This is not my memory. This is the space between dreaming and waking. This is the gap between scribbled journal entries and the melting black and white image, a struggle for understanding.
~
December winds pushed Joan’s dark brown hair with her every step toward Cuxtitali, a neighborhood on the outskirts where town met forest. A graphite sky hung above the main plaza buzzing with vendors selling hand-carved wooden figurines in the Christmas market. Shaggy dogs sniffed for scraps wedged between cobblestones, others inspecting shrubs and agave plants. Joan folded her arms tight against her ribs, the thick maroon sweater she wore trapping body heat. Snow doesn’t fall in the mountains of San Cristobal de las Casas, but night-time temperatures hovering just above freezing made a blazing fire essential. Indoor heating largely didn’t exist, cell phones and the internet not yet dreamed of in this place. And in the early ’90s, a few years before the Zapatistas, most houses didn’t have landlines. Even if she could have called, the past replayed in Joan’s mind like a warning. She knew she had to see Mica.
Joan arrived in Cuxtitali. A ten-foot-tall fence of oak and pine slats separated Mica’s house from the road. Mica had chained shut a makeshift gate through her fence, her usual sign for wanting to be left alone. Beige, green, and pink houses lined the opposite side, Mica’s usually friendly neighbors nowhere to be found, the neighborhood quiet, the dirt paths absent of children kicking soccer balls beneath chapel shadows. Gusts whipped, and earth scattered across Joan’s boots. She eyed low hanging tree limbs swaying in the wind, scanned the barrier stretching to the heavens, tried talking herself out of worry.
Maybe it’s nothing, Joan thought. Maybe the baby had gotten sick. Or perhaps Mica had locked herself in her darkroom, cranking out new proofs of postcards to sell by the holiday rush, exiting just long enough to ensure her son had a fresh diaper, sippy cup full of grape juice, or that he slept soundly in his hammock. Maybe they lay in bed against one another while Mica hummed lullabies.
~
Almost two years earlier, Mica trudged into town, migraine spiderwebbing across her temples. Joan and her husband, Barry, had been chatting at the bottom of crumbling concrete stairs near Na Bolom, the museum they helped manage, and where they’d met Mica. Mica ordinarily attracted dozens of hellos, everyone eager to share the day’s news. To hear about the pregnancy. That day, though, she grimaced with each step, lightning strikes burrowing across her cranium.
Mica, like a bird, migrated north and south as she saw fit, free to soar from terrestrial chains. She went wherever she wanted, dated whomever she wanted, lived only how she wanted. When she first arrived in Mexico, she stayed in Oaxaca with a pot dealer boyfriend, and legend has it she drove a Station wagon brimming with his stuff across the country and into the US, border patrol in the ’70s hardly making a fuss out of a pretty LA girl coming home. They split the money, not that Mica needed it. A child of upper-middle-class southern California suburbia, Mica needed only ask her parents for money and they’d gladly have given it to her. Mica didn’t want that. She never wanted to be in anyone’s back pocket. She’d let someone tell her what to do exactly once and resolved to do so never again, which is perhaps why she at first resisted Joan and Barry’s insistence that she come to their house, if for no other reason than to rest for a few moments without massaging her temples.
Joan and Barry had a neighbor, Pablo, who’d grown up in Mexico City, then studied at Harvard. Always dressed in the three-piece suit of the polished academic, Pablo had been trained as a psychologist, not a medical doctor. But he had the needed equipment to give Mica a look, the nearest hospital ninety minutes winding down the mountain to Tuxtla.
The four of them gathered in Joan and Barry’s living room. Pots and pans hung dry above the wooden table, Mica and Joan’s landscape watercolor paintings framed against red adobe walls. The scent of coffee still clung to the morning air. Outside, jays sung and plants swayed beneath umbrellas of pine, hummingbirds darting through seas of petals. Mica feared what Pablo would find, afraid that, once again, life conspired to keep her baby from her, that he’d never join her in this place she loved.
