Woman Hollering Creek

Speaking in dialogue, two friends debate the identity of the real Marlboro Man. Didn’t he once date a friend of a friend? No, he was gay. He died of AIDS. No, he died of cancer, as a result of smoking all those cigarettes. He bought a giant house outside of Fredericksburg, full of rolling hills, full of deer and wild turkey. No, he bought a ranch in Texas where he set up his own recording studio. He was interviewed on 60 Minutes. No, that wasn’t the real Marlboro man, was it?

The narrator recounts bawdy gossip about a woman named Carmen who “likes to say she’s Spanish but she’s from Laredo like the rest of us” (61). Carmen’s life choices seem to be made possible by her very large bosom, which draws men to her. She gravitates towards adoring men who are already in relationships with other women. Her sometimes paramour is an attractive Texas corporal named Jose. According to the narrator, Carmen treats him terribly “but when you treat men bad, they love it” (62). Jose is furious and becomes violent when Carmen takes up with a different man, a senator who is married with children. Jose tries to kill Carmen and a rumor circulates that “he carved his initials across those famous chichis with a knife but that sure sounds like talk, doesn’t it” (62). The narrator doesn’t know what became of Jose, only that he went off the radar altogether. As for Carmen, she is indefatigable. She has a new man, a professional wrestler, and is seen out, drinking and dancing the night away.

The narrator of the story, Ruby, is daydreaming throughout the entire story. She admits that sometimes, when cooking dinner, she lets herself fantasize that there is a crowd of adoring fans cheering for her. She then details the show she imagines putting on for these adoring fans. In this fantasy, she ceases to be Ruby and instead becomes Tristan, a feminine and flamboyantly-dressed man who is capable of making any woman fall in love with him. Tristan dances passionately for the crowd, seducing even Death itself. The crowd goes wild for the dancing and cheers for the seductive power and beauty of Tristan. 

Clemencia has been warned by her mother many times to never marry a Mexican. Her mother is Mexican as well but Mexican American, and was looked down on by her in-laws, who saw her as a step down as she came only from a middle-class family and didn’t speak Spanish and wasn’t steeped in the domestic arts as a child. Clemencia’s mother often told her and her sister, Ximena, that she married too young, that she threw her life away. Clemencia feels betrayed and confused when her mother marries again after Clemencia’s father dies. The new husband, a white man named Owen, has sons, and Clemencia’s mother devotes herself to the care of these new half-brothers. According to Clemencia, “[o]nce Daddy was gone, it was like my ma didn’t exist” (73). Clemencia’s relationship with her mother dries up almost entirely.

Clemencia decides not to marry and instead pursues a makeshift life, cobbling together income in any way she can in order to devote herself to what she cares about most—art. She takes many lovers and feels no remorse for the damage she inflicts in their marriage. She considers herself an “accomplice” who “committed premeditated crimes” (68). This lifestyle of enjoying casual sex while devoting herself to art seems to work well until she gets involved with Drew, an art teacher she eventually sleeps with. She and Drew have a long affair and she is with him the night that his son is born. Drew talks often about ending it but it is years before they do.

Clemencia is startled to run into Drew and his wife, Megan, at an art gallery. Clemencia has moved on but suddenly is drawn back in. She becomes a mentor to Drew’s son, who is a younger facsimile of Drew himself. First, Clemencia is the boy’s teacher. Then she becomes his lover. This, she decides, is her revenge, one she relishes as she walks through life, simultaneously wanting to kill and caress those she meets.

A pair of clandestine lovers share greedy handfuls of bread as they drive around a city that is rife with memories for both. For the man, who speaks Italian and is married with children, the city is a beautiful place. For the Spanish female narrator, the city reminds her of sorrows from her childhood such as “a cousin’s baby who died from swallowing rat poison” (84). They drive around, listening to tango music as loud as they can stand it, stuffing themselves with bread and savoring furtive kisses.

Ines Alfaro, the lover of Emiliano Zapata, recounts the story of their relationship, narrated in non-linear sequence. The narrative begins with Zapata back home again and Ines, as always, watching over him as he sleeps. As he rests peacefully, she reflects on their history together, from their first meeting in the zocalo to each war-weary visit he pays her. She provides a clear vision of him, as well as a view of herself and the role she plays and would like to play in his life.

Speaking to him though he is sleeping, she reminds him of how angry her father was about their relationship. She had to endure being called a bitch by her father and later she had to return to her father’s home, with one young child in tow and another on the way. She had thought he would marry her but no, Zapata insisted that he never promised that. Lovesick for a time, she took to her bed to be cared for by her father, who nearly gave her up for dead, and her mother’s sister, her Tia Chucha.

Ines, like her aunt, has “the sight,” the ability to see more than what is before her, to hover and to see the past, present and future all at once. Ines watches over Zapata when he is gone. She watches him when he comes to take their son, Nicholas, to war with him. She watches him cheered up by the crowd. She watches him in danger. She watches him in the arms of other women, including his wife, Josefa. She looks into the past and sees her mother, betrayed and murdered by her lover. She sees her daughter, Malenita, grown and then Malenita’s twin daughters grown, living as herbalists and unmarried women.

Though the story mentions the force of Zapata’s eyes, “eyes with teeth” that are “terrible as obsidian” (101), the true force of the story is the power of Ines’s eyes. She sees past, present and future side by side. What unites all those phases of life is her love for Zapata and her belief in the enduring power of that love.

The narrator of this brief story is in desperate need of some new religious items. The narrator only has $10 to spend but is hoping for “[o]ne of those framed pictures with a silver strip of aluminum foil on the bottom and top” (114) of La Virgen de Guadalupe. Because someone named Tencha has been put in the hospital, the narrator can’t cross the border to Nuevo Laredo to get a proper image of La Virgen as hoped. Instead, the narrator is stuck shopping at the only available local shop where the owner is “a crab ass” (114). While the narrator deliberates carefully, trying to select the ideal image of La Virgen, the owner accuses the shopper of wasting his time. The narrator is furious, and despite the narrator’s obvious piety, is tempted to tell the man to go to hell.

This polyvocal narrative is comprised of many different prayers, to different saints and incarnations of the divine. Some, such as “Arnulfo Contreras, San Antonio, Tejas,” ask La Virgen for very specific things, such as overdue pay from “the Tortilleria in Casa de la Masa” (120). “Ruben Ledesma, Hebbronville, Texas” asks San Lazaro to keep his “face from breaking out with so many pimples” (121). Others speak more generally, asking for good health, financial security or familial stability. Some prayers are anonymous, as in the case of “s., Corpus Christi” who asks to be taught how to love her husband again (119). Some are articulate, polite and well composed. Others are rambling and sorrowful or angry. The final prayer is from “Rosario (Chayo) De Leon, Austin, Tejas” who describes her journey of faith from agnostic to an adherent of her own uniquely-styled faith. Though initially she rejected La Virgen, seeing her as yet another example of subservient femininity, Rosario concludes her prayer by noting that she “learned [La Virgen’s] real name is Coatlaxopeuth, She Who Has Dominion over Serpents.” Connecting Christianity to indigenous faith leads Rosario to finally love and accept La Virgen (128). 

This story is told from the perspective of a lonely widower who seems to have waylaid a stranger at the laundromat, desperate for someone to talk to. The widower lends his basket to his audience, who seems to be a woman with many children in tow, one of whom has knocked a bottle of soda over on the floor. The speaker chuckles, recalling his own experiences picking up after messy kids. He then offers his audience a few unsolicited pointers about how to best wash and dry a pair of jeans or a favorite t-shirt to minimize wear and tear. By the end of the narrative, the widower begins describing his wife, whom never let a stain set and even ironed his boxers. Now she’s gone and he’s here at the laundromat, alone and lonely.

This short story relates the loneliness and sadness experienced by two unnamed characters, one male and one female. Both frequent the Friendly Spot Bar on Fridays and after payday. Both go there to drink, with the hope that being intoxicated will let them give voice to their innermost thoughts and fears. Both experience the opposite, in that each “simply drank and said nothing” (133). Though they are both alone and lonely and though they both frequent the same bar, fate seems destined to keep them apart. Each comes home at night and stares up at the same moon, feeling utterly without hope.

This story is an acrostic, with the first letter of each short paragraph collectively spelling out the name Lupita, the one who has wronged the male narrator, Rogelio Velasco. Through his acrostic to Lupita, the reader learns how they met. Rogelio arrived at her house “dressed in [his] uniform and carrying the tools of [his] trade” as an exterminator. The two fell in love and later promised “until death do us part” but Lupita has been unfaithful (135). Rogelio has suffered in his adoration of Lupita, who he feels has a “flirtatious woman’s soul” (135). He has written this acrostic to demonstrate the depths of both his pain and his love for Lupita.

This narrative offers the opposite side of the story that is first presented in “Tan Tan.” The narrator, Lupe, recounts her meeting and romance with Flavio Munguia, who writes poetry under the name of Rogelio Velasco. Lupe is house sitting for a more affluent Latino couple who are away on sabbatical from their academic jobs. Though the house is stuffed with valuables, it is also filled with cockroaches at night. Lupe calls the number of an exterminator whose flyer she finds stuffed under the front door.

The relationship is not initially romantic as they are not even initially compatible, it seems. Lupe is an artist, well versed in mythology and history, especially that of Aztec culture and religion. Flavio is more practical minded and views Lupe’s interest in connecting with authentic Mexican experiences bewildering. Their different upbringings are clearly an issue: Lupe is Mexican American, raised in a hybrid culture, whereas Flavio was born and raised in Mexico and came to the U.S. to find a more stable job. Lupe asks Flavio if he will model for her for an updated version of the Prince Popocatepetl/Princess Ixtaccihuatl volcano myth that she is painting. Flavio seems surprised and confused by the request but agrees.

Eventually a romance blossoms between the pair. Lupe comes to view Flavio as “bien pretty” in ways she failed to notice before. She becomes captivated by the reddish brown hue of his skin and the gravelly sound of his voice, especially when he coos to her in Spanish while making love. But the romance ends abruptly and without warning. The two go to breakfast together and Flavio informs Lupe that he has to leave, that his mother has written to him about an issue with one of his sons. It is then that Lupe learns that he has four sons by two different women. Just like that, he is headed back to Mexico.

After Flavio leaves, without a note or a phone call, Lupe becomes deeply depressed. She can no longer paint. Instead, she starts spending her free time watching sappy, romantic telenovelas. She looks in the mirror and is repulsed by her reflection. At the end of the story, Lupe still feels wounded and fractured. She feels that “half of [her] is living [her] life” while “the other half [is] watching [her] live it” (163). She is bothered by her obsession with romance and finding love but decides to simply accept it as a fact that she needs to process. At last, she returns to her art, to the Aztec mythological scene she was painting with Flavio as her model. She decides a role reversal is in order. In her new version, it is the woman in the position of power, the man lying on his back. Lupe decides, “I kind of like it” (163).