by Mary Morris
We went to breakfast at La Parroquia on the Plaza de Armas. The café had white tiled walls, fans, cement floors, waiters in white jackets, and served wonderful coffee and scrambled eggs. The day was sunny, and so after breakfast we went to the popular Mocambo Beach. We passed poor fishermen who lived on the shore in shanties and crazy, dangerous dogs who patrolled the shantytown. I could not imagine how these people made it through the storm that night.
On the beach Alejandro told me a story about his family. This story was a kind of missing link, the one that made me understand all the rest. He had a blind brother named Tomás. Blindness, he told me, was inherited through the women in his family. One day when he was small and all the children had gone out to play, his mother went into the street, leaving Tomás alone, and somehow his brother got on to the roof and fell off. Now, Alejandro told me, his brother lay in bed like a vegetable, as he had lain for twenty years, in his mother's house. He could not speak or move or see, and his every need had to be taken care of. Alejandro looked at me, his eyes filled with a rage I couldn't help thinking was directed at me. "It is her curse," he said. "It is what she deserves."
That afternoon we took the bus to La Antigua (old Veracruz). En route Alejandro reminded me of my history. "You know, this is where Cortés landed and it is also where your president, Woodrow Wilson, bombed our shipyards and killed two hundred of my people in order to quell a revolution."
"I didn't realize it was Veracruz," I told him.
"Yes," he said in a huff. "The conquered always recall their history better than the conqueror."
We reached the place where in 1519 Cortés had tied up his ships. The exact spot is a famous ceiba tree, a giant tree with enormous roots that reach into the walls of the city, the roots exposed. Centuries have passed. The walls have crumbled. Only the roots of the tree, which have endured, sustain the walls. Alejandro looked at the tree, and a satisfied grin came over his features. "You see," he said to me, "the walls are in ruins. Nothing has survived. Only the tree. It was here before Cortés. It will be here after."
On the bus ride back from the gulf, I made the mistake of referring to the time when I'd be going home. "Home?" Alejandro said. "I always thought you'd come to stay."
"I've always said I'm going home." At that moment, in fact, I ached to go home. I longed to get away. And yet I could not seem to leave. Even as I thought about it then, it seemed impossible that I would ever go home. Still I yearned to return. "I want to go home," I said.
"Yes, but I am in love with you. You may go, but I am in love with you." He held out his hands to show me how empty they were.
I shook my head and said I didn't think he was in love with me, but this only made him more angry. "How do you know what I am?" he said.
"I don't want to hurt you," I told him. "I love you, but I'm not in love with you." Even as I said it, I thought how much I had hated that distinction when men had made it to me. "I want to always be honest with you," I told him. "I could never stay here. I couldn't stay with you."
"I only want you, Maria. There is no one else for me." Alejandro could have had just about any Mexican woman of his social class. He was handsome, charming, kind, and loyal. Instead he had decided to fall in love with me, though I had told him this was not a good idea.
Alejandro, for all his kindness—and he was a very kind man—suffered from what I have come to call the Aztec complex. He was a stoical man of great dignity and pride. Stoical, stubborn, hiding behind a mask, basically disdaining women. He chose to involve himself with women like me, who would only make him feel bad about himself, or with women like Angelita, whom he could easily dominate, who did not interest him. Like Moctezuma, opening the gates of his city to embrace Cortés, Alejandro welcomed me to break his heart.
After being back in Mexico City for a few days, I wanted to go to San Miguel and decided to return. The morning of my departure as I packed, there was a knock at the door. When I opened it, I found a man standing there. He said he had a telegram for Alejandro Santiago Sanchez, and Alejandro opened it.
"What is it?" I asked. "Is it bad news?"
"It's from you," he said. And he handed me the cable I had sent weeks before from Guatemala City, which read simply, "Back Friday, Mary."
I HAD NEVER BEEN TO A PARTY AT A CEMETERY before, but Lupe said it would be fun. She wanted me to help her with the preparations and accompany her there. I wasn't sure what this entailed since Day of the Dead in America is essentially Halloween, so I asked if she wanted me to help her make costumes for the children. But she said no, it wasn't like that at all; if we could work in my kitchen, she would teach me.