Pablo wrapped the blood pressure cuff around Mica’s left arm. He pumped and constricted, eyed the readings, clicked his tongue, snorted. He removed the cuff from the left arm and repeated the process for her right.
“Barry, let’s talk in the other room,” Pablo said.
Barry and Pablo rounded the corner to Joan and Barry’s bedroom.
“Her blood pressure is so high she could drop dead at any moment,” Pablo said. The two decided that Barry should tell Mica.
Ordinarily, Barry loved talking with her. The two sang along to Juan Luis Guerra, smoked joints while Barry strummed guitar or played piano, talked politics and movies. They practiced speaking Tzotzil and Lacandon Maya, traded stories for hours on end huddled shoulder to shoulder in the darkroom. He admired her beauty, her ability to catch her subjects’ world in the glint of their eyes. He also knew Mica to be stubborn and bullheaded, not easily persuaded, not one to be told what to do.
“Mica,” Barry started.
Mica began crying. She hadn’t told anyone about the vomiting. About the blood. About the sleepless nights. Her hands tensed, one laced with Joan’s, the other planted over her baby bump.
“Your blood pressure is dangerously high. You need to go to the hospital and get treatment. We’ll go with you.”
Mica had a double uterus. She’d already miscarried twice. Aborted one pregnancy on the orders of a previous partner, though she never told Joan. Joan herself had endured multiple miscarriages. She and Barry birthed one daughter—the baby girl lived a handful of hours, and they marked her funeral plot with a small wooden crucifix. For more than a decade, Joan knew of Mica, another expat living in San Cristobal, but their friendship had only truly flourished in the last couple years. They had bonded, among other things, over mutual suffering. Joan knew what this baby meant to Mica.
~
Joan returned to Cuxtitali the next day. She still hadn’t heard from Mica, nor had any friends she’d seen in town. This time, Mica’s neighbors stood outside talking frantically, all silver dollar eyeballs and flailing arms. They also worried about Mica.
“Have you seen her in the last day or two?”
“No, and she comes out every day to say good morning and let us see the baby.”
“And you’re sure she didn’t take a trip somewhere?”
“No, señora, she would have told us. Other friends have come by looking for Doña Mica, too.”
Other friends, Joan thought. She wasn’t the only one spooked by Mica’s absence. Joan eyed the fence, determined to scale it. She doesn’t remember how she climbed over. Maybe she clawed at the rough wood plunging splinters into her palms until they bled. Perhaps she hoisted herself over courtesy of a low hanging tree branch. Or maybe she simply levitated, winter birds trumpeting in the background.
On the other side of the fence, Joan noted that Mica had left the lawn immaculate, children’s toys sorted, gardening tools squared away, the cobblestone path leading into the front patio flanked by neat, trimmed grass. A wooden rocking chair sat empty among an array of potted plants at the far end of the tiled floor. Mica’s wood pile stood tall against the earth-colored wall. Handcrafted pillars wrapped in vines, potted succulents adorning their feet, all looked cared for, unabandoned. Mica had closed the window shutters and double doors leading inside. Joan yanked the front doors’ handles but couldn’t pry them open. Pear trees swayed and cracked, yet the house remained quiet. Could Mica have left without telling the neighbors? Joan knew Mica had been saving for a surprise trip to the States, so maybe they had left without telling anyone. Joan paced the perimeter. All the window shutters were locked down. Otherwise, everything appeared normal.
Unconvinced, Joan left to find Chavel and Manuela, the land owners, good friends of Joan’s and of Mica’s. On her way, she was delayed by other friends asking about firewood, the winter air still sharp. Hours passed before they returned to Cuxtitali. Armed with a long wire, Chavel picked the lock in Mica’s gate, then hoisted a ladder over his shoulders as the three marched into the yard.
The window shutters had flung open. How? Joan felt certain they had been shut earlier.
A diaper bag sat atop a dresser visible through the now unblocked window. Blue light flickered off the floor. Television. The warmth evaporated from Joan’s limbs.
“Mica!” Joan, Manuela, and Chavel shouted.
Silence.
A skylight overlooked the bedroom. The three of them walked to the back of the house so they could look through it.
