Pinata Tragedy

 

The Piñata Tragedy

By

Maximilian Maier

The piñata was going to be the icing on the cake, Stacy’s chance to prove herself. She was going to show Pedro, her boyfriend of three months, that she was not your ordinary gringo, that she had undeniable Latin flair. As for Maria, Pedro’s five-year-old daughter, she was as good as won. The piñata was going to be symbolic. It was going to represent the ancient image of the wicked stepmother. Every hit that the little girl would deliver to the piñata would help disintegrate any negative image of Stacy that the little girl might have formed in her small, impressionable brain. And what could be better than a piñata to accomplish this? What she wanted was a piñata with a dark theme, preferably a witch, and she wanted to smile and hold the video camera as Maria took her junior baseball bat and beat the evil out of this witch before the fist-pumping throng of Kindergartners.

            She put on her sunglasses, rubbed her lipstick-stained cigarette out in the ashtray, locked the doors in her SUV tight and drove eastward into the unknown. Before he got rich writing screenplays, Pedro had lived in this part of L.A., and he had even invited her to visit his abuela here, but Stacy had never actually said Si to any of these invitations, remembering all of the horror stories that her sorority sisters used to recount about those dangerous quarters.

            This was about atonement, about the conquering of lingering fears. It was time to act like a grown lady, to smash down cultural barriers and jump out of her pale skin, if only for a few hours.

Stacy drove quickly and with a purpose. She glanced up occasionally as the street signs became less and less familiar and the automobiles increasingly less prestigious. She wound her way about, darting in and out of lanes and waving at the victims of her driving.

She expected piñatas to be everywhere in this part of town. I mean, that’s what these people do, right?. They don’t work in offices. They don’t bicker about the speed of microprocessors. They just mow lawns, roll enchiladas, make meals for thirty people and beat the crap out of piñatas when one of their kids has that cumpleaños deal. Stacy figured that there would be piñatas for sale on every street corner, that men with large black mustaches would be waving her down at red lights, leading her to vans chock-full of the stuffed and papery figures. She would put her painted fingernail to her richly red lips and have to decide which was the best for Maria, judging of course on price, texture, overall agreeability of the product, and of course the contents. She would speak Spanish with the locals, raise their eyebrows with her turns of phrase, and find out how good all the candies were that lined the bowels and innards of these paper men, women, and beasts.

Stacy pulled her SUV confidently into a large parking lot that seemed to belong to an impressive tent, probably a food market of some sort. She got out of the car, pressed the button, and the car alarm chirped nervously.

She made her way through the market, saw lots of round ladies examining vegetables, massaging colorful, natural goods with their soft, brown hands, pressing the potential purchases to their dimpled cheeks, laughing and talking in Spanish. Stacy attempted to study and mimic their gestures. She saw in these shoppers a certain propinquity to the natural world that she and most others in her circle lacked. These people don’t read labels. They don’t need the judgments of bureaucratic bodies. They are in tune with natural forces in ways that she and hers are not. They must have inherited this from the Mayans. These were the same people that erected pyramids with symbolic numbers of steps. Why can’t folks in her neighborhood shop like this?

She stumbled in half awe through the market, feeling like a tourist in a faraway land, like one of those globe trekking college kids that report from Thailand or Burma on public television. As she made her way around, she tried to make eye contact and smile to as many folks as she could. Half out of diplomacy, half out of hunger, she filled plastic bags with fruits and vegetables and toted them about proudly, if only to show the others that she ate the same food as they. It was about proving herself, and she even seemed to notice in their benevolent, round smiles an acceptance that just made her want to start giving out hugs by the dozen. Democracy is best celebrated in the supermarket.

 She felt so good about herself that she almost forgot that she was there to buy a piñata instead of squash. She craned her neck as she passed each aisle. There was an air of mysteriousness about the place. The few who noticed her there seemed accepting enough. But they still spoke that language, the one that she had sort of studied for two semesters in college before deciding that she wanted to study a “civilized” tongue like French.

Despite carrying three sacks of fruit in the crook of her arm, Stacy began to realize that her independent search for the piñata was fruitless. So she swallowed, gathered her wits, and approached an amiable old woman.

