The Falling Woman

15 Elizabeth

Thursday night, after another burned dinner, I sat in my hut, checking my notes on the Mayan calendar. I had caught a chill on the way back from our attempt to raise the stela. Though the evening was warm, occasionally I would be taken by a violent spell of shivering and chills. I considered asking Maria to prepare me a pot of hot tea. Boiling-hot tea laced with rum might head off a cold, but in the end I decided against asking anything of Maria. I had heard Salvador’s truck roaring back to camp, returning from the village of Chicxulub with the curandera, and I did not want to blunder into a touchy situation.

I checked my calculations, and rechecked them. Today was Men, a day governed by the old goddess of the moon. It should have been a favorable day, yet the stela had fallen, an outcome I would not consider favorable. I had not seen Zuhuy-kak since that afternoon.

The camp was quiet; the students were either writing up field notes or swimming in the cenote. Camp had been quiet ever since Philippe’s accident. The sun had set and the moon was just rising when I saw Salvador walking toward my hut. The old woman who walked beside him took two small steps for every one of his. Tucked under one arm, she carried an orange-and-red plastic shopping bag, the kind that Yucatecan housewives use to carry groceries. She walked slowly, leaning on a cane.

Salvador stopped in the doorway to my hut and removed his broad-brimmed straw hat. ‘Señora,’ he said in Spanish. ‘I am sorry to interrupt you. This is Doña Lucinda Calderón, the curandera from Chicxulub. She wanted to meet you.’

Doña Lucinda was examining my hut and myself with great interest. She was a thin old woman with eyes like a predatory bird. Her huipil was elaborately embroidered around the neck and hem with a pattern of twisting green vines and flowers. A rebozo was draped casually over her gray hair and her shoulders; leather sandals were strapped to her feet. Her cane was rosewood; the face of an owl watched me from its carven head,

‘Welcome, Doña Lucinda,’ I said in Maya, rising from my chair. I took my other folding chair from the corner and put it in the open doorway. The old woman placed her bag on the ground by the chair and sat down, leaning forward on her cane – the tip set on the ground, the owl’s head locked between her hands.

‘Thank you,’ she said in Maya. Her voice was strong. ‘Performing the cleansing ritual leaves me weary. I have grown old.’

I nodded in sympathy. ‘How can I help you?’

For a moment, she continued her scrutiny of my hut. Her nostrils flared, as if she were trying to place an elusive scent. She studied my hands, my face, the papers on my desk top. The sleeves of my shirt were rolled to the elbow.

She lifted her cane from the ground and pointed the tip to the scars on my wrists. ‘How did you come by this?’

I glanced at the scars and made a cutting gesture with one hand on the wrist of the other. ‘By my own hand,’ I said. ‘Many years ago.’

‘Ah.’ She glanced again at the papers on my desk. ‘And what is it you are doing now?’

‘Writing,’ I said. ‘A book about this place.’

Salvador, standing in the doorway, was holding the brim of his hat in both hands and turning the hat around and around restlessly. I offered cigarettes. Salvador accepted; the old woman declined. I lit one for myself and for a moment we filled the silence with smoke.

‘How is Philippe?’ I asked at last.

‘The doctors at Hospital Juarez have set his broken bones,’ she said. ‘They will heal.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I understand that.’

‘I respect the doctors at the hospital,’ she said. Her eyes were dark and shrewd. ‘You must understand that. My grandson, a clever young man, is studying to be a doctor. The hospital is very good for treating natural illness.’ She was leaning forward as she tried to impress me with her progressive attitude toward medicine. ‘But you must understand that Philippe has more than broken bones. As you know, he has bad luck.’

‘That is true,’ I said. ‘Salvador said that we are digging in a place of bad luck.’

She glanced at Salvador then frowned at me. ‘The place that you are digging does not matter so much. But the gods are strong now. And Philippe was digging on the day Ix, a day of ill fortune.’

I glanced at Salvador, but he was looking at the burning tip of his cigarette. He did not meet my eyes. Strange, to have my calculations confirmed so directly. ‘The bad luck is past then,’ I said. ‘That is good to hear.’

