“Harder,” she cries.
He does as he’s told. He leans into the tub. His T-shirt is soaked. His pants are soaked. His hair is dripping.
Suddenly, the mother stops. Water continues to slosh over the top. The floor is thoroughly puddled. She is trembling.
She sees what he hadn’t noticed. He’s hard. He doesn’t want to be. He’s sixteen. He prefers boys.
She is flailing as if a caught fish. The sounds she makes are not human. What he sees when she looks at him in that moment, he does not know, but from the look on her face, it is not human, either. He must not be human.
She didn’t hear him saying he was sorry. She couldn’t have heard him with the commotion. He was punching his erection as she wailed.
Know this: It was Rafa who comforted her after she forced the Explorer to evacuate. She had chased him out of the house, down the lane, and out of the canyon with her hands clawing at the sky. Every rock within her reach was used to tell him no apology would suffice. And if she could’ve reached the sun, that immense flaming rock, she would’ve hurled that, too. There would be no forgiveness. He’d worshipped Rufina’s body. He’d filled her with the essence of himself, too. How could he turn from Rosalinda, who he told was everything? Everything. Until she’d come to believe it. No other woman existed. There was no other body. No other port of entry to pleasure. And yet, she’d forgotten to see her growing daughter as another woman, with a body. And which like all bodies could be caressed, could be harmed, consumed.
The Explorer took nothing. All was left waiting in its place as he stumbled from the canyon, past city limits to the highway, and put out his thumb. There was no destination where he would be able to forget the house, the mother, the daughter, and what he’d left inside both. He hitched south, farther than he’d ever been before, and kept hitching south until he ran out of land.
For weeks following, Rosalinda mourned. On her bed, Rafa under the sheet with her like a cat. Petting his back with her feet. Tracing his hips with the tips of her toes. It was necessary for the mother to weep and wail. The records played, she puddled in her bed for days at a time. A candle dripped wax onto the wood floor, one after another. Cigarettes, one after another. All while down the hall, at the start of her second trimester, Rufina grew fat, like she had swallowed something without first chewing it and now there was only one way for it to come out. She prayed the Explorer would come back for her. Why couldn’t she be treasured when her mother was? Was she not her mother’s daughter? Nothing about hurt is rational. Which is to say, no matter Rosalinda’s story, or Rufina’s story, or the Explorer’s story, which changed shape given the moment and the sensation, all loved and all lost. There was an act of violation and betrayal. And yet, who loved most? Who lost more?
Here is what you need to understand about a mother’s love: It was Rosalinda that chose to have the life inside her cleaned out. The day after she found out about Rufina’s pregnancy and chased the Explorer from the house, her legs were in stirrups at the clinic while the Grandmothers to All completed her paperwork at the front desk. Rosalinda had the abortion because she knew Rufina would need to heal and that the baby would give her that. After all, that was what Rafa had done, made living possible for her. She wanted to give this to her daughter.
Rafa watches the bills in the well soak through. He imagines a shoreline thirteen hundred miles away. Walking into the ocean, sand pulling at his feet.
He makes his way through the house, down the hall which to him feels like a thousand miles, a journey crossing continents. Once in the mother’s room, he locks and bars the door. Pulls the curtains. He chooses the viga above. He places the chair beneath. Throws the rope. He steps up, makes his knot with as much reverence as a prayer. Then, the sound of her voice.
“Mi conejito,” she says.
Finally, what he has sensed is clearly before him. The fins of her dress, the huipil wrapped at her shoulders, the headdress of mums. Her lips stained in fuchsia. The smell of her filling the room.
“I wouldn’t go without you,” she says.
“I can see you,” he says. “I can hear you,” he says, stepping off the chair and into her arms.
