Let Their Spirits Dance

  “Don’t worry, mijo,” Paul says. “Just do what you can.”

  We head up to Wheeling, Ohio. Pepe and Gonzalo weave past us with Fritz sitting in the back of the truck. I’m worried they’re doing more than drinking.

  “If we all make it in one piece it’ll be a miracle,” Chris says.

  “Don’t say it too loud,” I tell him, “there’s people here who believe in miracles.”

  Wheeling is old brick buildings with white-trimmed windowpanes. Two-story houses face the street. We’ve passed Livingston, Lancaster, strong British names, then drive by Egypt Valley. I wonder if people from Egypt settled there. I can barely imagine the descendants of the pyramid builders living in the magical green forests of Ohio. I can only see them in deserts. Wheeling is the last city we drive through to get to West Virginia.

  “We’re almost there, Mom,” I tell her. “We’re crossing into West Virginia.” My mother sighs and makes the sign of the cross over herself. I look back at her. She’s thinner than she was in Arizona. Making her eat is a lost cause. She always puts it off for later, then I forget if she ate or not. It’s all I can do to keep track of her medications. One by one the pills have disappeared, and my mother looks the same.

  There are days I don’t want to give medications to her because nothing seems to work. Priscilla thinks I should stop at a hospital and have Mom checked in an emergency room. She’s threatened twice to take her there herself. Mom won’t hear of it and keeps saying La Virgen will protect her. She says la manda is her whole life.

  We travel through the tip of West Virginia and cross over into Pennsylvania. The country is lush green with banks of green grass that look almost blue growing up the sides of the highway. We pass Jessop Place, and it reminds me of Jesse. We drive through a tunnel built right through the Allegheny Mountains. The mountains are bluish-green, tall, mystical. Don Florencío would have loved to explore those mountains, maybe even live there in a cave. In Pennsylvania we see the first sign advertising D.C.; 127 MILES TO D.C. Chris starts honking, and all the others echo the same. It reminds me of Erica when she dropped off Gates at the freeway right before we climbed up the ramp. Other motorists honk, too. I look back through the rear window, and everyone is still trailing behind us. I glimpse the Zuñi feathered wands, and the flags of the U.S., Mexico, China, and South Africa flapping in the wind.

  “Wow, what a trip,” I tell Chris. “Can you imagine the beauty of this country? I never knew how beautiful it really is. America was just a word before, and now it’s something I can feel—I can hold it, and I don’t know where I’m holding it. My mind? My heart? My spirit? I don’t know, maybe it’s all three.”

  “Yeah, the guys in Nam felt the same sometimes. We’d think of the world back here, and we’d get homesick, just wanting to come back and watch a baseball game or eat a hot dog. Me? I wanted to climb up the Sandias. You know, the mountains you saw in Albuquerque. I used to take my daughters there on Sundays. We’d watch the sun set, and the mountains would turn dark purple, then darker and darker, until they disappeared, and all I could see were shadows. Huge mountains, and they disappeared.”

  “Jesse must have felt the same way. He wrote to me about the Salt River. We used to call it El Río Salado. I almost drowned there when I was a kid, but it was still a special place. Jesse remembered it when he was walking through the Mekong Delta.”

  We pass the Mason-Dixon Line, and the history I read in high school classes takes on a new form. These were places where the American Revolution and the Civil War were fought, places with great meaning for millions whose children would one day travel through the U.S., eventually meeting up with us, the children of Aztlán.

  It’s dark as we drive into Frederick, Maryland, but I can still make out wildflowers growing along the roadside, white, violet, yellow. Surprisingly, the evening is cool. My mother wants to stay at Frederick for the night to wash clothes and pray. She says she can’t go see her mijito with her clothes all dirty and no clean socks to wear. I want to move through the night and get into D.C., but I also want to turn around and wish this all away, like a dream after I wake up in the morning.

  • IN FREDERICK we meet a girl who’s washing clothes at a laundromat. She helps Sarah load up a washing machine. Sarah tells her that when she was a girl on the Indian reservation, they used to go to the river and beat their clothes on wet rocks to get them clean. “For soap, we used Borax,” Sarah says. “That’s all the missionaries had to give us. Then my mom got a washing machine with a wringer for rolling clothes through. She hated that machine. She used it three times, then filled it with rainwater for our horses. After that, we went back to beating our clothes on the wet rocks.”

