The Sky Below

by Stacey D'Erasmo

  “Why do they need this? There are bathrooms inside,” I said, leaning on my shovel.

  Malcolm X sat down in the dirt, lifting the back of her shirt and leaning against the coolness of the earth. “Oh, that feels good. It was one of Julia’s dreams. And it’s not such a bad idea, because the plumbing inside is ancient, and sometimes we have gatherings of folks here. Extra facilities will be a help.”

  I dropped my shovel, hard. “What do you mean, Julia dreamed it? We’re busting our asses in the heat all day because some kid had a dream?”

  Malcolm X took off her mud-caked sneakers. “She’s not ‘some kid.’ Don’t you know? She’s an indigo child.”

  I stared blankly at her.

  “An indigo child is a kid who’s been given special abilities and sent to Earth to change the world and lead us into the future. They have prophetic dreams and some of them can read minds, things like that. It’s very bad to force them or try to make them conform. When Julia was born, Jabalí saw her indigo aura right away, and he’s been careful with her ever since. She’s very important.”

  “Do you believe this bullshit?”

  “Well—”

  “And is there some sort of rule that indigo children can’t get braces? It’s amazing the girl can chew her food.”

  “Jabalí can’t afford anything like braces. Can’t you see that? That’s why he’s always going down to Ixtlan to talk to the communal about buying the land around the church. He’s trying to set up an ecotourist-spiritual center—for Julia. He knows he won’t be around forever.”

  I leaned forward. “Who is her mother?” I said in a low voice. “Doesn’t she have anything to say about this?”

  “Oh.” Malcolm X’s usually sharp look softened. “That’s a sad story. Let’s dig, okay? I’ll tell you later.”

  Unsatisfied, I dug. We got our rhythm, we dug until our hands were in shreds, we talked. Malcolm X had been a political science professor at Berkeley. Up north, she’d left behind years with a gloomy husband, and a baby they never actually had but endlessly fought about. The circumcision question for the phantom baby, she said, had proven to be the final straw. They divorced. And anyway, she had wanted a baby girl, named Laurel. I agreed that Laurel was a pretty name, a name that would be right her whole life, child to woman. No Laurel, though, said Malcolm X. No anyone—she’d had her tubes tied. The gloomy husband, who drank, killed himself a year ago. She’d been an occasional visitor to the ex-convento before, but since his death she’d decided to stay on; she’d taken a name. What kind of father could he ever have been? said Malcolm X, digging and tossing dirt out of the pit. A child would have been swept under by him, his impossible needs. He was inconsolable, she said. An inconsolable man. Bottomless. We talked about names through the afternoon, digging ourselves down past Nathaniel and Margarita to John and Mary until, by the time the dinner bell rang, we had made a pit as deep as Malcolm X was tall.

  “Not bad for one day,” said Malcolm X, leaning on her shovel. Dirt dusted her all over. “And now we’re friends.” She smiled. My hands had left blood smears on my shovel handle.

  At dinner that night, gauze wrapped around my thumbs and crisscrossing my palms, I watched Julia trot around the room, beaming at everyone with her buckteeth. She was wearing the Communion veil again. Javier, a dark-eyed boy about her age, chased her, running at the veil with his fingers at his forehead like bull’s horns, and she shrieked with laughter, wiggling the veil and yelling “Toro!” After dinner, as we drank strong coffee and ate dulce de leche smooth as spun silk, Julia stood on a chair behind Jabalí and braided more things into his hair: a yellow ribbon, a bit of green paper. “Papi, be still,” she said. When she was done, she threw her arms around his neck, resting her cheek in his already much-ornamented hair.

  Malcolm X and I dug for three days, until the handle of that shovel felt like an extension of my hand, which finally stopped bleeding on the afternoon of the third day. Calluses had formed. We had a ladder now, leaning against the dirt walls of the latrine pit. We had considered the fate of the world, written it off, and offered it a thread of hope, several times over. The pit had begun to seem almost cozy, familiar, ours. Above us, the southern sky was high and clear; throughout the day, from where we stood digging, back to back, we could hear muffled footsteps, the murmur of voices, passing cars.

