The House on Carnaval Street

by Deborah Rodriguez

  “Stop it. You’re not crazy. But I’m not saying it’s not going to happen again. Though at least now you have some tools to work with, a way to start coping with the PTSD.”

  “I hate that label.”

  “I understand. And honestly? Trauma has become sort of an overused term these days. But it is good to have a name for it, because it’s hard for people to explain an injury that’s invisible. And I suspect that it may not be the classic war-zone syndrome, the one that legitimized the diagnosis for the rest of the world, that you’re suffering from. What happened over in Afghanistan did leave you raw and exposed, and for certain paved the way for a whole host of issues to come back and bite you in the ass, hard.”

  “I guess I can buy that. But I still can’t believe what happened here today. And I’m still blown away that I met you. It’s all so weird.”

  “Not so weird. It’s all a part of the magic in this area. It draws that energy out of you. The trauma will eventually stop controlling you, just maybe not as quickly as you’d like.” ­Cynthia stood and held out her hands to pull me to my feet. “Sleep well, my friend.” She hugged me with a strength a girl her size had no business having. “Meet me downstairs at breakfast. I have something I want to show you.”

  I headed wearily down to my room. Appreciative as I was for all Cynthia was trying to do for me, it was a lot to digest, and I still really wasn’t sure what I believed. But I couldn’t get the thought out of my head that meeting Cynthia was somehow meant to be. And maybe, I was beginning to think, moving to Mexico was meant to be. Despite my implosion at the mall, there was no denying that I was feeling a little more like the old Deb, in the good way, every day. Mexico seemed to be giving me something I desperately needed. I was genuinely grateful, and looking forward to the day when I could figure out how to give back something in return.

  “Good morning, Mary Sunshine,” chirped Cynthia the next morning as a cup of steaming hot coffee seemed to magically appear in her outstretched hand. “Sleep well?”

  “Arumph,” I mumbled, my tongue seeming to have stayed behind in that nice cushy bed.

  “Take a slug and follow me,” she ordered. I dragged behind as Cynthia marched toward the far back wall of the courtyard. “I wanted to make sure you saw something before you went home.”

  “It’s a wall, Cynthia. And I’m gonna need some more coffee.”

  “Suck it up. You’ll get your coffee in a sec. And I’ll have you know it’s not just a wall.”

  “Okay,” I said, anxious for that refill.

  “People often tell us they get odd sensations here at Casa Encantada, but especially in this spot. They say it’s the same feeling they get when they’re out visiting the pyramids around here.”

  “Huh. Interesting.”

  “It is interesting. The pyramids often seem to leave people in a state of high energy, an otherworldliness. It’s all positive—not scary, just different.”

  “That’s kind of cool,” I had to admit, remembering how my skin tingled that first night, when Sharon and I were walking around town.

  “It is cool. We wonder if there might have been a pyramid at one time on top of the hill behind us, where the basilica is now. It’s all speculation, but from what’s been excavated it’s clear that this is not a ‘natural’ hill.”

  I have to say that when I reached out to touch the orange surface, I did feel more than just the bumpiness of the adobe against my palm. It was sort of like a little jolt, as if I had brushed up against an electrified fence or had been jolted by one of those dog zappers. But who knows, I thought. The power of suggestion can be a potent thing.

  Cynthia must have read the doubt on my face. “We had a guest once, a guy who worked for NASA. Even he kept telling me he felt funny every time he approached the back of the house. A scientist! He also explained to me about the vortex. You’ve heard about the vortex, eh?”

  I shook my head.

  “They say Pátzcuaro is a vortex. Some say there’s an energy flow that interacts with your inner self, that facilitates prayer, meditation, and healing. Most places in the world have a certain amount of vibration, but here it’s outrageously intense. The NASA guy told me he wished he had brought his equipment with him, to show us. He said that butterflies and birds feel the natural vibration; they’re drawn to this spot, almost pulled into it.”

  I didn’t say that I did sort of feel the same way, personally, about Mexico in general. “So why is that?”