“Perdón, señora. Dónde están las piñatas?”

The lady’s broad shoulders hunched together and she said, in English, “I don’t know.”

Stacy moved on, saw an employee, a young lady with rich, flowing black hair  and a friendly smile. She had an educated, cosmopolitan look about her, seemed like the kind of lady that would deliver news bilingually on TV, so Stacy decided to skip the Spanish this time.

“Excuse me, Ma’am,” she said, tapping the woman on her shoulder. Touching is important, but she did, however, regret the word ‘Ma’am”, deeming it excessively gringo, intensely Southern. “I was wondering if you could tell me where the piñatas are.”

The lady kind of smiled with embarrassment and shrugged her shoulders. From the blankness in her eyes, Stacy assumed that she had not understood.

“Tiene Usted piñatas?”

“Piñatas? We no have here. I sorry.”

“Gracias.”

As Stacy was heading out of the market, an old fellow with a cowboy hat and a dignified mustache, sitting on a metallic folding chair and drinking a Tecate,  shot a look at her that made her feel uneasy. It took her a moment to realize that this look had nothing sexual in it. The guy was not some leering stranger but a security guard, and he was glaring at her not because her boobs looked nice but because she was about to walk out of his market with a bunch of fruit without paying.

Stacy smiled at the security guy, embarrassed, and whispered ‘I’m sorry,” first in English and then more demonstratively in Spanish. He tipped his cowboy hat and motioned for her to wait in line like the rest of the folks there and that’s what she did, although she was beginning to realize that this whole piñata expedition was cutting into her day. Stacy has always been a miser with her time, just like Tommie friggin’ Jefferson, and she has never liked running trivial errands. She waited impatiently in line behind a round woman who seemed to be purchasing enough food to feed half of Guatemala with. To pass the tense moments, she began perusing one of the Mexican tabloids displayed on what she labeled ‘the aisle of desperation,’ the place where gum and batteries and magazines beckon to be bought so that somebody can be a little richer and somebody a little poorer at the end of the day. The tabloid was full of pictures of beautiful people, Mexican soap opera stars and singers, the folks that dance around on Telemundo at those insane hours when the wolves howl out to the desert moon.  These were people of enormous stature in their native land, complete unknowns to her and to most ‘real’ Americans.  Their fates interested her about as much as that of say Pakistani soccer studs. When her turn finally came, she delivered a cold ‘Hola’ to the checker, paid for her fruit, handing over a large bill and almost wanting to tell the lady to keep the change.

The sun did not want to let up outside. It glinted off the buckled black asphalt of the parking lot and turned the car windshields into razors of glare. Stacy got back in and drove around streets with tried and trusted Anglo-Saxon surnames that in these parts were pronounced interestingly. Heavy gusts of air-conditioning blew at her from three directions and she dabbed the sweat from her brow with the base of her palm. She looked over at the digital clock on her dashboard, still not set correctly, the victim of daylight savings time, but more or less exactly one hour off. She realized that she only had a couple of hours before Maria’s party and that the search for the piñata had best be sped up. There would be no more time for dawdling in supermarket aisles, no more free minutes to admire and inspect produce. She could no longer afford to observe. It was all about finding the bloated corpse of a toy with papery feathers, counting off as many bills as the owner of said toy saw fit, and packing it like wild game into the back of her SUV.

She hit two more supermarkets and even a used clothing store before she began feeling desperate. Clerks smiled warmly at her request but scratched their oily foreheads and sent her to other places where piñatas were said to hide and cackle behind other merchandise. These leads all turned out to be false. Piñata, probably the first Spanish word Stacy had learnt, seemed to be a myth, a cruel joke on the gringo, something that real Latinos only laugh about but never beat.

Of course, she could always give up on the piñata altogether. But this was all about proving herself, both in the eyes of Pedro and his daughter. This piñata was going to be magical. It was going to make Maria smile widely and toothlessly and attack Stacy with a hug, like a rabid little terrier. Stacy was going to hop on this piñata, whichever incarnation it should take, and use it to wrench her from the murky depths of gringohood and take her to the kingdom of the Latina.

