Carry Me Like Water

by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

  “Oh,” Lizzie said quietly.

  “They won’t help,” Jake mumbled.

  “Maybe not—but at this point they’re as good as any doctor.”

  Jake shook his head in disgust. “Lizzie, I thought you were more levelheaded.”

  Lizzie said nothing, but she made a mental note of the fact that Jake always made sure a new candle was lit before the old one went out. Everyone had their separate relationship to the candle—including Mrs. Sha and Mrs. Cantor. They always reminded Jake when the candle was getting low even though he needed no reminders. “What is this thing with the candle—everyone’s worried about the damn candle, and nobody’s Catholic but Joaquin.”

  Some days Joaquin was talkative, and he spoke easily to Lizzie about his dreams, about how his mother was coming more and more often, about how he would send his father away when he came into his room: “I never loved him. He never loved me either.” Sometimes she felt as if she was his priest, Joaquin confessing all his sins including the fact that he was living outside of the sacrament of marriage. Lizzie never knew whether to smile or cry when he said those things—so she smiled and told him that everything was fine—everything forgiven. Sometimes, he would stretch his hand toward her face and feel it. “It’s a good face, a very good one, the best I’ve felt in a long time.” Sometimes he would drift off into a world that was his alone and say nothing, just mumble to himself in Spanish. Sometimes his questions made no sense: “Do you still have that penthouse in New York?” he once asked her. “No, my darling,” she said, “I sold it.” He addressed her as if she were his mother. “¿Por Qué no lo dejaste?” “¿De quién hablas?” she asked. “Mi papá—¿por Qué no lo dejaste?” “I loved him,” was all she said. “Why are you speaking English, Mamá—you don’t know English.” “I learned,” she said. He nodded. “It’s an ugly language, isn’t it? You should try spelling in it sometime—la cosa más fea del mundo.” Another time he insisted she take him to the airport. “If you don’t hurry and dress me I’ll miss my flight.” “The hell with it,” she told him, “let’s stay home. We’ll play Scrabble instead.” “Scrabble instead of Mexico City—are you crazy?” “It’s just that I’m tired,” she said, “I want to stay home.” “I’m tired, too,” he said—and fell asleep. And another time he insisted to be taken home. She was unable to convince him that he was home. When Jacob walked in, he verbally accosted him with all of his strength: “Why did you move me into this house, you sonofabitch? I loved our house—and you sold it right under my nose.” Jacob soothed him by promising to buy their old house back.

  By the end of the week, he had completely stopped eating. All he had was an IV to keep him from becoming completely dehydrated. Mrs. Cantor announced to Lizzie she couldn’t come and stay with him in the mornings anymore. “I just can’t take it anymore,” she said, trying not to cry. “My heart can’t take—please don’t think that I’m abandoning him. He and Jacob Lesley have been such wonderful boys—so nice, so nice—it’s just that I can’t see him like this anymore.” Her eyes were as gray as her hair, and Elizabeth held her as she sobbed.

  “It’s OK, Mrs. Cantor, you’ve done what you could. Jacob would have been lost without you.”

  “So many boys have been coming by,” she said straightening herself out. “I’ll bring food by every day. It’s too much work for Mrs. Sha—and she can’t make a chicken soup to save her life.”

  Elizabeth smiled. “Perfect,” she said.

  “I’ve given him his last kiss,” she said. “And you tell Jacob Lesley I’ll be bringing by some food.” She left the apartment slowly and looked toward Joaquin’s room as she stood at the door. “And make sure his candle doesn’t go out—and when the time comes make sure the priest comes. He wants a priest.”

  Before Lizzie had the chance to acknowledge her adamant reminder, Mrs. Cantor left the apartment. I won’t cry. I will not cry. She poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down. She tried to empty herself of all thought. She took off one of her earrings and rubbed her earlobe. She looked at her watch. She walked into Joaquin’s bedroom. His breathing was loud and labored. She touched his forehead. He was sweaty and had a temperature. He opened his eyes. “Is that you, Lizzie?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “I’m cold.”

  “I’ll get you another blanket.”

