1. Tell TELL It''s easy to get sucked into playing morbid games. When I was little, I happily went along with a few. I played one with Renee Jr., the daughter of the woman who gave me my second perm. She and Renee Sr. lived in a tall apartment building across the street from the used bookstore where I sometimes spent my allowance. Sycamore trees towered in a nearby park, and when their leaves turned penny-colored and crunchy, falling and carpeting the grass, they created the illusion that we lived somewhere that experienced passionate seasons.
Santa Maria''s seasons could be hard to detect. The closest we came to getting snow were whispers of frost that half dusted our station wagon''s windshield, hardly enough to write your name in. Renee Sr.''s face was as gorgeous as my mother''s. The scar above her lip accented her beauty. Above her living room TV hung a framed cross-stitch, God Bless Our Pad . I sat on a black dining room chair in the kitchen, trying to look out the window above the sink. The sky was a boring blue.
Cars chugged along Main Street. A gust of wind sent sycamore leaves scattering. Renee Sr. gathered my hair in her hands, winding it around rollers. The ragged cash my mother had paid her was stacked on the kitchen counter. Beside the money, chicken thighs defrosted. My feet rubbed the spotless linoleum floor. I liked the sensation of my tight socks gliding against it.
"Hold still," said Renee Sr. "Quit squirming." Renee Sr. had a perm and an odd, impatient voice. She sounded how I imagined an ant would. Dangerously high-pitched. Venomous. Once her mother was done setting my hair, a grinning Renee Jr.
waved at me, inviting me to her bedroom. I accepted. Renee Jr. had inherited her mother''s beauty, accented by long teeth instead of a knotty scar. Renee Jr. and I knelt on her chocolate-colored carpet. The apartment, including her room, smelled of buttered flour tortillas and fabric softener. The scent made me feel held, safe, and I couldn''t wait to rinse the perm solution out of my hair so that I could sniff that fragrance again.
The stuff Renee Sr. had squirted on me made my head stink and my scalp burn. Renee Jr. dumped a pile of Barbie dolls between us. Lifting one by her asymmetrical pageboy, I asked, "You''re allowed to cut their hair?" Renee Jr. petted a blonde and nodded. "They''re mine," she said. "I can do whatever I want to them.
" I tried not to act envious. I wasn''t allowed to cut my dolls'' hair or my own. My mother had put that rule in place after I tried giving myself Cleopatra bangs. With the bedroom door closed, Renee Jr.''s dolls enacted scenes inspired by US and Latin-American soap operas. They yelled, wept, shook, and made murderous threats. They lied and broke promises. They trembled, got naked, and banged stiff pubic areas.
Clack, clack, clack. They slapped and bit. They hurt one another on purpose and laughed instead of apologizing. They cheated, broke up, got back together, and cheated again. They were lesbians. They had no choice. Renee Jr. had no male dolls.
Renee Jr. carried a distraught lesbian to the open window. I hurried after her. She shrieked, "I can''t take it anymore! I''m gonna jump!" Silhouetted against the boring blue, we watched the doll go up, pause, and then plummet. Face-first, she smacked the ground unceremoniously. She''s dead , I thought. Renee Jr. and I looked at each other.
Smiled. We had discovered something fun. Throwing dolls out the window and watching them fall ten stories was something we probably weren''t supposed to be doing. Soon, all of Renee Jr.''s dolls were scattered along the sidewalk beneath her window, contorted in death poses, and we had nothing left to play with but ourselves. My parents owned a book with glossy reproductions of paintings and drawings by Frida Kahlo. One of the paintings, The Suicide of Dorothy Hale , looked like the game invented by Renee Jr. I was growing out my perm.
I liked the one Renee Sr. had given me better than the first one I''d gotten, but I didn''t plan on getting a third. Gilda''s mother and mine were downstairs drinking coffee and gossiping in Spanish. Gilda''s mother spoke Spanish Spanish. She was Spanish and had a challenging nickname. In Spanish Spanish, the nickname didn''t mean anything. It was cute gibberish. In Mexican Spanish, it meant underwear.
