Caramelo

“But how could a girl with skin like a caramelo have such a dusty old mother? […] The girl Candelaria has skin bright as a copper veinte centavos coin after you’ve sucked it. Not transparent as an ear like Aunty Light-Skin. Not shark-belly pale like Father and The Grandmother. Not the red river clay color of Mother and her family. Not the coffee-with-too-much-milk color like me, nor the fried-tortilla color of the washerwoman Amparo, her mother. Not like anybody. Smooth as peanut butter, deep as burnt-milk candy.” 

Lala attempts to describe her connection to Candelaria, the daughter of a washerwoman who does Soledad’s laundry. Lala struggles to understand her grandmother’s dismissive treatment of Candelaria simply because she’s Native and has skin the color of a caramelo. This moment is the first reference to caramelo in the aptly titled book, wherein caramelo becomes a reoccurring motif. Though the resonance and meaning of this motif changes with each occurrence, caramelo consistently suggests a kind of elusive sweetness one struggles to hold onto: the sweetness of love, the sweetness of remembering loving words and gestures. Candelaria herself is a charged figure for Soledad and Zoila, reminding them of the affair that Lala’s father, Inocencio, had with the washerwoman. Candelaria is therefore un recuerdo in the minds of Lala’s family members: a living testament to this family secret. 

“[…] as he watched her die, he was so overcome with her beauty that he knelt down and wept. And then they both turned into volcanoes. And there they are […] One lying down, and one hunched over watching her. There. That’s how you know it’s true […] I suppose that’s how Mexicans love, I suppose.” 

Narciso (the Little Grandfather) tells Lala the story of two lovers who turned into volcanoes. When he tells this story, he notably cites the visible presence of these volcanoes as evidence that the story is “true” (much in the way a photo—un recuerdo—is upheld as evidence that a memory is “true”). This story also illustrates the complicated love that Soledad and Narciso feel for one another (and begins to stir Lala’s feelings that there might be more to the Awful Grandmother than initially meets the eye). 

‘“You climbed up in life marrying my son, a Reyes, and don’t think I don’t know it. […] My son could’ve done a lot better than marrying a woman who can’t even speak proper Spanish. You sound like you escaped from the ranch. And to make matters even more sad, you’re as dark as a slave.’” 

Soledad demonstrates her typical denigration of Zoila, making racially prejudiced reflections on her skin color (just as she did earlier with Candelaria). As the book late reveals, Soledad is defensive and paranoid about her family’s status because she herself once served as the Reyes’s servant (and was initially perceived as lowly, not deserving of Narciso’s love). In many ways, Soledad projects anxieties surrounding her own marriage onto the marriage of Zoila and Inocencio.

“Women across the republic, rich or poor, plain or beautiful, ancient or young, in the times of my grandmother all owned rebozos—the ones of real Chinese silk sold for prices so precious one asked for them as dowry and took them to the grave as one’s burial shroud, as well as the cheap everyday variety made of cotton and bought at the market. Silk rebozos worn with the best dress—de gala, as they say. Cotton rebozos to carry a child, or to shoo away the flies. Devout rebozos to cover one’s head with when entering church. […] A rebozo as a cradle, as umbrella or parasol, as basket when going to market, or modestly covering the blue-veined breast giving suck. That world with its customs my grandmother witnessed.” 

Lala explains the significance of the rebozo as a symbol of Mexican feminine identity. She suggests that the many styles of rebozos—and the contexts for wearing them—are as diverse as Mexican women themselves. This reflection is especially important in light of Soledad’s family legacy as rebozo-makers (and foreshadows the ways the unfinished caramelo rebozo will be passed down as a memento. 

“When Guillermina departed from this world into that, she left behind an unfinished rebozo, the design so complex no other woman was able to finish it without undoing the threads and starting over. […] Even with half its fringe hanging unbraided like a mermaid’s hair, it was an exquisite rebozo of five tiras, the cloth a beautiful blend of toffee, licorice, and vanilla stripes flecked with black and white, which is why they call this design a caramelo.”

Lala describes how Soledad inherited an unfinished caramelo rebozo when her mother passed away. This garment—reminiscent of candy-like sweetness—stands-in as a kind of bittersweet reminder of her mother’s absence. Thus, it is aptly handed down from Soledad to Lala when she passes away later in the book (as a sweet reminder, un recuerdo). 

