Carry Me Like Water (60 page)

Maria Elena moved closer and closer to Rose as she talked. She placed her hand on her shoulder, but said nothing. The old woman’s throat was dry. She stopped speaking.

“Rose, would you like some water?”

“Yes,” she said, “I’m thirsty.”

As Lizzie hovered over the house, she felt a great sadness. She wanted to wander the earth forever. She wanted to go back to Mexico and study the desert, its peoples, everything that inhabited it. She wanted to be a student of the world. Today, she had been out of her body for hour after hour after hour, and with each passing hour, she had begun to let go of the heaviness of being a body, a person, a human—the robes of flesh had become a heavy yoke. Perhaps she was becoming a spirit. Perhaps she was becoming perfect. She circled the house. Jake and Eddie were at the Bridge of the Americas in Juarez—stuck in traffic. Lizzie was free of all traffic. The thought occurred to her that she did not have to return. Nothing, no one could force her. She could abandon her bones and leave them to rot. She would not care. But as she hovered over the house, she suddenly became aware that it was completely dark except for a faint light coming from the window of her room. She moved closer to the room, and was surprised to see her body lying on her bed and Maria Elena and her mother keeping vigil over her body. She did not even have to try to read her mother’s mind to know that she was exhausted with worry.
I don’t want to go back, Mama. Tell her, Nena, tell her I no longer exist.
But Maria Elena, too, was wearing the same look as her mother, and she could hear her name being uttered.
Come back. Lizzie, come back.
The women’s faces could not be resisted. She knew there was no going back into the night. She
would have to reenter her old self for the sake of the women that were keeping watch. She would have to return and think about what she was going to do about a body for which she no longer had any use, a body for which she no longer had any love. She felt a stranger to herself. She found it odd that she still felt such strong loyalty toward these women and the things they felt.

When Maria Elena returned with a glass of water in her hand, a hot breeze came in through the window. The candles flickered but did not go out. Maria Elena smiled. “Thank God. ¡Ay gracias a mi santo Dios. Gracias!” She handed Rose the glass of water and pointed at Lizzie. The body that had lain on the bed all the long, silent day, lain as still as death itself, suddenly moved. Rose drank from the water and stared at her daughter as she slowly sat up on the bed. She looked at Maria Elena. “I’m seeing things,” she said.

“No,” Maria Elena whispered.

Lizzie looked up at the two women in the room. “Will someone please tell me why we’re using candles instead of lights. Have we gone back in time to a previous century?”

“Don’t ever do that again—do you hear me, Lizzie.” Maria Elena’s voice was as hard as the walls of the old house.

“Jesus Christ, Nena—”

“Don’t Jesus Christ me—you scared the hell out of us. We’ve been sitting here since noon wondering if you were ever going to come back to us—and don’t you ever do that to us ever again. Are you—”

“Slop it, Nena, you’re being hysterical. This was all your idea in the first place. I followed them to Casas Grandes and they’re fine, by the way—in case you were wondering.” She lugged on her earlobe searching for an earring, but found none. “And, in the second place, I don’t need your permission, Nena.”

Maria Elena glared at Lizzie. “Selfish, you’re so selfish, you know that. You could have at least let us know …” Rose sat quietly in the background regaining her composure as the two women argued. Their voices filled her with relief. Their was nothing serious in their disagreement, and it would be settled in minutes. She wanted to
scream with joy. She had been so afraid of losing her daughter, as afraid as she had ever been of anything. Her dream returned to her, but she banished it from her thoughts. Today, there would be no death in this house. She nodded at the exchange in front of her. She wanted to laugh, but she had no wish to show either of the women in the room her sense of exhilaration. She wanted to go to her room and be alone, perhaps shout out into the warm summer night.

“Well,” she said, interrupting Lizzie as words poured out of her like sweat, “I hope you’re rested enough to cook dinner.”

“Dinner, Mama?” Lizzie asked looking a little confused, “I’m in the middle of an argument.”

“Well, argue as you hover over a stove. If you can hover over Casas Grandes, you can hover over a kitchen stove. I’m hungry and I’d like something more interesting than a salad and a piece of meat. Mexican. I’d like Mexican tonight.” She rose from her chair, “I’m going to take a shower and change. Waste of a day, I’d say—a waste.”

9

A
WEEK LATER
, Mundo and the T-Birds drove up in their cars and honked in front of Luz and Diego’s house at sunrise.

Diego and Luz came out of the house a few minutes later. Luz looked at their cars and shook her head at Diego. “Their cars are too flashy,” she said. “They should be ashamed. They look like something that should be hanging on a Christmas tree.” She wrinkled her forehead as if she were smelling something unpleasant.

“Don’t you like the colors? I think they’re beautiful,” Diego wrote.

She shook her head. “And they shouldn’t be honking their horns. Just because I can hear doesn’t give them permission to honk in front of my house. Can’t they knock on the front door—they have no manners. They have no class.”

Mundo waved them over, his motions telling them it was time to get going. They got in the front seat of the canary yellow Chevy Mundo was driving. Three guys in the backseat tipped their hats toward Diego and Luz. Luz forced a smile, and Diego greeted them by pointing his chin toward them. He recognized El Guante and El Güero, but he didn’t know the other guy.

They drove toward Sunland Park to the entrance of the road that led to Mount Cristo Rey.

