Alice Adams - To See You Again - Stories

The person of whom Teresa was least afraid, with whom she talked as easily as she did with anyone, was Aurelia, an older cousin of hers. Aurelia was already married, to Francisco, a bad man who beat her when he drank and who did not work, but Aurelia had no fear of Francisco nor of anyone. She had established a thatched-roof restaurant in Ixtapanejo, on the beach, where she served the tourists fresh oysters and clams, and red snapper that she cooked in a special way, and quantities of beer. She did not even own the land where her restaurant squatted, there on the beach overlooking the green-glass sea, but Aurelia had explained to Teresa that what she did was not truly illegal; there was something in the laws of Mexico that favored the rights of Indian-blooded people. “And anyone can see that we have much Indian blood,” said Aurelia, with one of her big laughs.

Aurelia very much liked her tourists, especially the North Americans; and she liked Teresa, often worrying about her shyness, and her fears. She had tried to persuade Teresa to come to work at the restaurant, speaking of large gratuities and sometimes presents. But Teresa could not bring herself even to think of taking orders and remembering and counting beers and asking for money and making the change correctly. Once, on an errand, she had gone to the restaurant, and the very look and the sound and the oil-sweet smell of those people had weakened her legs and tightened her breath, so that she was barely able to speak to Aurelia.

The town where Teresa lived at that time was so small that there was not a proper cantina, just a hut like the others in which beer was sold, and ice-cream bars. But there was a large, bright-colored machine for playing records, North American music, mostly: fast hard band music for dancing, and some slower Spanish songs. The boys of the village often gathered there at night, some of them buying beer, and on many nights several girls, in small groups, would walk past, in a slow, indifferent way. Two boys, or more, might saunter toward the girls, and invite them to dance, and maybe the girls would say yes. The ground around the hut was as hard and smooth and bare as any floor, and most of the boys and many of the girls danced barefoot, in the light warm breeze from the sea, in the flowery darkness.

On a certain night, one especially hot November, the season of rains, Aurelia, visiting from Ixtapanejo, persuaded Teresa to take a walk past the dancing place. Normally, Teresa stayed at home with the younger children; she would work on some small jars that the village potter had commissioned her to paint, to be sold in Ixtapanejo. Her shyness kept her at home, and a feeling that she was too clumsy for dancing. But Aurelia was very persuasive; with her, Teresa would be absolutely safe, she reasoned. No one would ask a married woman to dance, and thus it would be impolite for anyone to invite Teresa.

Fat and bright-eyed, darker even than Teresa, Aurelia was in an especially good mood that night. She was rich, she said; some North Americans who were returning that day to New York had given her a great many pesos. She bought them both ice-cream bars, as the music machine played Beatles songs. Teresa saw Ernesto standing outside with a group of boys, their white shirts silver in the dark, but she did not look at him, not really.

Aurelia and Teresa were on the point of unwrapping their ice cream, standing inside the hut, when they heard a thundering commotion. Teresa thought, An earthquake! Many years ago she had felt such a thing and had been told what it was, that trembling of the world beneath her feet, and naturally she had not forgotten. But this shaking was not an earthquake; it came from huge horses, a group of them just arrived, galloping up outside, and some shouting men.

The first man to enter the hut was tall and fat and blond, with a big yellow mustache; he looked like a North American but he spoke in Spanish, and before anyone had said his name Teresa knew that he was Señor Krupp, Carlos Krupp, the owner of many plantations. Even in the heat he wore leather clothes, and his face was red, perspiring. Other big blond men, very likely his brothers, followed him in, and they all opened their cold dripping bottles of beer, and drank from them, with a noisy rude gulping.

Then suddenly, and with no warning—she had no idea that he had seen her—Señor Krupp turned on Teresa, and with his huge blond-haired hand he grasped her chin; she closed her eyes as she heard him say, “And this lovely young girl, whose is she?”

Almost fainting (although a part of her that she had not known existed wanted to spit in his hand), Teresa heard Aurelia begin to speak: “It’s Teresa, sir, my cousin—”

And then another voice, a young boy’s, but stern and confident: Ernesto, of course. “Teresa Valdez is my friend, sir.”

Startled, Teresa opened her eyes to see the look that then passed between the two men: Ernesto, at her side, and Señor Krupp, who was leaning sideways against the big music machine, which had unaccountably stopped playing. She saw that both men had forgotten her; in their look was violence, and murder, purely male and somehow familiar.

But nothing happened then. Perhaps Señor Krupp was too tired, or knew himself to be drunk, for he said, “Well, in that case my congratulations—Fuentes, I think your name is?” However, his eyes and his voice were stone cold, Northern, unforgetting and unforgiving.

Teresa and Aurelia, with Ernesto following, were able then to slip outside and into the clearing, where at one edge of the open space the great pawing, sweating horses were tied, and the other boys had gathered, staring at the horses. As Teresa and Aurelia moved away, toward the darkness that hid the rest of the huts, Teresa turned back to Ernesto, and for an instant they smiled at each other. Of course she wanted to thank him, but she could not say it.

The following night it rained, and Teresa stayed at home. She was very nervous, agitated.

The night after that was miraculously clear, millions of stars in the vast black sky, above the darker sea. It seemed right, then, for Teresa to walk past the hut with some other girls, and to say yes to Ernesto, coming up to ask her to dance.

That was the beginning of an unusual time in Teresa’s life. Despite some trembling in her blood, and new bodily heats, she was unafraid; to be with Ernesto very soon seemed natural to her. She even found that she could dance with him. For the first time she felt herself to be a girl exactly as other girls; when she was not with Ernesto she spent time with girlfriends, laughing, discussing eye makeup. And when Ernesto drew her away from the clearing, into darkness, and then stopped and turned to her, holding their mouths together, that seemed natural too, nothing to fear. Even later when, farther away, in a hidden grove of vines, the heat of both their bodies forced them to lie down in the cool silver sand—even then, Teresa was not afraid; it did not seem a sin. She trusted Ernesto. She thought, but did not say, Love, you are my love.

After a few months spent in this way, months that included some long white beach afternoons with Ernesto, splashing at the edge of the waves, and a trip to Ixtapanejo, slowly some of Teresa’s fears and forebodings began to return, including, of course, a new one, that she should be with child. She was not, and then she began to fear that Ernesto would leave her, as her father had left her mother. They talked so little, Teresa and Ernesto, and she did not know what was in his mind.

“He will want to marry you, he is a very serious boy,” said Aurelia.

“That is possible,” Teresa agreed, although she blushed. And then she tried to tell her cousin, her friend, what was in her heart. “But when I think of the future, the years ahead of me, I see darkness, shadows. Sometimes something worse, some disaster, perhaps a giant earthquake. And when I see these things I think that I should not marry Ernesto.”