  When she touched him, she knew he was not afraid. He only wanted to rest. There was something very peaceful about him and Lizzie could almost touch it. Lizzie was happy he was calm. It was she who was afraid—and so was Jake, and she could not make what she felt go away.

  “Tell him not to be afraid. Tell him I dreamed about his heron.”

  “Yes,” she said. She wrapped him up in blankets.

  “Will you tell him?”

  “I’ll tell him.”

  “Did I ever tell you I hate Mexico?”

  “Shh,” she said.

  “I hate the U.S., too.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It does matter,” he said as if it were urgent that Lizzie understood. “Shhh.” He could hardly breathe at all. Dementia, she thought. “Don’t talk.”

  “Do you understand me, Lizzie?”

  She could see he wouldn’t stop until she agreed on the importance of his point. “You’re right, amor,” she said.

  “The United States is barbaric,” he said.

  “Yes, amor,” she said.

  “And Mexico, too. Barbaric.”

  “Shhh.”

  “I’m right about this. I insist on it.”

  “Of course you’re right, corazón.”

  She held his hand until he fell asleep. She kissed him on the forehead and left the room. When she walked back in the living room, she reached for the phone. She stared at the picture of the young man. She had not thought of the picture since the first day she had been in the apartment—but as she sat there waiting for Tom to answer his phone, she felt a sense of urgency about the boy in the picture.

  “Hello.”

  “Yes, I’d like to speak to Dr. Michaelsen. It’s about one of his patients. It’s very important.”

  “Who should I say is calling?”

  “Elizabeth Edwards. It’s about—hell, he’ll know.”

  “Can you hold?”

  “Why the hell not?” She was annoyed. She stared at the photograph, those familiar eyes, the well-defined chin, the soft lips.

  She heard Tom’s voice on the other end. “Yes, Lizzie, what’s the news?”

  She put down the photograph at the sound of Tom’s voice. “I don’t get a good feeling here, Tom. I’d drop by after work and park myself for a while if I were you. You got big plans tonight?”

  “Just dinner with Rick.”

  “Tell him to come say his good-byes—if he wants.”

  Tom said nothing for a while. Lizzie didn’t mind the silence.

  “Sure thing, Lizzie.”

  “See you this evening, then.”

  “Lizzie?”

  “What?”

  “Are you as tough as you seem?”

  “No.” She quietly hung up the phone.

  Sometimes the smell of death or dread of an impending unknown is in the air like the smell of corn tortillas at a market in Juárez or the smell of sulfur near an oil refinery or the smell of eucalyptus after a rain. The smell is strong, overwhelming, irretrievable, and it loiters in the air like a prostitute waiting to be picked up. Some people know—without knowing—that something sad or good or significant is going to happen. They smell, they sense what is coming in the air and they prepare themselves as best they can, prepare and brace for the impact. Sometimes they hide the preparations even from themselves. When Jacob woke that morning, he sat up in bed and knew. He remembered his dream. The heron had come to him again. He was young and he was walking along a beach, the red sun rising, the lyric lake so perfect and blue and shining that it seemed as if it had been created out of nothing only the day before. A heron as white as any angel he had dreamed of
as a boy flew out of the water flying toward the red sun. As he watched it beating its wings against the bluing sky, the heron suddenly stopped beating its wings. Something interrupted its perfect flight toward the sun. Its wings stretched out, they froze, unable to move, and it began falling back toward the lake. “Fly!” he yelled, “Fly!” But the bird was deaf to his voice. The grace and strength having left the white heron, his heart was no longer able to withstand the labor that life asked of it. The heron, falling toward its death—its wings outstretched—offered no resistance against its fate. It fell quietly, graceful even in its final descent. “Fly!” Jake yelled, his face growing older and more desperate with each passing second until he was old and weak and wrinkled. “No! No! Fly!” He watched as the heron splashed into the shining lake and sunk into its drowning waters.