  Malcolm X’s rump was close to mine all day, every day, and her rump, like the rest of her, was surprisingly muscular. Feeling companionably sweaty, rump to rump in the pit, I almost told her who I really was and why I was here, but I didn’t, for fear of jinxing things. Because every time my shovel hit the earth and I was able to loft more dirt out of the pit, I felt death move back an inch. Another, another, another. I beat my lazy-ass cancer with that shovel. Until death was at least twenty feet away. Twenty feet and a half, for good measure. We scrambled up the ladder, threw our shovels out ahead of us, and collapsed at the edge of the pit, giggling, giddy with fatigue. We drank huge gulps of water out of a plastic jug. It was the shank of the afternoon; everyone was working. I tossed a rock into the pit and listened for the small thud.

  “Fuckin’ A,” I commented. “All this for people to shit? What kind of prophecy is that?”

  Malcolm X rolled over and crawled on her belly to the edge of the hole. Resting her chin on her fists, her large breasts scooped between her arms, she said, “Look.”

  I crawled next to Malcolm X and peered into the pit. A rough column of dirt ending in dirt. I saw what she meant. It looked like art, like an earthworks piece by Michael Heizer (Sarah had loved those), or like a meteor had plunged into the ground and disappeared, or like a door. It looked impossible, ominous, beautiful. It was exhilarating. With a surge of energy, I swung myself around and hopped back down the ladder. Malcolm X, laughing, followed me.

  At the bottom of the pit, she turned to me and pressed her body against mine. I bent my head to hers, but we didn’t quite kiss. Instead, we stood like animals, nose to nose, quivering. I was shocked to feel myself hardening. I hadn’t had sex with a woman in so long that it barely seemed like a possibility anymore. And yet. She unzipped my pants and slowly ran the back, then the palm, of her hand along my dick, closing her eyes, taking it in her hand as if it were a precious object she was weighing. “Shhhh,” she whispered, though I wasn’t saying anything. “Shhhh.” Her shirt, when I pressed my face down into it, tasted like dirt. I unbuttoned it. Her large nipple was as warm as the rest of her and it stiffened in my mouth. Then the other. Her skin tasted of salt. Her breasts were so large I couldn’t hold them in my hands, which made me harder, the way a regular guy would get. It was strange to be a regular guy.

  Leaning against the wall of the pit, she pulled her pants off and dirt tumbled over us as I hoisted her up with a grunt. She was heavy, braced against the dirt. She tightened her legs around me; dirt fell into my eyes, my mouth, but once I got into her I was all blood and reckless forward motion. Her skin was hot. “Go,” she said. Hunched over, I buried my face in her neck and pushed like I was trying to push through the dirt wall. We dug together. Was it still art if you fucked in it? Our dirt house was crumbling over our shoulders, into our hair. I thought maybe it would bury us, but I kept pushing anyway. She wouldn’t let me pull out, wrapping me with her short, strong legs, as I got close to coming. The weight of her was almost too much, but it also made me want to fuck her more, deeper, harder, faster. Even in my lust, I noticed that the nodule inside my left thigh didn’t hurt at all. The vein on Malcolm X’s neck pulsated against my closed eyes; her tears mixed with the sweat and dirt and I tasted mud and salt.

  I came. I set her down. We leaned against the walls of the latrine pit as the wind above roared past us. We were both streaked with dirt, panting, sweating. Leaning forward, she took my face in her hands and kissed me deeply, pulling my tongue into her mouth. She held on to my forearm for balance as she stepped back into her pants. A ray of sun shone into the pit, illuminating the side of her face, and I studied the lines the
re, her skin, as if it were a map that might show me where I was. You Are Here. Where? I felt like I had vertigo. I was a stranger to myself; Julia was right. For a second I wondered if I had dreamed it, but there she was, Malcolm X or whatever her name was, buttoning her shirt over her big breasts, pulling the damp hair off her forehead, starting up the ladder. She had a big ass, too. I held my palm to the soft dirt wall in the place where she had lain against it. The spot was still warm.

