The Soup and Sorrow Digest

Look out! It's Tía Inez.

Across the street was the pastel blue storefront of Alberto’s carnicería. Cartoon drawings of grocery items graced its walls. Women idled about the entrance with their heads crooked to hushed gossip. By the columns of carts, two teenage girls, sporting fishnets and half-gloves, jabbered in absolute delight over the chaos wreaked by the Night Stalker.

“I bet he’s sexy looking. The sexy ones are the screwed up ones you need to watch out for,” one of them said.

“I don’t know about that. At least he’s making his mark … My brother’s freaking useless.”

Ricardo had been on his way to see Carlos about the odd-shaped package in his backpack when he noticed a black twig of purpose zooming onto the teenagers—Ricardo sighed—Inez, a handbag tucked underneath her left arm, marched with a sudden fire gifted by God himself. In his mind’s eye, he previsioned the conflagration that would occur, light versus dark, flesh against spirit, Inez’s screeches versus teenage screeches. And that was all was needed for him to bluster across the street into the screaming cars and their blinding brake lights.

“He killed three women already. Oh, he’s such a man, he’s so killer sexy? You should be ashamed of yourselves,” Inez shouted over their dull blinkering eyes.

“Hola, Tía! God and I had a conversation about you,” Ricardo said, pouncing onto the scene. But God was not enough to douse her fervor, as she waggled her bag over their chins to impress her particular point. The girls yawned then flicked their glittering talons at her quaking exertions. This cranked another gear into high zeal and rocketed Inez to pronounce on their evil insouciance.

The motions fractured Ricardo. He grabbed the damp cane of Inez’s wrist and pulled away, but she yanked back swiftly, yelling, “Let me go! Repent! Dress like a puta, talk like a puta, soon enough you’ll bringing up home fatherless babies like your idiot sister.”

“Cállate! Shut up or I’ll break that mouth of yours,” the girl screamed.

That was it. Ricardo bundled Inez out of there past the yawns and shrugs of passersby and rounded the corner away from busy street. Inez, red and sweaty, rubbernecked to the girls flipping her off. “God doesn’t spare teenage girls from the flames of hell!”

“Don’t touch me!” Inez took to hitting Ricardo furiously with her handbag. He let go, but the hitting did not stop. The gall, the fury, the unrecoverable opportunity to preach God’s truth, Ricardo’s head felt it all. “Don’t you dare touch me again. I don’t want that disease you reprobates carry.”

“What disease?” Ricardo asked, deadpan.

She stopped. A curl of embarrassment quivered its way on her lips.

Rubbing his hot temple, he stared unflinchingly at her downcast eyes. The smell of perfumed leather and spit and sweat were noisome in his nostrils. The ringing in his ears pinged louder now, and his cheeks were flushed and prickled.

“Perdona,” Ricardo said in the surest and hardest tone possible then turning away before he would unleash damnations of his own.

“Wait,” she called out.

“What now?”

“How many men have you slept with it?”

“How the fuck is that your business?”

“Don’t swear at me.”

“Don’t ask me bullshit questions.”

Seeing his own words crossing Inez’s face, Ricardo had to admit they were especially unkind. This naked squabble with a menopausal woman in the open street was just as his father had warned him against, undignified and unseemly. But rational action was verboten when Inez was involved. She never came to his house, but somehow during in the gatherings and streets corner interruptions, they knew the resonant frequency of each other’s frustrations, all significant digits of it, the exact way to position the antennae so as to excite calm waves to roiling tempests. And along the way, they picked up colors and hues of their moods.

Like now, ruefully and painfully silent, she stood, rummaging in the infinite recess of her handbag. On and on, circles over circles, she would search for something that larger than a silver dollar. There—a three-inch-diameter caramel wafer, always a wafer. She lifted her eyes to his and her lips scrunched. And back again into her bag, minute growing hairs and more minutes then she retrieved a glittering packet of tamarind sweets for him. The same gesture of apology as it had always been since he was eight.

Ricardo perused the naked bribe in her hand but hesitated at the childishness of it, the merciless effectiveness of it. But she was family. No matter what, one could not stay angry with family. And so he took it and scattered away the nipping embarrassment over the sight of the long road telescoping down into the haze of poles and traffic lights.

“I read about it in Newsweek, you know,” she said in between nibbles.

“Read about what?”

“The disease killing queers.”

“You should be happy. God has found his final solution.” He spat a hard line of seeds at the green box of a parking meter.

“This isn’t funny. Whatever it is you’re doing you need to stop.”

He exhaled explosively. “Believe me, Tía, I’m not doing anything. I’ve not been in the mood. I’m not going to be the mood for a very very long time.” He kicked at the curb and grimaced at Inez, nibbling in serene calculation over something beyond his understanding. “I should go. Gratias.”

“Where are you staying? Selena told me yesterday, you weren’t living at home.”

The relative merit of truth and lies riffled through Ricardo’s mind. Although Elena was a college student, Inez would disapprove of her heathen and gaudy habits, her relations with the self-serving Carlos who brought many a young lady to their ruin.  

Ricardo clucked, said, “I'm staying with Tío Gaspar.”

“Gracias a Dios. I was worried.” She dabbed a veined warty hand over her brow. “I should drop you off.”

“Adiós.” Ricardo dashed away past the line of parking meters and the chain-linked fences. Cars passed by intermittently, people walked wide away from his wavy splashy gait, the warmer promise of summer and its mirth of porch feasts swirled with the breeze. At a residential crossroad, he felt himself fluff lighter and abler. The sweets had been spicy, sweet, sour, muy excelente, and he was left smiling at the peach orb of the sun in the sky.