The Falling Woman (19 page)

Thinking of my wedding, I imagine Robert and me, dressed neatly and uncomfortably in our best clothes, standing before a justice of the peace in an office that smelled of dying flowers. I feel cold, thinking of it now. I cannot remember if I felt cold then.

Tony's wedding was in a church filled with flowers and well-wishers. I stood in the back, having declined a place in the bridesmaid lineup. Hilde had asked me, but I would have felt strange and awkward in a lacy gown. I remember watching Tony stride toward the altar, fumble for the ring, lift the white lace veil and kiss the tow-headed bride. I can even remember what I was thinking. I was wondering why I did not hurt. I was considering how curiously empty I felt. I felt like the shell of a half-constructed house or like a broken pot. The hollowness was centered in the pit of my stomach and I wondered if I might be catching the flu.

After the wedding I wished them well and drank champagne. The bubbles rose and burst in the great void inside me, but failed to fill it. I danced badly with men I did not like.

A little after midnight, I returned to my home. Sitting at my desk in the cramped ill-furnished one-bedroom apartment, looking at the flowered wallpaper and the ugly green rug, I worked on my thesis project, reading and taking meticulous notes. At dawn I went to the campus library so that I would be there when it opened, and I passed an Indian hunting party on my way. When Tony returned from his honeymoon, I welcomed him back and we picked up our friendship without a hitch.

Now we had come to this: old friends drinking warm gin and tonic and listening to thunder.

"I like your daughter," Tony said easily. "She's a lot like you were on that first dig."

"Yes? And how was I?"

"Careful," he said. "Very cautious. She's friendly, but she never lets her guard down completely.

Something's going on under all that calm, but I don't know what it is."

"Neither do I."

The thunder rumbled and Tony waited for it to pass. The wind was blowing harder and our shadows rocked as the lantern was buffeted by wayward gusts. "I don't think you need to worry about Carlos.

Diane's too smart for him."

'' You' re probably right.''

The rain began with large drops. Each one made a wet spot the size of a dime on the hard-packed dirt of the plaza. The wind blew behind us, sweeping the rain over the tin roof and away from us.

"What about you?" he asked. "How are you getting along with your daughter?"

I shrugged, staring out at the rain. The memory of the dream was still with me. My world was filled with uncertainties that I could not explain. "All right, I suppose."

"I've been wondering—it seems like you've been worried about something. Anything you want to talk about?" He was leaning forward, holding his glass in both hands.

I do not like it when friends lean forward and ask me what is wrong, particularly when they are asking about worries that I have not yet admitted to myself. I had a vague feeling, still less than a hunch, that a balance somewhere was shifting and I was losing control.

"That first summer in Arizona you held everything tight, sealed up, smooth like glass," Tony said. "But I knew there was something explosive inside. If anything nicked the surface, you would blow up. You're like that again."

My arms were folded across my chest. I shook my head. Somewhere in the darkness beyond the swaying circle of lantern light, the shadows were gathering. The world was out of balance.

"What's wrong?"

"I just feel like ..."I made a quick helpless gesture with my hands. Empty. Open. Vulnerable. "I don't know."

He leaned back in his chair. "I've always wondered which of us has it worse. You keep everyone at a distance, shut them out so they can't hurt you. I drag people in so close that they can't help but hurt me."

His voice was slow and steady, only slightly blurred by gin. "Neither of us can find the middle ground." He reached out and took one of my hands in both of his, holding it carefully and gently. I liked the feel of his hands on mine. His voice was warm and comforting. His hands were rough from the acid bath he used to clean lime deposits from potsherds.

I find it difficult to let people help. I always have. Tony knew that. He would not push me. "I'm afraid,"

I said.

The thunder roared and rain clattered on the tin roof above us. In the flash of lightning that illuminated the plaza I saw a shadow step into the open space, moving with the rain that swept across the hard-packed dirt, yet oblivious to it. In her world, it was not raining.

"Don't be afraid," Tony said.

