THE CROOKED BEAK OF HEAVEN

A Thesis

Presented to

The Faculty of Graduate Studies

of

The University of Guelph

by

ELIZABETH ELLEN ARRAND

In partial fulfillment of requirements

For the degree of

Master of Fine Arts

August, 2009

© Elizabeth Ellen Arrand, 2009

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1

PROLOGUE

My leg is balanced like a ballerina's on the "clean water" side of the concrete

sink, my razor gliding over my calf, and the light from the bulb above casting too many

shadows. Outside, beyond the balcony, I hear someone from below. I lift my leg to avoid

the rough concrete, and go to the window. Sitting in the darkness under the banana tree is

Enrique - small, wild-haired, Mexican/American rock star of this little town. He's staring

up at me.

"Want to go for a walk?"

"Sure," I say, surprising myself.

I smooth my skirt, take my keys, hurry the two flights downstairs, and fumble to

unlock the iron-barred door beside which Momma Lya once perched in her wicker chair

- before her sudden death - disapproving all the comings and goings of her rooming

house.

Enrique watches me from where he sits now - on the cement flowerpot. I can see

his grin with its gap between his teeth.

Under the moonlight, we walk the malecon as it stretches out over the water. The

tip has been split off by an earthquake, which, many years ago, gave the whole town a

good shake. Seawater invaded homes and stores. Fish swam down the streets. Locals

thought it was the end of the world.

The moon sits above the black water, interrupted by staccato white waves.

Shadowy fishermen stand on the broken wall edges letting their long lines dangle while

beside them, in the night, baskets of fish gasp for air, their mouths shaped like vowels.

2

Enrique and I hold hands as if we are a real couple. From the end of the breakwater, we

look back and I see, for the first time, it is just a town after all, a town as vulnerable to the

shake of earth and rush of sea as any great love, and just as easily snuffed out.

3

CHAPTER ONE

1997

At the airport, Raven pulls out her camera and takes pictures of me, her mother,

standing like a mule with my great pack on my back, roped in by the feeble make-shift

aisle.

"It'll be fun. If nothing else we'll laugh about it when you get back. Maybe you'll

even meet someone."

I must look confused because she clarifies: "You might meet a man that you

like."

That's what I thought she meant. Did she think I needed to? Even wanted to?

She's never mentioned this before.

"You think so?"

"Yes, I have a feeling."

When it's time, I watch myself lift my hand, watch it wave goodbye, and smile as

I pass through the outer gate. I hear Raven's last word to me.

"Write."

The word has a double meaning - write postcards home, but also get to my poetry

which is - for better or worse - my task in life, to push ink across scraps of paper.

As soon as I am alone in the waiting area, I put my pack on the chair beside me

and lean on it.

I am already weary from the lack of her; she's better at the practicalities of life.

Yesterday she helped me pack.

4

She gave me thirty seconds to defend each item. If I couldn't convince her I

needed it, she tossed it onto the growing mound of discards. Starting with "I might need

it" immediately doomed that item to the reject pile.

I was only really convincing about three items: my journal...

"All right, all right," she cut me short. "The journal can stay."

It is red and I've pasted a map of Mexico on the front.

My flip-flops, "because of the grimy bathrooms and bugs..."

"Okay, next."

And the mini-clothesline with its suction cup ends that stick onto walls, a twisty

rope for hanging underwear and tops on: "I'll be all alone in hotel rooms. There may be

nothing to hang anything on in the room. Scorpions on the walls."

"The clothesline stays."

But I almost lost her on the scorpion thing, too dramatic.

The pickings she chose were slim; she left me with to two pairs of shorts, one pair

of long pants, a bathing suit, three T-shirts, one long shirt, a sweater, a sun hat, sandals,

and running shoes.

She showed me how to use bags for 1) bathroom items - soap, shampoo,

toothpaste, dental floss and tweezers 2) emergency things - Band-Aids, iodine, Ibuprofen

3) comfort - herbal tea bags, candles and matches, a little flashlight; and 3) sun

protection -lots of sunscreen. I took back some tapes and a Walkman from the reject pile

and put them into zip lock bags: "for comfort" I said. She was not impressed. But I put

songs on them, songs that Claire and I had liked. It would be like taking Claire with me,

like taking a younger self.

5

Raven took the rest of the rejects and hid them: "I bet you won't even miss them."

Then we played house again. Raven helped me find the "fancy" plates, the ones

splashed with poppies. She set the table and I put the pasta and salad into glass bowls.

We both went to get the flowers from the living room and laughed at ourselves.

She smiled over the giant salad.

