The Taste of Ashes

by Sheila Peters

“Lily Thomas.” Álvaro’s voice seemed to come from far away. “The one who lived beside the rectory?”

  Isabel looked at him then and knew from the way the scar along his chin turned red that he was back there with her in that creaking bed, the curtain blowing in the open window, trying to keep quiet as they struggled against each other, the key turning in the locked door, the voice booming hello from the front room, and the intensity of that moment as they both came, together, in terror.

  She blushed too as the kids looked back and forth between them. Trevor started to speak and Janna thumped him hard.

  “Don’t,” she said.

  He giggled. “It does take a little getting used to.”

  Álvaro ignored them. “She would throw all the weeds from her garden onto the lawn. Walter would throw them right back. We were talking about her just the other day.”

  “Father Walter?” Janna’s voice flattened.

  Álvaro nodded.

  “You mean the old bastard’s still alive?”

  Álvaro snapped his mouth shut.

  Janna turned to Isabel. “Did he know about him? When I was going to catechism?”

  “Yes, he did,” Isabel said. “He most certainly did.”

  She waved a sandal at Isabel. “How could you let me go to those classes? Were you trying to piss him off? Or hoping he’d let something slip and get you off the hook?”

  “I tried to talk you out of it. Several times.”

  “But he never told you about me?” Janna directed this question to Álvaro.

  Trevor took the sandals from her hands. “Maybe we shouldn’t go into all this right now.” He squatted at her feet. “Let’s see if the shoes fit you, Cinderella, and magically turn you into a lovely princess.”

  “No,” Álvaro said. “He never did. I asked after your mother several times and he assured me all was,” he paused, “all was well with her. In fact, I was a little bit hurt by that.”

  Isabel snorted.

  “I know,” Álvaro said. “It’s embarrassing.” He paused. “It’s more than embarrassing. It’s terrible.” He stared at the sandals Trevor was lacing on, the same kind of sandals he had fit onto Isabel’s feet so many times. He wondered what had happened to those sandals and looked up to see Isabel watching him. Smiling.

  Trevor’s warm hands on her feet calmed Janna down. She wished all hands could be like her brother’s. Deft and protective. She remembered the way he’d hold her on his lap to keep her from squirming while he pulled out a sliver or the careful tissue nudging dirt out of her weeping eye.

  Trevor pulled her upright and pushed her to stand between Isabel and Álvaro, Isabel’s arm tentative around her waist, Álvaro’s hand on her shoulder, the three of them awkward together like mismatched puzzle pieces.

  “Soryada,” he called. “Do you have the camera?”

  A wave of shrieks and giggling broke in the kitchen. Soryada, her face buried in her hands, was gently pushed into the living room by Amy and Margaret. They prodded her until she dropped her hands and stood upright. She wore a dark striped skirt gathered at the waist, a brilliant embroidered blouse, and a red cloth coiled around her head. Her feet were bare. When she looked up, her smile was beautiful.

  Trevor whistled. “My own Mayan princess.”

  “Isn’t she lovely?” Margaret beamed. “The clothes are from a village near Cobán.”

  Álvaro recognized the red headdress from the pictures of his mother dressed for burial. The coral snake. This is what she might have looked like when Cesár López came to her village to build a coffin for her grandfather and, instead of money, took her away. The glory days of Árbenz, when change was good. When good was possible. He greeted the young woman in Q’eqchi’. She shook her head and giggled.

  He switched to Spanish and she told him she wasn’t sure exactly where she was from but she thought near Nebaj. She had her mother’s tzute though. Would that tell? She knew only a few phrases. She spoke them.

  “Ixil,” he said. “It’s where I grew up.”

  “Are you Mayan?” Trevor asked.

  Álvaro paused. “Half,” he said. “My mother.”

  “She should wear it for the wedding,” Margaret said, patting Soryada’s stomach. “It’s expandable.”

  Soryada twisted away, shy in front of Álvaro and Janna.

