Читать книгу Damselfish - Susan Ouriou - Страница 9

Faith’s retching filled my ears and nose. We’d pulled off the road. José was standing next to the car and looking over the roof while I stood next to Faith on the other side, holding her forehead as she doubled over, all her weight pushing against my hand. This was a first for us. Back in Montreal, during my CEGEP years, I was always the one down on my knees hugging the toilet bowl, Faith’s hand supporting me. Of course, mine was always due to too much Baby Duck, too many rum and Cokes, or a record night of beer chugging. Like today, my warm beer to give me courage for the reunion. Faith never over-indulged, over-imbibed, over-anything that I knew of. Always in such control.

It wasn’t like she was one to get carsick either. That too was my specialty on our yearly holidays, trips across the entire breadth of the country (to become true Canadians we had to know the whole of Canada, Papi said. Papi never did anything by half measures) or, on one occasion, all the way back to Mexico. On the first day of driving, we’d inevitably have to stop by the side of the road at some point for me to throw up. That was on good days, when Papi managed to find a place to pull over soon enough. Faith hated it when he didn’t make it in time. I was too far gone to care.

On our first night out, the ritual was always the same. Vacations, Mom decreed, were her time off from mothering, so Papi washed my matted hair — somehow I never remembered until the second day to tie my hair back — in whatever cheap motel room we’d managed to find, always, again, at Mom’s insistence. Left to his own devices, I think Papi would have driven through the night. We called it being hyper. In the moisture-sucking prairie provinces, on top of the upchucking, my nose would start to bleed and keep on bleeding for days.

Papi didn’t seem to mind the vomit or the blood or the dust. He took delight in helping me make soap-beehive hair-dos, shampooed French buns, spikes on either side of my head, then he’d hold the mirror up for me to admire our creations or fly into uncontrollable fits of laughter. Afterwards, my favourite part, two parts pain to three parts bliss, I’d stand shivering between his knees, one towel wrapped tight around me, another in his hands, while he attacked my hair, wringing every last drop of water out. He always rubbed too hard, but the pleasure was never less than the pain.

I wondered if poets ever stopped to consider the pain or pleasure they wreaked on their muse. Not that the pain was Papi’s fault, he just didn’t know his own strength.

That’s what holidays were, frequent pit stops, strong thighs holding me upright as stronger hands buffeted my scalp, a Grand Prix family on the move. Until Papi left.

We were on the crest of a hill. In the valley below lay Cuernavaca, the City of Eternal Spring instead of eternal pollution. The sky was blue, not the grey haze of Mexico City, and the space above the car hood shimmered in the heat. We could actually see the volcano el Popo, which José said would be visible from Mexico City too if we ever had a day without smog. Together he called el Popo and the dormant volcano beside it the Sleeping Woman, said each one of the four peaks was named after a part of her body. I tried to focus on the volcanoes, breathe in clean air, and block my ears to sick-making heaves. José was right, the four mountain peaks did look like a woman asleep.

In art, to anticipate is to lose the truth of the movement, the gesture, the landscape, all the telling details. I had anticipated too long and too hard this trip, seeing my mother in a home I’d never known, imagining the three women of our family finally joining forces to track down a missing father and husband in his homeland. Now, instead, I concentrated on the distant volcano.

Faith stopped heaving. Her head — clammy not hot — lay heavy on my hand. I tried to imagine what could have brought this on, whether Faith said anything or gave any sign before her strangled plea for José to pull over.

José was into what must be his highway driving mode. Much more relaxing than his kamikaze city style. Faith hadn’t been taking part in our conversation. I thought she’d dozed off in the back seat. It was as though José and I were alone in the car.

“When did you last see your parents?” I asked as we drove.

“My mother. My father died two years ago.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

José shrugged. “We weren’t that close.” The tone of his voice seemed to contradict his shrug. I waited.

José glanced over, put both hands on the wheel. “It felt like I spent most of his last few years trying to connect. The grown son he’d imagined would have stayed close to home, worked the land with him or, at the most, got a job in one of the water-bottling factories nearby. That son wasn’t me. He didn’t get it, what I was doing, who I am, what I’d become. We were both disappointed all the time. We quit trying. It got so I started finding excuses to stay in the city. Then he died. At least I made it back before the end. Anyway, this is one of the few holidays my mother insists on me driving down for.” A pause. “Families, huh.”

I watched the way he crossed one hand over the other as he turned the wheel. Switched from one topic to the next. “I guess I’d better explain how you and Faith can get around Cuernavaca. You’ll be minus a chauffeur once I’ve gone.”

