Mexicans knew destiny spared no one. If your time was up, it was up. That was why every bus driver had a picture of the Virgin swinging from his rearview mirror, and every teenager learned the routine: key in the ignition, left foot on the clutch, shift into first, then give the sign of the cross. Only then did they step on the gas.
If I hadn’t had to read the map for Faith, I would have felt safer with my eyes shut tight. We travelled down Paseo de la Reforma in one of eight lines of traffic while cars whipped from one lane to the next in front of us, turning without warning, honking. Pedestrians dodged the chaos. Faith wanted to take me to the pre-Columbian restaurant her guidebook billed as an authentic experience, a restaurant that served ants and maguey worms. As she drove, she told me more about the specialty, a delicacy — roasted ants poured onto a taco and smothered in hot sauce.
I’m not too big on ants. And I’m a useless navigator.
“For Christ’s sake, Hope,” she said. “Where am I supposed to turn?”
“How should I know?” I told her. “I can’t even see the bloody signs.”
She wanted to pull over and have me ask directions from a uniformed man. The one carrying a regulation rifle in his hands, the muzzle pointing straight at my head. I said no thank you, I’d rather drive on. We circled for over an hour, stuck by traffic in lanes that went nowhere. Somehow we finally ended up back on our own street and saw a car pulling out. We took its spot. Then walked back to my flat — our flat now — buying four greasy tacos from a vendor on the way. So much for a night on the town. Who wanted to eat ants anyway?
The money for the rental car would be better spent on another bed. But would it fit? If not, a fold-out couch for the front room. For Faith, of course.
Back home when we were little, we’d start out in one bed taking turns at back rubs, then go off to our own beds to sleep. Sometimes at night, though, when I was six or seven, I’d have nightmares: under-the-bed long-limbed monsters whose disembodied voices drowned out my own. I’d jump out of bed, quickly before my ankles were grabbed by one of those long arms, and crawl in with Faith. I couldn’t snuggle close, she hated to be mauled, so I’d just graze her arm with my finger or let my toe rest on her calf. Enough to feel her force field billow up around me, one my nightmares couldn’t break through. Even after Papi left, she’d allow me that.
But I was twenty-four now, she was twenty-six, and the temperature was twenty-two. Sleeping with my sister was not what it used to be.
She didn’t wake up early the following morning when I slipped out of bed. I took my clothes into the next room — the only other room to be exact, not counting the bathroom. It looked a little less bare now with Faith’s laptop on the table and her boom box on the bookcase we’d moved out from the bedroom to make way for her suitcase. I’d bought the bookcase in the street early on, from a peddler who carried the rough pine boards nailed haphazardly into a bookshelf-like shape on his back. The case now held what amounted to an actual collection of books. It was a good thing Faith hadn’t brought the whole twenty-some volume Britannica though.
I patted the back pocket of my jeans. The used metro ticket that José had written his address on was still there. I was finally going to go back to his place, the apartment I’d seen just the once. I felt a sudden rush of heat. What was I embarrassed about, I hadn’t been that drunk. But still, in the cold light of day... Anyway, I wasn’t going there to talk about the other night. This was about my promise to volunteer at the market school. Today was Monday, the day I’d said I would come. Now I’d have to cancel out because of Faith and her other plans.
The first time I stumbled on the market school some two weeks before, it was by sheer accident. Out of total frustration — with my inability to paint, draw or find some other way, any other way, to translate my new life to canvas — I abandoned my paintbrush and easel in the Coyoacán studio and went out to clear my head.
My senses were already overloaded enough so I decided to skirt the marketplace with its spices, chilies, fishmongers’ shrieks, shoppers trying to make their orders heard above the din, and strangers jostling, unseeing. I vaguely remembered a park out back, so I bypassed the mercado and made for the other side.
Small children were sprawled on the ground between the benches in the middle of the park. I could see the dirtpatterned soles of their bare feet. Each was huddled over a piece of paper, each held a stubby pencil. A man walked among them. He looked to be about my age, taller than me but slight. He wore a colourful woven belt around his jeans and a navy blue shirt with long sleeves, its cuffs rolled halfway up his forearms. His head bent to look at the papers on the ground. Every once in a while he knelt down to speak to a child. A young teen, small for his age, shoulders bowed, followed the man as he walked from child to child. I was struck by the contrast with the cocky adolescents I remembered from back home, 20 below but shoulders back like peacocks to show off their unzippered winter parkas and their eff-you attitude to the cold.
As I drew closer, the man raised his head and looked at me with eyes that beckoned me in instead of reflecting me out.
I felt I had to say something. I looked down at the little girl and the drawing she was working on
“Son pájaros en el cielo, no?” Six black Vs in a sky shot through with colour; not one crayon shade had been left out. The little girl bit her lip.
“De España?” the man asked. My lisp, so apparent back home, was taken for a Spaniard’s accent here — thielo instead of sielo — not some physical blight.
“No, Canadá.”
He turned to the young teen behind him. “Guillermo, see, someone to practise English with. Practicar.” The boy tilted his head and smiled shyly. Another small boy called out to the man from a bench on the far side. “José,” he said. The man looked, waved, turned back to me, reached out his hand, and welcomed me with his eyes. I extended my hand, a simple handshake, and met his gaze. Long enough to let me know I wanted to go back.
I’d gone back by almost every weekday since, either morning or afternoon. Since I wasn’t painting anyway it didn’t make any sense to spend all day stuck in front of my easel. Seeing José again did make sense.
Mornings were when the children dropped by the in-market school — they actually worked at the market, some of them as young as four — whenever they had some free time or wanted a break. That was when José, who had been hired by the city to start up such a school, had the use of a space donated by the merchants, which he’d filled with secondhand desks and books and blackboards. Afternoons, he took them wherever he could, usually the park. The children or their parents, if they had any, couldn’t afford the books and supplies to go to the public school so that was why the city had subsidized José to school the children where they worked.
That afternoon last week at the marketplace, it was José’s suggestion that we get together afterwards. That was how the evening started, too — just the two of us getting together for a drink. Discovering we lived not far apart, he a few metro stops before mine. Each of us going home to change and grab a bite to eat, meeting at a bar halfway between our two places at ten o’clock. In the bar, it was harder to keep up the flow of conversation, both of us used to the constant interruptions from the market kids. I felt us move into that awkward space where spoken words falter and body language hasn’t yet picked up the slack. That’s when I always start to drink too much. During one of the longer pauses, as we avoided each other’s eyes, José said, “Do you like to dance?”
I drained my mug. “Uh, I guess so.”
“The discoteca is just down the street.”
Somehow this felt like an admission of failure, but I nodded and tried