What You See in the Dark Page 6

  She thought of Cheno at lunchtime, when she took some of her hour to walk over to Stewart’s Appliances. The store, with its shiny radios and washers and sewing machines, was only for people with money. So Teresa stood outside the enormous store with its plate-glass windows reaching all the way to the sidewalk—built brand new and shatterproof after the earthquake—and watched the television sets, six of them playing without any sound. All six sets played a lunch-hour newscast, sometimes flashing pictures of the stark white regal domes and pillars of Washington, D.C., or some other faraway place, and Teresa patiently waited until it was over and the 12:30 musical show came on. A woman sang. Always a different woman, but always the same posture, the same stance—hips angled over to the side and arms straight down, her voice slowly rising to a crescendo Teresa could never hear from behind the window. She stood watching these soundless lunchtime concerts, and anyone watching her knew that she was dreaming beyond the desolation of Bakersfield’s dusty streets to a stage like the ones those women occupied, or to the theaters glimpsed by the audience when the cameras cut away to the interior: tiny round tables and elegant glasses, rows and rows of plush-looking seats. Velvet stage curtains and a spotlight like a tender moon, the full force of all manner of musical instruments, and men at the ready to play them: guitars, pianos, drums feathered gently, saxophones held to the lips with almost unbearable hesitation. Teresa daydreamed as the women sang because she couldn’t hear them through the glass. But she knew it would be over when the women’s arms finally reached outward to the camera, as if pleading, as if asking a lover back or sending him away, their mouths rounding out to release a last note held so impossibly long that Teresa thought she heard a glimmer of it through the thick plate-glass windows.

  On afternoons in the dark quiet of the shoe store’s stockroom, she’d think of her mother boarding a bus and she would think of the hills south of Bakersfield and the pictures she saw of Los Angeles. Her mother had been heading to Texas, but Los Angeles would be the first city she would see, and Teresa wondered if her mother would be moved by the city’s pageantry and decide not to continue. You’ll understand one day, her mother had said, when you fall in love. Her mother’s words stayed with her for a long time, like the embraces of the chanteuses on her afternoon viewings, full of longing and never letting go. They filled Teresa with both hope and sadness: She understood, as she slid box after box onto the dusty shelves of the storeroom, that she had to fall in love first before she could be any of the women with the open arms. She understood, too, that this same hope and sadness led her imagination to put her mother back on the bus for the long hours to Texas, what she thought would be the hot, dusty sands of the Southwest before the bus stopped with a hiss and the door swung open for her mother’s release. Her mother with the open arms and someone there to receive them.

  So when Cheno appeared one evening, the only person on the corner as she arrived home from work, she waited for him by the green door to her little room above the bowling alley. They stood there talking for a bit in Spanish and she asked him if he had worked that day. He said yes; she could tell that he was lying but she appreciated the effort that he had made, his plain white T-shirt tucked inside his pants, a faint hint of bleach carrying in the air, mixing with the Lucky Tiger oil he used to slick back his hair. Even the way he had hesitated in crossing the street charmed her a bit: tentative, looking at her as if awaiting a sign from a distant star.

  They talked for no more than fifteen minutes, her hand on her purse even though there was nothing to guard except her key, and when he parted, Teresa knew he would be back the next day. She let herself in and climbed the stairs, immediately going to the window to peek out, just in time to see his form make its way down the street and finally turn a corner, heading west, walking all that way to the side of town where men lived too many to a house.

  The next day, when the Mexican men on the corner watched her emerge, the usual taunts began. “¡Ay, mi amor!” “¿Adónde vas con mi corazón?” She walked on but cast a quick glance to see if Cheno was in the group, attempting to quiet them. He didn’t catch her looking for him, but she was heartened by the uninterrupted catcalling, certain that Cheno had done no bragging of his own. That evening he appeared at the corner with two lukewarm bottles of soda, which he uncapped against each other, and this was the start of his small, edible gifts: candy bars and fresh peaches and cans of Kern’s nectar and dried apricots and shelled walnuts packed into an empty Gerber baby-food jar.

