BOOKS

Border pressures complicate relationships in 'El Chuco'

Women deal with the contradictions of living on the border in Christine Granados' El Paso-based stories.

By Amanda Maria Morrison
SPECIAL TO THE AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Sunday, July 16, 2006

Don't be fooled by the title. Although the phrase "brides and sinners" suggests the played-out virgin-whore stereotype of Latina women, the Chicanas in this debut short-story collection are anything but clichés. Neither saints nor she-devils, Christine Granados' protagonists are, instead, ordinary people living in El Paso, the arid border town known to its majority Mexican American population as "El Chuco" ("the disgusting one"). An El Paso native, Granados portrays the city as a sand-blown land of contradictions, where people daily navigate the worlds of Mexicans and Anglos, immigrants and natives, the barrio and the middle class. The young women in "Brides and Sinners in El Chuco" are some of the edgiest of this edge city's residents, continually pushing the boundaries of feminine propriety and ethnic tradition.

As a result, they often find themselves in sticky situations. In the opening story, "The Bride," a teenager chides her older sister Rochelle for her lily-white wedding fantasy. Rochelle doesn't want mariachis or uncouth relatives in ill-fitting burgundy tuxedos who crack tequila bottles over people's heads. "It was going to be a bland affair, outside in a tent, like the weddings up North in the 'elegance of autumn' that she read about in the thick glossy pages of the magazines," Rochelle's sister remarks. "I wasn't going to tell her there is no 'elegance' to autumn in El Paso. Autumn is . . . scramble a huevo on the hood of your car hot . . ."

By the end of the story, Rochelle attends her less-than-glamorous nuptials with her head held high, four months' pregnant and wearing an "off-white linen pantsuit, which was damp on the shoulder and smeared with Mom's mascara." Her sister recounts, "It didn't matter to her that the groom wore his blue Dickie work pants with matching shirt that had his name stitched in yellow onto the pocket. She looked at him like they were the only two people inside the closet-sized courtroom."

Granados, who now lives outside Austin, knowingly captures El Paso's sense of place. In the three-part "Latchkey Chronicles," she contrasts images of suburban sameness with barrio eccentricity. When an upwardly mobile Chicano family moves to the "good side of town" on El Paso's eastside, daughter Jenny notes that "the square, light-brown house we lived in looked like every other house on our block. . . . Our next door neighbors to the east were tumbleweeds and sand as far as you could see." She reminisces about the old neighborhood, where Señora Monsiváis' "Pepto-Bismol-pink-colored house was hard to see because of the rows of sunflowers and corn in her front yard."

Still, Granados avoids the romanticized nostalgia for barrio life that occasionally creeps into the work of prominent Mexican American authors such as Rudolfo Anaya and Sandra Cisneros. Jenny and her brothers cleverly adapt to their suburban setting, staging lucha libre matches on their scorching concrete driveway. A scrappy proto-feminist, Jenny holds her own with her brothers, skinned knees and all.

Although most of the young women in "Brides and Sinners in El Chuco" are tough, even a little tomboyish, their relationships with men and their mothers aren't necessarily empower- ing. In "Man of the House," a studious girl named Nancy fetches beers for her mother and rolls her eyes at her mom's loser boyfriends. Through terse dialogue and vivid narration, Granados conveys the complicated emotions of a teen who resents her mother but can't help loving her. At a poker party, ignored by the adults, Nancy observes, "Mom's eyes were heavy from too much beer. Her cheeks glowed like they did after she did sit-ups in our bedroom. The stupid look on her face didn't diminish her beauty. It added to it. Made her look like the sexy maids on TV who slept with their bosses."

This mother-daughter dysfunction often extends to romantic relationships. Women are both victims and aggressors who endure and sometimes even crave macho outbursts. In "Comfort" — Granados' rawest and most disturbing tale — a damaged young woman claims she needs a man who would "slam his fist in the wall next to her head to show her that he loved her so much that he couldn't control himself." Throughout the book, the threat of violence and abuse looms nearby, but Granados also includes spectacular moments of defiance. Several stories climax with young women standing up to male oppressors, be they overbearing boyfriends or Bible-thumping uncles. In "Inner View," Granados stages her most hilarious face-off when a young woman purposefully sabotages a job interview to get revenge on a bigoted employer. Without spoiling the punch line, let's just say she uses her knowledge of Spanish to her full, devilish advantage.

There's a palpable sense of momentum in "Brides and Sinners of El Chuco," as each ending becomes increasingly audacious. These sorts of plot twists are hard to pull off within the parameters of short fiction, but Granados orchestrates each affair with the skill of a seasoned storyteller — impressive, given that this is her first published work of fiction. With her flair for the dramatic and eye for realist detail, she concocts Tex-Mex tragicomedies that bring the parched landscape of the Texas-Mexico border to life.

Amanda Maria Morrison is an anthropology graduate student at the University of Texas whose work focuses on Chicana/Chicano youth identity.