She rolled the rosewood cane between her hands and the eyes of the carved wooden owl stared in a new direction. Doña Lucinda scowled and continued staring at my face. ‘Do not be a fool,’ she said crossly. ‘You know better. Tell me, what day is today?’

‘On the Mayan calendar?’ I shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

She narrowed her eyes as if she expected better of me. ‘Today is the day Men,’ she said. She jerked her head toward the rising moon, but did not look away from my face. ‘She is a fickle old woman, Men. Contrary. Always turning a new face. She is not to be trusted.’

I was uncomfortable under her gaze. I shrugged.

‘Today is the eighth day in Cumku, the last month of the year,’ she said. ‘This is not a safe time. The gods are strong now.’ Her voice had dropped. I could barely make out her words. ‘You must be careful.’ Salvador was not watching us; he was smoking his cigarette and looking away, gazing out into the open plaza. ‘The year is almost over.’

I shook my head, took a drag on my cigarette, and stubbed it out in the ashtray. My hands were shaking and I folded them in my lap.

‘Why do you look at me as if you do not understand? You know these things,’ she said. ‘I can see that you have the second soul.’ The second soul is what gives power to a witch – a bruja in Spanish, a wai in Maya. The second soul is a source of power.

What did I say before? The mad recognize their own. Her head was cocked to one side, and she was watching me carefully. ‘You are a strong woman, and that is a danger to you. You seek to stand alone in the evil times, and that cannot be. Unlucky days are coming.’

She stopped and waited for me to speak. ‘How can I be careful?’ I asked. ‘I cannot change the time of year.’

‘Leave this place,’ she said.

‘Impossible,’ I said.

‘It is not safe here. Not for you, not for the rest.’

I shrugged.

She frowned and thumped her cane on the ground. ‘I want to help you, Señora Butler, you must understand that. You are a clever woman. Now you must listen. This is a serious business.’ Her hands gripped her cane more tightly. ‘Send away the young one, the redheaded woman, your daughter.’

I was shaking my head slowly. ‘My daughter has nothing to do with this,’ I said in English.

The old woman shrugged. She did not understand the words, but she seemed to understand my tone. ‘It is your choice. You may choose to be a fool. You speak our language well, but you do not understand this place. You do not belong here.’

My hands were in fists. Who was this old woman to tell me that I did not belong? I belonged. I spoke with the dead; I knew the day of the year. My hands were trembling and I shivered with a sudden chill. ‘That may be so,’ I said to her. ‘But I cannot leave now.’

‘I tell you to leave this place,’ she said. ‘If you choose not to…’ She shrugged. ‘I will pray for you and your daughter.’

I wondered what gods she would pray to. ‘Thank you for telling me this, Doña Lucinda. I will think about it.’ I stood up.

The old woman remained seated, staring up at me with beady black eyes. ‘Listen to me, señora.’

‘Thank you for your advice, Doña Lucinda.’

She stood reluctantly with the aid of her cane, bent slowly to pick up her shopping bag, and turned away. In the doorway, she stopped and turned back to make the sign of the cross and mutter a blessing.

Salvador put on his hat. ‘I am sorry, señora,’ he said, but whether he was sorry for bringing the old woman to me or sorry that I was a witch, I did not know. He turned away to follow the old woman across the plaza. Whatever he was sorry about, I knew he was embarrassed.

I could see a lantern burning in Tony’s hut, but I did not want to speak with him, not now, not yet. I walked alone to the tomb site. Zuhuy-kak was there, sitting on a stone beside the picks, sifting trays, and buckets. The moon was rising and she cast a shadow in the dim light.

As I approached, she looked up and nodded in greeting. ‘What do you want from me, Ix Zacbeliz?’ she asked.

‘Answers,’ I said. ‘Why did the stela fall when we tried to raise it? This day was governed by the goddess. We should have had good fortune.’