"Here's to your trip," she raised her glass. I manufactured a smile, clinked glasses,

and downed the cranberry juice as if it were the blood of a Viking. I couldn't back out

now.

In the departure lounge I sit across from a tall older woman who is touching up

her makeup, holding a powder case up to her face. She reminds me of Claire's mother,

Ann. Both Ann and Claire had that elusive thing called style. Both had the loose lips and

long faces that made you want to paint or photograph, them. But where Claire was

always a splash of bright abandon, Ann, with just a touch of red lipstick, is a mistress of

understatement.

When Claire died, Ann left a message on my answering machine.

"I have some rather sad news."

I thought maybe Claire was delayed in coming home for the holidays or, at worse,

the cat had been run over.

Without Claire's death I wouldn't have the money for this trip. I'd rather have

Claire. I miss Claire's presence - her Indian print dresses, her jangling bangles.

The woman puts her powder away. I check my flight number again and, even

when I hear it called, check again. As I line up, I reassure myself: Claire traveled all the

6

time. And without taking a risk - sticking my thumb out that first day I met her, I would

have missed so much. The line moves forward.

I drop my satchel and purse on the aisle seat, take off my pack, and squeeze it into

the overhead compartment. Another wave of fear hits me. The whole trip looms.

Travelling alone in Mexico. What if I make a stupid mistake? Like that poor couple that

took photographs inside a church. I think it was Chiapas. The locals chased them down

and murdered them, slit their throats. How could they know taking photographs was

blasphemous?

I do some deep breaths, and think about the beach and the heat.

When I was nineteen, the same age Raven is now, I hitchhiked up to a farm in

Durham, Ontario. Raven's father, Harley, and I were living with his best friend Ken, and

his wife Diana. We shared everything: food, chores, and ideals. Of course it didn't last.

Harley and I eventually moved back to Antpa, but I promised Diana and Ken that,

whenever they needed me to, I'd get up there and feed the horse.

The farm looked different than it had when Harley and I thought it might be a

refuge for us, an answer to our miserable little lives. The floorboards were now a shiny

green. Where Diana painted the far living room as a night sky with stars there were now

aged and oiled barn boards. In the kitchen the poster remained: a white gull against a blue

sky and the caption: "The bird of time has but a short way to fly and lo the bird is on the

wing." That poster, especially on acid, made me sad; already I felt life's possibilities

disappearing into the blue.

The horse's food was nearly gone. I kept the mare company, talking and hand

feeding her. We should never have brought a horse here. Now she was up for sale like

7

some old scarf you thought you wanted and never wore. Even at 19,1 never thought I'd

be this careless.

The landscape was silent.

The sun was going down. The idea of spending the night there became more and

more filled with impending malice. Biker gangs roamed the area, broke into homes when

people were away. I could hide, but they'd find me. And what would they do to me? I was

in the middle of nowhere. My screams would disappear.

I had to leave, to hitchhike back to town. The horse had enough food for a few

days.

I ran down the long driveway, intent on beating the setting sun. Few cars were

out; I could wait on the road for hours.

A car full of hooting men formed out of the cloud of approaching dust. They had

already spotted me; it was too late to run back to the farm. I thought of hiding in the ditch

as the car sped past, gnashed and barked and whined to a halt before spinning around to

face me. The men's voices, hunters possessed, howling, trilling and triumphant. There

was no way to save myself.

Bumping and sputtering, a yellow Volkswagen going the opposite direction,

jerked to a stop across from me.

"Get in!" a woman screamed out her window.

I ran across the road, grabbed the open passenger door, tumbled in, and we did a

U-turn, just as the men backtracked.

As we knocked our way down the dirt road, the carload of crazed men behind us,

the woman took her right hand off the wheel and held it out.

8

"Claire."

"Sara."

"Pleased to meet you. Don't worry," she said, "I know a short cut to the highway."

She skirted the yellow Beetle down a secondary road and within what seemed like

minutes we merged into the anonymity of speeding cars.

I must have said, "thank you" over and over because Claire finally interrupted:

"Hey, you're going to wear out the word."

As she drove me right up to the door of my place on Joseph Street, she looked at

me with concern. "I'm just visiting relatives here. I live in Victoria, B.C."

"I'm from there too - well actually the Okanagan Valley. My parents moved to

Victoria when I was going into grade twelve."

"Shit, eh?"

How did she do that? I felt immediately that she understood. I didn't have to

explain why 17 was tough for me. I didn't have to explain myself at all.

"Anytime you want to come out that way, I've got an extra room. It's really a cool

place. A bunch of single women, mostly parents - I've got a two-year-old son. We all

rent apartments in these great old heritage houses. You'd fit right in." She wrote down

her address and phone number and handed it to me. But I wasn't a parent or single; I was

withHarley.

