Hey hey, look who's all dressed up like a princess," I told my baby sister. She kicked her tiny arms and legs at me and nearly smiled. It was that same Sunday night, and I noted on an open Sears box on the bed. "Don't tell me you're gonna baptize her in Mexico?" I asked for a joke, but what else could such a dress be meant for, all ribbons and lace?

"Why not?" my mother answered.

I was shocked. "You mean all by yourself? Without my father or none of us?"

"My mother will be there." She stripped the little dress off Dolores and hid it in the bottom of her suitcase. "Now get out," she said. "I'm sleepy. Quick! Pa'fuera, Out!" And shut the door on me.

Whenever my mother mentioned my father, her voice got edgy. I wondered why. I never remembered them what you might call lovey-dovey, but in the old days they weren't like this. Maybe even at that age married people had their little secrets. There were too many secrets in this house of ours, and I didn't care for it at all.

Dr. Kildare cured his patient of the week on TV, and I was on my way to bed when my father came charging up the steps. "Where's your sister at?" he yelled at me.

"How should I know?"

He grabbed my arm.

"A brother guards his sister, that's how. In Mexico, even the lowest knows that, but up here you don't know nothing."

He turned me loose and yanked open the bedroom door. "Where's my daughter:" he yelled into the dark. My mother groaned herself awake.

"In the crib." she said. My father swore at her and shook the bed. She came out pulling on her robe. Her eyes were still asleep and her mouth and hair.

"Maybe she's over Aurora's house, I think," my mother yawned.

"Liar!"
"What's this big noise all about?"
Public scandal's what," my father shouted, "and with one of those bracero devils, those no-good son of a bitch rapers."
"Who says?"
"Never mind who, it's all over town. But what do you care?" Do you know where your daughter goes at night? No, not you. Just turn her loose on the town!"
"Calm yourself. Drink coffee."

They were in the kitchen now. I heard a slap and a coffee mug went rolling, but from my mother not a sound. She was too proud to scream like most. And now she came on real strong.

"You bore me," she said. "All you damn men. Think you're king over us because you got that ugly thing that dangles down your pants. A bull's got bigger, or a burro."
SLAP.

"Hey, cut it out," I called. What else? If I went in there it only made things worse. I felt sympathy for my mother, but tonight, in another way, I was on my father's side. This so-called romance of my sister should have been stomped before it got started, and I had a feeling of my mother knew more than she admitted. Lately, there had been a lot of misterioso whispering between these two women and our house was split down the middle, where back in the old days Lena was always Papa's little girl and used to sit at his feet and trim his rocky toenails.

"What you want in there?" my mother called.

My father was in the bedroom now, racketing through the closet. For the .45? I wondered.

"You'll never find it," my mother promised him.

My father knew better than to try to beat it out of her. He would have to kill her first, she was that kind of Indian. I heard the closet shelf come crashing down. Dolores woke up and yelled. My father's face was wild, wild red, and his teeth were grinding. His fists looked like battle-axes. My mother tried to stop him.

"You'll only make a scandal."

He brushed her off his sleeve and banged out the door. I ran after, but already he was in the Buick and gone. I shook all over. My father's voice set me on fire. I couldn't sit home doing nothing. I had to find them and save my sister even if I had to kill the guy. But that Armando was twenty-four years old, his papers said. I went for my baseball bat. And what about the cops? Which always show up when you need them least? And what about their smart remarks? "Well, well, if it isn't the home-run king," they no doubt might say. "Climb in and we'll drive you to the ball park." No. A knife was more private. I grabbed the chicken-killer from the kitchen drawer and slided it inside my pants where the belt would hold the handle. My mother sat at the table, eyes shut, touching her bruised face here and there with her finger tips.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

She didn't say she wasn't, so I went running down Shamrock and up Main to Huxley Street. Lots of apartments there rent to braceros, and junky old hotels. Behind any one of these closed doors that rat could have my sister. Possibly he got her drunk or gave her some kind of pill. I could see him riding her with his pants shoved down over those checkered shoes. Raging all the way, I cut into yards and listened outside suspicious windows, but all I heard was televisions and snoring. I kept tight hold of my knife so it wouldn't slip down my pants. This would be my first time to stab into flesh. "Don't stab high," everyone always told me. "Drive in for the belly." I needed practice. Lucky for me, it was garbage night. I stabbed paper sacks and plastic bags and ripped them open from the navel up. I left a fine trail of garbage up Huxley Street and people might hate me in the morning, but by the time I hit Broadway I was quite expert with that blade.

