Margarita Wednesdays

by Deborah Rodriguez

This time he led us to a tiny plastic table. Doubting he’d have the patience to wait while I typed my questions into my phone, I instead called Lisa and asked her to translate via speakerphone. He then started pointing at pictures in a binder as he explained the curriculum. Or at least that’s what I gathered he was doing, because about two minutes in, Lisa’s voice came booming through the phone. “Deb! This guy’s speaking so fast I have no idea what he’s saying. It doesn’t even sound like Spanish to me.” We moved on to the price list. I wrote down what I had been quoted and handed it to him.

  “No,” he said. “Es más.” It’s more.

  “But that’s what the other guy told me!”

  “Es lo que dijo el otro hombre,” Lisa translated.

  “Lo despidieron,” he replied almost before she had the words out.

  “He’s been fired, Deb.”

  “Ask him if I can speak to the manager. Maybe if I tell him we’re nonprofit he’ll cut us a break. Tell him we’re going to be sending lots of students here.”

  Lisa asked. “He is the manager, Deb.”

  “Then ask if we can speak to the owner.” It was only later that I learned from Martha that in Mexico you never, ever ask to speak to an owner of a business, as they will suspect you might be a kidnapper out for ransom.

  So we got off on the wrong foot. But after all the schools I had checked out, this still seemed like the best one, so I sent Martha to iron out the details. She came back mad as a hornet, insisting we change schools.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “The Argentinian,” she answered, her lips curling in disgust.

  But that day, nothing mattered but what happened when the Argentinian diva told Lupe and Gaby that they could start tomorrow. At first Gaby’s look was one of sheer terror. But then something shifted. She stood up a little taller, her shoulders relaxed, and I could almost see a sense of purpose and pride filling up her insides bit by bit. It was as if she had gone in an instant from a scared little girl to the person in charge. And for the first time since I met her, Lupe smiled, revealing a mouthful of beautiful white teeth that I swear would glow in the dark. Renee and I struggled to fight back our tears.

  Now it was time to go shop for uniforms and shoes. The pants were easy: black and sturdy enough to withstand multiple washings. Then it was upstairs for the shoes, sensible shoes that would help a person survive standing on her feet all day. I knew all about that, and Renee, a former nurse, knew all about that as well. But the girls balked at the sneakers and walking shoes we pointed them toward.

  “Zapatos de la abuela,” I overheard Lupe whisper into Gaby’s ear. Grandma shoes. I took a stiletto from Lupe’s hand and placed it back on the rack.

  We tried another store. Renee shook her head at the red patent ballet slippers Gaby was eyeing. “No arch support, no school,” she said, shaking her head. The girls looked outraged by the whole ordeal, as if insisting on comfortable shoes were a form of abuse. How I wished I knew how to say get with the program in Spanish. I was a little embarrassed by the girls’ behavior, as I had so wanted them to make a good impression on Renee. I tried using the eye I used to give my own kids when they misbehaved in a public place, but Lupe just wouldn’t quit with the heels and platforms and wedges. Gaby must have known from hearing about me that this was a battle she wasn’t going to win, and luckily she took charge in the nick of time, before I totally lost it. A few choice words into Lupe’s ear and we were good to go, with two brand-spanking-new pairs of sneakers under our arms.

  Back at Tippy Toes, it was time for a pep talk. “Tell them that they need to wear their uniforms every single day,” I instructed Martha before sending the girls off. “Including the shoes. And under no circumstances can they ever be late.” I remembered my no-tolerance policy in Kabul. It was a suicide bomb, they’d claim. It was a rocket attack! You live in Afghanistan, I’d tell them. These things happen. If you live in New York, you plan on traffic. You just leave earlier. I was not going to change my rules for Mazatlán.