  They’d eat these treats sitting on the curb in front of the green door leading up to her apartment, mostly in the early part of the week. The closer the days got to Friday, the busier the bowling alley became in the evening, and Cheno withdrew, as if he didn’t want to be seen by anyone. She liked this about him, as if their short evenings were a secret between them, despite meeting out in the open. As the days passed, her affection for him grew, the way his gentle fingers carefully handed over his latest gift, not wanting to touch and offend her, his round eyes taking her in like light. She began to notice mornings when he wasn’t at the corner at all, the catcalls uninterrupted, and these disappearances alarmed her at first, until she figured out that he was wheedling himself into more work. She left the curtains open one night so that the dawn light would wake her as she lay in her bed under the window. She hoisted herself up on her elbows to peer down, and sure enough, there was Cheno in the hushed violet of five in the morning with a few other hard workers, ready to go, and not ten minutes later, he climbed into a farmer’s truck and was whisked away, his head turning toward her apartment and his gaze steady on her window.

  It wasn’t love. She knew that. But she liked the attention, wishing to herself that maybe time would transform her feelings into the kind of longing her mother had displayed, the longing that drove her back to Texas. When they had lived together, her mother had played old blues records with women singing the way only women could about love, love gone right, love gone wrong. Sixteen records that her mother cared for rigorously, searching for scratches, easing them back into their paper sleeves, bringing them out only when the mood struck.

  Pull out the one with the red slip, her mother had told her one time. They sat on the bed, right underneath the window to catch the evening breeze, two glasses of water with ice long since melted. Man from Abilene, her mother had told her, a sad song, and the way her mother requested it, Teresa had known that sad music was something that you should listen to alone.

  The crackle of the needle brought the easy strum of a guitar and a harmonica. Her mother hummed along but sighed and gave the singer space for her lament, not interrupting. The singer moaned, cursing Abilene, a whole story of pain that could have been avoided if she had ignored the deep brown eyes she still managed to sing about. The guitar strummed along, one beat after the other, a monotony, but easy to tap your heel to. Put it on again, her mother had said.

  Outside, just like the morning Cheno rode off with his love-struck ambition, the street held violet and their rented room had darkened enough for Teresa to watch her mother close her eyes and listen to the song. Her mother had played that song hundreds of times, yet as their room darkened, Teresa made out the burn of her mother’s sorrow only by the sound of the song, the way she hummed a little louder when the lyrics matched her own life.

  All of her mother’s records were like that in some respect, some speck of phrasing, some line or two that could draw out the mmm from her throat in confirmation. Again, her mother had said with a sigh, the violet of evening seeping into their room.

  Teresa didn’t want to be like that. She watched the street corner begin to buzz with the approach of the Mexican workers and thought of Cheno. She could never be like her mother for Cheno. Love could not be a heavy darkness. It could not be violet light in a window, fading. She wanted love to be like the open arms of the women singers in the display windows of Stewart’s Appliances, all receiving and nothing ever lost.

  It felt decisive, this feeling about how to con
trol her own heart, and she set out to work as she always did, the catcalling and the stale dustiness of the storeroom and the glow of the TV sets in the store window all coming as familiar as ever. Days passed, and when Cheno didn’t appear, she began to miss his presence, the street bare of anyone when she approached her apartment in the early evenings. More and more days passed and she began to wonder if Cheno had left for more lucrative work up near Fresno, a silent room in her heart wondering if, in fact, another woman had caught his attention.

  Whatever filled her about Cheno’s absence was neither anger nor loneliness nor regret, but she could not identify it, could not place words against what it was. Teresa sank at the possibility that the dark space inside her would spark into one of those emotions, a tiny match struck in the dark—how easy it would be to become her mother upstairs in that room with its single bed under the window and the empty kitchen table with two chairs.

