We all smiled awkwardly as Mom walked up the slope, fumbled with the lock and chain, and swung the gate open.
She came up to me, kissed my cheek once, turned to Faith, and brushed her cheek as well. I held my breath. She didn’t seem to notice Faith’s still-pallid skin, red-ringed eyes, or limp hair. She was too busy turning to José with a questioning look.
“Mom, this is José Molinar, a friend. José, my mother, Ramona Alder.”
She smiled and shook his hand. The calculations had already begun. How much of a friend? How long? Where from? “Won’t you come in?”
“Gracias, but no. I’ll leave you to your homecoming. Better without an intruder.”
Homecoming. Strange home considering I’d never been here before. The last home I had with Mom was in Montreal. The one the three of us stayed on in after Papi left; a mother and two teenage girls, not the perfect mix. But then Faith moved out with her boyfriend and I reached college-age and Mom decided to start over again. Now I wondered if she and I would ever catch up on that time she had missed between my teenhood and womanhood.
José had mentioned an intrusion, too. There could be no intrusion when he had been invited in. But Mom didn’t insist, her attention was already turning back to Faith and me. So I didn’t insist either. Although I wanted to.
José opened the trunk and held out Faith’s suitcase and my backpack. Faith didn’t even make a show of taking charge, she must really be sick. I hoped Mom didn’t notice. She’d have Faith at death’s door in no time. José came close, his arm brushing mine as he handed over the bags. His touch was a magnet to my skin, the prick of iron shavings coming to life. I wanted to drop the bags, grab his neck, and give in to the pull. I didn’t. He kissed me lightly, gripped Mom’s hand, then Faith’s with a pat on her shoulder, and climbed back into the car. “Give me a call from the bus station when you get back.” He stared pointedly at Faith, who still looked like she was having trouble finding the strength to stand straight. “I can give the two of you a lift.” I watched him drive off as my mother and sister started walking down the rise.
Mom gave us a whirlwind tour of her apartment, then over to the villa, where we had to climb a ladder attached to the outer wall to our guest room, actually the maid’s room, a concrete box perched on the top of the flat roof. Dozens of birds chirped from among the leaves of a tall mango tree whose top hugged the outer wall of the box which was actually a bedroom that had no door, just two openings, one the doorway, the other a window entirely open to the elements, and one bunk bed. The only other furnishings were an ironing board and a wooden chair piled high with clothes. I’d thought Mom’s apartment looked spartan, this was beyond belief.
“The dueños are between maids right now. Their last girl left, so they offered to let you two sleep here. Otherwise, we’d have had to string up two hammocks in my place.”
“I can see why she left,” I remarked. I tried to catch Faith’s eye, but she was still winded from the climb and didn’t notice. She looked almost grey in this light. Mom just shrugged.
The landlady and landlord were at their front door as we climbed back down the ladder. Both were of a stocky build but dressed for a younger, slimmer age. He wore an open-necked shirt and jeans, she a long white T-shirt over black leggings. The woman came over first, smiled, and shook our hands. Mom pulled her aside as her husband stepped up to greet Faith and me. “¡Qué linda familia! ¡Qué placer infinito es encontrarles a las hijas de nuestra gran amiga! Soy Miguel.” I smiled in spite of myself. Somehow, after seeing the spartan maid’s room, I’d expected the owners to be stern-looking, penny-pinching. Instead, Miguel’s effusiveness, the kind where nothing is just fine, but everything is beautiful, every pleasure infinite, reminded me sharply of Papi. As did his courtly gesture as he opened the door for us and ushered us into his house. I remembered Papi’s bewilderment back home when such an act of courtliness on his part was interpreted as chauvinistic. I had returned to another generation as well as another land. It made me see Papi in a new light. How stifling it must have been to always have to tone down his effusiveness, his chivalry, his lifestyle, his tastes.
Mom and the landlady, Graciela, had finished whispering. Graciela nodded and looked at us, “Of course, come in, come in.” We soon discovered that Mom had asked if we could visit the altar Graciela and Miguel had set up for the Day of the Dead.
The irony didn’t escape me: our father, the non-Canadian, had been the one intent on showing us the real Canada during our cross-country trips, now it seemed it was our mother, the non-Mexican, who was bent on showing us the real Mexico. In this case, the real Mexico’s fascination with death. Papi quoted Octavio Paz to me once, and I remembered it still because, at the time, it seemed such a strange thing for a father to say: “by refusing to contemplate death, we cut ourselves off from life.” Now I wondered if there was a country somewhere in the world that contemplated people disappearing instead of dying and built altars in their name.
The first thing I noticed was the full baby bottle and soother nestled in between sugar skulls and skeleton figures surrounded by flickering candles and burning copal incense on the top tier of three what looked like orange crates covered in purple crepe paper. My sandals slid, then caught, on ashes and marigold petals scattered at my feet.
“Careful,” said Graciela. “The ashes are to show up his footprints when he comes.” She took a framed picture of a little boy, a toddler, from the place of honour on the altar and held it out to us. “He was our son,” she said.
Faith’s stomach chose that moment to rebel. She mumbled something about the incense and motioned for me to help her beat a quick retreat to Mom’s home.
Once back in the apartment, Faith headed straight for the bathroom. Mom, who had followed us out, headed for the juicer — “I should have offered you something to drink to begin with. You must be dying of thirst” — and reached for three glasses as she explained that the oranges came from the tree poolside, and that there were bananas too and mangoes, such a luxury to have a private source of fruit outside the front door. I grabbed a glass just as it was about to fall, motioned for Mom to concentrate on the juice, and took down the last two glasses from the open shelf. Her voice blended with the whirring of juicer blades. I scooped emptied orange shells from the sink, dropped them into the garbage can, and let her words wash over me in waves of sound, remembering how I only learned what silence was after Mom left Montreal. Where had Papi’s voice fit in, an occasional swell or the tide washing out?
Faith came back finally and dropped into a chair. Mom kept talking with only the briefest glance in her direction. “There you are, Faith, I was just telling Hope about all the fruit we have growing right in the garden here, but even homegrown you can’t be too careful, it all has to be washed in purified water and soap, scrubbed with a brush, or else diarrhea strikes. Remember how you always used to call it ‘dire rear,’ Hope? Or was it you, Faith? Oh well, it doesn’t really matter, does it? We got a lot of laughs out of that. Speaking of the Aztec two-step — that’s what they call it here — you don’t look too well, Faith, a little peaked? Nothing wrong I hope, you always have had the stronger constitution, not like Hope what with her heart murmur...”
I broke in, “Innocent, Mom, an innocent heart murmur.” The words brought back the anxious wait nine years ago in the cardiologist’s, Mom holding my hand. A murmur no doctor had mentioned before. Maybe it had been shocked into existence. In any case, the cardiologist pronounced it innocent, but it was a verdict Mom never believed.
It was as though I hadn’t said a word.
“Now it wouldn’t surprise me in the least to see you get sick, Hope, your defences must be so weakened from all those paints, the turpentine, the charcoal dust you work with all the time, you really should be careful. You must install a fan in your studio, I’m sure no one has thought