  And then came Jessie. Down here there’s always some story about someone’s brother’s sister’s cousin’s sister’s mother’s son’s stepchild who did something or needed something or saw something, so when Martha started telling me about how she was sort of related to a girl named Jessie in some convoluted way that I doubt included bloodlines, I was barely listening. But when she came to the part where she asked me to send Jessie to beauty school, my ears perked up. Martha is not the bleeding-heart type, so I knew this girl’s story had to be serious. And it was. Jessie was fourteen when her mother died. She and her brother were shipped off by their stepfather, to go live with their father in Mazatlán. He had no interest in raising his children, so off they went to stay with their other brother and his wife, Celina, a couple barely out of their own childhood. Jessie was forced to help the little group survive by selling pots and pans door-to-door. Between that and caring for her little brother, there was no time for school. Besides, when she had been sent north to Mazatlán all her school records had been left behind. Nobody had bothered to retrieve them. Now Celina was pregnant, and things were about to become even more desperate.

  So down to Instituto de Belleza Martha and I marched, a solemn Jessie lagging slightly behind, squinting in the midafternoon sun. But once inside, she continued to squint, her eyes tiny slits piercing her broad, smooth face.

  “I don’t think she can see, Debbie.” Martha frowned.

  I pointed to a diagram of fingernails posted behind the desk. “Ask her what that says.”

  Jessie just shrugged at the question.

  “Oh my Lord,” I said out loud. “You have got to be kidding.”

  On our way to the optician Martha got the rest of Jessie’s story. She used to wear glasses, but around the time her mother died her eyes worsened, and her glasses broke. There was no one around to get her another pair, so for three years she had been walking around nearly blind. The eye doctor told us she could barely see two feet in front of her.

  When Jessie came by Tippy Toes a week later with her Coke-bottle lenses perched on her nose, I wanted to melt.

  “Cómo están?” I asked. How are they?

  “She says she gets a headache,” Martha told me.

  “Well, remind her that the doctor said it will take time to get used to the glasses.”

  Jessie remained silent.

  “Tell her it will be okay, Martha. The headaches will go away, school starts on Saturday, it’s all good.” I wanted so badly to see this girl’s smile.

  As Jessie slowly turned to leave the salon, I was suddenly caught off guard by a memory so painfully overwhelming I had to sit. Seven years earlier I had shown up for a visit to the Kabul Welayat, a women’s prison in Afghanistan, loaded with a big box of Paul Mitchell gift bags stuffed with hair ribbons and nail polish and all sorts of girly stuff donated by church groups and schools back in Michigan. One look at the place and the women inside sent me reeling into a spiral of shame. Here these women had been locked inside this hellhole because they’d been raped, because they’d been beaten by their husbands, because they’d dared to run away with a man they loved, and I was all excited to be bringing them friggin’ goodie bags? What on earth had I been thinking? It was the same with Jessie, I thought. She needed so much more than a stupid pair of glasses and a beauty school diploma to hang on her wall. She needed someone to care for her, to love her, to tell her she was someone special. She needed a mom. And here I was thinking I was doing enough for her?

  I felt the tears start to roll down my cheeks. And it wasn’t just her, I thought. It was all the girls. There was no way I’d be able to give them all everything they needed. A part of me wished I’d never heard their stories, wished I’d just stayed on the outside barely looking in, maybe writing a check here and there or plucking a card off an angel tree. It’s so much easier not to know, because once you do, you have no choice. You have to act. You have to figure out something to do about it. It’s like with that damn iguana—th
e minute you open your eyes and really see something, there is no turning back.

  I heaved a huge sigh and wiped my cheeks with the back of my hand. Keep your eye on the ball, Deb, I told myself. You’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing. Keep your blubbering to yourself. Stay focused. Keep the girls on course, and let them know you are there for them. And for God’s sake, learn to speak Spanish already, would you?

  THE SEASONS HAD CHANGED BY the time I got back to Pátzcuaro. Of course, you’d never know it in Mazatlán, where it was still so hot that you could fry a tortilla just by dropping it on the sidewalk. But dropping a tortilla would mean you’d have to prepare for a lot of company, or so my girls told me. I took off on a Wednesday, as starting anything on a Tuesday, including a journey, they also told me, will bring bad luck. Why take chances? It would still give me plenty of time to spend with Cynthia before everything started.