“Did you bring the water?”

Mundo took his eyes off the road for an instant and looked at
Luz. “You bet, Doña Luz, I don’t forget nothin’—I got a sharp mind. Anything that passes through my eyes and my ears stays up there forever.”

“You should paint this car another color. People on the road are looking at us.”

“Let them look, Doña Luz, that’s why they got eyes. Anyway, it’s not my car—if it was mine, I’d paint if cherry red.”

“Red would be worse—it would make me feel like I was covered in blood.”

Mundo kept driving and laughed. He took his eyes off the road to look at Diego. “Hey, Mr. Diego, guess what? I saw a sign on a window yesterday. There’s a flower shop behind the jail that’s looking for a delivery man. I think you should go on Monday and apply for the job.”

“He doesn’t know how to drive,” Luz answered.

“I’ll teach you how, Diego, no problem. There’s nothing to it—I’ll just get you one of those DMV books, and you can read it, and then you take the test. Nothing to it—and then you got yourself a job delivering flowers. It’s in the bag.”

“Keep your eyes on the road,” Luz said. “You’re going to kill us.”

“Will you really teach me how to drive?” Diego wrote.

He placed the pad in front of Mundo.

“You’re going to make him wreck the car,” Luz said.

Mundo read the note and nodded. “Yeah, I’ll teach you, and when you go in on Monday tell them you already know how to drive, but that you can’t start work for a week. You gotta lie about it, see? One week, that’s all we need.”

“Stop talking and keep your eyes on the road,” Luz said.

“Do you think I should lie like that?”

Luz read the note aloud to Mundo. “Don’t read Diego’s notes, anymore—I’ll just tell you what he writes, damn it. Just drive.” Mundo nodded.

“Monday, I’ll go down and apply.”

Luz read the note to Mundo.

Mundo nodded and laughed. “That job’s gonna be all yours.”

“I don’t know, Dieguito,” Luz interrupted. “It sounds like a wonderful
job, but I worry about you driving around this city. The roads are full of lunatics—do you really think you can learn to drive?”

“Don’t worry,” Diego wrote, “it’ll all work out. Mundo will teach me—you’ll see.”

Luz smiled to herself. She was glad Mundo was doing something for Diego. She decided to try and be nicer to him. Maybe that was part of his problem—not enough people had been nice to him.

When they arrived at the entrance to the road that went up the mountain, the company of pilgrims got out of the cars and stretched their legs. “These guys,” Mundo said, pointing to El Kermit and Indio, “are going to stay with the cars. We can’t let anybody mess with these babies. They’ll keep watch down here while the rest of us go up.” He looked up at the din path that led to the statue of Cristo Rey. “It’s a long climb. Doña Luz, you think you can make it?”

“I’m getting old, but I’m a long way from dead, Mundo—I can make it. My legs are strong. And I don’t want any talking while we’re climbing; this is supposed to be something sacred, so tell your birds not to talk. Tell them to pray if they know how.”

“They’re not birds, esa, they’re people, brothers—have some respect. These guys are doing you a favor, so try and act real nice.”

“I told you not to call me ‘esa.’”

“Don’t fight,” Diego wrote, “this is supposed to be something holy.”

“Don’t tell me about pilgrimages and what they’re supposed to be, Dieguito, I know more about these things than you do. Just put your pad away and be silent—I don’t want to see that pencil move until it’s all over.”

Diego placed his pad and pencil in his pocket reluctantly. For a moment they all stood in silence not knowing exactly what to do until Luz began climbing the mountain. They walked behind her on the path without attempting to talk. At first, they climbed at a steady pace, but the sun was beating down on them like a belt against the back, the rays as heavy as a belt buckle. They moved
slower with each step. Luz prayed her rosary as they climbed. Diego watched her hands as they touched the beads and fixed his eyes on her rosary as it swayed back and forth, back and forth touching her skirt and then swinging up toward the statue, toward the sky. Diego thought of his mother and how she had paced with her rosary in their small house, her lips moving, begging for things he could only guess at. They climbed slowly, higher.

Luz finally had to stop and rest though something in the way she stopped said she was angry with her body for having to take a rest. She put her hand on her back and arched it tossing her head up to the hot, open air. Diego put Luz’s bag down on the ground, and looked out at the desert. It was amazing to him that the chamizos and the mesquites were so green. A miracle, he thought, the pale green that refused to surrender its color to the sand that swallowed everything, made everything parched, made everything die begging, begging for cool, begging for water. How could this green exist?

Mundo handed Luz a cup of water from the jug he was carrying. He offered her a handkerchief to wipe the dust that had stuck to her sweating face. El Güero and El Guante wet their bandannas with water and tied them around their heads. El Güero lit a cigarette, and the look on his face said the nicotine was as good as water. Luz looked over at Mundo; he shook his head. El Güero took a deep drag and crushed his cigarette on the ground with his foot. After their first rest, they moved up the mountain—slower now—too hot to go fast. Diego felt his skin burning in the sun—burning like a match too close to the fingers. Luz took out the hat Diego had given her, the hat he had bought for Mary. She tied it to her head with the ribbons so the hot breeze wouldn’t blow it off. Diego watched her. She looked young in the sun, the way she looked before she had gone to Chicago, the way she had looked when he had first met her. He thought that many men must have loved her when she was young.