From Webster & Ponce's Funeral Home on the corner I cruised down toward Bailey Street, but they would never risk all the bright lights of Broadway, no they would be locked into some dark bedroom, which there were hundreds of in Eastside, if not thousands.

I was just going to turn back when by some miracle I saw them at the Mexicatessen. It's the least dark place in town. Neons shoot red and blue arrows and bulbs wink on and off till your eyes can't stand it.

They were sitting outside at one of those cement tables where you bring your food from the service window, the only ones out there. It was wet from today's rain and a cold wind was blowing but they didn't seem to notice. They didn't even notice when I walked up to them. My hand was folded round the knife handle ready for anything, and under my pants the blade froze my skin.

"My father wants you," I told my sister, very rugged.
That bracero jumped up electrocuted, not Lena.
"This here's my brother," she told the guy as calm as if she'd been expecting me. He held out his hand. Automatic, my own hand reached out like an idiot. I pulled it back too late. The knife slid down my pants leg and rattled on the cement. We all inspected it. I made a grab but Lena's foot got there first.

"Jees Christ," she yelled. "Do you want to kill somebody?"
"Why not?" I said.

She whipped the knife into her bag and started scolding, but to my surprise the guy took my side.

"If it was my sister, I would do the same," he said. "What does your brother know of my intentions? Rodolfo," he seemed to know my name, "I swear to you by my mother that I am honest and sincere with your sister. Never once did I touch her the wrong way, or even suggest it."

"Sit down, little brother," Lena told me. She yanked my wrist. My knees seemed watery and there I was on the bench facing them.

"Permit me to buy you a hamburger," Armando begged, "or even a steak sandwich."

To sit at the same table was bad enough. To eat was going too far.

"Rodolfo," he said in that decorated Spanish they use down there, "I am not like those others from my country who come up here to take advantage. Pure brutes they are, for the major part, and lacking in cultura and educacion." Where he himself had gone one year to the politecnico and his family was highly respected, to hear him tell it, with a licenciado for a cousin and a far uncle that was a priest. But his mother was a widow and life was hard down there so every week he sent his money home. Oh yes, I know all about his "money home" from that lady's letters. But I didn't mention it at the time.

I knew it was my place to hate the guy but he was so polite, what could I do? Especially since I'd lost my blade. While he talked I inspected him closely. He was light color, as light as Lena and more the Latin type than Indian. His pearly teeth were the first thing you noticed. They were on view all the time, a whole mouthful of them. He had narrow eyebrows that met over his nose which as thin and straight and even looked okay from the side, and not like mine. Girls would no doubt call him very handsome. And his hands were like a woman's. You knew he wore gloves to work.

"Rudolfo," how he loved that name, "I confess I am here illegal. I wanted to come the right way but the list was too long. My Mexican papers are all in order." He pulled a letter which stated he had good character and had never been in jail. It was from his chief of police, as if that might make a hit with me.

"What else can I say?" he said, "except that I have fallen honorably in love with your sister, not only for the beauty of her face, but for the beauty of her soul and for gentle and quiet ways."

Quiet ways? Lena?

I looked at her and she winked. Wait till the guy heard her banging around the kitchen. So anyway he respected my sister and my mother and my father and me. He didn't mention the baby, but no doubt he respected her too.

"Shall I show him something?" Lena asked the guy in Spanish, then held out her wedding finger and there was a ring on it with a tiny sparkle that could be a diamond.

"We're gonna get married by church," Lena told me, "just like Espie's wedding only I've decided on yellow for the bridesmaids because it's cheerfuller, and we're gonna have twelve instead of eight."

"Que dices?" Armando asked her.

My sister had slipped out of her Spanish. It seems she was giving him English lessons, but if so he hadn't gotten very far. So then I had to sit back and listen to them rave in both languages, how the chamberlains would wear those new King Edward-style tuxedos adn they would hire a Cadillac covertible to drive to church and have mariachis at their reception and a rock band for their dance, and of course, Mexican style, Armando would pay for everything.

"What's he do?" I asked my sister. "Rob banks?"

