She looked as out of place as I’d felt since I got here. She was even more obviously gringoesque than I was: taller, broader, whiter. Her Mexican half didn’t show. Was this what it had felt like for Papi in Quebec? Forever a stranger in a strange land?
“Why didn’t you tell me you were coming? What are you doing here?”
Faith ignored my questions. As usual. “I was thinking of moving in.”
That’s when I noticed the suitcase at her feet. A big one. I looked from the suitcase to Faith in shock.
Faith backtracked ever so slightly, “Maybe to start with, you could just ask me inside.”
I stood back and let her pass. I couldn’t get my mind around what I’d just heard. My move to Mexico was supposed to be a new beginning. A fresh canvas. A time to figure myself out. Admittedly, nothing much had come of it so far. For me or my art or Papi. But what were the chances of any of that happening with my big sister — the ever-present big sister I’d just moved away from — hovering over me?
My expression must have held all the questions I couldn’t seem to mouth. Faith and I gave up on words long ago. Or rather, we gave up on finding the words.
“You remember the new project I told you about before you left? The university finally gave me the go-ahead. They cut through all the red tape so I could leave right away.”
She set the suitcase down and looked around. “It is kind of small here, isn’t it?”
She turned back to me and let her hand light on my arm for a second. “Everything’s been so last-minute. I thought I could crash here with you.”
“But, Faith...”
She jumped in before I could say anything she’d want me to take back, “I’d help pay the rent.”
“Why not just get your own place? The university would spring for it.” Faith worked at McGill. In a research department — linguistics or philology — I could never get it straight.
“Well, there’s a bit of a problem with funding. The money still has to be worked out.”
I wondered what that meant exactly. And how many stories within stories I wasn’t being told.
“I swear. I’ll be out most of the time doing research, you won’t have to worry about me getting in the way.”
What could I say? And really, what did I want to say? I would never have thought it, but a city of twenty-two million strangers can be a pretty lonely place. Loneliness the predator, me the prey.
Things were getting better. Or had, and still could now that I’d met José, found the market school, and started painting again, but there remained all those endless hours after the sun went down.
“What about Marc?” I asked. Marc had been Faith’s live-in for the past four years. Off and on. Every time she felt the need to show her life revolved around no man, they split up. But they always got back together again.
I liked men, but I’d never lived with just one man. I liked them best in the plural.
“He’ll manage.” Her tone was curt. “So, what do you say?”
I shrugged. I looked down at the kitchen table and at what might have been my best solitaire game ever. The cards slid back too easily into neat little piles. While I put the deck away, Faith opened her suitcase, pulled out a plastic Steinberg bag, and leaned against the door for balance while she took off first one shoe then the other, lined them up against the wall, and pulled out her slippers. Sensible slippers with support. I did notice with a hint of satisfaction that they were lined with fleece. I wondered how long it would be before Faith put them away never to take them out again. She’d discover that bare feet on cool linoleum was the only way to survive when the heat got bad.
Faith came to bed wearing her old T-shirt. The one she used to wear for chores around the apartment in Montreal. It was a faded purple with a rip high on the left-hand side and a stretched, deformed collar. The T-shirt-cum-nightie slipped off, baring one shoulder as she walked into the bedroom with her boom box under her arm. It reminded me of those Saturday mornings after I moved into the apartment with Faith and her boyfriend, once Mom had seen me through high school and taken off. Saturdays Faith wore that same shirt as she vacuumed, still half-asleep, her hair mussed, the firm, round slope of one shoulder or the other always exposed. She definitely filled the T-shirt out more than she used to.
She dragged her suitcase into the bedroom behind her, flipped back the top, pulled out a roll of paper towels, placed several sheets down on the floor then put both hands on either side of one neatly stacked pile of clothes then another and laid them against the wall. She pulled out one, two, three big black books – an encyclopedia — and some smaller what looked like guide books. She straightened my books on my rough pine board bookshelf, pausing for a second when she saw what they were. Papi’s books of poems.
She set the boom box on the floor next to the bed then turned to face me, where I lay watching her still. “Want a back rub?” I hadn’t had one for years now; from nightly occurrences when we were kids, they slowly tapered off after Papi left.
She checked the plug on the boom box she’d set down next to the bookcase while I rolled onto my stomach, my face in the pillow. I had no T-shirt to shed, the air was too stifling in my apartment to wear any clothes to bed. I could hear her slip a cassette into the tape deck and press start. Luba began to wail as my sister’s hands touched my wrists. In one fluid motion, she ran her fingers from the upturned palms of my hands, along my elbows and inner arms, up over my shoulder blades, and into the hair at the base of my neck. I felt the familiar shiver of pleasure and gave a small sigh. Slowly she increased the pressure until she was kneading my muscles like a potter her clay, and the pleasure gave way to pain. Pain had never felt so good.
I started missing her touch before she had even stopped, just feeling the pressure ease off. But instead of tapping my shoulder to signal my time was up, Faith only lifted her hands to better centre them on either side of my spine. The gentle notes she began to play on either side of my vertebrae were her own Morse code, I remembered now. All these years later, her fingers still held the notes inside. I concentrated, picking out the tune, made easy this time by the tape she was accompanying. Faith and Luba. Both here to stay.
II
When I woke up late the next morning, Faith was not in bed. I found her sitting bolt upright in the kitchen, tapping her toes like a fiddle player, and waiting impatiently for our day to begin. I resigned myself to not getting over to see José that day. There was the orientation she wanted me to give her to the neighborhood, a dry run she wanted us to make to find the library where she’d be doing all her research, and a car rental place to visit where she could rent a car for the length of her stay. She didn’t know yet that nothing gets done in a hurry in Mexico City, but she soon found out. Just as she found out that a car could be more of a nuisance than a convenience, somewhat along the lines of fleece-lined slippers and old T-shirts.
The car only lasted one night. We didn’t get back to the apartment with it until close to dinnertime. I sat inside, waiting double-parked in the street as Faith ran up for the guidebook she wanted to take along for what she called our night out on the town.
I read the map, she drove. The car had no seat belts, something I should have remembered from the time we came to Mexico with Papi. Papi thought Canadians were crazy, so obsessed with saving ourselves. Buckle up, wear a helmet, cross on green, smokers outside, work up a sweat. All because we believed we were in control. Because we thought fate would turn a blind eye so long as we believed, so long as we had faith.
Faith. The story goes that my sister’s name was a source of endless arguments between our parents.