Arcadio by William Goyen Page B

something you never gave me. It was a Show, she spat at me. For deformities. Fake deformities. What is this world, I cried out, what in damnation is this world? It was not an act , I said, pulling back from what was going to be a fight between us. It was a cheap act and one to humiliate your mother, my mother shouted, until I came to get you out, and I shouted, it was not an act! And she cried humiliation! Cheap humiliation she screamed from a face that was wild with her feelings of fear and self-hate and run off a ways and turned her face from me and cried into her hands, bitterly and for herself, for all her life that she had just told me—and for more than I could know, but not for me. And while she sobbed her lonesome anguish, cut away, again, from the world, and by her own hands had done it, again, cut herself away, with one hand, you wan hear it, I opened my pants and with both hands pulled down my pants to my ankles and lay back. Look , I said softly, Mama look , I said softly with softness and love, without blame or anger, I don know why it wasn’t anger but I guess because it was the work of God, I said Mama look . I am revealed. My mother turned, whimpering, and gazed upon me lying revealed in the firelight; and then she came closer and looked down upon me and then my mother Chupa stepped back from me, and back, stepped back whispering O Dios O Dios O Dios and vanished into the trees, someplace way back, and the night was silent, where was my mother was she praying was she going to steal back and kill me? And then I heard her crying. Mama, I called, why you cryin; don cry for me. I already cried enough, God knows, tears enough to fill a hundred buckets. Nobody ever cried for me but me and tears enough I’ve cried to fill a bowl to wash your long black hair; don cry for me. There was no answer. And I laid on there, as alone as ever; quiet, though, now; and finally revealed the final mystery; the final mystery that Old Shanks could never get from me in the Show; and now felt older and more of myself, don know why exactly; and laid on, laid on awake and under the eternal stars, naked as God made me and revealed to Him; and the night passed. You wan hear it.
    At daybreak I built a fire, and my mother Chupa come back, smelling the fire. We was quiet and then I said to her quietly, and loving her, what’d you expect, the Dallas Morning News? And then to my surprise I felt myself breaking into crying, so full, for the whole story of my mother, and for my whole story, all what happened to me, for the whole troubled thing, our lives, that just suddenly drownded me down like heavy water over me. Then my mother swept like a wave of water into her sobbing and we cried deep and full together, lágrimas de dolor lágrimas dolorosas, negro es el color de nuestras tristezas , like the Mescan song says. I’m sorry for your black life of shit, I told my mother, rubbing off tears with the back of my hand for some reason laughing now.
    I’ve had some good of it, I heard her say while she begun to comb down her black bitter hair.
    Don you think I haven’t out of mine? I said. Corazón …? Sweetheart?
    You seem to be getting ready to go someplace? I asked, sensing the old abandonment, the way she used to brush her hair before she went out.
    To relieve myself, she said.
    I never saw my mother Chupa again. You wan hear it? Twas later said to me by somebody that twas the sin of uncovering, of revealing, that put a curse on my mother Chupa—or another one, seems to me, she was born already with a curse—as in the White Bible when Noah was looked upon uncovered and a curse fell upon the viewer of his nakedness—his very son. Sent my mother wandering away, the uncovering of my nakedness. God knows, I don’t. But although I will be telling you of hunts for her and espectations of her you might as well know now that never again did I find my mother Chupa. That morning by the fire I waited and