  “Do you know how happy my aunties are to know that you have Indian blood?” Trevor laughed. “And you too, Janna. All that time you were trying to be an Indian, you were right on. But working with the wrong fish — I don’t think there’s many salmon in Guatemala.”

  “A wedding?” Janna said, staring at Soryada. “Expandable?”

  “How kind of you to ask,” Trevor replied. He bowed to Soryada. “Allow me to introduce my fiancée and the mother of my child.”

  “Another little secret everybody knows but me?”

  Trevor scanned the room. “Have we told Professor Coleman? I’m not sure.” And he yelled his name, grabbing the foot Janna had lifted to kick him. “What do you say, Soryada? We could make Janna the maid of honour — get her some duds like these. My little Guatemalan family. Mrs. Coleman, do you have another outfit we could try on my sister.”

  “No,” Janna snapped.

  Trevor ignored her. “Álvaro, maybe you could perform the service.”

  Before he could answer, Janna interrupted. “Oh, won’t that get the town buzzing. All our dirty laundry flapping on the line.”

  When he’d seen those three men grab her, Álvaro had been sick with fear, flushed with fury. When he saw her sleeping, he’d been suffused with love. Now dislike curled in his stomach.

  Trevor opened his arms in a gesture that took in all the uncomfortable witnesses. His voice became formal. The voice of the Gitxsan feast hall.

  “You are no one’s dirty little secret,” he said.

  Janna shrank back.

  “And if you have any dirty little secrets of your own, no one here is one of them.” He pointed to Isabel. “You’re her daughter. Have you asked how she’s doing? What it’s like to meet this guy here again after twenty years?”

  It’s like the beginning of the corn vigil, Álvaro thought. The settling of business so the men would be in the right frame of mind for the slow sweet pleasure of the planting.

  Trevor turned to Margaret. “You’re her guest. She’s been taking care of your dad, giving him a place to stay while he tries to get past whatever hell he went through.”

  A nod to Álvaro. “You’re his daughter. The last thing he needs is some pissy little chick holding him to account for something he didn’t even know about.”

  “So he says,” Janna whispered.

  “You had all of us. You had a home, you had all Mom’s relatives, my family too, for Chrissakes. Have you talked to my dad in all the time you’ve been away? Asked him how his heart bypass went? How his feet are rotting with the diabetes?”

  “Just a minute,” Álvaro started, one hand on Trevor’s shoulder.

  Trevor, his eyes still on Janna, took Álvaro’s hand and lifted it off his shoulder and tucked it under his arm. His voice was quiet now.

  “We need you, Janna. And you need us. Maybe you’ve got a hundred aunts and uncles and cousins in Guatemala just dying to meet you. Folks who, from the sounds of things down there, might need your help.”

  Álvaro pulled his hand free and shoved it deep into the pocket of his jeans. His hands that needed somewhere to go. Somewhere that would not do damage.

  Janna was desperate to get away from Trevor’s voice, the stern warnings of the feast hall. She was desperate to get away from the masks looking down from the walls and the smell of salmon baking. She rose to go, but Thomas Coleman was hovering in the doorway. She glared at him, daring him to stop her. He did not move, nor did he look away. His squashed and wrinkled face was a question, his look one of in
tense curiosity and great sympathy. As she approached the doorway, he merely opened his arms and took her in.

  “That’s enough, Trevor,” he said as she struggled to keep from crying. “Everyone. This is what comes of low blood sugar. Margaret, could we please eat now?” He brought out a big handkerchief, wiped Janna’s eyes, and led her into the kitchen to sit between him and Joseph. Isabel slid in beside Soryada, reassuring her that she was not the cause of the angry words. Amy leaned between them with a bottle of wine.

  “Me and Soryada, we’re on the wagon,” Isabel said, taking the bottle and reaching across to pour Álvaro a brimming glass. He looked at her as if he didn’t know her, with the distant eyes she remembered from that day in her kitchen when her anger sent him to some terrible place.

  Cutlery clattered against plates and Margaret scrabbled in a drawer for another serving spoon. Isabel was afraid for Álvaro. She returned the wine to Amy before she gave in to the temptation to lick the red drop about to roll down from the bottle’s green lip.

