The Falling Woman

14 Diane

My mother was chain-smoking again. She had been in a bad mood since the beginning of the week, but it had grown worse since the stela fell. Tony was drinking. Maggie and Carlos were trying to persuade John and Robin to join them in a game of cards. The air was hot and heavy and slow-moving.

‘Want to go for a swim?’ Barbara asked. I shrugged and followed her to the hut to get our swimsuits, then down the path to the cenote.

As soon as we were out of sight of the plaza, she grinned at me. ‘I have a treat,’ she said. ‘A present from Emilio.’ She pulled a joint from her pocket, waved it delicately under my nose, and tucked it back in her pocket. ‘I think we need a little relaxation.’

‘I think you’re right.’

On the edge of the pool, she stopped. ‘Swim first or smoke?’

‘Smoke.’

We left the path and scrambled around the pool to the high rock from which Carlos liked to dive. If anyone from camp wandered down to the cenote, we could sneak away, following the path to the tomb site. Barbara lit up and took the first hit, closing her eyes and drawing the smoke in deep. I took the joint and drew on it, fighting the urge to cough out the smoke, drawing it in deep and holding it in my lungs.

‘Emilio said to think of him when we smoked it,’ Barbara said, holding the joint. ‘I’m thinking of him quite fondly.’

I nodded. With the second hit, the world around me began losing its hard edges. The air was cooler here, and bats skimmed low over the water. ‘He’s a fine man, Emilio. He has risen immensely in my estimation.’ I accepted the joint and glanced at Barbara. ‘Are you going to sleep with him?’

She shrugged, leaning back on her hands and staring out over the water. ‘Don’t know. Wouldn’t mind it, but I get the feeling that he’s playing some variation on the game I’m used to. I think he would like me better if I didn’t sleep with him.’ She shrugged again. ‘I’ll play it by ear. What about you? You like that young basketball player?’

‘Sometimes. But I know what you mean about the game. The rules are different.’

For a moment, we sat in companionable silence, trading hits. Long shadows stretched across the cenote. The surface was still, disturbed only by spreading ripples when an insect landed on the water or when a fish rose. Barbara took a paper clip from her pocket and bent the wire to make a primitive roach clip. We finished the joint.

‘Let’s go for a swim,’ Barbara suggested.

The water was cool and I swam several slow laps, watching the last of the sunlight play on the rippled water. I floated on my back, looking up at the deepening blue of the sky. I relaxed and my thoughts drifted. There was a rock ledge a few feet beneath the water’s surface at one edge of the pool. I rested there for a moment, sitting on the submerged ledge with my head above water, my knees pulled close to my body. The last sunlight shone on the mound beyond the path. I could see the traces of relief carving on the stones, here and there. I wondered idly what the temple had looked like before the stones had tumbled and the trees had overgrown it. I studied the hill and drew a picture in my mind: three doorways, side by side in a rectangular building.

Barbara glided to a stop beside me. ‘What are you looking at?’

I jerked my head toward the hill. ‘That pile of rocks. Liz told me, one time last week, that you can choose to see the past. I’m trying it out.’

‘Liz can be a very strange lady,’ Barbara said. She sat on the ledge, let her toes rise to the surface of the water, and regarded them solemnly.

‘Yeah.’

‘I’m going to head back to camp before my toes turn to prunes. I’ve still got to write up today’s field report,’ she said.

‘In your condition?’

‘It’ll probably be better than all the ones I’ve written straight. I feel inspired.’

‘I’ll stay here a while,’ I said. ‘I’ll meet you back there.’

She swam languidly to the rocks on the far side and dressed. ‘If you don’t come back soon, I’ll send out a search party,’ she called.

