When She Was Good...

"Slowly she sank to her knees on the floor
Cursin' the freedom she'd won
From the torture she vowed not to take anymore
And the victim she'd almost become..."
- Kristofferson, Down To Her Socks

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - In her sleep, Betty Lou Thelma Liz Gonzalez always threw her brain toward one of those lovely dreams in which she always found her prince, romanced him and had one of those Happily-Ever-After lives. There were so many princes, however, that to work it into reality seemed the tallest of mountains to climb. The thing was Betty Lou Thelma Liz had this reputation for sharing her body with men, with documenting the relationships, with being unceremoniously dumped. What to do, loomed as her agony.

Woman in this part of the world, she'd learned as a young girl, arrives to serve men. All women were for men, the good ones and the bad ones. She'd had more than her share of the bad ones, went the line in the streets. And as she strolled into the bar, it was the weight of that baggage that depressed her to the point of wondering if perhaps she wouldn't be better off dead. The last prince had turned into a cad, abused her and dumped her. When her friends asked about him, Betty Lou Thelma Liz would say, "He got bored with me and, oh, well..."

The bar loomed as the own's latest magnet for the romantics, of which everyone in town was one. All local men thought they were handsome; all local women thought they were beauties. That wasn't the case, but the bar was dimly-lit, allowing for deception and wonderment. Its music bounced off the walls and settled down onto the thick carpeting, lyrics and refrains to be vacuumed in the morning. Betty Lou Thelma Liz cut through a departing group of patrons and beelined for the Ladies Room, where she would listen to the other women speak about the night's male prospects.

She dropped her purse on one of the sinks and stared at herself in the mirror. She pursed her lips and pouted, made faces and swung her hair in a manner she thought might be flirty. Then she patted her roundish rump, wishing for an evening workout down there. Betty Lou Thelma Liz knew the local ropes. She reached for the red lipstick in her small purse and then lifted it to her smallish mouth. It was the brightest of the sticks she owned. While a covey of other birds strolled-in, she threw the lipstick back into her purse and turned to leave. One of the arriving women glared at her and then said, "I thought Pedro told you to stay away from this bar." The voice was terse, although not loud. One-on-one mano-a-mano, the usual Spanglish thrown out inside these joints.

Betty Lou Thelma Liz stared right back at the girl, a Big Haired woman with huge breasts and a short skirt that barely made it below her fattened crotch.

"Pedro can go to Hell," Betty Lou Thelma Liz shot back, her voice equally in control.

Momentarily, three of the women with the large woman who had confronted Betty Lou pushed themselves into the conversation, one saying, in a voice that seemed straight out of a talking crow, "You want your ass kicked?" Betty Lou Thelma Liz said nothing, holding her ground, but now knowing that the women had blocked her way out of the bathroom. Fights in these situations were commonplace in Brownsville, although never reported by the local press. A few of the Bloggers had witnessed a few, but they, too, looked the other way, maybe because they were in the bars as partyboys and not as reporters.

A blow came her from behind, in the low-back of the head, someone's fisted hand cutting across, burying itself for long seconds before bouncing off and allowing for the surprised stars to form in her brain. Betty Lou Thelma Liz fell to the concrete floor, gasping for air. She did not feel the heels cut into her chest and, when she rolled over in self-defense, another pair landed on her upper back. One of the women next said, "Kick her in the goddamned head, so she'll remember why she had her ass kicked." It was a contradiction, but that's women in brawls.

Betty Lou Thelma Liz recovered three weeks later at the county hospital, her first bit of news from the doctor being that one of her cheeks had been caved-in during the kicking. Here, she looked like a mummy, head bandaged almost entirely, her purpled nose being the only facial feature exposed. But she was alive. She knew that. The rest she could not remember. The signs of a beating were obvious, but the faces of her attackers were gone, not a set of angry eyes or foaming mouth she could fashion. That too was life in town. Abuse ran rampant in all aspects of local life, and everybody said it was better to forget, to live and let live.

Betty Lou Thelma Liz was alive, a victim of a thrashing, but still alive.

On the morning of her departure from the hospital, she thanked her caregivers and joined her two sisters in the walk to their vehicle. One of them, the older one, patted her softly on the head and said something about helping with the bandages. Overhead, the day's sun already had the temperature on the run. All in all, Betty Lou Thelma Liz felt good. She was going home.

On the way home, the vehicle drove past the bar where she'd almost been killed. Betty Lou Thelma Liz looked over at the aging marquee and smiled a little smile, for herself. Her attackers had not been arrested, and not even identified. They were out there. Of that, she was certain. Another time, she might have plotted a worthy revenge. Not this time.

You can fight the ways of a bordertown, but you can never change them, she told herself once more as the vehicle rolled to the red light at the next intersection...

- 30 -