Carry Me Like Water by Benjamin Alire Sáenz
“I never thought about it. We didn’t discuss your name or your life, did we? How often did we talk about ourselves? I’m such an idiot.”
He looked at her blankly. “What difference does it make? It’s just a name.”
“No, it’s not just a name.”
“What are you getting so excited about, Lizzie? I’m tired. What does it matter? If it makes you feel any better, I don’t know your last name either. You’re Lizzie, that’s who you are. What’s a goddamned last name?” He leaned over and placed his head between his hands. “Lizzie,” he said almost without emotion, “you’re hysterical. Is it our turn to calm you down? Is this your way of helping us deal with grief?”
“Edwards,” she said, “My last name is Edwards.” She smiled, then broke out laughing.
“Why do you look happy?” Tom asked. “It’s a strange time to look so happy.”
“Jake,” she said almost yelling, her heart beating as fast as the wings of a hummingbird, “I know your brother.”
“What?”
“Your brother. All this time, I’ve been sitting here—and me a seer—and I couldn’t see—I know your brother.”
“Yes, you said that,” Tom said.
They both stared at her.
“I can’t take this, Lizzie,” Jake said. “Don’t do this—”
She stuck out her hand and pointed her open palm at Jake. “Wait,” she said. She grabbed his picture. “I kept staring at this picture—he looked so familiar. Of course he’s not this young anymore—he’s thirty. And nobody calls him Jon-Jon, and nobody calls him Jonathan. I didn’t know his name was Jonathan. I know him only as Eddie. Eddie Marsh—the sweetest man I’ve ever met.”
“When’s his birthday?”
She knew why he asked. She smiled knowingly. “November 22, 1963. John Kennedy.”
“John Kennedy,” he repeated softly, Jake clenched his teeth. The thought occurred to him that he had lost his mind, that he had died along with Joaquin, and had gone to hell and Lizzie had become the devil and would tempt him with news of his brother forever. But he knew he was sitting in the same room he had sat in for the last ten years. He wanted to ask Joaquin what to do, he wanted to tell him: I have found my brother, I have found him. He is alive—but Joaquin was not there, Joaquin was not alive, could not hear, could not see the great reunion. Was this true? Was this strange woman telling him the truth? Who was she? Where did she come from? He knew nothing about her, really. Could it be? After all this time, was this woman sent to bring him his brother? He was lost now, he knew he had gone completely mad. He remembered reading about his parents’ death in the newspaper. He had felt like this, devastated and elated all at once, and all he wanted to do was wander outside and live as homeless and confused as he felt, and be away from anybody who even pretended to treat him like a human being. A human being? What was that, anyway? He stared at his skin. Joaquin had told him that his skin was everything. “It’s white, Jake, and it will always be white, and mine is not, and that is what we are,” but he had spoken those words in anger because someone had called him a spic, and he had been hurt. Joaquin? Joaquin, why are you dead? He was suddenly cold and he wanted to be warm and yet he felt he would never be warm again; who was hot enough to thaw his frozen skin? He knew sounds were coming out of his mouth because he fell something, his own sounds, but he was not speaking a language. He looked at Lizzie. He had known her less than a year and yet he believed in her compassion, had grown to rely on it, He kept his eyes on her, and they calmed him and so he felt himself stop his screaming. But he wanted to yell more, yell and yell and yell in grief for his dead Joaquin, the only person who had ever made him shake like a leaf in the wind out of pure love, and yet he believed what this woman had said, believed she had found his brother, and so he wanted to shout “I have found him, I have found him,” Lizzie grew dim, he couldn’t see her. It was as if he was looking through a windshield in a rainstorm. He heard himself howling, he felt the noises he was making. He could not stop the howling that came from within him. Jake felt Tom’s arms around him. He did not have the strength to push him away. He was unable to speak for a long time. Finally, he found the words, and speaking them he felt he had regained his intelligence. “Call him,” Jake said softly. “Tell him his brother needs him.”