I am suddenly thirsty, trapped, and dependent. I strap on my seatbelt. I reach for

the In Flight magazine. A brassy blond sits beside me; the shock of her perfume makes

me cough. She reaches for the same magazine in its pocket in front of her, her thick

9

fingers overdressed with rings. Beside her is a man; all I can see of him is his expensive

loafers, with their ribs of stitches in ovals around the tops. When he makes circles with

his foot, the shoe lets out a distinct squeak. Maybe they were not so expensive. I look out

the window. On the blacktop, puddles of water waver with the leftover drizzle from last

night's downpour.

The plane begins its slow turn, its unnervingly gradual and noisy acceleration

before the manic rush to lift off.

The first time I travelled alone was twenty-six years ago, on a bus, my attempt to

escape my fate. My parents didn't notice that in grade eleven I had changed. Not only

was I still excelling at school and still wandering the hills and writing poetry, I was also

wearing paisley shirts and bellbottoms, my crazy hair no longer restricted but set loose all

around me. They didn't notice I now had a friend, Rose, a friend who played Donovan

songs on her recorder for me and told me I was beautiful, and she had friends and that we

all hung out together, our feet circling in the lake at the end of the pier, the hills smiling

down on us as we talked about boys. They never noticed that I went to mini rock concerts

in big fields overlooking the lake where Rose and I sat under chokecherry bushes,

deciding everything. They didn't notice I was happy.

"Don't be miserable," they had said. "Help your mother pack. You've always

been a miserable type; you need to snap out of it. At your age we had a war going on.

Then we had a handicapped child. Some kids would be delighted to be moving to a

university town. What's your problem?"

10

I tried to speak, to defend, to say that Rose's family offered to have me for the

year. That it was what I needed. Both my other sisters had been out of the house for five

years. One had gone on to university, one to a home for the mentally handicapped. All

they had left was me. All they had to do was let me go.

"Nonsense," was their response.

I sat on the roof of a duplex across from a recreation centre in Victoria. I walked

to school slowly, I saw other students laughing and holding hands and having lunch on

the school lawn.

I hung out with two girls from Nelson who smoked cigarettes and let me skip

classes with them and watch TV at one of their mother's. I took pottery classes and rode

my bicycle everywhere. I got a part-time job, which became a full time job in the summer

time, at the Empress Hotel in the kitchen washing pots.

I sent all my childhood poems - mostly love poems about "my land" - to an

Integrated Studies Program across the country in Anpta, Ontario. I was invited for an

interview. I had enough money for the bus. While passing more Canadian landscape than

I ever hope to see again, my will to follow through on this last chance idea of making

something out of my life grew smaller. From Thunder Bay to Toronto, I watched a group

of people my age. A guy with curly blond hair playing "The Eve of Destruction" on his

guitar and all of them joining the chorus:

"... Over and over and over again, my friend. You don't believe we're on the Eve

of Destruction."

Then they start talking about going tobacco picking.

"Girls can do it better because they have hips."

11

"What are you talking about?"

"It's true. You have to carry these big bags to hold the leaves and girls can rest

them on their hips, but guys just get tugged at all day across the shoulders. They don't

last as long."

Then they talked about what they were going to do with the money they were

going to make. One wanted to start in Holland because she had Dutch relatives there, if

that was okay with the rest of them.

And another said: "Fine, as long as we spend at least two weeks in Paris."

"Oh and Barcelona!"

"Of course."

I didn't feel young anymore.

I got off the bus and found my way to the University of Anpta, to the sparse room

on the third floor of a concrete building, and the interview.

Six people fired questions at me: Why did I want to do this?

"I don't know. I like poetry, I guess."

"If you don't get in what will you do? "

"Work on a tobacco farm maybe?"

I wasn't trying to be cheeky. I was struck dumb. No one had ever asked me what

I wanted or why or how I hoped to achieve my goals. I left my body, passing through the

window behind the woman with the deep sarcastic voice, to a place of nothingness above

the jagged points of a Cyprus tree. They kept talking to me as if I was still there. After the

interview I went into the washroom and wept.

12

I pretended for over a year that I was a student. I wrote my parents and told them

all about my great classes in Bohemian Literature and - my favorite - The Concept of

Death in the Mentally Impaired. To keep the lies authentic, I went to the university

several times a week and made notes about the campus and students. I audited one

feminist class and could transfer some of the characteristics of this professor onto several

imaginary ones: the way she clucked at the end of each sentence, how she lifted and

dropped her arms all the time and how she wore heavy chokers around her wrinkled neck.

