The Sky Below

by Stacey D'Erasmo

  “Julia,” I said in my best adult voice, “do you know where we are?”

  “Quiet, Stranger. Just come on.”

  Since I didn’t know the way back any better than I knew the way forward, I complied. If we didn’t turn up for dinner, I thought, someone would come looking for us eventually. I wanted to sit down and eat lunch, but Julia was forging ahead, bending back ferns, her white rebozo flickering through the green. The air continued to thicken and dampen around us, the supersonic greens grew even greener, and what I really wanted right then was an iced double espresso from the smiling twin at Starbucks, loaded with sugar. Would the Tweeties be happy by this river? I wasn’t sure where they were from—it might have been India, or was it Cape Verde? Someone had flown them in from somewhere. They’d landed in the middle of the night at JFK in a special climate-controlled cage. I didn’t think they would like this humid, wild zone, though they were the ones who had sent me here, hadn’t they? Maybe if I had spit in the atrium, none of this would have happened. I wouldn’t be a stranger.

  Julia hummed, did her hopping dance, turned us this way and that. The river remained on our right, though sometimes our increasingly impassable route tilted down closer to it, at other times rose up and away from it. Julia cut over abruptly. She seemed to be listening hard, eyes still closed. In profile, she looked older than she was, her future self. Her top teeth stuck out above her lower lip. I could take care of her, I thought. I could get her teeth fixed, tutor her, make sure she left here for school in the States (had she ever been to school?). She could live with Janos and me in the winters, return to Ixtlan in the summers, grow up and be complicated. Jabalí loved her enormously, but he was a total crackpot, and an ex-con to boot. She would outgrow him. She would outgrow this place, and then what would she become? A guide, taking gringos on burro rides into the mountains, telling tourists three times a day to spit in the river? A maid at La Hacienda? Or, worse, she’d stay here doing not much of anything, as fascinating and wayward as the rest of them, growing taller, more odd. Decide on a name gleaned from one of the moldy books holding up the walls in the chicken coop: Heloise, Don Quixote, Bath-sheba. I stopped, bent over, breathing hard. It was unbearable to me. Was this why I was here? To get her out?

  When I straightened up, I didn’t see her. “Julia?” Green everywhere, a thick curtain of ferns. The river was almost inaudible, so we were high up now, far above it. “Julia?”

  “Stranger!” Her small, clear voice, like the ringing of a hand-held bell, somewhere to my left. I walked left, forward, wading through the green. “Over here! Close your eyes!”

  I closed my eyes. Roots grabbed at my ankles, clutched my toes. The ferns were up to my chest. It was hard going but I persevered, hands held out awkwardly, and then something snapped and I stumbled, because I was suddenly free.

  “Here! We’re here!”

  I opened my eyes. Julia was standing in a clearing, twirling excitedly in the Outkast T-shirt that reached to her knees. The clearing was a downward-tilting spot where the ferns didn’t grow so thickly. In the center of the clearing was a shallow declivity ringed by rocks that had once been, or perhaps still was, a fire pit. Behind Julia was the entrance to a cave. I set the knapsack down and walked closer. At first the cave seemed to be a cleft in the rocks, little more than a shadow in the side of the mountain. The air emerging from it was quite cool. A rusted bicycle wheel rested near the mouth of the cave, ferns growing through and around its spokes. The rough sides of the entrance were charred. A striped lizard with a long yellow tail and a stark streak of red by its eye watched me from an outcropping of rock, his shiny underbelly falling and rising. I wanted to touch the lizard but knew that I shouldn’t. I leaned forward, curious, tentative. Inside the cave were scorched objects I couldn’t identify. A ladder toward the back? A round mirror, half blackened. Something larger. Something smaller with a handle.

  “Where are we, Julia?”

  She gestured like a tour guide. “This is my mother’s house. It used to be really beautiful. There are special things inside.” I stared.

  “When someone dies here,” she said, “we make a little house and burn them in it. So it goes with them, and all their favorite things, too. She had her cave, so we did it here. I gave her a special thing of mine to take with her.” Julia sat down by the fire pit. “I’m not going to tell you what it was. This was her place, Stranger.”

