Brave Mennonite

Continued from Isabel Lopez

“Why did it have to have such a tragic ending? I don’t like it. ”

“Because that was as far as my imagination could go before it became real.”

“No Anna! No! How about, a Mexican man comes out of nowhere, swoops up Isabel just before the Lobo is about to eat her, shoots the Lobo and takes her to his place in the mountains.”

I looked at him as I hesitantly nodded my head imagining it. I knew that men didn’t watch telenovelas, especially men like El Guero, and that he was just going along to keep the conversation going. I sensed that he might be poking fun at me a bit. But the tequila acted as a soft, warm cushion that caught and cuddled my hurt feelings.

“Anna, it’s a telenovela, anything can happen,” he said, and we both laughed.

Evry time I took a sip of the tequila I got a bit braver. I loved nothing more than to talk about my telenovela nonsense, especially to a man like him. Even if he was poking fun at me, it was still a way to have a conversation that wasn’t about my lack of life experience. I worked hard to keep it going, thinking up my response to his ending. I decided to give him a chance to bail; if he hated listening to me enough, he would jump at the chance to get out of it. So I asked, “Aren’t your guests arriving?”

“If I would have known that you would actually come, I wouldn’t have invited all those people.”

“I almost didn’t.”

“I am so glad you did. And why don’t you write your telenovela? Dream it up as you would in your wildest imagination where anything can happen. Don’t let your reality ruin it.”

“I don’t think I am brave or smart enough,” I explained, and reminded myself not to tell him that I wasn't capable of writing something like that, because I had only graduated kindergarten a short while ago. I imagined rolling my eyes at myself.

“You came to my party,” he said as he smiled.

“Yeah, coming to your party might not have been brave, it might have been stupid.”

“NOOOO! Why do you say that?”

“I’m not sure, but it’s a feeling that I can't seem to shake.”

“I appreciate your honesty.”

“If anyone finds out that I was here tonight, I will be in so much trouble.”

“No, Anna, it's getting too real again. Can we go back to Isabel’s world where anything can happen?”

I inhaled a deep breath and sighed as I stared across the evening sky and said, “Okay, so who is this ‘Mexican man’ who swoops up Isabel and saves her from the Lobos, and why did he do that? If he's just going to swoop in and save her every time she's in trouble, she might as well just go back to the colony as Anna Wall and surrender to a life where men decide what she wants and needs, but she’ll never be happy and forever feel trapped.” 

“Esteee (welll),” he said, and cleared his throat.

I just stared at him and waited.

“How about we worry about the Mexican’s name later. But Isabel is curious enough about him to stay at his place until she learns that she can trust him. And she accepts his invitation to travel the world with him. She’d get to see all his favorite places in Mexico. And in the end, she accepts that she is, in fact, Mexican and learns that she doesn't feel trapped and she’s happy and chooses to be with him,” he said as he leaned back in his chair and took a sip of his tequila.

“No!” I replied, and began voicing my thoughts as fast as I could.

“How about Isabel kills the Lobos with her bare hands, sneaks into the ‘nameless Mexican’s’ house in the mountains, steals his gun, his pickup, and takes off. The entire colony mourns Anna Wall’s death, but little do they know that she's out there living life on her terms as Isabel Lopez. The people in the colony hear stories of this woman who looks Dietsch, but she’s not, she’s Mexican. And that she did not only save herself from the vicious Lobos, she feeds them to the ‘Chupacabra’—the mysterious creature that has been appearing out of nowhere in the night and eating the colony’s chickens for years. She becomes their heroine. The ‘Chupacabra’ has become her pet and follows her around wherever she goes, which is the reason why the ‘Chupacabra’ has mysteriously disappeared. Then one day Isabel returns to the ‘nameless Mexican’s’ place and brings him a bottle of tequila to thank him for letting her get away with stealing his gun and his pickup… FIN….”

I inhaled a deep breath and took a sip of tequila. My heart attempted to pound through my chest as I waited for him to start laughing at me.

I looked over at El Guero.

He wasn’t leaning back in his chair anymore he was sitting up straight, elbows on the table, and listening, “No! No, you can’t do this to me. It was just getting interesting. Was the ‘nameless Mexican’ mad at her, or did he accept her gift?”

“You’ll have to wait until the next telenovela.”

“Oh si (Oh yeah) and what is the next telenovela called?”

“Anna Wall returns from the dead.”

We both burst out laughing, “Ay caramba! I can't wait!” he replied.

He had no idea how much I enjoyed that. It made my butterflies so happy that they were trying to escape through my bellybutton. Immature or not, I could never dream out loud like that with anyone in my colony. I thought it was perfect and exactly what I needed after feeling lonely and isolated in the colony.

“Your guests are probably waiting for you downstairs,” I said.

El Guero looked at his shiny gold watch and said, “You’re right. It’s too bad, but we better go downstairs and meet some people?”

“Okay.”

He walked around the table and waited for me to get up. He pulled my chair out and put his elbow out toward me. I stood there like an idiot, not knowing what his gesture meant. He took my hand and pulled it through his elbow, and proceeded to walk me down the stairs.

All I could do was remind myself to breathe each time we took a step down the stairs. A couple of men were waiting for El Guero at the bottom of the stairs. He introduced me to them. They all shook my hand and said, “Mucho gusto.”

Paula came up to us and said, “My turn to steal Anna away. Come, I want to talk to you while I do my makeup,” and back upstairs I went with Paula. I followed her to a room where she had a walk-in closet full of clothes, and mirrors everywhere. I sat down on the bed and picked up a magazine that was lying on the table beside the bed. I flipped through it as she was doing her makeup.

