We sat by ruins of the Spanish chapel and I asked about her books. ‘In the last chapter of your first book, you said, “There’s more to be seen in the world than most will admit.” What did you mean?’ I asked.
She stared into the distance, where the light of the rising sun already shimmered on the sparse grass and barren ground. ‘Over there, on the edge of the plaza, a stoneworker once sat and shaped irregular lumps of obsidian into sharp sacrificial blades for priests, into spearheads for hunters. He squatted on the ground, shaded by an awning of bright blue cloth. His skin glistened with sweat as he bent over his work. He was a well-fed man, fattened by the venison and wild turkey with which the hunters paid him, unusually stout for a Mayan.’ My mother leaned forward, as if to get a better view of the stoneworker. ‘Do you see him there, sitting in the sun and patiently chipping an edge on an obsidian blade? I see him. He’s a very careful workman. You can choose to see him. Or you can choose to see the bare earth.’ She glanced at my face. ‘That’s what I meant. Do you see him?’ Her tone was light and casual.
I felt uncomfortable, staring at the bare place in the earth. I remembered the dream that had led me to discover the stela. But that had been a dream – I was awake now. I shrugged. ‘I see the sunlight on the rocks, that’s all.’
She nodded. ‘Nothing wrong with that. I sometimes think that to see the past clearly you must give up a good deal of the present.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s a choice I made long ago. A sacrifice of sorts.’
‘Do you mean you really see him? In the same way that you see me?’
She was silent for so long that I thought she had decided not to answer. When she spoke, she spoke softly. ‘Sometimes, I think I see the shadows of the past more clearly than I see any living person.’ She shrugged, as if to rid herself of the thought, then quickly stood to return to camp.
I did not follow all that she said to me. I was reluctant to ask questions, because questions seemed to disturb the spell, to break some unspoken rule. If I asked too many questions, my mother would shrug and fall silent, or suggest immediately that we return to camp. Sometimes, it seemed like our morning walks were waking dreams, unsettling, subtly disturbing. Thoughts and feelings that I could not pinpoint were tapping at the back of my skull. I liked my mother, but I did not understand her. I did not understand her at all.
In the heat of the day, my mother was a different person – brisk, fast-moving, impatient that the excavation went so slowly. She argued with Tony about where the crew should be digging, about the significance of the stone head, about the likelihood that the underground chamber would really turn out to be a tomb.
By the fourth day, I felt at home at the dig. It seemed that I had always washed my face in gritty lukewarm water from a black barrel that smelled faintly of plastic, had always blundered to a pungent outhouse in the darkness each night.
Barbara asked me if I wanted to go to Mérida with her that weekend. She knew a cheap hotel with a pool. We could take hot showers, maybe see a movie and eat popcorn in an air-conditioned theater. I asked my mother if she thought that a trip to Mérida would be worthwhile, and she said I should go.
On Saturday morning, I woke early. Barbara had not set her alarm: we had planned to sleep late and leave camp sometime in the middle of the morning. When I woke, I glanced at Barbara, who was just rolling over to look at the clock.
‘What time is it?’ I whispered. Maggie and Robin were still asleep.
‘Seven-thirty,’ she whispered back. She leaned back in the hammock, one hand tucked under her head.
She was frowning. ‘I can’t even sleep late anymore,’ she grumbled. ‘This is ridiculous.’
We dressed quietly, packed clean clothes, and slipped out of the hut. We stopped at the water barrel to wash, and the splash of water into the metal basin was loud in the hot morning air. The camp was still asleep; the only sign of life was the small curl of smoke rising from Maria’s kitchen.
‘Ah,’ Barbara said. ‘Perhaps we can convince Maria to spare us a cup of coffee.’
I hung back when Barbara went to the door of the kitchen. The look that Maria gave us was far from friendly. Teresa hid behind Maria’s skirts. Barbara stepped away from the kitchen, frowning. ‘I guess we’ll get coffee in Mérida. Maria says she hasn’t made any this morning.’
I followed Barbara to the car. When I glanced back over my shoulder, I caught a glimpse of Teresa, peering out the kitchen door after us. ‘I don’t think Maria likes me much,’ I said to Barbara.
‘Of course not. She doesn’t like me either. You and I are young women, but we dress in pants and spend all our time with men.’ Barbara shook her head. ‘We don’t behave properly. She doesn’t approve.’
‘She talks to Liz.’
‘She doesn’t like Liz either. She doesn’t approve of any of us.’
I nodded, relieved at Barbara’s certainty that I was not alone in Maria’s disapproval.
Barbara’s battered Volkswagen bug jounced over every bump and rut in the road out of camp, finding every pothole, dropping into it, and emerging triumphant on the other side. Barbara drove with gleeful enthusiasm and unnecessary speed, tramping on the gas whenever the road looked clear for a stretch, only touching the brakes for an instant when the car hit a bump. ‘What’s the hurry?’ I shouted over the roar of the engine.
‘I’m tired of moving slow, that’s all,’ she shouted back. She swerved to avoid one pothole, struck another one dead-on, gunned the engine, and kept moving. ‘I’m tired of dirt and flies.’ She hit another pothole. ‘I want a hot shower, coffee, breakfast, bright lights, and men who want to talk about something besides potsherds.’ She looked away from the road to grin at me with bright-eyed malice. ‘I want to look for trouble.’ We hit another pothole.
‘I know one person in Mérida who might know where to find trouble,’ I shouted. ‘Someone I met on the plane.’
‘Man or woman?’
‘Man.’
‘Of course. Fast worker.’ I didn’t know whether she meant that I was a fast worker or the man was a fast worker. It didn’t seem to matter. ‘Cute?’
I thought for a moment. My memory of Marcos was rather vague, but I thought he had been presentable enough. ‘Not bad.’
‘Good. He’ll have a friend. They always do.’
We reached the main highway, the road that had seemed so narrow on my way to camp. It felt like a freeway now. The car picked up speed, and we rolled down the windows to let the wind blow through. We passed a truck filled with workmen on their way to somewhere, and we waved and honked the horn like high school kids who had escaped the campus for a field trip. We roared by a cluster of huts and waved to a woman who was hanging out the clothes and to a troop of children who were playing by the road.
‘We’ll have hot showers first, then breakfast,’ Barbara shouted.
‘Great,’ I said. Everything was great. The wind, the road, the promise of breakfast.
The hotel was an old establishment, a few blocks from Mérida’s main square and right beside Parque Hidalgo, the park that Marcos had mentioned. A little shabby. The desk clerk spoke bad English. A thin black cat seemed to live in the lobby. The banister on the curving stairs leading down to the lobby was ornately carved, but in need of polish. The blue and gold tiles of the lobby floor needed sweeping; dust hid behind the potted palms. But the sun streamed in through the open arch that led to Parque Hidalgo and there were fresh flowers on the check-in counter.