  I nodded, careful to keep my face still. “Honey, you should drink some water. It’s hotter out here than you think, and we’ve been walking for a long time.”

  “Okay.” A gentleness had come over Julia; now she looked younger than she was, a past self, blurrier, not fully formed. I pitied her. She drained half a bottle of water, stray wisps of hair escaping her braids. Malcolm X had tied them, lovingly but not very deftly, with twine. Her mother should have braided and bowed her hair.

  “What was your mom’s name?”

  Julia shook her head. “You can’t say it anymore. No one can ever say your name once you die.”

  I glanced inside the cave again. Blackened objects, heartbreak. The scorched mirror’s strange gleam. “And was your mom the first person who died here?”

  “Uh-uh. There was an old guy before her. I can’t say his name. And a dog.”

  “Do you burn the dogs, too?”

  “Well, yeah, but we don’t make them a house. And they don’t really have stuff to take with them.” Julia finished the bottle of water and smiled up at me. “That old guy had a lot of favorite things. He used to be a shoe salesman.”

  I smiled back at her, but I was distracted. So Jabalí had come up with it. Maybe the prison cell was where he first began inventing all this. It was like him—simultaneously thoughtful, semiplausible, and half-cocked. Burn the dead one’s place, burn it off this earth, burn her favorite objects, burn her name, burn the mirror that held her reflection. It occurred to me that he might have been a violent man, before.

  “You must miss her.”

  “Special things in there,” said Julia. “They’re all mine. Let’s eat and then we can go in.”

  I sat down next to her at the fire pit and unwrapped our lunch. Cold enchiladas, dense and meaty, almost nutty. “Are you sure it’s okay for me to be here?”

  “Don’t you want to see?”

  “Sure. If it’s okay.” Actually, I was afraid. I didn’t want to see it at all. I had seen enough, but I didn’t want to disappoint Julia, who was being so generous with the most precious thing she had.

  When we finished lunch, she got up and walked ahead of me into the cave. Reluctantly, I followed. Inside, it was dim and cool, and the indeterminate blackened shapes were now recognizable as a saucepan, the charred remains of a single wooden pallet tucked beneath one of the cave’s irregular walls, a kerosene lantern on its side. It smelled of soot. A burned ladder did, indeed, lean at the rear of this part of the cave, in a curve where the walls tilted sharply upward and continued back into a deeper, danker darkness. The mirror was cheap and thin, about two feet across, unevenly ringed in melted veneer, foxed in some places, blistered in others, while in still others it looked as if small suns had exploded on its silver surface.

  Julia squatted down, her nose almost touching the mirror. Then she stood up again, shaking her head. “Sometimes she’s in there. Not today, though.” She took measured steps around the cave, not hopping or dancing, toes first. In this part, the cave was low-ceilinged but fairly wide, perhaps as big as my apartment on East Seventh Street. Big enough to collect shadows by its walls. Julia picked up the lantern and set it upright, a few inches from where it had tumbled. She bent over again, sniffed, displeased. “Raccoons.” She briskly kicked dirt over the area and continued. In the gloom, her white rebozo was a light, accompanying her on her journey around the interior of the cave.

  I stood not far from the saucepan, my hands at my sides, sweating even in the coolness, thirsty. My overwhelming feeling was that I shouldn’t be here. And it wasn’t clear to me that Juli
a’s mother wasn’t here, because the cave had an almost unbearable atmosphere, a kind of surface tension, like the air before a storm breaks. I wasn’t sure I liked this woman, whoever she had been. What kind of woman needs a mirror in a cave? Julia was standing quite still now, eyes closed, hands over her heart, singing something I couldn’t make out, a mix of Spanish and English. Then she opened her eyes and kneeled in the dirt, moving some small objects here and there.

  “Look, Stranger. Treasure.”

