Carry Me Like Water

by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

  “His friends will ruin everything. Those gang members, Dieguito, are not good for each other. When they’re by themselves, they’re almost human, but when they’re with each other, they turn into animals—like packs of wolves looking for fights or women in heat. Animals, Diego, they act like animals around each other.”

  “I like them,” Diego wrote. “They were great at Mary’s funeral. You should have seen them, Luz, and they didn’t act like animals.”

  “Ay, Dieguito, you think everybody’s nice, don’t you? That’s a real problem, don’t you know?”

  8

  WHEN SHE WENT to sleep that night, Lizzie told herself she would spend the next day walking the streets of the city using what Maria Elena referred to as her “God-given body.” But as soon as she woke, she was overwhelmed by the smell of another world, rose petals attacking her senses. Instinctively she felt her mother’s presence. She went directly to her mother’s room and knocked softly before entering. Rose was sitting up on the bed. She looked old and tired and frightened. Lizzie sat on the bed without speaking and took her mother’s hand. “Mama,” she whispered, but her mother placed a finger to her lips. There were no words in her mother’s thoughts, just a tiredness in her body that made Lizzie sad. Her mother squeezed her hand. “Whatever happens, Lizzie, you mustn’t be afraid. Never be afraid—it’s such a waste of time.” She nodded at her daughter. “I’d like some time,” she said. Lizzie kissed her and left the room. Her mother was beginning to embrace something beyond the reach of her arms. Lizzie walked back to her own room. Her mother’s sense of calm filled her for a just a moment; it was enough to ease her. The smell of roses in the room grew fainter and fainter until the odor disappeared altogether. And again, she felt restless, unsatisfied, purposeless. Then suddenly she smiled knowing she would follow Jake and Eddie all the way to Casas Grandes. She tried to fight the urge to leave her body. “Smoke,” she said, “smoke all day—stick to normal addictions.” But the thought of leaving herself made her feel alive; a surge of adrenaline shot through her and she laughed out loud like a girl.

  Outside, the sky was already more blue than black. She put on a robe and went to her window. The birds were beginning to sing. She wanted to be among them, to be surrounded by their songs. She thought of the tree where the sparrows sang, a place where she often went. She heard the front door open, and then shut. She knew Eddie and Jake were leaving for Casas Grandes. She closed her eyes and found herself among the birds. She felt as if she were experiencing the purest form of laughter. How could she choose a body over this? She stared back at her form standing at the window. Today, she wanted nothing to do with that repulsive lump of flesh called a woman—that woman was a prison. Today, she would be a bird. She would go to Mexico undetected. She would watch Jake and Eddie, she would make sure they would return to Maria Elena safely. Today, she would have a purpose. She would be more than a bird—she would be an angel, a protector. Lizzie heard a car start up as she floated down to the driveway where Jake was pulling away. She followed the car as it made its way toward the freeway. The sun was rising. Even the river, poor as any river she had ever seen, sparkled in the dawn.

  Maria Elena did not see Lizzie in the house all morning. She looked for her everywhere: in the backyard, the ballroom that she and Jake were slowly turning into a greenhouse, everywhere, but there was no trace of her. She even knocked at her door, but hearing no answer, she assumed she had decided to sleep in. This body thing is making her tired, she thought. All morning, she had a funny feeling, but the baby and the garden she and Eddie had started in the backyard kept her busy. Rose called her in from the garden about noon. “Lunch is ready,” she said.

  “Oh Rose, you shouldn’t make lunch.” She looked at the old woman and noticed she looked pale and tired. “You have to rest more,” she said trying not to sound too alarmed.

  “There will be plenty of time for resting,” she said softly.

  Maria Elena grew even more alarmed at her tone, but smiled. She washed herself at the kitchen sink and smiled at the baby who was playing with his hands and feet, “Rose, have you seen Lizzie?”

  “This morning. She visited me early.”

  “Oh. I haven’t seen her all day. Maybe she stepped out—or maybe she went back to sleep.” She sat down, but did not touch her food.

  “She wouldn’t have gone back to sleep,” Rose said definitively.