  Álvaro floated adrift even as he helped himself to the bright food Margaret and Thomas had so carefully prepared for these people they barely knew. For him. He floated alone, all sound muted around him. He wasn’t afraid of Vinicio’s voice and he didn’t feel Ana Elisabeth jostling his heart. He felt nothing at all. When Isabel had filled his wine glass it was as if she’d poured him out of himself and into the narrow gold-rimmed glass etched with the small scallops. He watched his hand reach for it and pause.

  Margaret nudged him to take the bowl she was passing. He stared at the lemon wedges and took the bowl instead of the wine glass.

  Just keep going, Walter had said. The creek will reappear. He wanted to talk to Walter. He wanted tell him about his mother. How his mother had slept with Fortuny to save his father’s life, only his father wasn’t his father. About how he had made a young boy’s fumbling love to Clara, who turned out to be his sister. How his mother, trying to save his life, had killed their baby. He wanted to tell Walter because he could not see his way to telling those stories to anyone sitting with him at this table. The lemons shimmered in the bowl. He set them down and waited while the eating and passing went on around him. Isabel leaned across and touched his hand. Trevor was speaking to him.

  “Do you want to come to the Canucks game tomorrow? Soryada’s beginning to get the hang of it and I might as well teach two at once.”

  “Hockey?” Álvaro used to play in Winnipeg. “I’d forgotten about hockey,” he said.

  “Do you like to fish, too?” Janna called down the table.

  “Fish?”

  “Trevor and Jason’s dads were always taking them to hockey games. And fishing,” she said. “So I figure we could start with a hockey game and maybe later a fishing trip.”

  “Are there fish in Vancouver?”

  Isabel tried to damp down the hope that leapt inside her. “Maybe you could both come up north. There’s plenty there.”

  “And be a happy little family after all?” Disdain crept into Janna’s voice and ruptured the sense of possibility that had been growing.

  Álvaro felt something move in him, something that needed to present itself. He spoke directly to her. “In some Protestant churches, parishioners stand up, proclaim their sin, and ask forgiveness of the congregation. Is that what you want?” His voice was not penitent, nor was it angry. It was the voice of a father speaking to his child.

  Janna stared at him, some kind of recognition slipping in between her ribs.

  Margaret rose. “I am going to be the one to ask to be excused. You have many difficult matters to discuss. Thomas, Amy, Joseph, let’s leave these people some privacy.”

  In the embarrassed silence that followed their departure, Janna looked at her hands on the table. A fork in one. A glass of wine in the other. She set them down and pushed back her chair.

  “Don’t,” Trevor said, already on his feet.

  She looked around the table, at her mother’s hand on Soryada’s arm, comforting her. At Álvaro watching her, waiting. Trevor, ready to pounce. A family cobbled together with scraps of waste wood and crooked nails. She slipped one hand into the pocket where she kept Christmas girl and gripped her tightly. She’d never felt more alone.

  “I don’t want it to be about me,” she said finally. “I don’t want all these expectations and explanations. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just some story we tell each other. I want to feel normal and I don’t know how to make that happen. I’ve never known how to make that happen. Look at us.”

  Soryada looked around, bewildered. “Trevor, what is this normal?”

  Álvaro felt his whole body stir, all the spirits of Ana Elisabeth, all the children he’d despaired for, prayed for, all the bones tumbled in the graves, his mother, even the great spirit of Bishop Gerardi himself, rumbling inside him. It took him a frightening moment to realize it was laughter shaking him, laughter and tears streaming down his face.

  “Oh, mi corazón,” he said to his daughter, “look at us.” His arms spread out, his hands reaching for those beside him. “Look at the threads that connect us, look how far they spread out into the world. We never know what pain our best intentions will bring, what joy our mistakes.” He reached across to Soryada. “There is no such thing as normal.” And his laughter spilled over and was, for the moment, a contagion they all welcomed.

  †

  Álvaro and Isabel finished drying the dishes while Janna played Speed with Trevor in the living room. Her victorious cackle was followed by Trevor’s groan of defeat. She insisted on another game.

