“Grandmother approved”

Matchmaking and Taxes

by Russ López

“Watch out,” my sister Elena warned me, “Abuelita Marisol has decided you are too old to be single. She’s hired Señora Alba to fix you up with a suitable young man.”
 
Grandmother wasn’t the only one who thought I needed a partner. My mother gently told me last month, “I keep looking for a saint we could ask to help you find a novio.” I didn’t have the heart to tell her that the chances of the Catholic Church creating a patron saint of queer relationships was infinitesimally small.
 
It didn’t matter who or what you were, my family thought no one should be single. My Aunt Davida kept pushing me to go out and meet guys. “Sleep around until you meet one you like,” was her advice. “That’s the best way to find true love.” This from a woman who married my uncle when she was sixteen and was still blissfully with him nearly fifty years later.
 
One cousin suggested I should sign up for a dating service, not knowing all the apps I had on my phone, and another told me it was time for me to think about children. “You aren’t getting any younger,” he admonished. They preferred I meet a nice Mexican man, of course, or at least someone Latino. But that wasn’t necessary. Everyone just wanted me to be with someone.
 
I had four siblings, all of whom had at least embarked on a long-term relationship even if they didn’t last. It was my turn, if only to give everyone something to gossip about. “I’m sure there is someone wonderful out there for you,” Elena promised me. “And we will all talk behind your back about why he puts up with your annoying habits.”
 
I was twenty-six, out of school, and living on my own. I had graduated with a business degree and was an independent adult gainfully employed. On paper at least, it was time I acted like an adult. While my family was otherwise proud of me, Mom still had a picture of my league champion soccer team from my high school up in the hallway, they thought that being single made me incomplete.
 
On the other hand, I felt like I was just starting out in life. Despite the low-cost education I received from the California State University system and living at home my first two years, I graduated with huge student loans I can barely make the payments on. I drive an old car that embarrasses me and live in a studio apartment my brother Mike calls the smallest in Silicon Valley. I have far too much Indian blood in me to pass for anything but Mexican so if that isn’t a guy’s taste, I am out of luck. An accountant for a real estate company, my only luxury is my gym membership. Now that I think about it, maybe I was too dull to be marriage material.
 
If you want to hire a matchmaker, Señora Alba is a great choice. Not only is she a well-respected bruja, she also dabbles as a curandera, and during tax season prepares returns for half the neighborhood. Thus, she knows everyone: the good, the bad, the broke, and the single. In my family alone, she found Uncle Rodrigo his second wife, cured my cousin Manuela of hiccups by brewing a special herbal tea, and helped Elena straighten out her 401(k) roll over. “You weren’t too proud to go running to Alba to have your taxes done,” Elena taunted me. “What makes matchmaking so different?” Still, the idea of Alba assessing my physical, emotional, and financial strengths and weaknesses disturbed me. And though Alba has excellent taste in men, her love life is legendary, I was put off by her meddling. Angry that they thought I was a pathetic loser at romance, I vowed to Elena, “I am going to reject anyone that Alba picks out for me.” Childish, but they had hurt my feelings.
 
The next evening at the gym, I found out my humiliation had gone public when Mike and his buddy Alejandro teased about the matchmaking going on all around me. “No ring yet,” Michael reported to Alejandro as he held my hand up. “I’ve heard Alba has interviewed over a hundred men in three languages and none have agreed to woo my hermanito.”
 
“It’s his baby face,” Alejandro suggested as he pinched my cheek. “He’s cute in that muchacho next door kind of way but dating him would be like going out with a puppy dog. That’s not everyone’s taste.” Michael and Alejandro laughed while I turned red. They were best friends, having met when they started working at Mayfair High School where Mike taught Drama and Alejandro ran the ESL program. Though Alejandro was handsome and gay, I never paid much attention to him because he never expressed any interest in me. However, he had the key as to why Abuelita had made my love life her priority.
 
“Last Saturday, your grandmother was at Pancho González and Julian Chávez ‘s wedding. You should have been there, it was spectacular,” he explained. “They wore matching tuxedos and arrived in separate coaches drawn by white horses. There was a sit-down dinner at eight prepared by a chef from Oaxaca, and a midnight buffet that featured sushi and a taco bar. They had a band inside rocking the best norteño music I’ve ever heard, and a DJ blasting party tunes out on the patio. Your grandmother danced for hours. Everyone did. Sometime after her third glass of champagne, Abuelita told me you were her only chance to have an over-the-top gay wedding in the family.” I was doomed.
 
