Caramelo

Lala explains that in her grandmother’s time, Mexico City was very different from the Mexico City she knows today: “chaparrita, short and squat and hugging the earth” (98). She describes the building Aunty Fina lived in as skinny and rust-stained, filled with “smells doing battle with each other” (100), including laundry, cottage cheese, and urine. She explains that the rooftop was the only place where Soledad could go to get peace and quiet.

Though Aunty Fina’s home is dreary and overcrowded, she tries to make the best of their lives with her warm, cheerful attitude. She regularly entertains a strange guitar-playing man named Uncle Pio who sings songs of love and loneliness. Aunty Fina makes sure to lock the children’s’ doors “against Uncle Pio’s funny ways” (101), insinuating his proclivities toward illicit contact.

Soledad feels so lonely that, one day, while standing on the rooftop, she tells herself that the next man she sees passing below the building will become her husband. At this moment, Soledad notices a young Narciso Reyes in “his smart military cadet uniform” (102).

Chapter 23 begins with an explanation of the masculine value system Narciso has been taught to live by: that a man should be “feo, fuerte, y formale,” i.e. “ugly, strong, and proper” (103). As Lala explains, Narciso is strong and proper, but he is not ugly.

As soon as Narciso enters Aunty Fina’s home, he is hit by a bowl of milk flung by one of the children, and his uniform is soaked. Soledad enters the room and helps clean Narciso with her caramelo rebozo. She is in awe of his handsome appearance and proper bearing, and she converses awkwardly. Lala explains that Soledad’s awkwardness can be attributed to her lack of a mother who could have taught her “how to speak with her rebozo” (105) if she were alive:

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 (105).

Lala further explains that Narciso is actually a distant cousin of Soledad—a member of the Reyes family—although neither of them know this. Lala and her grandmother reflect that this detail makes their family story “just like a good fotonovela or telenovela” (105).

When Narciso leaves, Soledad follows after him in tears, distraught by the idea of never seeing him again. Unsure of what to do, Narciso kisses her, and thus seals himself as an object of adoration in Soledad’s mind. She tells him that she longs to escape living with Aunty Fina. Narciso then promises to take her home with him so she can become the family’s servant.

Soledad is introduced to Narciso’s mother, Regina Reyes, an intelligent and domineering woman who is initially skeptical of Soledad. Lala explains that some of this attitude originates from the fact that Soledad is a Reyes of the “backward, Indian variety” (113), whose physical appearance uncomfortably reminds Regina of her own humble roots. Narciso’s family lives in luxury compared to other families in their neighborhood (mostly due to Regina’s enterprising spirit selling used items at the el Baratillo market). His father, Eleuterio, is an immigrant from Seville, Spain, who plays the piano (and earns little income despite his artistic dedication).

For most of Chapter 25, the grandmother’s voice takes over, narrating the loneliness she feels while working in the Reyes home. In their home, her bedroom is nothing but a thin mattress in a pantry (and she can’t even close the door all the way). Her primary source of solace is the quiet sanctuary of church.

Soledad explains that because she “married into a family of category” (121), she has felt some degree of class tension between herself and Narciso their whole married life. During dinner, he expects to be waited on by her like a servant, bragging, “I don’t even know what color the kitchen walls are” (121) because he never enters the kitchen.

Lala explains that the year of her grandmother’s arrival in the Reyes household was the centennial of Mexican independence, just one year before the 1911 Mexican Revolution. She then “spin[s] the camera like a dizzy child” (126) to tell the story of the Reyes family’s tumultuous life during the Ten Tragic Days of the revolution wherein the president was imprisoned in his own palace and “the streets were a battleground” (126).

As the Tragic Ten Days of the revolution rage on, Regina becomes fed up with Soledad and her husband, mocking her for sitting around “playing with her shawl” and him for “playing the piano” (127), leaving her to procure food for the family. Regina leaves the house armed only with a pillowcase as a white flag, holding it as proudly “as if she were one of the flag bearers in last year’s Centennial parade” (128).

