The Sky Below

by Stacey D'Erasmo

  Mexico is actually full of ex-conventos; they’re not rare. If you said to someone, It happened at the ex-convento, that person would reply, Which one? And yet, for all his vision, his many, often contradictory visions, Jabalí never gave the ex-convento or the ragtag group that inhabited it a name. Maybe he thought it shouldn’t be limited to one name. Or maybe if he named it, that might give the group a starting point and, potentially, an end point, a moment when he would have to know whether or not he’d failed. Or maybe he just didn’t get around to it. So it was always “the ex-convento.” If you knew about it, you knew which one it was.

  I set my father’s radio on top of the stack of wooden crates and turned it on. A man speaking Spanish in the deliberate cadences of a speech, arguing some point. I turned it off. I sat down on the bed and looked up at the rough, uneven plaster on the ceiling. It was dull red in some places, yellow in others, and it was falling down. It looked like scabs. In the corner of the ceiling, the building’s lath was exposed. The walls seemed to be made out of papier-mache, layer upon crumbling layer, and they were cold. My bed was made up with clean white sheets, a modest pillow, a blanket folded at the foot. I was tired. I’d been traveling so long. I leaned against the wall and closed my eyes. The gravity in my body was still shifting; I felt as if I was spinning.

  “Hey.” I opened my eyes. Julia stood in my doorway in her many skirts and shirts, folding one dusty bare foot against the floor. “Hi.”

  “Hi, Julia. You can come in.”

  She did a sliding step into the room, picked up the radio. “Did you bring this?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “From where?”

  “New York.”

  “New York,” she repeated. “I knew that. That was in my dream.” She jumped and her colorful skirts flounced, then she sat cross-legged in the middle of the room. “Do you want to pray?”

  “I’m not religious. Do you have to be religious to be here?”

  She shook her head decisively and smiled broadly at me. For the first time, I saw her buckteeth. I hadn’t noticed them in the church, and in the truck she had kept her veil across her nose. Her teeth were terribly uneven and practically perpendicular to her head. “You can be here,” she allowed. “I dreamed you.”

  “Oh.” Along with everything else, I couldn’t understand why no one had asked me who I was or what I was doing here. They had just taken me in, as if I was expected. “So, do you like to pray in that big church in town?”

  “I have things I have to do there,” she said.

  I tried another tack. “Julia,” I said, “what did you mean that I can’t have a name yet? Do you give people their names, too?”

  She regarded me as though I were an idiot. “Of course not. You pick your name. When you’re ready.”

  “Ready for what?”

  “To stay with us.”

  “Oh,” I said, “honey, I’m not planning to stay here. I’m . . . looking for someone. But then I have to go back to New York.”

  “Maybe,” she said in the imperturbably superior tone that only an eight-year-old can take. “You don’t know.”

  I began to feel annoyed. “No, Julia,” I said, “I do know. I live there. I’m going back.”

  “Who are you looking for?”

  I didn’t want to go into it. Who were these people? It seemed best to change the subject again. “Is Julia the name you picked for yourself?”

  “I haven’t picked my name yet. It’s almost time. I have a list.” She paused. “You can’t see it, Stranger.”

  I was so tired. There was a fog in my head. “Stranger? No, my name is—”

  Julia cut me off with a laugh, jumped to her feet, hopped up and down a few times in her skirts, and did a little heel-toe dance. “Here,” she said. From her dirty fist she produced a red jujube. She set it on the blanket. “This is for you.” Then she scampered out of the room. Her footsteps pounded away down the hall.

  I ate the red jujube, which was delicious. A bell that wasn’t inside my head rang; I later learned that it was the dinner bell, but that night I fell asleep sitting up in my clothes. Wherever it was I had ended up, I didn’t care. They were a bunch of weirdos, but so long as I didn’t get beaned by any falling sixteenth-century plaster, I’d probably be all right.

