I went to the cenote that night after dinner and I sat by the pool, listening to the sound of the crickets and watching the shadows of peasant women come to fetch water. Zuhuy-kak did not come to join me. My daughter did not come. I was alone, and when the moon rose, I went to bed.
Friday was Akbal, a day of darkness. It is governed by the jaguar in its night aspect, lord of the underworld.
On Friday, Tony went with me to the site. By noon, the workmen had loosened and removed another stone, making an opening large enough for me to slide through on my belly, pushing my flashlight before me.
The skeleton lay on a stone slab, flat on her back with her legs stretched out. Her rib cage had collapsed; the flashlight beam shone on a jumble of pale crescent-shaped bones and glinted from the smooth jade beads scattered among the ribs and vertebrae. One arm lay over her ribs and across the pelvic girdle; the small bones of her hand were strewn between her thighbones. The other arm was crossed over her chest and the finger bones were lost in the confusion of ribs and vertebrae. The bones of her feet and toes had been scattered, perhaps by mice scavenging for food. Not far from the arm that was crossed over her chest, an obsidian blade lay on the stone platform. Nearby, the stone was stained by a splash of red: cinnabar spilled from the scallop shell that lay beside her.
Her skull was deformed, flattened at a steep angle to make an elongated expanse of forehead. Her mouth had fallen open and the teeth were intact. I recognized Zuhuy-kak by the jade inlays in her front teeth. A white shape lay by her pelvis and I played the light on it: the conch shell that had dangled from her belt. One thighbone had a knot in its center: a break that had not healed properly.
I heard Tony slide through the narrow gap behind me. His flashlight beam played over the pots that surrounded the skeleton: a jug in the shape of a turkey, a cream-colored three-legged bowl painted with glyphs, a squat vase in the shape of a spiraling shell, an incense burner in the shape of a jaguar, an assortment of bowls, jars, jugs, and vessels.
Tony’s flashlight stopped, spotlighting a large bowl at the skeleton’s feet, a vessel as big around as the circle I could make with my arms. It was elaborately decorated with glyphs and pictures. The ceramic lid had been knocked askew. Tony stepped closer, peering into the bowl, then gently lifted the lid aside.
A skull the size of a large grapefruit smiled out at us – a dark-eyed child whose teeth had long since left the jaws. Smooth and pale, the skull nestled among the curving ribs and long bones like an egg among twigs. Here and there, the bones were touched with cinnabar. By the look of things, the skeleton of the child had been disinterred, cleaned, dusted with cinnabar, packed neatly in the bowl, and buried again. I stepped closer, and the dark sockets of the eyes, set low beneath the flattened forehead, followed me. So fraiclass="underline" I could easily snap these ancient ribs in my hands. So young. The bones had been arranged with care, gently placed in the bowl, and I wondered who had tended to them.
In the end, the grand movements of civilizations matter little. What matters is the skull of a child beside the skeleton of its mother. I glanced up at Zuhuy-kak’s skeleton and the obsidian blade beside her. What mattered was how this child had died. A cool damp breeze touched me and I shivered.
‘It goes on,’ Tony said, and for a moment I did not understand. Then I followed his flashlight beam with my gaze and realized that the darkness was a sloping passage, the beginning of a limestone cavern extending down beneath the earth. The limestone walls were studded with fossil seashells. The hairs on my arms prickled and my skin rose in goose bumps. I could smell water somewhere far away. No sound but Tony’s breathing and mine. He stepped toward the opening.
‘No,’ I said sharply. ‘Don’t go in there.’
It was not until he looked back at me that I realized I had spoken too loudly.
‘Is something wrong?’ he said, stepping toward me.
‘No,’ I said, ‘nothing.’
‘We have our work cut out for us,’ he said. ‘I hadn’t counted on spelunking.’
‘We aren’t equipped for it,’ I said. I played my flashlight over the walls and knew that there were shadows just beyond the reach of the beam. I did not want Tony to go into the cave. I did not want anyone to go into the cave.
‘That’s never stopped us from doing anything before,’ he said. ‘I’ll see if John wants to organize an expedition tomorrow.’
We began excavation of the burial that day, setting John and Robin to work with trowels and whisks while the men continued bringing down the wall. When the survey crew returned, they all trooped down to the site and exclaimed over the skeleton. We finally quit working when the sun went down.
20
Diane
On Friday night, I woke to the sound of stealthy footsteps on the path. The hut was dark. Barbara breathed in a steady rhythm. Maggie mumbled something in her sleep and shifted uneasily in her hammock. Robin breathed softly, like a small animal curled in a burrow.
I don’t know what woke me – a change in the song of the crickets, the hooting of an owl, something. I don’t know. But I sat up in my hammock and stared out through the open door, then left my hammock and stood by the opening. The dirt floor was cool beneath my bare feet.
The lights were out; the moon was down. The sky was immense, endless blackness dotted with too many stars. Even Tony was asleep – the light by his hut was out. A bat flew overhead, briefly blocking out the stars and chittering in a high-pitched excited voice.
I saw something move in the shadows near the water barrel. I watched carefully, and it moved again, a darker shadow within the shadows. ‘Is someone there?’ I said softly, not wanting to wake the others. ‘Who is it?’
No answer. I thought I knew the answer: waiting in the shadows was an old woman dressed in blue.
In the starlight, the world was black-and-white, a late feature on a black-and-white TV. In late-night movies, monsters live in the shadows. The heroine always goes to investigate and the monsters always get her. Always. When I watched late-night horror movies, I never knew why the heroine didn’t just go back to bed and pull the covers over her head and sleep until morning, when the sun would come out and the birds would sing and the vampires and werewolves would go back into hiding. I was no late-night-feature heroine; I could go back to bed and sleep until morning.
Except for the uncertainty. The lingering doubt that had been nagging at me since I saw the old woman in the monte. The suspicion, faint but growing stronger, that I was going to be as crazy as my mother someday soon. I was afraid of things that were not there. I saw shadows by day; I heard noises at night. When I was not aware of them, my hands formed fists – they were doing it now.
I snatched my flashlight from the table, slipped through the door, and hurried along the path toward the shadow, hurrying because if I did not hurry I might go back to bed and lie awake all night, listening for the sound of footsteps coming nearer.
The figure beside the water barrel did not move as I approached. I shone my flashlight beam into the shadows, and my mother blinked in the sudden light. Tousle-headed, clad in blue pajamas, barefoot, and blinking like an owl. Her eyes were large and her face was haggard. I touched her shoulder and felt the frail bones beneath the thin layers of cloth and flesh. She was trembling. ‘What are you doing here?’ I asked. ‘What’s going on?’
‘I’m watching over the child,’ she said. Her eyes had turned away from the light, but they focused on nothing.
‘You scared me,’ I said. ‘You didn’t answer when I called.’ She was not listening.