by Laura Resau
The court was lit up. A crowd was gathered, including the girls who had been playing. They had miraculously transformed. They were showered, their hair shiny with gel and spray, comb lines visible, earrings dangling, thin gold chains nestled between their pushed-up breasts. Tight pants, high heels, shirts not quite reaching their waists, showing off a little mound of belly. Lips outlined in red and colored in pink beneath a thick coat of gloss.
Ángel was shaking hands with some guys standing in a clump under a tree. The girl who’d been squirting him now wore a sparkly red spaghetti-strap shirt and hoop earrings. She moved away from the group of girls and came over to me. “Goo’ nigh’,” she said in English, and then leaned closer. “Ángel. He joo boyfrien’?”
Inside, part of me shouted Yes! But a bigger part of me said—with scorn—Don’t be stupid, Sophie. I shook my head. “No. No hay nada.” There is nothing. I’d had my time in his spotlight and now he was moving on.
The girl strutted over to Ángel and planted herself possessively at his side.
I stared at them, feeling the same sick feeling I’d had in Huajuapan after the parade stomped through the streets and left sad heaps of colored sawdust.
I walked quickly over to Pablo. “Okay, Pablito,” I said. “Time for you to go to bed.”
“Pero, Sophie, we just got here!”
I grabbed his arm. “Let’s go.”
“No, I’m staying.” He squirmed out of my grasp and ran to Ángel.
I walked back to the house in the dark. I was Sophie the amoeba after all. Sophie the weak. A few streetlamps glowed and flickered and illuminated swarms of moths high in the air. Back at the house, Dika and Abuelita and the aunts and cousins sat inside the yellow glow of the smoky kitchen, sipping lemongrass tea and eating pastries.
I tried to sneak past them, but they saw me. Dika patted a wooden chair. “Sophie, come sit down.”
“I’m tired. I’m going to bed,” I said.
“Come, Sophie! Two minutes. We have plan.”
I sat down, wary.
“Now, Sophie,” she said. She spoke in Spanish so that Abuelita could understand. “My comadre and I, we were talking, and we have decided to do a limpia.”
“A limpia?”
“To clean our spirits. You and me and Pablo. And what luck! My comadre knows how to do it!” She raised her teacup in the air, and Abuelita followed, and their cups clinked in a toast. Then Abuelita ladled a cup of lemony tea from the blackened pot over the coals, and placed the plastic bag of pastries in front of me. “Eat, m’hija,” she commanded. “Eat.”
I took a dry bite. “Gracias, Abuelita. Why do we need our spirits cleaned?”
Dika rolled her eyes and muttered in English, “You are kidding, no, Sophie? You must to look at yourself. And you must to look at Pablo, this poor boy. He watches his parents die the last year. Do you not think he must to have limpia?”
Abuelita nodded and smiled at me, as if she knew something I didn’t. “I think the limpia will be good for you, Sophie. At dawn we will do it.”
Later, at the cistern, I splashed water on my face and thought about what Pablo had said about his grandmother curing me. Was this what he meant? Was it possible to clean up a spirit, to soap it up and wring it out and make it gleam? I dried my face on a rough towel, imagining washing away the gunk weighing down my spirit, scrubbing off the black stains from years of worries.
Inside the house, I settled on the mattress next to Ñola. Soon, with the corners of my lips turned up in a smile, I slid into dreams.
I was so excited about the limpia, I woke up before anyone else. At the sink outside, I splashed water on my face. The air was a magical shade of purple. I watched the sky, the shadows, the shapes of things slowly gathering light. Little by little, gaining color, losing their blue.
Soon Abuelita emerged in a dress and apron, followed by Dika in her pink quilted robe. Dika plodded over and kissed my cheek. Pablo trailed behind her, rubbing his eyes, looking around dazed. After trips to the outhouse and cistern, we gathered inside. Abuelita set up a small table with a white cloth and a clay pot with three feet and triangular holes in the side, filled with pieces of wood. She lit it and blew, fanning the flames, making smoke rise up and fill the room. Light snoring came from behind the sheet curtain, where Mr. Lorenzo and Ángel slept.