  The girl tells Priscilla and me that her name is Bridget. Thank God she’s not a Vietnam vet, she’s too young. I don’t think anybody will be tempted to invite her to go with us to the Wall. She only remembers the war in schoolbooks. She tells us which machine to use, because she goes there every week. She just got married, she says, and is happy with her new husband. I tell her she’s the first happily married person I’ve seen in a long time. “It’s easy,” she says, “we treat each other like we’re boyfriend and girlfriend. It makes us do special things for each other all the time.” I think about that and wonder how long they’ll be able to do this. I feel like a pessimist and only smile at her and congratulate her for such a lovely way to live. Privately, I think she’s living in a bubble that will burst some day and drop her to the ground.

  The Guadalupanas are back in the motel getting ready for their big day tomorrow. They have an upstairs room this time and have to use the elevator. Mom says the upstairs room is better than the ones on the bottom where you have to put up with cars parking at your front door. They’ve decorated a coffee table with white linen and added a couple of vases with silk roses. They light candles and set up the image of La Virgen and a small statue of El Santo Niño. They prop up Jesse and Faustino’s pictures in front of the images. Pepe and Gonzalo have given Mom a picture of their brother, Gustavo. It shows how much they love their brother, Mom says. Irene says she almost died like Gustavo’s mother after her son’s death. Maybe it would have happened, Irene says, except she had so many problems with her other kids, she had to stay. Gustavo’s picture is unframed, and leans up against Jesse and Faustino’s framed photos. His photo shows a young man in a shirt and tie, dressed for a wedding or a party.

  One of the flickering candles is scented, and makes the motel room smell like a miniature church. The two heavenly figures look back at the old ladies, unblinking, silent. “They’ve brought us this far, they won’t fail us now,” Mom says. “Dios obra en todo, God works through all things.”

  Later, Priscilla and I come back from the laundromat with the clothes folded and ready to be put away. We find the Guadalupanas kneeling before their makeshift altar reciting a litany of praise, a chant that moves in circles around their heads, breathing over the flickering candle flames. Bendito sea Dios, bendito sea su santo nombre, bendito sea Dios en sus angeles y en sus santos, Blessed be God, blessed be His holy name, blessed be God in his angels and in his saints. Blessed be this, blessed be that—the chanting goes on for fifteen minutes at least. It reminds me of the song my mother never finished the day we found out Jesse had been killed. Bendito, Bendito, Bendito sea Dios, los angeles cantan y alaban a Dios. Blessed, blessed, blessed is God, angels are singing and praising God, angels are singing and praising God. A deep nostalgia for Mom’s voice goes through me like an electric shock that makes me drop the clothes I’m putting away. The Guadalupanas are so caught up in their prayers they don’t even look my way. I want to shout at Mom—SING THE SONG—SING “BENDITO”! It’s been so long, too long. I don’t say anything. I just freeze in position behind them and listen to their chanting, mesmerized by the weariness of the journey and the feeling that la manda between Mom and Heaven will be finished before another day goes by.

  Jesse looks like he’s smiling at all of us from his position between
the heavenly figures. I know Jesse. He’d probably say “Get me out of here” if he really found himself caught between the two old women. He wouldn’t say anything about La Virgen and El Santo Niño, he had too much respect for that.

  Priscilla is out the door before I am. “Mom shouldn’t be kneeling like that, it’ll put pressure on her knees.”

  “Forget it,” I tell her. “She’s got more strength than the two of us when it comes to praying and believing.”

  “That won’t help her in D.C.,” Priscilla says. “Have you thought about what’s really gonna happen there? Do you think Mom can handle all this? We’ll see his name on the Wall.” Priscilla says the last words like she’s whispering a prayer. We’ll see his name…

  “And we’ll touch it,” I tell her.

  “God, why did all this happen to us? Did we do something wrong?” Priscilla asks. “Maybe we didn’t love God enough, or each other. Maybe God got mad at us and took Jesse. He was the best our family had to offer. Do you think God’s like that?”

  “He’s not the Aztec god! What are you talking about? Christ sacrificed Himself, what does that tell you?”

  “I still miss Annette, Teresa!” Priscilla says suddenly. “God, this trip is killing me! I’ll never touch my baby again! Mom gets to touch Jesse’s name, and all I have is Annette’s headstone.” Priscilla is crying, wiping her tears with the end of her T-shirt. I haven’t seen her cry in years and forgot what it was like to smooth her hair back and blot out her tears with my fingers. “Maybe I’m being punished for all the wild years. You remember…the times I wouldn’t listen to anybody.”

