Buenas is Spanish for Bingo

Loteria’s a game like Bingo.

Except instead of 75 balls, it’s a deck of 54 cards. Instead of stamps, it's beans. Draw a card, call it out, place a bean on the game-card if you got it.

Could be La Sirena, a mermaid. Likely a Latino boy’s first encounter with female nudity, the only time Mamá wouldn’t yell, “Shut your eyes!”

Could be El Diablo, the devil himself. Red hot in cheap underwear and a pitchfork, a rooster’s talon on one foot, a hoof on the other.

Could be La Muerte, Death, a skeleton with a scythe and nothing else. When La Muerte is drawn, uncles can’t help but yell, “¡La Flaca!" which means, "The Skinny Missus!”

Whatever it was, it was sure to be soaked and saturated in watercolor. And instead of yelling out Bingo when you won, you yelled “¡Buenas!”

*

“And what’s the point, huh?” Tito said.

“Yeah, what's the point, what do you win, huh?” Chico said.

Tia Tejas squinted at her nephews visiting from Iowa, Tito and Chico, over her reading glasses. She took her feet off the Formica in her kitchen. She rolled up her newspaper and smacked them with it.

“Watch your tongues!” Tia Tejas said. “You win a prize, idiots. TVs, Radios, Gift Cards. Like any other game.”

Tito and Chico rubbed their arms.

“We don’t play that,” Tito said, pouting.

“Yeah, Tia,” Chico said, pouting. “Back in Iowa, we don’t play that.”

*

The thing about Loteria games was they always took place in a church building called a salón. Very likely, the salón was old and it was musty and it was cramped, and a large mural of some vague saint loomed in the background of it. No one could tell you who the saint was.

“It’s Mary, I think. Mother of Virgins. I pray to her as I pass.”

“Mad-woman you are, then. That’s clearly a man! Look at the crown of his head. Bald. It’s Saint Anthony, who watches over the lost. Makes sense, lots of money lost in here…”

“I think we should all just agree it's Saint Vincent de Paul. He’s got a lot of things going for him, as far as saints go. Charities…horses…prisoners…”

“Don’t forget spiritual help!”

“That's right, spiritual help. An excellent umbrella for many causes, that.”

Tia Tejas was in one such church building. She’d been playing Loteria for four hours, and began to scowl things out under her breath like, “Se lo hecho…,” which meant, “They’re cheating…”

She’d play four game-cards at a time. Beans zig-zagged across each of them, and on each of them she needed only one more spot to win, and…

“¡Buenas!” some other old lady would say.

And Tia Tejas would slam her hand on her card and send beans flying everywhere and say, “Se lo hecho…”

*

So it went for an hour. Tia Tejas kept at it, convinced she would win. She’d get her hopes up on a prize. Then, when she’d lose, she’d say, “Bah, I already got a tee-bee,” or “Bah, radio esta muerto, radio is dead.”

The next prize, however, was a Pear Tree. Back at home, Tia Tejas had an Apple Tree, and a Pecan Tree, and a Peach Tree, and a Lime Tree. She didn’t, however, have a Pear Tree.

Laser-focused, Tia Tejas bought in for six game-cards. She was like a switchboard operator on Mother’s Day, plugging beans away at the squares on her game-card as they were called out, somehow managing to keep track of every bit of gameplay, each card having two or three places where she could plug a bean in and win, if only they’d call out La Muerte. That’s all she needed, was La Muerte.

“La Muerte!” the caller said.

“La Flaca!” Somebody’s uncle said.

Tia Tejas plugged the bean in, and it took her a second to realize what had happened.

“Buenas!” Tia Tejas said, shooting off her chair.

*

The Border Bandits ran in just then, two buffoons in ski masks holding up guns and yelling into the room that it was a robbery.

The Border Bandits scanned the rows and rows of white folding tables, the old ladies holding their hands up and saying, “Sheezus.”

They materialized a canvas bag and went, one by one, and asked the ladies to please give us all your cash.

“Que dijo?” the ladies said. Which meant, what did he say?

“Sue DeNiro,” the Border Bandits said. Which was phonetic for, your money.

The ladies crossed themselves, and they fainted, and the Border Bandits waved their guns and collected the cash.

The Border Bandits made their way to the prize table, where the card caller stood anesthetized. The Border Bandits thunked their bag of cash on the table, and they collected all the prizes onto it. They even got the ones set aside for the winners to take home later, like the Pear Tree. They missed, however, the safe-box that held the money from folks who bought in on the game.

The Border Bandits attempted to lift the table, shimmying this way and that, clumsy as Cantinflas, the Mexican Charlie Chaplin.

“Put your gun on the table, ya dummy,” one of the Border Bandits said, putting his gun on the table.

“Oh,” the other Border Bandit said, putting his gun on the table.

Stabilized, they shuffled toward the door, shoulders shot up from hauling the table.

Tia Tejas watched silent as the two idiots made off with her Pear Tree. She hadn't felt that kind of emotion since Juan Gabriel died.

The Border Bandits approached her table, panting, the rest of the ladies still frozen, and Tia Tejas got an idea.

She leaned over the prize table as they passed, and she grabbed the guns, and she squeezed the triggers -

one, two

- just like that.

“Buenas,” Tia Tejas said, the guns smoking.

*

The vague mural of a saint loomed over the Border Bandits as they bled out. They stretched their hands toward it, removing their masks and revealing the faces of Tito and Chico.

“It’s Saint Nicholas,” Tito said.

“Patron saint of thieves,” Chico said.

Tia Tejas stood over their bodies and crossed herself. If this was a telenovela, a Mexican soap opera, Tia Tejas would have collapsed to her knees and stretched her arms out to heaven, and screamed, “NOOO!!!”

Instead, Tia Tejas said, “No. That’s Saint Dorothea of Caesarea, patron saint of Fruit Trees.”

“We don’t pray that,” Tito said.

“Yeah, Tia,” Chico said. “Back in Iowa, we don’t pray that.”

And they died.

*

Painted on the outside of Tia Tejas' shed in her backyard, the same, vague mural of Saint Dorothy watched over her Apple Tree, and her Pecan Tree, and her Peach Tree, and her Lime Tree, and, now, her Pear Tree, too.