  I woke up a few hours later, chilled, hungry, my belt buckle cutting into my waist. I undressed and got into bed. The cool night air seemed to get cooler as it drifted across the stone floor. A coyote howled outside. In the courtyard, a few people were speaking Spanish in low tones. What did the nun think about, lying here so long ago? Did she really think only about Jesus? At least she knew what her life was about, that Mexican bride of Christ. I imagined she was short, serious, studious, with an unfortunate nose. I pulled the surprisingly soft, dense wool blanket around my cold shoulders. It was scented with lavender. I wondered if everyone had gotten my e-mail and if they’d written me back yet. Even if they were mad at me, I hoped they missed me, too, a little. Surely they understood the pressure I was under, and that I had to do what I had to do.

  I remember the sacred tree. It was a tall, spreading tree in the middle of a field that could be seen for miles around. Caroline would have liked it.

  And I remember—still, with such happiness, such delight, were they not the biggest sign of all that I was doing the right thing?—I remember my wings. My wings! How they arched above my head. Their weight on my shoulder blades. Their conductivity: heat, cold, wind. Like getting a seventh sense.

  But days spent in the sacred tree were long, and trying to find a spot on the branch that didn’t stab me in the balls, the ass, or the thighs was a continual head-on collision with futility. The wings didn’t help; my shoulders ached from the leather straps, and I was sure something was living in the tip of the left wing. Something with a lot of legs and antennae that also could bite. The wings were filthy and they smelled of old glue and the sweat of the person who’d used them last. They were also heavier than shit, made of real white feathers from what must have been an entire flock of birds, and highly sensitive to wind currents. Every time a breeze came up, I almost fell out of the damn sacred tree altogether. Julia, who was generally perched on the branch above me in her pretty, ultralight, modern moth wings that were made out of polyester and silk thread, never tilted as the breeze merely ruffled her hair, shimmered her moth wings.

  When Jabalí had put the big wings on me in the courtyard of the ex-convento and explained the project that first morning, I was thrilled, flattered that he’d let me participate, but I also suspected that this was a test, which amused me. Here was Jabalí’s explanation: “We’re pantomiming the animal origin in the sacred tree of Ixtlan. Another time, we would do this as part of a velada, but CNN wants to shoot segments around the world on eco-protests, so . . .” He shrugged. “We’ll be an eco-protest. That they can understand.” He rummaged through a bin on the east side of the courtyard.

  I rolled my shoulders around in the wings. They were heavy and reached down to my knees. They stank. They were real. The straps already, satisfyingly, hurt. “It’s not an eco-protest? What’s a velada?”

  “Yeah, sure.” He pulled a moth-eaten monkey mask with eerily lifelike fur out of the bin and held it to his face. “Phew. We’re protesting, our whole life here is a counterargument. If they can see it if we call it a protest, it’s a protest. Do you know the work of Maria Sabina?”

  Was that Julia’s mother? “No.”

  “Very, very important shaman. I came here to study with her, to experience velada. Extraordinary woman.”

  “But what is velada?”

  He shook his head. “It’s hard to put words to it. Come on, let’s go. Don’t trip.”

  By day four in the tree, sweating, shoulders aching, I was exasperated enough to venture, “I don’t think they’re coming. Did anyone call to confirm?”

  Jabalí, eyes closed, leaning against the trunk on a lower branch with his monkey mask on, murmured, “You have to be patient.” />
  Malcolm X, who was short and plump with very large breasts and wore a squirrel tail, said, from near the top of the tree, “Julia, go get us some sodas? Por favor?”

  The others, in their bits of fur and fin, were quiet. Meditating maybe. Or simply bored speechless. The wind rocked us in the branches. Julia, in her ultralight moth wings, clambered down onto my branch. She leaned against me, smelling of sugar and sweat and jalapeños. A mosquito bite by her knee was puffy and red. “How are you doing, Stranger?” she said. “Do you want a name yet?”

  I adjusted the strap that was making me sore. “I like my old name.”

  “Ha!” said Julia, swinging down to the next branch, and the next. “Idiot.” She jumped, flying lightly to the ground, her skirts billowing. She began hopping and dancing. The tree folk applauded.

  “Geronimo!” cried Julia, stretching out her arms and running down the field toward the ex-convento. The spots on her wings, the colors of her skirts, flew above the scored dry dirt.

