Hunger's Brides (207 page)

Another new truck, I see.

Got to keep up.

Thank you, we are not going far.

Another time.

The truck trolls off.

Who was that?

They may tell you they are musicians from Louisiana. Other times Haitian priests. They are drug runners.

Can they be more obvious?

This is the texture of life here. People accept. It does not mean we would want one to marry into the family.

Un negro
.

Why are you always provoking?

It means I like you.

Like me differently please.

They seem to know where you live. Are you friends?

They think I am some kind of wizard—they think we are in the same sorcerers guild, or want to exchange recipes, or I do not know exactly. Maybe you want me to introduce you….

My Temple Mask turns to me, eyes of blackest regret. I am sorry.

I can't expect you to just forget where you found me.

I do not know why I said this.

I'd like to go back now.

What are your plans?

Plans? You brought
me
.

Will you go back to Tulum?

No.

Why not come to San Andrés?

San Andrés …

Come, for the play.

No.

They will hold it under a huge ceiba tree. Did you and I not speak once about the Maya World Tree? It was often a ceiba. From there I could take you to Bacalar lagoon, one of the most beautiful places in all Mexico, perhaps anywhere. I have friends there.

You have friends everywhere….

Or you can stay for free at the Hotel Laguna.

So many friends, so many places. Who are you really, Jacinto Ek Cruz?

I could ask you—

Guerilla poet secret agent drugman—shaman? Are you? It's what the Maya sergeant—

He said teacher.

He said
curandero
.

Which can also mean healer. We were very lucky he was there. You and I both. You are writing about us I think, but know only books. If you come like the tourists to take our souls, you should know us a little first, no? As a courtesy. Come to San Andrés and maybe you will solve the Maya mystery.

Why San Andrés.

It is as good as anywhere else. It is where my mother lives.

19 Feb, San Andrés, Yucatán

It's true, the ceiba is enormous. A thousand candles of shade, a menorah. The village arrayed beneath in a ring of sandalwood boxes. In the clearing between chapel and tree people make ready for the play. Sweeping, laying a pine needle carpet beneath the spread ceiba boughs. Small wooden tables dragged into a broken row, draped in embroidered coverings. Clay cauldrons, a griddle for tortillas. Off by herself Patricia arranges bright-lacquered gourds and cups on a solitary table.

Hola, Beulah
. These cups we give the children after the play. We write their names on each with this paint. A cup to value and reuse and not throw away to collect rain. All this?—this is for the meal afterwards. I love coming into the country with don Jacinto but this is the hardest part for me, standing by while they do all the work. I am a guest here and a colleague of his so I am not allowed to raise a finger. At least that's what they say but it's also because I'm
may era
.

Mayera?

A city Maya. Citified—they think I'd botch everything. Let me show you the village. I think I can manage that much. Don Jacinto's uncle lives over there, his mother back in the trees….

A score of houses bend on an arc, roof thatch thick and neat. Mahogany beams. Beside each house is a painted cross, garlanded in pine. Inside the doorways little shrines, candles and Messiah. Dolorous virgin mother, but no Guadalupe here. Yards fenced in pale fieldstone—like chalk under lichen. We step into the little chapel of thatch, whitewashed walls, red-trimmed. Floored in fresh needles that gleam green.

How far have they gone to find pine?

Don Jacinto could tell you, but maybe as far as Chiapas.

Does he really know Commander Marcos?

You should ask. I have heard that Marcos read some things don Jacinto wrote, but there are other rumours.

Like
?

When he comes from his mother you can ask for yourself, if he feels like talking. Her attacks are smaller now. It's sad, such a beauty she was. Some people say it is a punishment. Of all the girls her age she was the finest weaver, the wisest, with the most suitors. Then she runs off with the grandson of a rich Mexican—the
chiclero
many of the village elders had been forced to work for. What would the gossips find to talk about
if she hadn't come back to the village, I wonder? Just listen to me!—you must think
I'm
one.

Dusk gathers. Children in white cotton pile out of farm trucks. Dressed like adults but running, laughter soft and deep—no shrill and shriek of sugar in the blood. Children running hard running barefoot in the dusk … a deep river of joy flowing around us. Exhilarate hush.

How many children
live
here?

A lot. But half of these are from X-Cacal—this is new, very exciting. These are the purest Maya, or purist Maya as I call them.
Los Separados …
The separated ones have appointed themselves guardians of the Chan Santa Cruz.

You said that was the old name for the capital.

Named after the Speaking Cross of Maya rebellion. We hid it in the jungle after the city fell to the Mexicans.
Los Separados
think the rest of us are all
Mayeros—
fallen. Of course we don't have the Oracle to guide us. Even these people of San Andrés are too modern for their liking. But since don Jacinto came back from Mexico City last year …

Yes?

Things have become better.

Someone called him a
curandero
.

His grandfather was a healer. His mother was learning to become one before she ran off. But no. For don Jacinto, the old ones use an old word. Scribe. It is the highest praise. He is our foremost interpreter of the old texts and inscriptions. The Maya leaders come to him for help, just as the foreign investigators do. Someone so young. He has set many of our popular legends down, in a form that delights country people. And he has written
new
texts, new songs that even the purist Maya find beautiful. After he is finished playing a spare tire for the children tonight, he may be asked to recite. Watch the faces, of the old ones. They say he speaks as their own grandparents knew to speak once. Ah here he comes. It must be true that his mother is worse.

