Shane and Carmen: the Novelization

Shane and Carmen: The Novelization

Chapter 16 She Feeds Herself

On those occasions when Shane had to work late and wouldn't be home for dinner, Carmen sometimes went over to her mother's house in east LA to say hello, catch up with members of her family, and receive a booster shot of her mother's home cooking.

"Hey, mom," Carmen said, walking into the kitchen and giving her mother a hug and a kiss on the cheek. She saw that her mother was making a Yucatan chicken recipe with a brown sauce that was one of Carmen's favorites. "Mmmmmmm! Got enough to feed an extra hungry mouth?"

The question was rhetorical, because there was never a time in the history of the Morales household when there wasn't enough food or room at the table for an extra place. And the question was doubly absurd when the supplicant was Carmen, the apple, the peach, the tangerine of her mother's eye.

"Is there enough?" Mercedes responded. "No, I am sorry, my baby. We are so poor we only have a few scraps for ourselves. There is no extra food to feed you, so you'll just have to go down the street to Taco Bell."

Carmen stuck out her lower lip, pretending to sulk, and batted her eyelashes. "No supper for your youngest daughter, your sweet, precious, baby girl? No Yucatan chicken for little Carmencita?"

"Taco Bell," Mercedes repeated firmly. "Maybe they are having a special. Two chalupas for the price of one."

Carmen laughed. "What can I do to help?"

"Set the table, please, while I try to find a small bone or something in here you can have."

Carmen laughed again and began setting the table.

"Where is Chane tonight?" Mercedes asked.

"She's on a movie set somewhere down on the beach," Carmen said. "They need to catch the sunset or something, and Shane called and said she has to stay late just in case somebody's hair needs a touch-up. Shane said it was breezy down there, so she'll be working all night until they get the shot."

"Some night you should bring her over for dinner," Mercedes said. "I met Jenny those times you brought her over. I would like to meet Chane. Ever since you grew up and graduated from college I don't meet any of your friends too often."

"I know, mom," Carmen said. "I'll mention it to Shane, but she works pretty hard, too, like I do. It's tough coordinating our schedules. But I'll see what I can do."

***

Carmen was in bed and in that twilight zone just before sleep when she heard Shane come in.

"Hey," Shane whispered as she leaned over Carmen and gently kissed her on the mouth.

"Hey," Carmen murmured. "What time is it?"

"A little after ten."

"Did they get their shot?"

"Yeah, finally. We were about three seconds away from total sun below the horizon when they got the take right."

"Mmmm. Good for them. You hungry? Did you eat? My mom made me bring some leftovers home for you. It's her specialty, Yucatan chicken."

"I spent most of the night hanging around near the craft table, grazing," Shane said.

"Mmmmm. Then come to bed, before I fall asleep."

"I will, but I gotta jump in the shower. Be right back."

Carmen dozed, and woke when she felt a naked, moist, tooth-pastey-smelling Shane climb under the sheets and spoon herself against Carmen's bare bottom. It was arguable that there was no finer place to be in all of the Northern Hemisphere than to be spooned against Carmen de la Pica Morales's bare bottom.

"How was your day?" Shane asked, kissing Carmen's shoulder blade.

"Good. They finished shooting the video early. I got home by four and went over to mom's for dinner."

"So you said. I'll eat the chicken for breakfast."

"Mom wants you to come over for dinner. She wants to meet you."

Shane grunted.

"What's that mean?"

"It means I'm too tired to think about it. When does she have to know?"

"No special time. It's an open invitation. We can stop over almost any time."

"You don't have to call ahead of time so she can make extra?"

But she got no answer, just the sound of Carmen gently snoring, a rustling zephyr sound Shane had come to love. She was asleep herself in just seconds.

***

In the morning it was one of those rare days when they were both working at the same movie studio, which in this case happened to be the Universal lot. They decided to carpool, and stopped by

The Planet

on the way to pick up their morning caffeine.

"Did you give any more thought to coming over to my mom's for dinner?" Carmen asked as they walked to

The Planet's

front door.

"Yeah, but I just feel funny about it."

They entered

The Planet

and got in line. "Baby, it is so not a big deal. My mother is used to us bringing people over for dinner all the time."

"I understand," Shane said, her arm over Carmen's shoulder, "but I'm not used to it, so you have to give me a moment, okay?"