I waved and she headed back to camp. I returned to my consideration of the rock-strewn hillside, and the picture in my mind came into sharper focus. Above the doors, the wall was an intricate lattice of stone, which rose high above the pool. The stones around the doors were carved with hieroglyphics, a jumble of shapes and faces and strange symbols, painted in bright red and blue. A curving stone jutted out just above the central door; a little higher on the wall, two dark recesses in the carvings flanked the stone, making the doorway appear to be a cavernous mouth in an enormous long-nosed face. A steep stairway led from the mouth to the edge of the pool, and the stones of the stairway were carved and painted, a riot of unreadable symbols.

I leaned back in the water, squinting at the slope and holding the picture in my mind. I was still tired, a lingering weariness from all the sleepless nights in Los Angeles, and the pot had relaxed me. I listened to the beating of my own heart, steady as a drum. I relaxed, half asleep though I could still feel the ledge beneath me, the water around me. I listened to the crickets in the monte, and their trilling seemed to come and go, keeping time with the beating of my heart. The tone of the cricket’s song seemed to change as I listened, growing harsher, a sharp buzzing like beans in a rattle.

Suddenly I was afraid. I smelled smoke in the air, an acrid scent like burning pitch. My eyes were closed and I was afraid to open them, afraid of what I might see.

I shivered suddenly and opened my eyes. For an instant, I saw a temple at the end of the pool, as detailed as I had imagined it. On the steps, a blue-robed figure stood watching me. Then there was nothing but rocks, sunlight, and shadows. The temple was gone.

The sun was nearly down. A bat flew overhead, dipping and dodging in erratic flight. I shivered again, climbed out of the pool, and dressed. I returned to camp through the darkness where the trees shaded the path. I knew the path from each afternoon’s visit to the pool, but things seemed different now: the trees seemed closer to the path; the path seemed rougher; the noises of the monte seemed louder, and it bothered me that I did not know what animals were rustling in the bushes. Something moved at the edge of my field of vision, and I turned toward it. Nothing there. Maybe a bird flying overhead. Again, I caught a flickering movement in the corner of my eye. Again, nothing. Maybe the shadow of a swaying branch. I hurried along the path to Salvador’s hut, where the lantern light would chase back the shadows. I hurried from the trees by Salvador’s hut and almost tripped over Teresa.

The little girl crouched in the deep shadow by the garden wall, playing with a scrawny black kitten. The kitten came to greet me, mewing piteously, and I knelt to stroke it. Teresa stood by the garden wall, one hand at her mouth, the other clutching the hem of her dress. The air was hot and heavy. Already, I felt sweaty and dusty again. My mouth was dry.

‘What’s the cat’s name?’ I asked Teresa. At least, that’s what I intended to ask. I think I said something like that in Spanish.

She did not answer. She watched me with round brown eyes, as if I were dangerous yet fascinating.

‘Cat got your tongue?’ I asked in English.

Still she didn’t speak. The kitten was purring, a steady desperate throbbing under my hand. I smiled at Teresa, seeing in her expression a reflection of my panic down by the cenote. I think she wanted to run back into her yard, but she found me intriguing. ‘Qué tal?’ I asked her. ‘How’s it going?’

The creak of an opening door sent her scurrying away through the gate and into the foliage of the yard. An old woman was stepping through the doorway of Salvador’s house; Maria was just behind her. Maria was speaking quickly in Maya, and her hands were clasped together in supplication. Salvador followed the two women, saying nothing. I remained where I was, petting the kitten and listening to it purr.

The gate was right beside me. The old woman stopped in the middle of the path and said something sharp in Maya. I looked up at her and smiled, but she did not smile back. She said something to me in Spanish and scowled when I did not reply. Maria murmured something, and the old woman shook her head. She thumped her walking cane on the ground angrily and repeated herself.

‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry. No comprendo.’

Maria quickly made the sign of the cross, still staring at me. The old woman leaned forward. She took hold of my arm and peered into my face as if she wanted to remember it later. Her breath smelled of chili peppers. I drew back, startled, but her hand stopped me. I tried to smile. ‘What do you want?’ I asked in English.