Five
The Explorer smelled of vinegar, curing meat, and fried apples. All that time in the kitchen preparing food for them. When he smiled, he appeared trustworthy. It was the way he raised his hairline, his forehead pitching upward, as if asking permission for his momentary happiness. He had trained Rufina to lean into his understanding of her, not develop her own. Only he knew the stories about who she was, where she came from. He gave Rufina to herself before the destruction of her people, and during the destruction, and after the destruction. History as if living in her. In this way, she could pretend she had been there right along with Rosalinda and had survived, too. It didn’t matter that he’d researched it all in encyclopedias and in the Spanish newspapers. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t actually her people at all, but a combination of people he’d met stateside and interviewed. At a certain point, wasn’t it all the same story? Couldn’t Rosalinda have been any woman escaping from military dictatorship in Central America? What did Rufina know? What choice did she have but to see her mother as land from which she’d come? Study her as if she were a map she’d never understand? The sole carrier of their lineage, Rosalinda’s womb, Rufina’s homeland, and yet, see the separation. The perpetual loss of and longing for home.
He had been telling her a story as he’d done so many times before. She was wrapped in his arms as they both lay on her bed, which was not uncommon, a girl held by her father. This had been their routine for years. Only he was not her father. And at fourteen, she was the kind of girl who was plump to the pinch with full breasts and hips, already taller than her mother, as if she were the woman of the house. He had not been sleeping in Rosalinda’s bed but had found himself back on the couch, outside. Their own intimacy happened in brief moments far from her bed, in the garden, in the parked car, next to the river. It was Rafa at sixteen who’d been waiting on his mother, lingering in her room until the late hours, crawling into her bed. Lighting her cigarettes, making her cups of hot ginger tea. Listening to her incomprehensible speech. The vigilant, devoted son.
It wasn’t as if the Explorer had planned it. All he’d done was taken off his shoes and his socks. The story was about a jaguar priestess who could see in the dark. It wasn’t that the story was funny, but she caught a spell of laughter and couldn’t stop herself. It was the shaking her body made and the sounds of pleasure rubbing against him that made him kiss her. It was only the top of her head, and this was a familiar act, how many of these kisses before she threw her head forward to catch her breath and there was his mouth, found. His lips covering hers and he couldn’t stop. There was no stopping. She kept her mouth open, which made him think something he never should have—that she was receptive to him. His pants were off. The sheets pulled back and her nightdress lifted to her neck. Why wasn’t she wearing any underwear? His hands between her legs did not have to fight. He never should have thought this was confirmation of desire, as she did not sleep with underwear, not since she stopped wetting the bed when she was four. The weight and fullness of him buried her. A man over six feet tall, over two hundred pounds. He pinned her and pulled at her like she was a woman who’d done this before, who’d expected it, not like she was the girl who he made breakfast for and whose temples he kissed.
Who had only wanted to please him.
Who had only wanted to be loved as much as the mother was loved.
Who couldn’t see there at her window, Lucio, her sweet admirer, her want-to-be guardian as he cried. Covering his eyes because he could not summon the courage he needed to save her.
Who couldn’t imagine all the women she was related to, who had come before her—tucked into their respective places in each of her cells—and had awoken and witnessed what was happening. Collectively, they shook their heads and collectively beat at their hearts. Wailing. Their voices were the
music that spun Baby deep in Rufina, delivering her a talisman, which would keep her strong until the time came for her to deliver herself.
Six
Lucio knocks at the door. He’s unsure if anyone will answer. He’s unsure if he’s knocked loud enough. He is not in his uniform. It’s his pickup truck, not the police car, in the drive. The monkey painted on the outside of the house has almost entirely faded. The tail is gone completely. The eyes are visible, two black points, a fan of leaves surround it, their tips sharp. The call did not come from the station. It came from the compound up the road, from the Grandmothers to All.
When Rufina appears, the hair at her temples and neck is damp with sweat, a braid slung over her shoulder. Her T-shirt and jeans, both white. She is barefoot. Her face, naked. She appears older than her age. She is forty-five, she is sixty, she is seventy-two. Her cane, her wooden companion, at her side. She has trouble looking Lucio in the eye. He notices how difficult it is for her to focus.
