The Falling Woman

20 Diane

On Friday night, I woke to the sound of stealthy footsteps on the path. The hut was dark. Barbara breathed in a steady rhythm. Maggie mumbled something in her sleep and shifted uneasily in her hammock. Robin breathed softly, like a small animal curled in a burrow.

I don’t know what woke me – a change in the song of the crickets, the hooting of an owl, something. I don’t know. But I sat up in my hammock and stared out through the open door, then left my hammock and stood by the opening. The dirt floor was cool beneath my bare feet.

The lights were out; the moon was down. The sky was immense, endless blackness dotted with too many stars. Even Tony was asleep – the light by his hut was out. A bat flew overhead, briefly blocking out the stars and chittering in a high-pitched excited voice.

I saw something move in the shadows near the water barrel. I watched carefully, and it moved again, a darker shadow within the shadows. ‘Is someone there?’ I said softly, not wanting to wake the others. ‘Who is it?’

No answer. I thought I knew the answer: waiting in the shadows was an old woman dressed in blue.

In the starlight, the world was black-and-white, a late feature on a black-and-white TV. In late-night movies, monsters live in the shadows. The heroine always goes to investigate and the monsters always get her. Always. When I watched late-night horror movies, I never knew why the heroine didn’t just go back to bed and pull the covers over her head and sleep until morning, when the sun would come out and the birds would sing and the vampires and werewolves would go back into hiding. I was no late-night-feature heroine; I could go back to bed and sleep until morning.

Except for the uncertainty. The lingering doubt that had been nagging at me since I saw the old woman in the monte. The suspicion, faint but growing stronger, that I was going to be as crazy as my mother someday soon. I was afraid of things that were not there. I saw shadows by day; I heard noises at night. When I was not aware of them, my hands formed fists – they were doing it now.

I snatched my flashlight from the table, slipped through the door, and hurried along the path toward the shadow, hurrying because if I did not hurry I might go back to bed and lie awake all night, listening for the sound of footsteps coming nearer.

The figure beside the water barrel did not move as I approached. I shone my flashlight beam into the shadows, and my mother blinked in the sudden light. Tousle-headed, clad in blue pajamas, barefoot, and blinking like an owl. Her eyes were large and her face was haggard. I touched her shoulder and felt the frail bones beneath the thin layers of cloth and flesh. She was trembling. ‘What are you doing here?’ I asked. ‘What’s going on?’

‘I’m watching over the child,’ she said. Her eyes had turned away from the light, but they focused on nothing.

‘You scared me,’ I said. ‘You didn’t answer when I called.’ She was not listening.

‘Someone must watch over the child,’ she insisted. ‘She’s too young to be left alone.’ She was looking at my face, but I didn’t think she saw me. ‘I can’t run away again.’

I put my arm around her shoulder and tried to turn her away from the hut. She would not move. I could feel her trembling.

‘I’ll watch her,’ I said. ‘I’ll keep her safe.’

‘You must be very careful,’ she said to me owlishly. ‘She is stubborn and she doesn’t want to leave. But it isn’t safe here.’

‘I’ll be careful.’

‘How do I know I can trust you?’

‘I’m a friend of hers. A very good friend.’ I hesitated, then said softly, ‘Tell me – what must I watch for?’

‘The old woman,’ she said, blinking into the shadows. ‘Watch out for the old woman.’

She let me lead her through the silent camp to her hut. In her hut, I lit the candle on the desk. The big stone head watched from the corner as I helped my mother to bed. I used the sheet that had been bunched at one end of the hammock to cover her. Her skin was hot and dry, and I wondered if she were running a fever. She tossed and turned in her sleep. When she spoke in Maya to people I could not see, I told her that everything would be all right. I hoped that I was not lying. I sat beside her, listening to the sounds outside and holding her hand.

When the faint gray light of dawn shone through the open door, my mother was sleeping quietly. I blew out the candle and returned to my hut. I had just finished dressing when Barbara woke.

‘Come on,’ I told her. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

She blinked at me sleepily. ‘Hey, give me a minute to wake up.’

I waited for her to roll out of bed and dress, and we walked out into the plaza. ‘I was thinking of sticking around here to see what Liz turns up in the tomb today,’ she said. ‘After all, this is our first big find.’

‘Whatever’s in the tomb now will still be there on Monday,’ I said. ‘Are you willing to go without a hot shower to see it one day sooner?’

‘You’ve got a point there.’ She stopped at the water barrel and splashed water onto her face. ‘You sure are eager to go to town all of a sudden. Did Marcos steal your heart?’

I shook my head, wondering how much I could tell Barbara. ‘I just need to get out of here.’

‘More troubles with Liz?’

I nodded.

She studied my face, then shrugged. ‘I suppose you’re right. The secrets of the ancient Maya can’t really compete with a hot shower. Let’s go.’

We arrived in town early in the morning and had breakfast at the usual table beneath the trees that shed yellow flowers like a cat sheds fur. Emilio arrived with his hammocks at the usual hour, bought the customary round of coffee.

It was Barbara, not I, who asked about Marcos. Marcos, it seemed, was busy that day; he had business that took him elsewhere. Emilio was evasive; he would not look at me. Barbara frowned and asked him a few questions in Spanish, then shook her head. We finished our coffee in silence, then Emilio said that he would be selling hammocks in the zocalo. He would meet us at lunchtime, he said.

After Emilio left, Barbara ordered more coffee. ‘It seems we were right about the game,’ she said. ‘You all right?’

‘I’m fine. If he’s busy, he’s busy.’ I shrugged. ‘I don’t care.’