  Later that afternoon, we began mixing the concrete. She showed me how much water to add to the cement, how to stir the mixture, how to pour it. The dusty bags of cement were even heavier than she had been. I felt like Atlas, and rather pleased with myself, as I struggled to hoist each one onto my shoulder, stagger a few feet with it, and drop it at the base of the big rusty tin drum where we mixed it. We had been coated in dark dirt before; now we were coated in the gray-white dust of the powdered cement. We looked like survivors of Vesuvius, pouring the concrete slabs that would anchor the latrine. I was unaccountably content and, to my great surprise, got half hard for her off and on all afternoon.

  At the end of the day, we went back to the edge of the latrine pit to admire our handiwork. “You’re a good digger,” Malcolm X said, pinching my ass. “We could use a digger like you around here.” At dinner she fetched me my dessert—a flan like a cloud of cream—with a wink.

  That night—and for this I have no more explanation than for what happened in the latrine pit—Janos came to me in my nun’s cell. I woke to find him sitting upright on the bed, his feet on the floor, gazing down at me. The Tweeties perched on his right knee, sleeping, their yellow heads tucked into their yellow chests. He was in the middle of telling me something, a very long story in Hungarian, and somehow I knew Hungarian, and I was torn between a ferocious desire to know what happened next and an equally ferocious desire for the story, which had every kind of thing in it, not to be over. He talked on and on into the dark, and I held my breath for fear that he would stop. I didn’t want to be a stranger forever.

  Where are you? I miss you.—G

  I walked outside the Internet place. The sun was bright on the zócalo. A group of kids, big boys and little boys, were scrambling on the basketball court, all of them in the baggy shorts and enormous shirts of American ghetto style. Michael Jordan looked on, inscrutable as Mona Lisa. The burnt-orange ball pounded on the concrete. The boys shouted to one another. In marked contrast to my dream, the virtual Janos in real life had nothing to say to me. I’d checked the Sent queue—no problems there. Caroline had sent me back a long, articulate, pleading, worried missive that I didn’t finish reading. Sydnee had written curtly that I was fired. Where Janos should have been, however, there was a blank space. I watched the boys run up and down the court, chasing the basketball. Who did they love? Did any of them love another boy? Could a boy do that in Ixtlan? The tallest one, soaked in sweat, tumbled theatrically down onto the concrete as he was fouled. The other boys gathered around to help him up and jostle one another in their baggy ghetto clothes.

  Across the zócalo, I saw Jabalí leave the municipal building. He waved me over. I crossed the square and got into the truck with him. “How did it go?” I said.

  He lifted his shoulders, started the rumbling truck. “These things take time. They understand the ecoturismo, but this is a very Catholic place.” He pointed to the church on the hill. “They’re suspicious of gringos with ideas about the spirit.” He waved his fingers in a mock-spooky gesture.

  “Well,” I said, “can you blame them? Consider the history.”

  He laughed. “Not to mention looking like this,” he said, tugging at the tinsel and feathers and other items in his hair. He had, however, put on a clean white button-down shirt, long pants, and decent sandals for his meeting. He looked smaller, dressed conventionally. “To them I’m a madman. Harmless, but a madman.”

  We left the town and began climbing back into the mountain. I kicked off my shoes. “Did you get the duct tape?” We always needed duct tape at the ex-convento.

  Jabalí nodded.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  He nodded again, shifting. The topmost shimmering pool at La Hacienda came into sight.

  “This place, the ex-convento—what is it all about? I don’t understand.”

  Jabalí squinted. “Yeah. I don’t always understand it myself, to tell you the truth. It just got a hold of me. It started because I used to have another name. And then for a while I had a number.” He gave me a knowing glance, but I must have looked blank, because he continued, “Twenty-five years ago, when I finally walked outside those prison gates, I swore that I would make something better. Not just another fucking prison with prettier walls and a big television set.” He slapped at a bug on his wrinkled mahogany neck. “When I go, I want Julia to feel like her crazy old father left her something that matters. Someplace a special person like her can be. Where she can build what needs to be built.”

  Not wanting to know, at least not yet, or maybe ever, what he’d been in for, I asked, “So it’s like a utopia? Like a commune?”