  When Cheno finally did appear, her relief came as a surprise. Even from two blocks down the street, she could tell it was him, the gleam of his white T-shirt, his small frame waiting patiently by her door. He’d returned after all, and even if it hadn’t been love that stirred within her, she sighed at the release of the mysterious grip within, grateful to have Cheno back.

  The closer she walked to him, the more she could tell he was holding something, a large, bulky object, and when she crossed the last street and neared the apartment, she could finally make out the rounded curves of a small guitar that Cheno held in his arms.

  “Un regalito,” he said, handing her the gift.

  She took the guitar. “Where have you been?” she asked him in Spanish.

  “Al norte,” he said. “Pueblitos.” He’d gone way north of Bakersfield, staying in small labor camps, following whatever crops he could and saving his dollars, and she knew his motivation without needing him to declare it. Even after presenting her with the guitar, Cheno kept his hand on the fret board, holding his fingers there as he told her about the day he’d seen her in front of a store window and how, after she’d walked away, he’d gone to see what she’d been watching. The show had ended, but he asked someone, who told him the young girl always watched the afternoon variety show to see the singers.

  “But a guitar?” Teresa asked. “I don’t know how to play.”

  “I’ll teach you,” Cheno said, his voice so sincere and small that Teresa could do nothing but smile and clutch the guitar to her chest, embracing it, before dipping her hand into her purse and extracting the key. She had no worries about Cheno doing anything untoward. Even as he followed, his steps feathered up, as if he were hardly there, as if he were floating, as if he had been down on the street corner as he’d always been, alighting with his small boots in the air and coming right through the open window of her small room, the light blue curtains parting for him.

  How long did this go on? It had been late summer when he’d given her the guitar, her apartment still orange in the late evening. Cheno left whenever daylight started to go. She kept the guitar in the closet on his urging, covering it with a light cloth, and whenever he returned, he’d turn the instrument round and round in his hands, checking for cracks before handing it to her. He taught her a few chords and they’d share whatever treat he’d brought her—lemon drops or dried, sugared mango—as he listened to her practice, his patience infinite. She got to thinking, at times when she watched him demonstrate a chord she was finding difficult, that he was the only person who’d been in the apartment besides her mother, yet her mother’s dark presence was long gone, and as the months drifted into fall and sundown came earlier and earlier, she finally made it clear to Cheno that it was okay for him to stay a few minutes longer after she turned on the bare bulb in the center of the room.

  You’ll understand one day, her mother had said at the bus station. When you find a man of your own, you’ll know why you’ll run toward him.

  Teresa served him dinner once—just once—a small bowl of beans with onions and two corn tortillas, which Cheno ate with relish, his thanks never ending. He refused a second plate. It was getting dark, he told her, and it was best he got home. She watched him from the window as he went down the street, hurrying, and part of her wondered if his secrecy was meant to protect her, to keep anyone from seeing a strange man close the green door at the base of the stairwell.

  She knew he was going to ask her to marry him. Not soon, but one day. What she felt for him was affection, not love: she liked the thrill of pulling him closer and closer, then the slight edge of relief when their guitar lessons were over for the night. There were days he stayed away and Teresa knew he’d gone back up into the northern parts of the Valley to make money, but even so, she didn’t want to leave the safety of her single room. It was hers and she was a twenty-three-year-old woman walking down the street and she was no longer Alicia’s daughter.

  “Do you sing?” he asked her in Spanish.

  She was about to say yes but realized that the songs she hummed to herself were all in English. She didn’t know how he would take this. “Sometimes.”

  “Would you sing me something?” He took the guitar and, surprisingly, began to strum something she recognized, a Patsy Cline song. She laughed and shook her head, refusing, but he kept playing the chords over and over until finally she complied, the song she knew so well from the dim glow of the radio, which she left on at night to lull her to sleep. She sang “Walkin’ After Midnight,” casting her eyes over at the open window, remembering her mother and how the room had to be quiet when her records played, the only sound the pain in those women’s voices.