Regina, Gilda''s across-the-cul-de-sac neighbor, was with us. We were gathered in Gilda''s bedroom, and I was wearing a shawl, white wig, and granny glasses. Gilda had told me to put these things on. She said it would make the ghost stories I wanted to tell more realistic. I rocked in the corner rocking chair, reciting ghost stories until I ran out. We shared some silence. I continued to rock. Regina said, "We should play a game.
" I was hesitant. Regina''s games usually led to sudden humping, and I didn''t want to be humped by Regina. "What game?" asked Gilda. "Delivery room," answered Regina. "How do you play?" asked Gilda. Regina said, "Well, there''s three of us, so one of us can be the doctor, one of us can be the pregnant lady, and one of us can be the husband!" "Okay!" we said. Regina told Gilda to get a pillow or stuffed animal and stick it under her sweater. Gilda chose a pair of lace-edged pillows and followed instructions, creating a lumpy bulge.
"Looks like twins!" said Regina. She ordered Gilda onto her bed and said, "Spread your legs." Regina rolled up her sleeves and said, "Ma''am, you''re gonna have to push." Looking at me, she said, "Sir, you have to support your wife. This is one of the hardest moments of her life. It could kill her." I composed myself and fell into my role. I was a married man.
I had to support my wife. She could die. The twins could kill her. I hadn''t considered this when I''d gotten her pregnant. After five minutes of huffing, groaning, panting, and pushing, Gilda gave birth to fat, healthy twins. We rotated roles, quickly realizing that the best role was pregnant lady. The worst was husband. All he did was cheerlead.
I gave birth five times. The first two times, my babies survived. The third time, my baby died. We made the corner where the rocking chair stood the cemetery. We had funerals for babies and women who died in childbirth. I died twice. When was the last time you played a death game? Were you alone or did you play with others? How much did you trust them? In Philosophical Investigations , Ludwig Wittgenstein postulates that "?''games'' form a family." To that I would add that players form a family.
The game I played with Renee Jr. is related to the game I played with Gilda and Regina. I mostly trusted the kids I played with, but my guard stayed up around Regina, especially when she was doctor, and I was pregnant lady. Pregnant lady is vulnerable. Doctor is powerful. Danger breathes in the space between them. My father tells stories about growing up in Norwalk, California. Celebrities sometimes visited.
In 1955, Bela Lugosi came to town. Known the world over for his portrayals of Dracula, the Hungarian actor was admitted to Metropolitan State Hospital, formerly Norwalk State Hospital, for treatment of his morphine addiction. During his stay, the vampire read scripts. He would later star in B moviemaker Ed Wood''s science-fiction film Plan 9 from Outer Space . My father lived in a tract home next door to a Mexican family with five or so kids. One of the kids accidentally killed her sister by sticking her fingers in the baby''s fontanel. Can you imagine? The oldest boy in the family was named Zippy. Zippy was bright and gangly and mostly wore shorts and T-shirts.
He invented a game. By Orr and Day Road grew a eucalyptus tree whose trunk could hide several boys. Zippy and his friends would cluster behind it and wait. Neighborhood kids would come out to watch. My father hid behind a juniper with other little observers. They were tense with excitement. A Buick began making its way through the intersection. Zippy released the tricycle.
It sped into the street. A realistic child mannequin wearing overalls was loosely tied to its handlebars, and the Buick collided with it, loosening the rope and sending the "child" sailing through the air. When the mannequin hit the asphalt, its limbs contorted. Its head rolled off. "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!" screamed the old white lady who''d left her Buick running in the middle of the intersection. She ran in zigzags with her hands on her head. "I killed him! I killed him! I killed him!" she shrieked. "I killed the baby!" A curbside bush filled with children shook with laughter.
When my father took us to Norwalk to visit my uncle Henry, we would drive through Zippy''s intersection. I half expected to see his tricycle and mannequin roll into the street until I remembered that Zippy was now an adult and that Zippy was in prison. I never met Zippy. I knew him only as a character from Dad''s Norwalk stories. When telling Zippy tales, my father would insist that the stuff his neighbor had done was terrible, just sadistic, except Dad didn''t look or sound horrified. The corners of his lips turned up and I could hear nostalgia. His voice told on him. He recalled those death games fondly.
My father was four years old when he left Mexico and arrived i.