She would like to meet you, Beulah.

Why?

I am not the one to explain my mother. She wants to talk to you alone. Will you?

I don't see….

Her reasons are her own. As usual. Maybe after you can explain her to
me
. Lately I feel a greater need. But I should warn you she can be harsh. Her
speech is a little slurred. And her memory … It is a great frustration. And an embarrassment, since she was once admired for her wit. It is a trait we prize.

Small thatched hut shunned out of the arc. Behind lies a cornfield, vines of beans creeping up the stalks. A rocking chair tipped on its side. No shrines, no cross. A sweet smell of mildew or rot. Cardboard nailed over the windows, flattened boxes of pesticide—
Shelltox
again. Bags of grain are stacked to the ceiling poles. A backstrap loom tacked to one wall is the sole adornment.

Mother, this is my friend—

We can introduce ourselves ourselves, Jacinto. Two bright eyes gleam from a hammock slung along the sacks of grain. Come girl, sit down. She beckons to a little crate.

Your mother lives in a granary.

Thank you,
hijo
, you can go now. Sit.
Ándele
. Swing me.

¿Señora?

Swing the hammock. Call me Marta. And you are Beulah.

Fine weave of wrinkles, heavy cheekbones, sunken temples. Jacinto's toucan bill. Her hair is a turban, matte black, impossibly thick, braided with pink and blue ribbons. There is a slackening, a blur in the flesh from droop of lid to chin. Her right hand lies across the chest … a cutting of calla, a lily slowly withering. Petal fingers, she has Jacinto's white palms.

You have beautiful hair.

My downfall. My nieces help me with it now. So that it does not fall. This is the house of my brother. No, it suits me, it is perfect. He built it specially. Exactly where I asked. He said when I moved in, A house without a shrine is fit only to store grain. This suits me also. The corn is my shrine, no? What is yours girl?

You're a weaver.

Was.
Obviamente
.

You wanted to talk.

You can be direct. Good, it is best. Are you the one for my son? You are the first of his women he has brought here.

I'm not his—

Of course. No one is anyone's now.

Your blouse, did you—

I hope you are not changing the subject. I am already making an effort for you. No I did not weave it.
Huipil
, not blouse. Every true Maya must weave hers. It is a rectangle embroidered with the four directions, the
four colours of the corn. Her head slips through the centre, like a noose. No matter how far she travels she is always there, where she has placed herself. Between the heavens and the underworld, woven into the centre. Hung like a spider. These threads are strong….

They ask me why I lie here. Why I do not get up and hobble around. Do you want to ask me too?

No.

Good. Then you I will tell. I am where I have placed myself, am always. Three dead children, one beautiful husband with a stone for a heart. I am an old woman, almost sixty. There is only Jacinto holding me. Swing me. There … Again now, harder. Be careful with him, he is a smooth one. For his own good a little too clever, like his mother. But stronger. And his heart is good, though soft.

I should go, I don't belong—

Ah, you have noticed already. It only came to me later, after twenty years or so. No, do not go yet. Soon. That box there. Bring it. Open—go on … Do you know what that is, under the creases?

A
huipil
.

Obviously. That is the last
huipil
I wove. When I had come back here for good. The finest weaver in the village still and ever. How do you like the embroidery?

There isn't …

It is what they thought too. But this is my best work. Look more closely. The best embroidery they have never seen. I know it is dark. Look harder. Such detail, no? Of every colour, every shade. And every thread and stitch is
white
. When they finally saw, they said I was crazy. Then when I had my big stroke, they said … well, just think. But I was already sick when I came.

Señora
, what do you want to tell me?

I want you to explain to my son.

About this?

No.

No entiendo, señora
.

I want him to let go. So I can go.

He capers like a clown for a hundred children. This man, this famous Scribe. A spare tire, cheeks puffed out, fatman sway and swagger. Antic, comic is the serious face. He is the one they watch, eyes alight.

After, alone under the ceiba, he is the one the old ones bend their heads to hear. In such a sweet simple voice Jacinto sings—what lyric what lament? Two ancient sisters clutch at each other's wrists, eyes never leaving him. Patricia says they are granddaughters of a Maya poet dead a hundred years. How does this make them feel…. There is no way to ask this.

Patricia packs the panel van—No she insists, this is what she is paid for, just sit by the fire. An earthenware vat of corn simmers, banked low for the night, the women to rise in darkness, make fresh tortillas for the sleepy family.

Across the embers breaths of air glide shadow mantas. He comes to the fire. It is quiet for awhile.

Your father was a Mexican?

Not my father. Her husband. I was born much later. When I press her she says it was the gardener. It may be true. With her, there is no knowing. Our culture centre was once a depot for hemp and
chicle
for chewing gum. Her husband's family contested his will. The building was one of the things they could not take back. She gave it to me, and gave most of the rest away.

Is that why they think she's crazy?

In town, yes. But here, they understood her pride. She was widely admired. A kind of hero once, though people had different reasons. Some admired her leaving, some her returning. Everyone had thought she ran off for the money.

She didn't.

I believe she loved him. She kept only enough for her brother to build her house.

The granary.

Uncle has not touched the corn in there for months. He moved it in there after a fight. Then she would not let him take it back. It moulders now. The sicker she gets the worse he feels. He has begged her. He has begged me to beg her.

Have you?

With her, begging does no good. You have an expression in English—the good ones dying young? My mother has a harsher view.

That it makes no difference when.