Carlos Fuentes - Happy Families

If he hadn’t killed you, José Nicasio would have betrayed himself. He had to kill you to know that he existed. That he culminated his life saying,

“Don’t be afraid of me. Please. Don’t give me fear. Give me love.”

And you gave him fear.

He killed you out of fear of himself, of his effort to come out of obscurity. You betrayed him with your rejection, my dear.

Now, kneeling before the urn that holds your remains, I tell you that perhaps you didn’t know how to remove the fear from your consciousness. Your intelligence, so brilliant, had that enormous flaw. You were afraid. It’s my fault. You gave me so much. If I can write these lines, it is because by educating you, I educated myself. But I, because of protective love, because of my protective devotion, could not tell you in time:

Don’t be afraid. A day will come when intelligence isn’t enough. You have to know how to love.

My dear daughter, have mercy on me.

This is my prayer.

I will live transforming your death into my reconciliation with the world you left me when you died.

before anything else exfoliation

hydration

elimination of impurities

so the bridegroom doesn’t find a single imperfection

the scrub and you’re ready to try on your wedding dress

choose: fairy-tale dream of gold or the goddess of spring

goodbye to singleness

all your girlfriends

are drinking coffee martinis

they’re offering you a kit spa a kit moon a kit honey a honeymoon kit

they’re giving you a bronzing express so you don’t arrive white as a ghost

they’re reading your cards pure good luck a hundred years of life eight children twenty grandchildren

you’ll outlive your husband

waah waah

she cries alone in the church

don’t listen to the priest’s sermon against abortion against the pill against condoms pro-life

forget about the epistle of melchor woman is weak she owes obedience man is

strong man commands

you just hear the DJ at the banquet singing I will always love you

you just went into raptures in the magic garden of your wedding banquet

everything a dream everything so in mirrors instead of tablecloths hung with Swarovski

magnums of champagne seviche of mango rolls of pork iguana ice cream

cactus cake

the superatmosphere the blowout plenty to drink a blast

waah waah

the golden couple

we don’t stop dancing

getting frisky

lots of kissing and cuddling

everything so in

I will always love you

put on a cherub face

lucky you your fiancé I mean husband I mean monkey hairy beast horrible King Kong

mama mamamama mamama

allons enfants de la patrie

a photo sitting on the toilet

perverted prick

we’re going to Cancún

1. You know her. Nobody knows her better than you. But now you wouldn’t recognize her. How could she be? Doña Medea Batalla stripped? A mature woman — sixty, seventy years old — naked in a police cell? The gray-haired grandmother without clothes except for a diaper pinned on her, you say? Her chest defeated as if by a too frequent haughtiness? Thin strong arms accustomed to work and not to penitence?

What work, you ask? In the neighborhood, many occupations are attributed to Doña Mede, who begins her back-and-forth at the market very early in the day. She wants to be the first to choose the potatoes and dry chilis and grasshoppers and locusts in season. Then she withdraws to her one-story house between a tire-repair shop and a hardware store, at the rear of a parking garage, and takes the real treasure from her rebozo. A snake rattle. Doña Mede knows she survives thanks to the rattle, which is a potion for long life. Each snake has five rattles. With two doses a week, you enjoy good health.

This is a secret you may not have known, and I’m telling you now so you can begin to understand. Because in the case of Doña Mede, everything is supposition and guesswork, since she makes a point of keeping — concealing — her secrets inside her rebozo, allowing neighborhood gossip to fly. They say she’s a seamstress. Haven’t you seen her go into the house with a bundle of clothes and then come out with packages that could be shirts or blouses or skirts? Or she’s a potter. Have you heard her turn the wheel and then go out to wash the clay from her hands at the faucet outside her house? Or a midwife. Where does she go in such a hurry when a little kid from the neighborhood comes running and says come, Doña Medea, come now, hurry, my sister’s yelling and says you should come and help her? Or a witch, a Protestant preacher, a procurer for nonexistent local millionaires, and more miracles are hung on her than the ones she gives thanks for with constant special ex-votos to the Virgin here in the Church of the Immaculate Conception.

A straw-colored braid adorns the nape of her neck and her back. You remember that when she was a young woman, her hair was black and pulled back tight, hanging down to her buttocks and driving the men wild. Now they say she has one foot in the grave. Though they’ve been saying that for many years.

“Doña Mede has one foot in the grave.”

“She’ll go flying to the cemetery.”

“Doña Mede’s ready to breathe her last.”

“One of these days Doña Mede will kick the bucket.”

“Death already rented her body.”

“The next world is in her eyes.”

It isn’t true. You know Doña Medea doesn’t have death in her eyes, she has sadness. You know the lady’s comings and goings don’t reveal her real concern. She has another, secret desire. Does it have to do with the men she knew in her life? Who knows if you know. Doña Medea has pure desolation in her eyes.

You’ve heard there were men in Doña Medea’s life. But you never saw their faces, and neither did anybody else. One thing is sure: This woman lost all her men in cheap pulque taverns.

It was her destiny. And destiny is like a hare. It jumps out when you least expect it. And nothing less than the rabbit of fatality jumped out at Doña Medea in the taverns. This is a crowded district, you know that very well. It’s as if lives become confused here. Names are lost. Men change their lives and their names without having to or being afraid to. Like movie stars, wrestlers in masks, criminals. El Santo. El Floridito. El Pifas. El Tasajeado. Evil names, all of them. El Cacomixtle. But then, like compensation, there are all the blessed names. Holy Child of Atocha, Christ of the Afflicted, Virgin of Remedies.

That’s how flashes are given out, because for Doña Mede, flashes were what people called themselves or what they were called by others. Flashes in the city. Sudden flare-ups. Grass fires.

“And how did you get such a strange name, Doña Medea?”

“Because of Empress Carlotta.”

“What does she have to do with it?”

“My mother saw a movie with an actress who always played Carlotta.”

“What was her name?”

“Medea. Empress Medea de Navarra.”

“Isn’t it Novara?”

“Navarra, Novara, at this late date, what difference does it make? We all have the names that somebody else dreams up for us. That’s God’s truth!”

Men change their names and their lives. That’s why it’s strange that all of Doña Mede’s loves have been pulqueros. Not exactly the owners but the victims of pulque taverns. In La Solitaria she lost a husband among the silver mirrors and wooden barrels. In La Bella Bárbara another man drowned in pulque mixed with oats. And they say a third husband was swallowed up by a mixture of lukewarm eggs, cascabel chili, and watered milk at the pulque tavern El Hijo de los Aztecas.