Lupe brought over a giant cauldron and we began baking breads and small cakes. We shopped for cinnamon, pecans, brown sugar, flour, eggs, food coloring, colored sugars. In the cauldron, we put a kilo of sifted flour, ten eggs. We put in the grated cinnamon, the sugars, pecans. Then she made small cups and in the cups she put food coloring and she dyed the dough. Then her hand shaped the dough. She made little lambs and elephants, reindeer and skulls, coffins and flowers. I watched as she carved skulls, shaped coffins, wove funereal wreaths with her colored dough.
Death was everywhere for days. In town all the stores were selling the little cakes and cookies, sugar candy and funereal wreaths, and everyone was laughing and happy and having a wonderful time. The night before we went to the cemetery, we stayed up, making another batch of breads. I asked Lupe how she had learned to be such a good cook and she told me she had carefully watched the patrones she had worked for and remembered what they did. Even though she could not read recipes, she could remember.
"I remember everything," she told me. And suddenly she began to cry. She broke down and sobbed into her apron. Another one of José Luis's women was pregnant, and Lupe was pregnant, and she remembered everything, all the good and all the bad, and it was all rolled into one. "I am sick of all these men," she said. "If I didn't have so many children, if it weren't for this"—she patted her belly—"I'd get away from them all." She said José Luis had told her that afternoon that if she went to the movies alone—or went out anywhere alone—it meant only one thing. That she was looking for a man. He said that if she did that, he would kidnap Polio and take her to one of his other señoras. "How can I look for a man like this? He doesn't even want me anymore," she said, "but he threatens me."
Lupe said she was a slave to that man and she'd been a slave to the man before him. "Don't ever be a slave," she told me. "Be free. Always be free." Then she apologized for crying and we went back to shaping our skulls, our tiny coffins.
Mexico is the land in which Xochipilli, the young god of beauty, love, and youth, was depicted with a death's head contorted into the most hideous of smiles. Life to the Aztecs came only from death. One flowed naturally into the other. The people who worshiped Xipe Totec, god of vegetation, watched as their priests flayed victims alive and walked around in their warm skins. Children still play with puppets called Dead Mariachi or Dead Peasant or even Dead Dead Man. To be Mexican means to be well acquainted with birth and death.
The cemetery in San Miguel is about an hour's walk outside of town and I'd never been there before that day. We left early in the morning, Lupe, me, and all of the children except Maria Elena, who was pregnant and not feeling well. We carried our flowers and baskets of food. Lupe had a dear friend, she told me, who had died the year before, and she also had a child who had been born dead. We would go to their graves.
The cemetery was alive with people, flowers, and streamers. Families gardened around graves, pulling up weeds, planting flowers. Everyone was eating cookies and cakes, drinking coffee or tequila, passing food around. The festivities were everywhere except for in a small enclosed area near the middle of the cemetery. I asked Lupe what it was. She said she didn't know, so I went over. It was the American part, all fenced in, well gardened and kept up, but with no visitors, no one bringing flowers. It seemed lonely and sad. "Lupe," I said, "if I die here, will you be sure I am buried
in the Mexican part of the cemetery?"
She laughed. "It is sad over there, isn't it."
Suddenly it became very important to me that she make this promise. "Promise me," I said. "I won't be buried in the American part."
She squeezed my arm. "I promise, but you won't die in Mexico."
We reached the grave of Lupe's friend. Two of Lupe's other friends, sisters named Carmen and Consuela, were clearing a nearby grave, scrubbing the tombstone. They had a large picnic basket with them and offered us some slices of chicken and a beer. I wasn't hungry, but I understood that it would offend them if I refused. They seemed very content. Both had strange, witchlike faces. Carmen had clear green eyes, unusual for a Mexican, and silver hair down to her waist. After a while she began to talk about the grave she was clearing. "It is my son's," she said. "And my mother." She looked at Consuela. "Our mother." Consuela nodded.
"Oh, your son," I mumbled.
"And our mother," Consuela said, as if she were proud of this fact.
