Hook Noses, Popped Cheek Bones, and Our Own Inquisition
stand on my patio above the clean streets of Coronado, CA, an imported
beer in my hand staring at my lips, two Hispanic maids walking a Dalmatian
and a San Bernard down below. I down this fifth beer, its icy coldness
soaking my thirst, its liquor enhancing my memories.
Back in Lima, a troop of maids came and left my house, each arriving from the Andes mountains with a dirty neck and a soft wool-fabric sack strapped on her back, each leaving in the middle of the night with that same wool sack, its fabric pissed on and mistreated. Mother and father knew what went on late at night, but they never brought it up in the mornings. Mother avoided looking at my brother and me, her teeth grinding behind her closed mouth. My father�s lips extended across, his glowing smile swallowing my brother and me, his cheeks stuffed with prideness. The tired maid�s nipples popped through her yellow stained morning gown, her eyes filled with that Indigenous innocence that lasts no more than a week. She arrived in Lima two days ago, her wool sack located underneath her rusted bed starting to collect coins of dust.
Seventh beer on its way down...
...the crystal waters zig zag down the gorgeous Andes mountains, tree tops extending their arms, brushing their elbows to cheer the passing of the fresh icy waters. The waters descend roaring good bye to green hills, bright yellow suns, warm adobe homes, and liquid blue skies. Oh, the waters descend in a rush down a swollen concrete road, no breaks on, pouring down inside corroded pipes. The nasty aura of their new home, a labyrinth of contaminated sewers of a gray city, Lima...
...Gulp, gulp, gulp.
I was only four, the first time I spent the night in the maid�s room. She was twenty six. She had been in the city since she was eleven, always working as a maid from brick home to brick home. By now, she knew all her duties in the house. She stuck her tongue inside my throat. I didn�t scream, but I bit her tongue and laughed at it bleed. I don�t think my parents knew that my brother and I spent nights with the maids that early in age. It was only the night after my tenth birthday that my father showed me his kind of glowing smile. I knew then that my parents knew about the maids and the two little Don Juans that they had proudly raised two blocks away from our church. At least father was the proud one. Mother kept her mouth shut the way my brother and I were forced to keep ours when the good book was read in church.
In Lima, father threw a big party once to celebrate his textile company�s fifth year. I was eight. All his nine brothers and sisters, and their family branches showed up. Two of my aunts brought two of their maids to help out in the kitchen. My grandmother led the kitchen crew, all women. I remember standing right next to father�s pants, right next to a case of cold beers. I heard him tell my other uncles that he agreed, it�s safer to make the maids do it with them than taking them to a whore house where a lot of the whores are dirty and drilled with disease. I didn�t think about what he meant. I was hungry and wanted him to get me a plate. Noticing his hands were busy holding a glass and a bottle, I walked towards the back of the house where the kitchen was. I stood in the kitchen looking around to see if I could get a plate to eat. I heard the maids. I heard them talk to each other in that Indigenous language of theirs. My grandmother was singing along in Quechua with them. I approached them slowly, camouflaged by the raised steam from the boiling pots.I got close enough and saw my grandmother attached to them, her hook nose and popped cheek bones were the same as those in the maids� faces.
I remember my grandmother talking to my father and uncles in Quechua. I remember father telling my uncles that it�s safer to do it with the maids. I remember all the peasant maids� faces and voices blending in with my grandmother�s. I see my father�s hook nose and popped cheek bones. I see my brother�s and my hook noses. Yet to this day my parents, my brother and I don�t talk about what we all did. We fucked each other through those maids. We fucked each other hard until we ejaculated blood, our own blood.
So, I am here alone, pacing up and down my patio, half way into my tenth beer, thousands of miles and years away from Lima. Kids in the Regattas Club with my wife playing tennis or some other shit. With my vision pulsating, I can�t help but to smirk with a glowing smile directed to the walking maids below.
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