  “It’s the pyramids. You know about the power of pyramids, eh?”

  I shrugged my shoulders, making a note to myself to read up on that later. Cynthia continued. “A lot of people believe that the purpose of building the pyramids was to harness the cosmic energies. Think about it. If the interiors of the pyramids could be fresh and energized, the mummies would be well preserved. Pyra means fire, so think pyra-mid, fire in the middle. The pyramids harness the fire, or energy, and preserve it within. There have been tons of experiments showing how pyramids can keep food fresh longer, make razor blades sharper, even bring sick plants back to life. So of course it makes sense, as so many have claimed, that exposure to pyramid vibrations can alter your mental, physical, and emotional states. It’s all about the aura.”

  As I’ve said, I am far from a woo-woo type of person, but the fact was that the slight dizziness I had felt as soon as we arrived in Pátzcua-ro had still not gone away, and I was beginning to wonder if it had anything to do with what Cynthia was talking about. It wasn’t a bad feeling, it was just a strange one, like having permanent butterflies in your stomach and an extra beat in your pulse. Whatever it was, it was not to be denied. Nor was the feeling that my encounter with Cynthia was meant to be. I didn’t know quite what to make of it all, but I did know one thing: I would be making the trip to Pátzcuaro, and Casa Encantada, again, soon.

  And then a few things happened that I never saw coming.

  Noah had gone back to Michigan and was working hard to live up to his end of our bargain. He had stopped drinking, on his own, cold turkey. I was proud, and extremely relieved. But now that it was time for me to step up to the plate, I seemed to be dragging my feet through the Pacific beach sand. I had offered Noah a three-week temporary visit. I really looked forward to seeing him, and was hopeful about witnessing the change that, he swore over and over, had come over him. On one hand, having family nearby sounded truly wonderful. And yes, Mexico seemed to be the great do-over spot, the perfect place to start fresh. And we all knew Noah needed that. The problem was that I was still worried about his ability to stay sober here, and was concerned about the challenges of earning a living, should we agree that he could stay longer. But there was something else that was fueling my reluctance. Here I was, trying to get my own act together, trying to build a new life for myself, on my own. Did I really want my empty nest invaded by a full-grown duckling?

  Cynthia and I had been talking regularly by phone. One thing we had recently discussed was the idea of moving from surviving to thriving, something she assured me was totally possible for those suffering from trauma. I was so ready to thrive it was killing me. Just being in Mexico had caused something to shift inside me, and I did feel like I had changed even a little more since my return from Pátzcuaro. After a lot of effort devoted to thinking about everything Cynthia and I had been talking about, I thought that maybe I was beginning to understand myself better. Between our frequent conversations and e-mail exchanges (hers always ending with the sign-off “Love and Light”) things were slowly starting to make a little more sense. Was it really such a smart idea for me to take on the responsibility of caring for Noah when I was just beginning to learn how to properly take care of myself ? Even on airplanes they tell you to secure your own oxygen mask before putting one on your child. But a deal is a deal, and down he came.

  I wasn’t sure what to expect when he got off that plane. The last time I had seen Noah, about a year earlie
r, he was not a pretty sight. His clothes were dirty and worn, and I had to hold myself back from throwing him in the shower and scrubbing him down. Imagine my relief when a trim young man in a crisp white shirt came bounding through customs with a huge grin on his face. I just prayed, for both our sakes, that the new leaf he seemed to have turned over was more than skin deep.

  It wasn’t long before Noah fell in love with Mexico, and with a Mexican woman. Martha was Sergio’s sister-in-law, and Sergio and his wife, Teresa, had introduced them within days of Noah’s arrival. I was good with that. Noah needed to hang out with people closer to his own age, and besides, Sergio was the only guy around who never touched a drop of alcohol.

