Shane and Carmen: The Novelization
Chapter 14: The Traveling Wilburys
When Carmen dropped Shane off at her house, Shane asked, "Do you want to come in for a while?"
"Thanks but no thanks. I think I just want to go home and take a shower and talk to my mom. I have to tell her I'm moving out and moving in with you."
"Will that be a problem?"
"No, I don't think so. My mom's pretty cool. But we'll see."
It was much easier than Carmen had expected.
"Hey, honey, how was your trip?" her mom, Mercedes, asked when Carmen came into the kitchen in her big fluffy terrycloth robe after her shower. Mercedes was at the sink preparing dinner. She was a large, affable woman, having the capacity for infinite love and infinite solicitude -- and implacable anger and fierceness in defense of her family, most especially her beloved children. She was not a person to cross, but if she loved you, she loved you forever. These were traits among many others she shared with her daughter, including the capacity for hard work, single-mindedness, a big heart, compassion, and a sense of fun.
Carmen loved her mother and had always gotten along well with her, even during the notoriously difficult teen years, which in Carmen's case weren't difficult at all. It helped that Carmen had been an angelic child, an "A" student, pleasant, cooperative, fun, hard-working, affectionate. It also helped a great deal that from about the age of 12 onward, there was one aspect of Carmen's life that she kept secret from her mother. This meant she spent her teen years largely free of boys, which was also a major factor in her peaceful adolescence. Perhaps it was because she was intelligent and perceptive that Carmen somehow understood that her own sexuality and sexual orientation were not something she wished to discuss with her mother. What would be the point: It was hardly negotiable. She understood intuitively that she was "different" from the other girls, but she also sensed this wasn't something she could discuss with Mercedes. In any event, Mercedes' views on homosexuality were well known, as was Mercedes' opinion that the proper role for a woman in life was to get married to a man -- a nice man, if possible -- and have children and grandchildren.
Either that, or become a nun -- that was okay, too. Mercedes didn't like whores and hookers, sluts, girls who were "easy," girls who went from man to man to man, women who cheated on their husbands, women who ran off with married men, women who used curse words in public, women who showed off too much skin and too much cleavage, women who used curse words in private, and of course lesbians, most especially those dykey ones with the short hair, the unshaved arms and legs, and the flannel shirts and boots. And yes, living in Los Angeles and near Hollywood, Mercedes recognized that she lived in the middle of thousands and thousands of such unacceptable women, as she saw it. At least in the barrio, in the Hispanic and Latino culture, there weren't too many of the bad kind, except for the ones who went out with the boys from the gangs. Mercedes didn't worry too much about Carmen, but she had once worried about Carmen being influenced by her best friend, Lucia Torres, who lived across the street. Mercedes liked Lucia well enough when she was little, perhaps on behalf of Carmen and especially before puberty, but the fact was, Lucia was a little wild, so they said. Mercedes knew she was dating a boy from one of the gangs named Pablo Fuentes. When people said Lucia was "dating" Pablo, everyone knew that meant something else. After Lucia ran away, Carmen spent a lot of time at the church, and that was a good thing; she was almost certainly praying for her friend, and maybe she had even been thinking about becoming a nun. Mercedes had always said out loud that one day Carmen would make a good nun. Mercedes had never heard of the word "libido."
"Did your friend get into the hospital okay?" Mercedes asked when Carmen came into the kitchen.
"Yes, Mom, she's fine, thanks. We got her in okay. It was pretty sad, though."
"Yes, poor little thing. I hope she be okay."
"Me, too. What can I do to help with dinner?"
"You can get out the vegetables and everything to make a salad, and cut them up."
"Sure."
"And what about your other friend who shared Jenny's house. What was her name? Chawn?"
"Shane. She's fine."
"Chane. She going to be looking for a roommate now? You should think about moving in with her."
Carmen froze, then thought to herself, wow, some days you just get lucky. "Well, mom, I wanted to talk to you about that. Would you be okay with me moving out?"
"Am I hokay? Oh, yes. I will miss you, my baby of the family, but you are twenty-five years old, you know. Time for you to leave the nest and go out into the world. I have been expecting it for several years now. You are such a big girl now -- no, I know! I know! I should have said such a woman! and you work so hard, two jobs. But you also need to start looking around more seriously at the young men, you know. Start thinking about getting married." She winked at Carmen. "Start thinking about babies."
"Well, I don't know about that, Mom. I don't think I'm quite ready for marriage and babies."
"Eh, we'll see. One day you find the right man and two minutes later, wedding bells! That's what always happens."
Carmen laughed. "Okay, Mom. Wedding bells. Right."
"I so want to see you in your beautiful white wedding dress and mantilla. You will be so pretty!"
"I wanted to talk to you about that. See, for my wedding I was thinking about going all Goth, wearing this kind of black tube top and a black leather miniskirt--"
"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh! Nooo!" Mercedes cried out, turning away from the sink. "Carmencita!"
But Carmen was laughing. She went to her mother and hugged her. "Mom! I was teasing you!" She kissed her on the cheek. "Oh, I sooooo got you!"
"Oh, Carmen," Mercedes said, holding her hand over her heart.
"I got you, I got you," Carmen chanted in a playful sing-song voice as she chopped up the salad lettuce. "I got you, I got you."
***
It should and could have been a simple move, but it took nearly three weeks from start to finish. First, Shane and Carmen had agreed that although they would sleep together every night, Shane would basically maintain her own room, and Carmen would have Jenny's old room. At night, they would sleep together in one room or the other, and it didn't matter to them which room it was. Carmen suggested that since she was the one with the most fluid dynamics, most nights it probably ought to be her room, since she put a special plastic liner over her mattress underneath the sheets. When they slept in Shane's bed, they'd just have to remember to put a couple of towels down first, if they thought things were going to get aquatic.
The first issue was that Jenny's room was pink, and as girly a girl as Carmen was, pink was just a little further than she could go. She talked to the landlord and got permission to repaint the room, at her own expense and labor. Even with Carmen's prodigious work ethic, it still took almost a week to prep the bedroom for painting. Carmen went over almost every evening after work, and after eating dinner with Shane if Shane was home and hungry, she worked on the room ... until she and Shane got a little frisky. There were two nights during which Carmen got exactly four minutes worth of work done, and on those evenings Shane was less than helpful, being the chief cause of the distraction. It's tough to put painter's tape around molding and trim when a horny lesbian has her face in your bush.
Still, by the weekend the room was ready for painting. Carmen arrived at ten after eight Saturday morning and let herself in, knowing Shane was still asleep and would be for several more hours. She went into her new bedroom-to-be, which was completely taped. Plastic drop cloths covered the floor and the major furniture, which was pushed toward the center of the room. Carmen opened up the brand new gallon of eggshell white paint, poured some into a paint tray, and was ready to go. But before she started painting she stripped down almost naked, wearing only a pair of very old flip-flops. She put a translucent plastic shower cap over her luxurious hair, and put on a pair of clear plastic safety glasses in case paint splattered toward her eyes. Dressed for the occasion, she began painting the room. First, using a wide paint brush and a three-step kitchen stepladder she cut in the corners all the way around the ceiling. Then using a roller attached to a broom handle, she rollered the ceiling. She didn't worry about the occasional drops of paint that got on her, since she was naked and the paint was latex and would wash off. When the ceiling was done, she cleaned out the paint tray and roller in the bathroom and switched to a can of light beige to use on the walls.
***