Meanwhile, as a young cadet, Narciso must handle the horrible details no one else has time to deal with. He spends much of his time helping his classmates burn dead bodies in the streets. People must be doused with gasoline and burned on the spot because there is no time to bury them, and leaving them unburned could lead to an epidemic. In the midst of this grim task, Narciso reminds himself to remain “feo, fuerte, y formale” (129). On his way home one day, Narciso is accosted by a group of men in an alley who demand to know whose side he is on: Heurta’s or Madero’s. Narciso finds himself unable to answer, knowing the wrong answer will lead to his death. The soldiers beat him and decide to shoot him anyway. He is saved from death at the last minute by an officer who declares, “Let him go. I know this boy. His father and I visit the same barber” (130).

Narciso’s family sends him to the infirmary, where he is treated for a collapsed lung. To operate on the lung, three of Narciso’s ribs must be sawed from his chest. He leaves the hospital with a permanent hole in his chest and his three ribs wrapped in a gauze bundle.

Lala explains that, later in his life, Narciso becomes fond of bragging that he lost his three ribs in the decisive battle at Celaya (opposed to a random confrontation). Lala says, however, that this claim is “nothing but story” (133).

After the Ten Tragic Days, Regina sends her son to stay with his Uncle Old, who runs an upholstery business in Chicago. She claims he will be safer in Chicago than in his own country. Meanwhile, Regina manages to turn an impressive profit during the war, stockpiling, trading, and smuggling goods (specializing in cigarettes).

The things Soledad sees during the revolution are stranger than any fiction, including “cannons, and mausers, and neighbors hiding horses in upstairs bedrooms to keep them from being stolen. […] a dismembered head mumbl[ing] a filthy curse before dying. […]” (135). Lala reflects, “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” (135). 

Narciso goes to live in Chicago with Uncle Old and his sons, Chubby, Curly, and Snake. He learns that Uncle Old moved to Chicago to escape from the Mexican army after embezzling the salary of 874 federales for Cuban rum, Cuban woman, and Cuban gambling. Narciso reflects on the irony of this story after hearing so much bragging from his family about the Reyes name.

Because Uncle Old’s wife died many years ago, the home is trochemoche, or “come what may” (138). Furniture is spartan and utilitarian, and surfaces are covered in dust. They survive on strange American-Mexican hybrid meals such as quesadillas with American cheese, peanut butter tacos, and hot dogs in tortillas.

The lifestyle of Uncle Old is offensive to Narciso’s delicate sensibilities. Narciso dislikes cleaning the shop in his fine linen shirts and pinstriped suits. He also resents how this manual labor makes his feet hurt (though, in time, his feet hurt more from dancing than work as he begins to go out on the town).

In the midst of Narciso’s gallivanting through Chicago, he meets a beautiful showgirl with caramelo-colored skin named Josephine Wells. They have a love affair, and Narciso writes home that he is in love with a woman who is “Spanish on her father’s side […] half Cherokee and half Negro. But all together […] a real American and wonderful” (141). Soon after, Narciso receives a telegram that reads: “FATHER DEAD RETURN HOME” (142). The novel reveals that this showgirl—Josephine Wells—is none other than Josephine Baker. Shortly after Narciso leaves Chicago, she moves to France and becomes a sensation.

After receiving the telegram about his son’s relationship with Josephine, Eleuterio experiences a shock so great—from the revelation that she is “half Negro”—that he suffers a cerebral embolism and is declared dead.

Eleuterio is dressed in his best suit and displayed in the living room, but during the wake, his eyelids begins to twitch. He is then moved to a bed where the doctors summon him “back to life” (143). Only “half” of Eleuterio’s body regains function, however, and the left half remains “asleep” (144).

When Narciso returns home, Regina notes that something has changed about him irrevocably, that he has the look of “people [who] have experienced a disappointment in life” (145). Though he does not mention his heartbreak at leaving Josephine, Narciso carries this disappointment with him in his appearance.