"Hook me up, Janie," Carmen said to the barista, who handed them cups of coffee.

"Well, what is it that you are not used to," Carmen asked, "because we go over to people's houses for dinner a lot, and you're fine with that."

"I know I can. I'm just not used to this whole family thing, and especially my girlfriend's family, and, well, even more so, considering they don't know I'm her girlfriend."

"I meant to ask you something about that. Do you think ... can you ... I mean ..."

"You want me to pretend I'm straight and we're not together," said Shane.

"Well, yeah. Baby, would that be a problem?"

Shane shrugged. "Someday you're going to have to tell them," Shane said, blowing on her coffee to cool it before taking a sip. "Someday" -- she sipped -- "someday they're gonna find out."

Carmen let out a sigh. "I know. My sisters already know, they're fine with it, but it's not them I'm worried about. The first time you and mom and my family all meet, that's sure as hell not the right time for me to tell them. For one thing, my mother would hate you forever, and I don't want that. I just have to find some way to tell her, and I'm just not ready."

Shane shrugged. "That's cool."

"Really? Is it? Shane?" Carmen turned Shane's head around so she could look into Shane's eyes. "I'm so sorry to ask you to do this. But ... you know how much I love you. It's just that I'm not the one who's ready."

"It's okay," Shane said.

"Really?"

"Really."

"I love you so much."

"That's a good thing," Shane said. "Because I love you, too. Come on, let's get to work before we get fired."

***

However, their schedules were such that it took more than a week to make it happen. It looked like the first day both Carmen and Shane would both be available was the Tuesday of the next week. Over the weekend Carmen called her mom and told her that Tuesday was looking pretty good for bringing Shane over, barring anything unforeseen. Mercedes understood that both women worked jobs that sometimes broke schedules, and she was already quite used to that in Carmen's case.

"That will be fine," Mercedes said. "I always make plenty. If she can come, she can come. If not, we try again another time."

"Great, mom," Carmen said. "I love you. See on Tuesday."

As the day approached, Shane's window of opportunity remained stubbornly open, but her resolve started to slip, as Carmen had suspected it might. She was beginning to learn that Shane didn't handle some kinds of pressure very well, and this was one of those times.

Just to make sure, Carmen swung by Shane's job site that afternoon to pick her up and make sure she got home in time to shower and change. Shane was conscious that she was being "handled" by Carmen, and in some circumstances such handling would have irritated Shane and perhaps even increased her resistance. In time, it might even have generated outright rebellion. But this was Carmen she was dealing with, and Carmen was no fool. She was learning every day how to read Shane's moods and feelings, and she often talked to

Ixchel

about tactical questions.

"She'll be okay,"

Ixchel

assured her. "This is just a big deal for her, that's all. It's bigger than you realize."

"But why?"

"Because despite the deception, this is still the quintessential act of a relationship. She's being taken home to meet the Significant Other's parents. Just the one parent, since your father is deceased. But it's not just the parents, she's being introduced to your whole family for the first time. This is always a major event in someone's life, and in the life of the relationship. The fact that you're both going to hide that relationship is irrelevant. And remember, we're talking about a person who has never been in love before, and never been in a long-term relationship before. It's like she's 17 years old."

"But my mother will love her."

"You and I know that, but Shane doesn't. You can say it a thousand times, but she still doesn't know it. We both know about her self-esteem issues. In your mind, Shane is a sweet, lovable, iconoclastic, warm, caring, slightly damaged free spirit. In Shane's mind she's an andro dyke former chickenhawk prostitute drug abuser who finger-fucked total strangers in lesbian fern bar bathrooms, and who is now finger-fucking you. Shane is worried about how deeply your mother will be able to see under the surface to discover the real Shane."

"But that

isn't

the real Shane!" Carmen objected.

"Maybe not now, no. But once, yes. And anyway, it isn't your opinion of who Shane is that counts. It's Shane's notion of who she is that's the guiding factor here. To put it simply, Shane is just worried sick that your mother won't like her."

"And nothing I can say--"

"--will do any good,"

Ixchel

finished her sentence for her. "And there's one other thing."

"What's that?" Carmen asked, half dreading to hear the answer.

