Thirteen
On the other side of the door, Rufina is calling down to Rafa at the bottom of his pit. Any presence he’d had earlier that day on the plaza, any emotional thrust, any investment for living has now gone. Frankincense burns. Golden crumbs of it on hot coals on the shelf above the mother’s bed. A fog of it in the room. Rufina can smell it from under the door. The mescal is nothing like it was hours ago. The mother’s door is locked, and Rufina rattles the knob. She studies the hinges, goes to search for the best tool to undo them.
The mother’s bedroom was never a place for Rufina. Unless she wanted to pick at the calluses on her mother’s feet. Unless she wanted to massage oil into her mother’s scalp, or rub lotion onto the mother’s legs, legs that continued to seize up with the memory of her journey, thousands of miles, one punishing day after another. Being pinned down—soldiers, rebels—men’s faces, blurring, too close. How could she tell which they were? The dried blood on their hands. Bits of chewed meat passing from their mouth to hers, making her gag, her stomach growling, the forced opening of the raw wound between her legs, the deeper cut. The way it happened was exactly like she’d been warned. The rebels had been caught in a surprise attack. The soldiers sprayed bullets into the dark. In that moment, she crawled away, heading north, the volcano a massive silhouette behind her. The only divine presence she’d ever known. Skeletons running. Mountains shifting. She would need a way to find herself as all she knew emptied out of her.
What she remembers: Night. The blinding force of a flashlight. Hands pulling her along. A blanket. Women’s voices. The open trunk of a car. The final border. Being caught. Being wrapped.
For days, the Grandmothers to All had acted as her own hands, feeding her, bathing her, helping her drink the tea that would protect her from nightmares, giving her phrases to say in English, placing each word on her tongue. They had visited her daily, paused from the work of bees and harvest, from writing letters to the government of El Salvador, to the government of Honduras, to the government of Guatemala, letters to the president, to their representatives, to the governor, to the mayor. They were plain women, militant about their causes, sovereign as dirt. They taught the mother to read and write, but she preferred to draw, to paint the faces that flashed through her mind, catching what was familiar. They lent her the house, because the house existed for such a thing, for someone who had been forced to flee, for someone who suffered the holy humiliation of having made it, of being termed a “sole survivor.” The house was less than a quarter mile from their compound and it kept her safe, it tucked her in, it sang her to sleep, it kept watch. She had just turned seventeen, and then there was a baby, Rafa, a reason to live.
In the end, everyone faded from her view, eclipsed by the fighters surrounding her. Instead of machetes, they held bouquets of sword lilies. Deep red flowers full of life and blood and heart. What is cancer if not a malfunction of time? Centuries compressed inside her, the rapid mutation of cells crystalizing. All those ancestors, begging to be counted, calling out. Her bones went porous. Filled with air and light.
She’d been dead four months, or sixteen weeks, or one hundred and twelve days, or two thousand six hundred and eighty-eight hours. Nearly the same number as the miles she had covered once, while her son grew inside her. Now, there he is on the floor. A man sprawled out as if exposed on the battlefield. She senses the possibility of letting go as it blooms inside him. He will feel the beginning of it, a simultaneous sinking-and-lifting sensation, and then be overtaken by the relief.
Know this: The mother had read the Explorer’s shadow on that first day she met him in the sewing shop with no name and saw everything she needed to. She could’ve asked him, “Will you choose to hurt or to heal?” She could’ve asked him, “What will you do with your pain?” Seeing into his shadow didn’t make her able to read the future. If he was going to hurt her, she didn’t know how, to what extent. For now, she’s still submerged in the well where the angel put her. Waiting.
And about shadow reading, there’s no way you could know how old this capability is, how ancient the art form. The original images go back before any royalty, back to when animals had their say, back to when even the creatures in the unseen realm could permeate the veil. It was a way for the spirits to intercede, a way for the people to correct one another without weapons, a way to sense into and beyond. What Rafa did in the plaza was a drop from the lake of this knowing, the smallest of expressions. All it did was defeat him, exhaust him. No one present benefitted. There was no medicine of observation or questioning dispensed.
At this hour, one town to the north, far from any tourist, is a trailer in a lot at the end of a dirt road. Inside, Alejandro, the Kid Thief, lies on the couch watching the TV blaze in the dark. His stomach growls. His cousin is passed out with his girlfriend in the back bedroom, having cashed in their food stamps for caballo. Alejandro’s hand is still swollen and split from the punch he delivered to Rafa’s face.
Rufina gives up on trying to take the hinges from the door of her mother’s room, something the house refuses to let her do. Her brother has gone quiet on the other side. Now, she goes through the rooms collecting the broken dishes. With all the pieces, she sets the kitchen table. She can see Paulo and Blanca Soto, Rafa, too. They’ll sit down together and eat roast chicken with strawberry shortcake as if children with parents, as if family. Blanca will ask them what they would like to dream when they sleep. She will say that their dreams are listening and that their dreams will come and find them even when they are lost. Which is to say, there is no need for you to lose heart, not yet.
The angel knows that the rope attached to the well is no longer there. That it is coiled, not unlike a venomous snake, under the mother’s bed. There is only so much the angel can do.