Soledad is assigned nursing duties in addition to her usual servant duties. In the midst of waiting on Eleuterio, the two become exceptionally close. Soledad also becomes closer with Narciso, who tells her exaggerated stories of his three removed ribs and his time in Chicago. Upon noticing that Narciso has delicate feet “too small for a man” (146), Narciso tells her that in Chicago, he earned corns and callouses from working so hard (even though he really gained them from dancing the Charleston). Upon hearing this, Soledad is filled with pity, and she announces, “You’ve got hooves like a girl’s” (146). Narciso laughs at this awkward comment, then tugs her toward him and kisses her. Lala remarks, “In that kiss was his destiny. And hers” (147).

Eleuterio is disappointed by the change in his son’s behavior after living in Chicago. He thinks of Narciso as “a little lizard strutting about in a tight suit […] a baby-faced dandy, a mama’s boy” (148).

Eleuterio is unable to speak without sounding like he is gargling, but he retains some of his piano-playing ability. He and Soledad continue to become close friends, and she is the only person in the household who understands his deep loneliness (and is thus able to communicate with him).

Meanwhile, Regina’s wealth flourishes as a result of her “little commerce,” and the house is stockpiled with fine furniture, crystal chandeliers, silver tea sets, leather-bound books, and paintings. She cautions her family to be careful because “everything’s for sale” (150).

Narciso and Soledad make love, and Soledad loses herself in the thrill of the moment (despite remembered warnings that women must “cuídate” or, in other words, take care not to become pregnant). As they make love, Eleuterio hears them (and it’s inferred that he vows to make his son take responsibility for his actions by marrying Soledad).

Because Soledad is inexperienced in love, she believes all of Narciso’s facile promises of adoration and sweet-nothing sentiments (or chuchulucos). Eleuterio, however, is not fooled, and he seeks to get through to his son simply by staring at him, attempting to convey his thoughts through his facial expression. “We are not dogs” (159), Eleuterio emphasizes repeatedly in his thoughts, recalling his own disreputable departure from Seville and his unplanned impregnation of Regina.

Chapter 35 tells the story of Eleuterio’s move from Seville, Spain to Mexico City. As a young man, Eleuterio used to play the piano in bars. One night at a bar, he saw one man killing another. When the police arrived, he pointed out the man who committed the murder, and was taken into the station as a witness. Once at the station, he became terrified by the prospect of “being yanked into history” (161), and took advantage of a commotion between two recently arrested women to flee the scene.

Thus, Eleuterio left Seville to avoid being summoned by the police. He abandoned his first wife without explanation and boarded a ship with only the clothes on his back. When he came to Mexico City, he taught at an elementary school and played the national anthem when the president dictator came to the inauguration of a new school building. Prone to narrative “embroidery,” like all members of the Reyes family, Eleuterio exaggerates that he played at the Presidential Palace. 

Soledad becomes pregnant, and though Regina makes her life hell, Narciso is blind to all but her best qualities. Meanwhile, the sympathetic friendship between Soledad and Eleuterio deepens. As Lala explains, “Like him, she was a sad, frightened creature whom everyone was so used to seeing they didn’t see her” (165).

Regina throws her son an elaborate going away party with fine food and many distinguished guests. Soledad serves the guests throughout the party, and Eleuterio is mostly ignored. Toward the end of the evening, Eleuterio becomes so fed up with the hypocrisy of the party that he pulls Soledad to him and smashes down across the table with his cane, shattering Regina’s fancy china. He shouts repeatedly, “We are not dogs!” (167). In the heat of this moment, Narciso is finally able to “see” (167) Soledad and regain his humanity. He thereupon decides to marry Soledad.

Narciso and Soledad take a trip toward the sea, but Soledad is too sick from her pregnancy to travel all the way. Thus, Soledad stays in the mountains of Oaxaca while Narciso ventures forth to San Mateo.

Soledad is in great physical pain and distress, throwing up almost everything she eats, and suffering cold chills at night. She is extremely sensitive to smells, especially sweet smells.

Meanwhile, Narciso meets—and becomes smitten with—a ferociously beautiful and eccentric woman named Exaltacion Henestrosa. Exaltacion is a vendor of shrimp, turtle eggs, embroidered cloth, and live iguanas, which she notoriously carries on her head like a headdress.

