by Miriam Toews
Are you thinking about Mom? I said.
Yeah, said Aggie.
Well, that was all we said. So much for words. And driving wasn’t the same as skipping. So the bad stuff stayed in our minds and we both stared straight ahead through the dirty windshield. Ximena made odd noises like she was trying hard to fill the void but didn’t yet know exactly how to articulate loss or, like Wilson had said, how to communicate loneliness.
We had Ximena and her sunset beach towel and diapers and bottles and stuff and the woman behind the counter asked us where our bags were and I told her we didn’t have any. Well, we have a bag of oranges, said Aggie. The woman looked at the bag of oranges and frowned and looked at Ximena and frowned more. I told her I wanted to buy three tickets to Vancouver, Canada, or two if my baby could sit on my lap. She said we’d have to fly to Houston first, or Los Angeles, and then to Vancouver. She asked us when we wanted to fly.
Now, I said.
Do you have passports? she said.
We were sitting on the curb in front of the airport. I was nervous, worrying that my father would drive up any second. We had half an hour to kill before our flight to Acapulco. We didn’t have passports. Aggie was eating an orange and leaning way over so the juice didn’t dribble onto her dress. Some of it fell onto the asphalt and a bee spotted it just like that. And then a bunch of them. The baby was awake again and waving her arms around like a shipwreck survivor.
We’ve learned something today, haven’t we? I said.
Is this my new school? said Aggie.
We’ll go to the beach, I said.
We don’t have bathing costumes, said Aggie.
Bathing costumes? I said. They’re not called that.
That’s what they’re called at school, said Aggie.
Are those books from the eighteen hundreds? I said. They’re called bathing suits now.
Bathing suits? said Aggie. That’s worse.
Men call them trunks, I said.
Trunks? said Aggie. Why?
I guess you can figure that out yourself, I said.
We’ll teach Ximena how to swim, said Aggie. Just throw her in like those hippies.
What hippies? I said.
I don’t know, said Aggie. Hippies. They throw their babies into water right after they’re born.
They don’t throw them into oceans, I said. Here, hold her for a second so I can eat my orange.
A Mennonite family walked past us and we all stared at each other. The father nodded and the kids trailing behind him all dominoed into each other because they were staring so hard and that made us smile.
Aggie, I said, if anyone asks you if you’re Aggie Voth, say no.
I told Aggie we should go inside and wait. I told her to hold Ximena while I went into the washroom to make her a bottle and she said she’d think about fake names for us while she waited. I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror. Sweat was pouring out of me. It was so sudden. My hands were shaking. I tried to make the bottle but formula was spilling everywhere and I was gasping for air. An older woman came out of a stall and stood next to me washing her hands. We smiled at each other. Está enferma? she said. No, no, estoy, I said. I washed my face with cold water and dried it with toilet paper that stuck to my skin in small chunks like porridge. I took deep breaths and tried again to make Ximena’s bottle and this time I did it without spilling any. I remembered my father using the words confronted by freedom when he described the perverted temptations of the world and then I heard a loud voice reminding those of us flying to Acapulco that it was time to go.
I’m Fiorella, she’s Button and you’re Ham Hock, said Aggie. We were walking to our gate. We’d only be in Acapulco for two hours and forty-five minutes before we had to catch another flight to Mexico City, heaven and hell, according to Diego, but his world was defined by extremes. I was hoping we’d find some little street to live on that straddled eternities. If life was always going to be like this there was no way I’d be able to do it forever.
I’ll skip all the flying stuff (because recounting it exhausts me almost as much as living it did) and keep this story about the things that happened to us on earth. Basically, it was a nightmare with Ximena Molina (Button) Miep. Vomit. Wailing. Flailing. Streams of shit. Screams of anguish. Aggie and I were both covered in puke and a little crazy with mortification. Eventually I gave up trying to comfort Ximena and focused on comforting myself with the knowledge that X., my newest baby sister, even with her unfinished features and ruinous needs, was a very honest person at least. So far. And that I had been given the task of keeping her that way. And so, if she needed to do these unholy things, then so be it. She was an ambassador-at-large, not appointed to any one country, but on a mission to represent babies, and I was her servant and facilitator.