Abuelita arranged the chairs around the table. Pablo seemed to know what she was doing and helped her set things up. From a cabinet in the corner of the room, he took out a small tin that he carried carefully with both hands. He sat down, and Dika and I followed his lead. Abuelita settled into her chair by the clay dish. The fire had gone out now, leaving hot glowing coals. She opened the tin and took out a bag of what looked like little amber and white stones.
“What’s that?” I whispered to Pablo.
“Copal. It smells good. It comes from inside a tree.”
Abuelita picked out pieces and set them on the table in front of her. For a long time she chanted and prayed in Mixteco. I didn’t understand her words, only the hypnotizing rhythms, rising and falling, wave after wave of words. I found myself watching things in the room, taking in their essences: the smoke, the hot coals, Dika, Abuelita.
Abuelita motioned for Pablo to sit down beside her. She moved a piece of copal over his legs, arms, stomach, chest, neck, head. Then she dropped the copal onto the coals and watched the pattern of the smoke. It swirled up, curving this way and that around the room. She spoke to Pablito in Spanish. “Look at those rays of light.”
Sunlight was shining through the smoke, making the air look solid.
“Your mamá and papá are with us, in that light. Do you feel the sun on your face, Pablito?”
He nodded.
“That is your mother kissing you.”
His pink birthmark did look like the soft imprint of lips.
Abuelita continued. “It is your father touching your cheek.”
The light shone right in his eyes now, but he didn’t blink. A smile spread over his face, a big, natural smile with neat white rows of teeth and two lopsided dimples. There was a small light around his thin body, a strength I’d never noticed. A hint of who he was before, maybe, who he would become. I saw not just Pablo the six-year-old boy, but Pablo the baby, the man, even the old man, all at once. I looked at my hands, folded in my lap, and saw a child’s hands, shaping Play-Doh, and a woman’s hands, touching her lover’s waist, and a mother’s hands, stroking a baby’s head, and an old lady’s hands, veined and wrinkled and calm.
Dika took Pablo’s place in the chair. Abuelita moved the copal over her, which took a while since there was so much body to cover. We watched the smoke snaking upward in spirals.
“You get headaches sometimes, comadre, don’t you?”
Dika nodded.
Abuelita held Dika’s head between her hands, buried her fingers under the gray roots, and squeezed. Then she shook out her hands as though they were wet.
“That light you see through the glass, comadre. That light is with you always. Remember this when your head aches.”
She took Dika’s arm, the one with the three scars. She squeezed it hard, then shook her hand out, and again, and again. “Now these scars are light.”
Dika nodded.
It was my turn now. I sat in the chair and Abuelita moved the copal over me. “Oh, Sophie, m’hija, you are accustomed to hiding things. Don’t keep everything inside for no one to see. Take a breath and let them flow into the light.”
I took a breath and blew out. And another, another. Abuelita massaged my head, my shoulders, my neck, loosening up what was inside. She took off my sweater. I wore only a tank top underneath.
“Breathe,” she said, massaging my arms. “Look at all this! Do you feel this?”
I did. Things were flying out of my mouth and drifting around the room like dandelion puffs: the smell of rain, colored sawdust, ribbons of music, tiny white sparks. Silky moss and curled petals and lime zest. I felt lighter and lighter, as though I co
uld float right up with them all.
Later that morning, I helped the women get ready for a goodbye party in honor of Mr. Lorenzo and Ángel, who planned to leave the next day. We sat at a long wooden table outside the kitchen, with the ingredients for tamales spread out before us. My job was to scoop a spoonful of corn mush into a dried husk. Next, Abuelita dropped in a few chicken pieces, then Dika topped it with a dollop of green tomatillo salsa; then one aunt folded it up and the other put it in the steamer of a giant pot. We were each a link in the chain.
After the first dozen tamales, I started getting the hang of it, and my hands moved on automatic pilot. I chatted and laughed at the aunts’ jokes about their lazy husbands drinking Coronas in the shade. Meanwhile, Mr. Lorenzo and Ángel wandered with Pablo and the cousins in the monte, chasing lizards and playing tag and splashing around in the stream.
