didn’t kill myself they said they’d kill you papamama
for the three thousand pesos I owe them
ferris wheel merry-go-round drug dealers cocaine
popcorn marijuana sodas straw hats of glue
terrific
Conjugal Ties (1)
YOU’RE STILL WITH ME because there’s nobody left but me who remembers your beauty. Only I have your young eyes in my old ones.
TIME belongs to me. He doesn’t understand it. I close my eyes and time belongs to me.
WE’RE ALONE. You and I. Husband and wife. Newly-weds. We don’t need anything. You don’t let anyone in. Other people spoil everything. Only you and I, lost in an endless embrace. Chained dog barking in the courtyard. Only sound in the area. Your yellow dress tossed over a chair. The only light.
I DON’T HAVE the words.
How strange. We talk a great deal.
Inside I’m silent.
THERE WERE MISUNDERSTANDINGS. I made a date with you for twelve o’clock. What? You said two. No, twelve. Write down your dates. Dates? How many do you have in a day? With whom? With how many people? Why do you provoke my jealousy with equivocal answers? You always knew I was jealous. You even liked it. I like to feel jealous. That’s what you told me. And why didn’t you ever make me feel jealous with another woman? What? You were always faithful? Or didn’t you have the imagination? I was busy with my career. I never had time for chasing after women. I was absorbed in my work. You know that. I wanted to get ahead. For you. For me. For our marriage. For the two of us. I had ambitions. My greatest ambition was to be director general. You held me back. What did I do? Nothing. That was the problem. No, tell me, really, what did I do? Your behavior. Your wanton behavior. But if I’m tied to you, do you think I have time to deceive you? Ah, then, if you had the time . . . But you watch me like a jailer. That’s what brought you down. Hovering over me the whole day. First those phone calls from the office. Then you’d show up unannounced. Then the absurdity of opening closet doors, looking under the bed, saying aha! in front of an open window. Finally, you wouldn’t leave the house. You watched over me day and night. And instead of calming down, you grew more and more jealous. Of what? Of whom? And you don’t remember that jealousy inflamed my desire, the more I had you, the more I laid siege to you, like an enemy city, I laid siege to you with my tenderness and my eyes and my skin until you surrendered and then felt disgust for me and disgust for yourself for having done everything you shouldn’t have what was forbidden what was dirty what degrades us to ourselves but not you, you took it for granted, it was natural, you had no idea of sin, my disgust wasn’t yours, you felt something like ecstasy, whore, you displayed it to me, you didn’t share my anguish,