Rafaela wanted to defend the old man, wanted to say that after so many years of work, perhaps he deserved some rest, deserved to leave work early. But this was México. This was the way of her country. Her relationship to Doña Maria depended on her ability to pay Rodriguez and to get what she paid for. She remembered her arguments with Bobby. They had a business together. They had to agree to pay the people who worked for them and to follow the rules, American rules about paying them, and there were so many others. She couldn’t remember anymore. Were they arguing about the rules? And what were the rules? If she asked Doña Maria, the woman might say that she was a God-fearing person and that the poor would always be with them. But Bobby would never say that. Sure Bobby thought he was one of the poor, and he wasn’t going away, but he wasn’t going to lie down and die either. He was going to take care of himself, so he wanted to know why she wanted to take care of everyone else in the world. “Take care of Sol first,” he said.
She asked Doña Maria instead, “Are you thirsty? Would you like a drink? A cold glass of passion fruit?”
“Perhaps a little. Passion fruit makes me sleepy. Where is Sol?”
“Taking a nap.”
“Dear thing.” Doña Maria followed Rafaela into the kitchen, but not before adjusting the lace doilies over an antique chest and fingering the wooden candlesticks placed as an altar to Frida Kahlo. She stared at the monkeys and Frida who stared back, but she never understood what tourists saw in that woman. Frida was an old fixture, but the doilies, candlesticks, the array of glass and porcelain vases, hanging clocks, and framed reproductions of Van Gogh and Picasso were Rafaela’s doing. So were the sunflowers placed in vases all over the house. Maybe Gabriel had been trying to achieve a rustic old México look what with that heavy dining table, the big leather chairs, and that giant mirror framed by a colorful Quetzalcoatl, not Doña Maria’s personal preference; she liked what she called a French Mediterranean look—marble staircases, Louis the 14th cherrywood side tables, silver candlesticks and porcelain figurines behind beveled glass. She saw her two blue velvet brass-knobbed chairs near the fireplace and nodded approvingly, “The house has a woman’s touch now. I can tell you have done a nice job, Rafaela. Gabriel, what was he thinking? Such a sweet young man, but here all by himself. Sometimes there were others, but he never introduced me. There was that gringo couple, and then I remember an African woman. No really, African. She had her hair like long twisted black noodles in a beautiful blue scarf. Do you know what I mean? The last I remember was the Chinese woman. Gabriel, Gabriel,” she sighed as if he were her own son. “He really should be married by now.”
Rafaela didn’t know who these friends of Gabriel might be, but the Chinese woman must be Gabriel’s current girlfriend, Emi, who wasn’t Chinese but probably Japanese and Japanese American at that. Rafaela didn’t care to gossip about Gabriel with Doña Maria and only nodded and smiled. The Gabriel she knew in L.A. was self-assured and assertive. She was grateful, but even his helpfulness was assertive. “Do it this way,” he seemed to tell her. Now, in México, in the disorder of his dreams, it occurred to her that maybe Gabriel was rather lost. She understood how Doña Maria might think of him as her son, that he seemed to be the sort that required mothering.
“Doña Maria,” Rafaela wanted to change the subject, “Rodriguez told me that crabs are not usual here.”
“Crabs? How funny for you to say so. The first time in all the years I have lived here, there is a crab in my house. Where did it come from? How did it cross the road?”
“Are they good to eat?”
“Eat? I don’t know. But how could this crab be a crab in the ordinary sense?”
“Perhaps the crabs fall out of the trucks coming from Mazatlán,” suggested Rafaela, wanting an explanation.
“Crabs? This was just one crab in my house this morning. It is very strange.”
Rafaela remembered Rodriguez’s stare. She did not want to say how she swept a crab out—not to mention everything else—from the house every morning.
But Doña Maria was more interested in gossip of the human rather than the animal kind. “The Chinese woman was always in a bikini. But that was the dry season. Hardly any mosquitos. Think of her now.”
“Mami!” Sol’s voice could be heard across the corridor.
“Sol’s up,” Rafaela announced.
“I will say hello to Sol and be on my way.” Doña Maria bustled down the corridor, adjusting Gabriel’s hanging assortment of black-and-white photos, oblivious to their scenes of a distant childhood in East L.A., and greeted the boy tugging at the neck of his T-shirt. “Sol,” she said patting him on the head, “such a sleepyhead. When are you coming to my house? I may have a surprise for you.” She nodded at Rafaela. “My son sent for men to put up a satellite dish. They are doing it right now! Imagine, two hundred channels! How many with cartoons, yes, Sol?” Sol followed Doña Maria to the veranda. “I just hope it doesn’t take me so long to cross the highway again. When you walk out there, be careful with Sol. Well, you will see,” she waved to Rafaela, scrutinizing a giant potted cactus, the health of trailing ferns, and toeing the corner of a throw rug into place. Retrieving her umbrella, she turned suddenly, “How silly of me. I almost forgot to tell you. The very reason I came here. The hotel called to say that you have a package waiting there. The bus left it this morning.”
“It must be from Gabriel.”
“Bring a strong sack with you. It is not such a big package, but they say it is heavy.”