So the search continued, and seconds continued dripping off the precipice of time relentlessly, vanishing into nothingness. Liquor store doors were thrust open in haste, causing the bells to cling more neurotically than usual. Clerks drew back as an angry blonde lady, perhaps packing heat, pointed her rifle-like finger around and asked about piñatas in sentences that whizzed past their ears like stray bullets. Convenient store clerks with English vocabularies not large enough to fill the back of a travel guide were berated by a hot-tongued woman for their “revolting inability to maintain the timeless tradition of Latin peoples.”

A cigarette dangling dangerously from her lips, the sun still relentlessly bright, Stacy started the car, this time with the intention of leaving behind the barrio and the piñata hiding somewhere in it. The party would have to be piñata-less. This was Fate’s indisputable verdict. She turned off the Latin music that she had so eagerly bobbed her head around to on her way into the labyrinth of the barrio three hours earlier. She sought solace in the familiar sound of string quartets on the classical station, but when she realized that folks might drive up next to her at a traffic light, hear this stuff, and start resenting her even more, she flipped it off for good and drove in silence.

Stacy usually drives like a lady tranquilized by adult contemporary music, but today, she was darting and weaving, making horns attract hands like magnets. She wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it all but was too bitter to do so. She imagined all of the store clerks mocking her behind her back. They were probably all tossing about the hundreds of ripe and sprightly piñatas that they horde in the back of their stores and distribute only to those with magic names like Sánchez and Garza.

This was when the miracle happened, the milagro. Like many miracles, the lead-up was unspectacular. Stacy was stuck in traffic. Some sort of accident involving a school bus and a postal truck and flames. Stacy was too concerned with her failed piñata expedition to worry about any schoolchildren being blown up or postal packages damaged.  She was stuck in sullen silence behind a bunch of overcrowded cars. In front of her was a station wagon with no license plate that pooped out more exhaust than Manchester back in the dark days. Her inoffensive vanilla SUV was flanked by two cars that looked anti-social and bestial, one a run-down two-tone Mustang with a grid that looked like shark teeth and flames on its dented doors. The man driving this muscle car was staring lasciviously in her direction, loud, incomprehensible music and static rushing out of his ailing speakers like spunk out of a dog’s dick. As she was sucking on her cigarette and trying to relax, Stacy noticed this leering, and she soon turned her head to the other side. That was what brought her redemption.

The car was maroon and loud, undeniably ugly. It was a ghost from the past, a model consigned to the junkyard of history, an El Camino. Those unfamiliar with this model had better not try to look up images of it online, for doing so has been said to induce instant psychological trauma. Former owners, even occasional passengers of the El Camino are said to wake up from ghastly flashbacks, drenched in sweat, the growl of the car’s engine thick in their skulls. It is no lie that those souls sick enough to have bought this car had higher suicide rates than owners of any other car. The truth in that fact is unimpeachable. Stacy read it from a credible on-line leisure magazine. No car could better express squalor than this one. The driver of this beast of an automobile had a beard scraggly enough to make Tolstoy blush. He had a half-mauled Pop-Tart in one hand and a cigar in the other. There were paw prints on its windows. The vinyl of his seats had been mauled and torn by paws and teeth. The ashtray harbored the ashes of a thousand dead cigarettes.  Techno music boomed out of his back speakers and subjected the world around to a mild earthquake.

Were she not leaving the barrio, on the verge of re-emerging into palm trees and prosperity, Stacy might not have looked any further at this unsightly vehicle. But curiosity swirled in her head and her eyes began to wander from the cab of the car to its rear, like a drunken old man checking out his daughter’s sorority sister at a cocktail party. In a strange way, Stacy found herself admiring the car. There was, behind all of the squalor, a certain nobility in this car. It was like a raised middle finger to all of the SUVs out there.