10
THE DETECTIVE at the morgue uncovered the body and looked at Diego. “You know her?” His voice was as aggressive as his movements.
“Yeah, he knows her,” Mundo answered. “I already told you that, man, can’t you speak English?”
The detective ignored Mundo and continued staring at Diego. Diego looked up at the tall, graying man and nodded.
He stared at Diego with straightforward gray eyes. “What’s her name?”
“I already told you that,” Mundo said. “Goddamnit, her name’s Mary.”
Diego grabbed Mundo’s shoulder and put his finger on his lip. “Her name’s Mary,” he wrote. “I’m deaf.”
“Yeah, I told him already,” Mundo answered.
“Mary what? Does she have a last name?”
Diego thought a minute. “Ramirez,” he wrote.
Mundo stared at him.
“Ramirez?” the detective asked. “She doesn’t look Hispanic to me.”
Mundo clicked his fingers, “She ain’t Hispanic, man, she’s a Chicana, you know? A Chicana—what the fuck’s a Hispanic?” He clicked his fingers again and did a dance.
The detective stared at him. “I’m talking to your friend. And this is a morgue not a dance floor.” He looked at Diego again. “She doesn’t look Mexican to me. Does she look Mexican to you?”
“Hey, you’re harassing him,” Mundo said, “chill out.”
“Her husband’s name was Ramirez,” Diego wrote.
“Where is he now?”
“No one knows. He took off years ago.”
“How many years?”
“Ten, fifteen—hard to say. She didn’t talk about him much.”
The detective looked hard at his handwriting. “Where did she live?”
“She didn’t have a home. She lived on the streets. I don’t really know, I thought she might have lived somewhere. She never talked about it.”
“I thought you were friends?”
“She kept secrets.”
The detective shook his head, a hint of disgust in his expression. “Secrets, huh? Can you tell me anything about her?”
“Not much really,” he wrote. He stared at the dry blood on Mary’s skin, her ripped clothes, the yellow dress with white flowers. He took a deep breath.
“Are you gonna be all right?” Mundo looked at the detective. “Go easy.”
Diego placed his hand over his eyes. Mundo moved next to him and shook him softly. “You gonna be all right?”
“I’ll be all right,” He wrote, “I’m fine.”
“Was she a prostitute?”
Diego clenched his teeth and glared at the detective. He pointed his jaw at him as if it were a dart, an arrow about to be let loose. He dropped his pad on the floor. The detective reached down, picked it up for him, and handed it back to him. “Can you tell me anything else?”
“I don’t think she had any relatives,” Diego wrote. “No children that I know of. She carried a bag with all her clothes. She had a box with a new hat in it, a white hat with yellow flowers. She was supposed to meet me on Sunday morning. We were going to Mass together—she was my girlfriend—and she wasn’t a prostitute.”
The detective read Diego’s note and nodded. “But you can’t be sure she didn’t have a family.”
Diego shrugged his shoulders.
The detective looked at him with his harsh gray eyes. “What’s your name?”
“Juan Diego Ramirez.”
He rubbed his thumb against his lip. “What a coincidence,” he said, “you have the same last name as she does.” He smiled.
“I hate your pinche smile,” Mundo growled. “It’s making me sick. I get violent when I get sick.?
The detective smiled more deliberately.
“A lot of Ramirezes in this town, wouldn’t you say?” Diego handed him the note.
The detective nodded. “I guess there are. Still, it’s an odd coincidence, don’t you think?”
“You callin’ my friend a liar?” Mundo gave him a threatening stare. “Like you say, it’s a coincidence. These things happen all the time. I never ask a woman her last name before I go out with her, you know? Don’t care if she has my last name or not—don’t give a damn—y ya no chingues.”
“Speak English,” the detective said as he moved his thumb away from his lip.
“Be careful, Mr. Dick-tective, I could make you look like Mary here. You want to lie next to her, frozen with that smile of yours?”