To sound authentic I had to study Bohemian poetry, of course, taking out books from the

Public Library. Mother, in particular, was overjoyed and we had discussions in the mail

back and forth, like I was a real writer. I think it helped her to think I'd finally moved on.

I told her that I shared a great apartment with this kooky schoolmate and that we

studied together, even though she was in engineering. She almost became real to me, like

an imaginary playmate. She had shoulder-length straight blond hair and a heart-shaped

face. Her family had come from Poland.

In reality, I rented a cheap garret above a funeral parlor with the unemployment

checks that came regularly, and was devoted to my lies. Aside from doing my "research",

I spent all my time alone. I spoke with no one but store clerks. I drank one glass of

mescal a night. And I slept in the kitchen, which was the only room big enough for a bed.

I looked out into roofs and upstairs windows and the night air was filled with the smells

that penetrated the stinky, ugly beer-brewing city of Anpta.

The public library and Penny's bookstores saved me. The course I audited led me

to buy Ms. magazines from Penny's and then search out the list of recommended texts at

the library. I read the tome Women in a Sexist Society. I read My Mother My Self. I read

13

Gynecology. Then I read all of Anais Nin's Diaries. Penny's Books timing was

impressive; I'd just finish one volume and the next volume would be waiting for me

wrapped in cellophane and hot off the press. Nin led me to Henry Miller's The Tropic of

Cancer, and, of course, to D.H. Lawrence. All of D.H. Lawrence. I pretended I was a

Bohemian poet, or a member of the Algonquin Round Table. I got cleverer every day. I

was Dorothy Parker, Edna St. Vincent Millay. I was Rimbaud.

I was lonely.

And someone had noticed me.

Someone started following me to the campus and back again, to Penny's, the

library, to the grocery store, even to the liquor store when I bought my Mescal. He paced

himself a block or two behind. I should have been afraid, but I found it comforting. I had

a shadow. I had someone who was there with me throughout my days and because of him

my nights felt less lonely. I knew he'd be there again the next day.

He got bolder. At the library he began sitting at table next to mine, almost

comically looking over the top of his book, his big spectacled eyes watched me.

He finally approached me in Good Will where I was in the pajama section looking

for a housecoat. He held up a brown wool one my size and smiled. He was taller than I

had thought, Popeye thin, long-necked, fuzzy black hair, not much of an upper lip,

crooked teeth, and a weak chin. Beautiful eyes.

"This would go nice with your eyes," he said, his own pupils nearly covering the

green of his irises.

14

The blond woman nudges me out of my half-sleep. Lunch is served. Mine is the

vegetarian special: a chickpea mash in a white bun and an anemic salad. Everyone else

had beef or chicken. I look down to see the landscape below. No longer the heavily

clouded green rainforest, but the complete opposite - the dry cracked landmass of

Arizona. An irrigation pipe strikes across it like a blue road. I picture, out of the mounds

of hard earth, big-footed, strong-muscled, Mexican women lying down comfortably or

playing soccer with each other, a community of women, watching out for each other. I

want to write about this, about everything that I see, everything I experience, everything I

think. Even when my thoughts go back there where I wish they wouldn't.

His name, he tells me, is Harley. He isn't shy.

"I noticed you months ago. I first saw you in the park by the swans. Your white

blond hair caught my eye. The next time I saw you was in front of the Barton Steele

Company's chain link fence. You looked so out of place. I remember thinking you belong

somewhere magical - Paris maybe. Not that I've ever been."

He visits me. I read him passages from D.H. Lawrence and Anais Nin. He lends

me books by of Timothy Leary and Ram Dass. Three weeks go quickly before he

announces he's leaving for the west coast to live in a communal house.

"We do LSD once a week, in a sacred manner. It'd be great to have you there. It'd

be a chance for you to live what you missed in high school. It doesn't matter when you

do something," he reassures me, "if you are completely present for it now. Hey - and I

have friends driving out in a few weeks; you could travel with them."

15

In the remaining days he asks me out to see a band. I meet him in a rickety house

on a street of abandoned factories. He takes me upstairs, above his parents. The room is

empty except for a mattress and a box of record albums. He shows me an album cover of

The Who, layers of aura around Roger Daltry's head. Then he pushes me against the wall

and kisses me. I bend my knees and wriggle down and out of his hold.

"I'm not ready," I explain. "I barely know you." I don't want to tell him I'm a

virgin.

He shrugs but looks away out the narrow window that probably once looked over

a farmer's fields.

"Are we still going to see the band?"

He nods but says nothing. We walk down the stairs in silence.