Over the next several days, I kept my eyes out for a setup, but nothing happened until Friday when Abuelita asked for a favor. “I bought a new television online and didn’t want it stolen off my porch, you know how bad the crime is on my street. So I had them deliver it at Santiago’s Market where I need you to pick it up for me. When you get there, see Tony, Santiago’s son. He’ll help you get the TV into your car and then come over with you to bring it up the stairs to my apartment. I arranged it all.” This was so obvious that I had a hard time not laughing. Still, if Abuelita asks me to do something, I do it.
 
Again, my humiliation was public and there was a crowd at the market when I got there including my mother, two aunts, my brother, and Alejandro. It was as if someone had sold tickets. “This is too entertaining to pass up,” Alejandro said, smiling.
 
To punish him and to thwart Alba’s machinations, I asked Alejandro to help me with the television. I admit I was tempted by Tony. He was mad handsome and still as built as he had been during his high school wrestling days when I had drooled over him. But I was determined not to let Grandmother run my love life and refused Tony’s offer to help. Abuelita must have been surprised when Alejandro and I carried her television into her apartment, but she didn’t say anything. I had won the first round in this war, but I didn’t gloat.
 
Afterwards, Alejandro and I went out for burgers to dissect the setup. “You know Alba would lead with a Dominican, she loves their music,” he teased. “Let’s face it, your family could use some outside blood.” That was true. Just about everyone in the family had married someone from Coahuila. Abuela had married a second cousin from her little village while Mom and Dad had lived across the street from each other growing up. My family never went too far afield to find our mates.
 
“Nothing against Tony, I’d have a roll in bed with him anytime.” I wondered why we had never hooked up. Maybe I was too timid to act on my crushes. “But he has no ambition beyond running his father’s store. I want someone who wishes he could go to Mars, even though he knows it will never happen,” I told Alejandro. “I want a guy who lives in his dreams. Tony is too literal.”
 
“Dang, you are tough,” he replied. “I’m lucky that Alba isn’t pushing me on you.” We both laughed.
 
Thanks to Alba, I started getting all sorts of strange requests. A guy I barely knew wanted me to be his date at his sister’s quinceañera party, a one-night trick from two years ago suddenly resurfaced to ask me to dinner, and a man at the gym invited me to go home with him. “You’re hot as hell, bro,” he said as he stood next to me in front of one of the wall mirrors by the free weights. “I want it right now.” Fortunately, Mike and Alejandro didn’t see us leave together. Gym guy was not one of Alba’s setups, however. Though I had a good time, it turned out he had a boyfriend.
 
The hits kept coming. A guy on Grindr texted me that he was “Grandmother approved” while a bartender asked me how the matchmaking was going as he slipped me his phone number. “I am exhausted from all this,” I complained to Alejandro the next evening at the gym.
 
“Cheer up,” he said as he hugged me. “Now you know everyone wants your hot body.” His arm around my shoulder felt good.
 
The next Thursday, everyone went to see Mike’s students perform Romeo and Juliet. With a party of thirty in an open seating auditorium, it was chaos with people trying to figure out where to sit. At the very last second, Alba ordered Kyle Moon, a gym coach, to take the seat next to me. This may have been innocent, but with Alba in action, I suspected everything. As far as I knew, Kyle was straight and I was pretty sure that Abuelita would prefer me to date a Latinx guy, but under the circumstances, I was annoyed by this blatant setup. To make matters worse, Alejandro was sitting on the other side of Kyle, rather than next to me, and by this point, I was convinced that he should be the one I go out with. But of course, he wasn’t anyone’s idea of a proper boyfriend for me. Keeping my anger hot, Abuela and Alba sat behind me, and before the play started, they loudly assessed the romantic potential of every young man in the audience. I seethed.
 
The family had found out I was gay ten years ago when I stupidly left a Valentine’s Day card from a classmate on the kitchen counter. Billy Martínez was a dream and had worked for a week to create a giant card that opened up into a three-dimensional football stadium with our names in a pink heart at the fifty-yard line. My parents were cool, though I was mortified when they put the card up on the mantle to show off. Elena helped me through that time. “Be grateful,” she told me. “Mom is trying to tell you the family loves you more than anything.”
 
