The Falling Woman

‘She wants me to tell you…’ He hesitated, as if searching for the right words. ‘You got to go away,’ he said at last. ‘Don’t go back to your mother.’

‘What are you talking about? Why shouldn’t I go back?’

He shrugged. ‘She says that your luck is bad.’ He shrugged again. ‘That is what she says.’

‘Tell her that I understand,’ I said. I looked at the old woman and she stared back. ‘Yo comprendo.’ Her grip on my hand loosened and I freed myself. I stood then, backing away from her.

‘Hey,’ the hammock vendor called after me. ‘You want to buy a hammock?’

I was stumbling away, almost running across the zocalo. Thunder rolled across the sky, bumping from cloud to cloud. I went back to the hotel to get my bag and found Barbara and Emilio at the usual table. I told Barbara that I was going to catch a cab back to camp. When she protested, I just shrugged. I knew that I had to go back. I did not know why the old woman wanted to chase me away from my mother, but I knew I had to go back.

The first fat drops of rain began falling as I ran from the hotel across the square to the taxi stand. The bronze man on the pillar glistened in a flash of lightning. He stared out over my head, ignoring my hurried negotiations with the cabby.

The road to the ruins seemed longer in the rain. The taxi driver tried to talk to me. I think he was complaining about driving in the storm, but I just shrugged, understanding only a few of the words. I watched the shapes in the moving rain, never clear but always present. Once, I almost called to the driver to tell him to stop – I saw an old woman crossing the road. But she vanished into the rain, a shadow, nothing more. Thunder rolled overhead like the crash of falling monuments.

21 Elizabeth

I woke on Saturday, the day Kan, as stiff and sore as if I had been hiking through the monte in my sleep. The sky was overcast and the morning was half over. I stopped by the kitchen and Maria gave me – reluctantly, I thought – a breakfast of atole. Barbara and Diane had left for Mérida; Tony was nowhere to be seen.

This day is governed by the smooth-faced young god who makes the maize grow. It is a good day, by most accounts, favorable for beginning new projects and continuing old ones. I considered this as I sat in the plaza and ate my atole. Then I gathered my equipment and went to the tomb.

I was halfway there when Zuhuy-kak fell into step beside me. She limped slightly and I remembered seeing the knotted thighbone that caused her pain. I looked at her broad face and knew the smooth white surfaces beneath it. I glanced at her, but did not speak.

‘Are you happy with the secrets you have found?’ she asked. When she spoke, I remembered the skull’s gaping mouth.

We had reached the mouth of the tomb. I did not acknowledge Zuhuy-kak’s presence. I pulled aside the tarpaulin that covered the excavation, and descended the steps into the tomb. In the passageway, I lit the Coleman lantern, reached through the opening to set it on the floor of the tomb, and squirmed in after it.

In the tomb, it was still night, governed by the jaguar, the dark aspect of the sun. The lantern cast a circle of light that faded before it reached the ceiling. In the silent darkness, I could hear my heart beating quickly, as if I had run a long distance. I lifted the lantern high and looked toward the back of the tomb. The floor sloped away, ending in darkness. Caves are the entrance to Xibalba, the Mayan underworld inhabited by gods of death and sacrifice. Cold air from the underworld stirred the hairs on my arm and I shivered. On the mottled stone wall of the tomb my shadow shifted and changed, monstrous and strange. I saw Zuhuy-kak standing at the edge of the circle of lantern light, watching me.

On Friday, we had begun clearing the area, brushing away the loose dirt. Our initial work had uncovered a vase that lay on its side on the floor near the skeleton’s head. I set the lantern on the stone dais, so that the vase fell within the pool of light.

I knelt by the vase. On Friday, I had started cleaning it, but the vessel was still half covered with soft dirt and bits of straw brought in by generations of rodents. I used my whisk broom to brush the upper surface clean.

‘I made that vase,’ Zuhuy-kak said. ‘When I emerged from the well, while I lay on the pallet, I painted it.’

I noticed that my hands were shaking and I stopped for a moment, waiting for the trembling to subside before I continued my work. I breathed deeply. I could still feel a trembling deep inside me, but my hands were still. I recognized one glyph – the place glyph for Chichén Itzá. On the side of the pot, just below the band of glyphs, I could make out a thin black outline on the cream-colored pottery. I continued brushing. The dirt brushed away easily now, revealing the elaborate headdress of a priest or nobleman. The black outline was his hand, which was raised above his head. He was looking down, at something beyond and below him.

I continued brushing the dirt from the pot. The half inch of rim that I had exposed was circled with a band of black marks on a red background: glyphs that were scratched and illegible in the dim lantern light. On the vase, a priest stood on a cliff with a group of other priests and nobles. All of them looked down. My whisk broom uncovered feet first, then her blue dress, fluttering around her as she fell. Her hair was streaming behind her. The falling woman. The priest’s hands were raised because he had cast her off the cliff. Her arms were crossed on her breast; her eyes were open and staring. She saw something, but I did not know what it was. She was falling through empty space, just as she had been falling for many years.

The glaze at the base of the vase was scratched, but I could make out curling waves of turbulent water, black swirls on the cream-colored background. In the swirls, between the cracks and gaps in the glaze, I could see an upthrown arm and a weeping face, several small figures struggling against the serpentine coils of the water.

‘I brought that vase with me when I came down here,’ she said. ‘I wanted it with me. I brought my daughter’s bones.’

I heard the rain begin to fall outside the tomb. The tarp flapped in the wind and the water trickled down the steps – I could hear the soft liquid sound, like a cat licking itself.

I used my trowel to remove the soil surrounding the vase, transferring the loosely packed dirt and detritus to a bucket. The vase was almost free of its cradle of soil. When I brushed it, it moved slightly, rocking in place. I stopped for a moment, waiting for the trembling in my hands to stop. Then, with care, I lifted the vase from the soil.

The glaze on the side that had faced the ground was pitted and cracked, but the picture was still intact. The woman in blue – the falling woman – lay on a platform. At her feet lay a conch – a symbol of the water from which she had emerged and of the underworld where the sun dies and is reborn. One hand held a leaf-shaped obsidian blade. Her other arm was extended to display a bloody gash from which blood flowed. She was smiling and her expression was triumphant.

‘You killed yourself here,’ I said.

‘There was no one else left to kill me,’ she said softly. ‘The goddess had no power and I had sent the people away.’

Zuhuy-kak was sitting on the edge of the stone dais, and she seemed as solid as the bones that lay beside her. She sat with her shoulders hunched forward, staring at her folded hands. For a moment, I felt sympathy for this poor mad ghost, exiled by her own doing, lost and alone. Without thinking, I reached out toward her. She looked up and I stopped.

‘How did your daughter die?’ I asked.

Zuhuy-kak met my gaze. Her hands were folded in her lap. For a moment, she said nothing. ‘I gave her to the goddess,’ she said at last.

‘You sacrificed your daughter,’ I said, staring at the woman’s face.