The club is red and small and noisy. Harley knows people there. He introduces me

to an old girlfriend. She's large and loud. He leaves me sitting to lead her out to the dance

floor where he dances with his arms around her shoulders. I call a cab and go back to my

little garret above the funeral parlor, barricade myself behind my den of books and notes

to myself about writing.

A small airport glitters between the tops of palms. Moments away from

touchdown my stomach clenches. I long for someone's hand.

On the ground, between plane and airport the hot air hits me, nurturing. Then I

shuffle beside everyone else through glass sliding doors into a slap of cold air-

conditioning.

16

The travel agent had warned me: "Don't take the yellow cabs. They'll pressure

you. Once you get your bags, walk right through to the outside and catch a white cab,

best to share with other tourists. Much cheaper and safer."

The airport seems manageable, smaller than Victoria's with one big room. Men

come up to me speaking rapid Spanish and, in spite of all my studying, I am unable to

decipher anything but the word "Taxi." I shake my head and say: "No, gracias."

Tourists disappear out the doors and into cabs, quicker than one can say Puerta

Vallarta.

Soon I see the enormous difficulty of simply getting from point A to point B. And

this is just to be my stopover before heading out to Barra de Barcos, using the little sea

town as my base, making a trip to the interior, and ending in a month back on the beach,

writing.

I don't even know how to collect my luggage.

Then I see a cylinder of baby blue tiles wrapping the girth of a stainless steel

carousel. My daughter's Northface pack circles round, familiar and alone.

Two Mexican men wearing cowboy hats relax against the walls, a third leans on

counter top by the ticket sales desk talking to the petite, well-dressed clerks. One man is

suddenly beside me helping lift my pack off the carousel. He is obviously amused at its

size.

"Grande!" he smiles.

"Si," I say, trying to relax my face into a smile.

My pack is wet, a spilt shampoo bottle. The Mexican man shakes his head as I

rifle through. He gets me paper towels. When I say "Gracias" I give him a "thanks, now

17

please go away" look, which he does. I wipe down what I can with the paper towels, take

out my shampoo bottle and throw it and the towels into a bin marked "basura" hoping

that means garbage. The three Mexican men watch me without interest, one has the heel

of his foot up against the wall, and another worries a toothpick in his mouth. I suppose I

am just something to pass the time. I try to ignore them.

Out the door, the heat hits me again. It is hard to feel fear with the warmth

massaging my muscles. And I remember D.H. Lawrence describing the smell of Mexico.

Something about it being a mix of earth and garbage and flowers.

I finally catch a group of senior citizens, getting into a white caravan cab. We

bounce along streets divided by palms visually split by skirts of white paint. One of the

seniors demands, in pidgin Spanish that she and her companions be let out at a towering

hotel that is, miraculously in this desert climate, surrounded by lush green lawns.

Once they are gone, I am without any words. I show the driver the name of my

hotel in my guidebook.

He drives me far away into the heart of old town Puerta Vallarta where the roads

are cobbled. Buildings are exquisite Spanish colonials, side by side, one after another,

paint chipping and fading in the sun creating walls like deliberate batiks and mosaics.

Symmetrical wrought iron shadows dance in front of open windows and doors. Small

verandahs tier in both horizontal and vertical rows, potted plants adorning them. The

bumpy roads are jammed with cars from the fifties and sixties and the occasional mule.

I probably over-tip, thinking it better to err on the side of generosity. It takes

great effort to carry the pack on my back up the "porch" steps of the hotel, through

gloriously squared Spanish arches, and onto an indigo-tiled floor, an indoor flower

18

garden. I lean against the counter and repeat the phrase I've memorized: "Por favor,

tienen habitaciones?"

The hotel is full.

"Manana," the woman behind the counter says. Try again tomorrow.

I want to say I'll be gone tomorrow, if I can find the bus station, but it is too hard.

So I nod and leave. My pack is so heavy now that I regret having put up such arguments

over each item. I think of the Oregon Trail, a unit I taught to a group of grade eight

Drama students. So many settlers didn't survive because they tried to bring everything

with them, trunks and furniture, even pianos. How silly of them,

On a cold miserable January morning, worn-out by attempts to figure out how I

can bring in enough money to cover basic costs without pulling the soul right out of me, I

seek wisdom from a self-help book. My plans to go to university and get my teaching

certificate - although a goal achieved with hard budgeting and planning when Raven was

a teenager - are now bereft of any joy. And it is more difficult to demand proper behavior

from other people's teenagers when they can sense I'm not really there; all I really care

about is that Claire isn't here anymore.

Ann, Claire's mother tries rescuing me by paying me to be her house sitter.