“Oh, if only her mother were alive. She could have told her how to speak with her rebozo. How, for example, if a woman dips the fringe of her rebozo at the fountain when fetching water, this means—I am thinking of you. Or, how if she gathers her rebozo like a basket, and walks in front of the one she loves and accidentally lets the contents fall, if an orange and a piece of sugarcane tumble out, that means, —Yes, I accept you as my novio. […] But who was there to interpret the language of the rebozo to Soledad? No one!”

Lala explains how the rebozo is not just an inert symbol for Mexican femininity, but a form of vibrant, living communication unique to the Mexican female experience. Not only was Soledad’s mother tragically unable to finish the caramelo rebozo, she was unable to teach her “how to speak” with it. Thus, the rebozo is an objective correlative for another kind of unspoken absence: a language of love that Soledad never learned to speak effectively. 

“Soledad Reyes saw cannons, and mausers, and neighbors hiding horses in upstairs bedrooms to keep them from being stolen. […] She saw a dismembered head mumble a filthy curse before dying. […] She saw the magnificent Zapata riding on a beautiful horse down the streets of the capital, and just as he crossed in front of her, he raised an elegant hand to his face and scratched his nose. These things she saw with her own eyes! It was only later when she was near the end of her life that she began to doubt what she’d actually seen and what she’d embroidered over time, because after awhile the embroidery seems real and the real seems embroidery.”

This passage describes Soledad’s memories of the Mexican Revolution, speaking to the ways memory often seems stranger than reality (and the ways our memories are re-embroidered—reconsolidated—every time we recall them). This reference to the “real” and the unreal in our memories resonates with Lala’s reflections on the role of the author. As she tells the grandmother’s story in Part 2, Lala often exaggerates, stretches the truth, and sometimes lies outright. She does so, however, with the hope of capturing the sensation of lived experience: of making the moment “real” for her reader. 

‘“All I’m asking for is one little love scene. At least something to remind people Narciso and I loved each other. Oh, please! We really only have that vulgar love scene overheard by Eleuterio. And isn’t it important to understand that Narciso and I were in love, really, I mean before he met the so-and-so?’” 

Soledad interjects into Lala’s telling of her story (as she does on several other occasions) to suggest that Lala is not fully representing the complex love she and her husband shared. This charged moment gestures to the ways every story prioritizes—and marginalizes—certain details for the author’s narrative aims. Here, Cisneros suggests that every story contains multitudes of other (untold) stories. 

“She suffered, ay, she suffered the way only Mexican women can suffer, because she loved the way only Mexicans love. In love not only with someone’s present, but haunted by their future and terrorized by their past.” 

Lala speaks not only to the suffering Soledad experienced in her love (and in Narciso’s neglect of her during her pregnancy), but to the multi-layered sensation of feminine history that haunts her own future and past. This sentiment is echoed later on in the novel when Soledad bemoans the fact that Lala is repeating her romantic mistakes. 

“A person of independence, who does not need nor want us, inspires our admiration, and admiration is a love potion. A person who needs us too much, who is weak with neediness, inspires pity. And pity, the other side of admiration, is the antidote of love. Remembering is the hand of God. I remember you, therefore I make you immortal. Recuerdo. I remember. Un recuerdo. A memory. A memento.” 

Narciso is told—much to his dismay—that the only way to make Exaltacion “love” him is to “forget” her. He thus realizes he will never be able to make her love him, as he will never be able to let go of her memory, which is captured poignantly in the form of un recuerdo. With this realization, Narciso shares the sad understanding of his wife, Soledad (who also suffers for her love of him.)  

“Sadness was gathering where it always gathered, first in the top of the nose, and then in the eyes and throat, and in the twilight sky running like a ruined cloth, not all the sugared sweets in the world could stop it. He chewed softly the last bits of caramelo, carefully, the molars grinding, the jaw working, great gobs of saliva washing down his throat. […] Exaltacion Henestrosa. He said her name. A deep root of pain. The little wall he had built against her memory crumbling like sugar.” 

Unable to forget Exaltacion—and thus resigned to the impossibility of procuring her love—Narciso attempts to drown his sorrows in candy. For Narciso, the sweet taste of the caramelo candy is analogous with the sweetness of his cherished memory. Much like the memory (and the sadness attached to it), the sweet taste becomes difficult to swallow, to process.

“But when the nurse came to record my name, Mama heard herself say, —Celaya. A town where they’d once stopped for a mineral water and a torta de milanesa on a trip through Guanajuato. —Celaya, she said, surprised at her own audacity. It was the first time she disobeyed father, but no, not the last. She reasoned the name “Leticia” belonged to some fulana, one of my father’s “histories.”—Why else would he have insisted so stubbornly? And so I was christened Celaya, a name Father hated until his mother declared over the telephone wires, —A name pretty enough for a telenovela.” 