She shook her head, released my arm, and started down the path to the plaza. Salvador glanced at me and followed the old woman. Maria retreated into the house. I stood and watched Salvador and the old woman walk away. The kitten rubbed against my legs, gazing up at me expectantly. I found that I was holding my arm where the old woman had touched me as if I were stanching the blood flow from a wound. I let my breath out in a rush.

For a moment, I stood where I was, unwilling to follow the old woman and Salvador along the path to the plaza. The hair on my neck prickled, and I glanced toward Salvador’s hut. Maria stood in the doorway, her arms crossed, watching me. I turned away, stumbling a little, following another path, one I had noticed but never followed, away from Salvador’s hut.

I felt strange and unsettled. Nothing had happened – I reminded myself of that. Drug-induced paranoia, that’s all. A dream, an old Mayan woman – nothing really. But the shadows around me seemed darker and my hand kept touching my arm where the old woman had held me. I wished that I had understood what she had said.

The path led through the monte to a dirt road that ran along the edge of the henequen field. To my left, the henequen field stretched away, mile after mile of spiky brutal plants. The sun had set and the moon was rising. In the moonlight, the henequen plants cast distorted shadows. Each plant made a tangle of darkness beside it, a black net of shadows that could trap anyone foolish enough to stroll among them. The dirt road was clear of plants and I walked in the center between the wheel ruts.

On my right grew the monte. Near the road, the scrubby mass of brush was no taller than I. Beyond that, maybe fifty feet from the road, larger trees reached for the sky with dry branches. The wind made the leaves rustle, but it was not strong enough to stir the branches.

When I was in junior high school, my father sent me to summer camp for a month. I remember walking through the woods at night from the campfire to my tent. I was always very careful to stay on the path. The path was safe; it was marked ground. The woods beyond the path were unknown, filled with strange sounds. But at the same time, the woods fascinated me. I found excuses to walk along the path at night, and each time that I passed through the woods unharmed I felt that I had accomplished something noteworthy.

I was never sure what the danger was. Nothing concrete: I did not fear mad killers or wild animals. I never thought it out completely, but I think I felt that if I stepped off the path I might vanish, blend with the darkness and be gone. The darkness drew me and repelled me, and I walked the thin line, never straying from the path.

My footsteps seemed loud. I could hear an owl hooting in the trees. I walked with my hands in my pockets, knowing that I was walking along a thin line once again.

The old woman stepped from the shadow of the monte. For a moment, I thought it was the same old woman who had touched my arm. No, not the same. She was dressed in blue and she grinned at me, displaying crooked teeth. Her head seemed misshapen, though perhaps it was just the way her hair was arranged. I recognized her face: the face I had seen on the stone head, the face of the Madonna in the Mérida cathedral. I backed away.

Her grin grew wider and she held out her hand as if to welcome me. I took another step away from her, back toward camp.

She said something in a language that I did not understand, and she laughed. The sound was like dry leaves rustling against one another. My hands, still in my pockets, were trembling. I took them from my pockets and made fists to stop them from shaking. Then I turned and hurried back toward camp, pursued by the sound of her laughter.

What was it that my mother had said in one of our morning walks? At twilight and dawn, the shadows show you secrets. I don’t know why I ran. She was probably just a woman from the hacienda or maybe a companion to Maria’s visitor. She would probably tell Maria that she had met this gringa wandering in the bush and scared her to death. I must have imagined that her face was familiar. The dim light played tricks.

I had reached Salvador’s hut when I saw a flashlight beam bobbing down the path to the cenote. ‘Hello,’ I called out, my voice a little shaky.

‘Hey,’ Barbara called back. ‘I wondered what happened to you.’ She came up beside me and shone her light on me. She laid a hand on my shoulder and said, ‘What’s up? You don’t look good.’

‘Nothing. Just went for a walk and got caught in the dark, that’s all.’ I shrugged. ‘It gets creepy alone at night. That’s all.’ I didn’t mention the old woman. I didn’t want to feel any more foolish. ‘Let’s go back to camp.’