In her deep, luxurious bathtub, I light candles all around. Through the open glass doors

of the living room, Puccini's Mio Babbino Caro flows up the stairs down the hallway as I

stare into the paintings and prints of Italy and France. The Italian painting is in pale

yellows of laundry strung across a sunny morning avenue and contrasts with the French

cafe at night.

19

I have a roof over my head, food and water, a healthy daughter. A few good

friends. Yet I want more. I want adventure and travel and possibly even love. In Ann's

gorgeous bathtub, I cry out for more. I cry for my unlived life. I cry so that my tears fall

sparkling in the candlelight, into the water.

Then I stomp outside to gather up logs and get a blazing fire going. In front of the

fire, on big sheets of foolscap I write, nonstop, long poems about Claire. I write about the

random things - a woman in a wacky hat on the bus, a laugh overheard, and the tiniest

spring flower.

Then I ask myself the following questions: What would I do if I only had five

years left to live? Two years? What if I knew I was going to be struck dead by lightning

six months from now? My answer to the last question takes me by surprise: I'd sublet my

apartment and go to Mexico.

There it is in blue and white.

It is a preposterous, though thrilling idea. Even if my landlord is okay with

subletting, I have no money for a plane ticket or anything to live on once in Mexico. But

the idea lightens my heart. Perhaps, I think, this new idea will lead to some good changes.

Maybe I'll learn about Mexico. Write poems about longing to go there. Or take Spanish

lessons.

I go down to the beachside, broken crab shells at my feet. I throw a stone in the

direction of the lighthouse.

Back at the apartment, about an hour later, I receive a call from Claire's mom

Ann thanking me for taking such good care of the house. And more.

20

"Sara, there's something I'd like to give you. It's not a lot, but I know how tight

you are for money. It was for Claire's tuition for the design program at Dalhousie. She'd

applied, you know. And I'd tucked away a little something to get her started. I'd like you

to have it. Three thousand dollars. Think of it as a gift from Claire."

The heat is beating me down. I walk up and down the streets of old Puerta

Vallarta, half in awe of its loveliness, half afraid. I expected it to be ridden with tourists

and their wake of shops and dull restaurants. Instead, I notice the palm trees and the

tropical hills, the sea wild, the place where "Night of the Iguana" was filmed, where

Hollywood fell in love with Mexico. That Puerto Vallarta is not so far away, only

covered up by trinkets and trade.

There seem to be no vacancies anywhere and it is late in the day. My pack now

digs into my shoulders, even with its thick straps.

I walk over the bridge into the more commercial areas. No vacancies. I walk back

again. The sun is low on the horizon. My back and shoulders ache. It is February and I

need a cold shower. Coming here unprepared was daft, maybe even dangerous. Ann's

words: "You mean you're not going to reserve a hotel?" echo in my head. I thought Ann a

little naive; she knew nothing about traveling on a shoestring.

"You can't, Ann. Not for the cheaper places. It's all on a first come first served

basis." Or at least that's what I had read in Lonely Planet.

The sun sets. There is no twilight. Along the side of the street, venders sell their

wares of glass beads, silver jewelry and opals, birch paintings and animal carvings, but

my worry makes all of it simply an annoying distraction. The Mexican people look

21

amused by the visitors and their constant need to collect, photograph, and record

everything.

The ocean is on the left, the beach is active with both milling American tourists

and Mexican families relaxing and visiting with each other. The sand is probably warm

enough to curl up on for the night, but a dangerous place to sleep alone. I suppose that I

could wander all night. Or maybe sleep in a doorway somewhere, like homeless people

do, and face what I fear most about being that poor - being vulnerable to the attacks of

others. I could try to hang out in a bus station if I can find one. This is my third time

hauling my pack across this end of town looking for vacancies and then back again to the

old town, hoping someone booked out of one of the small, cheap places. I wish I were

home. It was only last night that I snuggled in my own bed.

A couple, wearing Canadian T-shirts, stops me on the bridge.

The man is friendly. He's had a beer or two. They looked relaxed. They've

obviously thought ahead, have a hotel room, money, and are real adults.

The woman's round face is encircled with curls. Her husband looks through his

glasses at me with interest.

"Try the Rio Grande. It's in the middle range, but we stayed there one night. Not

bad."

Oh God, I think to myself, turning around and following their directions back

across the bridge. Ann was right, I should have booked something - even if it did mean

going over budget. I hope to god, goddess, whatever, that there is room. And affordable -

what's middle range to one person.. .1 don't care anymore. If I have to spend all my

money on a hotel and change my ticket and go back tomorrow, I'll have to do so.