“He won’t come out,” she says to Lucio as if she were expecting him. “We made enough. I won.” Her face is sunburned. The three days exposed on the plaza have made pink tracks down her nose and across her cheeks. “He won’t come out,” she says again.
Lucio does not know how to get her from the house into his car. The angel did not give him instructions. He is awkward, shifting like a high school boy from side to side. Then the father in him steps forward, takes both of her hands. Gently, he begins to lead her.
Rufina allows him. He sees defeat in her pupils. It’s fixed there. She leaves the front door without her cane. One foot and then the other across the yard. When he has her in his truck, he returns to the house, grabs her purse just inside on the table, and her shoes. He follows the instruction he was given, lifts the rock at the base of the mulberry tree. There is the pack of smokes filled with bills, in addition to a damp stack still stinking like the well from which they came. Remember what is buried beneath this: the bones of Baby held in the sweet earth, always cherished. Holy in the way only the sweet earth can know and hold. Another seed to comfort.
Lucio makes a call up the road. Tells the Grandmothers to All he’s got her.
Sitting with her in the front seat, Lucio locks the doors, starts the engine. Rufina’s breathing changes. Gathering air feels not unlike sipping it from a straw. Which is to say sometimes the hardest part about surviving is remembering to breathe.
The angel is still in the rocking chair on the roof. From this vantage point, she can see the truck with Rufina inside.
“I want you to listen to me very carefully,” Lucio tells Rufina, putting the car in reverse. His voice is deliberate. “I am going to drive you to the airport. There will be a woman waiting. I am going to put you on a plane. She will get on with you.”
Rufina’s sips of air become more difficult. She can’t get a full inhalation. She does not know who she is meant to be. Lucio keeps talking. Each of his words, a resting place. She tries to hold on.
The sun cuts through the windshield as Lucio drives west out of the canyon. While he squints into the sun, Rufina barely blinks. Arrangements have been made in quick succession. The Grandmothers to All have kin in cities all over the country. Women waiting to claim other women who are lost, refugees of one kind or another, the sole survivors of their families.
She is her mother. She is not her mother.
She will be ushered into the next decades of her life in a place where she has never been before. A place she knows nothing about. A place that will meet her and save her. As the right place can do. There will be the period of rehabilitation. Women who will feed her, instruct her on how to begin again, who will find her a home that knows how to hold her. There will be tinctures to stop the nightmares. There will be blankets to wrap her in.
In the rearview mirror, Lucio sees the Grandmothers to All coming down the road with sheets for wrapping the dead.
The steady sinking of the sun continues. The plaza is vacant. Set lights dimming. The shops closed. The hotels are momentarily hollow, waiting for the next arrivals. The Original Enduring Ones have packed up and gone. The portál where they’ve sat all weekend still radiates with the heat from their presence.
Once Lucio and Rufina pass through the last stoplight and veer onto the freeway, the road opens. The mountains are blue as the deep they were once submerged under. The land expands, infinite and holy, as the sky opens further, and the light.
The light, the light, the light.
Acknowledgments
No doubt with my best intentions, I will still miss those I wish I would have included here. Please accept my sincere apologies. A hundred thousand thank-you’s to the following for all their generosity and support:
My agent, PJ Mark, whose presence, attention, and integrity are of the highest quality. I am forever grateful to you and all that you have done and continue to do. Thank you also to Ian Bonaparte (assistant extraordinaire). My editor, Jonathan Lee, thank you for exceeding all my expectations. What a joy to work with you. To everyone at Catapult—Alicia Kroell, Nicole Caputo, Wah-Ming Chang, Carla Bruce-Eddings, Katie Boland, Megan Fishmann, Rachel Fershleiser, Samm Saxby, Laura Gonzalez—and all other benevolent forces who had a hand in manifesting this dream, my deepest appreciation.