"Yes, my son was killed last year. With an ice pick in his head." She said this as if she were telling me about a new movie she'd seen.
"And our mother died of grief, six weeks later," Consuela said. It was like a routine the two of them had worked up together.
"So we buried them together. We have just put the tombstone in. It is very nice, I think, don't you?"
Lupe said she thought it was very nice and for a while we all admired the tombstone. They insisted that we touch the cool reddish-gray stone, run our fingers over the carved letters, look at our reflections in its polished surface. Then they offered us some little cakes and Lupe offered them some of ours. They admired the basket Lupe had brought. "These are beautiful." And they took a coffin and skull and offered them to their dead.
"You don't eat them?" I asked.
"Some do. I prefer to offer them," Carmen replied. "So"—she grinned at me—"if you die in Mexico, you will be buried there." She pointed to the American enclave.
Lupe laughed, knowing I was being teased. "Oh, no," Lupe said as if on cue. "She will be here with us."
Then Lupe wanted to find the grave of her stillborn child. She had an idea of where it was, but as we walked to the children's part of the cemetery, she became confused. The grave was unmarked and more graves had appeared since she'd last been there, and she couldn't find it.
Instead we cleared away the weeds on the grave of an unknown child. We planted the pansies and a small rose sprig we had brought with us. We knew that the rose sprig would not live without care, but we planted it anyway. Then we sat beside the grave and ate avocado sandwiches. A priest came by and blessed the grave with holy water from a pill bottle.
In the far corner of the cemetery a bonfire burned, but Lupe didn't want to get near the fire. I asked her what it was. "They are burning the coffins of those who could no longer pay to stay there." She asked if I would help her make a bank account. She said she never wanted them to burn her coffin. "All right," I said. "I won't let them bum your coffin if you don't let them bury me where the Americans are." We shook hands, sealing our pact, both laughing at the thought of our impending doom.
Toward the end of the day some people began to leave while others dragged out more beer and bottles of tequila; for them the festivities would continue into the night. Lupe was ready to leave so we said good-bye to Carmen and Consuela. They asked if she'd be back that night, but she said no.
As we walked back across the fields, I asked her why she wouldn't return that night, but she shook her head. "It is one thing to go in the day," she mumbled. "It's another to go at night."
That night I returned and found the cemetery transformed. It was a blaze of fires and strange dances, of drunk men staggering and women incanting. Candles burned on tombstones. Odd shadows illumined the faces of the living. I passed Consuela and Carmen, their faces even more witchlike now, glowing red in the flames. I waved, but they did not see me. I stopped beside them, but they did not recognize me. Carmen rocked back and forth, her silver hair glistening as if on fire. Death masks abounded and skeletons marched. The ghosts were on parade.
I journey among the dead, wandering from grave to grave. Flames dance in the shine of tombstones. Dancers try to pull me into their dance. A young man appears before me, thrusting a bottle into my hand. He insists that I drink. I drink as if from a well. When I go to hand him the bottle, the boy is gone and an old woman is there. Her hair is pure white, her eyes flashes of silver. She breathes on me and my body is warmed. She looks at me through an eye of glass. She tells me my name and where I am from. She whispers the name of the person I last loved. "Who are you?" I say.
But she says nothing. Instead she leads me somewhere and I follow. Around us the dancers dance. I feel the heat of the flames. The drunk get drunker. We pass the American part of the cemetery and it is quiet and still. I walk quickly, following the old woman, her hair like a trail of moonlight on water. I do not know where we are going but she beckons to me. Then she stops. She extends her arms, opens her skirts. She covers the ground. I am the mother you never had, she tells me. I am the daughter you will one day be. I can make nothing of her gibberish. Instead I curl into her arms.
I wake to find myself lying on a small grave, a rose sprig above my head, about to blossom.
When I returned, Globo began acting strangely. She lurked in closets, pulling out socks, making piles with my clothes. Her body shook; her legs trembled. It wasn't long before one kitten was born. It slipped out, its sack intact, and Globo bit it free. I rushed over to Lupe and told her to come and bring the children because Globo was having kittens. Lupe came with Lisa and Polio and Pancha. Word spread through the neighborhood that Globo, the balloon cat, was having kittens.