"It seemed that temporarily Armando was making the potato salad over at X-Cell Packing which he did in a cement mixer, feeding in the potatoes and hard boiled eggs by shovel and the mayonnaise by hose.

"But my true career is artista," Armando said.

He had only five lessons more to go on his draw-by-mail course and would soon earn up to $200 a week in his spare time. To prove it he opened up his sketch pad which he always carried with him. The first page was a big head of Lena. I have to admit it was very pretty, but you would hardly know it for my sister, the way he had tamed down that fighting nose of hers. He showed me other pictures too, all dollies in bikinis with left legs crossed over for stylish. They were quite sexy too, except no hands or feet because that would be covered in the next lesson. Till finally I got bored of pictures and threw him the one big question.

"What about my father?"

"I will pay him a formal visit," Armando promised, "to ask for your sister's hand."
"And he'll give you both fists."
"If I treat your father with respect," Armando thought, "he will respect me too. I would let him set the wedding day. We could wait six months, one year even, and both save money till the happy day when I stand beside the altar and your father leads your sister down the aisle with a carnation in his buttonhole."

I seriously doubted any of us would live to see that day.
"He's looking for you right now," I told Lena. "He could drive by any minute."
That stopped the conversation.
"I am not afraid of him," Armando boasted. "I am master of Kung Fu," but Lena dragged him off in the shadows to say goodnight. She tried to kiss the guy but he didn't let her, possibly out of respect for me.
"Now shake hands with your future brother-in-law," she ordered me.
I hated to, but to please her finally I did, keeping fingers crossed behind my bank. So then Armando went his way and we went ours down Huxley street.
"How come all this garbage?" Lena asked after stepping on a grapefruit skin. "Did Jack the Ripper pass by here?"
I changed the subject.
"My father's gonna murder you."
"Oh well," she said, "you only live once."
Lena hung lovey-dovey on my arm like I might be her boyfriend, but all she could talk about was Armando and what a fine dancer he was and how he talked like poems, besides being so polite and well-dressed.
"Oh sure," I said. "The guy's a prince and no doubt his little wife in Mexico thinks the same."
Lena threw my arm away.

"There's no little wife!" she yelled. "I asked him. And besides he's very Catholic-minded."
"He's only marrying you to get immigrated."
"Thank's a lot, little brother. You make me feel real charming."
"There's plenty of guys from up here, and you've known them all your life," I pointed out.
"Fat Manuel? Your friend Gorilla?"
I named various others.

"A lot you know," she said. "All they ever want is just one thing. 'Come on, honee, let's make out, huh?' And 'Ooooo,' and 'Aaaaah,' and, 'Eeeee,' like some dirty kind of animal. My toes get sore from kicking shins. Where with Armando, holding hands is good enough for him, and he talks to me so fine, 'My little green-eye orchid of the jungle,' he calls me in Spanish."
"What do you call him? My potato salad?"
Lena blazed and slapped. There was no room beside her on the sidewalk after that. Single file we passed the brewery and the Aztecs' club. On Shamrock my sister's feet started dragging and I didn't blame them. "Maybe I won't tell the whole truth exactly just yet," she said.

The Buick wasn't home yet. Still the lights were on in the house and possibly he could be waiting.

"I'll go first just in case," I said.

My mother was alone, at the kitchen table. Her left eye was turning black.
"Mama, look at your face!" Lena screamed, then turned on me. "And I suppose you just stood around as usual!"

I ignored her and went outside to watch for my father. I turned off the porch light and sat in the shadows and their voices came rattling through the screen door.

"But I gotta face him sometime!"
"Not tonight. Tomorrow he'll be grumpy, but mornings he doesn't slap. Or better wait till the afternoon. He'll cool down at work. Go spend the night at Virgie's."

Lena groaned. "Why not Aurora's?"
"Because he'll bust in her door, which he wouldn't dare with my comadre. And after work tomorrow I'll phone you what mood he's in. And I'll make him chile verde which he loves and hand over Dolores for him to play with . . ."

On and on they went like that. What politicians! My dumb innocent little mother had my father figured to his slightest sneeze. They may claim mexicanas are slaves to their husbands, but sitting out there on the porch and listening to those two, I wondered if I myself would ever dare to marry with any member of tha tribe.

by Danny Santiago

from "Famous All Over Town"