We got off the plane in Acapulco and went outside and got into a taxicab and I asked the driver to take us to a beach. We smelled bad. We looked awful. Ximena had fallen asleep all wrapped up in the towel, soaked in sweat and with a sweet expression on her face that underneath it seemed to say fuck you all, I possess vital intangibles and when I learn to talk the world will know its shame. She was growing on me.
Aggie and I stared out the windows of the cab and tried as best we could to act like this was all just another typical day. The driver asked me if we had bags and I said no, not really, just this plastic farmacia bag with diapers and stuff in it, and he said okay, no bags, and shrugged. He smiled at us through the rear-view mirror the way Wilson used to when he was driving the truck and I was sitting in the back. He asked us in Spanish where we were from and I said Canada. He asked us if we were here in Acapulco for a holiday and I said yes.
Just the two of you? he said.
Three, I said. I pointed at Ximena.
No husband? he said.
Well, yes, I said. There is. But he’s … I’m a widow.
The cab driver said he was sorry. He said he was raised by a single mother and it was always hard for her. She had cried secretly at night. It’s not impossible, though, he said. He told me I’d be all right. It was a different world now, he said.
Which resort are you going to? he asked me.
Oh, I said. It doesn’t matter. Just any one with a beach.
They’re all on the beach, he said. Do you have the name of your hotel? Aggie cleared her throat and Ximena sighed in her sleep. Everybody started honking their horns at once, it seemed, and music was playing in every car and I was sure I smelled salt water, like we were all in some kind of parade.
Can I just tell you something? I said to the driver.
Of course, he said. You can tell me anything. He turned his music down and glanced at me through the rear-view mirror.
I don’t know the name of the hotel, I said. We don’t actually have a hotel. We’re only here for two hours and forty-five minutes and then we have to go back to the airport to catch another plane. I promised my sister I’d take her to a beach. She’s never been to one before.
The cab driver said he’d take us to a quiet beach that real people from Acapulco went to and we could eat fish tacos and drink mango juice and splash in the waves and lie in the sun to dry off and then he’d take us back to the airport, no charge. He was feeling generous, he said, and that he could use some time off because he’d been working for something like eighteen hours straight and he couldn’t feel his ass.
Okay, I said. That sounds like a good idea. Gracias.
For real? said Aggie. I hadn’t seen her smile like that in ages.
Les gusta este lugar? he said.
Sí, sí, I said.
Me llamo Gustavo, he said.
Do you trust him? Aggie asked me in Low German.
Why not? I said.
You don’t even know him! she said. What if—
So what? I said. We’ll scream if he tries anything.
Aggie reminded me in Low German that we didn’t have any bathing suits. Ximena woke up and started kicking and punching. Soon she’d be into full-blown wailin
g but she was still just frowning and sputtering and quiet enough that the car horns and music everywhere drowned her out. She stared at me with one dark eye like a pirate and tried to claw my face. I held her to the window so she could focus her wrath on the outside world. I’m not sure she saw anything except for a blur of cars and buildings and sky.
Que bebé tan hermoso! said Gustavo.
Sí, gracias, I said. Babies weren’t called beautiful in the campo. I put my ugly face next to Ximena’s and together we looked at the city of Acapulco and I remembered the lyrics of a song I used to sing in church with my parents when I was a kid. Beautiful words, wonderful words, wonderful words of life. Words of life and beauty teach me faith and duty. Beautiful words, wonderful words, wonderful words of life.
Tell him we have to stop somewhere to buy bathing suits, said Aggie.