The back of the car was what really fascinated Stacy. Like the back of a truck, the El Camino offers those lucky enough to drive it enough space to carry life’s burdens in it. While most owners of the vehicle elect to keep this back area empty, perhaps in some attempt to bolster the car’s aerodynamic kick-ass capability, others put their life into it. They put old mattresses that smell like eggs and butter into them and let them fry in ultraviolet light. They toss all the empty beer cans that are cluttering up the front into the back. It is waste disposal of the most efficacious sort. Nobody’s toes are stepped on in the exterior world. The car becomes an isolated instance of being, a bubble of tranquility that does not stir the seas of chaos that all other forms of activity inevitably contribute to.

And yet, this tar-like tarp that concealed this car’s inner system was not entirely effective. Something was sticking out, surging out shamelessly into the exterior world. Stacy leaned forward and squinted to see if she couldn’t figure out what it was. Intrigued, she reached onto the dashboard and picked up the glasses that she is supposed to wear when she drives but never does out of pride. After a moment of careful inspection, it struck her consciousness like a gong.  What Stacy was looking at was a leg, undeniably human in form. She could make out a swollen foot, stiffly jutting out. The foot was even manicured. Its toenails were painted and what appeared to be a high heel encased it. A leg. Una pierna. There was no denying it. This was serious and yet beautiful.

This leg was not of a corpse but of something far more desirable. It was the kind of leg that makes kids shriek with excitement and want to beat. Underneath its flesh was not blood or muck or things that make kids’ eyes puff out purple. It concealed, rather, candies and sugars, lollies and taffy, things that rot teeth rather than spirits. It was, yes, a piñata in the back of this mysterious El Camino, or at least a leg of one.  

There was no time to lose. This intervention was too obviously divine not to merit at least a loud “Gracias, Jesus!” Stacy was so excited that forgot that, and perhaps it would cost her later on.

Stacy quickly honked her horn to get the driver’s attention. This attempt was unsuccessful. Horns lose their potency in traffic jams. The ear becomes inured to their alarmed cry. And besides, this guy had his music on louder than even the angriest horn could honk. Stacy was going to have to get out of the car and confront him in person.

She looked ahead to see if all the mess might clear any time soon and was reassured that it wouldn’t. She left her car running and hopped out and signaled at him with arms flailing like an airport runway worker. He gritted his teeth and squeezed the soft paper of the cigar in his mouth and rolled down the window reluctantly. The music got louder.

“Sir,” said Stacy eagerly, opening up her money purse and showing the stranger green. “I want to buy your piñata.”

“Qué?”

Stacy kind of waved her hands down so that he might turn down the booming music. He kind of frowned at her and then finally realized what she meant by this, complied in a jiffy.

“I see a piñata in the back of your car. I want to buy it. I will pay whatever you like.”

At this moment, something unsettling happened. A head emerged from beneath the steering wheel, a woman’s. She made brief eye contact with Stacy and smiled back awkwardly and yet lasciviously, wiping the running lipstick off her face with the back of her hand. Stacy looked back at the driver and he looked back with embarrassment and shrugged his shoulders as if to say, ‘I’m only human too, lady. B.J.s help make traffic jams more tolerable.’

“What you need?” he asked in English that sounded fragile.

“I need your piñata.”

The man began speaking Spanish fast to the woman in the car and they started laughing. Stacy almost felt a rush of embarrassment come over her as she said this, praying that piñata did not have a second, anatomical meaning in Spanish. Finally, the woman leaned over, pressing her voluptuous body over the driver and sticking her head out the window.

“The piñata is full of things you don’t want. No good this piñata. We’re sorry.”

Just as she was about to roll up the window and smash Stacy’s, and hence Maria’s dream, five twenty dollar bills flew into the car and enchanted its passengers. One could almost distinguish in the El Camino’s harsh idle a brief respite, a purr of contentment, and soon, the engine was off. The driver ignored his lady friend’s shoulder-slapping and loud and fast Spanish admonishments. He proudly emerged from the car and winked at Stacy. She followed him to the back and helped him lift up the tarp.