“It’s nice you came, Anna,” said Paula in her heavy Spanish accent.

“Do you know how many people are coming?” I asked.

“No, but not too many, just some of El Guero’s colleagues and his good friends. He is very careful with who his friends are.”

“Okay, are you related to him?” I asked.

“Yes, el es mi primo. (He is my cousin.)” 

“Okay.”

“You want to try some of my makeup?”

“Sure,” I replied and met her at the mirror. I picked the lightest color of her lipstick and put some on.

“Here, you need some of this too,” she said as she handed me a mascara.

“Thanks.”

“Don’t be shy, put on whatever you like. I will change my clothes.”

“Okay, ahhh, I'm going to go to the washroom,” I said.

“You can use mine,” she said, as she pointed to a door in the room.

“There’s another bathroom in this place?” I thought as I went into the bathroom and locked the door behind me. I stared at myself in the mirror as I wondered if I had ever heard the word colleague before. Or was the tequila causing me forget the English I had learned in Canada? I took the opportunity to recognize how awkward I was feeling again. I had a little chat with myself. “What are you doing, Anna? You shouldn’t be here; you should go home.”

“Anna! Do you want to come with me to Patos?” Paula asked. “I have to go and pick up my friend,” she said as I came out of the bathroom.

“Okay,” I answered and thought, “I will go home after.”

“We will come right back here to eat after,” Paula explained.

We passed my brother on our way outside, Paula explained to him where we were going. I followed her through a couple of doors into a garage. She hopped into a shiny new black pickup. I walked around, climbed in, and off we went to Patos.

“So what were you and the chef making? It smelled really good in the kitchen.”

“We made menudo and frijoles charros. Do you like menudo?”

“Ummm, not really.”

“What about frijoles charros?”

“I have never tried frijoles charros.”

“Tonight is the chance for you to try.”

I smiled and said, “I probably won't stay that long.”

“But what do you mean? It’s a New Year’s party, Anna.  Everybody stays until the new year. That’s why it’s a New Year’s party. El Guero would not like that if you left his party early.”

“He probably won't even notice.”

“I think he will. He wants to dance with you yet.”

“Oh no! He knows that menonas can’t dance, right?”

“Si pero a él no le importa. (Yes, but he doesn't care.)”

My anxiety grew so thick that I didn’t even have to explain it to Paula. She felt it. “No te preocupes (Do not worry), Anna. El Guero doesn't get embarrassed, and trust me, he will do all the work. All you can do is enjoy the ride,” she explained.

That didn’t help my anxiety much. Especially when Paula said, “Okay, Anna, we are going to park around the corner, and my friend is going to sneak out of her house to come with us.”

“Okay, why is she sneaking out of her house?”

“Porque (because) her husband is a pinche cabrón (f#cking bastard) and he doesn't want her to come to the party.”

“Oh no,” I replied.

“We will wait here for her, okay?”

“Okay.”

As we sat in the pickup waiting for her friend to sneak out of her house, we watched all kinds of dressed up people going into a building across the street.

“What’s going on here?” I asked.

“A New Year’s dance. All the people that weren't invited to El Guero’s party are going there.”

“Oh, that must be the dance I got invited to,” I said, as a cowboy wearing a shirt with the Virgin Mary on the back of it walked across the street.

“Was the guy that invited you to the dance wearing a shirt like that?” asked Paula.

“No, at least not when he asked me. Why?”

“Anna, trust me, do not ever date a guy who wears shirts like those,” Paula explained in a serious tone.

“But why?” I asked, and we got interrupted by her friend, who jumped into the pickup and said, “Vamonos! Vamonos!”

Paula stepped on the gas, causing the tires to spin and leaving a cloud of dust behind us. Alejandra, ella es mi amiga Anna (She’s my friend Anna). Anna meet my friend  Alejandra.

“Es un placer conocerte. (It's a pleasure to meet you.)”

“Igualmente (likewise),” I replied.

As soon as we were done with the introductions, Alejandra turned to Paula and started ranting about her husband. She spoke so fast I didn’t stand a chance at understanding much of it.  But I got the gist of it by her tone and the swear words she used—she was very angry at her husband. Alejandra looked at me then at Paula and said, “Gracias por sacarme de allí (Thanks for getting me out of there),” with tears in her eyes.

I understood enough to know that Alejandra was worried about people noticing that she had been crying and that she wanted to fix her makeup before joining the party.

By the time we hit the back road behind Patos again, it was pitch black out. Paula seemed to know those back roads very well. She knew exactly when to slow down and when she could go full speed. By the time we reached the two armed men guarding the entrance gate at El Guero’s ranch, the full moon was peeking over the maintains. It looked like part of the mountains was on fire.

The armed men didn’t even stop us; they knew the pickup and just opened the gate to let us in. There were a lot more vehicles parked than there had been before we left. Paula drove the pickup back into the garage.

We snuck through a back door, through the kitchen, and upstairs back to Paula’s room. I sat on the bed and flipped through the magazine while Paula helped Alexandra with her makeup.

Music echoed through the entire place, people drinking and mingling. As we made our way back down the stairs, I stopped halfway down and scanned the crowd. All I saw was a room full of men, and when I spotted a familiar face, I knew that the bad feeling I had been having wasn’t a vicious mountain lion or the fact that El Guero had a gun. When he acknowledged that he had seen me, all the butterflies that had been dancing in my stomach on and off throughout the entire experience suddenly choked, tumbled down my legs and fell on my toes. Click here to continue reading my story.