Say Her Name

by Francisco Goldman

  You already have one just like it, I said.

  She made a disappointed face and put it back. That coffee press now looms like another uncanny sign or clue that I missed and can’t decipher. Given the role her old coffee press was destined to play in our trip to Mazunte, it seems more like a clue, or evidence, though not in the ordinary forensic sense.

  If I’d bought her the turquoise coffee press … ?

  July 3, 2008, one year to the day after Aura and I flew from Newark Airport to Mexico, and I’m back: same evening flight to Mexico, same complimentary upgrade. On the flight to Mexico City, I have to fill in the immigration form, which requires that I identify myself as either married or single. I mark married, as I always do on such forms. Three weeks later, on July 22, I fly to Puerto Escondido and the next day take a taxi to the district prosecutor’s office in Puerto Ángel, on a side street, back from the rancid harbor.

  A sign on a closed door at the end of a short corridor off the front door reads, Oficina de Investigación Criminal. But the district prosecutor takes me into a small windowless office on the left, where there is a desk with the usual clunky, old desktop computer. The light in the room has a flickering, snippy quality, as if the air itself is rapidly blinking. There’s a reason: the plastic blades of the revolving fan have been fastened beneath the two illuminated lightbulbs on the ceiling fixture they twirl from. The district prosecutor is a lanky young man with a nut-brown, chiseled face and shiny black hair, combed straight back. I will tell him my story that day as I haven’t to anybody since hours after Aura’s death, when I told it to that woman in the delegación who typed it all down and then couldn’t use it as testimony because I didn’t have my passport. That story has been running silently inside me ever since, but changing, too, seeking and finding its path, like a wild torrent narrowing into a stream: a story in which I assume what seems the proper amount of responsibility and blame, not as much as Juanita and Leopoldo assigned to me, probably not enough to send me to prison under any but corrupt circumstances, but enough to ensure that I’ll never have a respite from self-condemnation, horror, and shame. But what the district prosecutor in Puerto Ángel will tell me that day when I’m done will alter that narrative again.

  The house we’d rented in Mazunte was large enough to accommodate the several friends we hoped would come and spend at least part of the two weeks there with Aura and me and her cousin Fabiola and her boyfriend. Originally, Aura’s friend Mariana was going to come, too. Mariana worked out of her own little apartment as a masseuse and mystic healer in the Hindu tradition; in university she’d studied to be a Lacanian psychoanalyst until one day, as she tells it, she admitted to herself that instead of sublimating the ego, she wanted to get rid of it. We were in Pata Negra when Mariana told us that she wasn’t going to be able to come. She was having a hard time making ends meet and couldn’t afford a vacation. She said she didn’t want to go to Mazunte anyway, because the waves were too rough.

  What? But Mazunte is a safe beach! That’s how we—Aura and I, Fabis and Jaunca—unanimously answered Mariana. Because Mazunte is famously situated in a curving cove that impedes the waves rolling in from the ocean enough to diminish their size, momentum, and strength, it’s considered safe for swimmers. Ventanilla, and even San Agustinillo, open to the ocean, are the dangerous beaches. You take your life into your hands when you swim at Ventanilla, to say nothing of Puerto Escondido or, farther down the coast, Zipolite, notorious for its riptides and known as la Playa de la Muerte because so many drown there every year, though people keep going, it being still the favored beach of hippies, druggie drifters, Euro nudists, and the like.

  I know Mazunte may be safe compared to those other places, said Mariana. But you can’t just have a peaceful swim there. Maybe I’m just getting old, but I don’t like being knocked and rolled around in the waves and always having sand inside my bathing suit, in my hair, even in my teeth.

  Aura said that if you swim out past where the waves break, the water is calm. That was where Aura always swam. Mariana said that she much preferred the Caribbean, especially Tulum with its placid sea, its yoga retreats. Yes, I like Tulum, too, I said. We all liked Tulum. But who could afford to rent a beach house in Tulum for two weeks? The airfare was more expensive, too, as much from Mexico City as from New York. But we all loved Mazunte. The waves could be rough, but they didn’t scare me. Going into the water there, I never felt that trepidation in the pit of my stomach, like I did whenever I even thought about swimming at Puerto Escondido. The waves at Mazunte seemed about the same as at Wellfleet, on Cape Cod, where I’d learned to bodysurf as a teenager.