  We shuddered around an upward curve. The shining expanse of La Hacienda’s grounds came into full view, glorious and pristine. Malcolm X had told me that they had fresh salmon flown in every day. Half of Ixtlan worked at La Hacienda in some capacity or other, mostly as maids, waiters, and groundskeepers. “It’s what’s next,” Jabalí said. “I can’t explain it to you better than that.”

  I stared out the truck window at La Hacienda. It was quite beautiful: someone had dreamed it up, terraced the mountainside, dug the pools to spill water from terrace to terrace. “Twenty-five years? You’ve been here twenty-five years?”

  “Yeah. Never expected to be. I thought I was on my way to Costa Rica. Ixtlan was much less built up then.”

  “So you’ve seen a lot of folks come through here.”

  “Who are you looking for?”

  I didn’t hesitate. “My father. He came this way, maybe, around twenty years ago. It’s just a feeling. I don’t have any evidence.”

  “Hmmm. You should ask Julia. She might be able to pick up a vibration, see something. Do you have anything that belonged to him with you?”

  “I do, actually.”

  That night, after dinner, I brought Julia to my nun’s cell. We sat cross-legged on the cold floor. I handed her my father’s radio. She closed her eyes, felt the radio all over with her slender brown fingers, turned it on, turned it off, held it against her cheek. She set it in front of her on the stone floor and held her hands over it. My skin prickled; my heart speeded up.

  “Who is this?” she said, eyes still closed. “He’s a running man.”

  “My father.”

  She nodded. “Okay.” She tilted her head. “He’s a running man. But.” She frowned, pursed her lips. “He is sad.”

  “He’s sad?”

  She touched the knobs on the radio. “Homesick.”

  “Was he here?”

  She sighed. “If he was here, he wanted to leave again. Homesick.”

  “So did he? Did he come here and go back home?”

  She shook her head. “I can’t say. I don’t know. I’m getting tired. Javier ate all the extra cookies.”

  “Julia, please. Tell me.”

  She opened her eyes, lifted her head. The small radio, silent, sat between us. “They’re going. I can’t. They say it was a long time ago.”

  I did my best to conceal my overwhelming disappointment from her. She was only a little girl, after all. “Yes. It was a long time ago. When I was about your age.” She looked fractious, exhausted, and as if she might cry. “It’s okay, honey. You did great.”

  I remember the cave. On the day that the concrete was drying in the latrine pit, Julia led the way to what she had said was a special place with treasure inside. She was purposeful in shorts, an Outkast T-shirt that was three sizes too big for her and belted with a white rebozo, and good sandals with a buckle and a thick tread. I walked behind her carr
ying a knapsack with water and lunch. I was already hungry.

  Julia turned around. “Are you tired yet?”

  “No.”

  “Good. We have a ways to go.”

  The path was wide and well worn. Not far away, the river burbled, creatures scrabbled in the undergrowth, birds called. There was a single sock in the dirt, a bottle cap. We reached the edge of the winding river and Julia grasped my hand as if I was blind and she was going to spell something on my palm.

  “That’s them,” she said. “The Burros.”

  Five rocks, rising in a dark curve above the water; when I squinted, they looked like a shoulder, a back, a donkey head.

  Julia was stern. “They got stuck swimming across. Spit.”

  “What?”

  “Spit right now!” She kicked me.

  “Ouch.” I spat in the general direction of the river. The current was strong here, rushing over the Burros. It wasn’t hard to imagine that they had gotten caught, confused, enchanted. The sound alone would have been bewildering to an animal balancing on hooves.

  She sighed. “Okay, good. Come on.”

  We turned and walked along a path by the edge of the river that lifted us above it, grew thinner, more tangled. The air changed, turning sweeter and damper. The greenery lightened in color and became more delicate. There were fewer tall trees, though it didn’t feel as if we were emerging into a clearing or a sparser part of the forest. The path behind us disappeared. The stray clangs and shouts from the ex-convento grew faint, washed away. We entered a long field of ferns. Julia let her hands drift over the big, mitten-like leaves that were nearly as tall as she was. They eddied around my waist, brushed my arms. The green of the ferns was supersonic. When Julia turned her head, I saw that her eyes were closed.