  Cynthia had talked me into coming for El Día de los Muertos—the Day of the Dead. While in Mazatlán the Day of the Dead is celebrated with a parade, and by chasing a donkey cart down the street in pursuit of free beers (at least as far as I could tell), in Pátzcuaro it’s the real deal, and a huge draw for the thousands of people who flock there every November 1. I was curious and excited, but also a little trepidatious. Death had always creeped me out, going way back to that childhood fear of my parents dying and leaving me all alone. Their way of dealing with that was to do everything in their power to shield me from the experience of death, including bringing another, identical Chihuahua into the house when Spot died. To be fair, they did try to broach the subject of their own mortality after I was well into my twenties, but every time they’d start to talk about wills and “arrangements,” I’d cover my ears and drown out their words with a shrill la-la-la. In fact, I’d never had much experience with death, except for my father’s, and I wasn’t even around for that. He had been wheelchair-bound and suffering from Alzheimer’s for years before I left for Kabul, and since I was originally going there for only one month I figured nothing would change. Besides, my dad had always played the I could be dead tomorrow card, for all sorts of purposes, and by then I had learned to blow it off. When I heard my mom’s voice on the phone from Michigan, I could tell things weren’t going well. But she knew I couldn’t get home until the end of the month, so she never came out and said just how bad things were. When I checked in during a layover in New York, stuck in a storm, nobody told me he had already passed while I was in flight. Back in Holland, they took me straight from the airport to the funeral home, where Mom wanted me to see Dad before he was cremated. It pained me that we never got to say good-bye to each other. Though it had been nearly ten years by now, I still hadn’t really dealt with the grief, as I’d never been able to get past the guilt of being in Kabul, and not by his side.

  But in Pátzcuaro, during Day of the Dead, it wasn’t about grief. In fact, despite all the images of skulls and skeletons and coffins and bones slapped onto everything from T-shirts to bread, it was life that was being celebrated—the lives of those who were no longer living. And Cynthia had promised a transforming experience. Energy changes, she told me. Things happen.

  IT FEELS SO GOOD TO be able to pull on a sweater, I thought as I headed out from my room into the cool courtyard of Casa Encantada to meet Cynthia for a day of shopping. I found her in the open dining area, surrounded by B&B guests eager for sightseeing and restaurant suggestions. The town was packed with tourists from all over Mexico, and all around the world, judging from the jumble of languages I’d heard swirling around since I’d arrived.

  “Ready?” asked Cynthia after she handed a map to a young couple with three kids. I held up one finger in the air and gulped down my coffee as fast as I could. Our first stop was to be Santa Clara del Cobre, an old copper mining town known for its handmade crafts, which these days were completely made from recycled wire and cable.

  A light drizzle began to fall as we started to make our way through the mountains, their peaks barely visible through the mist. Though the air was thick with moisture, somehow it felt more like a cozy blanket than the murky mess it really was, judging from the muddy fields and increasingly slick roads. I watched through the window as the scrubby roadside pulsed from color to black-and-white to color again as the sun struggled to break free from the clouds. Even the cattle seemed to have been lulled into a state of blind contentment, as was clear by the look on one surprised cow’s face as she found herself skidding across two lanes of cars on her knees, scrambling frantically to her feet as she safely reached the other side.

  We kept our pace to a crawl as we neared the entrance of Santa Clara, much to the delight of the wily children who had strategically positioned themselves on both sides of the speed bumps, thrusting their hollowed-out gourds toward our windows in hopes of scoring some holiday candy or loose change. Once our pockets were empty, we continued down the main street past the low whitewashed buildings, with their tiled roofs and uniform black and red lettering, each façade painted with a broad, horizontal red stripe across its base to camouflage the dirt. If I didn’t know any better, I would have sworn we’d just completed a huge circle ending back at Pátzcuaro, where all the buildings were identical to these. But with the glare bouncing off the copper gazebo in the middle of the town square, and the copper pots, pans, plates, shot glasses, clocks, jewelry, vases, beds, tables, chairs, light switches, counters, sinks, and even bathtubs lining the streets, there was no mistaking where we were.

  Cynthia led me into her favorite shop, where I was stopped dead in my tracks, right inside the doorway, by a mound of bright yellow flowers cradling an ornate copper cross. Directly above, on a shelf lined with even more flowers, sat a photo of a rakish-looking guy in jeans, a hand in one pocket. And above that, on yet another flower-lined shelf, was his straw hat, its brim curled upward in a sporty arc.