In this significant moment, Lala’s mother takes her first steps toward emotional autonomy within her marriage to Inocencio. It is telling that Inocencio is only able to accept the name “Celaya” because his beloved mother approves it (linking the name to the telenovelas whose drama resembles the drama of Lala’s family). Thus, Lala’s name is simultaneously connected to her mother’s independence and her father’s deep bond with his mother.

“For a long time I thought the eagle and the serpent on the Mexican flag were the United States and Mexico fighting. And then, for an even longer time afterward, I thought of the eagle and the serpent as the story of Mother and Father.” 

In this reflective moment, Lala illustrates how her sensation of the physical border between the United States and Mexico (and her complex sense of “home” that evolves from moving back and forth) is analogous to the tension between her mother and father. Thus, Cisneros vividly illustrates how the personal is political in Caramelo, how this family’s history stands in for the Mexican-American cultural experience.

“The Grandfather, who paid so much attention to being feo, fuerte, y formal in his life, backed up traffic for kilometers; a feo diversion, a fuerte nuisance for the passing motorists, a sight as common as any yawning Guanajuato mummy, as formal as any portrait of Death on the frank covers of ¡Alarma! scandal magazine.”

The moment of Narciso’s death slyly pokes fun at his lifelong philosophy of masculine self-presentation, suggesting that striving to be feo, fuerte, y formal makes about as much sense as a car crash. This is one of many moments wherein Cisneros humorously critiques Mexican machismo and hard-lined gender expectations. It also illustrates the strange ironies of death: a moment wherein our lives and our lifelong values are captured in a kind of macabre recuerdo, an unflattering self-portrait. 

“The Grandmother forgets about all the work waiting but simply unfolds the caramelo rebozo and places it around her shoulders. The body remembers the silky weight. The diamond patterns, the figure eights, the tight basket weave of strands, the fine sheen to the cloth, the careful way the caramelo rebozo was dyed in candy stripes, all this she considers before rolling up the shawl again, wrapping it in the old pillowcase, and locking it back in the walnut-wood armoire, the very same armoire where Regina Reyes had hid Santos Piedrasanta’s wooden button until her death, when someone tossed it out as easily as Santos had knocked out her tooth. As easily as someone tossing out a mottled-brown picture of a young man in his striped suit leaning into a ghost.” 

After the death of her husband, Soledad contemplates the caramelo rebozo. As Cisneros’s language suggests, the rebozo carries the weight of her memories and emotions, and serves as a kind of stand-in for the emotional experiences of Mexican women (such as Regina Reyes with her wooden button). As Soledad subconsciously recognizes the rebozo’s role as a capsule of feminine emotional memory, she is thus able to discard the old photograph of Narciso with Exaltacion, letting go of the sadness she attaches to this recuerdo.

“At the corner, I turn and walk down the route Candelaria and I used to walk toward the tortilleria, and I look at the doorways and try to remember where I would abandon Cande and where she would abandon me in the blind man’s game we played. Here is the shop where the Grandfather always stopped to talk to the tailor, and here’s the kiosk where he picked up his newspapers […] An old man behind the counter with the same pelt of white hair and scent of a good cigar like the Little Grandfather. Suddenly I feel funny, a sadness and tenderness all mixed together. Until the old guy looks up and starts making smacky kisses at me. I forget about buying anything and hurry toward La Villa.”

While exploring Mexico City, Lala experiences the bittersweetness of her childhood memories playing in the streets with Candelaria, suggesting how large these memories loom in her conscience (and how important they will become when she learns that Candelaria is her sister). She is also confronted with a cruel reality of feminine experience: that men—even apparently harmless men like the Little Grandfather—can threaten women with unwanted physical contact.

‘“Your grandfather was very strict, because of the military, but your grandmother, what was her excuse? You think she was bad by the time you knew her, but back then, well, you have no idea […] That’s why he said, “Normita, you know better than I your parents will never give us permission to marry.” This was because he’d already been married […] Plus he was a lot older, almost twenty years older than me […] and much-too-much-too Indian for Mother to approve. She was always concerned with el que diran, the what-will-they-say.’” 