  The first few times we went to that coast, Aura and I stayed in Puerto Escondido, for the hotels, but in the mornings we’d take a microbus to Mazunte and its beach, about a forty-five-minute drive, and a taxi back in the evening. A few years before I’d met Aura, I’d spent the millennial New Year in Puerto Escondido with Jaime and Isabel; when we arrived people were talking about the rogue wave that had dashed three surfers into the cliffs at the far end of the beach the day before, killing them. My first morning, I went swimming and then directly to breakfast at a café on the beach where the waiter, a scruffy Italian, said that the last time he’d gone into the ocean there, he’d come out bleeding from both ears. And Isabel told me about a high school teacher she’d had who was spending his vacation in Puerto Escondido and was out walking on the beach one night when a freakishly large wave crashed in and swept him out into the water and drowned him. At night, in my hotel room, I lay in bed listening to those waves, which now sounded to me as if they were grinding bones. I didn’t go into the water again at Puerto Escondido until more than four years later, when Aura and I took a surfing lesson there during the three-day weekend trip when I proposed. A wave that caught me by surprise as I was on the board trying to push myself up onto my knees drove me off the front and my head struck the sandy bottom with a force that stunned me, sending a hard jolt through my spine; shaken and wobbly, I went and sat on the beach. The instructor laughed. He said that Aura was a more natural surfer than I was. She was stretched out upon and clinging to a board and the instructor, standing in the waist-high water, was pulling her around like a child on a sled and releasing her to ride in on the gliding foam of waves that had broken farther out. It turned out that he wasn’t an authorized instructor. He’d lied to us and borrowed the surfboards without permission from the shop of a friend who ran a legitimate surfing school. Our lesson ended when the friend’s mother ran onto the beach shouting at him that he was going to get us killed and to bring the boards back that instant.

  We were staying at the Santa Fe, one of the nicest hotels on the beach. In the hotel’s garden courtyard a ripe coconut plummeted from a tall palm and landed on the paved path just a few inches behind me with a hard splatter. We laughed about it, but if it had hit me on the head, I could easily have been killed.

  In front of our hotel, across the road, there was a stone mirador, or lookout point, facing the ocean, and I had thought I might propose there, even if it did seem a little too picture-postcard. But the mirador wasn’t so ideal after all, with its direct view of a rock formation topped by a grim statue depicting the hand of a drowning person thrust out of the water. The statue had been placed there by the families of swimmers and surfers, Mexican and foreign, who’d died in those waves.

  I’d hidden the diamond engagement ring in our room’s safety deposit box. I hadn’t found the perfect moment or setting to propose in Puerto Escondido, and considered trying to do it in Mazunte when we went there during the day. But where could I safely hide the ring when I went swimming? I always worried about thieving druggies on that beach. By the last evening in Puerto Escondido I still hadn’t proposed. My neck was stiff and aching from when I’d hit my head during our surfing lesson, I’d come down with a cold, and, worse, the bad shrimp I’d eaten the night before was giving me stomach cramps. For dinner all I had was a bowl of chicken soup and nursed just one margarita. Stil
l, I had to do it. I couldn’t go back to Mexico City not having proposed. I excused myself from the table and went to the room. A light rain was falling, one of those warm tropical drizzles that feel like the moisture-saturated air inside a cloud, soft as finest silk against your face. It might be even more romantic, I thought, to propose outside on the beach in this rain. I went into the bathroom and when I came out I took the little box with the ring out of the safe and put it into my pocket. Aura came into the room. Let’s go out to the beach, I said. Why? she asked. I don’t want to go out to the beach, it’s raining. It’s barely a drizzle, I said, come on, we have to go to the beach. I have to ask you something. She looked at my hand in my pocket and grinned. Ask me here, she said, laughing. Ay, mi amor, what do you have in your pocket? This is serious, I said, and I pulled out the box and dropped to one knee.

