Читать книгу Damselfish - Susan Ouriou - Страница 7

After saying goodbye at the metro — both of us too awkward out in the open, too tentative, to kiss — I wanted to relive the morning with José, but the sparrows kept intruding. I walked slowly, not wanting to imagine birds toppling from branches, wings folded, never to unfurl for one last flight. I realized I couldn’t be any part of the poisoned air.

There was only one solution. I would tell Faith the car was out. There was no way I’d add to the exhaust in the air that kept birds raining from the sky. I wasn’t as sure what Faith’s reaction would be. Well, actually, I was. Faith always told me that I think in headlines, that I’m the melodrama queen. I still remembered her reaction the day I decided to quit eating mammals. I was living with her and Marc then. After Mom left for Mexico.

Mammals, not meat. Because of a terrible dream I had. In my dream, we made a huge bonfire — Faith, Mom, and I — at first throwing on wooden crates, branches of trees, and book after book after book, some of them bearing Papi’s name, until they were all gone. Then we threw a donkey, a pig, a calf, and a goat — mammals all — into the flame-ringed pit. Not one gave a cry, a squeal, or a scream. Their cries, squeals, or screams were sucked away by the ring of flames like molecules of oxygen. Worst of all, the fire created a vacuum in me. I watched and felt nothing, there was nothing left to feel. The vacuum frightened me more than the sacrificial act.

No other nightmare had ever made me feel that much fear before, not as a kid in my bed alone, not even during the long nights after Papi left. I had to listen to what the dream was telling me.

Faith’s reaction? “Mammals, you’ve given up mammals! So, like, you’re a non-mammalian now? Can’t you just be a vegetarian like everyone else?”

I expected more or less of the same when I told her about the birds and the car. Faith accusing, like there was something wrong with not being like everyone else. Like she had something better to offer. And that wasn’t all. If she did agree to give up the car, she would probably figure this got her out of the promise she made last night to come with me the weekend after next. Mom had been back to Canada seven times in the past seven years, but neither Faith nor I had ever been down to see where she lived in Cuernavaca. I’d told Mom before Faith arrived that I would go down one weekend to visit her. She suggested a date to coincide with one of her vacation breaks, one that would give me enough time to settle in to the big city first. She mentioned us going together to her friends’ beach house, on the ocean, once she’d shown me the place she now called home. “You could tack some days onto the end of your stay in Mexico to make up for the few days you spend with me.” Now Faith was part of that plan.

Faith thought of the hitch right away. “Where does that put Cuernavaca? How do you think we’re going to drive down?”

“I didn’t have a car when I told Mom I’d go to see her. There are buses you know.” Then I had an idea. Another excuse. “Maybe José could give us a ride down. He mentioned he was planning on driving down to be with his family for the Day of the Dead. Cuernavaca is on the way to his village down by Tehuacán.”

“Who’s José? And whoever he is, doesn’t his car pollute the same as this one? What about your sacred principles?”

“But he only drives it for emergencies or trips outside the city.”

I was like that, my principles easily swayed. Not like Papi. I believed Papi’s leaving us had something to do with his principles coming first. Principles linked to a poet’s obligations to put his art above all else and to a man’s obligation to be free. A father’s obligation got in the way and came between the other two. I couldn’t help wishing his principles came last.

When I decided to cut out meat, I did it the real vegetarian way at first. I thought I could go whole hog — wrong expression that — and cut out all living creatures. But I was so hungry all the time! And I kept losing weight. At my skinniest, one of Papi’s hugs would have crushed me.

I didn’t know what to do. Then I got to thinking about my dream. About the animals we threw into the fire — a goat, a pig, a donkey — mammals only. So that’s what my vision meant.

I didn’t know yet where falling sparrows came in.

“You didn’t answer my first question. Who is this José anyway?” Faith asked. “How much do you know about him?”

“For Christ’s sake, how much do I know about anyone? You, for example? You’re my sister, what more is there to tell? And he’s my... he’s my lover, that’s all you need to know.” I liked the feel of the word lover on my tongue. So much better than the alternatives. And true, technically. “He’s a painter too, a fingerpainter. And a potter, a woodsmith, and a whiz at glue guns. Whatever it takes. He and a part-time social worker run the informal school for the children who work in the market. I’ve started helping — teaching reading and writing, maybe a bit of English, too — if I’m there in the morning when they have the classroom. If I go in the afternoon I help with crafts outside.”

Faith had her own thoughts on the whole idea, but I was already busy planning how to ask José, glad for this new excuse to see him, so I let her words pass me by.