  “Why not?”

  “Never could. Once she wakes up, she never goes back to sleep. She’s always been that way. Up with the sun, that girl, no matter how late she stayed out. Never could nap either. That’s why she could never work anything but day shifts at the hospital. If she had to work nights, she just plain didn’t sleep.”

  “She must’ve stepped out then.”

  “Did you check her room?”

  “I knocked.”

  “Did you go in?”

  “No. There wasn’t an answer.”

  “You sound worried.”

  “Well, not—” She stopped herself. “A little. She’s been leaving her body a lot—don’t you think?”

  “Yes—not that she tells me—not that she needs to. A mother always knows.”

  Maria Elena looked down at her son who was enthralled with his own feet. “Will I know, too?”

  “Oh, you’ll know more than you want to know—it’s not instinctual exactly—just something you acquire—like tired bones and wrinkles.”

  Maria Elena laughed. She looked at the sandwiches Rose had made for lunch. She took one and bit into it. “Good,” she said, with her mouth half-full. She wasn’t hungry. She swallowed. “I did something stupid,” she said.

  “Again?” Rose laughed.

  “Don’t tease me. Rose—I’m afraid Lizzie went and did what I asked her to do—I shouldn’t have asked. She said she wouldn’t—and she was right to say no. But now I think she’s gone ahead and done it.”

  “What is it, Nena?”

  “Well, Jake and Eddie were going to Casas Grandes today—it would have been Joaquin’s birthday.”

  “Joaquin?”

  “Jake’s lover.”

  “Oh yes, how stupid—of course—it’s my mind—”

  “Your mind is fine. Rose.”

  She reached over and placed her hand on Maria Elena’s face and held it there for a moment.

  Maria Elena felt as if the hand against her cheek were disappearing, becoming something immaterial. Rose pulled her hand away—slowly. “Anyway,” Maria Elena continued, “I just got overly worried, and I asked her to follow them—just to make sure they’d be OK, She said she’d never been gone from her body for more than a couple of hours—I shouldn’t have asked. I could just kick myself. And now she’s out there, and—”

  “Now, don’t go beating up on yourself over the things Lizzie decides to do and not do. She only does what she wants to do. She could never be controlled even as a child. Besides, we don’t really know if—”

  “Don’t we?”

  “We can check her room.”

  “Come with me, will you?”

  Rose nodded. “She’s probably in her room reading a book.”

  “Think so. Rose?”

  Her silence betrayed her.

  “We’ll take the elevator.”

  “I can still manage the stairs, Nena.”

  “It’s for me, Rose—the baby’s getting heavy.”

  Rose was grateful to her for the small lie. The house was too big for her, the stairs too unforgiving on her bones.

  When they reached Lizzie’s room, Maria Elena took a deep breath, turned the glass knob, and pushed the door open. Lizzie’s body was lying on the floor near the window. She took a deep breath and looked at Rose. ‘ ‘Don’t panic. Breathe. Calm, calm.” Rose shook and seemed to be on the verge of tears, “Is she dead?”

  “No.” Maria Elena said immediately.

  “Call an ambulance.”

  “She’s fine. She’s just left.”

  “Left?”

 
“To Casas Grandes.”

  “Is she breathing?”

  “It doesn’t seem like it.”

  “She’s dead then,” Rose screamed.

  Maria Elena kept her voice calm, deliberate. “Listen, Rose. Just listen. Does that look like a corpse?”

  “What will we do?” Rose fought herself, tried to remain calm.

  Maria Elena handed her the baby. “Hold him,” she said, “He needs you,” She walked over to Lizzie’s body and touched it. She placed her head on the body’s heart.

  “Is she breathing?”

  “No—but her body’s still warm.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means she’s left.”

  “Will she come back?”

  “Of course she’ll come back.” Maria Elena smiled at the old woman. She tried to hide any hint of fear.

  “What should we do?”

  “I’ll move her to the bed.”

  “Let me hel—”

  “I can manage Rose, really.”

  “I’m not an invalid,” she said. The words came out harsher than she’d intended. Her bones were beginning to hurt again.

  “A seventy-year-old woman has no business carrying a woman in her thirties. Besides you’re holding the baby.” Maria Elena’s tone was almost severe.

  Rose recognized that tone in Maria Elena’s voice—she sometimes used it with her husband: It meant she wasn’t going to negotiate. She watched the younger woman pick up her daughter awkwardly. As she carried her to the bed, they seemed to be doing a clumsy, awkward waltz.

  “You’re strong,” Rose said. She envied her.

  “Lizzie’s small—very thin. Thank God for that, huh?” She laughed. She was succeeding in keeping Rose calm.

  “Are you sure we shouldn’t call for an ambulance?”

  “When she comes, she won’t be able to find her body—then what will she do?”

  Rose nodded. “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure,” she said. Long ago she had learned to play the role of being someone else. Lizzie, damnit, you’d better come back—come back this instant, do you hear?

  “OK, but I won’t leave this room until she comes back.”

  “Then, I’ll wait with you,” Maria Elena said.

  Rose wondered which of them was more stubborn. She liked this woman more and more. When she had first met her, she had thought her too nice, too fragile. She was glad she had misjudged her.

  The two women said little all afternoon as they waited for some sign of Lizzie’s arrival. Occasionally, Rose would take her daughter’s hand and look at Maria Elena. “She doesn’t belong out there,” she would say. The words became a prayer, a litany, and Maria Elena would nod in agreement as she sat wordlessly, the nod itself becoming a kind of amen.

  When the hot, slow sun finally fell into the earth, nothing in the room had changed except the baby’s movements as he crawled around the room reaching for things. Nena left the room and brought back candles. She lit them. The room, already too hot from the long day, seemed to turn into a burning ember. The two women were soaked in sweat, but they suffered the effects of the heat patiently as if to suffer it was a ransom they were paying for the return of the woman they loved. Come back, Maria Elena thought, come back. We cannot live without you, cannot live without your voice. She was too afraid to utter a single word aloud, did not want to worry Rose with stupid and unnecessary words that could not possibly help. After sitting perfectly still for what seemed hours, Nena finally rose from her chair and stood.

  Rose took her eyes off her daughter’s unmoving body and looked toward Maria Elena. “I didn’t want her, you know, not at first.”

  Maria Elena looked at her as if to urge her to keep talking. It was time to break the silence.

  “I wanted her brother—that’s who I wanted. My husband wouldn’t let me keep him—but that boy, I wanted him. I wanted a boy. Funny how women sometimes want boys more than they want girls. Lizzie was a consolation prize. I sometimes thought she knew that—maybe that’s why we were always fighting. She was hell to raise, you know? But she’s kept me alive. Yes, she has. And she knows how to love. She matters—”

  Maria Elena moved closer and closer to Rose as she talked. She placed her hand on her shoulder, but said nothing. The old woman’s throat was dry. She stopped speaking.

  “Rose, would you like some water?”

  “Yes,” she said, “I’m thirsty.”

  As Lizzie hovered over the house, she felt a great sadness. She wanted to wander the earth forever. She wanted to go back to Mexico and study the desert, its peoples, everything that inhabited it. She wanted to be a student of the world. Today, she had been out of her body for hour after hour after hour, and with each passing hour, she had begun to let go of the heaviness of being a body, a person, a human—the robes of flesh had become a heavy yoke. Perhaps she was becoming a spirit. Perhaps she was becoming perfect. She circled the house. Jake and Eddie were at the Bridge of the Americas in Juarez—stuck in traffic. Lizzie was free of all traffic. The thought occurred to her that she did not have to return. Nothing, no one could force her. She could abandon her bones and leave them to rot. She would not care. But as she hovered over the house, she suddenly became aware that it was completely dark except for a faint light coming from the window of her room. She moved closer to the room, and was surprised to see her body lying on her bed and Maria Elena and her mother keeping vigil over her body. She did not even have to try to read her mother’s mind to know that she was exhausted with worry. I don’t want to go back, Mama. Tell her, Nena, tell her I no longer exist. But Maria Elena, too, was wearing the same look as her mother, and she could hear her name being uttered. Come back. Lizzie, come back. The women’s faces could not be resisted. She knew there was no going back into the night. She would have to reenter her old self for the sake of the women that were keeping watch. She would have to return and think about what she was going to do about a body for which she no longer had any use, a body for which she no longer had any love. She felt a stranger to herself. She found it odd that she still felt such strong loyalty toward these women and the things they felt.

  When Maria Elena returned with a glass of water in her hand, a hot breeze came in through the window. The candles flickered but did not go out. Maria Elena smiled. “Thank God. ¡Ay gracias a mi santo Dios. Gracias!” She handed Rose the glass of water and pointed at Lizzie. The body that had lain on the bed all the long, silent day, lain as still as death itself, suddenly moved. Rose drank from the water and stared at her daughter as she slowly sat up on the bed. She looked at Maria Elena. “I’m seeing things,” she said.

  “No,” Maria Elena whispered.

  Lizzie looked up at the two women in the room. “Will someone please tell me why we’re using candles instead of lights. Have we gone back in time to a previous century?”

  “Don’t ever do that again—do you hear me, Lizzie.” Maria Elena’s voice was as hard as the walls of the old house.

  “Jesus Christ, Nena—”

  “Don’t Jesus Christ me—you scared the hell out of us. We’ve been sitting here since noon wondering if you were ever going to come back to us—and don’t you ever do that to us ever again. Are you—”

  “Slop it, Nena, you’re being hysterical. This was all your idea in the first place. I followed them to Casas Grandes and they’re fine, by the way—in case you were wondering.” She lugged on her earlobe searching for an earring, but found none. “And, in the second place, I don’t need your permission, Nena.”

  Maria Elena glared at Lizzie. “Selfish, you’re so selfish, you know that. You could have at least let us know …” Rose sat quietly in the background regaining her composure as the two women argued. Their voices filled her with relief. Their was nothing serious in their disagreement, and it would be settled in minutes. She wanted to scream with joy. She had been so afraid of losing her daughter, as afraid as she had ever been of anything. Her dream returned to her, but she banished it from h
er thoughts. Today, there would be no death in this house. She nodded at the exchange in front of her. She wanted to laugh, but she had no wish to show either of the women in the room her sense of exhilaration. She wanted to go to her room and be alone, perhaps shout out into the warm summer night.

  “Well,” she said, interrupting Lizzie as words poured out of her like sweat, “I hope you’re rested enough to cook dinner.”

  “Dinner, Mama?” Lizzie asked looking a little confused, “I’m in the middle of an argument.”

  “Well, argue as you hover over a stove. If you can hover over Casas Grandes, you can hover over a kitchen stove. I’m hungry and I’d like something more interesting than a salad and a piece of meat. Mexican. I’d like Mexican tonight.” She rose from her chair, “I’m going to take a shower and change. Waste of a day, I’d say—a waste.”

  9

  A WEEK LATER, Mundo and the T-Birds drove up in their cars and honked in front of Luz and Diego’s house at sunrise.

  Diego and Luz came out of the house a few minutes later. Luz looked at their cars and shook her head at Diego. “Their cars are too flashy,” she said. “They should be ashamed. They look like something that should be hanging on a Christmas tree.” She wrinkled her forehead as if she were smelling something unpleasant.

  “Don’t you like the colors? I think they’re beautiful,” Diego wrote.

  She shook her head. “And they shouldn’t be honking their horns. Just because I can hear doesn’t give them permission to honk in front of my house. Can’t they knock on the front door—they have no manners. They have no class.”

  Mundo waved them over, his motions telling them it was time to get going. They got in the front seat of the canary yellow Chevy Mundo was driving. Three guys in the backseat tipped their hats toward Diego and Luz. Luz forced a smile, and Diego greeted them by pointing his chin toward them. He recognized El Guante and El Güero, but he didn’t know the other guy.

  They drove toward Sunland Park to the entrance of the road that led to Mount Cristo Rey.