Stacy felt in that moment like a mortician uncovering a recently slain body for autopsy. This piñata was already hers, but both the woman it seemed to be representing, a hooker, and its condition, rather sordid, made Stacy feel empty. What was there to do? The money had already changed hands. Still, to say that these goods were damaged would be an understatement. Stacy almost wanted to avert her eyes when the man rolled over the stiff paper body. The head had been partially crushed by some of the lawn equipment with which the piñata had been forced to share the back. The area between its temple and its left eye had suffered a nasty contusion, and it seemed to bleed Styrofoam.

“She looks pretty bad,” she said, shielding the sun from her eyes. “Is there anything you can do for her to make her more presentable?”

The man scratched his head and said “Qué?”

“Can you make her pretty again?”

He blinked and looked quizzical. Then, understanding jolted him like a surge of electricity. He nodded and began patching up her face with his worn workman’s hands, mending the ripped papier-mâché, putting some of the Styrofoam stuffing back into the wound and pressing the severed skin back together.

“This okay?” he asked with raised brows.

“I guess so.”

Engines behind them began growling with impatience. The traffic mess ahead appeared to be clearing, the tragic loss of schoolchildren and mail all but forgotten. Stacy’s quick but fateful interlude with the man in the El Camino was ending prematurely, without a sincere look in the eyes and a heartfelt ‘Gracias.’ She took her prize, lifted it with all the strength in her limbs (it wasn’t all that heavy), and jaunted back to the open door of her SUV. As she did this, she thought she could hear the man and his lady friend laughing hard.

By the time Stacy had made it to the ‘safe’ side of town, the party had already begun. An assembly of children was whirling about the backyard, as desultory in their motion as fruit fries, as loud as ailing hyenas. Their shrieks rang out without warning, like sudden gunfire, piercing Stacy’s sensitive ears. Gladly would she have gone inside to smoke a cigarette and cool off in the AC, but Pedro was watching, as well as a convocation of parents and stepparents, standing around with smiley-faces, sipping non-alcoholic beer and spinning yarns about Bobby Ray’s exploits on the T-ball diamond or Juanita’s uncanny ability to memorize time-tables.  

The birthday cake seemed to collapse in the heat of a dying day. The white icing dripped down its walls like sweet wax. A ceremonial song was sung in English and then in Spanish and then once more in English. Miniature infernos were extinguished by three rapid pulmonary gusts. Several animalistic “hoorahs’ and barbaric clapping ensued. Maria birthday girl blushed and chewed on her lower lip with her small, doomed teeth. Then, Pedro emerged, like the high priest of an ancient religion, holding high a knife sharp enough to decapitate a piñata with. The first sacrificial victim of the afternoon was not the piñata however, but the cake, and when the knife tore into its sweat-soaked mush, a sound was emitted that sounded like the last gasp of an animal in the desert. Remnants of this sugary animal were eagerly distributed, clumps of mush spooned onto plastic plates hardly firm enough to carry the weight. Spike, the canine denizen of this backyard, wagged his tail gaily. Good feeling was in abundance. The cake was gone in less then seven minutes. Stacy knew this because she was counting off the seconds.

She had not told Pedro anything about the piñata. She had just knocked on the door with a couple of modest-sized boxes, hastily wrapped in glossy paper, smiling widely. The idea was to wait for the consumption of the cake and maybe the opening of two or three presents before dashing back to the SUV and retrieving the cadaver-like party whore of paper.

Maria began tearing her little fingers through wrapping paper, hardly appreciative of the careful concern that had gone into this gift presentation. Several Barbie dolls, some blonde, some Hispanic, were re-introduced into the world. Smiles were exchanged among mothers, nods of approval offered. Finally, Stacy decided that the time for the great revelation had come. Just as Maria had finished opening up a plastic pony, she clapped her hands in a quick flourish and vanished. No one noticed her go.

Her return was glorious, far more impressive than she had imagined. As she stood in the threshold of the glass sliding door that separated the cool realm of Pedro’s home from the sun-stained and parched yard, the full body of a paper lady in the crook of her left arm, heads turned around, fingers both large and small pointed in her direction, and “Ooohs” of astonishment and gratitude were emitted from mouths rich with bacteria, coffee and cake.

Pedro shook his head and smiled warmly. He wanted to smother Stacy in kisses, to lick all over her body and to hump her brains out. Of course, he had to banish all of the lascivious visions and keep his mind G-rated. This party was too wholesome to pollute.

