Читать книгу Damselfish - Susan Ouriou - Страница 6

When I woke up late the next morning, Faith was not in bed. I found her sitting bolt upright in the kitchen, tapping her toes like a fiddle player, and waiting impatiently for our day to begin. I resigned myself to not getting over to see José that day. There was the orientation she wanted me to give her to the neighborhood, a dry run she wanted us to make to find the library where she’d be doing all her research, and a car rental place to visit where she could rent a car for the length of her stay. She didn’t know yet that nothing gets done in a hurry in Mexico City, but she soon found out. Just as she found out that a car could be more of a nuisance than a convenience, somewhat along the lines of fleece-lined slippers and old T-shirts.

The car only lasted one night. We didn’t get back to the apartment with it until close to dinnertime. I sat inside, waiting double-parked in the street as Faith ran up for the guidebook she wanted to take along for what she called our night out on the town.

I read the map, she drove. The car had no seat belts, something I should have remembered from the time we came to Mexico with Papi. Papi thought Canadians were crazy, so obsessed with saving ourselves. Buckle up, wear a helmet, cross on green, smokers outside, work up a sweat. All because we believed we were in control. Because we thought fate would turn a blind eye so long as we believed, so long as we had faith.

Faith. The story goes that my sister’s name was a source of endless arguments between our parents. Finally, they decided Mom would be the one to choose for the firstborn and Papi the second. Papi always used to tease Mom that the name she picked was like just another seat belt. The origins of my name are much more murky but, from the little information either parent was ever willing to give out, Papi himself was hospitalized when I came into the world and not in a name-choosing mood. So Mom had to come up with another name for a baby girl. Hope. Maybe she felt fate needed a bit of a nudge.

Mexicans knew destiny spared no one. If your time was up, it was up. That was why every bus driver had a picture of the Virgin swinging from his rearview mirror, and every teenager learned the routine: key in the ignition, left foot on the clutch, shift into first, then give the sign of the cross. Only then did they step on the gas.

If I hadn’t had to read the map for Faith, I would have felt safer with my eyes shut tight. We travelled down Paseo de la Reforma in one of eight lines of traffic while cars whipped from one lane to the next in front of us, turning without warning, honking. Pedestrians dodged the chaos. Faith wanted to take me to the pre-Columbian restaurant her guidebook billed as an authentic experience, a restaurant that served ants and maguey worms. As she drove, she told me more about the specialty, a delicacy — roasted ants poured onto a taco and smothered in hot sauce.

I’m not too big on ants. And I’m a useless navigator.

“For Christ’s sake, Hope,” she said. “Where am I supposed to turn?”

“How should I know?” I told her. “I can’t even see the bloody signs.”

She wanted to pull over and have me ask directions from a uniformed man. The one carrying a regulation rifle in his hands, the muzzle pointing straight at my head. I said no thank you, I’d rather drive on. We circled for over an hour, stuck by traffic in lanes that went nowhere. Somehow we finally ended up back on our own street and saw a car pulling out. We took its spot. Then walked back to my flat — our flat now — buying four greasy tacos from a vendor on the way. So much for a night on the town. Who wanted to eat ants anyway?

The money for the rental car would be better spent on another bed. But would it fit? If not, a fold-out couch for the front room. For Faith, of course.

Back home when we were little, we’d start out in one bed taking turns at back rubs, then go off to our own beds to sleep. Sometimes at night, though, when I was six or seven, I’d have nightmares: under-the-bed long-limbed monsters whose disembodied voices drowned out my own. I’d jump out of bed, quickly before my ankles were grabbed by one of those long arms, and crawl in with Faith. I couldn’t snuggle close, she hated to be mauled, so I’d just graze her arm with my finger or let my toe rest on her calf. Enough to feel her force field billow up around me, one my nightmares couldn’t break through. Even after Papi left, she’d allow me that.

But I was twenty-four now, she was twenty-six, and the temperature was twenty-two. Sleeping with my sister was not what it used to be.