After a hundred tamales, we cooked a giant vat of pozole thick with corn kernels, swirled with dried red chiles that we’d roasted and ground and fried in oil. The entire head of a bewildered-looking pig poked out the top of the soup. Next we boiled a cauldron of coffee and threw in a handful of cinnamon sticks and a gourdful of sugar. Earthy, rich smells of boiling corn and oregano and roasting chile and cinnamon filled the kitchen and seeped out the door.
Once the work was done, I went inside to change my clothes. My shirt was spotted with a mosaic of dried corn mush and salsa and coffee stains. I pulled out a silky black tank top, smoothed out the wrinkles, and reached for a cardigan to cover up my bony elbows. Then I stopped. I remembered the limpia, how the air, so crisp, had made my bare skin tingle. How new it made me feel. Quickly, I stuffed the sweater back into the bag and put on my coconut jewelry and took a deep breath and walked outside.
Over the thatched kitchen roof, the sun was dripping like beeswax into golden pools between the peaks. Ángel and Mr. Lorenzo and the cousins had gotten back. They were devouring oranges and setting things up for the party. “Come help us, lime-girl!” Ángel called. Together, we set up wooden chairs in a circle between the kitchen and the bedrooms. He put the stereo speakers by the window and blasted music, cumbia and salsa and merengue.
Once everything was set up, the aunts brought us bowls of steaming pozole and tamales and sweet coffee and cinnamon rolls sprinkled with sesame seeds. As we ate, Dika hung on to Mr. Lorenzo, feeding him bits of her roll, pouting over his leaving. “Now when will you come back to me, mi amor?” she asked.
“In one week, mi amor,” Mr. Lorenzo said, stroking her cheek. “In one week we’ll return.”
I glanced at Ángel. He had stopped chewing and was staring at an orange peel in the dirt.
“One week!” Dika moaned. “One week without mi amor! How I will survive?”
As we finished dessert, it grew dark, and Ángel turned up the music so loud it vibrated my bones. The uncles dragged the aunts—who raised their voices in fake protest—inside the circle of chairs and started dancing.
Dika plopped down next to me. “Now, Sophie”—she rubbed her hands together devilishly—“you must to tell Ángel.”
“Tell him what?”
She winked and pinched my cheek. “You know! You see how I tell Mr. Lorenzo he is mi amor. You must to do the same.” She adjusted the clasp of my necklace, and smoothed the coconut circles against my chest. “You cannot wait for the things to happen. You must to make them happen. And now I will not say more because I know you are angry with me when I say the things how they are.”
I flushed. Dika was right. I felt as though I’d climbed up on the high diving board and was taking in the view. But the thought of stepping into the air still scared me.
After Ángel finished his pastry, he bowed to Dika, and ceremoniously asked her to dance. Watching Ángel dance was even better than watching him play basketball. He moved perfectly with the rhythm; he was a magical, flowing sculpture of music.
And Dika—who would have guessed she could move her body like that? She was in her element, like a sea cow in water, a graceful, beautiful thing, a strange mermaid. She followed Ángel’s spins and dips without missing a beat. She added belly dance moves, snaking her arms above her head, gyrating her hips. Beads of sweat flew off her like tiny diamonds.
After a few songs, Mr. Lorenzo danced with her. He wasn’t as amazing as Ángel—his movements were slow and deliberate and his eyes full of concentration, focused on which step came next. Still, Dika was glowing. She said to him loudly in Spanish, so that everyone could hear, “Mi amor, if you don’t come back from Guatemala in exactly one week, I’ll come get you and put you over my shoulder and carry you back!”
Ángel glanced at me and grinned. “Let’s dance, lime-girl.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know how.”
He pulled on my arm. “Come on. I’ll show you.”
But I shook my head and felt Dika frowning at me.
Ángel grabbed Abuelita instead, and after the song ended, he came back to me. I said no again, and then he grabbed an aunt, and for the next song I said no again, and then he danced with the other aunt, until he’d gone through every female but me and Ñola, who was lying beside the patio, watching the stars. I looked at Ñola and thought, That’s me, that’s who I’ll be in eighty years, an old weird lady who hovers at the edges of life and watches the sky and hears a faint echo of laughing stars and lives on that memory.