I got the message. The subject of families was closed.

“It’s easy to get around the city, just hop a bus, they call them rutas, for two pesos and you’ll be able to go just about anywhere. Out to the San Antonio hacienda that Cortés built. Or to Tepoztlán, you’ll have to go there, just outside Cuernavaca. A great hike to the top to a tiny pyramid that marks a sacred site. Worshippers go up there to watch the sun rise and pray for the gods’ intervention.”

“People still believe in all that?”

José looked over at me, even slowed down a little. “Well, yeah. Why not? What do you believe in?”

That was when Faith called out, “You’ve got to pull over. I’m going to be sick.” I didn’t have time to say what I believed. Even less to decide if I did.

Thanks to an old sink behind a gas station, Faith was sort of cleaned up by the time we reached Mom’s place. The wrought-iron gate where José let us off led to the villa where her employers and landlords must live, the ones who ran the language school she worked in. The swimming pool, bougainvillea, mango, and banana trees we glimpsed from the road must belong to them as well. As must the broken Coke bottles glued to the top of the gate and along the fence, their jagged edges forming a bizarre frame.

She appeared in the door of a two-storey apartment block down the driveway from the villa, greying hair pulled back into a sloppy bun, loose strands escaping around her face. I had a flashback: Mom standing in more or less the same position at the foot of another hill in Montreal, one covered in snow.

I waved. She smiled, waved back, started up the drive. Her breasts were heavier now than they were those many years ago, but her waist still indented slightly above generous hips — just like Faith’s. Compared to the two of them and Papi, I’d always been out of place. Skinny, curveless me.

“I was starting to get worried,” she called out to us. “You’re late.”

I certainly wouldn’t be the one to tell her why. Mom tended to imagine the worst ever since Papi disappeared.

The day before Papi left, Mom stood at the bottom of Mont-Royal, just like she stood at the foot of this rise, while the three of us — Papi, Faith, and I — trudged to the top above Beaver Lake dragging the crazy carpet behind. Once there, Papi lay stomach down — mouth down as the Mexicans say — toes digging into the snow, with Faith boca abajo on him because she was the oldest and the biggest and me on top of the two of them. In one motion, Papi pushed off.

Papi was a big man, thick bones, solid muscle, with a bit of a paunch. Faith took after him, except for the paunch. The two of them like two sturdy cushions under my bony frame, softening the bumps and hollows we hit. It never got that good again.

That day, ten years ago — me fourteen, Faith sixteen — we must have looked bizarre, too old for kids’ games but shooting down the hill anyway. Racing after a childhood.

Faith gave a gasp on the first bump as my body floated up and slammed back into hers. Wind chomped at the top of my head and along my back. Crystals of snow flew up from the toboggan runners and burnt my tongue.

That time, Papi didn’t whoop and sing, or even gasp and grunt. Just kept his head to the sled as we hurtled down. Like he was trapped between the lash of wind, the crunch of snow, and his daughters’ weight.

I saw the approaching sled.

I tried to shout, but my voice — high and breathy at the best of times — was swallowed by the wind.

Our path veered. We headed for the trees along the sides, on target for the spear of a branch. I tucked my chin, closed my eyes, and felt the scratch of a twig on my cheek.

I raised my head and saw we were headed straight down the hill now, on a collision course with Mom. She waved, hair and scarf whipped by wind, her body standing firm, smiling as we plummeted down. God, couldn’t she see? The ride from hell, and she did nothing but smile. No wonder she named us Faith and Hope; she wasn’t capable of imagining anything else.

At the last minute, Papi put his head up, threw his arm to the side, and changed the course of our run. Mom kept waving and smiling, pretending everything was all right.

The next day Papi left. Without saying a word. Then or now.

They say Mont-Royal is a volcano, supposedly extinct. But I swear I have felt its rumblings ever since.

Papi’s leaving was as physical as a sled broadsiding Mom where she stood. From out of nowhere, she said. When she could have seen it coming. So could I if I’d only read the last poems he’d typed: “The Forgotten Lines,” “Intimacy Untold,” “Animal of Despair.” The words he never spoke that I might have heard if I’d read them in time. He painted word pictures, now I tried to bring them to life with a graphite pencil or a brush. Both of us looking for what could have been, what wasn’t, and the wide spaces in between.

So many words still left unspoken. As many after his departure as before, if not more. Meaningless words were the only ones uttered, not the words that mattered most. Why did he go? Where had he gone? For how long?