I told her that for some reason I was kind of embarrassed to ask Gustavo to stop and Aggie said it was more embarrassing to show up at a beach without bathing suits and she had a point. I liked her life theory of decision making—choose the least embarrassing option—and so I asked him if we could quickly stop at a shop along the way. Yeah, it was no problem, he said. He would hold the baby while we ran in and grabbed something. It was just a little beach hut along the side of the road that catered to tourists. Aggie bought a white bathing suit in two pieces. There was a gold chain around the waist of the bottom piece with a little fake combination lock and the words RICH BITCH in shiny gold letters across the top. Mine was yellow with a big blue anchor on it.
When we got back to the cab Gustavo was talking to Ximena about his childhood. I heard him tell her that she would have to be strong as the daughter of a single mother. My life is hard to lead, he said, but in the end there is happiness. That to truly know happiness is to know the fleeting nature of everything, joy, pain, safety and happiness itself. Ximena was lying on the front seat glaring at him like a female prisoner with her hands all balled up into fists but at least she was quiet, entranced by his voice. Aggie and I got back into the cab and Gustavo told all of us a story about how he used to be a mailman in Mérida and one day he had just lifted the lid off a mailbox to put the letters in it and a bird flew out and it scared him so much that he screamed and fell over backwards and down the stone steps of the house. He lost consciousness and when he woke up he was in the hospital and couldn’t remember anything. It took him six weeks to get his memory back and when he went back to work they told him that his job had been given to somebody else. He became angry and then depressed, too depressed to look for another job, and then his wife became frustrated with their poverty and left him for another man and took their son with her. He never saw them again but his son sometimes visits him in dreams and sometimes Gustavo hears him whispering into his ear while he drives his taxicab around Acapulco.
Just one little bird, said Gustavo. Ximena looked at him suspiciously. I picked her up off the front seat and we drove to the beach where the real people go.
Aggie jumped around in the waves and I sat in the shade with Ximena who lay naked on her sunset towel, churning and shadowboxing. She never stopped moving. I took a peek at my body. Not good, I thought. I was so pale and bony. I looked like a skeleton in the sand. Like something only an archaeologist would be thrilled to get his hands on. Gustavo had brought us mango juice and fish tacos that he got from a man in a palapa. They were friends. When he handed me the juice and tacos he told me I looked sad.
No, I said.
No? he said.
Estoy un poco triste, I said.
Gustavo smiled and nodded. He turned for a second to watch Aggie in the water and he waved and she waved back. Then he pointed at my stomach.
Nice anchor, he said.
Thank you, I said.
Do you know something? he said.
No, I said.
My wife and I used to come here when she was big and pregnant with our son. I dug a hole in the sand for her belly so she could lie on her stomach. It made her so happy. Our little son was incubated in the cool sands of Patricio Beach. When she lay there like that with her stomach in the hole nobody knew she was pregnant.
Then Gustavo prepared what he called his beach station. It was an elaborate performance and there were many steps involved. He set up his beach chair, the long kind you can recline on, by adjusting the back of it so that it was at a perfect angle. He left for a few minutes and returned with a little plastic table that he stuck in the sand next to his beach chair. He spread his towel over the chair so there were no wrinkles and it hung evenly over both sides. Then he left again and came back with another mango juice and some fish tacos and a newspaper which he carefully arranged on the little table. He adjusted his sunglasses. He re-straightened his towel. He kissed his fingers and pointed them at the sky. He lay down on his chair and then spent a long time wrestling his newspaper into submission against the wind. He was quiet for a few seconds, reading. Then he decided to reach for his mango juice and as he did that something snapped and his beach chair collapsed and he knocked the little table over and dropped his newspaper which went flying off towards the water in several sections, entertainment, sports and crime.
I hadn’t laughed in so long. I couldn’t stop. I tried to. Ximena stopped wriggling and stared at me. Gustavo swore and turned around to look at me. One of the lenses in his sunglasses had popped out.
You did that on purpose, I said.
I did not! he said. Now I have to start again!