  I crossed the cave. On the ground in front of her she had four or five ceramic animal figures of the kind you saw all around that area, from roadside souvenir stands to upscale arty stores in Oaxaca. A pig, a horse, a chicken, a fantailed bird, a llama, a man. She also had a cardboard box, a bit bigger than a shoe-box, turned on a long edge, open in front. Inside, there was a painted landscape and a tiny trough, a plastic miniature ear of corn. Julia picked up each ceramic creature, kissed it, and set it back down against the painted landscape, very precisely, as she had done with the lantern. Whatever design had once been painted on them had burned away, so they were only simple clay figures now, unevenly scarred by black streaks and clouds. Julia, frowning, arranged them with enormous concentration until she was satisfied they were in the right spots. The animals obediently stood, as if grazing, by the painted clouds and trees and mountains—skinned, singed, placid, unaware of their true condition. The burned man, equally oblivious, watched over them.

  Julia gestured. I kneeled next to her. “Now we have to say her story,” Julia said.

  “I don’t know her story.”

  Julia gave me a look. “I know that, Stranger. I’m going to teach you.”

  “Please stop calling me that.”

  “When you pick a name, I will.” She tapped me on the wrist. “Okay. Repeat after me. She was born.” Silence. “Stranger. Say it.”

  “Oh, sorry. She was born.”

  “She was born and she was beautiful.”

  “She was born and she was beautiful.” I really wanted to get the hell out of that cave.

  “She was born and she was beautiful and she sailed over the ocean.”

  “She was born and she was beautiful and she sailed over the ocean. Julia—”

  “Shhhh. Ocean ocean ocean.”

  “Ocean ocean ocean,” I mumbled. “A bee came out of the waves.”

  “A bee came out of the waves.”

  “Jesus Mary and Joseph.”

  “Jesus Mary and Joseph.”

  “The bee stung her.”

  “The bee stung her.” Was the smell of soot growing stronger?

  “The bee stung her and she died.”

  “The bee stung her and she died.”

  “Oh! The bee. The little bee.”

  “Oh! The bee. The little bee.”

  “Jesus Mary and Joseph.”

  “Jesus Mary and Joseph.”

  “Amen.” Julia bowed her head, holding her palms out by her sides.

  “Amen.” I waited a beat. “Can we go now? I think it’s getting late.”

  “No. Oh, no—we forgot the flowers!” She looked over at me beseechingly.

  Glad of the excuse, I dashed out of the cave and cast around in the greenery for anything that might resemble a flower. It was all ferns and peculiar succulent plants up here, probably poison ivy or who knows what poison thing, and useless scrubby bushes. The striped lizard, still on the outcropping, watched me skeptically, motionless, king of this entrance to the underworld. Although I was outside, I was as frightened as if I were still in the cave, and I plunged around frantically, scattering fern leaves. I was desperate not to fail. I had the irrational fear that if I didn’t bring back at least a handful of flowers, Julia would be trapped in the cave forever, perpetually eight years old. Going around past the cleft and onto the hillside, I stumbled down the slope and managed to capture a grubby clutch of weeds with a few pink and red blooms on them. They were sub-daisy at best, but they would do.

  Panting and huffing, I carried them back into the cave. Julia put her finger to her lips. “We have to be quiet for this part.”

  We stood in silence together for several minutes, until my eyes adjusted again to the dimness and my breathing slowed to match Julia’s. Whatever this was, I wanted to do it right. It was like a game, except it wasn’t a game, of course. When Julia was sure I had assumed the proper attitude, she took the flowers from me. “Come over here,” she said. My heart sank, but I walked with her over to the remains of the pallet by the irregular cave wall, trying mightily to conceal my reaction to what I suspected was there. “You take one.” She handed me a stalk of weed with two red flowers on it.

  The charred pallet was a busted box. The figure was half buried in ash and dirt and shriveled, dried-out flowers. Time and fire had made the mortal shapes that were still visible abstract, sculptural. You couldn’t know her from what she was now. Next to the phalanges of the fingers was a white dinner plate, cracked down the middle. Julia went first, murmuring her near-song and solemnly strewing pretty weeds on the ribs, the hipbones, the slender white architecture of the fingers. She brushed a brown stalk aside to lay down her last green one, finished her song, and nodded to me. I set my stalk next to hers on an anonymous clump of earth. I didn’t like this cave that was also a funeral pyre, and I didn’t like the woman who had once been woven around these bones. I saw a muddy, roiling red around her, shot through with lines of a bad, empty, flat white, a deathly white. I was angry at Jabalí for letting Julia come up here alone, as she was obviously accustomed to doing. Even for a child as strong and smart as she was, the forces in this place were too great for her. Even I could sense how dangerous it was.