Had their shouts told me that hope remained? Did I hear footsteps and understand that this was my chance?
I whimpered. Once. Weak. Faint. But loud enough that the three of them heard me before they propped the ladder against the outer wall. Chavel climbed first, reached the top, then peered inside.
“Madre santísima, está muerta la Mica,” he said, anguished.
Joan climbed the ladder next. My memory mercifully spares me the image that she looked upon: Mica’s midnight blue eyes rolled backward, face arced toward the skylight, blood, tears, and vomit streaking the immaculate cheek bones Joan knew so well. This death hadn’t happened recently. Joan guessed Mica had died Friday night, and now the sun was beginning to set on Sunday.
What did I do during those two days, alone with my mother’s body? Had I tucked myself against her, praying for warmth, for comfort? Did I tug on her clothing hoping she’d change me, feed me, give me water? Did I try to nudge her awake, or did I comprehend quickly that she was gone? Had I been in bed with her when she suffered her aneurysm and died instantly, with no time to warn anyone? Maybe I howled, a baby’s cries for his mother drowned out beneath the stars. Or perhaps I went silent, already numb, waiting my turn to join her, death already a familiar face at nineteen months old.
Joan stayed atop the ladder and searched for me. She scanned beside the bed, the corner of the crib visible to her, but found no sign of the infant the spitting image of his mother. But I’d whimpered—she knew that I remained alive.
Joan descended the ladder and started for the front doors.
“Wait,” Chavel said.
Joan paused, veins throbbing, ready to demolish the double doors.
“We have to go in there and get Ariel. Now,” Joan said.
“There’s a dead body in there. If we go in now, we’ll be arrested for suspected murder.”
“What do we do?” Joan asked, panting though standing motionless.
“Go to the ministerio publico. Have them come here immediately. When you’re there, call Barry, and tell him to bring Pablo, too.”
Joan understood. They needed the officials to investigate the death without suspicion, and Barry and Pablo because they knew Mica’s medical history. I would have to wait inside a while longer.
~
“What would happen to Ariel if I died?” Mica had asked Joan more than once.
Mica had barred my father, Ricardo, from being an integral part of my life. Absconding to Chiapas had been Ricardo’s way of rebelling against his conservative Catholic upbringing in Mexico City. The eldest son in a sprawling family tree, Ricardo’s fatherhood came strapped with expectations, or so it seemed to Mica. She liked him, loved him, despite being ten years his senior. Kind, intelligent, handsome, but also young and immature. Ricardo wouldn’t live with us. We wouldn’t masquerade as a happy nuclear family.
“His last name will be McGuirk,” Mica had told him.
“What about Martinez?” Ricardo asked, face flushed, gravelly voice heavy with disappointment.
“You can be in his life. You can be a father to him. But we won’t be a family.”
I have a photo of the three of us together, taken days after my birth. They’re both looking down at me lovingly, a newborn bundle wrapped tailormade for their care. Ricardo arrived at the hospital the day after I’d been born, but he snapped a photograph of my first bath that a museum displayed for some time. I emerged from rippling water, contorted face of a furious infant, fist raised defiantly in the air, ready to fight from day one. Mica knew, when it mattered most, I’d be alone.
Mica kept Ricardo from being listed in my civil registry. He bounced between Mexico City and Chiapas, a sporadic presence in my infancy. Only faint pen scribbles in my baby book proved his fatherhood. Legal documents give the appearance that Mica had conceived and birthed me all on her own.
I had a Godmother, the only person with Mica when I was born, but they never put anything in writing. In California, she’d once told her brother and his wife that she wanted them to have me if she died. Maybe she never formulated concrete plans but wanted to know someone she trusted would raise me if the worst happened.
We celebrated my first birthday at home with a piñata and masks. The adults smoked cigarettes while the other babies and I rolled in the grass mound. Ribbons hung alongside my napping hammock over our front porch bordered by succulents and jasmine. Mica had tied my hair, long and dirty blonde like hers, into a messy pony tail and wrestled me into a blue and white suit. She pulled me around on a wagon, a stuffed lion and quetzal bird my companions. Joan had never seen Mica happier.
