* * *
•
We head to the Palacio Municipal for information about my great-great-grandmother. They have none. We cross the main plaza, El Jardín, to La Parroquia. The priest, Padre Gabriel, agrees to speak to us. I ask if he has any information about Juana “Juanita” Velasquez, born in the spring of 1880. I have a citation about her baptism certificate from the Internet. She was baptized in early April 1880, which means she was probably born around that time. He tells me he can try to dig up the original baptism certificate.
While we wait, we wander the streets interviewing ancianos about La Adivina. Some of the oldest people have vague memories:
“People came from out of town to speak with her,” one says.
“She was very serious,” says another.
“She wasn’t like other people; she rarely socialized.”
I show the ancianos the photographs I have of her, surrounded by crumbling adobe walls. I ask if they remember where she lived. No one can orient me. The town has changed too much, they say—their mental maps are scrambled up. We return to the church. Padre Gabriel gives me a scanned copy of Juanita’s baptism certificate. It reads, in Spanish: I, the father Juan Montes Casas, solemnly baptized Juana, who was born…on the thirty-first of March at five in the afternoon.”
Eddie’s jaw drops. I knew it.
Juanita was born on March 31—like me.
* * *
•
Eddie, my father and I tour the town with Wilfrido. A car-repair shop catches my attention. I shout at my dad to stop driving. He parks. Crumbling adobe walls, like those in my photographs of Juanita, are visible behind the shop, beyond a dirt lot. My dad sighs. Every house was made of adobe back then, he says, rolling his eyes. You’ll find those walls everywhere. I ignore him. I walk into the shop. Wilfrido follows. We approach the only person there, a man in his fifties with a gray goatee. He is repairing a car. I think my great-great-grandmother used to live here, I say in Spanish. Can I look at the walls over there?
The employee has a friendly smile and vibrant black eyes. He introduces himself as Carlos. It’s all just ruins, but go ahead and take a look, he says. I compare the walls to the photographs I printed out. They are the same, with similar bases of cobbled stones. But surely my father is right. These adobe walls existed throughout the town. Both he and Eddie are still in the car, engine running.
Carlos approaches me and Wilfrido from behind and says: You know, it’s funny, a man came here a long time ago, from the border, just like you….He walked in here saying he wanted to see the place. He said this house used to be a single property, that it belonged to a woman who cured—with herbs and cleansings, something like that, and—
I interrupt him, heart pounding.
Did you say a woman who cured? Did he tell you her name? Was she La Adivina?
I don’t remember if he told me her name.
Do you mind if I turn on my recorder?
He gives me permission to record his voice. Carlos explains that he was a little boy when the man from the border came, maybe five years old. The car-repair shop didn’t exist back then, but his family rented a room on the property.
The man from the border told Carlos that the old woman who once lived there was his grandmother, and that she had lived alone. “He said she was from a ranch across the river over there,” Carlos says, pointing north.
Earlier in the day, the townspeople had told me I could find the ruins of Encinillas—the ranch where Juanita lived before moving to Tlaltenango—somewhere in the desert, across the river.
I’m almost certain I’ve found Juanita’s old house. I wonder who the man from the border could have been. If Carlos was five when the man came, it must have been the late 1950s or early 1960s. My great-grandfather Antonio died in 1961. Perhaps he came to say goodbye to Tlaltenango.
Carlos continues: “There is a weird energy here at midday, from 11:30 a.m. to around 12:15 p.m. or 12:20 p.m. Often, ancianos arrive and sit on that bench right there for no reason. They sit there while I’m working and they just sit. They say, ‘Hey, you know something? There’s a vibration here.’ ”
I show Carlos a photo of Juanita. “This is my great-great-grandmother.” His face turns white. He stumbles backward as if I’ve shoved him. “You’re not going to believe this,” Carlos says, his mouth agape. He shakes his head, then continues: “There was a little garden here, with avocado trees, orange trees, lemon trees and the guayaba tree you still see right there….One day when I came to close the shop, I felt someone throwing dirt on me here….I turned around and there was nobody there. I kept working and I felt it again. I turned around and—with all the fear in the world—I beheld that woman…the woman in the photo.”
Carlos thinks the woman he witnessed was the ghost of La Adivina.
“She was old, skinny, wearing that gray rebozo, but it had black stains on it,” he says. “She just disappeared in the direction of the river.”