As soon as Exaltacion is introduced into the narrative, the grandmother’s voice interrupts Lala’s storytelling. The grandmother begs Lala to include another love scene, claiming it’s important for the reader to know that she and Narciso loved each other. When Lala denies her request, the grandmother points out that she has described the weather of Oaxaca inaccurately, and that the winds she alludes to “arrive only in winter” (171).

Because of the supposed wind, Narciso gets a fragment of sand stuck in his eye, which leads to infection. Exaltacion cures him with a strange concoction of iguana droppings. When his eye is restored, she invites him to have coffee with her. He stays in her hut, where they pass the time by making love. While Narciso immediately falls in love with Exaltacion, it is clear that he is just a diversion for her, and that she does not have strong feelings for him.

The grandmother bemoans Lala’s cruelty at this point in the story, saying, “All I wanted was a little understanding, but I see I was asking for too much” (172), and, “After all these years, I’m still trying to forget” (173). 

Narciso falls desperately in love with Exaltacion despite her relative indifference to him. When the Circus Garibaldi comes to town, he charms Exaltacion by buying copious amounts of sweets and candies, or chuchulucos. As Lala explains, “There were many things Exaltacion could resist, including this silly boy in front of her with his fanfarron striped suit, but she could not resist candy” (177).

At the circus, Narciso has his photograph taken with Exaltacion by a female photographer (who is rumored to be in love with Panfila Pan, a beautiful female singer traveling with the circus). When Exaltacion hears Panfila Pan sing, she herself is captivated. The next day, Exaltacion runs away with Panfila Pan, leaving both the photographer and Narciso heartbroken. Thus, the photographer delivers the photograph to Narciso with the image of her rival, Exaltacion, trimmed away.

Soledad is plagued by the creeping sensation that Narciso is having an affair. One day, this sensation is confirmed when a local child looks at the photo of Narciso from the circus and asks, “Who’s the lady sitting next to him?” (185). Soledad then notices the hem of a skirt: the only part of Exaltacion that hasn’t been trimmed from the photograph.

Seeking to confirm what she sees, she goes out and asks a watchmaker if she can borrow his eyepiece. When she realizes that she is most definitely looking at the skirt of another woman, she faints, feeling as though a pin has been driven through her heart.

Soledad confides in a wise old woman who sells tamales in town, asking her, “How much longer will I feel like this?” (185). The woman tells her that it all depends on “how hard [she] love[s]” (186). Soledad begins to cry because she loves Narciso so much; thus, the pain will last indefinitely. Soledad wonders how there can be such misery in the world. The tamale vendor tells her that there is much misery, but also much humanity. 

At this point in Lala’s narrative, the grandmother protests with outrage: “Lies, lies. Nothing but lies from beginning to end. I don’t know why I trusted you with my beautiful story” (188). Lala replies that her exaggerations are “healthy lies. So as to fill in the gaps” (188).

Narciso is troubled by his wife’s pregnancy weight gain and hormonal mood swings. He fails to understand why she insists on constantly hovering over him, asking if he is hungry, if he needs anything. Lala explains, “His body was her body now” (189), and that every time she fed him, she was really hungry herself. She feels she has lost control of both her body and her life.

In the midst of her labor pains, Soledad finds herself crying out, “Muh, muh, muh […] Ma-ma!” (191), subconsciously seeking for someone to care for her.

While working a job developing the mountain roads in Oaxaca, Narciso is haunted by his thoughts of Exaltacion. A local tells Narciso to seek the help of a witch woman named María Sabrina, who lives deep in the mountains “where the clouds catch in the crags” (192).

Narciso travels through the fiercely beautiful but impoverished mountain villages of Oaxaca, slicing “gigantic heart-shaped leaves” (193) to clear his path. The journey to reach María Sabrina takes eight days. When he finally reaches her hut, a skinny pregnant woman not much older than himself greets him. She tells him, “You want a love medicine, Narciso Reyes” (193), and explains that he must “[…] forget her. Abandon her. The more you let someone go, the more they fly back to you […] The worse you treat them, the crazier in love they are with you” (194).

