The heat of the day weighed upon me. On the brick plaza, two pigeons were courting. The male was circling the female, cooing and puffing out his neck feathers so that they caught the light. The female was searching for bread crumbs, oblivious to his attention.
Two small children, a boy in a blue shirt and jeans and a little girl in a faded dress, came to us with a bouquet of flowers. Marcos bought me a flower and I tucked it behind my ear. The little girl grinned: her teeth were crooked and her hair needed combing. I patted her on the shoulder – the way you pat a kitten or a puppy – and gave her a coin.
‘Will you come here next weekend?’ Marcos asked me.
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘I think so.’
He squeezed my hand lightly. ‘Sometimes,’ Marcos said, ‘you look like you are very far away from here. What happens with you then?’
‘Just thinking, I guess. I can’t explain it.’
He studied my face, then shrugged. ‘Whatever it is, it will be OK. You are in Mérida with us.’ He squeezed my hand lightly. ‘It will be good. We will be good friends.’
Across the way, Emilio’s attempts to persuade Barbara had been interrupted by the flower-bearing children. As I watched, Emilio tried to shoo them away and continue his conversation with Barbara, but the boy just grinned and thrust the flowers out again. Clever urchins, they kept grinning and holding out the flowers and watching Barbara laugh. Finally, Emilio threw up his hands with impatience, bought a flower from the boy and bribed the little girl with a coin.
‘Don’t look sad,’ said Marcos. ‘You will come back in a week. One week will pass just like that.’ He waved a hand in the air.
Barbara was walking toward me, twirling a white flower between her finger and thumb. Emilio, defeated but still hopeful, walked at her side. Barbara and I drove away in a car filled with the scent of dying flowers.
13
Elizabeth
Diane and Barbara returned to camp late on Sunday, roaring in about an hour after sunset. Tony, John, and I were sitting beside Tony’s hut when they drove up. Barbara waved to us from the car, immediately brought over a bottle of red wine that she had purchased in Mérida, and insisted that we all share it. She seemed exuberant, happy to have gone to Mérida, happy to be back. Diane was more subdued.
Barbara dragged over a few folding chairs, and we drank wine and listened to Barbara’s tales of selling hammocks to tourists. The wine was too sweet. Diane said very little, and I found myself watching the shadows shift and move. The dancing woman did not return. I felt restless and out of place and I excused myself after finishing a single glass of wine. Alone, I walked to the cenote.
I fingered the lucky piece that I carried in my pocket. Tony had given me the coin on the same day he told me that he loved me. I don’t remember what I said to him. I have a better memory for what others say than for what I say myself. We were walking home from the movies. Tony had insisted on taking me; he told me I was working too hard, that I needed some time off. When we reached my apartment door, he pulled a dark blue box from his pocket and handed it to me. ‘I made you a present,’ he said.
‘You realize,’ he said as I was opening it, ‘that I care a lot about you.’ He was shy, a little awkward. I remember hoping, as I opened the box, that a collapsible rubber snake would jump out, or that a joy buzzer would sound, or somehow the whole thing would be a joke. The coin glistened in the light. ‘I love you, Liz. You know that?’ Tony said quietly.
I did know – though I had not admitted it to myself before. I said, I think I said, ‘I don’t want this. I’m sorry.’ I think I held the coin out to him, hoping that he would take it back and hide it away again.
He took my hand and gently closed it around the coin. He kept his hands on mine for a moment. ‘Think about it,’ he said. He turned and walked away, leaving the coin in my hand.
I remember sitting in my apartment. I didn’t turn on the lamp; I could see the dim outlines of the furniture by the light of the streetlamp, filtered through the window shade, and I wanted no more light than that. What I had told Tony was true – I could not love him. Somewhere at my center, with the madness I had locked away, I had sealed off the part of me that knew how to love. It was too close to the part of me that knew how to hate, and that was at the center of the madness. I had sealed them all away, leaving a dead place, a place where nothing hurt because there were no nerve endings there. I had severed connections, cauterized the wound. I sat in the dim light in an ugly apartment that needed painting and I probed the dead spot, thinking about Robert, thinking about the pain of madness. Nothing.
I don’t think I cried. I don’t remember crying. I remember taking a shower and letting the warm water run over my body. I remember thinking, I feel the water, so I must be alive. But the warm water did not reach the part of me that I had sealed away.
Tony and I remained friends – very good friends. I tried to give him the coin back, but he insisted I keep it. We went to lunch together, to dinner now and then. Eventually, he mentioned to me that he was dating Hilde, one of the secretaries who worked in the department.
The cenote was dark and still. I stood on the edge of the pool and held the coin lightly in my hand. Something was stirring in the back of my mind; something that I did not want to examine too closely. Feelings that I had buried long ago were surfacing in me. I turned the coin over and over in my hand.
I heard the rustle of fabric behind me. Zuhuy-kak stepped to my side, smiling in the moonlight. ‘Ah, you are here,’ she said. ‘That is welclass="underline" you belong here.’
I smiled back. Seeing her helped ease the restlessness. I did belong here; I had always felt that.
‘I came to tell you that a day of bad luck is coming,’ she said. ‘The day Ix, three days from now, will be unfavorable. It is ruled by the jaguar god, who does not wish the goddess to return to power. You must give to the goddess to make her stronger so that she can help you against her enemies.’
‘What can I give?’
‘Something you value.’ Zuhuy-kak was looking at the coin and I closed my hand around it. My mind suddenly held a picture of the coin arcing high in the air, catching the moonlight as it tumbled toward the black waters.
‘You hesitate,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I was thinking that you have never told me what we will find when we finish digging.’
She frowned at me. ‘You were wondering whether the result would be worth the sacrifice. You cannot bargain with the gods.’
I shrugged. ‘I think about these things differently than you.’
‘What do you want to find, Ix Zacbeliz?’
I thought for a moment. Tony and I joked about jade masks and gold, but that was just joking. What did I want? A tomb that added to our knowledge of religious ritual? Murals like the ones in the caves at Bonampak?
‘I know what you want,’ Zuhuy-kak said softly. ‘I can tell you. You want power. That is what you will find when you reach the end. You will find the power of the goddess.’
I was turning the coin over and over in my hand.
‘You must sacrifice to the goddess to gain her favor. You must give to her willingly.’
I held the coin, unwilling to let it go. It caught the moonlight and gleamed in my hand. A sound on the path distracted me. My daughter’s voice calling, ‘Hello?’ I turned toward her, slipped on the rock, started to fall and flailed my arms to regain my balance. My hand opened and the coin slipped away from me, through my fingers. I heard it hit the rock, slide. I heard a splash in the water below. Gone.