Diego took Mundo by the shoulder and shook his head. He wrote firmly on his pad. “Look, sir, if you don’t believe me, then that’s your business. If you think I killed her or that I have some kind of reason to lie about this, then you have a right to your suspicions—I suppose that it comes with the badge. But I’ve told you everything I know and now it’s my turn to ask a few questions. How did she die? Who did this? Where did you find her? Who did this to my Mary?” He placed the note firmly in the detective’s hands.
“You talk an awful lot for a deaf guy, don’t you?”
“I’m gonna bust your fuckin’ face, dickhead.” Mundo tightened his fingers into a claw, then clenched them into a fist.
“And I’m gonna throw your ass in jail. I know all about you—I’m sick of dealing with your types. All you do is litter up the streets. I’m going on a cleanup campaign.”
“Go ahead, baboso,” Mundo yelled, “throw my ass in jail. I’ve been there before, but I’ve never been there for knifing a cop. If I’m gonna go, I’m gonna go happy.”
The detective smiled and put his thumb on his lip.
Diego shoved a note in the detective’s face. “What happened to Mary? It’s your job to find out.”
The detective’s face turned red, then white again as he flipped the note to the ground. “They raped her. They raped her and then they stabbed her. Looks like more than one man. They found her body in an alley—downtown. She was wearing that hat you just described.”
Diego nodded. He couldn’t control the tears welling up in his eyes. He must’ve made some kind of noise because both the detective and Mundo stared at him. He took Mary’s hand and rubbed his tears into her cold skin.
“Hey, Diego, chill out—calmate.” Mundo turned Diego toward him, making sure he could see his lips. “She’s not gonna wake up, man. Those bastards that killed her, they’re gonna rot in pinche hell.”
Diego stood still, unmoving, stood as though he would never move again.
The detective looked at Diego carefully. “Look Mr. Ramirez, I know this stinks—it stinks to high heaven. Look, I believe you. I know this is hard—1 don’t know if we’ll find out who did this. It could have been anybody—the streets just aren’t safe anymore.” He looked at Mundo. “Look, you can go by and pick up her personal effects at the station. I have her bag and her hat, just like you said. You can come by and pick up the stuff. Just come and sign for her things. We won’t be needing them.” He paused and looked back at Diego. “Can you arrange a funeral for her? If you can’t, I know who you can talk to at the county office.”
“I can handle it,” Diego wrote. “I got someone who can help.”
The detective slapped him softly on the back. “Take a piece of advice: Stop hanging around with your sidekick—you don’t need him. You keep hanging out with him and there’s gonna be a lot more trouble coming your way.” He walked out of the room. Mundo flipped him the finger as he walked past him.
“Mary used to do things like that,” Diego thought, “crazy gringa.”
“You’re crazy, Mundo,” he wrote. “Why do you always have to threaten people?”
“Control makes me crazy,” he laughed. “So, where to now? You look like you could use a drink.”
“I have a plan,” Diego wrote.
“What plan?”
“First of all, we have to find the nurse, Carolyn, at the clinic. I bet she can arrange a funeral. After that I have to talk to Gonzalo and ask if he’ll give me some time off.”
Mundo looked at him and nodded. “You go to a lot of trouble for your friends, don’t you?”
“I don’t have too many of them.”
“Is that why you gave La Mary your name?”
“What was I supposed to say to that cop? Was I supposed to tell him she was the Virgin Mary? Anyway, why should she die without a last name? Why shouldn’t she have a decent funeral? She never hurt anybody.”
The nurse agreed to arrange the funeral. “We have a social worker that knows all the ropes,” she said, “I’m sure it won’t be too difficult. I can arrange something.”
Mundo smiled at her. “I bet you can arrange a tot of things.”
She looked at Diego. “How come you hang around with this dirtbag?”
Diego shrugged his shoulders and wrote, “He’s all right. If you knew him, you’d like him, too.”
The nurse smiled. “If you come back tomorrow by noon, I can let you know what we’ve been able to arrange, OK, Diego? Go home and get some rest—you look like you could use some sleep.”
“And you make sure to get a Mass? We need to have a funeral Mass. Maybe at St. Patrick’s—Sacred Heart burned down today.”