  “I told you, God’s not like that. He’s not standing around wondering how he’s gonna hurt us. He doesn’t think like a human being. He knows we’re hurting, but there’s some hurt He can’t take away from us just as we can’t take our kids’ pain. Those two old ladies in there, they know what it means to suffer and still believe that God is good. Just because we go through pain, doesn’t mean God isn’t close by—that He doesn’t love us anymore. All these years I’ve known how much you hurt for Annette. I’ve always known, maybe that’s why I’m glad you’re close to Lilly. I thought maybe one of my own girls would give you comfort.”

  “She does. Lilly’s part of the reason I’ve survived all these years. She’s given me the chance to see what it means to have a daughter.”

  “Think about it this way, Priscilla, we were with Mom all the way. She has to do this, she has to finish la manda.” We hold hands as we did when we were kids and get ready to walk downstairs. Before we take a step, we hear Michael and Angelo racing up the stairs, out of breath. They tell us that Yellowhair and his mother, Sarah, have started a bonfire behind a garbage bin and are chanting and moving around in a circle.

  “It’s some kind of Zuñi ritual,” Michael says. “A cleansing ceremony from their tribe.”

  “Can I put on feathers like Yellowhair?” Angelo asks.

  We hurry down the stairs before the motel manager calls the fire department on Yellowhair and his mother. By the time we get there, Yellowhair is smoking a peace pipe and sitting before a fire smoldering in a tin tub that looks like the old-fashioned kind we used to bathe ourselves in when we were kids. He’s wearing red and white feathers as a headdress. I’m glad there’s high oleander bushes all around, blocking Yellowhair and his mother from the parking lot behind us. Sarah is sitting next to her son, dressed in a black and white jumper, flowered scarf, and white leggings, holding a white eagle feather in her hand. The fragrant smell of sage reaches me and instantly my body relaxes. I remember Don Florencío and pretend he’s the one who lit the fire.

  “Jesse would love this!” I tell Yellowhair.

  “My ancestors wouldn’t like us to approach a place like the Wall without a ceremony cleansing us and getting us ready for what the invisible world is preparing.”

  “And what is it preparing?” Priscilla asks.

  “Who knows?” Yellowhair answers. “It’s best not to ask too many questions. The answers will come by themselves. My ancestors hid for years from the white man, in kivas to worship in secret. So much of what is revealed is in secret. My mother, here, knows so much, she’s wise, but she doesn’t say much because she knows the gods will do what they want anyway.”

  “Gods?” I ask him.

  “Gods, like beings who guard us, but there is only one Great Spirit. We have Shalako who dance, six of them with huge masks. They tell the story of how the Zuñis came from the center of the earth to a resting place on a river. Later the white man swallowed up the river with a dam, and now we live in villages.”

  Yellowhair sprinkles sacred meal on the fire and it turns the fire to tiny sparks.

  “Jesse and I knew an old man named Don Florencío, a descendant of the Aztecs. He used to sprinkle sacred cornmeal in fire to cleanse the air of evil spirits. He believed our ancestors came from seven caves, somewhere in a land called Aztlán, which was north of Mexico.”

  “The Zuñis believe they are at the center of the earth,” Yellowhair says. “I think all people believe themselves to be located in sacred places. My brother, Strong Horse, now lives in a sacred place, maybe in the center of the earth, who knows?”

  Michael and Angelo adorn themselves with feathers and start dancing around the smoky tin tub. They attract attention from other motel residents and pretty soon a maintenance man comes by with a hose to spray the fire down. He splashes water into the tub, and the fire turns to gray smoke.

  “This is against city code!” he says in a loud voice. “What are you people trying to do, close the place down?”

  Manuel, Chris, and the others come down to see what’s going on, and the maintenance man tells us if we’re going to do a war dance to go to another motel. Pretty soon we’ve got an audience of motel guests.

  “We’re not doing a war dance,” Manuel says. “We’re against war! We’re the family traveling to the Vietnam Wall. Haven’t you heard about us?”

  “Oh yeah,” the man says. “Yeah, I heard about you, and frankly I don’t care where you’re going as long as you don’t burn this place down.”