Rafaela smiled. Sometimes the woman’s probing ways could be helpful.
Rafaela pulled the small straps through the buckle on Sol’s sandals. The other foot dangled back and forth, Sol watching it from one side of the milk bottle planted securely in his mouth. She found a strong canvas bag, the umbrella, and the folded stroller. Sol might make it to the hotel walking, but walking back was another thing. She had had to carry him all the way back the other day. She was taking the stroller today. Then again, Sol might refuse to get in the stroller, and she would have to carry him and the stroller and the bag with the package all back home again. And if it rained, she would have to do so and hold the umbrella above their heads. That was a chance she would have to take.
Indeed it was as Doña Maria had said; the highway was unusually busy that day. The noise of trucks and cars rumbling and whining down the searing asphalt road never seemed to stop. The pungent smell of tar stung Rafaela’s nose.
Rafaela watched the undulation of their shadows across the steaming green undergrowth at the side of the road. It occurred to her that the sun was still somewhat low for that time of the day, actually still west. But the afternoon rains had come and gone, and Rodriguez had come and gone as well. And Sol had awoken from his afternoon nap. Rafaela paused and looked back. No, the hotel was south down the highway, of course. The long shadows were disconcerting, but she continued on, Sol prancing forward with the simple pleasure of moving his legs.
She signed for the package. It was small but heavy as Doña Maria had warned. The hotel manager seemed to be waiting for Rafaela to open the package. “What could that be anyway?” She decided to open the package, a small concession to the manager who might find the pleasure of knowing its contents payment enough for his trouble. She pulled the newspaper from around the thing and uncovered a pair of faucets. The shiny chrome reflected the manager’s gaze. They were modern-looking things with a sort of industrial look, the sort that Gabriel seemed to like. Rafaela was indifferent to this style. It still had a surface like any other that had to be cleaned.
The manager took the liberty of turning the fixtures in his hands and then stopped and chuckled. “Hecho en México,” he read with amusement.
Rafaela sighed and shook her head. “I’d better be going. It will get late.”
“Yes,” agreed the manager, “before the afternoon rains.”
Rafaela looked up with a start. The big clock above the hotel desk read 11:45.
“Oh, it’s a little fast.
How far do you have to go?”
“Not far, but that is the correct time?”
“Ten minutes fast, I’d say. But what difference does it make?”
Rafaela felt Rodriguez’s mixed expression of confusion and fear in her own features as she wrapped the faucets back into their newspaper packaging.
About halfway down the road, Sol began to drag his feet and then to cry. “Sit here, Sol.” She offered the boy the open stroller. This was not satisfactory at all. Sol grabbed her blouse and pulled and jumped. Rafaela slung the bag with the package into the stroller, pushing it with one hand and cradling Sol next to her hip. Now the sun was pulling itself to the ceiling of the sky, and the shadows were almost nil. Across the horizon however, Rafaela could see the great billowing wall of an approaching thundershower. The sun’s intensity would not last for long. Thin streaks of lightning darted across the approaching wall. “Sol, how about the stroller? Please?” She pleaded, trying to get the boy to sit down.
Sol kicked and struggled, grabbing her neck with tenacity. She wanted to leave him in the road, but shifted him to the other hip and pushed the stroller and the heavy faucets with the other hand. Small drops of rain flew around the sunlight. A great rainbow pulled itself across the sky. “Look, Sol, a rainbow.” But Sol wasn’t interested, and he was getting heavier every step, and the stroller with the faucets wandered clumsily along the dirt road, jammed in the gravel and the frequent ruts.
The great rainbow slipped into oblivion, and the black sky approached with a vengeance. Rafaela put Sol down, to his great displeasure, and frantically worked at the rusty catch of the umbrella. The umbrella flew open and out like bat wings—good for hanging bats, bad for pouring rain. Sol was stooping near her feet and screaming as if he were hungry and very tired, as if he had never had his nap. Finally she picked him up and got him momentarily concerned about having the responsibility of carrying the umbrella. This turned out to be a bad idea because Sol wanted to hold the umbrella by himself, but the wind and downpour tossed it violently in every direction. Rafaela clung to the boy and blindly managed her forward momentum, alternately drenched and pressed against the embankment, fighting to avoid being flung onto the highway. The path was soon awash, and Rafaela could barely see anything. Vehicles careened through the rain and sprayed the greasy water from the asphalt in sheer walls. Rafaela struggled to higher ground and then crouched there in frustration, rivulets of mud flowing around the stroller and through her sandals, Sol sobbing unhappily.
Suddenly she noticed them. Just like the crabs she swept from the house daily, but hundreds of them, large and small, crawling frantically sideways in every direction, washing down with the river of rain. Rafaela forgot the necessity of the umbrella’s protection or the value of the heavy fixtures in the stroller. She hugged Sol, securing her hand over the back of his head and ran, crabs grappling the earth and crunching beneath her feet.
Approaching the house, Rafaela looked for the usual landmarks: the orange tree, Rodriguez’s brick work, and the new fence. Perhaps it was the rain—a thick wet lens through which she perceived this wet world. She was not sure, but the fence was somehow curved, or maybe even longer, or stretched. That was it. The fence stretched south in a funny way, like those concave mirrors in drug stores and 7-11s in the States. Rafaela was not sure.