22

Round the corner, across from the busy beach is a very noticeable Vacancy sign

and below it a white hotel with a neon light above its door: Rio Grande. I don't know how

I could have missed it. It's as if that couple and this hotel materialized out of my need.

The key fits in the lock.

I turn on the fan and have a quick cool shower behind wooden swing doors. Then

change into my lightweight checkered dress. Cool and relaxed, I plug my water heater

into my cup of what I hope is purified water. The water boils quickly.

All cars must have lost their mufflers. I turn away from the street side of the

room and look over the interior veranda. In the courtyard below are tables dressed in red

table clothes and paper flowers. A mariachi band arrives. I sit with my tea, listening to

the music and watch the people eating until my own hunger forces me out into the streets

again where I find a simple meal of rice and beans. On the way back to the hotel, a young

Mexican woman tricks me into a friendly conversation in English, then tries to sell me

time-shares.

As soon as I shut the door, my period begins to flow. I take out one of the pads

kept snug in its zip lock bag, go to the washroom and I put the pad onto a clean pair of

underwear, pulling them up between my legs. I feel the soft heat of a flood of blood. I

rinse out my other underpants, hanging them on my twisty clothesline. As I lie down an

evenness envelops me. Perhaps my anxiety was more a result of building hormones and

not this journey at all. I sleep.

23

II

The lean, middle-aged man beside me smiles widely and pats my pack that's

between his legs.

"Noproblemo!"

I am suspicious. I wonder what his real intentions are. Maybe he's hoping for

money from me. Or maybe he likes the soft blond hairs on my thighs. Wearing shorts was

not the best idea.

"Te gusta Coca Cola?" He says pulling a can from beside his seat.

Or maybe he is just sweet. I refuse his offer and he drinks the Coke himself.

As the bus turns and hugs mountainous corners, I nod off, waking to a landscape

of Mexican weeping pine trees and their slender graceful needles. In the mountains my

head falls on this stranger's shoulder as he too slumps towards me in sleep. Whenever I

wake, I pull back, determined to stay erect, but in no time at all find myself back in the

same position - head resting on his shoulder. It's been years since I've been anywhere

near a man and yet falling asleep against this man's body seems the most natural thing in

the world. It is the most natural thing in the world. His shoulder gives effortlessly. He

smells like Mexico which I've decided is a mix offish and seaweed, flowers and hot

garbage, diesel and human sweat but without the rancid smell of stress, only the sweet

yogurty scent of a newborn.

Each time I wake, the landscape has changed. Trees like tumble weeds touched

with green scatter over brown hills. People emerge out of tiny huts and step onto the bus:

old men, women with sacks of dead chickens, the feet sticking out, high fashioned young

24

women wear mini-skirts, sliced back hair, and four inch heels, children seemingly too

young to be on their own doing the family shopping, and teenagers travelling from town

to town to visit their friends.

One old woman carries on a cauldron of beans and tacos and a basket of tamales

wrapped up in corn leaves. She is giving away the food left over from market. The man

next to me helps her. In fact, whenever he can help someone he does, waking from his

slumbers to step over my pack and seat a frail couple, or pregnant woman, or just

unburden someone of bags.

I had braced myself for some hoopla from the Mexican men. But at forty-two I

am just a mother figure to them. I wouldn't know what to do with their attention anyway.

Just like I didn't know what to do with Harley's.

Harley returns the next day, full of apologies. He wants me to meet his best

friend, Ken, and his wife, Diana and their little baby boy, Forest. I guess I go because

Harley is the only person who's taken an interest in me the whole time I've been in

Anpta. And there is the promise of all I'd missed in high school.

Diana is only seventeen. Harley knew her in school when she painted pictures of

the Beatles, wore Beatle boots and a Paul McCartney haircut and sewed her own Nehru

shirts.

She takes my jacket and hangs it on an antique hook.

"Can't escape it," she says. "My dad's a collector."

25

"He's collected ten farms in this area," says Ken coming into the room with a

hash pipe. He's gangly, his neck a little hunched in that chicken way tall people often

stand. He's got straight hair down to his shoulders. "He's filled them all with antiques.

And women."

"Ken!"

"Well, it's true. He's a good looking guy and he gets these women knocked up

and then puts them on one of his farms."

"Only two," Diana defends.

"Only two!" Ken winks at us. "Good news is when I knocked Diana up - we got a

farm."

"Nice," I say. It is easy to be with them.

"Very nice."

Ken gets the pipe going. The sweet smell turns my stomach. Or maybe it's nerves.

I've never smoked hash or even marijuana. My shoulders are tight with worry; I'll be

exposed as uncool. Harley will be embarrassed for me. I notice Diana doesn't participate,

I guess because of the baby. She invites me to help out in the kitchen.

