their cultivation.
Now, ten years after, Terasina’s only flowers were great hairy-stemmed barnyard hollyhocks. And her dreams contained far stranger creatures.
She would find herself waiting in some great shadowed corral in a sheer night dress, for one whose hair, worn long, kept blowing across his face like a mane; whose scent had salt and sweat in it. A stallion made of moonlight, to rear against her neighing and all her hopes rearing with him. Then the salt-sweat scent turned sick and she wakened with a barber-shop scent fleeing faintly along the boarded doors. Weak with disappointment, she would dress in the holy cold and shrive herself like a nun to make herself proud again. Ready to play waitress downstairs to the brotherhood of trailer, truck and bus, below a sign that said:
Pie a la mode… 10
.
Pie a la mode with ice cream… 15
Lonches y sanguiches
25 y 35
And when lettuce ran out used cabbage instead.
‘Mexicans are lovely people,’ one of these smug-looking dunces with a badge in his cap was fond of assuring her, ‘and may I add, Señora, you got a right purty make on you?’
‘You lovely people too,’ Terasina would promise the Badge.
For ten years now this tightly wound woman with the snow-drifted hair had been serving section hands, firemen, railroad detectives, brakemen, tramps, tourists, engineers, conductors and truck drivers.
Antojitoes Mexicanoes
the back of her menu read, but she’d taken no Mexican fancy to any of them in all ten years.
Abierta hasta a las 12 de la noche
– empuje, her door invited them to push in and stay late. Yet kept her own self shut around the clock.
‘You must be connected with the railroads,’ one would try – ‘you got such a purty caboose.’
‘You remind me of Dolores Del Rio,’ another reported when his motor was running smoothly. Would the señora mind if he started a small bank account in her name to keep his wife from spending it all on whiskey? Would the señora object to be named beneficiary in a will? Or to taking a trial run in a new trailer over to Matamoros for the weekend?
She marveled at truckers whose vanity knew no truck-turning. The driver sat so long above so much pent-up power that after a while he came to believe the motor’s power was his own. Look out, I may shift into first. When he wanted to know what type of heating she had upstairs she said, ‘Same kind I got down.’ Well, he was only asking, because he happened to have a buddy in the oil-stove line.
Gracias
, no, he was very kind, but she already had one stove up there and what would be the use of another? Why own something she wouldn’t use?
And did she use everything she owned now, or was she wearing falsies?
‘God has been generous,’ she replied, and let her breasts rise with her pride. Yet let him tickle her palm when he took his change, flashed him her wide white smile and palmed two bits for her trouble.
The little restaurant drew drivers because it was the end of a long narrow road. There was always some cross-country monstrosity backing and turning between gas-pump and mesquite.
The only thing in pants around the place who pleased her was the browless, raggedy boy with the streaky red hair who had come in one day with a sheet of Sunday funnies in his hand – ‘I don’t know how letters make words,’ he told her, ‘so I’d appreciate it mightily if you’d quote these to me, M’am.’
At first she had not understood why he had come to her, of all people. Then she had realized he was ashamed to ask anyone else. So she had gone over the pictures with him section by section until she had gotten stuck on a word herself. That was when she had brought out one of her two books –
How To Write Better Business Letters
. But before they could make any progress with that a driver with a flat tire pulled up and the raggedy boy was gone to beg.
Sometimes she saw him circling a trailer in an anxious dog trot, one shoulder higher than the other and a tire
Now, ten years after, Terasina’s only flowers were great hairy-stemmed barnyard hollyhocks. And her dreams contained far stranger creatures.
She would find herself waiting in some great shadowed corral in a sheer night dress, for one whose hair, worn long, kept blowing across his face like a mane; whose scent had salt and sweat in it. A stallion made of moonlight, to rear against her neighing and all her hopes rearing with him. Then the salt-sweat scent turned sick and she wakened with a barber-shop scent fleeing faintly along the boarded doors. Weak with disappointment, she would dress in the holy cold and shrive herself like a nun to make herself proud again. Ready to play waitress downstairs to the brotherhood of trailer, truck and bus, below a sign that said:
Pie a la mode… 10
.
Pie a la mode with ice cream… 15
Lonches y sanguiches
25 y 35
And when lettuce ran out used cabbage instead.
‘Mexicans are lovely people,’ one of these smug-looking dunces with a badge in his cap was fond of assuring her, ‘and may I add, Señora, you got a right purty make on you?’
‘You lovely people too,’ Terasina would promise the Badge.
For ten years now this tightly wound woman with the snow-drifted hair had been serving section hands, firemen, railroad detectives, brakemen, tramps, tourists, engineers, conductors and truck drivers.
Antojitoes Mexicanoes
the back of her menu read, but she’d taken no Mexican fancy to any of them in all ten years.
Abierta hasta a las 12 de la noche
– empuje, her door invited them to push in and stay late. Yet kept her own self shut around the clock.
‘You must be connected with the railroads,’ one would try – ‘you got such a purty caboose.’
‘You remind me of Dolores Del Rio,’ another reported when his motor was running smoothly. Would the señora mind if he started a small bank account in her name to keep his wife from spending it all on whiskey? Would the señora object to be named beneficiary in a will? Or to taking a trial run in a new trailer over to Matamoros for the weekend?
She marveled at truckers whose vanity knew no truck-turning. The driver sat so long above so much pent-up power that after a while he came to believe the motor’s power was his own. Look out, I may shift into first. When he wanted to know what type of heating she had upstairs she said, ‘Same kind I got down.’ Well, he was only asking, because he happened to have a buddy in the oil-stove line.
Gracias
, no, he was very kind, but she already had one stove up there and what would be the use of another? Why own something she wouldn’t use?
And did she use everything she owned now, or was she wearing falsies?
‘God has been generous,’ she replied, and let her breasts rise with her pride. Yet let him tickle her palm when he took his change, flashed him her wide white smile and palmed two bits for her trouble.
The little restaurant drew drivers because it was the end of a long narrow road. There was always some cross-country monstrosity backing and turning between gas-pump and mesquite.
The only thing in pants around the place who pleased her was the browless, raggedy boy with the streaky red hair who had come in one day with a sheet of Sunday funnies in his hand – ‘I don’t know how letters make words,’ he told her, ‘so I’d appreciate it mightily if you’d quote these to me, M’am.’
At first she had not understood why he had come to her, of all people. Then she had realized he was ashamed to ask anyone else. So she had gone over the pictures with him section by section until she had gotten stuck on a word herself. That was when she had brought out one of her two books –
How To Write Better Business Letters
. But before they could make any progress with that a driver with a flat tire pulled up and the raggedy boy was gone to beg.
Sometimes she saw him circling a trailer in an anxious dog trot, one shoulder higher than the other and a tire
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