Not everyone was nice about my being gay. Aunt Julia’s boyfriend is always making crude jokes, and a cousin pointedly told me that I was never allowed to be near her kids. There were guys at my high school who threatened to kill me, and a group of girls nicknamed me mariposa rosa and painted pink butterflies and obscene drawings on my locker. I was happy to get out of there alive.
 
Watching the doomed romance unfold on stage, I kept wondering why I was single and ultimately decided I was too shy. There were several men that in hindsight would have loved to become involved with me, but nothing ever happened because I was too scared to initiate a relationship. When this matchmaking ended, I vowed, I would go out there and act on my feelings. Then I decided not to wait. I abruptly asked Alejandro to go on a date as we walked out of the auditorium.
 
“Sure, if you want,” was his response. I didn’t find that reassuring.  
 
Regretting my spontaneity and fearing more public humiliation, I said, “Please don’t tell anyone about this. You know how everyone is watching me.” He agreed to keep it quiet.
 
Alejandro is so handsome, he makes me nervous. He is two inches taller than me with a perfectly proportioned body, well-muscled arms, and a widow’s peak that draws attention to his big sparkling eyes. We are about the same dark shade of brown and he has a way of talking with his hands that I find irresistible. Three years older than me, he was much more grounded than I could ever be. Though he likes to laugh and is always full of jokes, he is serious while I am all giggles. Thus, I didn’t have high hopes for us going forward. I figured he was only going out with me out of pity.
 
It turned out to be the best date I had ever been on. We were blissfully happy and totally in sync with each other. At one point I was suppressing the urge to laugh and tell him I was having a great time because I didn’t want him to think I was a gushy romantic when Alejandro leaned back, laughed, and said, “This dinner with you is so wonderful, I don’t want it to end.” I was hooked.
 
He spoke a lot about his family. “As the youngest, I am the only one with status; everyone else stays in the shadows so they don’t get picked up. From the start, I had to interpret for them and represent them when we faced the outside world.”
 
I felt all of my privilege for being born in the US, but I also knew the pushes and pulls he had experienced. “We all have to work together to protect the most vulnerable of us,” I told him. “A lot of folks are here without documents. We live intertwined together, we share our lives. If we lost any one of them, we all would suffer,” I felt helpless as I always do when the topic is immigration.
 
“I teach ESL to help the kids who are like me when I was young,” Alejandro told me. “There is so much pressure to get ahead, yet at the same time, their families so depend on them that they can’t keep up.” Mike had told me how Alejandro’s students adore him and how he is always helping them navigate the bureaucratic mess that ensnares non-citizens.
 
“I know how our families frame our lives,” I said. “My father wouldn’t let me become a social worker or a community organizer. No. I had to major in something practical like business. ‘We gave up your brother to teaching to help our people. You have to look for other ways to make something of yourself,’ he told me. You’ve met my father. I couldn’t ever go against his wishes.”
 
“I understand. We are all still trying to figure out our way between our families and the world,” Alejandro nodded. He still lived at home, though Mike told me he wanted to move out. “I’m always second guessing myself. I wonder if teaching is the right way to go. Sometimes I think I should run for office to change things. My father thinks that I am crazy when I talk about that, but I like to aim high.” I just stared into Alejandro’s eyes, lost in their possibilities.  
 
After a brief silence, Alejandro said, “When you give me that cute puppy dog look, I have to ask if your apartment is really as small as your brother says it is.”
 
“It is pretty cramped,” I answered. “When I have a guy over, we have to be on top of each other all night long.” I let that sink in as I explained, “I moved out of my parents’ place when my sister and her three kids came to live with us. I was too old to sleep on a couch every night.” Then I took another bold step. “Want to come back with me?”
 
When Alejandro looked around my tiny apartment, he smiled and said wistfully, “You are so lucky. I wish I had a place like this.” Then he pushed me down on the bed.
 
Within a week Alejandro was spending every night with me. By the end of the month, he had moved in. We alternated Sunday dinners, one with his family, one with mine, and we did everything together: the gym, soccer, and knocking on doors to get our candidate elected to the city council. Still, as far as I knew no one had a clue we were seeing each other, and I was happy I had outsmarted Alba. I wanted to keep things quiet but the news of our relationship began to leak out. Elena saw Alejandro’s car parked in front of my apartment early one morning, and Mike caught us sharing a drunk sloppy kiss after our soccer team went out to celebrate a big win. He confronted us when he saw me wearing Alejandro’s beat up Mayfair High tee shirt at the gym. “Listen up, lovebirds. Either you go public, or I am going to tell everyone. I can’t keep a secret.”
 
