‘Someone must watch over the child,’ she insisted. ‘She’s too young to be left alone.’ She was looking at my face, but I didn’t think she saw me. ‘I can’t run away again.’
I put my arm around her shoulder and tried to turn her away from the hut. She would not move. I could feel her trembling.
‘I’ll watch her,’ I said. ‘I’ll keep her safe.’
‘You must be very careful,’ she said to me owlishly. ‘She is stubborn and she doesn’t want to leave. But it isn’t safe here.’
‘I’ll be careful.’
‘How do I know I can trust you?’
‘I’m a friend of hers. A very good friend.’ I hesitated, then said softly, ‘Tell me – what must I watch for?’
‘The old woman,’ she said, blinking into the shadows. ‘Watch out for the old woman.’
She let me lead her through the silent camp to her hut. In her hut, I lit the candle on the desk. The big stone head watched from the corner as I helped my mother to bed. I used the sheet that had been bunched at one end of the hammock to cover her. Her skin was hot and dry, and I wondered if she were running a fever. She tossed and turned in her sleep. When she spoke in Maya to people I could not see, I told her that everything would be all right. I hoped that I was not lying. I sat beside her, listening to the sounds outside and holding her hand.
When the faint gray light of dawn shone through the open door, my mother was sleeping quietly. I blew out the candle and returned to my hut. I had just finished dressing when Barbara woke.
‘Come on,’ I told her. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
She blinked at me sleepily. ‘Hey, give me a minute to wake up.’
I waited for her to roll out of bed and dress, and we walked out into the plaza. ‘I was thinking of sticking around here to see what Liz turns up in the tomb today,’ she said. ‘After all, this is our first big find.’
‘Whatever’s in the tomb now will still be there on Monday,’ I said. ‘Are you willing to go without a hot shower to see it one day sooner?’
‘You’ve got a point there.’ She stopped at the water barrel and splashed water onto her face. ‘You sure are eager to go to town all of a sudden. Did Marcos steal your heart?’
I shook my head, wondering how much I could tell Barbara. ‘I just need to get out of here.’
‘More troubles with Liz?’
I nodded.
She studied my face, then shrugged. ‘I suppose you’re right. The secrets of the ancient Maya can’t really compete with a hot shower. Let’s go.’
We arrived in town early in the morning and had breakfast at the usual table beneath the trees that shed yellow flowers like a cat sheds fur. Emilio arrived with his hammocks at the usual hour, bought the customary round of coffee.
It was Barbara, not I, who asked about Marcos. Marcos, it seemed, was busy that day; he had business that took him elsewhere. Emilio was evasive; he would not look at me. Barbara frowned and asked him a few questions in Spanish, then shook her head. We finished our coffee in silence, then Emilio said that he would be selling hammocks in the zocalo. He would meet us at lunchtime, he said.
After Emilio left, Barbara ordered more coffee. ‘It seems we were right about the game,’ she said. ‘You all right?’
‘I’m fine. If he’s busy, he’s busy.’ I shrugged. ‘I don’t care.’
‘You can stop being polite,’ she said. ‘Emilio’s gone.’
‘I really don’t care. It doesn’t make any difference.’
She looked at my hands. ‘You’re shredding that napkin,’ she said quietly.
I put the pieces of paper napkin down on the checkered tablecloth. ‘It shouldn’t make a difference,’ I said. ‘He doesn’t mean anything to me. It doesn’t matter.’
‘What a stupid asshole,’ she said.
I shrugged again. ‘No big deal.’
‘Look,’ she said, leaning forward and putting her hand on mine. ‘I know it’s not a big deal. I know your heart isn’t broken or anything like that. But it’s still no good. You can get mad about it if you want.’
I sipped my coffee, watching a blind beggar trying to sell a badly carved wooden animal to the couple at the next table.
‘Think I should tell Emilio to buzz off?’
‘Why? It’s not his fault.’
‘Whatever you want.’ She leaned back in her chair and spooned more sugar into her coffee. ‘Maybe we should get out of town today. Go tour the ruins at Uxmal. Something different.’
‘I’m all right,’ I told her. ‘I don’t care.’
She studied my face, then nodded. ‘Have it your way. What do you want to do? Go swimming?’
‘Fine.’
We went swimming in the hotel pool, a tiny patch of water in a turquoise concrete basin. I lay on the cement by the side of the pool and tried to read the paperback romance, a stupid story about beautiful people who always wore the right clothes. The world of the heroine was filled with vague anxieties, overblown fears. I felt right at home.
Barbara swam and periodically tried to get me to talk. After an hour of this, I told Barbara that I wasn’t hungry; she and Emilio should eat without me. ‘I think I’ll wander around in the market. Maybe buy a dress. I’ll meet you back here.’
I walked. I didn’t go to the market; I wasn’t up for the crowds. I wandered around the zocalo, bought a lemon ice from a sidewalk vendor, and sat down on a bench near the cathedral to eat it. The clock on the Municipal Palace said it was one-thirty, but it seemed much later. The air was heavy with the promise of rain.
I didn’t miss Marcos. I had expected little of him. He was a person to cling to when the shadows came, no more. But now, I didn’t even have that.
Two withered women wrapped in dark red shawls sat on the pavement before the cathedral, begging coins from passing strangers. The two middle-aged women who sold gilt-framed pictures of saints at the cathedral door were closing up shop, wrapping the garish frames in newspaper and stacking them in a cardboard box. Above their heads, pigeons trudged up and down on the stone lintel.
On the sidewalk, tourists strolled up and down. A neatly dressed woman with a sunburned nose was exclaiming over postcards. A man in a new panama hat was taking a picture of the Municipal Palace. All strangers. None of them would understand if I told them I was afraid that my mother was crazy, afraid that I might be crazy. They would not understand that I was being haunted by an old woman who looked like the stone head in my mother’s hut.
I thought about calling my former lover, Brian. I hadn’t spoken to him since I quit my job. What could I tell him? I’m seeing ghosts and I think my mother is crazy. No, I could tell him nothing.
I was afraid. A friend of mine had a dog that would chase after the spot of light cast by a flashlight beam, unable to catch it and unable to leave it alone. The dog would run after the spot on the floor and bark when it ran up the walls, until he collapsed with exhaustion. Poor dog could never figure out that he could never catch the spot. I felt like the dog. I did not know the rules and there was no one to tell me. It was like chasing a spot of light. Or like trying to catch soap bubbles as they drifted on the breeze. You end up with handfuls of nothing.
I did not see the curandera approach. She sat beside me on the bench and took my hand, holding it tightly in her warm dry hands. She said something to me in a low urgent voice and I shook my head. I didn’t understand. I tried to free my hand, but she would not let go. She called out to a passing hammock vendor and he came near. Still holding my hand, she spoke quickly to him. He glanced at me curiously, amused by the situation.
‘Do you speak English?’ I asked him. ‘Can you tell her to let me go?’
‘A little,’ he said. He spoke to the woman and she shook her head and said something else.