In this scene, Norma—Aunty Light-Skin—tells Lala about her former affair with The Man Whose Name No One Is Allowed to Mention. She reveals that a shadow of impossibility was cast across their relationship from the very beginning (because Soledad is so deeply prejudiced against Native Mexicans with dark skin). Norma’s grim reflection—“She was always concerned with el que diran, the what-will-they-say” (271)—foreshadows Lala’s father’s concern for what people might say if they learned the truth of Candelaria’s parentage. The specific concern for this man’s “Indian” appearance also echoes Soledad’s criticism of Zoila’s “Indian” skin and her prejudicial treatment of the “caramelo"-skinned Candelaria. 

“To make things even more confusing, everyone says ma-ma, or ¡mamacita! when some delightful she walks by […] If the delight is a he—¡Ay, qué papacito!- Or,—¡papasote! for the ones truly delicious to the eye. A terrible incestuous confusion. Worse, the insults aimed at the mother, —Tu mama. While something wonderful is —Qué padre! What does this say about the Mexican? I asked you first.” 

This moment exemplifies the many moments wherein Cisneros deconstructs the etymology and phonology of Spanish language, using these deconstructions to analyze Mexican gender values. Herein, she suggests that sexist gender problems within Mexican culture can be traced back to the ways the “feminine” is treated in Spanish language.

“She was turning invisible. She was turning invisible. What she had feared her whole life. The body led her, a wide row boat without oars or a rudder, drifting. Giddy, she didn’t need to do a thing, simply be.” 

As Soledad feels her body beginning to die, she connects the experience of “turning invisible” to her earlier experiences of aging and becoming desexualized (less noticeable to men). She reflects that this sensation of invisibility—and loss of control—is oddly liberating. This bittersweet liberation is much akin to her earlier discarding of the old recuerdo photograph with Narciso in his striped suit. By abandoning the weight of her memory—the weight she has carried in her body throughout her life—she is able, for a moment, to “simply be” (347).

“How can I explain? Talk is all I’ve got going for me.” 

Lala experiences hostility from her high school classmates after she tells a partially true, partially embellished story about her Spanish heritage. Lala’s mother is deeply frustrated by her tendency toward story-telling, likening it to her father’s own penchant for stories (and his tendency to pretend he is of a more elite familial status than he truly is). Zoila refers to the Reyes family as “mitoteros” (translating both to “racially mixed” and psychologically “mixed up”), trying to discourage Lala from pretending to be someone she is not. As a physically underdeveloped, shy, and awkward teen, however, Lala feels that “talk is all” she has going for her, that these stories—even with their exaggerations—are an important part of her identity and self-worth.

‘“Home. I want to go home already,’ Father says. —Home? Where’s that? North? South? Mexico? San Antonio? Chicago? Where, Father? ‘—All I want is my kids,’ Father says. ‘—That’s the only country I need.’” 

In this moment, Inocencio is forced to confront his financial and personal losses with his San Antonio business. He thus decides to cease his futile efforts to create a “home” through his hard work, acknowledging that the only “home” he needs is already there in the form of his kids. Inocencio’s sentiments echo Lala’s earlier projections between her family and the history of Mexico and the US based on her misunderstanding of the flag representing a symbolic fight between the countries. Thus, the Reyes family finds a home beyond national borders: within and among themselves. 

“I get dressed, tie the Grandmother’s caramelo rebozo on my head like a gypsy, and start sucking the fringe. It has a familiar sweet taste to it, like carrots, like camote, that calms me. I wander downstairs and out into the downtown streets of the capital, walking this way and that, till I wind up in the direction of La Villa. I don’t stop until I find myself in front of the house on Destiny Street. But everything’s changed.”

After Lala’s failure to begin a love affair with “Ernesto,” she seeks the familiar comfort of her grandmother’s street—and her related memories—in Mexico City. She aptly dons her grandmother’s caramelo rebozo, tasting it as though to absorb the layers of sweet memory, sadness, and experience embodied within this garment. By wearing the rebozo in this moment, Lala gestures to the experiences of love and loss she shared with Soledad.

‘“Me? Haunting you? It’s you, Celaya, who’s haunting me. I can’t bear it. Why do you insist on repeating my life? Is that what you want? To live as I did? There’s no sin in falling in love with your heart and with your body, but wait till you’re old enough to love yourself first.’” 

Still recovering from the loss of her relationship with Ernesto, Lala imagines Soledad appearing before her as a ghost. Soledad points out to Lala that she is “repeating” her life, that she must learn to “love herself” (406) before she can understand what it means to love someone else. This connection to the women of her family helps Lala to understand where she comes from, and thus learn to accept—and love—herself.