After the party had died down, Barry excused himself to the bathroom, and while there, he noticed a small paper rectangle wrapped in plastic plopped in the waste bin. Barry told Joan what he’d seen, and the two of them confronted Mica.
“You have to take your medicine,” Barry said.
Mica had returned home to Los Angeles days after Pablo’s diagnosis. She spent months there on medications and a salt free diet, which lowered her blood pressure from catastrophic to concerning. I’d been born in a hospital in Mexico City, lived with my Godmother and her three daughters in Cuernavaca until we came to San Cristobal when I was two months old, and life went on. No one is sure when she stopped taking her medicine.
Mica’s eyes sharpened, mouth narrowed, arms folded. “I know. But the side effects are awful. I can’t sleep and feel nauseous all the time,” she said. “They’re worse than the headaches.”
The three of them peeked into the front yard. “Ariel?” Mica called. I’d been sitting on the grassy hill picking up oblong stones and letting them plummet. I looked back to them. “There’s my little man.”
“Besides,” Mica added, “I doubt anything will actually happen to me.”
They looked to me on the hill again. There I sat, testing gravity.
~
Another hour passed before everyone returned to my home, now a tomb. Shake and rattle the double doors all they’d like, the ministerio publico officials couldn’t pry them open. They shattered the window, brushed aside glass shards, climbed inside, then opened the double doors for everyone else. The officials busied themselves with Mica’s body; Chavel and Manuela stood near the entrance; Joan and Barry searched for me; Pablo ran interference with the officials.
“I’ve taken this woman’s condition. I can verify she’s died of natural causes,” Pablo said. He and the officials discussed legal logistics.
Joan and Barry checked my crib to ensure it remained empty. They looked in the closet to find it vacant, too. Where?
For the second time, I whimpered.
Joan found me. I’d propped my limp body against a large wooden trunk, nothing on but a tee shirt and cramped diaper, tiny hands and feet translucent white. Joan scooped me, chapped lips and spaghetti arms, and wrapped me in the folds of her sweater. And I know I felt warmth.
While the officials examined my mother’s body, debated over whom to contact, Pablo seized his opportunity.
“Take that baby and get out of here,” Pablo whispered in English.
Joan, Barry, and I didn’t move for a moment.
“His father isn’t on his paperwork, right? With the mother gone, he’ll be thrown in an orphanage. It’ll take months to get him out. Maybe longer. He’s very dehydrated. Take him and give him water and juice. Barry, stay and help me sort things out with those two. Joan, you take him. Contact his family.”
I’m quiet these days. That I stayed silent through all of this, silent enough that the officials didn’t notice me, seems both implausible and well within character.
~
Dreaming of my mother is reassembling a shattered mirror with my bare hands. I can’t touch the pieces without bleeding. Hands cut and mind fractured, I make a mess until I see an imperfect reflection. The pieces, impossible to tell why they had split one way and not another, have taken me more than thirty years to gather. Glass by glass, I recreate the image, the man I’ve become gazing upon the infant who survived, and all the beautiful people who saved me, and I wish we’d had more time together. I wish I could tell Mica that I love her.
~
Cradling me in her arms, Joan carried us both away from Cuxtitali. I did not look at my mother as we left. I’d leave her, our home, Mexico, and live a life she did not intend for me. I’d grow up not knowing Joan, Barry, anyone from Mica’s world. I’d grow up not speaking Spanish, the anatomy of a camera as foreign to me as my father. I’d grow up crossing borders, learn the language of grief, study tattered photographs until I fell asleep, determined to find the seeds of the man I’d blossom into.
Maybe it’s the curse of all infants and children who lose their first homes to be burdened with unending longing, an inevitable sense of return. Like Mica, I too would become a bird, flocking to new homes, never in one place for too long. Because all my life, no matter what distant corner of the globe I called my temporary home, I had known that one day, I’d come back to our house in the mountains, to where we were mother and son.