  One of the others, a skinny kid in a frog head with a high voice, said, “Maybe he’s right. CNN couldn’t care less about us, or the planet for that matter. How do you even know that guy was for real?”

  “Do you think Julia will bring us back the sodas?” said Malcolm X.

  Jabalí laughed. “Listen,” he said. “They’re coming. Julia dreamed it.”

  “Did she dream she’d bring us sodas?” asked Malcolm X.

  “Did her dream say when, exactly?” asked the skinny kid in the frog head.

  “Forget the sodas,” said Jabalí. “Listen to the wind.”

  My wings were killing me. Maybe velada meant “to stagger around like a sweaty fool.” I pulled a bug out of the left wing and squashed it against the branch. That was one, anyway. The day got hotter. Julia didn’t come back with soda.

  An hour went by. Another. The road remained undisturbed by any CNN trucks. A few motorcyclists went by, engines roaring. As they passed out of sight, the wind gusted, but all at once I was able to ride it. I felt the lift. I moved my shoulder. The wing flapped. I moved the other shoulder. That wing flapped lightly, with perfect control. I moved both wings at the same time, rolling my shoulders, arching my neck, the wings flapping, flapping, flapping on my back, the heavy tips tracing parabolas in the air. I laughed out loud. I didn’t think CNN was coming, I didn’t think the tree was sacred, the branch didn’t stop stabbing me where I lived, another bug bit me on the neck, but I flapped my wings and was so fucking happy. Let the bugs bite. Let the wind blow. I had been truly transformed at last. I was a bird, a glorious filthy white bird. I stood up on my branch, clutching the branch above me, and crowed.

  “Ah-oooo,” I cried. “Ah-oooo.” Everyone else in the tree laughed. I laughed, too, victoriously. I felt not only well but better than well. Nothing hurt. I had tons of energy. Let the lazy lion pad around below the tree. Let him gaze up, frustrated, at the bird he’d never catch now.

  There were eleven of us at dinner that night—seven from the tree plus a short English professor who was walking from Ixtlan to Oaxaca and his very tall ceramicist wife, two teenage boys from the town in soccer jerseys, and their mother, who cleaned the church. We ate in one of the larger stone rooms, in which paintings of saints hung on the walls and a string of multicolored lacy paper squares ornamented the ceiling’s center beam. From across the table Malcolm X asked me, “So what brings you to us?”

  “I needed a change,” I said. “All I ever did was think about money—I worked on Wall Street.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. Uh-huh.” My tamales were limpid, meaty, with intricate spicing. Indeed, the food at the ex-convento was always astonishingly, even hypnotically, good. I’ve never, before or since, tasted food quite like it.

  “So did you see September 11?” In addition to her very large breasts, Malcolm X, who was around forty-five, had a sharp, restless way of looking.

  “I was late for work that day,” I said, “so I was halfway to the office before I realized what had happened. And then, it was the oddest thing, I didn’t turn around. I walked toward the noise and the smoke and the chaos. I was somewhere on lower Broadway and I looked up and saw the Trade Center buildings and then I saw these shapes. They looked like starfish falling through the air. And I thought, Oh, the world really is ending, the starfish are in the sky. It took me a minute before I understood what they were. Then the first tower collapsed, and I ran like everybody else. I think I ran all the way home that day, gagging.”

  “Starfish,” she said with her sharp look.

  It must have been that, her way of looking, that made me confess through a mouthful of exquisite tamale, “Yes. Starfish. And you know what? I hated it—the constant smell and the dust and the pall everywhere, for months. And you know what else? Secretly, I think the world did end that day. The sky did fall.”

  “Could be,” she said. “So this is the afterlife, is that it? We’re all shades?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well.” She laughed a throaty laugh. “You’ve come to the right place if that’s what you think. Did you try the chicharrones?”

  “Do you think I’m right?”

  “That we’re all shades? I don’t know. But then again, it’s in the nature of shades not to believe they’re shades, isn’t it? They’re all still hoping for another chance back up top.”