“I know,” she said, “the whole barrio’s buzzing about it.”
He smiled at her and slowly walked out the door. He headed for Vicky’s Bar. Mundo followed him out the door.
“And when we get to Vicky’s,” Diego wrote, “let me do all the talking. You handle my boss like you handled the detective, and I’ll be out of a job. Just promise me you won’t say anything unless I tell you.”
“Yeah, yeah, I promise—whatever you say. You’re the boss.”
Diego wanted to throw up at the smell and the darkness as they entered Vicky’s Bar. His boss was busy cleaning up for the evening shift. He looked up and stared at Mundo and Diego. He walked up to the bar with a frown on his face and found a pad. “I thought you were sick.”
Diego shook his head.
“His friend died. Somebody killed her. Diego here’s not doing too good. You know how that goes, right?”
Diego’s boss gave Mundo a cold stare. “I thought I told you to keep out of my place.” He pointed toward the door. “Get out!”
Diego wrote on his pad, “Why do you want him to leave? He’s my friend.”
His boss read the writing and began to write something. Diego grabbed his arm gently and pointed to his lips. His boss looked at him oddly.
Diego looked at Mundo and nodded. “He can read lips,” Mundo said.
“You been making a pendejo out of me ail these years? You get your rocks off making me look like an asshole? I ought to fire your deaf ass.”
Diego shrugged his shoulders and bowed his head.
“Finish cleaning this place up,” he said as he handed him a wet cloth. “People will be coming in for their evening drinks and I haven’t even had time to set up the bar yet.”
Diego shook his head. He put the dirty rag on the table next to him. “I’m not working today,” he wrote.
His boss picked up the rag and threw it across the room. “Goddamnit! You want to eat, then get to work.”
Diego shook his head. “I need the rest of the week off. A friend of mine died. I’m sick.”
His boss read the note, paused and broke out laughing. “A week off?” He laughed again. “I’m gonna tell you what, Diego, you don’t show up tomorrow morning, and you’re fired. You got that?”
Diego nodded. “Well then, will you at least let me off for my friend’s funeral?”
The boss shook his head as he read the note. “You already took one day, and you even lied about it. I give you weekends off, don’t I?”
Diego nodded.
“Well, schedule y
“I need to go the funeral,” he wrote. “It’s very important to me.”
“If it ain’t your own, then you don’t need to be there.”
“I’m going anyway.”
“You go, and you’re fired.”
“It’s just for half a day.”
Mundo kept looking over Diego’s shoulder to see what he was writing. “Tell that asshole to shove his job up his ass.” Diego wasn’t watching his lips but he saw his boss yelling at Mundo. “Get the hell out of my place you sonofabitch, good for nothing, cabrón marijuano.”
Diego looked at Mundo. “Quit!” Mundo yelled.
He looked at his boss. “I need the job,” he wrote.
“You fucking right you need the job,” he said. “And don’t ever bring your friend with you again. What the hell are you doing hanging out with people like that? And be here tomorrow.”
Mundo spoke into Diego’s face. “Tell him to shove his fuckin’ job.”
Diego stood motionless, not knowing what to do. He wanted to throw a chair at his boss; he wanted to sit himself down and be a customer and drink himself into unconsciousness—but he needed the job—what would he do? Who would hire a deaf-mute with a high school education? What could he put on a job application? “I’m deaf. I went to high school. I can read lips, but I know a lot because I’m an eavesdropper and because I go to the library and read things, I can make Mexican food and mop a floor.” He kept staring at his feet. He looked up at his boss, who was waiting for an answer.
“I loved my friend,” he wrote. “I think you’re cruel.”
His boss put his arms around the back of his head and stretched out. Diego hadn’t expected to change his mind, but he hadn’t expected him to be this hard—not even him. “So I’m not St. Francis,” he told Diego. “But then, you already knew that, didn’t you? I don’t pay you enough to like me—I just pay you enough to eat. And that’s why you’re still here, isn’t it?”