2006 Fiction Contest Prize (shared withSally Bellerose)

All the Nice Restaurants

MICHELLE BELLINO

Caitlin took three years of high school Spanish and can still roll her r’s, but shetries not to speak it in front of me. When the delivery guy says the door is rotaand todavía cerrada, she looks at me before she answers, her finger on thebuzzer. She is asking permission. I don’t know what to say to that look, so I goout and walk by all the nice restaurants with my hands in my pockets until itgets cold. At the corner store, I buy her flowers, long-stemmed irises withpetals that curve out like the arched-spined backbending of gymnasts. Caitlinsays my name when I’m at the door, going. When I am back, she is eating with-out me. She fills a jar with water and says I can’t fix everything with flowers.

Caitlin loves rice and beans and makes me eat at the pricey tacquería near herhouse that charges four dollars for a side of guacamole that’s watered downwith the stuff from the jar. Even though it’s California style, it’s all Mexicansworking there. Gerardo behind the smeary counter sets up a plate of nachoswith cheese and asks what we want. Caitlin tells him the taco salad. He asks ifshe wants some tortilla with that. When he says tortilla he says it like aMexican. He moves his mouth like a Mexican, outward, flat like there are icecubes on his gums. He says it like the Speedy Gonzalez cartoons. Not likeCaitlin who moves her lips up and down but never wide into a smile. If a smilecomes, it’s tight in her lips, like a secret.

I tell him I want the carne asada. I say it like an American. I also say no gua-camole. He writes on his little pad, all in Spanish. Then he looks up at me likeI’m his bro and asks what kind of Mexican doesn’t like guacamole.

It’s true: I’m Mexican, and I hate guacamole. I hate the look of it, the greenthrow-up mush, like the puddles of vomit my father mops down the drain inthe gas station bathroom. The smell of a pair of hands preparing it, ripe avoca-does in a warm kitchen. And the guacamole trash after, the rubbery greenjacket, tomato seeds, onion skin.

It wasn’t always this way. My mother made guacamole before she left. I didn’thate it then. My father would say, “Doesn’t she make the best guacamole intodo el mundo?” and I would say, “Yes,” and dip my tortilla in. That was beforeshe left with the man down the street who wore a hammer in the side loop ofhis pants and had no kids.

When she left, she took all the clean towels and emptied her half of the closetexcept for a pair of shoes with a straw heel.

I asked my father when she was coming back, cuando? His face was stretchedthin as the dark space of a baseball mitt closing in on a catch. He put hishands in his hair where the gray was coming in. He answered me in English,

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which meant I had to answer in English. The words were sharp edges on mytongue, but I said them, and I kept saying them, and he kept saying them untilwe were two Mexicans living in an English house. Smart Mexicans who knewhow to say the th, no matter how it sounded in a word.

Caitlin tries to hand Gerardo her menu. She wants to stop me before I reallylet him have it. Caitlin’s eyes try to find me because I am far gone from here,this table with a paper tablecloth and California license plates on the wall togive it that real So-Cal feel. I am in the kitchen with the yellow walls, throwingout day-old guacamole, which is even worse than new guacamole. The color isbrowner, and the lime juice separates at the sides like when milk goes bad. I sayto the waiter, “How do you know what kind of Mexican I am?”

New York City’s hard. Like when people come up to me on the street andask me something in Spanish, just because I have a Mexican look. I’m also halfNavajo, but you don’t see any Indians coming up and speaking their Indianlanguage to me, do you? People think they can say anything. People shouldleave you alone and mind their own business. When I’m in the mood to startsomething, I tell the person they don’t know anything about me and that Icould have grown up in China for all they know, I could have been adopted bySwedes and brought up in the mountains. What do people know? Caitlin saysI’m overcompensating because I feel guilty about not knowing Spanish. Shesays I make myself feel worse instead of saying nothing.

We eat in a small Italian restaurant near her place. She looks Italian if youask me, thick dark hair and olive skin. But no one ever assumes she speaksItalian, just because she looks it. The Mexicans who work in the Italian restau-rant give us a nod when we walk in, and you can see the glint in their eyeschange when they see me with her. They’re thinking, damn, que suerte for meto be walking with a girl like that.

The waiter fills our cups with ice water. He says, “Como estas?” to me. I say,“Fine,” and stare at Caitlin. Her eyes are stuck on mine like they are heavystones she is laying on my shoulders, down boy.

Caitlin tells me she doesn’t like going out with me to restaurants. I tell herit’s not my fault New York City has so many Mexicans waiting tables.

When my mother cooked, cilantro stuck to her hands. She would wash herhands and kiss me and put her hands on my cheeks and say, “Mi chiquitiiiiii-itoooo,” dragging the word out and out like the last line of a song. My fathersays I was too young to remember that, but I know that’s what it was like.After she kissed me, my cheeks were wet from her hands, and cilantro stuck tomy chin like green bugs.

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