Cry Me A Rio

Chapter Two

Borderline

I want this to be one of those vacations where you sleep until noon, where you take late afternoon siestas on a porch hammock, but my first morning in San Pedro, I wake in the early dark with my jaw clenched against the cold, stiff as someone who has died during the night. I'd slept in my jeans and hooded sweatshirt to keep warm, but also ready to fight or flee should anything happen. I lay in one of the lumpy beds in the rear room. A battered Jesus figurine hangs on the wall, impaled to the cross, ankles breaking, a cracked elbow exposing the wires within. The tin roof creaks and the roosters call.

The front door of Lucha’s house is posted with a holy card that reads San Ignacio De Loyola Dice Al Demonio ¡No Entres!, followed by a fevered testament about the card’s effectiveness against the threat of evil, but when Lucha gets up and props opens the door with a stone, a cold graveyard wind blows through the house.

Lucha moves to the kitchen, where she cooks a breakfast of eggs and refried beans. She doesn’t apologize about the clatter she’s making since she’s already decided that we’re rising early to make a day trip to Monterrey. I pack my guidebook into my backpack.

*

Daylight breaks as we leave the house and reach the paved road where we made the turn yesterday afternoon. In the bruising chill, the three of us wait for the local bus.

Forty-eight pesos cover the forty-mile trip to Monterrey for two adults and one senior citizen. My mother and I take the front seats while Lucha sits behind us. The seats are hard and rattle my hipbones and spine. The windows are stuck shut and the accordion doors squeak. Posted signs announce “PLEASE DO NOT SPIT.” A dirty fringe drapes the dusty windshield. A mangy red pelt decorates the dash. This isn’t the sleek transport that we took from Reynosa, but rather a refurbished school bus without a single amenity.

The driver stops a number of times. Every waylaid person is picked up. One ponytailed guy in tight jeans comes in sashaying down the aisle. “She” looks at each of us with steady hostility and takes one of the seats in the back.

My mother turns to me. “You saw that guy?” she whispers in English. “Right away you can tell he's a G-A-Y.” She spells it out so that no one will know what she’s saying. “It's better for you to be the way you are, like a real man, so that nobody knows. Even your aunt Flor said she didn't know you’re one of those.”

One of those? I don’t even know what to say to that.

“Yeah,” she says, with a toss of her hand, dismissing the issue as if it no longer mattered. Never mind that she hounded me for most of my life to sit up straight, to talk deep (and not too much), to dress in pressed, button-down shirts she thinks command respect. In other words, to be the hombrecito I was supposed to be.

She’s obviously satisfied that at least I’m not flamboyant, not realizing that the muscles I’ve packed on at the gym are gay-giveaways in a place like Manhattan. But what mother wants to hear about her son’s sex life? In our weekly phone calls, she only asks about my boyfriend as we’re ready to hang up, referring to him as “el amigo,” the friend. Ten years have passed since I first told her and my father that I was seeing another man. Ever since there’s been this forced enquiry about The Friend. First of all, he wasn’t just a friend, and there have been a number of men in my life since. Not that they’d know that.

The silence now, as the bus grinds forward, reminds me that she loves me in a way that still won’t let me be. She only wants her son. Not the man I’ve become. There are still miles of rough road for us to go.

The driver pulls off the highway to pick up the laborers leaving their shift at the surrounding refineries. The bus leans to one side as it churns up clouds of dust. Our speed drops a few hash marks, but the bus never stops. It rolls at a slow enough speed for the refinery workers to jump aboard. The men, in their green work shirts, and the orange hard hats carried in their grimy hands, pay their fares and move down the aisle toward the back. Most of them are quiet, exhausted from their work that night. They pack in tight. When there is no more room, the last man is forced to cling to the outer doorframe as the bus pulls back onto the highway.