  So Puerto Escondido, where we got engaged, in retrospect, might seem to have been sending us signs that suggested a warning that went unheeded. But it didn’t go unheeded. Except for that one surfing lesson, we didn’t swim there. We swam at Mazunte, which we believed to be safe. And what about Mazunte, were there episodes and premonitory signs there as well? The relation of premonitions and signs to evidence—how do you assign what wasn’t correctly interpreted or heeded and should have been? A chain of evidence like footsteps in melting snow.

  On one of those mornings when Aura and I took the microbus to Mazunte, we met two other passengers who got on at Puerto Escondido. He was a Mexican who’d studied in Sweden and settled there, but now he’d returned with his Swedish wife for a vacation. He was a computer programmer or technician or something like that. He sat across the aisle from Aura and, during the half hour or so drive to Mazunte, kept up an ebullient monologue about Mexico and its beaches. Sweden has a lot going for it but no beaches like Mazunte! He even chanted a long list of tropical fruits grown on that coast, including, he emphasized, five different kinds of bananas. He’d never actually been to Mazunte. He and his wife were both wearing straw cowboy hats that looked brand-new. We were let off at the intersection where you catch another camioneta into Mazunte, San Agustinillo, or Ventanilla; they got off a little before us, to visit Mazunte’s little sea-turtle museum and hatchery before they went to the beach. The Mexican’s nerdy, unjaded bumpkin quality delighted Aura—The best beaches in the world! Five different kinds of bananas! Several jungle-lined dirt roads led from the village to the curving cove of the beach. Thatched-roof palapas, restaurants, cheap rustic hotels, and hammock places lined the back of the beach; in front were beach chairs and tables with umbrellas that rent for the day—that’s where Aura and I were sitting when a commotion broke out, shouts for help and swimmers running to the aid of someone who’d had an accident. We went, too, and saw the Mexican from Sweden at the edge of the shore, lying facedown in only a few inches of pooled water, flailing and kicking as if he were drowning. He was carried up onto the beach and set down on the sand, where he lay coughing, sputtering, and gasping, his wife crouched alongside. People stood around watching. Some had seen what had happened. He’d been knocked over by a wave, had apparently been disoriented by the rush of surf, swallowed some water, and totally panicked, even as the wave receded, having practically deposited him on the beach. He was fine. We went back to our chairs. Later we saw him and his wife trudge past us, sun hats back on, carrying their things. We said good-bye but only the wife replied; he stared morosely down at the sand. Over the next few years, we occasionally recalled the Mexican-Swede—a funny-sad story about the danger implicit in a certain kind of touchingly naive enthusiasm, rather than one about danger itself—and we’d always laugh.

  We’d reserved and paid for tickets on the Monday night, July 23, first-class night bus to Puerto Escondido, which had seats that converted almost into beds. We decided not to fly because Fabis needed to save money; anyway, she and Aura had always traveled to the beach by bus. That was pretty novel, this frugal planning ahead, and I was glad to be spared the price of airfares. Juanca had to work that first week and would join us the next weekend. About a week before we were supposed to leave, I went to Aura’s family doctor for a checkup and had my first ever blood tests for cholesterol and the like. Aura had been hectoring me to do it throughout the past year but I’d always said I didn’t have the time. I was to pick up the lab results on Saturday and bring them to the doctor on Monday. Meanwhile, we were monitoring the weather in Puerto Escondido online—we couldn’t get the weather for Mazunte—it was showing clouds and rain every day. That morning Aura gave me a draft of her story about the wayward teacher, “La vida está en otra parte,” to read. I found lots to praise, but I also told her that I thought she’d rushed the ending. The next day, Saturday, the twenty-first, a bit past one in the afternoon, I was just leaving the gym, where I’d gone to a spinning class, when I got a message from Aura on my BlackBerry:

  fabiola is here making a phone call and I made her eggs and coffee for breakfast. I’m still drinking coffee and working on my story which has already changed a lot. Did you really mean it last night when you said that I’m an artist? Or were you just flirting and working me up???? … when are you coming back, you have to go and pick up your lab results.

  I wrote back: Claro que eres una artista, mi amor, de maxima sensibilidad e inteligencia. (Of course you’re an artist my love, of maximum sensibility and intelligence.)

  She wrote back: Gracias mi amor, ¿pero a qué hora regresas? (… but what time are you coming back?)