She squinted at me, her eyes as shrewd as the eyes of the curandera. I realized that she was more solid than any other shadow had ever become. Even in the moonlight, I could see the fine lines etched on her jade beads, the stitches in the embroidery on her robe. She spread her hands on her lap. ‘That was good fortune, Ix Zacbeliz. When the stela fell, the warrior lost his place. His strength is gone and the strength of the goddess is returning. Today was governed by the goddess and you helped her gain strength.’

‘Not good fortune,’ I said irritably. My joints ached and I knew that the chill that I had caught was creeping into my bones. ‘We wanted that stela intact, not in two pieces.’

The old woman was staring at me in surprise. ‘Do you only care for things, Ix Zacbeliz? Did you want to find only old pots and bits of jewelry? I am giving you secrets greater than that. You and your daughter.’

‘Leave my daughter out of this,’ I said. ‘She has no part in this.’ I wanted to take hold of the embroidered garment and shake the old woman, make her listen. I was alternately hot and chilled, and I felt dizzy. I wondered, gazing into her shrewd dark eyes, whether I could catch hold of her. Would it be like trying to catch a wisp of fog? My hands – clenched in fists at my sides – were shaking.

‘Your daughter chooses her own way.’ The woman was frowning at me. ‘You and I do not determine it. The cycle is turning and she is here.’

‘If I send her away, she will be safe,’ I said. ‘She will be out of all this.’

‘Send her away? Where will you send her? The cycle is turning. When the world changes, everything will change. And why will you send her away? She belongs here, just as you belong here.’

‘The turning of the cycle doesn’t matter,’ I said, suddenly angry. ‘This is not…’ I stopped short of voicing my thoughts.

‘This is not real?’ Zuhuy-kak calmly finished the sentence. Her voice was very soft.

I did not look at her. I took my cigarettes from my pocket and lit one, cupping my hand to shield the match from the wind. When I looked at Zuhuy-kak, she was smiling at me. ‘I am real,’ she said.

‘No. This is a game that I play with myself. I have played it for years. I can stop playing it. I can return to a world where you do not exist, where there is no danger, where there are no jaguars in the shadows.’ I looked into the distance, drawing in the smoke and feeling my heart beat faster. The smoke was real; the cigarette in my hand was real; the rock beneath me was real. Zuhuy-kak was a dream in which I chose to believe. I could stop believing.

I blew out a stream of smoke and watched it swirl, catching the moonlight. Just a game. I looked at Zuhuy-kak and she was watching me, holding her conch shell in her hands and smiling.

‘It is not as easy as that,’ she said. ‘Not nearly so easy. You cannot stop the cycles of time by turning your back.’

‘I can send you away.’

She shrugged. ‘You can try.’

‘You shrug like a Californian,’ I said suddenly. ‘That gesture could not have been part of Mayan culture.’

‘I learn from you just as you learn from me,’ she said. She grinned, showing me her inlaid teeth. ‘You think that you can control the world. You are wrong.’

‘I made you up,’ I said. ‘You’re my invention. I can make you go away.’

‘Why would you want to do that?’ she asked easily. ‘We are friends, Ix Zacbeliz. I am helping you.’

I shook my head slowly, fighting the dizziness. ‘I am not so sure of that.’

‘You are my friend,’ she said with quiet dignity. ‘I consider your daughter as my own.’

I shook my head again. ‘I can make you go away,’ I repeated. I did not like the tremor in my voice, but I could not stop it.

‘It is not so easy,’ Zuhuy-kak said. ‘You choose your gods, but you do not invent them.’

I closed my eyes. In the distance, an owl hooted softly – once, twice, three times. I imagined myself alone by the tomb site. I listened to the wind rustle through the grasses and I knew that I was alone, I had always been alone.

When I opened my eyes, Zuhuy-kak was still there. ‘You want the power of the goddess,’ she said. ‘Then sacrifices must be made. You belong here – you understand that.’

I walked away from her, feeling old and fragile as I crossed the open plaza. At the far side of the open area, I looked back. Zuhuy-kak lifted a hand and waved.