Woodcuts of Women by Dagoberto Gilb & Dagoberto Gilb

Author:Dagoberto Gilb & Dagoberto Gilb
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove Atlantic
Published: 2001-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

Mattie’s my best friend,” she said. It was gray dusk, and she’d been home for almost an hour. “We talk about everything.” She saw his expression was not enthusiastic. “We won’t get back that late.”

He didn’t want to go over there with her, but he didn’t know how he could stay back in her house without her, not do what she wanted.

“You must have some dirty clothes,” she said. “It’s your last chance to wash for free.”

He did have a few cositas.

“Let me have them.” She reached out her hands.

Some socks and underwear were in his hand.

“It’s all right, you can give them to me.” She was smiling again.

He didn’t know how not to.

“Maybe you’re right, maybe it does kind of turn me on to hold your underwear,” she said.

“If all it takes is some stinky chones.”

She cracked up. “We working girls learn to get it where we can.”

He gave her a pair of dirty jeans.

“What about the ones you have on?”

“I don’t got any others.”

She was really laughing. “Be that way then.”

Her friend’s house, a Spanish villa, whitewashed and red-tile roof, was a drive only a few blocks away.

“Didn’t I tell you?” Irene said. She gave Willie one of the plastic clothes baskets, and she took the other. “Andrew’s done well.”

“Man, I wish I knew that secret.”

She took a few beats before she spoke. “It helps if you come from it.”

The heavy front door on the other side of a Mexican-tiled entry patio opened with almost intentional elegance. “Hi!” Her friend Mattie looked like she was modeling the casual clothes she wore. Even the sandals looked sexy on her feet. “You better be hungry!” she said. Irene introduced her to Willie. “Hi!” she said. He pronounced his name and she tried to say it like he did. She had naturally what magazines tried to pose. “Well, Willie, I want to apologize beforehand that we’re having a no-meat night!”

“You don’t gotta worry about it.”

“You’re so sweet!” She turned to Irene and winked. “You had to find yourself a dark Latin man.”

“He’s already got me washing his clothes,” Irene said.

“Honey, I’d wash his clothes too.”

“You guys are starting to make me feel funny,” Willie said.

Under the ceiling of light in the kitchen, Mattie was even more beautiful than in the shadows outside. She had a shape, and long brown hair thick, and hazel eyes set off by an earth shade of skin. Next to her, Irene was bony and no soft bumps, her skin both too transparent and thin, too rough. Her blinking eyes seemed colorless. Around her friend, this Irene had even become jittery, jerky, both insecure and conceited. As she took charge of cottage cheese and salad, a big bowl of fruit, she was mad at them.

Andrew, Mattie’s husband, was fat. Not blubber-slob fat, but fat. Overweight in the soft, never was an athlete, never worked outdoors, never been in the military, in that never worked out way. Not so much that anybody’d stare, or even care. Nobody’d notice this guy.

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