  “Que lindo,” Cheno said when they finished.

  “Gracias,” she answered, and she was not surprised when Cheno reached over and touched her hand. She could feel the thin plastic of the guitar pick between his fingers, his touch light and unsure.

  “We should sing together,” he told her in Spanish.

  “What song?”

  “No,” he said. “I mean in public. At El Molino Rojo.”

  “Why there?”

  “So we can earn some money,” he answered. He kept his hand on hers, very light, as he would have done if he’d emerged from the secret shadow where he stood watching her in front of Stewart’s Appliances, reading her desires in the shows flickering across the screen, touching her shoulder. He was asking her for complicated reasons, Teresa knew—to fulfill her dreaming, yes, but also to make their work a joint effort, not just his own sweat in the field.

  “But how?” she asked.

  Someone on the corner had urged him to go audition at El Molino Rojo, where the bar owner let people sing for tips. Cheno’s plan was to go there on Tuesday afternoon, her day off from the shoe store, and meet her there once he finished whatever fieldwork he’d managed to get that day. She knew what side of town he was talking about, the avenue over on the west. Over there was El Molino Rojo. The Wild Horse. The Bluebird. The clientele went to the bars where they could pronounce the names. The signs in English glowed amber at night, an electric necklace of shimmering bulbs, some of them buzzing neon: the Fiddle, and Rosie’s with the namesake petals blooming in light. The Mexicans went to the cantinas with names beautiful and full of promise, even if the buildings were tucked away in the dark, no neon to speak of. El Club Diamante. El Paraíso. Teresa’s mother had spoken of cantinas in Texas with names that sounded just as regal. El Presidente. Las Angelinas. Saturday night the one night of the week for elegance, for the dress made from expensive-looking fabric purchased at the TG&Y. Such places! Such names! Why hadn’t the idea occurred to Teresa first, all those afternoons dreaming in front of Stewart’s, as if her mother had never given her stories about the cantinas up and down the state, over there near San Antonio, near Temple. La Lupita, La Conga. Even the little towns past the onion fields and the sweet potatoes had cantinas. Beeville, Kenedy, Mathis, and on to Corpus Christi. El Siete de Copas. El Espejo. El Gato Negro. El Peek-a-boo.

  There was no reason, really, to go against Cheno. Women
sang in bars like that. People watched them and listened. Old blues songs or honky-tonk or country or ranchera ballads, laments in the native tongue of the clientele. So she agreed to meet in front of El Molino Rojo the following Tuesday afternoon, her day off work, and when the day arrived, she pressed her white blouse and her denim skirt and smoothed her hair in the bathroom mirror. Then she picked up her small guitar with no case and no strap and went down the stairs, emerging into the white heat of the afternoon, the men on the corner too drunk by this time of day to notice her.

  At the far end of Union Avenue, El Molino Rojo stood near an intersection, tucked in a bit from the road. The building was unassuming, a small shack with dark windows and a flat roof, rough wood siding, tall yellowed weeds growing along the edges of a gravel driveway, the bare signage scripted badly by someone’s shaky hand. Teresa walked across the gravel parking lot, even though the door to the building was shut, and ducked under the faint shade of the roof’s overhang. The street was quiet.

  She put her hand against the dark windows, trying to see inside, and felt foolish about knocking. Cheno was nowhere in sight. Teresa rested the guitar against the wall and fanned herself. Her stomach gurgled with hunger and she wondered how long she should wait before turning around and walking back home.

  A black Ford truck slowed and pulled into the gravel lot across the street. The driver shut off the engine, and the dust from the driveway settled as he stepped down and made his way to the front door. He was tall—Teresa could tell that even from across the street—and he rattled the heavy chains that served as a lock to the cantina before pulling the door open, its metal growling against the cement. He stepped inside without shutting the door behind him.