‘You can stop being polite,’ she said. ‘Emilio’s gone.’

‘I really don’t care. It doesn’t make any difference.’

She looked at my hands. ‘You’re shredding that napkin,’ she said quietly.

I put the pieces of paper napkin down on the checkered tablecloth. ‘It shouldn’t make a difference,’ I said. ‘He doesn’t mean anything to me. It doesn’t matter.’

‘What a stupid asshole,’ she said.

I shrugged again. ‘No big deal.’

‘Look,’ she said, leaning forward and putting her hand on mine. ‘I know it’s not a big deal. I know your heart isn’t broken or anything like that. But it’s still no good. You can get mad about it if you want.’

I sipped my coffee, watching a blind beggar trying to sell a badly carved wooden animal to the couple at the next table.

‘Think I should tell Emilio to buzz off?’

‘Why? It’s not his fault.’

‘Whatever you want.’ She leaned back in her chair and spooned more sugar into her coffee. ‘Maybe we should get out of town today. Go tour the ruins at Uxmal. Something different.’

‘I’m all right,’ I told her. ‘I don’t care.’

She studied my face, then nodded. ‘Have it your way. What do you want to do? Go swimming?’

‘Fine.’

We went swimming in the hotel pool, a tiny patch of water in a turquoise concrete basin. I lay on the cement by the side of the pool and tried to read the paperback romance, a stupid story about beautiful people who always wore the right clothes. The world of the heroine was filled with vague anxieties, overblown fears. I felt right at home.

Barbara swam and periodically tried to get me to talk. After an hour of this, I told Barbara that I wasn’t hungry; she and Emilio should eat without me. ‘I think I’ll wander around in the market. Maybe buy a dress. I’ll meet you back here.’

I walked. I didn’t go to the market; I wasn’t up for the crowds. I wandered around the zocalo, bought a lemon ice from a sidewalk vendor, and sat down on a bench near the cathedral to eat it. The clock on the Municipal Palace said it was one-thirty, but it seemed much later. The air was heavy with the promise of rain.

I didn’t miss Marcos. I had expected little of him. He was a person to cling to when the shadows came, no more. But now, I didn’t even have that.

Two withered women wrapped in dark red shawls sat on the pavement before the cathedral, begging coins from passing strangers. The two middle-aged women who sold gilt-framed pictures of saints at the cathedral door were closing up shop, wrapping the garish frames in newspaper and stacking them in a cardboard box. Above their heads, pigeons trudged up and down on the stone lintel.

On the sidewalk, tourists strolled up and down. A neatly dressed woman with a sunburned nose was exclaiming over postcards. A man in a new panama hat was taking a picture of the Municipal Palace. All strangers. None of them would understand if I told them I was afraid that my mother was crazy, afraid that I might be crazy. They would not understand that I was being haunted by an old woman who looked like the stone head in my mother’s hut.

I thought about calling my former lover, Brian. I hadn’t spoken to him since I quit my job. What could I tell him? I’m seeing ghosts and I think my mother is crazy. No, I could tell him nothing.

I was afraid. A friend of mine had a dog that would chase after the spot of light cast by a flashlight beam, unable to catch it and unable to leave it alone. The dog would run after the spot on the floor and bark when it ran up the walls, until he collapsed with exhaustion. Poor dog could never figure out that he could never catch the spot. I felt like the dog. I did not know the rules and there was no one to tell me. It was like chasing a spot of light. Or like trying to catch soap bubbles as they drifted on the breeze. You end up with handfuls of nothing.

I did not see the curandera approach. She sat beside me on the bench and took my hand, holding it tightly in her warm dry hands. She said something to me in a low urgent voice and I shook my head. I didn’t understand. I tried to free my hand, but she would not let go. She called out to a passing hammock vendor and he came near. Still holding my hand, she spoke quickly to him. He glanced at me curiously, amused by the situation.

‘Do you speak English?’ I asked him. ‘Can you tell her to let me go?’

‘A little,’ he said. He spoke to the woman and she shook her head and said something else.

‘She wants me to tell you…’ He hesitated, as if searching for the right words. ‘You got to go away,’ he said at last. ‘Don’t go back to your mother.’

‘What are you talking about? Why shouldn’t I go back?’

He shrugged. ‘She says that your luck is bad.’ He shrugged again. ‘That is what she says.’

‘Tell her that I understand,’ I said. I looked at the old woman and she stared back. ‘Yo comprendo.’ Her grip on my hand loosened and I freed myself. I stood then, backing away from her.

‘Hey,’ the hammock vendor called after me. ‘You want to buy a hammock?’

I was stumbling away, almost running across the zocalo. Thunder rolled across the sky, bumping from cloud to cloud. I went back to the hotel to get my bag and found Barbara and Emilio at the usual table. I told Barbara that I was going to catch a cab back to camp. When she protested, I just shrugged. I knew that I had to go back. I did not know why the old woman wanted to chase me away from my mother, but I knew I had to go back.

The first fat drops of rain began falling as I ran from the hotel across the square to the taxi stand. The bronze man on the pillar glistened in a flash of lightning. He stared out over my head, ignoring my hurried negotiations with the cabby.

The road to the ruins seemed longer in the rain. The taxi driver tried to talk to me. I think he was complaining about driving in the storm, but I just shrugged, understanding only a few of the words. I watched the shapes in the moving rain, never clear but always present. Once, I almost called to the driver to tell him to stop – I saw an old woman crossing the road. But she vanished into the rain, a shadow, nothing more. Thunder rolled overhead like the crash of falling monuments.