  During those first few weeks all of us had been walking around on tiptoes, drinking water and sodas with Noah, quickly stepping away from any social situation that we feared might turn into too much temptation. But Noah was pretty amazing. Nothing seemed to faze him, and he was just so happy soaking in all that Mazatlán had to offer (minus the booze) that I began to relax. But watching Noah as he tried on life as a sober person turned out to be exhausting. He ran every day, despite the ninety-five-degree heat and one-hundred-percent humidity. Then it was off to the gym. And those were just the mornings! In the afternoons he’d wander by foot, alone, through the streets of the city, just as I had done not that long before. He’d come home happy, with descriptions of places he’d been and stories of people he’d met. I was in awe of his ability to adapt so easily to a new life in a new country. For him, it was more than that.

  “People down here just accept me for who I am,” he explained to me one night over dinner. “At home I felt like such a failure. I know I disappointed you, and everyone else.”

  “Oh, Noah . . .”

  “I know I did. You don’t have to deny it. I felt like it got to the point that everyone, including myself, expected me to fail.”

  “We knew you’d be okay, eventually.”

  “Well, to me, it felt like everyone was always looking at me and thinking ‘loser.’ Here, I’m not a loser. I’m just Noah.”

  It wasn’t long before Noah started looking for a job. If he wanted to stay, that was to be part of the deal. He grabbed the first thing he found, a gig as a time-share salesman, where he was urged to go hang out at the cruise ship terminals or in front of the hotels, luring innocent tourists into a sales presentation. Not ideal, but he was trying. Then Martha told him she was pregnant. The deal was sealed.

  Noah had always been attracted to the notion of family, and now he was starting his own. I knew all too well that a cross-cultural relationship was a hard tree to be climbing. Now both my sons seemed to be following in my footsteps. Zach had married a Persian woman he had met while in school in Northern Cyprus. With her high expectations and relentless pushing, she was good for Zach, in the long run. But his wife held on tightly to her family’s ways, where even a hundred-year-old grudge was something one was bound to honor. Let’s just say that avoiding a quarrel was something Zach was becoming quite adept at. And Noah was about to be put to the test by the paradox that was the Mexican female. Martha and her sister Teresa were fiery women. And I had been a target of Analisa’s hair-trigger temper more than once, like when I teased her about her picture in the paper next to a foul-mouthed old lecher I knew from around town. She flew into such a rage that I thought her head was going to fly right off her neck like a rocket from a launching pad. Any of these women could rip you a new one in a nanosecond. And from what I had seen, Mexican women had very conflicting expectations of their boyfriends and husbands—they complain about their men carousing too much, yet don’t respect them when they’re not macho enough. They’ll put up with all sorts of crap, but in the end, they, the women, are the ones who run the show. I feared my Noah might be way too sweet for this world. Even the toughest of men don’t stand a chance with a Mexican woman. Usually the men’s way of coping is to just ignore their wives’ mouths, and go off to the cantinas with their pals or meet up with their mistresses. That’s sort of normal down here. And there are plenty of men who even have whole other families outside the home. Martha once caught her best friend’s husband down at the mall, ­cradling an infant, a baby that clearly didn’t belong to her friend, in his arms.

  I admit I was nervous when Noah set out to make his first visit to Martha’s house, straight up the donkey-trail streets to the top of The Hill, a neighborhood with the best view of the city, yet one that nobody I knew had ever dared to visit. Generations of Mazatlecos had made their home up there for years, with houses passed down from parents to kids, and cousins and nephews and in-laws taking up residence so close to one another that if anyone sneezed their entire street would echo with their family’s saluds. It was cheap, way back when, to buy on The Hill. And it wasn’t a bad place to live. But by now the old neighborhood had become the turf of a bunch of small-time drug dealers, who unfortunately at times neglected to pay up, and who unfortunately at times could find themselves in big trouble. Handcuffed guys tossed into the back of a truck were a common sight at the bottom of The Hill, though you never could tell who it was behind the wheel.