* * *
•
Wilfrido, my dad, Eddie and I cross the river the next day. We want to find Encinillas and are following vague directions from those who say it is “somewhere in the mountains beyond the river, west of town, through a black gate off a dirt road.” The road branches several times. I have an eerie sense that I’ve been here and that I know where I’m going. Each time, I tell my father where to turn. The development ends, and we follow a dirt road through the mountains. Wilfrido’s truck gets a flat tire. He doesn’t have his toolbox, and he needs a special wrench to remove the spare. We have no phone service. My father improvises tools out of rocks and knives and removes the spare. We fix the truck and continue driving. We find the black gate and park. We walk. Horned cattle crowd around us. We discover Encinillas just as the sun begins to set: a desolate collection of crumbling walls. Towering piles of tree stumps rise in the abandoned rooms. A stone well and two reservoirs are full of silver water. Eddie finds a reddish rock indented with what look like little ouroboros shapes: a fossil. He puts it into his pocket. It may prove useful later.
* * *
•
On our last day in Tlaltenango, my father, Eddie and I conduct a spell to close what we suspect is Juanita’s open door. It is partially improvised but also uses Eddie’s spell books. The three of us take the spell very seriously, sobered by the strange town. The details must remain a secret, to ensure the spell’s integrity. But it ends like this: Hecho está en el aquí y en el ahora.
For Papi, who gave me a story
For my mother, who gave me earth
Para Abuelita Carolina, por las semillas
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My sister, Michelle Guerrero, journeyed through the past with me and helped me find some of the most vital gems in “The Road to Xibalba.”
Thanks to the teachers and mentors who lit the way. Steve Brown told me I could write a memoir; Jervey Tervalon told me to throw in as much eye of newt and fairy dust as I desired; Suzannah Lessard brought my feet back to earth and helped me make it true; other faculty in the nonfiction MFA program at Goucher College—Diana Hume George, Madeleine Blais, Dick Todd, Patsy Sims, Leslie Rubinkowski—provided wise guidance; and finally, Gabe Kahn and Anthony Harrup opened the door to my father’s birthplace.
I am beyond grateful to the One World team, particularly my editor, Chris Jackson, who gave chase with me upon the sea, keeping me on course through rough winds with his compass, and Nicole Counts, who lives in the lines as well. David R. Patterson believed in this book when it was still a thesis and I am very happy to call him my agent. The recognition from PEN America and FUSION, via the 2016 Emerging Writers Prize, was an unexpected gift. My team at KPBS gave me the time off and flexibility I needed to edit the manuscript even as the news coming out of my beat—immigration—was incessant.
My best friends Sam Oltman, Faith Gobeli, Bonnie Sweet, Lizz Huerta and Ana Vig
o kept me sane with their love and ideas. Thanks to my childhood friends Victoria Harper and Elizabeth Baber for showing me the worlds of fantasy and science fiction. And Paul Kiernan for pulling my body out of the ocean so that I could write this. Other friends and family provided invaluable support: Memsy Price, Neda Semnani, Ginny McReynolds, Rachel Dickinson, Theo Emery, Rae Gomes, Anita Huslin, Porscha Burke, Daniel Thiemann, Logan Sullivan, Rodrigo Delgado Calderón, Sophie Cohen, Timmothy Doolittle and Zerina Kratovac. Rob Waller taught me to think of writing as a physical art instead of a mental one—requiring practice to build muscle. The role of my hermanito, Eddie Rojas Rosas, is explicit in the pages.
In particular, I am thankful to my friend and ex novio Leo Carrión, who moved to the Yucatán Peninsula with me and provided crucial companionship while I was writing much of the manuscript. Although he does not appear in these pages, his joy dwells in them; this book might have withered on the vine without his love and exuberance.
I stand in awe of the courageous collaboration of my family, above all Papi and Abuelita Carolina, who revisited their most painful memories for this book, and my beautiful, extraordinary mother—Mami, Mommy and Mom—who in spite of her private nature always supported this project in every possible way. My gratitude to them is eternal.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JEAN GUERRERO is an investigative reporter focusing on immigration and the U.S.-Mexico border. She works for KPBS, with stories airing on NPR, PBS and other public media. She previously reported for the Wall Street Journal in Mexico City as a foreign correspondent. She graduated from the University of Southern California in 2010 and has an MFA in creative nonfiction from Goucher College. Guerrero was the 2016 recipient of the PEN/FUSION Emerging Writers prize. She lives in San Diego.
jeanguerrero.com
Facebook.com/jeanguerrero
Twitter: @jeanguerre
Instagram: @jeanguerre
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