'Not only has Shane never been introduced to a lover's or girlfriend's family, she has never had a proper family of her own," the jaguar goddess said. "She has almost no experience with families of any kind. She doesn't understand how family dynamics work. She doesn't know how to relate to people in a kinship setting. She's never had siblings, never squabbled with brothers or sisters, never had aunts and uncles and grandparents, or even cousins and nieces and nephews. These are all just theoretical relationships, as far as she's concerned. She's read about them, and knows such relationships exist. But she's never experienced them before. The only 'family' she's ever had is the group of Friends who hang out at

The Planet

. That being said, deep down inside she desperately wants and needs a family. This collides with her deepest fear, which is that yet again, she will be rejected or abandoned by yet another family. So she doesn't want to risk her affections, her heart, being broken like it was when she was 10 years old, or when Harvey died. She's going to carry that fear with her until the day she dies. It's her fear of a relationship writ large."

***

They climbed into Carmen's Jeep and Carmen started the engine. Shane sat looking forward, almost in a daze.

"Hey," Carmen said. She reached her hand over and put it on Shane's hand on top of her knee. "It's going to be okay."

Shane nodded, but she didn't mean it. "I want them to like me," she whispered. "And to do that I have to lie. I have to pretend. Both of us. We have to deceive them."

Carmen pulled Shane's hand up to her mouth and kissed it, and held it to her cheek.

"I've been deceiving my mom about who I am for thirteen years," Carmen said, "and do you know why it works? It's because she doesn't want to know. She can't conceive of the possibility that her daughter is a lesbian. It wouldn't cross her mind in a thousand years. So it won't cross her mind that you are, either. So in a way you really don't have to pretend. I can say it and you won't believe it, but all you have to do is relax and be yourself."

Shane said nothing.

"Shane?"

Shane turned to look at her and nodded. She wanted to smoke a joint so bad.

Carmen smiled. "No," she said.

"No what?"

"No, you can't smoke a joint. My mom may be deaf, dumb and blind, but her sense of smell is terrific. So no, you can't."

Shane finally smiled.

***

On the way over, Shane suddenly had questions. "So who does know about us?"

Carmen didn't take her eyes off the road. They'd been over this, but Carmen knew Shane's mind had been elsewhere. Anyway, Shane wasn't looking for information, she was looking for reassurance. She wanted to know who was safe, and who wasn't. She wanted to know if she had any allies in the family.

"Patty and Anna know," Carmen said.

"Which one is which, again?"

"Patty's the oldest. Anna's the middle. I'm the baby."

"Patty's the married one."

"Yes. And my cousin Evi knows, but I don't know if she'll be here tonight or not."

As they entered the barrio and Carmen's old neighborhood, Carmen began to point out familiar landmarks from her youth: The supermarket her family usually shopped at, a hardware store owned by a friend's parents, the movie theater Carmen had usually gone to. There were some vacant lots, too, and in the golden sunset the oversize murals beautifully painted on the sides of some of the buildings seemed to glow. Many of them had religious themes, with crosses, crucified Jesuses, angels, cherubs, Hispanic-looking women in peasant blouses, and Hispanic-looking men with black hair, black eyes and mustaches. There were paintings of deserts with seguro cactus, of lizards, of priests, of Spanish missions. Although there was death in some of the murals, the effect was quite the opposite: Most seemed full of life. To Shane, who had never been in this part of town before, it was like she had entered another world.

"That's where I got my tattoo," Carmen said quietly as they passed a row of shops. "That head shop, there. Only it wasn't a head shop. Back then it was Picassa's tattoo parlor."

"What happened to it?" Shane asked.

"Picassa got busted a year or two ago. I don't know if it was her fault or if she was really guilty of anything. But the two people she lived with, a brother and sister, were artists, painters and photographers, but they also ran some marijuana out of Mexico. They got caught, and I guess Picassa went down with them because they all lived in the same apartment. It was above the tattoo parlor."

Shane sensed that there was a lot more to the story than Carmen was saying.

"Was Picassa someone important to you?"

"Yes," Carmen said. "For a little while. When I was getting my tat done, we had an affair. Well, not an affair exactly. But yes, I slept with her a few times. I slept with both her and her roommate Maria, a couple of times."

"I never knew you'd had a threesome," Shane said.

Carmen glanced over at her, then turned her eyes back to the street. "That's because we don't talk about the past. Remember your motto? 'Never tell your story, never let them tell you theirs.'"