“Babe,” he exclaimed from afar, “Where did you find that?”

Stacy blushed and shrugged her shoulders.

“I went to see some of your people,” she said with a wink. “Gente muy amable.” Pedro approached her, hugged her, and the piñata, kissed Stacy first deeply on the lips and then, perhaps out of sheer lust for life, or maybe just because the paper lady looked like it needed a kiss before its public execution, he delivered a soft and respectful ‘friendship kiss’ to the cheek of the sacrificial victim.

“Muchas gracias por estar aqui,” he whispered to the piñata. Stacy held her and thought about playing the ventriloquist, maybe starting a conversation in Spanish to the entertainment of all in attendance, but the Spanish phrases that would enable such a conversation evaded her mind in that proud moment.

And boy did she feel good. To think that she had resorted to anti-depressants in recent weeks! Stacy’s euphoria was too profound to spoil by words. She felt tears welling up. She wanted to hug the world and to sing happy songs. She felt like a victorious character at the end of a heart-warming Disney flick. Part of her was hoping that the crowd would rush her and embrace her and lift her towards the skies like a goddess. But perhaps she would have to wait until the piñata in her arm was sufficiently beaten to death for this great instance of triumph to make bright her day.

Using a shoestring as a noose, Stacy tied the piñata to the branch of a sick but sturdy oak. A light breeze, perhaps from the hills or the Pacific, tickled the piñata and made it dance in the air, like a tap dancer who had drunk too much coffee. Children began fighting over the baseball bat. They all knew why this sad figure hung and all wanted a piece of it, all wanted to maim it, beat the life out of it.

Stacy had given a name to the piñata—Lady Jane. Señora Selena was the original nombre that bubbled out of Stacy’s brain, but Pedro shot it down. He disliked, read loathed the idea of using an assassinated pop star’s name, and Stacy cupped her mouth in false concern and said “Oops, I never knew that Selena.” Pedro shook his head and muttered something in Spanish that Stacy didn’t catch.

Lady Jane was fitting. The piñata looked like a gringo, and hence needed a gringo name. She was, after all, as blonde as a Swedish model, though her skin was hardly as soft to the touch. Pedro even cut his finger on one of the dangling paper strands around Lady Jane’s ankle. He bled and called her a puta and punched her in the ass for this. The punch created a small rupture but luckily, none of her goods feel out prematurely. One of the kids at the party saw and heard this nastiness, and the girl, though only six, understood the word puta. She looked up at Pedro and covered her mouth. Her coffee-colored eyes bespoke some strange mixture of scorn and giddiness. Pedro smiled and said Lo siento before she ran off.

Of course, Lady Jane’s black paper skirt was unusually high. Underneath, painted on, was something resembling a thong, though the piñata appeared to have suffered significant water damage. It had, after all, been stuck in the back of a man’s El Camino for untold time.

 Whatever the case, Lady Jane was not dressed appropriately for a child’s birthday. Were she a real woman, and were she in an Italian basilica, she would have been hissed at and sworn at as a harlot. Pedro was perturbed by Stacy’s choice of a sleazy looking piñata, though he didn’t tell her this. But really, why did Stacy have to choose such a shabby looking lady to be beaten into shreds by a stick? Was she trying to make a statement about the dangers of promiscuity? Were the kids supposed to learn to say no to sex by beating the brains out of this paper harlot?

           

 The sun was threatening to go down. It was time to put an end to the whole birthday brouhaha with one last exultant public beating.

Before the birthday girl, hanging lifelessly from the half-rotten branch of an oak, was the piñata.  Maria stood as silent and as solemn as an executioner. Normally, before they thrash a piñata to paper shreds and candy spewing, birthday girls wear blindfolds. It is about defending the hanging entity from unfairly inflicted blows, adding some element of sport to the otherwise senseless beating. After all, it ain’t all about the candy.

            And this time it certainly wasn’t. After her droopy face had been sufficiently licked into a nasty smile by Pedro’s sloppy kiss, Stacy came over to Maria and placed her hands squarely on her shoulder blades. She knelt down and whispered encouragement in the little girl’s ear.