  “Oh my,” I said out loud, suddenly sad for this family for their recent loss.

  “Es nuestro padre,” said a woman who had slid in beside me. I looked up, surprised to see her smile.

  Cynthia’s laugh tinkled across the room. “It’s okay, Deb. This guy probably died years ago. You’re going to see lots of altars and shrines everywhere this week. Beautiful, eh?”

  The workmanship displayed on the shelves of the little shop was stunning. My favorites were the etched copper plates, each depicting a different image related to the Day of the Dead, in a sort of bold, minimalistic style. The woman told us they were designed by her daughter, the most recent member of the family to apprentice in the craft. She then took us to their workshop out back, which, if it weren’t for the still-warm embers in the open fire pit, I would have sworn was a stage set, with its primitive tools and tree-stump benches. I loved imagining this family, like mine, passing down the tricks of their trade from generation to generation, but in a parallel universe on the other side of the world.

  I BEGAN TO NOTICE SIGNS of the approaching holiday all around the lake as we headed back to Pátzcuaro with three of those magnificent copper plates and four copper pedicure tubs tucked safely away in the trunk. Pickup trucks, some practically buried under piles of orange marigolds and purple cockscomb, and others crammed with passengers standing shoulder to shoulder like penned-in livestock in the back, sped past us on their way to who knew where. Near a crossroad leading into one village, we stopped to watch a group of men constructing a huge wooden arch, which Cynthia explained would later be completely covered by flowers and erected over the intersection as a guide for the spirits of loved ones heading back home for their yearly visit, sort of like when you put balloons outside your house to let everyone know where the party is.

  That afternoon was when my blood really got pumping. The annual crafts market had been set up in the Plaza Grande. As I strolled those aisles, serenaded by the music of a soft rain falling on the tarps overhead, the experience seemed for me like what spending a long winter’s afternoon in the Louvre must be for some people. But even better, because the artists wer
e right there beside you—the indigenous women with gray braids and long, tiered skirts proudly displaying their elaborately embroidered linens and blouses, and the sturdy, ruddy men with their carved masks and rich, glossy pottery. These people had come from all over Mexico with their creations, with the best of the best vying in a formal competition up in the basilica. One Indian woman handed me a card that described the embroiderers of her town as story-tellers. We tell our stories with needle and thread. And indeed, when I looked closely at their work, I saw amazingly complex tales of love and marriage, of the harvest, of death. It wasn’t long before I was forced to stop and buy one of those giant plastic totes to carry around all my new treasures. There were dishes and hats and purses and scarves, toys and mittens and sweaters and candelabras. And, of course, Catrinas. Rows and rows of Catrinas that, despite their gaping jaws and empty eye sockets, were alive with color and bursting with a whimsy that made the whole gravity of death seem like such a silly notion.

  I was in heaven, wandering from booth to booth, admiring the artisans’ work, fingering their wares, bargaining for deals. A friend once told me that my true calling was marketplace ministry. When I first got to Kabul, I’d defy the security restrictions and sneak out by myself to wander around Chicken Street, where the vendors and I got to know each other by name. “Miss Debbie!” they’d call out, inviting me in for some tea and conversation. In fact, I’d made friends with vendors from Addis Ababa to Nepal. Just name a town or mountain village, and I’ll tell you about the shops and the people who own them, how many children they have and what their wives’ names are. Knowing whose hands made what has always made every purchase seem just that much more special to me.

  More recently, on a road trip near Oaxaca, I spent a whole afternoon trying to locate the woman who had embroidered a fringed scarf I found in the market. I wanted more, and I wanted to meet the person behind these beautiful creations. We wound up in a teeny town in the pouring rain. Nothing looked open, but when I showed the scarf to the one man on the sidewalk, he motioned for me to follow, leaving me in front of an eight-by-ten countertop in a shop. I could see a woman seated inside, and next to her, on another plastic chair, was a young, pimply kid with the telltale crisp white shirt and skinny black tie of a Mormon missionary. What I didn’t see were any scarves that came close to resembling the one I held in my hand.