Another flash and I saw the shadow more clearly: a young woman dressed in blue, her face illuminated by a moon that I could not see. I recognized her by the tattoos on her face: Zuhuy-kak, when she was much younger. I heard the steady beat of a drum, a hollow wooden sound. The woman was dancing, lifting her arms over her head and leaping toward the sky. Another lightning flash: she was whirling and the light glinted on the obsidian blade in her hand. The drumbeats blended with the thunder. Her expression was joyful; her eyes were enormous and filled with power. I felt the moonlight running in my veins, and for an instant, I wanted to join her, to dance with her under the moon.

"Liz?" Tony squeezed my hand to get my attention. "Just remember that you can talk to me."

"I'll remember," I said.

The lightning flashed and the plaza was empty except for the rain. I held Tony's warm calloused hand and tried not to be afraid.

I was tired. The rain let up soon after I left Tony, but I slept sporadically, awakened again and again by ordinary sounds: the rattling of the door in the wind, the croaking of a frog, the thunder. At dawn, I was glad to leave my hammock and walk out to check on the southeast site.

The ground steamed in the early-morning sun. Most of the water had already seeped away into the soil.

Birds bathed in the few remaining puddles. One of Maria's pigs was napping in a wet spot beside the albarrada.

At the excavation, all was well. Some water had leaked past the tarp that covered the opening, but only a little. The stones were damp.

I went down the steps. A centipede rippled across the floor to hide in the rubble. When I stood erect in the passageway, my hat just brushed the stone slabs. The passageway was about five and a half feet high, three feet wide. Its construction was nothing remarkable: the walls of the stairway were smooth masonry, square blocks stacked neatly. At the top, protruding stones formed a lip on which the flat slabs that made the roof of the passageway rested. The plaster of the plaza had been laid on top of these slabs. The passageway was interesting only because I expected it to go somewhere interesting. I climbed the stairs and stepped out into the sunshine.

Zuhuy-kak squatted in the shade, as if she were waiting for me. I greeted her and she nodded to me, accepting my presence. I sat on a nearby rock and lit a cigarette. "Yesterday was the day Oc," I told her.

"The fourth day of Cumku."

She smiled. "Yes," she said. "The year ends soon. The time is near. Have you seen my enemies, Ix Zacbeliz?"

"Last night, I dreamed of a jaguar who stalked me and my daughter," I said slowly.

"He knows that the time is coming for change," she said. "Cycles are turning." She fingered the conch shell on her belt thoughtfully. "My enemies will try to stop the goddess from returning to power. You must be careful." She turned away from me, her eyes tracing the line of a building that had long since fallen. "It is so quiet here since the people have gone," she muttered. A lizard the length of my forearm watched us from a sunny rock on the mound. The grasses whispered softly. "I did not know it would be so quiet."

She looked sad and weary. I started to reach out to her, wanting to give her comfort. My hand passed through her as if she were smoke and I sat alone beside the tomb, talking to myself in the growing heat of the morning.

Chapter Twelve: Diane

The bush covers almost everything; it is the background within which lie all other special features of earth's surface. It is never reduced permanently to man's use; the milpas are but temporary claims made by men upon the good will of the deities who animate and inhabit the bush ...

—Robert Redfield,
Folk Culture of the Yucatán
T
hat night, we went to the university basketball game and watched Marcos's team lose. The game was played in a central courtyard, surrounded by tall stucco buildings. A few stars showed in the dark patch of sky above our heads. Spectators' shouts echoed from the yellow walls, and a small boy kept the score on a large blackboard. Marcos's team, long-legged young men dressed in bright green, ran and shouted and stole the ball from long-legged young men dressed in blue. High over the courtyard, the stars moved slowly across the rectangle of the sky.

Barbara and I sat at the top of the concrete bleachers, the only North Americans in the crowd.

Barbara leaned against the building that served as the back of the bleachers and put her hands behind her head. Her eyes followed the men as they ran from one end of the court to the other. "Wrap them up," she said softly. "We'll take them all home."

On the court, Marcos fumbled the ball and lost it to a blue-clad giant. I could recognize Marcos only by the number on his shirt. "Somehow I think Liz would object."

