The Chronology of Water - Lidia Yuknavitch [73]
Jimarcus said fuck mahn and Ernesto laughed and Sonny bent over how you do when you are going to vomit and I said “Shhhhhhhh! You’ll wake his ass up!” So we backed up like kids who’ve seen something they weren’t supposed to. The bum? He just slept the sound sleep of babies and puppies.
When we got back to the group none of us said a fucking thing about our bum. Rick would have popped a spring in that geared up little skull of his and beat the shit out of our bum. And look, there was no way we were going to tell the clean-shaven officer Kyle. He would have arrested our bum. We already knew what it felt like to be arrested. Multiple times. We already knew what it felt like to fuck up. To be passed out drunk. To stink. To not want to be alive. To wake up with your face on the pavement. To use words but find your sentences doubling back and betraying you. To stay in a hotel for a week when you hear on TV the police are doing a sweep. To have no one who understands. To be passing - leading a double life. Maybe we didn’t yet know what it was like to have swollen genitals the size of Texas, but metaphorically - some body part out of control - some piece of you gone freakish - kind of we did.
So we just left him there. In a kind of peace. Next to his own shit.
Vagabundo.
The last week of my period of service we had to pull weeds along this giant paved road that led up to some fancy ass facility of some sort up on the hill. In a wealthy neighborhood filled with white people with Mexican and Filipino house cleaners. The “trees” that lined the grand lane were tiny, so the only shade you could get was on part of your face and maybe a shoulder. We went through the giant yellow plastic vat of water in the first two hours - I think it was something like 98 degrees that day. Goddamn those little paper cone cups.
By the last week my body had become used to the labor. I didn’t get blisters and my wrists didn’t ache and I’d stocked up on Vicodin so my back felt like anyone’s. I didn’t get dizzy in the sun and I brought enough food in my sack lunch and I smoked Jimarcus’ cigarettes and Ernesto and I took our breaks together to practice English. I was not unhappy. I had a pretty great tan.
But really, I was going home, to my plush little bouge life. Half of them were going to jail. Ernesto disappeared partway through the ninth week. So that “we” I’m using? Well. It’s just language.
At the top of the hill we got to rest. The shade of an enormous Torrey Pine tree umbrellad out and held us so we could feel the coolness of breeze. We drank water. We ate our pathetic little brown sack lunches. I thought about Ernesto playing guitar, but my guess is he wasn’t.
That day though what I also felt was it’s over. This small thing I did with these men I’ll never see again. Something about that made me feel irrecoverably sad. But I was of course also thrilled to be “done” with my punishment. I closed my eyes and drank a Coke from a glass bottle. So simple. I wished Ernesto were there. Drinking a Coke. When I opened my eyes, I stared at my hands and how not Mexican they looked. My hands, they just looked … dumb.
Then I looked up the hill and saw the giant concrete and wood sign of the facility we had just carved our way up to.
The Cerritos Olympic Swim Center.
I’d competed there when I was 14. I’d won the 100-meter breaststroke. Sometimes I think I’ve been everywhere before.
Conversion
I’VE BEEN THINKING. MAYBE RECOVERING CATHOLICS turn to movies for salvation. I mean, in an informal poll that I took recently, a whole lot of ex-catholics seem unusually moved by film. The bigger and more epic the better. And we still really like