Upon this pronouncement, Narciso feels the same kind of horror that Soledad felt when she realized the pain of love would never leave her because she simply loves too hard. Narciso likewise realizes that he cannot forget Exaltacion. As Lala explains, “Remembering is the hand of God. I remember you, therefore I make you immortal. Recuerdo. I remember. Un recuerdo. A memory. A memento” (194).

The novel then briefly flashes forward to the moment of Narciso’s death many years later. In this moment, he crashes into a truck full of brooms with a bumper sticker that reads: “YOU MIGHT LEAVE ME, BUT FORGET ME?—NEVER!” (194).

Neglected by her husband, Soledad pours all of her love into her new baby: her first son—and Lala’s father—Inocencio. She tells baby Inocencio that he is “born under a star,” chattering phrases such as “I’m going to swallow you up, you fat little sweetness. You little tum-tum of caramelo” (196). Gazing at her son, she remembers the wise words of the tamale vendor woman from Chapter 39. The woman told her there was as much humanity as misery in the world: “Just enough. Not too much. Just enough, thank God” (197).

Chapter 43 describes the aspect and personality of young Inocencio. Inocencio is a serious, sad-looking boy with a poetic disposition, called “a daydreamer” by his teachers and “a thinker” by his mother. His eyes are described as “slouching houses,” and he develops a lifelong habit of disappearing behind them whenever a conversation or situation becomes too much for him to process. He devotes himself to esoteric studies and thoughts, contemplating ideas that overwhelm and frighten him because “there [is] no language to describe them” (200). Soledad reflects that Inocencio is so sad and serious because his “head [is] filled with too much remembering” (198).

Lala connects this remembering to the conversations of Mexican families around the Mexican Revolution, explaining how many families are fond of inventing tales of great wealth and prosperity they had “before the revolution”: “Before the revolution, when the Reyes family owned railroads […] Before the revolution, when we were moneyed, and thus, to excuse their humble present” (198).

Once again, the grandmother begs Lala to include another love scene between her and Narciso. Finally, Lala relents, describing how Narciso would often make love while having strange nightmares about Exaltacion. He would often try to reach for Exaltacion only to find “she turned into a fish and slipped through his fingers” (202).

Lovesick for Exaltacion, Narciso wanders the streets of the capital. One day, he is struck by a sudden craving for sweets (reminded, perhaps, of the time he bought her sweets at the circus). Narciso then visits numerous vendors, buying all kinds of chuchulucos: “marzipan hens […] Mexican delicacies called Fatties, Harlequins, Queens, Joys, Alleluias, Glories, and those sublime meringue drops called Farts of a Nun” (203). Unsure what to do with these sweets, Narciso sits on a bench, where a rust-colored street dog joins him. Narciso feeds the marzipan hen to the dog, and together, he and the dog consume the whole bag of sweets, piece by piece.

As Narciso eats, he begins to feel his sadness and loneliness overwhelming him, as “he chew[s] softly the last bits of caramelo, carefully, the molars grinding, the jaw working, great gobs of saliva washing down his throat. […]” (203). In the midst of this sadness, he whispers the name “Exaltacion Henestrosa […] A deep root of pain. The little wall he had built against her memory crumbling like sugar” (204).

Predictably, the grandmother is not very happy with Lala’s decision to emphasize Narciso’s adoration of Exaltacion in this brief love scene. Soledad cries out that Lala has no understanding, that she is killing her—“Me maaaaaataaaaas” (205)—and that from now on, she will not help Lala tell her story.

As Inocencio grows up, he struggles with school (he is not aided by his distracted—and not particularly academic—parents). When he brings home mediocre final grades in high school due to spending “more time with women than with books” (206), Narciso harshly criticizes him, calling him “a burro” who will “never amount to anything” (206). Thus, Inocencio and his brother Fat-Face defy their father and hop in a flat-bed truck headed for the United States, with the ultimate goal of moving to Chicago and living with their Uncle Old.