He went through the same process again and managed to maintain his position on the chair for a bit longer before another disaster struck. This time seagulls surrounded him and one even landed on his stomach and he called for help. But I had seen him deliberately put little pieces of fish taco all around his chair to attract them.
Help me! he said. I’m being attacked!
I loved Gustavo. If I’d been his wife I wouldn’t have left him just because he was feeling depressed and not making any money. If I was his little son I’d be in the streets looking for him right now.
Why are you laughing at me? he said. My God! Help me!
It was time to go back to the airport. After Gustavo’s performance he had offered to watch Ximena while Aggie and I jumped in the waves together, holding hands like little kids and shouting at each other over the wind like we used to do in the back of pickup trucks. Gustavo gave Ximena a bottle while Aggie and I changed out of our bathing suits behind some trees near the palapa.
Look at this, said Aggie.
What? I said.
She held up her hand and there was blood on her fingers. She curled her fingers to make a claw and made a feral animal sound.
Oh, I said. You’ve started. That’s okay.
I don’t have anything, she said. We have to stop again.
I was counting the money that was at the bottom of the plastic bag we used for all of Ximena’s stuff.
I guess that’s it for me, said Aggie.
You’ll get used to it, I said. It’s just a pain in the ass.
Goodbye childhood, said Aggie.
Take this and put it in your panties, I said. I handed her one of Ximena’s diapers.
No! said Aggie.
Fine, then bleed all over, I said. We had a little fight then. I was trying to count and kept having to start again. I turned my back to Aggie to give her the option of using the diaper after all without me noticing. I made a point of counting out loud, slowly, while she figured it out.
One minute you’re jumping in the sparkly waves for the first time in your life and completely unable to stop laughing and the next you’re shedding the useless lining of your uterus and smearing messages in blood in porcelain bowls and sandy beaches. Words of shame like I’m sorry about this mess and the smell and I don’t know why the hell I’m crying on such a beautiful summer day.
At the airport Gustavo held each of us close to his warm body, his beating heart, and told us that if we were ever in some part of Mexico, I can’t remember now which part, we ha
d to go to the lake of echoes and that anything we said would be cannonballed right back at us clear as day. If you say, for instance, the name of the person you love, then the world will say it back to you as though it is confirming that it understands.
You can yell anything, said Gustavo, and the world will confirm it. You could yell Vive mucho tiempo el muerto! Or you could yell Esto es una locura!
We will, I said. If we can find it.
Or you could yell Chivas! he said. El Rebaño Sagrado! That’s my team.
What team? said Aggie.
Soccer, I said.
The sacred herd, said Gustavo. You haven’t told me your names.
I know, I said. I’m sorry.
I understand, he said. I’m a cab driver. Nothing surprises me.
That’s good, I said.
No, said Gustavo, it’s a tragedy.
We said goodbye to Gustavo. But then he said wait a minute and he ran to his cab and took something out of his glove compartment and ran back to us and handed me a tiny photocopied picture of a boy.
Is this your son? I said.
Yes, said Gustavo, it’s Raoul Elisandro Lopez Mundo. He’s nine years old. If you see a boy who looks like this please tell him to contact me, Gustavo, at the address printed on the back. He turned the paper over and pointed at the telephone number and address in Acapulco.
Where did you last see him? said Aggie.
At home, said Gustavo, in Mérida.
That’s so far away, said Aggie. What’s the population of Mexico? Now that she had bid farewell to her childhood and all of its impossible dreams she had suddenly become ruthlessly pragmatic. Gustavo and I shrugged.
Millions and millions, I said.
How will we find him? she said. And hasn’t he changed since this picture was taken?
I know, said Gustavo, that’s true. That’s all true.
It would be a miracle if we found him, said Aggie.
Yes, said Gustavo.
Aggie put the photo into our plastic bag of random stuff and we stood on the curb outside the airport and waved goodbye again. Aggie made Ximena wave too, by waggling her arm around like a rag doll.