  “She’s stubborn,” Isabel said. “She’d never come when I called her — only when she thought the time was right. It’s really a miracle that she’s here today at all.”

  The others had returned. Amy was outside talking to Soryada, their faint Spanish rising and falling as she readjusted Soryada’s clothes. Margaret crouched to pull something from a flowerbed in the bottom of the garden. Thomas looked where she was pointing. As she stood, he put an arm around her waist to pull her up and kept her hugged tightly to his side for a moment, his hand on her hip. Isabel turned away.

  Álvaro stood with a dripping plate, listening to Janna tease her brother. She did laugh like Isabel. The times he’d seen her at the university, she’d been distraught or afraid. Or very angry. This was a girl who didn’t need rescuing. She looked so much like Clara did when she used to play cards with Vinicio, her dark hair with its slash of white pushed behind her ears, her cheeks flushed with the pleasure of winning. Clara’s hair now entirely grey, her Lucía Madriela in the big cemetery.

  Isabel took the plate from his hand.

  “Aren’t you afraid all the time?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. “Not all the time.”

  Trevor had refused the game and Janna jumped up from her chair to stand in the doorway. She surveyed the kitchen, its bright colours all revealed as the plates and pots and trays were put away. Evening sun splashed long lines of light along the big table, into corners and sparkled off the beads hanging in the room with the photographs. Isabel slipped cutlery into a drawer.

  “I don’t know what to call you,” Janna said to Álvaro. She leaned one hip against the counter. Her face was rounder than Clara’s, her eyebrows lighter. She brought a finger up to her mouth and nibbled on the nail.

  Álvaro swallowed hard. “What do you call your brothers’ fathers?”

  “Just their names.”

  “Why don’t you start there? Álvaro.”

  She tried it, stumbled and tried again, all the time staring at the sparkling beads.

  “Yes,” he said. “That’s very good.”

  She said his name and pointed to the alcove. “Can you tell me about those children?”

  He carefully hung up the dishtowel he’d been holding. The face he turned to her and Isabel was frighteningly bleak. His arm
s dangled at his side, as if he was about to be led away.

  “I’ve been reading about Guatemala,” she said. “It sounds pretty rough.”

  Isabel put a hand on her arm. “Maybe another time.” She did not want Janna to see him as she had. She did not want to see that again herself.

  His voice was a monotone. “Some of them were children who came to my school. It wasn’t an orphanage or a shelter, it was a school. So I closed the door every day at five and returned to the house where I lived with other priests.”

  “Where did they go?” Janna whispered.

  “They had places — a couple even had families. But for most of them, it was a cardboard box in an alley or a blanket and a piece of tin.”

  “Did they all die?”

  He barked out a laugh that sounded like metal breaking. “No, no. There were twenty or thirty at any one time and they were tough. We’d find some of them homes or places in boarding schools. But every morning when I went to the school to unlock the gates, I’d wonder who would be there. Who wouldn’t.”

  “Couldn’t they have come here?” Isabel asked.

  He struggled to explain the uproar about adoption in Guatemala, about the orphanage industry. About children being bought and sold. “Some,” he said, “are adopted by the very people responsible for the deaths of their parents.”

  Janna had parted the beads and looked through to the pictures.

  “Is your family in danger? Our family?”

  “No,” Álvaro said. “No, they’re not in danger, the ones that are left.”

  “Will you tell me about them?”

  Somewhere upstairs, a phone rang. They waited, but it didn’t ring again. Álvaro had made a vow not to lie. But he wasn’t ready for this.

  Joseph came down the stairs. “Father Al,” he said, holding out the phone. “It’s the hospital. Father Walter.”

  †

  Isabel perched on the arm of the chair Janna was sitting in, the clothes Isabel had brought heaped on the floor around them. They had all been tried on and modelled for Amy and Soryada, comments exchanged, decisions made. The men were upstairs. Margaret had taken Álvaro to the hospital. The fire had sunk to embers and the curtains were pulled against the darkness.