  Julia, though, was intent, standing next to me, rapt, rigid, hands over her face. This, too, it seemed to me, was dangerous; what would stop a little girl like her, with thin wrists and watchful eyes, from slipping into another realm and not being able to get back? That silent one in the pallet had had a jealous spirit, you could tell. But I was a visitor here, a newcomer and a trespasser, so I stood with my hands at my sides and didn’t say anything. What would I have said? You’re standing too close to the edge? I didn’t say anything. I did, however, notice that one of Julia’s twin hair ties had come undone and fallen to the dirt. I picked it up and put it in my pocket. I realized then that I was shivering.

  “Stop fidgeting,” whispered Julia from behind her hands. “We’re almost done.”

  Only a small part of the skull, about the size of a fist, was visible; the rest of it was buried. The large, curving bones of the torso remained in sight. The open arch of the white ribs was poignant, but the hipbones were terrifying: smooth, blunt knobs that enclosed nothing but ash and dirt. I have never seen anything as empty as those hipbones. The area between them seemed as vast as a steppe. I looked away.

  After what seemed a very long time, Julia whispered, “Okay.” She sighed, taking her hands from her face and letting them fall heavily to her sides.

  I glanced at the charred, busted box. I could feel the energy in the cave. “Julia,” I ventured, “ask her about my father. Ask her where he went.”

  Julia tilted her head. “Do you think this is the carnival, Stranger? I am not a gypsy.”

  “Please. Por favor.” I kneeled in the dirt.

  Julia looked down at me. Her hands hung limp and motionless. “I’m tired.”

  I bent my head. “Please,” I whispered.

  “Well. Okay.” Julia stood next to me, murmuring in Spanish. The only word I recognized was Dios. Finally she said firmly, “He’s gone.”

  “What?” I felt a cold iron bar go through me. “Gone? What does that mean?”

  “Gone,” she repeated. “He is gone.”

  “Do you mean dead? Or like he went somewhere?”

  “No. Not like he went somewhere. Like dead.”

  “Like dead? Or dead? Julia, please concentrate. It’s important. Maybe she’s thinking of another guy.”

  Julia stared at me in the gloom, her li
p quivering. “I just told you. Why do you keep asking me? I shouldn’t have brought you here. You have to leave now.” Julia clapped her hands together, shook herself, bowed to the busted box, and marched out of the cave. I followed sheepishly. The sudden warmth, humidity, and dense green were almost too much, like waking up from the thickest part of sleep into broad daylight. Julia picked up the rusted bicycle wheel with both hands and flung it into the ferns beyond the clearing. “This is not a junk heap!” she yelled to whatever thoughtless powers or beings had left it there. “Good,” she said, wiping her hands on her enormous T-shirt with efficient satisfaction, but to me she looked drained by her crackpot homegrown ceremony. She glanced around the area with a territorial air, hands on her hips, pale in the daylight.

  I was shaken. I sat down by the fire pit, fumbling in my knapsack for water, then drinking it down greedily. The water was warm from the day and had the peculiar taste of ash, nutmeg, and limestone that the water here always had, but I couldn’t get enough of it. I drank and drank. The striped lizard watched from his outcropping, impassive. The ferns all around us were benevolent and green with life, but there were so many of them, all massed together in every direction, that if Julia hadn’t been here I would have had no idea how to get back. It was nothing but succulent shades of green as far as the eye could see. The slight path appeared to have reseamed itself already.

  Julia gestured and I followed her out.

  ***

  At dinner that night, I sat at the long table next to Jabalí, who was plowing into his rice and beans. Julia was bounding around outside with the dark-eyed boy and three other little girls in party dresses. Like the child she was, and should be. “Listen,” I said in a low voice, “I know I’m new here, but I went with Julia to that weird cave today, and I don’t think she should be up there. She could get hurt.” I knew my tone was scolding, but I didn’t care. “She gets way too intense in there. She makes things up.”