            “I want you to beat the life out of her.” Stacy really wanted to say this in Spanish but fumbled the words around in her head.

            Maria nodded obediently. A safety radius was cleared. Maria was lightly shoved in the direction of the hanging victim.

            “Ahora!” hollered Stacy.

            Maria swung with blind ferocity. Lady Jane was spared this blow.

            “Higher!” called out one of the kids at the party. “Swing higher!”

            Maria missed again. Her swing was embarrassing and elicited scornful laughter from the gathered.

            That’s when Maria got angry. This anger could not be seen. She was, after all, wearing a friggin’ executioner’s mask. But if it could have been witnessed, it might have sent even the most callous five-year-olds home crying, praying that a Power Ranger or Teletubby could rescue their sorry souls from her rage.

            And who bore the brunt of this primordial rage? Well, luckily, the victim was human only in form, not in content. Lady Jane, were she organic, would have died of oxygen deficiency from the hanging. Of course, she wasn’t organic, unless you count the contents inside her, which might rather be described as orgasmic.

            What the hell are you reading now? Is your narrator suddenly getting racy on you, dropping spicy sauce on you at the last moment in some desperate hope that you might find interest on this poorly spun piñata narrative?

            No. And that No is equally valid in English or Spanish. The contents of this piñata were indeed orgasmic rather than organic. And when the proverbial shit (in this case, the orgasmic contents of Lady Jane) hit the proverbial fan (literally, the backyard, more broadly, all those present at the piñata thrashing), there was hell to be paid.

            You see, Lady Jane’s uncanny resemblance to a harlot was more than just uncanny. It was a friggin’ clue to her contents, and nobody, not Stacy, not Pedro, and least of all Maria (who thank Díos was blind under an executioner’s mask), would ever have suspected that those contents would be pornographic.

            Porno mags, DVDs with salacious covers, sex toys, condoms, whips, chains, cock rings, vagina molds, no guns (fortunately), were spewed onto the backyard like innards of a slaughtered pig. Kids were sent running in all directions. Their desultory motion bespoke at once the zaniness of a  Disney flick and the desperation of a slasher film. If only one could have played Strauss’ Trisch-Trasch polka at the right moment!

Pedro took his daughter into his arms and shot facial hate at Stacy, who stood stiff with her hand over her mouth.

            She now thought of the man in the El Camino who had hawked off this piñata. He looked disreputable. He had a five o’clock shadow and missing teeth and a nasty quality in his black eyes. And his car stank. And he was probably being pleasured orally by the sleazy chica in the passenger seat.

           

            The kids were all at home in less than a quarter hour. Stacy tried to apologize to shocked parents but received scant attention, lots of quick and nervous and unreceptive nods as the stunned and pissed parties made haste to their SUVs and the copious protection from pornography and auto death that such powerful vehicles confer. As for Pedro, well, he was out in the backyard, beating all of the devilry to death with the same miniature baseball bat that his daughter had used on the piñata. He whacked at Lady Jane with barbaric force. One blow split off her arm at the elbow and sent condoms flying halfway into the neighbors’ yard, thoroughly violating the principles of aerodynamics. Lady Jane slain, having bled out all the porn and the general nastiness that  once constituted her fully debauched being, Pedro put his hands on his knees and looked down at the agglomeration of smut that lay there on the lawn before him in the near dark. Gasping and desperate, he hollered various profane things at all the porn,  “Ay carrumba!” and “hijo de puta!” being some of the tamer expressions employed. “La cucaracha” was not used, although it might have delighted Maria. The smut was shattered. Were he God and capable of such miracles, Pedro might have reduced the whole heap to salt, just like Gomorrah.

            He stood for a moment and admired the fruit of his work. The twelve DVDs had been shattered into crunchy and sharp material that glistened in the moonlight. The plastic penii were more stubborn. They would be summarily burned. Pedro did not care if burning plastic emitted poisonous fumes and assaulted the ailing ozone layer. This was, after all, L.A., and the air sucked anyway.