  But I had to laugh when Noah described that first evening at the house—all of Martha’s six brothers and sisters and various spouses and children, including Martha’s own three-year-old, Derek, all talking at the same time. Except for Martha’s mother and father, who hadn’t spoken a word to each other in more than twenty years, their communication limited to the bird her mom flipped her dad every time they passed in the hallway.

  I was going to be a grandma. And as horrified as some people my age might have been hearing news like that, I, on the other hand, was struck with wonder. A new life! Though it probably could have waited a little bit, I was determined to be supportive of Noah, just as my parents were of me and some of the more questionable turns I had taken in my life. And I do believe that everything happens for a reason. It wasn’t just about me coming to Mexico anymore. Any second-guessing I had put myself through about the move down here was over the minute that baby was announced. A whole new human being was going to come into this world, and if I hadn’t been restless and unsettled and unable to submit to the allure of the California lifestyle, this, in all probability, never would have happened. I crossed my fingers that it would be a girl.

  Of course, I loved having my boys. I can still picture Noah gleefully climbing every vertical object in sight, and Zach crawling around in the dirt hunting frogs and bugs. But deep down I also wanted a girl. Someone I could take shopping for little ruffly skirts and sparkly shoes, who would watch in the mirror as I put on my lipstick and beg with pursed lips, “Me too,” who would someday share her secrets and hopes and dreams—that’s what I ached for more than anything.

  Now suddenly every little girl on the street drew me in like a magnet. I began to picture those beautiful big brown eyes and that shiny dark hair belonging to the girl I imagined growing inside Martha’s belly. I smiled as they poured out of the school gates in the afternoons, dressed in identical pleated skirts and white blouses, peering up and down the sidewalk for their mamas, and laughed as they squealed at the sight of the balloon man in the distance. But, of course, along with that I became even more struck by the sadness of the girls who lived the other life, who spent their time on the streets desperately trying to bring home enough change to keep their mother or father or whoever was pushing them out that door day after day, night after night, satisfied. I was particularly disturbed by the same young flower girl I’d been seeing since I first moved to Mazatlán, who I now seemed to come across every time I turned a corner. I started buying enough flowers from that girl to fill a mausoleum. It did cross my mind that I actually might not be helping her. Who knows what that money was going for? And seeing how much she was bringing home, whoever was making her work would probably just raise the bar, and start expecting that poor girl to sell out her inventory each and every day. It just seemed so hopeless for all these girls.
Even if they had a parent around, the kids were simply doing all they knew how to do, the only thing they saw around them. And if they were left to fend for themselves, what else could they do? There had to be some way to shore up the banks of that slippery slope, though for the life of me I couldn’t figure out what it was.

  The next thing that happened took me even more by surprise. I had stopped by Macaws to say hi to Analisa on my way to the first meeting with my new Spanish teacher. I was just getting ready to leave, bolstered by Ana’s words of encouragement, when a couple of guys came barreling in, mouths first. You couldn’t ignore these two, with their booming laughter and eager expressions. It was clear they were new to Mazatlán, they just seemed so damn excited about everything. The big one, who had the broad face of a Pacific Islander or something, ordered a couple of beers as his pal, a snowy-haired Japanese man, started chatting it up with everyone within earshot. I remained at the bar to eavesdrop, curious to know who these two characters were, tourists or snowbirds or what? When I overheard the Japanese guy say something about how he and his partner just got a home in the Marina, I put one and one together. Partner, plus a home in the Marina—a very chichi area—equaled gay. I loved these two guys. Funny and happy and loud, they were so entertaining that I was tempted to skip class. Instead I stood and offered the little Japanese guy my seat.

  He smiled, which made me smile back. Behind his back, Analisa gave me the local sign for “rich,” her thumb and index finger held far apart, as if an invisible fat wallet were sitting in between. I ignored her.

  “New in town?” So I’d be late. Hopefully the lesson ran on Mexico time, where it’s ten until it’s eleven.

  “Just got here yesterday.”

  “I could tell.”

  “It’s that obvious? My name is Denis.”

  “Debbie.” I shook his cool, smooth hand.