The only thing I knew for sure was that ever since that day, Mom had learned to fear the worst, as if making up for lost time. It was better for everyone if we kept Faith’s spell of sickness quiet. Our secret.

We all smiled awkwardly as Mom walked up the slope, fumbled with the lock and chain, and swung the gate open.

She came up to me, kissed my cheek once, turned to Faith, and brushed her cheek as well. I held my breath. She didn’t seem to notice Faith’s still-pallid skin, red-ringed eyes, or limp hair. She was too busy turning to José with a questioning look.

“Mom, this is José Molinar, a friend. José, my mother, Ramona Alder.”

She smiled and shook his hand. The calculations had already begun. How much of a friend? How long? Where from? “Won’t you come in?”

“Gracias, but no. I’ll leave you to your homecoming. Better without an intruder.”

Homecoming. Strange home considering I’d never been here before. The last home I had with Mom was in Montreal. The one the three of us stayed on in after Papi left; a mother and two teenage girls, not the perfect mix. But then Faith moved out with her boyfriend and I reached college-age and Mom decided to start over again. Now I wondered if she and I would ever catch up on that time she had missed between my teenhood and womanhood.

José had mentioned an intrusion, too. There could be no intrusion when he had been invited in. But Mom didn’t insist, her attention was already turning back to Faith and me. So I didn’t insist either. Although I wanted to.

José opened the trunk and held out Faith’s suitcase and my backpack. Faith didn’t even make a show of taking charge, she must really be sick. I hoped Mom didn’t notice. She’d have Faith at death’s door in no time. José came close, his arm brushing mine as he handed over the bags. His touch was a magnet to my skin, the prick of iron shavings coming to life. I wanted to drop the bags, grab his neck, and give in to the pull. I didn’t. He kissed me lightly, gripped Mom’s hand, then Faith’s with a pat on her shoulder, and climbed back into the car. “Give me a call from the bus station when you get back.” He stared pointedly at Faith, who still looked like she was having trouble finding the strength to stand straight. “I can give the two of you a lift.” I watched him drive off as my mother and sister started walking down the rise.

Mom gave us a whirlwind tour of her apartment, then over to the villa, where we had to climb a ladder attached to the outer wall to our guest room, actually the maid’s room, a concrete box perched on the top of the flat roof. Dozens of birds chirped from among the leaves of a tall mango tree whose top hugged the outer wall of the box which was actually a bedroom that had no door, just two openings, one the doorway, the other a window entirely open to the elements, and one bunk bed. The only other furnishings were an ironing board and a wooden chair piled high with clothes. I’d thought Mom’s apartment looked spartan, this was beyond belief.

“The dueños are between maids right now. Their last girl left, so they offered to let you two sleep here. Otherwise, we’d have had to string up two hammocks in my place.”

“I can see why she left,” I remarked. I tried to catch Faith’s eye, but she was still winded from the climb and didn’t notice. She looked almost grey in this light. Mom just shrugged.

The landlady and landlord were at their front door as we climbed back down the ladder. Both were of a stocky build but dressed for a younger, slimmer age. He wore an open-necked shirt and jeans, she a long white T-shirt over black leggings. The woman came over first, smiled, and shook our hands. Mom pulled her aside as her husband stepped up to greet Faith and me. “¡Qué linda familia! ¡Qué placer infinito es encontrarles a las hijas de nuestra gran amiga! Soy Miguel.” I smiled in spite of myself. Somehow, after seeing the spartan maid’s room, I’d expected the owners to be stern-looking, penny-pinching. Instead, Miguel’s effusiveness, the kind where nothing is just fine, but everything is beautiful, every pleasure infinite, reminded me sharply of Papi. As did his courtly gesture as he opened the door for us and ushered us into his house. I remembered Papi’s bewilderment back home when such an act of courtliness on his part was interpreted as chauvinistic. I had returned to another generation as well as another land. It made me see Papi in a new light. How stifling it must have been to always have to tone down his effusiveness, his chivalry, his lifestyle, his tastes.

Mom and the landlady, Graciela, had finished whispering. Graciela nodded and looked at us, “Of course, come in, come in.” We soon discovered that Mom had asked if we could visit the altar Graciela and Miguel had set up for the Day of the Dead.

The irony didn’t escape me: our father, the non-Canadian, had been the one intent on showing us the real Canada during our cross-country trips, now it seemed it was our mother, the non-Mexican, who was bent on showing us the real Mexico. In this case, the real Mexico’s fascination with death. Papi quoted Octavio Paz to me once, and I remembered it still because, at the time, it seemed such a strange thing for a father to say: “by refusing to contemplate death, we cut ourselves off from life.” Now I wondered if there was a country somewhere in the world that contemplated people disappearing instead of dying and built altars in their name.