  I nodded, considering her point. Who had Malcolm X been “up top”? What had she wanted? She wasn’t shy about her breasts, but in her black T-shirt she didn’t display them much either, in the way of a woman who might have given up on sex. Strong shoulders. Expressive hands. A teacher? A shrink? An actress? “Are you hoping for that?”

  She smiled, but her smile was sly. “Of course,” she said. “Aren’t you?”

  At the other end of the table, Jabalí tapped his knife against his water glass. “I have an important announcement,” he said. We all hushed. He put a hand on Julia’s head. “Julia had a nap this afternoon, and she dreamed that CNN isn’t coming this week. They’ll come later.” Everyone clapped. Julia beamed.

  “Oh, damn,” said Malcolm X. “What?”

  “That means we have to build the latrine. We start on the new moon—day after tomorrow. You’ll be my helper.”

  By now, I had surrendered to not understanding anything, so I said that would be great. On the way to my room that night, I saw my wings through the open doorway of one of the stone rooms. They were hanging from a hook on the wall. Beneath them were the frog head, the squirrel tail, the fox mask, a large shark fin, and a few other hypertrophic animal parts. I stared at my wings with longing, then, darting in, I plucked a feather from the right one and carried it off to my room. I clutched the stolen feather as I fell into a deep sleep.

  The next day, after breakfast, I sat on a cracked stone wall in the airy courtyard and spread out my map. There was the big beige hulk of the United States, and beneath it, like a rudder, the curve of Mexico and the countries beyond it: wider, narrower, narrower still, like the tail of the dolorous mouse in Alice in Wonderland. So many doors. He could have gone in through Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, California. He could have wandered to Baja and drowned. Most of the map fell over the wall like a thin tablecloth. A stone under the paper made a bump, like the bump on my thigh, in New Mexico. A leaf twirled down and covered most of Guatemala.

  Julia, the veil tied around her head, Hell’s Angels style, walked toward me along the wall. She stopped, tapping at Texas with a bare, dirty toe. “Qué es?”

  “I’m trying to figure out something important.”

  She tapped her toe on Mexico. “We’re here.”

  I put my finger on New York, which was tiny. “I come from here,” I said.

  Julia shrugged.

  “No, it’s great. Don’t you want to see other places?”

  “Not really. This is paraíso.” She crouched down on the map, wrapping the veil and her arms around her knees. Perched on North America, she covered it. The Pacific Ocean spread out from
under the tatters of her veil. “What’s your important thing?”

  “It’s a secret.”

  Julia’s face brightened. “I love secrets. Tell!”

  “Not now,” I said. “Not yet.” I touched the map, trying to feel for him, where he might have gone. The stone wall was cold under the paper.

  The rest of the day before the new moon was dull, drifty. Malcolm X sketched ferns in the courtyard. Jabalí, looking like a cobbler out of a fairy tale, tapped at the heels of a pair of large, cracked leather boots. I pretended to read Pablo Neruda, wandered partway down the road toward the tiny town, got hot, wandered back. Stray dogs lay sleeping in the fields. There was nothing in that town anyway. As I approached the ex-convento, I saw Julia by the tall church gate in her Hell’s Angels bridal/Communion/tablecloth veil. She was sitting on an upturned green plastic bucket, back straight, hands folded primly in her lap. The gate was propped open with a brick, but Julia was posted just behind it, her toes on the rusty bottom rail. On her face was an expression of melancholy and fervent expectation.

  “What are you doing, Julia?” I said.

  “Waiting.”

  “For what? CNN?”

  “It’s a secret,” she teased, but she didn’t move from the gate for hours, staring down the road, until the dinner bell rang.

  I remember the latrine pit. I pushed and dug and heaved next to Malcolm X, trying to convince myself that we were falling into a rhythm and were getting somewhere. The dirt was like sand in some places, like iron in others, and at times it shifted unpredictably. How would we ever get to twenty feet? The chickens clucked, watching us from the chicken coop/library nearby. The little library had an odd grandeur, ruined as it was, roof falling in; it must have been beautiful once. My arms ached and my hands blistered within the first hour; my knees began to shake before it was time for lunch.