The Falling Woman

22 Diane

I paid the cabby and ran out into the rain. Behind me, I heard him gun his engine and roar away.

My mother’s hut was deserted. Both doors were open and the rain had swept in, dampening the dirt floor. A plastic poncho hung on a nail, and after a moment’s hesitation I pulled it on over my dress and headed back into the rain. I didn’t know exactly why 1 wanted to see my mother right away. I think I had some idea that I would tell her about the old woman that I had seen, and then we would discuss the whole thing like adults, separating phantasms from reality carefully, bit by bit.

I followed the path to the tomb, splashing recklessly through the puddles in my sandals. I was already soaked; a little more water made no difference. Once, I slipped and banged my knee on the ground, and after that I limped.

The mouth of the tomb was a dark spot on the plaza floor. As I stepped down into the passageway, I felt a faint breeze that carried the scent of newly turned earth. The rain was splashing down the stairs into the tomb. Over the sound of the rain I could hear my mother’s voice. I could not make out the words.

On the last step, my leather sandals slipped on the wet stone. I lost my balance, stepped into the puddle that covered the floor of the passageway, and almost fell. A beam of white lantern light shone through the gap between the stones. The light beam shifted as my mother lifted the lantern up to the gap in the stones.

‘Hello,’ I called to her. ‘I thought you might be up here.’

I could see only her head, silhouetted in the gap.

‘I came back from Mérida early,’ I said. ‘There really isn’t much to do there. Barbara stayed, but I came back.’ My words trailed off. I could hear the rain trickling down the steps behind me, a river feeding the cold lake that lapped around my ankles. ‘It’s pouring out there.’ I stood awkwardly in the puddle, waiting for her to move aside, to invite me to look at what she was doing, to say something. Water dripped from my hair down my back. The poncho clung to my bare arms and legs. I lifted it over my head and draped it over the handle of a pickax that stood, head down, in the water. I kicked off my wet shoes and set them in the metal bucket beside the pickax. The bucket was not yet floating, though it was a near thing. Uninvited, I squeezed through the opening, and my mother stepped back to let me through.

The walls arched high over my head, and the light of the lantern did not reach the ceiling. Here and there, the light reflected from seashells, embedded in the rock long ago. A skeleton lay outstretched on a stone platform, staring up into the darkness with blank eyes. My mother’s notebook, trowel, and whisk broom lay on the floor near the skeleton’s head. She stood near the skeleton, staring at me fixedly. In one hand, she held the lantern, gripping the wire handle. In the other, she held an obsidian blade. Her right wrist was bleeding. ‘You cut yourself,’ I said.

‘Why did you come back?’ she asked. Her voice was rough, hoarse.

‘There didn’t seem to be any reason to stay in Mérida,’ I said.

She was shaking her head. ‘What brings you hiking through a downpour in sandals and a dress?’

I looked down at myself. My shins were marked with mud and a line of dark droplets oozed from a scratch where a thorny branch had raked across my skin. My dress was soaked despite the poncho. ‘I guess I should have stopped to change.’

‘You shouldn’t be here. You should have stayed in Mérida.’ She sounded on the verge of tears.

‘I’m sorry. I…’ I didn’t know what to say. I held out my hands in a gesture of resignation and tried to smile. ‘What can I do? Can you tell me what’s wrong?’

She took a step back as if I had threatened her and stopped beside the stone platform. She shivered like a wet dog. She looked thin and tired. ‘Go away,’ she said. ‘Please. Get out of here.’

‘It’s raining,’ I said, trying to sound reasonable. ‘I’ll stay out of the way. I just—’

‘Get out!’ Her words echoed from the stone walls, and I stepped back, the smile dying on my face. She straightened her shoulders and stepped forward. Her face was suddenly hard. ‘Go away from here! Now!’

I backed away. ‘I’m sorry. I just—’

‘Get out!’ Her face was a mask, washed from below with lantern light. Her eyes were wild, touched with red and too large for her face. She threw back her head and cried out again, not a word, but a groan, a wail of desperation. The muscles of her neck stood out in ridges and her breath came in great gasps. I took a step toward her and she glared at me, shaking her head like an animal tormented by flies. She lifted one hand in a fist, and as I stepped back, she struck herself in the leg, once, twice, three times, each blow hard enough to make me wince. ‘Go!’ she said. ‘Go! Go away.’ The last words were not shouted. The blow did not have the force of the ones preceding it.

I stood by the opening. I could hear the soft trickle of water flowing down the steps, but the pounding of the rain had ceased. ‘The rain has stopped,’ I said to her, as calmly as I could. ‘I can head back to camp. Why don’t you come back with me?’

Her hand was clenched in a fist, resting against her thigh. ‘You have to go.’

‘I’ll go if you come with me.’

The breath left her in a sigh and she seemed to shrink, her shoulders relaxing, her grip on the lantern easing. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘You go out.’

I slipped through the opening and stayed right on the other side, where I could look through the wall. Newly washed light shone down the stone stairs and made a faint rectangle on the floor. The puddle was already lower. Water had drained away into the earth. ‘I’m right here,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you hand me the lantern and then come on through?’

‘Yes,’ she said and handed me the lantern. I stepped back and let her come through after me.

‘That’s good,’ I said.

She stopped in the center of the passage and turned to look at me, frowning though her face was still wet with tears. ‘No need to talk to me as if I were a fool. You may think I’m crazy, but don’t think I’m stupid.’ She took the lantern from my hands, extinguished the light, and led the way up the stone steps into the steaming afternoon. She did not look back.