Chapter 46 opens with a reference to an old proverb: “Spanish [is] the language to speak to God to and English [is] the language to talk to dogs” (208). Living in the United States, however, Inocencio finds himself “work[ing] for the dogs” (208), and thus needs to teach himself English.

Inocencio’s English is very deferential, mostly drawn from passages in the “Polite Phrases” chapter of an English lesson book. His English, nevertheless, is odd to American ears, and his accent is often misunderstood. When he becomes extremely frustrated with the limitations of his English, Inocencio asks, “Spic Spanish?” (208).

On the way to Chicago, Inocencio stops and works in Little Rock. He works for a man named Mr. Dick, shucking oysters at Craggy Craig’s Crab Kingdom (which he deems a step up from his previous jobs as a dishwasher in Waco and a busboy in Dallas).

In his new job, Inocencio appears elegant in his white jacket and bowtie, despite the fact that his hands are often cut and bleeding from oyster shucking. Mr. and Mrs. Dick take a liking to Inocencio and even let him move in with them. Their affection is patronizing, however, and filled with racially ignorant sentiments, such as, “The Mexicans know how to live. Do you think they care who is president or what is going on outside their small villages?” (211). Inocencio is so relieved to be liked and esteemed that he simply agrees with these sentiments, saying, “You are very kind, sir” (211).

By the time Inocencio reaches Chicago, Uncle Old has long since passed away, and his Uncle Snake has taken over the upholstery business. Unlike his father, Inocencio sees great potential in the business, and enjoys learning the trade from Uncle Snake. Uncle Snake explains that the art of upholstery is all about getting into a working rhythm and “getting the taste of it […] A taste for the Italian twine when you lick it like so before threading the curved needle. The iron flavor of a handful of tacks in your mouth […]” (213). Inocencio thus becomes devoted to his craft as an upholsterer.

One night in 1945, Inocencio is brought to the holding tank of a Chicago jail amidst a series of racially prejudiced round ups. In the midst of other bruised and black-eyed men who had the misfortune of “calling attention to themselves at the wrong place at the right time” (215), Inocencio finds someone who speaks Spanish: an elegantly tuxedoed puppeteer-magician from Spain named Wenceslao Moreno.

Inocencio explains that he was rounded up when his local soccer team (made up of Mexican immigrants) got into a physical fight with another soccer team (made up of Mexican-Americans). When the Mexican-Americans began to insult Mexico, both teams came to blows, and “the next thing […] police [were] rounding [them] up and clubbing [them] both” (217).

Wenceslao then tells the story of his own misfortune, explaining that he was rounded up while performing with his puppets at a wedding. After the guests became intoxicated and began fighting, the police accosted him and ground his puppets “into chalk dust” (218). Wenceslao bemoans their loss, saying, “It was like seeing my own children being murdered” (218). He then worries about his prospects for the future, saying he can’t return to Spain because of the war.

To help Inocencio get out of jail, Wenceslao signs him up to join the army with a nearby military recruiter. Inocencio muses that perhaps his father will be proud of him for joining the military.

In Chapter 50, Inocencio meets Zoila—the woman who will become Lala’s mother—at a dance. At the time of their meeting, Zoila is still lovelorn over a short-lived past relationship with a handsome man named Enrique. Though she initially perceives Inocencio as nothing but a rebound romance—calling him “nothing but a big show-off” (222)—Zoila is charmed by “the way he holds her, moves her across the dance floor,” noting, “he’s not clumsy like other men her age. He dances like he knows where he’s going” (226). 

When Lala is born, she becomes “the favorite child of the favorite child” (231), as the only girl in her family. Though her father is initially dismayed when she is born a girl, he eventually comes to see her as special because of this.

Lala’s birth also stirs her mother’s independence in their relationship. After her father insists that she be named Leticia, her mother rebels by telling the nurse that the baby’s name is Celaya, “a town where they’d once stopped for a mineral water and a torta de milanesa on a trip through Guanajuato” (231-232). Celaya is also notably the town where an important battle occurred in the Mexican Revolution, where Narciso falsely brags he lost his three ribs.

Lala then notes:

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 (232).