The next song was my favorite, “Following the Moon.” This time, when Ángel asked, I said yes.
Until very late we danced. I stepped on his feet and bumped into him on spins, but we laughed and I let the music move through me like water, and it was actually fun. Afterward, we all collapsed into wooden chairs, exhausted and sweating. Ángel sat next to me and let his arm rest on the back of my chair.
“So, lime-girl, why’d you run off last night?”
I shrugged, embarrassed. “I guess I was confused.”
“I missed you,” he said.
I looked at him. “Really?”
He leaned into me and lowered his voice, so low it crackled. “I dreamed about you last night, Sophie. You want to hear it?”
“Sure.”
“You were inside a blue room, at night. The moon was shining through the window. You were lying on a bed inside a white mosquito net. There was a red glass necklace around your neck. That’s all you had on.”
I felt myself blush.
He continued. “I looked at your hips and I wanted to move my fingers over them. I wanted this more than anything.”
A heat gathered in my center and ran down my thighs.
“But when I came closer I couldn’t find the opening to the net, and I got tangled up, and you were inside, watching me, smiling. But you didn’t help me.”
I looked at him hard and tried to make out the pupils in the dark through his sunglasses. “I would have helped you.” And then, quickly, before I could change my mind, I asked, “You want to go for a walk?”
He took my hand and pulled me up. I didn’t look back to see Dika’s reaction as we walked up the hill, past the outhouse, through the cornfield to an open meadow. Here we sat down and tilted our heads back, watching the moon, half full above us, small and clear in the sky.
Ángel took off his sunglasses. “Look,” he said, pointing. “Our stars.”
I nodded and stole a glance at his eyes. “I’ll never know what’s in your box, will I?”
He hesitated and then said, “Seventy-three hundred dollars.”
“That’s it? Just money?”
“It’s a lot of money.” He seemed hurt.
“I mean, I thought it was something mysterious, like a treasure map or old letters. Something special.”
The insect songs rose and fell and rose and finally he said, “It is special. I’ve been saving it for three years. I’m going to set up a business in my town.”
I tried to let the gravity of this settle in. He’d spent three years planning for this. And he’d probably been dreaming of it since he was a little kid. “Does anyon
e else know?”
He shook his head. “Don’t tell anyone. My dad thinks it’s too dangerous there.”
My stomach clenched. “Is it?”
“The war’s over, but my dad says the soldiers kept their weapons and their way of thinking.”
Suddenly my chest ached. What if something happened to him there? “Why are you going?” I whispered.
He lay back and watched the sky and I watched his face. “I always felt out of place in Tucson,” he said. “Like part of me was somewhere else.”
“But I feel that way too!” I said. “And I’m not running away.”
“I have to go, Sophie. You know how Pablo feels here, at home, with all these memories of his mother? I think that’s how it’ll be for me, too.”
I wanted to touch the curves of his cheekbones. Instead, I stretched out on my back beside him. I thought of Dika’s urgent voice: You must to tell him, Sophie! You must! I thought of Ñola, who let her one and only true love slip away. I took a deep breath. “Ángel, I want to tell you something. I want to tell you that…” I stopped because what I’d rehearsed was I love you and I want you to come back, but that suddenly seemed pointless and selfish. Isn’t that what it means to love someone—to help him do what his heart is calling him to do?
I looked at the sky because I was scared I’d lose my nerve if I looked right at him. My words came out slowly, drop by drop. “Every time I look at the moon I’ll think of you. And this night. And the night in the van with you following the moon. And that first night, remember, when you stepped off the bunk. Moonlight was coming through the window, and sparks were coming off you. Did you know that? Sparks like stars.
“And every time I see the stars I’ll see those sparks again. At first it will be a sad feeling. But over the years, it might change to a happy feeling with only a little bit of sadness. And maybe one day when I’m old like Ñola and lying on the ground watching the sky, maybe it will fill me with complete happiness to watch the moon and the stars and remember you.” I took a deep breath, held it, and waited. My eyes filled with tears. Crickets sang back and forth in waves. In the spaces between their songs, silence.