Watermarks Making Monique by Monique Lynch

I lay on my side with one socked foot dangling off the edge of the bed, looking down at Mom on the floor. She lay on a pallet of itchy, green army blankets my dad "borrowed" from his tour in Vietnam. No matter how many times they were washed, the blankets always smelled like smoke and machine oil; I had never seen them used anywhere but the floor. It took a while for my eyes to adjust to the dark, but when they finally focused, I could easily follow along the profile of my mother's distinctive nose. The Torres Nose, a nose passed down from her father and his father before him--a nose I am now glad I did not inherit. She lay perfectly still looking beautiful and peaceful, hands at her sides as if asleep.

I knew better, Mom never slept when Dad worked out of town, she was practicing. Eight seconds was the time to beat, and if anyone could beat it, it was my mother. Mom had a steely determination much like the .357 Magnum kept under her pillow. It took a full three seconds to slide her right hand up under her head, two seconds to secure her palm around the grip and place her finger on the trigger, another two seconds to roll up on one knee, and one second more to steady herself by jutting out her leg to the side, a move I am positive she stole after watching Farah Fawcett in Charlie's Angels. She would run through the exercise many more times before morning came. My mother's late night drills continued until 1983. That year, our city established emergency 9-1-1 service, and Mom believed the police could now protect us from would-be intruders. Still, she bragged her response time was a lot faster.

The first Saturday morning of the month, if she hadn't stayed up practicing the night before, Mom and I would head over to a turquoise-and-pink cinderblock building that sold baked goods, tennis shoes, candles, cassette tapes, and meat. Spanish polkas played on the radio while an old woman with mismatched eyes sat in a folding chair near a box fan. I shuffled my feet along the floor making scraping noises with my shoes as I went. The linoleum was grainy with dirt that nearly hid the checkerboard pattern. As my mother placed her order, I used the black and white tiles to play my own version of hopscotch. I knew why we were in this candy-colored cement building, but I tried to put it out of my mind by focusing on the dusty squares beneath my feet. The owner, Julio, had a grin that held three gold teeth, and he always winked at me with both his eyes. Julio placed my mother's purchase in a brown grocery sack and, as usual, gave me an empanada. As Mom and I left the store, the old lady in the folding chair pinched my arm and laughed. I gave the old woman the scariest, ugliest face an eight-year-old could muster.

"Qué lista," the old lady told my mother.

That annoyed me; I was trying to be anything but cute.

On the way home in the car, I bit into the empanada, immediately forgetting the old woman and letting the sweet potato filling of the pastry squirt into my mouth. Mom's brown sack sat ominously on the back seat, moving with the car's pull at every dip and turn in the road. I kept looking back, thinking that what was in that bag may still be alive, and if it were, it would be angry.

Once at home, Mom took the bag into the kitchen and I ran to my room. The bag crinkled and fussed as Mom took the uncooked severed cow's head out of its paper wrapping. I slammed my door shut. I did not want to see, hear, or be a part of my mother putting the cow's head in the oven. I knew there must be consequences for putting a head of a cow in an oven--a price to be paid in the afterlife, or maybe worse still, a wart would appear on my nose overnight. The head would broil all day, its vacant eye sockets staring back at me through the window of the oven door. I stayed out of the kitchen, even when tempted by cookies, to avoid that empty stare. Later that night, my family ate cabesa de vaca tacos. I ate cereal.

My father is bald. Having an affinity for anything hairless comes to him naturally. He prefers an apple's sleek skin over the fuzz of a peach and the gloss of wooden floors instead of shag carpet. As might be expected, Dad's favorite TV drama was Kojak. While other children my age were tucked in their beds, I was with Kojak and Stavros patrolling the Lower East Side. Dad and I watched the gritty, tough streets of 1978 New York City be rescued by the swaggering Telly Savalas. Talking wasn't allowed during the show, but I giggled each time Kojak purred, "Who loves ya, baby?" My Wonder Woman Underoos magically transformed into officer blues and Dad's cigarette morphed into Telly's signature lollipop. Our police car, the corduroy couch Dad and I shared in silence, sped through the streets in chase of suspects. For one hour one night a week, Dad and I were partners.

At the end of our street sat the corner beer joint, Los Dos Compadres; it wasn't much more than a ramshackle lean-to with a metal roof. People went to Los Dos Compadres for two reasons: to fight or to get pickled pigs' feet. Drinking, like the carwash after purchasing a full tank of gas, was an afterthought. On occasion my mother had gone there to fight, and on this day I went there for the feet. Mom sent me on the eight-house pilgrimage for pigs' feet at least once a week.

I got to the bar around two in the afternoon; the place was empty except for an unshaven man with a grease-stained shirt and the bartender who held the last remains of a cigar is his fat, hairy hand. As I walked from the entrance to the counter, my lungs filled with the spoiled air of wet cigarettes and burnt popcorn. The unshaven barfly slurred, "Pigs' feet for the sweet." Ignoring him, I did my best squinty-eyed impression of Clint Eastwood while slamming my money on the thickly-varnished, knotty pine counter. The bartender ceremoniously rolled up his left sleeve, revealing an arm with more hair than I had ever seen on another human being. He plunged his hirsute arm elbow deep into the murky liquid of the five gallon jar housing the pigs' feet. He swirled his arm round and round in the vinegary solution until the sickly sweet smell of vinegar mingled with the already noxious air of the bar. He wrapped the wet, rubbery feet in newspaper and secured the packages with rubber bands.

I left the bar with a bundle under each of my arms, making the bicycle ride home a test of balance. I wasn't skilled at riding a bike, each scab and bruise a testament to that fact. Just a week before, I had to cut my handlebar streamers to stubby nubs. The streamers' flying grace, both mesmerizing and distracting, was the reason for the scab on my right knee. Relieved that I had made it home with no new scrapes, I handed the newsprint parcels to my mother. The sickening vinegary smell had followed me home and now invaded our kitchen. It would do battle with the cumin smell that mysteriously filled our house even when Mom wasn't cooking. Later that night, my family ate pickled pigs' feet. I ate cereal.

Now grown, if I have a trouble getting to sleep when my husband is away, I take a cue from my mother and practice. I am in the practice of locking my doors to ward off those would-be intruders. The comforting metal-gray gun in my mother's lap is interpreted to a metal-gray cat in mine. Becoming a vegetarian is a direct result of being exposed to the unusual food choices my mother enjoyed. Had I grown up on polite chicken breast and civil sirloin steak, I believe I may have stayed a meat eater. The only cow's head I want to see is one that is attached to a grazing cow. My mother, still trigger-happy and carnivorous, thinks buying a gun would help me sleep at night and worries that I am not getting enough protein. Law & Order and Forensic Files are my TV favorites, but I still smile when I hear, "Who loves ya, baby?" Telly Savalas may have made it famous, but it was my father who put the meaning behind it.