The Immutability of Shame “Let me take your picture, abuelita.” Her grandson, whose name is Alfonso, lifts the camera. A black boxy setup, like something from a magazine. Alfonso, with his straight teeth and white smile, cranks a dial. There is a ticking sound. “No, Alfonso.” A hand goes up. There is no sun today but the air is wooly around her shoulders, too cloying, too warm. “No picture.” “Just one, por favor.” Please. “No, Alfonso.” “Please?” “No, Alfonso.” She is ashamed. Her shoes are cheap and thin-soled and her hands are wrought with age and dark veins, and her hair is frizzy like that of a surly schoolgirl’s, and she is ashamed. “Put it away.” “Fine,” he says. “Grandma.” He knows that she hates that: Grandma, hard vowels drawn out long and ugly. Too American. No fluid, the word catches in your throat like trying to swallow down stale bread. The plastic looped around her left arm is a noose; bag heavy with tortillas, canned tomatoes. Herbs in a bottle, all mixed together. Putrid. She wants vegetables that taste like sun and earth. “Do you want me to carry that?” Alfonso, who lets the camera dangle from a polyester neck strap, asks. An old courtesy. Habit that will die hard, but by the time he is twenty he will watch old women cross parking lots burdened with big pendulous bags and he will be too occupied with his friends and dance clubs full of neon persuasion and the girl in tight jeans pushing a cart through the sliding glass doors of the supermarket. “No.” He lifts the camera again. “Not even one picture? For my school assignment?” “No, Alfonso.” Her shoulders ache under the jacket. She does not want a photograph of herself wearing this; good quilted fabric, deliciously warm, wide collar. It would keep the cold out, if it got cold this far south. She
30 Pillars of Salt