"Yeah, she would. She deals with sex by avoiding it." I glanced at her and she shrugged lightly. "As far as I can tell."

"How long have you known her?" 1 leaned back too, imitating Barbara's casual pose.

"Seven years," she said. "We've been working together at the university for three years." She lifted her eyes from the court to look at the stars overhead. "She's not an easy person to get to know. She likes to keep people at a distance. I'd been working with her for a year and a half before she ever invited me to her house."

"Where does she live?" The question was out before I stopped to think.

"It's a little apartment in an old building. One-bedroom. Crammed with books and pots and artifacts. Tiny kitchen. I think she eats out mostly." Barbara glanced at me, still casual. "You know, you still haven't told me the story here. You're Liz's daughter, but you don't know her and she doesn't know you. You turn up here unexpectedly and you stay." She shrugged without looking at me. "Tell me if you want to."

"She and my father were divorced when I was five. My father raised me," I said. "I only saw my mother a few times after the divorce. My father didn't want her to have anything to do with me. So I don't know her. 1 don't know her at all."

"Your father kept her from seeing you? Didn't Liz have anything to say about that?"

I shrugged. "Apparently not."

The courtyard erupted with cheers when Marcos's team grabbed the ball and made a basket—their first in ten minutes. Barbara waited for the echoes to die, her eyes following the running men. "So, do you think you'll sleep with him?"

I shrugged, grateful that she had changed the subject and knowing that she had done so for my benefit.

"Don't expect much if you do," she said. "Mexican men play by a different set of rules."

"That sounds like the voice of experience."

"I've heard tales," she said.

I did not get to hear any of the tales. Emilio hailed us from the bottom of the bleachers and made his way up to where we sat. He sat on the level below us, leaned against Barbara's legs, and grinned up at her, showing his gold-rimmed teeth. "I knew Marcos and I would have luck today," he said.

Sunday morning, Barbara and I woke early to the sound of church bells calling the people to Mass.

Marcos and Emilio arrived at the cafe" just as we were finishing breakfast.

Emilio dropped a stack of hammocks beside the table, collapsed into a chair, and waved for the waitress to bring two more coffees.
"Qué hacemos?"
Marcos asked, sitting beside me. "What are we going to do?"

"Want a hammock?" Emilio said to a passing couple, and what we did for a while was watch the intricate quick-step of careful negotiations. The woman said no and the man said yes, then after a while the man said maybe and the woman said maybe. Then finally, after much bargaining, the woman said yes and the man said yes. Emilio returned to the table smiling.

"So what are we going to do?" Barbara asked, but Emilio, distracted from romance by the promise of profit, had spotted two French tourists on the other side of the caf6 and was watching another hammock vendor try to convince them to buy a hammock.

"I will sell them a hammock tomorrow," he said.

"Let's leave these guys here and go somewhere cool," Barbara suggested to me.

Marcos leaned forward and said, "We could go to the park. You haven't seen the park, have you?"

We caught the crosstown bus, a battered vehicle that had come to Mérida to die. Clattering, wheezing, overloaded, and much abused, it had, I would have bet, served many years hard time in the States or in some wealthier province of Mexico before it reached Mérida. The bus took us to the park, which was not cool, but was a little cooler than the cafe.

We rode the small train that circled the park, squeezed in one corner of a car packed with fat women in peasant dresses and sticky happy children who smelled of cotton candy and hot sauce. We rented a small boat with clumsy wooden paddles and journeyed slowly across a tiny cement pond filled with pale green water no deeper than waist-high. Barbara and Emilio paddled enthusiastically. Halfway across, we collided with a boat piloted by a solidly built Mexican father; his wife and two children watched us with round eyes as we called out apologies in English and Spanish. On the way back, we rammed a boat piloted by two high school boys, who seemed to regard the collision as a challenge of some sort. The taller boy smacked his paddle against the water to send a cascade of green water in our direction, and we hastily retreated toward shore.

We rode in red-and-gold skyway cars, passing over the pond and dropping potato chips on the high school boys and, accidentally, on the father, who still paddled valiantly in a vain and foolish effort to reach the far shore.