Other children from San Antonio arrived. They brought Cokes and small cakes. They wore rags, tattered trousers. They were filthy. They sat in silence around the cardboard box as Globo produced six kittens. More children came. One of them brought a box of piglets his sow had just had. I made guacamole and went to the store for chips and more soda. Globo sat in her box, quietly nursing her kittens, while Pancha the lamb watched, and the children drank Cokes and ate guacamole, and three piglets ran around.
We were all happy. Later, when I was leaving San Miguel for the last time, Lupe would recall that day and say how happy we were.
THE APARTMENT NEXT TO MINE HAD BEEN VACANT for a while, but suddenly the tenants returned. Two women appeared who had been at an archaeological dig in the jungle, and one of them was sick. The sick woman, who had run a road crew in Canada, was big and bony and powerful with long dishwater-blond hair. Her name was Rosalind and her roommate was Anna. "She picked up something in the jungle," Anna said. "She has paratyphoid, according to the doctors in Queretaro." In Queretaro there is a five hundred thousand dollar bloodseparating machine that tells you what tropical disease you have contracted.
Rosalind looked pretty bad. There was something about seeing a woman that strong with that flushed, feverish look, and I thought to myself, "This woman could die." Someone had to give Rosalind a shot three times a day and Trevor volunteered. He practiced on a few oranges and soon he was giving Rosalind shots. I told her that if she needed anything, if she was sick, just to holler for me. I was home writing most of the days.
Soon after Rosalind and Anna were settled, a Mexican woman came to my door. She had two scrawny children who seemed to be suffering from malnutrition. She asked for work and I told her I had none. Then she begged me. "Please, please." She pointed to her children, their bellies distended. I said she could clean and I'd give her some money and lunch.
While the woman was cleaning, Lupe came by. "Who is that woman?" she asked indignantly.
"It's just for the day."
But she looked very hurt and upset. "If you need someone to work for you, I will do it."
"It's just for the day," I told her. "The woman needed something to eat." Lupe went away, looking very sad.
The woman ate lunch standing
up in the kitchen while I sat at the table on the patio. I watched her standing at the sink, eating rice and chicken, handing bits of food wrapped in tortilla to her children, while I sat at the table, comfortable and alone.
Alejandro was supposed to arrive Friday after work, but he never did. I saw Lupe Saturday morning and she asked where he was. I told her he hadn't come. "Do you think he has left me?" I asked her, unsure myself how I felt about this.
"No," she said. "I doubt it. Something may have happened. You never can tell. You have no phone. There is no way to reach you." Then she grinned at me. "Or maybe he did drop you."
On Sunday I went over to Lupe's. She invited me into her kitchen and I sat down. She saw I was sad and I was about to talk to her about it. Just then Polio squatted down and spilled a bloody diarrhea all over the ground. "My god," I shouted, "Lupe, is she sick? What should we do?"
Lupe just shrugged. "I've had her to the doctor. She just does that. It is the water. There's nothing we can do."
Seeing Polio get sick like that did not make me want to talk about my small problems, but I did not know where to turn. It was Lupe who raised the issue. "That Mexican, has he disappeared?" I got tears in my eyes. I realized how much I hated being alone again. "You know," she said, "men are not worth it. I don't know how to tell you this, but they just are not worth it. We think they are, but they aren't. Other things are worth it, but not men."
Lupe was cleaning up after Polio and I could not bring myself to look. "You know," she went on, "I met José Luis in a bar. I hardly knew anything about him, but we started to be together. I don't know what I feel for him, but he gives me fifty pesos a day. The señora gives me two hundred pesos a month, plus this house, to feed my children. I can't feed my kids without his money. So I don't throw him out." She paused and looked at me. "But a woman has got to make it on her own. No one is going to help you. No one. Don't cry for a man, especially a man who needs other women. No woman needs a man like that. And I'm not sure you need a man. Anyway, don't ever cry for one," she said to me. "They are never worth it."