She didn’t wake up early the following morning when I slipped out of bed. I took my clothes into the next room — the only other room to be exact, not counting the bathroom. It looked a little less bare now with Faith’s laptop on the table and her boom box on the bookcase we’d moved out from the bedroom to make way for her suitcase. I’d bought the bookcase in the street early on, from a peddler who carried the rough pine boards nailed haphazardly into a bookshelf-like shape on his back. The case now held what amounted to an actual collection of books. It was a good thing Faith hadn’t brought the whole twenty-some volume Britannica though.

I patted the back pocket of my jeans. The used metro ticket that José had written his address on was still there. I was finally going to go back to his place, the apartment I’d seen just the once. I felt a sudden rush of heat. What was I embarrassed about, I hadn’t been that drunk. But still, in the cold light of day... Anyway, I wasn’t going there to talk about the other night. This was about my promise to volunteer at the market school. Today was Monday, the day I’d said I would come. Now I’d have to cancel out because of Faith and her other plans.

The first time I stumbled on the market school some two weeks before, it was by sheer accident. Out of total frustration — with my inability to paint, draw or find some other way, any other way, to translate my new life to canvas — I abandoned my paintbrush and easel in the Coyoacán studio and went out to clear my head.

My senses were already overloaded enough so I decided to skirt the marketplace with its spices, chilies, fishmongers’ shrieks, shoppers trying to make their orders heard above the din, and strangers jostling, unseeing. I vaguely remembered a park out back, so I bypassed the mercado and made for the other side.

Small children were sprawled on the ground between the benches in the middle of the park. I could see the dirtpatterned soles of their bare feet. Each was huddled over a piece of paper, each held a stubby pencil. A man walked among them. He looked to be about my age, taller than me but slight. He wore a colourful woven belt around his jeans and a navy blue shirt with long sleeves, its cuffs rolled halfway up his forearms. His head bent to look at the papers on the ground. Every once in a while he knelt down to speak to a child. A young teen, small for his age, shoulders bowed, followed the man as he walked from child to child. I was struck by the contrast with the cocky adolescents I remembered from back home, 20 below but shoulders back like peacocks to show off their unzippered winter parkas and their eff-you attitude to the cold.

As I drew closer, the man raised his head and looked at me with eyes that beckoned me in instead of reflecting me out.

I felt I had to say something. I looked down at the little girl and the drawing she was working on

“Son pájaros en el cielo, no?” Six black Vs in a sky shot through with colour; not one crayon shade had been left out. The little girl bit her lip.

“De España?” the man asked. My lisp, so apparent back home, was taken for a Spaniard’s accent here — thielo instead of sielo — not some physical blight.

“No, Canadá.”

He turned to the young teen behind him. “Guillermo, see, someone to practise English with. Practicar.” The boy tilted his head and smiled shyly. Another small boy called out to the man from a bench on the far side. “José,” he said. The man looked, waved, turned back to me, reached out his hand, and welcomed me with his eyes. I extended my hand, a simple handshake, and met his gaze. Long enough to let me know I wanted to go back.

I’d gone back by almost every weekday since, either morning or afternoon. Since I wasn’t painting anyway it didn’t make any sense to spend all day stuck in front of my easel. Seeing José again did make sense.

Mornings were when the children dropped by the in-market school — they actually worked at the market, some of them as young as four — whenever they had some free time or wanted a break. That was when José, who had been hired by the city to start up such a school, had the use of a space donated by the merchants, which he’d filled with secondhand desks and books and blackboards. Afternoons, he took them wherever he could, usually the park. The children or their parents, if they had any, couldn’t afford the books and supplies to go to the public school so that was why the city had subsidized José to school the children where they worked.

That afternoon last week at the marketplace, it was José’s suggestion that we get together afterwards. That was how the evening started, too — just the two of us getting together for a drink. Discovering we lived not far apart, he a few metro stops before mine. Each of us going home to change and grab a bite to eat, meeting at a bar halfway between our two places at ten o’clock. In the bar, it was harder to keep up the flow of conversation, both of us used to the constant interruptions from the market kids. I felt us move into that awkward space where spoken words falter and body language hasn’t yet picked up the slack. That’s when I always start to drink too much. During one of the longer pauses, as we avoided each other’s eyes, José said, “Do you like to dance?”

I drained my mug. “Uh, I guess so.”

“The discoteca is just down the street.”

