The Lacuna

Mother said her son intends to be a lawyer, causing everyone to laugh.

But it wasn’t a joke. Cortés and the Governor of Honduras were tearing one another apart before they’d even got started. Cortés burned people and birds alive, to be terrifying. The Azteca priests smeared their churches with blood, also to be terrifying.

The oil man named Thompson told Mother she should make a military man of that one, not some snake of a lawyer. President Ortiz Rubio sends his two sons to the Gettysburg Academy in America, just the ticket.

Mother asked the doctor’s wife if there were any little schools left, run by the Catholic Sisters. The Rock of Ages nearly started to cry, saying they are all gone due to the Revolution. But they still have a place for the ones who aren’t clever enough for the Preparatoria. The government has let Acción Catolica take over the schools for the deaf mutes, cretins, and children of bad character.

Mrs. Doctor said the Revolution has wrecked everyone’s morals and turned the churches into newspaper offices or moving-picture theatres. She told Mother they used to have laws to restrict things like gambling, concerts, divorce, and somersaulters. In the time of Porfirio a person didn’t have to see all that.

Mother might quite like to see some somersaulters and divorce. Her favorite song is “Anything Goes.” But she put her hand on Mrs. Doctor’s lace sleeve. As a helpless mother trying to raise a young boy alone, she needed advice.

13 August

Feast of St. Hippolitus, and entrance exams at the Preparatoria. It was a scorching: most terrible of all, the maths. Latin was a guessing game. Outside the window, noisy green parrots came all afternoon to tear apart a patch of yellow tube-shaped flowers.

25 August

Today begins the year of all suffering at the School of Cretins, Deaf-Mutes, and Boys of Bad Character on Avenida Puig. The classroom is like a prison hall full of writhing convicts, its iron-barred windows set high along one wall. Small boys and monkeys for pupils. No one else there could be fourteen or anything near it, they’re the size of baboons. The Holy Virgin feels very sorry but remains outside, on her cement pedestal in the small tidy garden. She has sent her son Jesus in with the other wretches, and he can’t flee either. He is pegged to his cross on the wall, dying all the day, rolling his eyes behind the back of Señora Bartolome, even He can’t stand the look of her clay-pipe legs and those shoes.

She teaches one subject only: “Extricta Moralidad!” The tropical climate inclines young persons of Mexican heritage to moral laxity, she says.

Señora Bartolome, perdon: We are at an elevation of 2,300 meters above sea level here, so it isn’t tropical, strictly speaking. The average monthly temperature ranges from twelve to eighteen degrees Centigrade. It’s from the Geographical Atlas.

Punished for insolence. Bad Character accomplished, the first day of term. Tomorrow perhaps Deaf-Mute. After that, one could aspire to Cretin.

1 September

No reading in class. Señora Bartolome says a book will distract from her lessons of hygiene, morality, and self-control. You’ll sing a different song in the administrator’s office. She hints it may contain iron maidens and the wresting rack.

After lunch the older boys fall into sword fights, and smaller ones play at Hawks and Hens. If one pupil stilts out for the afternoon, subtracting from the bedlam, the señora could only be the happier. Mother doesn’t notice either. Too busy fuming about P. T.’s big house with nineteen maids in Colonia Juárez, which we will probably never see because of P. T.’s wife. Mother’s big plans, washed out. Like flotsam in the alley after it rains.

Saturday is the best day at the Melchor Ocampo market. One old cigarette seller named La Perla is boss of that place, telling the girls to tidy their flower stalls. Guapo, ven aqui, take this money and go buy me a pulque. I see you here every day, novio, are you too good-looking for the schoolroom?

Handsome! To an old woman with the face of a lizard.

13 September

P. T. Cash came today to the casa chica, but left early. Everyone in a foul mood, God included. The rain kept pouring until it seemed the whole sky would drain like a tide. First Mother cried, then drank tea like a foreigner, trying to drown her Mexican passions. He shouted that her head is in the clouds, he is a man, not a fountain of money, the PNR is falling apart and everything he worked to build is running away like the water out in the streets. The American businesses will run across the border like Vasconcelos did. Mother knows this small house could fall at any moment. And we shall be beggars looking for scraps at the market. Bathing on St. John’s Day.

15 September

Independence Day, the town boiling with parades for the Revolution. At school the cretins performed in costume: traditional dances, impaired by the absence of girls. The teachers made a Patriotism Banquet: rice in the colors of the flag, red and green salsa. Cups of rice water, sugared almonds, a little of everything, and of nothing quite enough. At the head of the table by the bowl of pomegranates, Señora Bartolome had put a note: Take only one, our Lord Jesus is watching!

A second note appeared at the foot of the table beside the sugared almonds: Take all you want, Jesus is looking at the pomegranates. The other boys laughed and spit rice water. The prank earned great approval and a whipping. But the administrator has a weak arm. Halfway through, he had to sit and rest, saying, this squalid school, is there no better place for you?

16 September

Stilted out of school before morning roll call. North on Avenida Puig and straight on, past the Hospital for Lepers. Past the Plaza Santo Domingo, where the scribes write letters for the people who can’t. Many blocks of multifamiliares with tiny balconies like ours, each building painted pink, blue, or ochre. The wooden trolleys run in straight lines: north to south, east to west. The Azteca built it this way, with the Templo Mayor the center of everything. The Spaniards couldn’t change what’s underneath.

The Zócalo was crowded with men selling ices, women in long braids selling vegetables, charlatans selling miracles. The scent of copal. Music from the organ grinders. A man selling carnitas, the hungry boys following him like dogs. Some Preparatoria students put on a play in the street about Ortíz Rubio and Calles: the president was a puppet on strings, and old dictator Calles was his puppet master. The Preparatoria students had also stilted out from school.

The shortest way home was to walk by the Viga canal, filled with floating newspaper pages and one dead dog, swelled up like a yellow melon.