It is hard to overstate the status of Mexican grandmothers. Fathers may love us to pieces, but they always have unreasonable expectations. We have to have perfect in every way. My father even had an opinion on what car I should drive. “Get a dark sedan. Cops always pull over a Mexican driving a red SUV.” Daughters have it even worse. Mexican fathers’ primary role in life is to make their daughters miserable by being overprotective. They hate every boy who even glances at their virginal little girls.
 
Mexican mothers are similarly ambiguous. They will fight to the death to protect us, but they also feel it is their duty to wheedle, threaten, prompt, and cajole their sons to do what they think is right. It drove my mom to madness if I left the house in a wrinkled shirt, for example. “If the teachers see you disheveled, they will blame me,” she said, tears running down her cheeks at the thought of the humiliation. Again, Mexican daughters have it worse because their mothers try extremely hard to prevent them from making the same mistakes they did. Daughters are too much like their mothers to get along.
 
Grandmothers, however, are the warm source of unconditional love. There are never any fights, never an argument or raised voice, and they never hurt our feelings. Abuelita would slip me cookies when my parents weren’t looking, and she let me stay up late to watch spooky movies when she babysat me. I admit to being annoyed when she made me say the rosary with her, and I grew bored the hundredth time she told me how bad things were in Mexico before she left. But those were minor quibbles.
 
Abuelita was the tough matriarch of our family. Denied the opportunity to go to school, she had taught herself how to read and write Spanish and after she moved to California, learned it all over again in English. She organized everyone to come to the United States, and when the window to citizenship opened up in the eighties, she had everyone apply. She and Abuelito raised seven children, and thanks to their force of will, none of their children or grandchildren succumbed to gangs or drugs. After a lifetime of hard work cleaning hotel rooms, Abuelita was at last retired, but only because her children demanded she rest. We all did whatever we could to please her.
 
Imagine my fright that I was going to confront her, perhaps the first time since the time of the fifth sun—the Aztec creation myth says we are in the fifth world—a grandson was going to directly contradict his grandmother. But I owed it to her. I couldn’t let her keep spending her money finding me a match.
 
My opportunity came while we were at Tía Agueda’s house. Alejandro was out back teaching Mike’s four-year-old and the other kids how to merengue; by now he had spent so much time with my family that if I showed up someplace without him, everyone asked where he was. My parents and their siblings were playing cards around the dining table while arguing over who was responsible for the latest defeat of the Mexican National Soccer Team. Abuelita and I were cleaning up in the kitchen. She is a tiny woman; I could easily lift her up over my head. Her short hair had turned gray before I was born; now it was mostly white, which made her dark skin glow. While she talked about her volunteer work at the parish, I kept looking at her to assess her mood. But she is as undecipherable as a marble statue. No one knows what Abuelita is thinking, but we always know what she wants. And here I was about to go against her wishes.
 
Surprisingly, it went very well. “Alejandro is a good boy. His family is very proud of him.” That is the greatest complement Abuelita has for anyone. “Es muy guapo,” she added. “Though both of you need to put on some weight.”
 
“No hard feelings?” I asked. “I am so sorry you were worried about me. I apologized for making you go through all this.” It was heartfelt.
 
“Pues, it was worth a try. I only wanted to help,” she said with a smile. I offered to reimburse her for Alba’s fee, but she refused. “This is a business transaction between the Bruja and me. Don’t go poking into it.” I backed off and put it out of my mind because I was excited that I was in a full blown, open, happy relationship with Alejandro. And I was with him on my own, without anyone pushing us together.
 
My sister finally told me what happened. “You really are a fool,” Elena rolled her eyes at my innocence. “No one can outsmart a bruja. It’s impossible to stop an abuela when she sets her mind to do something. Everyone knows that Alba planned to set you up with Alejandro from the beginning.”

Russ López is the author of six nonfiction books as well as book reviews and journal articles. After an extensive career of community organizing and social justice advocacy, he is the editor of LatineLit, a magazine that publishes fiction by and about Latinx people. “Matchmaking and Taxes” is part of a planned collection of short stories tentatively titled, The Lesser Saints of Silicon Valley. Originally from California, López has degrees from Stanford, Harvard, and Boston University. He currently divides his time between Boston and Provincetown, Massachusetts.

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