Somehow this felt like an admission of failure, but I nodded and tried to smile.

José was a gifted dancer, thanks, as he told me, to weekly trips as a teen from his village to neighbouring town dances. A dedicated dancer, too. In his eyes, dancing and drinking just didn’t mix. He might have been right. Sometimes I couldn’t tell whether the spinning in my head and the churning in my stomach came from the dancing or the beer. Eventually, like José, I switched to orange juice, afraid that otherwise I wouldn’t be able to keep up.

At first, the awkwardness of conversation carried on into the dance. I didn’t know what messages his hand was meant to convey on my back while we jived or just how to find the beat. But José smiled encouragement and kept guiding me in, out, round, back. We were both sweating, the crowd around us pulsing, my breath ragged from exertion when the tempo changed, slowed to a waltz.

Enveloped in music, black light, and body heat, pelvis against pelvis, hands creeping from waist to hips to flanks, our dialogue took off. A discoteca was no longer the place for us. Thankfully, José’s apartment was nice and close.

The eyes of the woman-of-the-sprouting-crotch followed me. My very first paintings when I majored in art in college — CEGEP — were images of sleds, severed limbs and hearts, broken, bleeding, beating still in the coldest oils I could find. I tired of their garishness though and slowly began to favour watercolours and charcoal drawings of empty chairs, doors ajar, half-eaten meals, and abandoned closets of clothes, trying to convey the violence of the quotidian through the act of watering down. Or at least, that’s how the review committee phrased it when they awarded me my grant.

This last woman I’d created in warm oils was present like none other. Her eyes spoke of the here and now.

I dressed in one minute flat, a specialty of mine, then stepped outside, shut the door, and took the two flights down.

I was glad José’s apartment was within walking distance. This early in the morning, there was no one on my street. A city of 22 million, and no one in sight. This was the time of day, the only one, when I felt Mexico City was a living being that could some day be a friend.

I stopped in front of the panadería and hesitated. Maybe I should bring something along. The sweet smell of bread drew me inside. I wandered up and down each aisle, six in all, finding the staggering selection of breads, cakes, and desserts at this early hour almost too much. I picked out three panques and three buns with my metal tongs, and carried the tray to the cash register to be rung in. I had the girl put one of the buns and one of the panques in a bag. For Faith later, after José.

Past the panadería, I turned right, so busy communing with the heart of the city that I just about crushed a dead sparrow lying at my feet.

It wasn’t the only one. There were four of them in a circle on the sidewalk. I bent and touched the sparrow I’d almost crushed. Its body was plump, its feathers sleek. No teeth marks, no prowling cat. It almost looked asleep.

I looked up through the tree branches to the grey-washed sky above. Was this a sign? At home, the thought wouldn’t have crossed my mind, but here signs existed. An Aztec curse, a father’s ghost.

In Mexico I was ready to believe that people really did commune with the spirits or sprout bougainvillea inside body folds.

The scrape of metal against concrete announced a street sweeper shuffling toward me — shirttails hanging, pants ripped at the knee, dragging a twig broom behind him, a long-handled dust pan in his hand, and a garbage bag looped at his side. He stopped and looked down at the sparrows.

“Otros!” he grumbled. “Qué bárbaro! Qué noche aquella!”

He eased in front of me and started sweeping the birds up with his broom. I walked away, not wanting to see sparrows turned to waste. Two blocks farther down I found the address that matched the one on the metro ticket. I didn’t recognize the building in the daylight.

José must have been sound asleep. He looked rumpled and warm. His eyes were as much a dark welcome in near-sleep as awake. His chest was bare, and his jeans hung low on his hips without the woven belt to hold them up.

I forgot my excuse for being there. I just held out the buns, wrapped in tissue folded like a scarf.

“Qué onda!” he said.

The first time I heard that greeting was in the park. I thought he said Qué honda, meaning how’s my Honda doing. I looked around for a motorbike lying nearby. But I learned it meant how’s it going. Now, here, though, it meant, Isn’t this great. In the little time I’d known him, José had already taught me the expressions of a younger generation, words Papi never knew.

“Hi,” I finally said, remembering. “I’m sorry. It really is early, isn’t it? It’s just... I wanted to catch you before you left to tell you I can’t help out... not today, but...”