  “It doesn’t matter what happens now,” Yellowhair says. “The ceremony is over. Great Spirit protected us.” The man dumps the water from the tub into the oleanders as we walk away, then hoists the tub into the garbage bin.

  “Buncha crazies,” he says. “The whole goddamn world is going to hell.”

  I think about the Guadalupanas in their room with the flickering candles, the silent images and the prayers spinning circles over their heads, and decide I don’t believe the world is going to hell anymore. I did once, after Jesse was killed. I smile at the man, and it surprises me. He’s so unhappy, his whole body is an angry fist.

  • I’M GLAD CHRIS is sharing a room with the boys tonight. I’m tempted to crawl into bed with him. There’s also a part of me that wants to call Ray on the phone just to hear his voice. The Wall is bigger than life in my mind, an immense structure, bigger than the Wall of China Willy talked about the other day. He said the Great Wall of China was one thousand miles long. “Is it a wailing wall like the Vietnam Wall?” I asked him. “No, of course not, except thousands died to build it, so that makes it a wailing wall of sorts.”

  About one o’clock in the morning Irene knocks on my door to tell me Mom is upset and crying. I walk into their room and Mom is sitting up in bed, her hair like a wispy halo on the pillow. My first thought is that she’s heard the voices again. I sit next to her hoping it’s not the voices. A chill goes through my body.

  “Did I do right, mija?” she asks as she catches her breath between sobs.

  “About what, Mom?” I sit next to her, smoothing the sheet around her, arranging her hair on the pillow.

  “Staying with your dad. He was so mean to all of us—to Jesse—then Jesse left. I know it was to get away from your father. But I still stayed with him! Ay, can Jesse ever forgive me? Maybe he hasn’t—maybe I came all this way, and Jesse doesn’t want to see m
e!”

  “Mom, his name is on the Wall. There are no eyes on the Wall.”

  “You don’t understand, mija. Spirits see without eyes.”

  “Jesse’s not mad at you, Mom. You know how he loved you and Dad. He couldn’t stay home when other guys were paying with their lives in Vietnam. But let me ask you this. Are you mad at him?”

  “Ay! For leaving me, yes, for leaving me! Why did he do that to me? I told him stay in school—but no, you see he didn’t do what I asked.”

  “What about me, Mom, are you mad at me?”

  “Mad at you? For what, mija?”

  “For not telling you that Jesse told me he’d never come back. I knew even before he left.”

  “Your nana told me. I knew, but I didn’t let myself believe it. You should never blame yourself. I hid everything inside me, and I didn’t want to see it.”

  “Mom—remember when you lost Inez, because I almost drowned in the Salt River and gave you el susto?”

  “El susto?”

  “Yeah, the fear. Doña Carolina said fear could freeze you in place, even kill you. I’m sorry I made you lose Inez. It was all my fault!”

  My mother looks at me, her eyes opening in surprise. “Mija, you didn’t make me lose Inez! I was sick from the moment I got pregnant with her. There was something wrong in the womb, that’s why Inez didn’t hang on. You blamed yourself all these years? My poor mija! Nothing has been your fault—ever!”

  I bend down and kiss her forehead. We’re both crying. I don’t let go until she stops crying, and Irene starts talking to her, promising her that Jesse will be happy to see her. “He’s over there smiling with Faustino and Gustavo,” Irene says, pointing to Jesse’s picture. “Our sons know we’re here.”

  I sense Jesse standing by watching us, the atoms of who he is merging with us, not floating aimlessly, but in a distinct spot. I put out my hand to touch him and grasp only empty space.

  • THAT NIGHT IN FREDERICK I dream I’m stepping on bodies in a river in Vietnam. The jungle is like pictures of Vietnam I’ve seen in books and on TV, except the trees are huge shade trees with birds’ nests in the trunks. I’m calling out for El Ganso to come get me across El Río Salado, and he doesn’t come. I see bodies floating all around. I keep pushing them down with my feet trying to sink them. The water is bloodred. Then, I try to step on the bodies to get across the river. The shore looks so far away, and I’m so tired. I can feel my feet sinking, but I keep walking on the bodies like they’re solid ground and make it to shore with no one helping me. I’m on the shore, waving my hands in ecstasy. I made it! The worst is over. I wake up and remember what my mother said, “Nothing has been your fault—ever,” and I smile in the dark, because I’m not drowning in El Río Salado anymore.