Stripping off Sol’s clothing and encasing his body in a dry towel, Rafaela looked through the starched lace curtains at a hazy visage of the world and remembered. The orange. That orange. It was not there.
Out across the garden, the sun’s light began to dapple through the parting clouds and rising mist. Somewhere a snake slid into a shadow. And it was still morning.
CHAPTER 11:
To WashOn the Tropic
Arcangel stood in the rain that flowed like a waterfall from heaven, splashing over his head and naked body in an exuberant torrent. From a distance and through the gauze of the rain, it would seem that he was clothed. The stark white of his torso and legs contrasted sharply with the deep brown of his head and neck, arms, ankles, and feet. He ran the bar of coconut soap over his body, through his hair, under his arms, and between his legs, frothing and rinsing, white foam slipping down his legs, swirling with mud and the rainbow of grease toward the highway. He bent over, his back toward the flow, to enjoy the pounding massage. He tilted his head back and spread his arms, swallowed and sputtered the rain from his mouth. He massaged his penis and ejaculated into the foam. Then, he peed into that.
The rain seemed to subside, allowing him to pull one of those disposable plastic razors this way and that across his face, carefully feeling his way against the hollow of his cheekbones. He felt his face, the rugged places and the soft places, and he thought to himself that he had had the same dream again.
In the dream,
a woman was pushing a cart
filled with cactus leaves.
Fresh nopales.
The woman was pushing her cart along a highway
toward the city,
only to come upon an orange,
out of season,
there along that horizontal line
where the sun sliced the tropics.
Yes, thought Arcangel, that is the Tropic of Cancer. That is a border made plain by the sun itself, a border one can easily recognize. And there was the orange, rolling away to a space between ownership and the highway.
The woman paused with her cart
to avoid the orange.
She stooped, scooped the thing up,
threw it in the cart with the cactus and shrugged.
As suddenly as they had appeared, the clouds with their torrents lumbered away, and the rain slipped across the horizon perhaps to the sea. Arcangel shook himself from his head to his feet much like a shaggy dog except that he was somewhat hairless. The water sprayed forth from the loose attachments of his old skin, especially the sagging lobes on either side of his torso, in a way that seemed to please him. The sun appeared to do the rest.
He carefully unfolded a wrinkled but clean set of clothing—a simple shirt and loose-fitting pants. Of course he could wear any number of costumes, but artists like himself always traveled incognito. He repacked his traveling menagerie in his worn leather suitcase, pushed his shirttail into his pants, and walked toward the marketplace.
A truck with a load of oranges was stalled in the street just at its narrowest place. Behind it was a line of cars and trucks and carts filled with produce, meats—dead and alive—grains, and kitchen utensils, all temporarily stalled in their progress toward the marketplace. The commotion behind the stalled truck was becoming fiercer by the moment as lettuce wilted and the rising stench of ripening fruit began to dash any hopes of a morning trade. Occupants in the houses on either side of the road stuck their heads out of the windows and yelled at the line of stopped vehicles. Some took advantage of the situation and bought produce through their windows. The man with the stalled truck was nervously tinkering with a wrench under his hood as impatient merchants with merchandise piled on their heads and shoulders struggled by on foot, yelling epithets. “Stupid! Have you checked the gas tank?”
Arcangel assessed the situation and made his offer. “I will move your truck for you,” he announced, flexing his skinny biceps.
“Old man, I don’t need your jokes, too,” the truck driver snapped.
“I have moved such trucks before. I will do it for you.” He climbed to the top of the truck and faced the long crowded corridor of angry people and fuming vehicles. His voice was powerful, the voice of a true performer. It drowned the commotion like an approaching tidal wave, thundering with fearful authority. His arms lifted, and his body seemed to glow against the morning sunlight. In each hand flashed a large metal hook.
I will demonstrate the incredible strength
of the human body.
With the aid of a steel cable
around the axle of this truck,
these two solid hooks
and the skin of my body,
I will myself move this vehicle.
What is it worth to you to see such a feat?
“Old man, you are crazy!”
“We are stuck here anyway. Let him do his trick. At least we will have a good laugh!”
“I give you my profits today!”
“What profits? You are never getting to the market to make any profits!”
“So what is there to lose? I give him my profits!”
“I give him a chicken!”
“A sack of beans!”
“A kilo of tomatoes!”
“Two kilos of tomatoes!”
Arcangel nodded and climbed down the truck. The crowd scurried forward to observe his movements, watching him secure a coil of steel cable from his suitcase. A young boy scampered up and offered to crawl under the truck to draw the cable around its axle. Meanwhile, Arcangel removed his wrinkled but clean shirt with a quiet flourish, exposing his thin white torso. When the cable was in place, Arcangel secured both ends to the two hooks and drew the hooks through the very skin of his body, through the strangely scarred lobes at the sides of his torso. He moved slowly forward until the entire contraption was taut, until he was harnessed securely as an ox to its plough. “Put the thing in neutral!” someone yelled.
Arcangel clenched his fists and moved forward.
The skin against his abdomen
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