  THE END AND THE

  BEGINNING

  OF THE WORLD

  1

  July 15, 1992

  I got a check in the mail today from Eddie. All the note said was: “Lizzie, I don’t want you to worry about money. All kinds of love, Eddie.” I called him on the phone and told him I couldn’t accept his gift, but I knew I was going to take it. I needed it. I hate needing it. Maria Elena must have blabbed about my pathetic finances. I wish I didn’t need money, not me, not any of us—it’s so violent to need it. Last week, I dreamed I was homeless, nowhere to go. I was sitting on a street corner and I would call out the names of people I knew as they passed me. They just looked at me with the strangest eyes, and I knew there was no longer anything human or recognizable about me—not my voice, not my face, not anything. I was separated from everything that had come before. I wanted, in that dream, to leave my body—but the power to leave myself was gone. And I knew I would be homeless forever.

  I keep wishing I could live in a kind and decent world. Everything I see makes me cry lately. I went out to the grocery store to buy some things for Joaquin and Jake. I ran into someone I knew from the hospital. He’d almost died, and there he was laughing and breathing and we sat down on the curb together to talk. It was such a miracle that he was there. And this guy passes us, stares at us. “Faggot,” he said. I could hear the hate in his voice, as clear and sharp as a dry twig breaking beneath a heavy foot. And I wanted to grab him and shake him and tell him that I hated him, too. I wanted to slap him and never stop slapping him and ask him again and again: “How does it feel to be hated? How does it feel?” And, not an hour later, as I walked with a sack full of groceries down the street, some guy eyes me, and I wanted to be nice, so I smiled. Goddamnit, I smiled at him. And he says, not a hint of shame in his voice, he says: “Baby, you look good enough to fuck. I could fuck you till I died.” I looked at him. He was waiting for me to say something back. The sonofabitch was hoping I’d smile. “I’m not your toilet,” I yelled, “so stop pissing on me.” He chuckled. What gives people the right? I’m tired of the world—goddamnit I’m so tired. If I didn’t have a body I wouldn’t be tired.

  So I keep wanting to leave my body. When I’m a part of the air, I don’t need money, I don’t need food, I don’t need to hear human voices, I don’t need to touch bodies, and I don’t need to be touched. I don’t need anything. Joaquin says the best part of dying is that you begin to slop needing.

  This evening I left my body because I hated it, wanted to be rid of it. It was an escape, a vacation, and I didn’t want to feel. It was so lovely to be a part of the night, to be all colors, to be a star that had nothing to do but shine. I was gone a long time. I didn’t really want to come back. I could have wandered for weeks in the desert of nothingness and never once been thristy. I’m so pure when I’m out of my body. I think I came back because Eddie sent me the money—and because of Jake and Joaquin, and the heron in their dreams.

  August 12, 1992

  Joaquin told me to bring him flowers today. He said it was the Day of the Dead. I told him it wasn’t November yet, but he wouldn’t hear of it. “No, no, it’s the Day of the Dead—and I’m mostly dead, so bring me flowers.” I didn’t argue with him. I told him I’d bring the flowers. Joaquin and I have been speaking a lot of Spanish to each other. Me and my perfect pronunciation of that language. And it’s mine, that language, mine, and yet it’s no more mine than English. I don’t feel Mexican. I don’t feel American, either. I’m disoriented and disjointed and fragmented lately. I hate all these confusions. I want to go to a place where I’m pure, where I’m certain

  The night Maria Elena had her baby, I dreamed about his birth. In the dream, we were all celebrating in a huge room. It was like New Year’s, and amid all the laughter—and Eddie’s smile—his son started to grow up right in front of us. Right then and there, he turned into a young man. When I spoke to him, he shook his head. And then I spoke to him in sign language, and he spoke back to me. We spoke to each other for hours, our hands dancing like leaves falling from all the elm trees in the world. When I woke up the next day, I called Eddie and left a message on the machine. He called back and told me the baby was perfect. But I know he isn’t. I know what the silence meant. But there was another man in the room, and I remembered him when I spoke to Eddie on the phone and I knew that man’s name—Diego—and he looked just like Maria Elena. And I know I’m going to meet him.