Most any other person would have been able to respond, but this was Shane, who took so long to take in and process and sort out and examine and turn over and ruminate and collect, that by the time she was done the question at hand had died five minutes ago.

Carmen, fortunately, knew this. She could see Shane trying to work all that out. She knew Shane couldn't even begin to put the words together to express what was in her heart: That not telling your story, and not letting them tell you theirs, was how she kept people at arm's length. It was how she kept from falling in love. It was how she kept from being hurt. And finally, that she was now past all that, because now she was involved. Now she had let her defenses slip, and she had fallen in love. And so the motto had become an artifact of an earlier age, a time, a place, and a Shane who no longer existed.

Carmen saved her. "That's the church I went to," she said, pointing as they passed. "Mom and the rest of my family stopped going there when they changed priests, but after a while they went back."

"Why did you stop?" Shane asked.

Carmen glanced at her again, and let a long minute go by. "I have some history there," she said.

Despite her inarticulateness, Shane's radar was fully functioning. She could tell there was a lot more to that statement than just "some history." But once again she didn't know what to say, and by the time she'd figured something out they had pulled onto the street where Carmen where her mother lived.

It was a well-maintained street in a nice-looking neighborhood. The homes were modest two-story buildings with well-maintained yards, some fenced, some not. Carmen pulled up her Jeep in front of a pleasant-looking house painted a pastel blue, with white shutters and trim. The small front yard had a white fence around it. Shane stared at the house as Carmen turned the car off.

"I don't know about this," she said.

"Why? What's wrong?" Carmen asked. She had been mentally prepared for Shane to get cold feet at the last minute. It was what Shane did.

"It's too soon."

"No," Carmen said firmly. "I'm telling you. You're gonna be fine, okay? Just -- they don't think like that, all right? So all you have to do is be yourself. They are going to fucking love you."

Carmen got out of the Jeep and closed the door, though not any harder than usual. But the sound of it jerked Shane out of her funk. Carmen walked around to Shane's door and would have opened it, if necessary, but Shane opened it herself to keep Carmen from having to baby her. She stood on the sidewalk tucking in her shirt, which was fine, and smoothing her clothes nervously.

"Okay?" she asked Carmen, afraid she had done something crazy like left her fly unzipped.

"Yes," Carmen said, knowing what Shane was looking for was reassurance. Her tone was kind and soft. "You look beautiful."

Shane wasn't used to anyone ever calling her "beautiful" before, and it stunned her again. She looked to see if Carmen was being sarcastic or taunting. But she wasn't.

"Okay," Carmen said, reassuring her again, and looking her in the eyes. "Breathe."

Shane started breathing again, and sucked it up, taking her courage from Carmen, because she had none of her own.

***

And then time sped up and they were in the house, Shane in the whirlwind of introductions, meeting Mercedes, who wrapped her in a big hug before turning her loose on Carmen's Aunt Begonia, and her grandmother, who was called Abuela, not a name but a title, and the sisters, Patty and Anna, and Patty's husband Carlos. Everything was a blur to Shane, but she was bathed in acceptance and warmth and all the minutiae of family life and preparations for dinner.

There was a long table in the dining room all set out with plates and glasses and silverware. Carmen immediately plunged into the dinner preparations, conducting simultaneous conversations with Patty and Mercedes. Shane found a corner of the kitchen out of the way and watched Mercedes ladling out bowls of soup to family members, who took them into the dining room. Carmen handed Shane an empty soup bowl and pushed her toward Mercedes to have her bowl filled.

"Chane!" Mercedes said happily. "For you!"

"That's fine," Shane said after only one ladle, but Mercedes was determined to give her more, to fill up the bowl to the brim.

"C'mon, eat more, you so skinny!" Mercedes said, getting her way as she always did.

"No, no," Shane tried to protest, but it was hopeless and she knew it.

"She's so skinny, don't you feed her?" Mercedes asked Carmen, ladling a second scoop of soup into Shane's bowl.

"No, mommy, I don't feed her," Carmen said, laughing. "She feeds herself."

To Mercedes' left Patty finished assembling a full plate of food, enchiladas, refried beans and rice, and a chimichanga. Mercedes handed it to Carmen.

"Here," Carmen said as she passed it to Shane, who now stood holding a hot bowl of soup in one hand and a full plate of food in the other. Fortunately, Anna came and took them from her and carried the plate and bowl into the dining room.