Carlos Fuentes - Happy Families

whole families on the roads

it’s better to have a fiery sky fall on you

it’s better to die in despair on the road in the daytime

than to fall into their hands

they tortured my father with a plastic bag filled

with flour on his head

talk

they mutilated my father cutting off his testicles

they hung weights on my father’s balls until they maimed him

forever

but we’re still there in our miserable villages

the women wash boil grind

we kids are couriers

we carry the news

they killed Gerinaldo

Jazmín won’t return to the village

we kids played ambush

Rutilio and Camilo and Selvín

then we grew up however we could

we formed gangs of rancorous orphans:

there is rancor

and nobody hides it

there are the fourteen families’ mansions in San Benito beach

houses cocktails at the country club Hollywood musicals

at the Vi movie theater

there are the mobs of one-eyed lottery-ticket sellers bootblacks

shooshine the lucky little number the blind man

on the streets

and the fourteen only read condensed novels from reader’s digest

and the fourteen listen to music by mantovani even when they take a shit

and they are protected by soldiers nothing but dark-skinned little farts with no

forehead no chin with boots that hurt and belts

that pinch

who follow the orders of strutting whites

who don’t dirty their hands

and the gang was formed there

children and grandchildren of guerrillas of soldiers of widows

of other courier children

the ones who got together night after night to wait for news

about the disappeared

then tell us

who cares about my death?

what’s more fucked up?

being dead?

or being poor?

that’s what we want

everybody poor

and that’s why they’re afraid of us now

since we stood up to the death battalions

the huey helicopters

since we were kids we thought think now you’re dead and your

worries are over

maybe only when you’re dead do you see your papa again and your mama

your little brother

so be initiated into the

gang take the vomiting test

you stick your finger in the back of your mouth

touch your uvula

if you don’t puke we jam a snapdragon to the back

of your palate and a corncob up your sweet ass

be initiated

with a savage beating

to see if you can take it

kicks to the balls

they cut off your father’s son of a bitch kicks to the belly

they kicked your pregnant mother bastard fucker until you

came out

kicks to the knees

they cut off your grandfather’s legs to make him talk

kicks to the shins

your grandfather cut off my grandfather’s

now pull down your pants and take a shit in front of everybody

put on a happy face

imagine you’re not shitting you’re killing

get used to the idea bro that killing is the same as the euphoria

of shitting

you’ll be the sergeant you shit

you’ll be the captain you turd

but don’t stop thinking about all of them

the fourteen families

the mob

the killers and torturers in the battalions of death

just like you

the guerrillas who killed in self-defense just like you

the gringos arming giving classes on death weapons of death

now remember a single soldier from the battalion: forget about him

now remember a single guerrilla at the front: forget about him

life begins with you

in the gang

get used to that idea

nobody cares about your death

try to remember a single ácatl

try to remember a single farabundo

forget about them

erase the words patriotism revolution from your head

there was no history

history begins with the salvatrucha gang

your only identity is your tattooed

skin

swastikas totems tears a little death

knives stones rifles pistols daggers

everything’s good

burn the earth

leave nothing standing

we don’t need allies

we need the jungle to hide rest invent

we learn to walk like shadows

each mara gang member is a walking tree

a shadow that moves toward you

toward you carefree asshole

do you think you saved yourself from us?

do you think you saved yourself from us?

just smell the acid of our tattooed skin

just taste the rust of our navels

just put your finger in the mudhole of our assholes

just suck the curdled cum of our pricks

just sink into the red butter of our mouths

just twist around in the black jungle of our armpits

we are the gang

we save salvatruchas everything all of you nice and clean and neat in your sunday best hid shaved cleaned deodorized

and on top of that tattooed skin

and the warnings on our skin

tears and teardrops painted on our

faces by death

while all of you read advertisements in the press on television

peripherals

we announce ourselves with our bitter stinking rancorous tattooed

skin

read the news on our skin

Every time I want to tell you the truth, something interrupts us.

Don’t worry, Lavinia. We’re alone, my love. I’ve given orders not to be interrupted. What do you want to tell me?

I’m very unhappy. No, don’t interrupt me. I want your love, not your sympathy.

You have both. You know that. Tell me.

Can I begin at the beginning?

I’m all yours. So to speak.

Leo, you know about my life, and you know I never lie to you. I want to talk to you about him. As you say in your discussions, I want to recapitulate. I only hope I can be brief. After all, we’ve been together nine years. I want you to be aware of my relationship to Cristóbal. I won’t hide anything from you. You know almost everything, but only in pieces. I want you to put yourself in my place and understand why my relationship with him has lasted so long. You have to imagine what it meant to me at the age of twenty-nine, when you begin to feel the terror of turning thirty, to renew my life thanks to a passion that was fresh, new, and above all, dangerous.

I swear to you, Lavinia—

Don’t interrupt, please. I was at an age, nine years ago, when you still believe you can begin your life over again, throw the old baggage over the side, and remake yourself from head to toe. I confess I already carried that inside me. Restlessness, the little worm, whatever you want to call it. My career had given me successes, compensations. Being a top publicist is something. It’s enough for a lot of women. They marry their careers.

They say a professionally successful woman always has a lover in her bed: her career.

Agreed. A career is very erotic. And yet I was dissatisfied. My career was just my dish of mole. But the sauce needed spice. Well, I was fertile ground, as they say. . The fact is that on the afternoon he came into the office, our eyes met, and we both said in silence what we repeated to each other afterward in a quiet voice, you understand, both of us in half-light. Love at first sight. An infatuation. I’m telling you this with no shame at all. Cristóbal came into the office, and I undressed him with my eyes. I guessed what he looked like naked, and he did the same to me. We found out that night. Do you care if I tell you about it just the way it happened?

No. I like it. If you kept anything secret from me, you’d be an egotist.

You’re a savage. In the bedroom, he took off my panties, picked me up still dressed, with tremendous strength he picked me up and took me with my legs wrapped around his waist. . I’ve never felt pleasure like that. Except with you.