The Moths and Other Stories by Helena María Viramontes Page A

shatter like sparks from wall to wall, but I want to be left alone.
He’s bleeding all over the
…I keep my eyelids cemented together and I wish I could stuff rags in her volcanic mouth.But Yreina’s an eruption. I heard the explosion, goddammit, so leave me alone. I was sinking into the mattress until I could barely see the tops of my warm sheets. Then, with the burst, I was vomiting on top of them. Stay asleep. So good to sleep. I act as if Yreina is just another addition to my sleep. I feel hands, cold and tight around my neck as Yreina screams
Wake up, Martha, jesusmío, Mama shot
…
II
    The saloon consisted of various kitchen tables and chairs colored from egg-yolk yellows to checkered red and whites. Although it was the rainy mid-March season, deflated balloons and faded crepe paper remained on the ceiling as a reminder of a never-ceasing New Year celebration. Christmas lights shone against two mirrors on one wall directly behind the bar. The dance floor was a small area made up of cracked, unsettled tiles often caked with mud until Olivia cleaned them early the next morning. Olivia, the evening barmaid and morning cleaning woman of Los Amigos, mopped the floors with a thick heavy cloth connected to a mop stick. Her shoulders tired of pushpulling the mop; the ache soon dropped from her shoulders and concentrated in her legs and feet—those same dancing feet that patted the mud tighter into the cracks of the tiles.
    It was the rainy season and business seemed slower than usual, for although there was still an even flow of customers, the tips dwindled to almost nothing. This time, however, Olivia didn’t mind all that much; she looked forward to seeing the man who had, without knowing it, unburied her feelings of loneliness and at the same time given her anticipated pleasure by just being in the same room with her. Presently, he was the man she secretly loved.
    She had not felt like this in a very long time; moonwarm and tender for another person. She loved once before, but not secretly. She lived openly with him, bringing forth two sons. And what a scandal that had caused! If she would have to live an outcast, she would do so for him. But he left one afternoon. The room was getting hotter.
    Oh, but could he love. Love her anywhere, anyplace. She remembered when she thought her head had exploded and bled between her legs when he first made love to her on theroof of her house. She could remember that slow-slap, faint-slap, almost monotonous-slap of her mother making tortillas in the kitchen right beneath them turn into an intense applause…and then she hated him, his two sons—thank goodness she gave them her name—and finally love itself. Her arms thrust the mopstick harder.
    But Tomás. He was not a coward. Someday, she would have to let him know how she felt. But she couldn’t, shouldn’t wait too long. Already her youth was peeling off her face like the paint on the saloon walls. Olivia stopped to inspect the job. The dance floor was ready for tonight.
    Olivia thought of her two sons as she locked the front doors of the saloon, proud of herself for being the only other person to hold the key to the establishment, and she smiled that smile when she remembered the roof incident. The key; just her and the old man. The old, tight, stinky sonofabitch, she thought. It was noon and the streets of Tijuana were flooded with puddles of muddy water. Two kids bathed near the street corner and the Saturday tourists waved like national flags along the sidewalks. The air was unusually fresh and she looked up at the sky. It will be a good night tonight, she thought as she hurried home.
    Tomás’s wife was a statue-tall woman with floods of thick black hair that reached to the folds of her buttocks. She watched her reflection in the mirror, brushing her hair with slow moving strokes. She enjoyed the luxury of time and the full view of herself. It was like a vacation long deserved, to