“What’s this?” José seemed more interested in my package than any explanation I could stammer out.

“Oh these, I thought you might like some...”

“You thought right.”

He stepped closer to take the package from my outstreched hands and shut the door behind me.

“I’m sorry if I woke you up. I wasn’t thinking. I should have come later. It’s just, my sister’s shown up, and I’ll probably have to spend the day with her today, maybe even tomorrow too, which is why I thought I’d better come by, to tell you that I can’t...”

José set the package down. “I’m not that hungry yet. You?”

“No.” Not that kind of hungry. Knock-on-a-stranger’s-door hungry, yes.

I’d come to the right place. He was warm. I could feel the heat of his chest, his hips, and his mouth through my tank top and jeans. Later, when his hands slid under my top and up, I could feel the soft trail of hair leading from his navel down. José’s hands reached along my ribs and stopped when they encountered not material but flesh.

I pulled back slightly. “I don’t believe in bras,” I said.

“Me neither,” he said as my top came off.

Later in his bed I confessed, “Sex is my favourite sport.”

“Then you’re my favourite jock,” José replied.

I laughed, José put his hands on either side of my head. “What’s the Spanish for jock?” I asked even as he touched his tongue to my eyelids and turned my head in his hands. He didn’t answer.

José, Josecito, Pepe, Pepito, Pepillo, who knows, why not mi amor, amor mío someday. What better language for the making of love than his?

He slid his thumbs to my throat, stroked the lump centred there, whispered, “Manzana for apple,” glided to his knees, murmured, “And now for the forbidden fruit.”

I rolled onto my side, my head at José’s feet. Traced a line along his calf, parting gentle hairs with my nail. In slow motion I traced and watched, reflexes drugged by sex. Thought to myself, he has to go to work. “So tell me, what’s so forbidden?”

José raised himself on one elbow, cast a glance at his travel clock, reached across, stroked a breast, my Venus mound, my ass. I noticed, detached, as my nipples grew hard again. “Not these, or this, or this. All of it. All of you. Gringa’s the forbidden fruit.”

“Gringa.” Funny how the words to describe me multiplied. Baby, girl, sister, daughter, woman, lover. Kid, student, painter. Anglo, Canadian, and now this. Gringa. “I am half-Mexican, remember. Besides, Gringa’s for Americans.”

“Wrong again. We’re the Americans, all of us Latinos to the south. Gringos are North American, that means you too.”

“Not true. Canadians never came in uniform to invade Mexico. Those are the greens the Mexicans wanted to see go.”

“Okay, okay, you win. How about I give you your prize?”

But there was something I still wanted to know. “So why are we, why am I forbidden?”

“Santos, you ask a lot of questions.” He twirled around to point in my direction, dropped his legs over the side of the bed. “Here, I’ll show you.” He rummaged next to him on the top of the desk, the only other piece of furniture in his room. “Look at this.”

He’d grabbed a magazine, flipped it open to an ad, full page. A picture of a milk carton stamped Made in U.S.A. Underneath was the caption “No sean malinchistas. Digan no al TLC.” Don’t be Malinchistas. Say no to the TLC.

“TLC. That’s the free trade agreement Mexico’s negotiating with Canada and the U.S., right?” José nodded. Back home, I’d had a union button handed to me on the same agreement. It said, Free Canada — Trade Mulroney. “Who’s Malinche?”

“Ever heard of Doña Marina? Cortés’s interpreter.”

“Uh-huh.”

“That’s her. The one who sold out. Defected to the other side. La Malinche was the name the natives gave her. Any of us who go to the other side, to the gringos, we call them Malinchistas. Looks like I’m going to be a Malinchista for a while.”

For a while. I said the only thing that came to mind. “In English, TLC stands for tender loving care.”

I walked him to the metro, broken crates, banana peels, and cigarette butts littering the gutters at our feet. I remembered the street sweeper, told José.

“Happens all the time. In the middle of the night. The pockets of smog get so bad the birds can’t breathe. They fall from the trees, and we wake up to them the next day. A new spot every time. Here today, a month from now thirty blocks further down. The air moves in mysterious ways.”

He didn’t notice my slight shudder.