  I went to speak to the priest at Mission Dolores. I told him everything about what’s been happening to me. I told him about leaving my body, about reading minds, about seeing things in the future. I seemed to need to tell him that I didn’t believe in God. I didn’t have to ask him if he believed me—I could read him easily. He believed every word. He wanted to know if I was going to be all right. I told him I didn’t know. I told him I was scared. I told him the world had changed, and I didn’t know how to change with it. He smiled. And when I cried, he held me, and he told me I would learn to live a new life. He seemed so certain.

  Joaquin keeps lingering. It’s as if he’s doing a slow fade. Every day he grows a little paler. I sometimes think he’ll turn into a ghost before he disappears. He seems to always take care of all of us, instead of us taking care of him. And I’m sitting here in this cold summer night wondering why it’s the dead and the dying who are always remembering the living. When will the living learn about the dead? When will the living learn about the dying?

  Lizzie opened the door before the doorbell rang and smiled at her mother as she stood in the dark hallway of the apartment building.

  “You knew I was standing here?”

  Lizzie smiled, “I didn’t want to make you wait out here—too cold.” She took her mother by the arm and pulled her into her living room. She kissed her, then kissed her again. “Coffee?” she asked.

  The old woman looked into her daughter’s face as if she were afraid that face would soon be disappearing. “It’s cold—even for a San Francisco summer. It’s warm in here, though.”

  “Too warm?”

  “No, it’s nice—wonderful. My circulation isn’t what it used to be.” Elizabeth listened to her as she walked into the kitchen. Her mother slopped talking.

  “Keep talking,” she said, “I’m listening.”

  “I don’t like to yell through walls,” she said.

  “Oh Mom, it’s not angry yelling, it’s just talking yelling.” She walked back into the room holding two mugs of coffee. She handed one to her mother. “Just like you like it—black and bitter.”

  Her mother smiled appreciatively as she sipped on the coffee. “You make good coffee.”

  “So are you going to tell me why you’ve come to visit your daughter?”

  “Do I need a reason?”

  “Mom, I can count on one hand the number of times you’ve visited me. If you just felt like talking, you’d have called me on the phone.” She squeezed her mother’s hand. “So what’s the occasion?”

  “You tell me—you knew I was at the door. You’re gifted, no?”

  “I can’t read minds at will, Mama, it just happens sometimes.”

  “Have you left your body lately?”<
br />
  Lizzie shrugged her shoulders. “I’m learning to control that one.”

  “Where did you go last night?”

  “How did you know I had one last night?”

  “Maybe I’m gifted, too.”

  “Seriously, Mama.”

  “Seriously? You look too thin.”

  “I look too thin and you’ve been talking to Maria Elena.”

  “I still call her Helen.”

  “You’re so stubborn, Mother—it’s not a real name.”

  She looked straight into Lizzie’s eyes and smiled. “You don’t seem to mind your name, and it’s not real either—and me? I’m not your real mother—you don’t seem to mind that either.”

  Lizzie sipped on her coffee. “I like Lizzie just fine. And, Mama, you’re as real as I need.” She let out a laugh, calm. “You sure it’s not too strong for you?” Her mother shook her head. “You’re real to me, Mama—and you shouldn’t have driven all this way in this cold. I would have been happy to drive to Palo Alto.”

  “You hate Palo Alto—and the drive did me good. I’m not on my deathbed, you know—and I needed to get away from Sam. You don’t look like you’re getting enough sleep.”

  “What did Maria Elena tell you?”

  “She said you looked too thin and that you were working too hard for no money. Who are those boys, anyway?”

  “They’re not boys, Mother, they’re men. And one of them is dying.”

  “And Elizabeth Nightingale has to stick her nose in everybody else’s business.”

  “Mama, this isn’t negotiable.”

  “What if you—what if—”

  “And AIDS is hard to get—if that’s what you’re worried about. You didn’t come here to lecture me about that, did you?”

  “You quit your job, you go and practically live with two gay men, you start talking about revolutions, you start losing your interest in sex, you start reading people’s minds, and you leave your body every Tuesday and Thursday. What the hell are the people who love you supposed to think?”