dogeaters :: jessica hagedorn
jessica hagedorn :: Dogeaters
We compare notes after the movie, sipping our TruColas under the watchful gaze of the taciturn servant Lorenza. “I don’t like her face,” Pucha complains about Jane Wyman, “I hate when Rock starts kissing her!” “What’s wrong with it?” I want to know, irritated by my blond cousin’s constant criticisms. She wrinkles her mestiza nose, the nose she is so proud of because it’s so pointy and straight. “AY! Que corny! I dunno what Rock sees in her—“ she wails. “It’s a love story, “ I say in my driest tone of voice. Although I’m four years younger than Pucha, I always feel older. “It’s a corny love story, when you think about it,” Pucha snorts. Being corny is the worst sin you can commit in her eyes.
“What about Gloria Talbot? You liked her, didn’t you? She’s so...”—I search frantically through my limited vocabulary for just the right adjective to describe my feline heroine—“interesting.” Pucha rolls her eyes. “AY! Puwede ba, you have weird taste! She’s really cara de achay, if you ask me.” She purses her lips to emphasize her distaste, comparing the starlet to an ugly servant without, as usual, giving a thought to Lorenza’s presence. I avoid Lorenza’s eyes. “She looks like a cat—that’s why she’s so strange and interesting,” I go on, hating my cousin for being four years older than me, for being so blond, fair-skinned, and cruel.
Pucha laughs in disdain. “She looks like a cat, aw-right,” she says, with her thick, singsong accent. “But if you ask me, prima, Gloria Talbot looks like a trapo. And what’s more, Kim Noval should’ve been in this movie instead of Jane Wyman. Jane’s too old,” Pucha sighs. “Pobre Rock! Everytime he had to kiss her—“ Pucha shudders at the thought. Her breasts, which are already an overdeveloped 36B and still growing, jiggle under her ruffled blouse.