Sunday
One
Sunday, late afternoon on the plaza, and the tourists present are sparse. They speed-walk to shuttle vans, wheeling their suitcases behind them, bent forward as if mimicking the planes’ ascent. They are unsure if they have the correct time for their flight. They check the apps on their phones again and again, calculate time zones, minutes to the airport, bags wagging behind like tails. Those who remain rush through the streets, attempt to grab that last souvenir, attempt to memorize what’s before them as if they’ll never return. As if Ciudad de Tres Hermanas will disappear once they’ve gone, no longer in existence without their presence.
Rafa has a rattle. He shakes it now and then as he stares up into the tops of the cottonwoods and box elders. Considers the crows. He’s still in the same clothes. Well, he’s still in the same pants. The vest is gone. He’s bare-chested and bare-footed. Not changing his pants in three days means they’ve stretched out beyond their size and hang from his hip bones, reeking. Even in this state, he’s attractive; a kind of animal-like musk still causes people to slow and look again. Take him in. He’d promised his sister the whole of the weekend. This is the last of it.
Rufina beats a hand drum and wails. She’s wearing a blush-colored slip with shells sewn onto it. There are her unshaven armpits. Her one leg stronger than the other. Her cane on the ground in front of her like a line no one is permitted to cross.
Everything is exactly the same as it has always been on the plaza. The laborers shuffle from job to job, still trying to make Mass. The Original Enduring Ones survey the scene, predict the day’s sales.
A group of white women in their fifties or sixties or seventies tour the Southwest without their husbands. They parade around the plaza. With each lap, they gather more courage to start a conversation with one of the sellers.
They delegate a leader. The leader picks a man at the end of the row of sellers. They huddle around him. She asks, “Now then, what tribe are you?” Her name is Betsy or Susie or Patricia. She is unaware of the demand in her question, the exhaustion her privilege causes in those without it.
He does not want to tell her. He does not want to hear who he is come out of her mouth. He does not want to h
ave to correct her pronunciation.
He is so pretty, she thinks but will not say until later, when the women are traveling home, congratulating themselves on another adventure. And then she’ll say, “And wasn’t he just so very pretty?” She wears a squash-blossom necklace like his grandmother’s. Something he would never be able to afford if it weren’t already in his family. He names the pueblo he is from. Gives the Spanish name instead of the actual name. “Oh!” she says. “I was just reading about all of you.” He is thinking about his new wife and how when he crosses the threshold to their home, she is there to welcome him in their language and how this is the medicine that keeps him from feeling like he’s selling part of himself when he sits all day, every day, negotiating the price of his hand-pinched pots.
The woman in the necklace explains to her friends everything she knows about who she thinks him to be. Once she has run out information, she grunts.
“Now you talk,” she says. Her eyes are loaded and bearing down on him. The women are in junior high again, surrounding her. They are impressed with her knowledge.
He grins. He is the Navajo man, or the Zuni man, or the Hopi man, grinning. Grinning is what he’s become accustomed to doing when insulted. Says, “Close enough. Smart woman. Close enough.”
He’s willing to tolerate them for a sale. They could easily fund his expenses for the next few weeks. The women, however, are more pleased with themselves than with him. When he doesn’t add to their narrative, provide an impromptu history lesson, they wander off. Hunt for other entertainment.
The women wanted a conversation! They wanted him to make them laugh!
He’ll have to explain the loss of this income to his wife. And during the ceremony, when all living things are acknowledged and thanked, protected and blessed, he will remember these women and they will have no idea they are being considered, prayed for. As they lap the plaza again, precious as a flock of guinea hens, they pause by businessmen gathered in front of Rafa and Rufina.
“Well, look at that . . .” the leader says to her friends. “What would you call that?”
“Odd,” says one.
“Surprising,” says another.
The men in suits and ties clap for Rufina. They sparkle and shine. Their wedding bands glisten on their fingers. Slicked-back hair and leather shoes, gleaming. Squeaky clean behind their ears. Flossed teeth. High-SPF lip balm shimmering in the sun. How fine they appear, effortless in their pride, and yet, there are shadows—you can imagine—the hunger that will not stop no matter how large their bonuses. They are from Chicago or Miami or Phoenix.
Rufina refuses to acknowledge the pack of them.
One of the men, whose name is Kenneth or William or Richard, spots the cane. Points it out to another man in a suit, who points it out to another, until they all are aware of its presence. There is mumbling under breath. Heads are cocked and the backs of hands held up in front of mouths to screen what is being spoken. There is a kissing noise. The youngest man, Austin or Stewart or Jacob, is blowing Rufina kisses.
Still, she will not look their way. She feels as if her head is in a rusted tin can at the bottom of the arroyo, her body, her breath an intolerable nuisance.
Without any more dramatic gestures, or goading—and as if in unison—each of the fifteen men withdraws his wallet. It seems like a choreographed move. The flip of the suit jacket without looking, first one and then another and then another, reaching for and then locating the leather. Know this: Last night in a casino on the nearest reservation they doubled their budgets for this trip. Which is to say, they are more generous than usual. As if cued on five, six, seven, eight, and one, each places a hundred-dollar bill in the basket. They turn on their heels, basket behind their right thighs, and march off, swinging their arms. A pack of businessmen headed back to the convention center for their conference on banking or franchise ownership or executive leadership.
Rafa can still see their ties long after they’ve gone. The knots at their necks.
“Should we count it?” Rufina says.
He gathers the bills, flips through them. She watches him put half into his left front pocket, the other half into his right. He stuffs the rattle in his waistband and makes for the corner of the plaza, heads toward the canyon. Rufina is slow to follow, dragging her leg.
Two
As they roll the wagon home, Rufina wants to lie down in the middle of the road like she did when the mother returned without the Explorer. Her head pointing downhill. Rocks in her mouth.
It’s difficult for her to walk. The pain in her hip is a splinter buried deep beyond reach. Her posture is suffering. She’s folded forward into a shape meant for a letter of the alphabet, not for a woman’s body. She relies, more than she ever has, on her cane.
In Rafa’s ears, a hammer strikes. Or is it a gun firing, or flint striking? He keeps looking for where it originates, from which direction, but cannot locate it. There is the steady repetition of it.
As they pass through the woods, the walls of green seem more narrow than they ever have. The river has a current. Cobwebs pull at the skin on their arms as they push back branches. A coyote flashes in front of them, darting through the clearing in the path. Another follows. Rufina stops. Counts them, four.
“You’re going to make it,” Rufina tells Rafa. He can’t hear her over the noise in his ears. She does not say, “I won.” She does not say, “I saved you.”
As they approach the house, it prepares to gather them close. Somber as a house full of loss can be.
Three of the Grandmothers to All pass by on foot. They stop, let Rafa and Rufina cross. They have known them both since birth. There are soft hellos and watchful eyes. After Rafa and Rufina pass, the women turn to one another and sharply change direction. As they swiftly make for the compound, they’ve already made it through an initial draft of their plans.
Three
Officer Armijo had a dream the night before. It was not uncommon for Lucio to dream about dispatches before they were made. It was not uncommon for him to dream about a mountain lion cuffed in his backseat or losing his keys, a dream from which he’d wake and immediately be in a panic, ripping his pockets until he found them right where he’d left them before he’d gone to bed.
In the dream he’d had the night before, he’d been the first to respond to the call. Of course he knew the road. Of course he knew the canyon. Of course he knew the house. Could drive there without his lights on. When he arrived, the front door was open. He stepped through the house with his flashlight shining into each corner. He started with Rufina’s room, and then scanned the kitchen, the living room, the dining room, the bathroom, and ended in Rosalinda’s bedroom. There, from the vigas, hung both of them. He couldn’t tell who’d gone first, or if they’d done it together. Their faces looked the exact same. It was clear whose children they were.
He left his wife in bed, stumbled to the kitchen sink, and poured himself a glass of water. He let the cold run up and down the insides of his forearms. He splashed his face. As he stood there dripping, he drank from the glass. Next, he looked in on his sons. All of them tucked onto their right sides, breathing their way through the murky depths of sleep.
On his way back through the kitchen, he saw the angel sitting on the counter, her impossible long legs. The smell of sour, oily feathers in need of fresh air.
“You may still have a chance,” she said, putting a cherry Colt in the corner of her mouth. “For that rescue you’ve been fantasizing about.” She leaned over to the stove, switching on the flame, and the tip lit immediately. “All these years you’ve been trying to atone for what was never up to you to prevent.”
Lucio hung his head and turned away from her.
As the angel inhaled, the cigar crackled and hissed, as if it had its own opinion and finally wanted to share. She continued, “Listen carefully. At the base of the mulberry tree—”
At the mention of the tree, Lucio’s shoulders began to quake, like earth does when it loosens as it yiel
ds to the shovel, sinking.
Four
The angel sits in the rocking chair on the roof, tapping her toes as she tilts forward and then back. She spies on Rafa, who is bent over the edge of the well. He lifts the lid, tugs at his pockets, dispenses each of the hundred-dollar bills into the dark, wet tunnel. Bends down, pries open the lid further.
The memory of his mother in the bath swarms his mind’s eye. There, in the bathroom, the steam glistens on every surface. She has lit a bundle the Grandmothers to All gave her after they brought her back from the clinic. The abortion was a simple procedure and the only choice she could think to make. It was such a simple procedure, she can’t imagine that it released what the Explorer planted inside her. The fumes from the bundle mix with the steam and fog the room. Rafa is on his knees on the tile beside the bath.
“Help me,” she tells him. “You have to help me.” She is furious in her scrubbing. Water splashes over the side of the tub, soaking his shirt and the thighs of his pants. The bar of soap, submerged between her legs, turns the water to milk. Suds ride the surface and slip over the edge.
He’s nauseated from the bundle’s scent.
“Give me your hands,” she says, and when he does, she puts the soap in them. She is moving his hands between her legs. “Scrub harder,” she says.
His hands are slipping. He doesn’t know exactly where he’s supposed to scrub. He tries to not feel with his hands.
Brother, Sister, Mother, Explorer Page 13