To those who provided the physical space of their homes for me to write the drafts of this book—Michelle Victoria, Katie Power, Rachel Balkcom and Ian Sanderson, Michael Waldron and Chantal Combes—many thanks. To those beloved beings whom I cherish and who also provided the sanctuary of space in addition to the never-ending resource of loving support—Toby Herzlich (Queen of the HEART and advocate of all things Mother Earth--om tare tuttare, ture so ha), Clara de la Torre (Bodhisattva and sister friend), Eileen Olivieri (fierce truth-teller and tender care-taker, you are a gift), Mark Hess (the brother I always wanted and never had, you are pure light), Colleen Kelly (my chosen auntie/mentor and example of life-long commitment to creative practice and honoring soul/spirit, I bow to you) and Katharine Menton (for all our life-times together and this one, too, such grace and the balm of belonging). A very special thank you to Ren Nelson who gifted a home/refuge for all those years for me to become the writer I am today. Your investment in me during that time is responsible for so much positive change in my life. And to anyone else who permitted me a table, a room, a safe space to continue drafting pages for however short the duration of time—my gratitude. To the Sierra Nevada College MFA Writer-in-Residency, Bread Loaf, VONA, the Jack Kent Cooke Graduate Arts Award, and the Rona Jaffe Foundation, thank you for choosing me.
For the early readers and all your brilliant insights—Kim Parko, Tomás Morín, William Shih, Elise Ota, Christopher Castellani, and Stephen Graham Jones. And to those who read late drafts and shared support at large, Tommy Orange and Tiphanie Yanique. Two incredible forces of magic who have changed my reality—for your mentorship, all your teaching/insights/example, for your inclusion of me, for your dear friendship, and for your imaginative force and books in the world, on my shelf, and close to my heart, Ramona Ausubel and Marie-Helene Bertino.
To all those who shared knowledge of the craft, assisted me with my writing and gave me the best experience of themselves, my teachers, a very humble thank you—with special recognition to Natalie Goldberg. To the entire community of the Institute of American Indian Arts, both the undergraduate and graduate faculty, visiting writers/professors, and students past and present—the biggest embrace. To the Lannan Foundation for all the readings, conversations, dinners, and time spent with extraordinary authors, thank you for your undeniable force for good in the world.
So many comadres, fellow visionaries, dearest friends/sisters to offer appreciation for (the short list)—Edie Tsong (+ Che!), Cristina González, Sydney Cooper (+ Lucio, inspiring namesake) (VIVA MEZCLA!), Chrissie Orr, and Molly Sturges, Adelma Hnasko, Annie Chamberlain, and Kelly Sue Enfield. To the entire WOC writing group, especially those who always showed up, no matter what—Beth Lee and Jennifer Love. Thank you a
ll for your inspiration and unique ways in the world. For chosen family, spotlighting specifically, Ann Filemyr and Onde Chimes, my very young grannies.
To the incredible writing community of Santa Fe—too many to name here—whose work adds to the quality of daily living and pushing pen in this place of enchantment. To Littleglobe and the Santa Fe Art Institute who are committed to social justice and equitable, dignifying engagement, thank you for including me, for your work in the world, and in our community.
To my sister, Linda, thank you for being such a profound example of transformation. Healing can happen in one generation, and effect all generations to come, your love and your family are proof. To my mother who has tried her best, my stepfather Jim (Pa), and the rest of my motley crew of kin, thank you for doing your part.
To Mary Charles (legendary reader and learner) and Alecia Charles (your laugh is medicine), thank you for sharing your son and brother with me. Appreciate your support and sharing in this celebration.
And always, always, always, with my whole heart, with my whole being, thank you to my partner, Randle, and our son, Tsítso Kalaná.
© Zoë Zimmerman
JAMIE FIGUEROA received her MFA in creative writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts. Her writing has appeared in Epoch, McSweeney’s, and American Short Fiction. She is the recipient of the Truman Capote Scholarship and is a Bread Loaf scholar. Boricua by way of Ohio, Figueroa lives in northern New Mexico.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2021 by Jamie Figueroa
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