The first thing I noticed was the full baby bottle and soother nestled in between sugar skulls and skeleton figures surrounded by flickering candles and burning copal incense on the top tier of three what looked like orange crates covered in purple crepe paper. My sandals slid, then caught, on ashes and marigold petals scattered at my feet.

“Careful,” said Graciela. “The ashes are to show up his footprints when he comes.” She took a framed picture of a little boy, a toddler, from the place of honour on the altar and held it out to us. “He was our son,” she said.

Faith’s stomach chose that moment to rebel. She mumbled something about the incense and motioned for me to help her beat a quick retreat to Mom’s home.

Once back in the apartment, Faith headed straight for the bathroom. Mom, who had followed us out, headed for the juicer — “I should have offered you something to drink to begin with. You must be dying of thirst” — and reached for three glasses as she explained that the oranges came from the tree poolside, and that there were bananas too and mangoes, such a luxury to have a private source of fruit outside the front door. I grabbed a glass just as it was about to fall, motioned for Mom to concentrate on the juice, and took down the last two glasses from the open shelf. Her voice blended with the whirring of juicer blades. I scooped emptied orange shells from the sink, dropped them into the garbage can, and let her words wash over me in waves of sound, remembering how I only learned what silence was after Mom left Montreal. Where had Papi’s voice fit in, an occasional swell or the tide washing out?

Faith came back finally and dropped into a chair. Mom kept talking with only the briefest glance in her direction. “There you are, Faith, I was just telling Hope about all the fruit we have growing right in the garden here, but even homegrown you can’t be too careful, it all has to be washed in purified water and soap, scrubbed with a brush, or else diarrhea strikes. Remember how you always used to call it ‘dire rear,’ Hope? Or was it you, Faith? Oh well, it doesn’t really matter, does it? We got a lot of laughs out of that. Speaking of the Aztec two-step — that’s what they call it here — you don’t look too well, Faith, a little peaked? Nothing wrong I hope, you always have had the stronger constitution, not like Hope what with her heart murmur...”

I broke in, “Innocent, Mom, an innocent heart murmur.” The words brought back the anxious wait nine years ago in the cardiologist’s, Mom holding my hand. A murmur no doctor had mentioned before. Maybe it had been shocked into existence. In any case, the cardiologist pronounced it innocent, but it was a verdict Mom never believed.

It was as though I hadn’t said a word.

“Now it wouldn’t surprise me in the least to see you get sick, Hope, your defences must be so weakened from all those paints, the turpentine, the charcoal dust you work with all the time, you really should be careful. You must install a fan in your studio, I’m sure no one has thought to do that for you and you know how harmful toxic fumes can be and who knows about the added risk just from breathing the air in Mexico City, really I wish you’d asked them to send you here instead...”

Faith broke in before the next wave could gather any strength. “No, there’s nothing wrong, Mother.” It didn’t look like Mom caught the sarcasm. I certainly did. “Other than the fact that I’m pregnant, that is.”

Mom and the blender stopped together. A neighbour’s rooster crowed outside. And I was the one who was broad-sided.

Mom’s exclamations, her questions, were only so much background to my whirling thoughts. I went back for the bottle of Tequila I’d noticed on the top shelf and added a shot to my orange juice. I could see the coming months so clearly. Marc, who had always been there for my sister, would of course drop everything and rush to her side. She would have the family I had not, the family I had hoped to rediscover by embarking on the search to find Papi. And I would have José or another man and our tentative attempts at closeness until sex was not enough and he dumped me or I dumped him. Did I want to do it all over again?

Growing up, every single friend I ever had liked Faith best. Quite the testament to friendship if you asked me. The power of those two extra years she had on us spurred my friends to look for inclusion into her world. As if Faith needed them. Did she ever suck her thumb for company or drag an old blanket around until nothing was left but a pocket-sized shred? No. Because she had no need for things or people.

First at everything, me last. Not that I wanted a baby, not now. But still. It made me sick. I added another shot. Not that anyone was going to give a damn if I threw up.

“I’m going to do this myself,” Faith was saying. What had I missed?

Mom didn’t like that. “Oh, Faith. I think it’s a big mistake to set out to do it all yourself. The kind of mistake I made with your father.”

“What do you mean?”

Mom ignored the question, clammed up.

Which was a relief.