  I wrote back: Ya en un ratito, mi amor (Right away …)

  At 1:29, she wrote back: Ya ven estamos viendo de irnos hoy! (Come now, we’re seeing if we can go today!) We’re missing all the good weather.

  That’s the last e-mail I ever received from Aura.

  When I got home, Aura and Fabis were in a state of high excitement. Fabis had been on the phone to a friend who’d just returned from Mazunte and who said the weather was great—our online weather reports had been all wrong. But we’d better go today because, according to the friend, it was definitely going to rain later in the week. They couldn’t change our bus reservation because all the buses were fully booked, but Aura and Fabis had concocted a circuitous plan. We’d take a bus to the city of Oaxaca, stay overnight, and fly to Puerto Escondido, a short hop over the cordillera, in the morning, on a small airline called Aerovega. We’d lose our bus tickets, but we had to get to the beach while the weather was still good. I could go to the doctor with my lab results when we got back. Hurry up and pack!

  Should I have fought against this new plan? No, Ow-rra, we already paid for bus tickets, we need to stop throwing money away! What about my doctor’s appointment? I could and should have said that; I did, actually, but not very forcefully. (Juanita used to criticize me for always giving in too easily to Aura.) The woman from whom we were renting the beach house had already given me keys. We were on our way out the door when Aura remembered she’d forgotten to pack her coffee press. We’d need it, right? It wouldn’t fit in her suitcase so she put it in a black plastic bag and we went out to the taxi.

  At El Tapo, the bus terminal, we had enough time before our bus left to eat in the diner downstairs, delicious greasy tortas. It was supposed to be about a five-hour drive to Oaxaca. When we got there we’d still have time to go to El Central for a drink. But the trip took much longer than five hours. When we pulled into Oaxaca, its streets and plazas were deserted and dark, and we had to be up at five-thirty to go to the airport. We were carrying our bags from the taxi into the hostel when Aura realized that she’d left her coffee press on the bus. Back at El Tapo, when she’d placed the coffee press in the rack over our seat, where it was quickly hidden behind our other bags, I’d thought that it could easily be forgotten there and had made a mental note to remember; then I hadn’t.

  Well, now we can buy the turquoise one, I said.

  But I’ve had that coffee press since Austin, Aura sighed sadly.

  I wasn’t happy about sleeping in a hostel. In my male dorm, a few
other travelers were already asleep in their bunks, and I moved about as quietly as I could without turning on any light. Was this a youth hostel, I wondered, or just a hostel? I had only one thin blanket, and slept in T-shirt and jeans. I lay in the hard narrow bed and was angry with myself for giving in so easily to this roundabout and wasteful rush to the beach. Why was Aura so impatient?

  That night, as we slept, where was Aura’s wave in its long journey to Mazunte? Having done some research on waves since, I’m certain that that wave already existed. Most surface waves of any decent size, even the moderate-sized waves that reach Mazunte on a normal day, have come thousands of miles. A wind blows ripples across a calm sea and those ripples, providing the wind with something to get traction on, are blown into waves, and as the waves grow in height, the wind pushes them along with more force, speeding them up, building them higher. It’s not the water itself that travels, of course, but the wind’s energy; in the turbulent medium between air and ocean, water particles move in circles something like bicycle pedals, constantly transferring their energy forward, from swell to crest and back into the trough and forward again. Short choppy waves, like the ones you see on lakes, come from nearby. Large waves charge steadily along on high-velocity winds that have been traveling across the open ocean for many thousands of miles and for days; those are the waves you watch from a Pacific beach, forming into swells that, as they near the shore, rear into high curving crests that finally peak and break. Aura’s wave might easily have gotten its start a week or more before, during a storm in the warm seas of the Indian Ocean, where strong winds consistently blow in one direction. The older a wave is, the more dangerous it is; the height of a wave, its steepness, I read, is related to its age: “As a wave ages, it gradually grows higher, longer and consequently faster.” Where was Aura’s wave that night, as we slept in our bunks in the hostel in Oaxaca? Was it already a murderous old wave, or still a relatively young one, born only the night before in a tropical storm maybe only a thousand miles out to sea? There’s a Borges poem that ends with the lines: