HOW DRUG-ADDICTION, CHILD-ABUSE, AND A GOOD MEXICAN RESTAURANT BROKE MY HEART

By Walter Agnew Moore II, Roving Correspondent

Austin, Texas, 24 May 2001

When (Bianca) and I pull up into the parking lot of Polvo's Mexican Restaurant on South First, the joint is rocking. And I was afraid it would be closed, she took so long at the apartment, silly me. But (Bianca) is on Latin Time, and so is Polvo's. Guess I'm the one who needs to get in the groove. There are people at all the tables outside listening to a duo sing while happy music comes at you like the Christmas lights strung everywhere.

The man at the counter with the scarf on his head says we are welcome to relax and have drinks, but if we would like some food we need to order quickly, because the kitchen is going to close in "2 minutes". We both pop off "Fish Tacos!" and the deed is done. It is 10:20. (Bianca) asks when they close the kitchen and he says "at 10", and smiles at us.

I guess I should explain to you why I am hanging out with (Bianca) tonight when I went to so much trouble to avoid her all last month. She is trouble in a gift-wrapped package. She looks like a movie star, the kind of movie star who is on the rocks and doing way too many drugs and flailing about for a sugar-daddy to pay her way. Flashing dark eyes and golden-brown hair, a moody serious expression that sets you up to have the rug pulled from underneath you when she smiles.

Anyway, I started avoiding her when I realized she had an addict's lifestyle—no job, was about to get evicted—and was saying things to me like, "I am totally over my ex-boyfriend now" and "I know a good apartment if I could just find a room-mate". Actually, that's half the reason I started avoiding her. The other half is I knew I had no immunity to the disease that is a woman like (Bianca). I caught it before and damn near died. I don't mean figuratively either.

So when she called me earlier tonight, my guard went up. I made sure she knew I was really busy. She told me about quitting a grocery-store job after one week because they yelled at her. I was on auto-pilot listening, putting in "yeh"s, "uh-huh"s, waiting for her to wind down, rolling my eyes, getting ready to fend off whatever favor she was about to ask for.

Maybe you think I was cruel, but I know addicts. My next door neighbors are that way. They care about two things: getting fucked up, and, no, wait, there is no second thing. They will be nice to you as far as it helps maintain their buzz. One of those goobs was once my room-mate and took off with all the utility money. I've gotten about two-thirds of it back... over the course of 2 years. Hopeless.

I pegged (Bianca) the same way.

I slid a word into her monologue: "So how are you paying your rent now?"

"I got a new job today, at a photo lab, it pays better."

"You did?"

"Oh yeah. I walked down to Oltorf Avenue (she sold the van 2 weeks ago, folks) and back again, twice, but I got it."

"That's a long way." About 10 or 12 miles.

"Yeah, my feet are blistered up pretty badly, I'm soaking them right now. But it was worth it. I need to pay my bills. They didn't even have an ad for the job, I just walked in cold and explained to them why they should hire me, and they did."

I stared at the phone in disbelief.

"Anyway, I just wanted to tell somebody about it, and I didn't really want to talk to those guys next door, all they care about is sitting there getting high, and I hadn't heard from you in so long."

I have no immunity to a woman like (Bianca). "Hey, (Bianca), that's all great. We ought to go get a beer later and celebrate."

"Great! There's a little bar near here called the G&S that somebody said is cool, if you wanna check it out we can..."

So that's how we are in Polvo's now. I showed up at her place hungry, she thought that was great. I said I had a craving for Mexican, she said that was great too. She had found out that Polvo's had good fish tacos, she'd been looking for a local place that did after I first got her to try them at Pato's up my way.

Now for any of you who sinned in a former life and were reborn somewhere far from real Mexican food, a Polvo's fish taco is like nothing your going to find in your mall food-court. You take piping-hot grilled fish and green peppers and put them inside a crispy paper-thin shell, and maybe you add some rice or black beans, a little mole, some diced tomatoes ... and then you try not to bite off the tips of your own fingers when you start eating it because I guarantee you that you will inhale them once you taste them. I have barely touched my Bohemia beer, and both of my tacos are gone.

She sips her margarita through a straw, raises those perfect eyebrows: "Walter, this is good. Would you like one?"

"Those things give me head-aches."

"It all depends on the quality of the ingredients. This is good tequila, not cheap stuff ... I like this place. It was cool of them to feed us after they closed the kitchen."

I agree. "In Mexico I was always amazed at how nice people were to me. They'd walk with you halfway across town to make sure you found the hotel or the bus station, didn't want anything, just wanted to welcome you to their town. Happened all the time. Spain was the same way. I prefer those countries with Mediterranean cultures, Spain, Italy ... I always felt at home there."

She looks at me steadily: "That's how it was when I grew up in South America. People might not have anything, but they treat you with love. Here in America people are like spoiled bratty kids, rich, hating themselves and each other. I think that's why I grew up so schizophrenic, coming from there to here at a young age."

"I'd say the beatings were a lot more to blame than the culture shock."

"Those didn't help." She looks off past the table for a while. "I wonder what I could have been without the screwed-up parents I had. Growing up in that poison environment. Here I am, 27, and I'm nothing. Working in a photo-lab."

"Well, that's all in the past now," I say, It sounds as dumb as it is.

"My mom. My fucking mom. They had me read that letter when I was in the group home where she said, in writing, that she didn't want me. They had me read it so I would face reality. I was a grown woman at 13 because of that letter."

"That was rough, I bet, being in a rehab at 13..."

She flashes a hint of berserkergang at me: "RE-hab? Who said anything about a rehab? I wasn't on drugs. I was in a home for unwanted girls because my mother didn't love me!"

She continues: "She hated me. She was adopted, of course. She was half Italian and half Indian."

"What part of India?"

"I'm sorry— American Indian— Blackfoot. And so she is this blocky little fat woman because Indian women are ugly—"

I can think of some exceptions to that, but mostly I'm wondering what the women folding silverware think of (Bianca)'s train of thought. Several of them are neither tall nor thin, and they are folding spoons, forks, and knives. But they are having their own conversation in Spanish.

"—BIG square chin, NO eyebrows, HAWK nose!"

She is getting wide-eyed. I listen. She winds down about her mother. I say "And there you are, everything she's not, physically."

"Yes! And she hates me for it! And I don't even think my 'dad' is my father— I look nothing like him—I think my father was this Australian guy."

The waitress asks if we'd like something else. A little boy runs past, and (Bianca) smiles and speaks to him playfully. I look at my Bohemia and decide that I don't need another at the moment.

(Bianca) looks at the bottle too. "I don't know Bohemia beer."

"I first tried it in Tuxpan. Little corner restaurant, they had it for about 50 cents. At first I was tempted to drink a lot, they were so good and so cheap, but after the first day I calmed down. I'd have one or two at a meal. Besides, the guy sitting at the next table may have been making 50 cents an hour. No need to rub it in his face."

She nods. "Respect... we aren't known for that here."

She sips again. "So every day my parents would wake up fighting, we'd hear them screaming and hitting each other, and then she'd leave to go have an affair with some student, and we'd lie there shaking because we knew we were next. My dad would take it out on us."

I know what she means. "Shit rolls downhill. I got smacked many times as a kid. Technically for things I did, but..."

She shakes her head rapidly once or twice: "Yeah, I wish that's what he did, hitting. My dad had a thing about water. He'd use water tortures on us."

I visualize water dripping on a prisoner's head in a dungeon. "Water torture?"

"Fuck yeah. I remember being 3 years old with that bastard holding my head under water until I almost drowned. One day he almost killed my youngest brother. Me and (Tony) are waiting in our room; we can hear our dad in the bathroom with my baby brother. First we hear his screaming stop, then the splashing stops, then it gets really quiet, and my dad comes out holding him, and he's not moving..."

We stare at each other. Her nostrils are moving as she breathes. She shoots lightning at someone over my shoulder: "Who the FUCK is he looking at?"

I turn around as a 50-ish man at the counter quickly turns his back to us.

She is smiling a dangerous smile at the man's back: "YEAH, that guy there. Like I have to put up with every damn GUY who wants to walk up and stare at me!"

"He's just some old drunk guy, let it go, let it go..."

"I don't have to put up with it! I don't care if he's drunk!"

I try a different approach. "In the MP's, they taught us how to cool drunks. You just remember you are the one who can get the drunk to change his mood. Sergeant Logan told us we could get a drunk to fight, or we could get them to sing a song, whatever we wanted, the drunk would do it. You're in control."

She settles. Grins. "Yeah... what are you worried about though? Big guy like you ... nobody's going to be able to kick YOUR ass."

"It has happened many times. Little guys are the worst. One lucky punch to the right place, and I'm down like anybody else. So what happened to your brother?"

"Slight brain damage. He was only a year-and-a-half old, you see, he couldn't hold his breath the way we could."

"After that, anybody who picked on him, anybody big or small, I would beat the hell out of them. I became the crazy little girl who would fight anybody who messed with her little brothers."

"Like when you took that pipe to those three guys who were pounding on (Tony) at that party?"

Her jaw drops: "You remember that!"

As if I would forget. Bad punk-rock party. Brawl breaks out; lots of groups of people banging on isolated individuals. Girls pounding on other girls. (Tony) is in a ditch sparring with three other guys. He's holding them off, but three-on-one, inevitably he takes a hard one on the jaw that drops him backward and to the side, and the three close in. From behind them comes a shriek— not a girl's scream, but a valkyrie's war-cry— and (Bianca), back-lit by the house lights, hair flying out like wings, comes racing through the ditch from behind them swinging a long lead pipe, not to threaten, not to hurt, but to kill. Nobody touched (Tony) again. The three guys took one look at (Bianca), then scattered like quail.

She smiles a little. "What a waste it has all been."

All of a sudden it is clear to me. "You think your life is a waste. You didn't get to be the flute-player you could have been. You didn't get to go to college. All that sucked. But you did learn something in those 27 years: you were training to be a fighter. That childhood, everything. It was hellish and rotten and done against your will. But you're not afraid to fight now, and you should fight— for good things—to protect people who can't fight."

She inhales, nods. "I had a vision when I was 15— I was trying to O.D— to kill myself. God gave me a vision, it was me in the future, I was on a stage giving a speech, and the people were roaring because they knew that what I said was true! God gave me that vision, so I would know not to die; my fate was to defend others. But because of that, someone will kill me. My success is to the cause of my death."

"(Bianca), everybody dies. You at least will drag some of your enemies down to Hell with you."

"Exactly", she says and tilts her head back proudly.

We smile at each other, pay the bill, and walk out to the car. One of the ladies is wiping down the salsa bar and says good-night to us as we go.

Well, folks, I wish that is where it ended. The Regeneration of (Bianca), a Saint Joan of Arc for our times. But you know better. We end up in the local bar; twice I have to cool her out when she wants to start a fight with strangers over an accidental bump or drunken mumble. Once I take a beer bottle ever so gently out of her hand because I sense she is about to crack a man over the skull with it. If you ever hit someone in the head with a beer bottle, you will be sorry the rest of your life, so don't do it. She is beautiful, so every drunk in the place hits on her. She is drinking more beer than I am and Scotch as well. One of the drunks offers her various controlled substances, and that's all there is to it.

It's 2:30 am, the bar has been officially closed for 30 minutes, and (Bianca) is standing with two guys at the phone who are calling their dealer. I walk over.

"(Bianca), I am leaving."

"Are you OK?"

"Yeah, I'm fine, it's just time to go, so I'm gone."

"You're Gandhi? Hey, I had a really good time, Walter, don't worry about me, I'll get a ride..."

"You sure?"

"Oh yeah." And she laughs at me.

I nod, and I turn to the guy who isn't on the phone and who is looking in my eyes, wobbly drunk. I tell him with words "You be careful too", and I tell him more than that with my eyes.

© Walter Agnew Moore II 2001