I see there are paintings in every room, a certain whimsical style: cow sleeping,

her mouth almost in a smile, people walking through fields of bubbles.

"Yours?"

"Yes. I can't stop! I love it. You?

"I can't draw worth beans; my passion is poetry. Since I was a child."

We chat about what it means to be artists while we add a bit of blue food dye to

the brown rice just to freak out the guys.

26

When baby Forest wakes up, Diana gets him from the bedroom brings him to the

living room. Ken turns up Black Sabbath and he dances with his barefoot wife and baby

across the floorboards.

When Harley leaves Anpta I finally notice that even my plants are dying here,

above the funeral parlor. I see myself from the outside as a young person living like an

old person, going to the store for my meager rations, having my one drink at the end of

the day, the days very long.

Harley sends me a letter. He begs me to come to Vancouver, to stay with him in

the "acid" house. He embellishes his letter with a sketch of a man with wings and a quote

from Grace Slick Solo album "Manhole" that they all listened to on acid last Sunday:

"Man must fly."

I write him back what I think is a clever and cynical response: "Man's tendency is

to crawl" and draw a stick figure of a man on his hands and knees.

When I awaken for the umpteenth time the scenery has changed again. I am in the

lowlands. The weather is noticeably hotter, the highway passing groves of banana,

eucalyptus, and coconut and palm trees. The ocean is visible again, in sprinkles. There is

a warm sensation around my heart as if I were returning home.

27

CHAPTER TWO

In the early afternoon, I sit outside my hotel room, in this little town, writing and

watching the young women who have come back after cleaning the rooms all morning,

washing sheets, and hanging them on the roof in the sun, to collect up those same sheets

and chatter with each other. They fold the sabanas and drop them over the balcony into

the baskets below, reminding me of how Mother used to throw plastic ketchup and

mustard bottles and oranges off the balcony of our house for me to catch and set on the

picnic table. There must be a poem in there somewhere.

I stretch out on the outdoor couch in the courtyard to try my hand at a new poem.

The Yucca plants beside me are as tall as I am. But instead of delving into a poem about

the balcony and mother, I think about Harley again.

Ken and Diana pick me up in their van, baby Forest sleeping in the back, beside

me, in a nest of blankets. We're all following Harley out to Vancouver. It'll be a long

trip. Ken has brought a collection of rock and roll tapes: Diana shares mandarin oranges

out of cans and peanut butter sandwiches she makes along the way. And when we run out

of food we stop at diners where complete strangers come up to Diana to tell her how

beautiful she is - the farm girl with the peaches and cream complexion. She deflects their

comments with a quiet thank you and an immediate focus on her family. Ken is gangly

and big nosed beside her

Life is easier with other people in it. People to talk to - even about simple things

like the weather. Or the scenery. Saskatchewan is still cold and snowy. The mountains

28

are a real kick; I've not seen them in over a year. Other people are also unpredictable.

Ken steals a can of oil and gets Diana to drive the get-away vehicle, which has lost its

gearshift. Ken has replaced it with a real stick. Ken shifts the stick over mountains. Diana

entertains me by telling me about the time she was picking magic mushrooms not

knowing she was on private property. Someone started shooting at her. She never ran so

fast in her life, past a deer also on hoof. She sketches everything along the way and points

out bushes and trees and buildings she thinks have "character" and I see that they do too.

We are soon lost in Vancouver; we waste an hour trying to find the magical

mystery house. What is it we think Harley will give to us here? Maybe Ken and Diana are

just being tourists.

Harley's out when we arrive. I notice the front door inscription: "Welcome to the

Future." He told Diana and Ken just to come in when they got there. I change and go out

onto the sidewalk where a group of children are making small chalk drawings on the

sidewalk. I encourage them to go big. I've always been good with kids. On my walks in

the Okanagan the neighborhood children would line up to see me make my imaginary

live frog sandwiches which I would pretend to and eat. It is only adults I have trouble

with. The children and I draw giant suns and birds with widespread wings, mountains

eating the sun.

I am in the kitchen with Diana and Ken when Harley arrives. He hugs us all, but

doesn't seem overly thrilled to see me.

"Hey," he says. "Good for you."

He is thrilled with the chalk drawings the children have done. But he gives all the

credit to Diana. I can see how he would think that; it would make more sense that it

29

would be her - she's an artist, collects articles and photographs and books about

illustrators. I don't bother to dispute it but - 1 can't help noticing - neither does Diana.

Why can't the past leave me alone? I'm here now.

I leave my little roost at the Hotel Pacifico with its outdoor couches placed in the

shade of the courtyard in front of the upstairs rooms, its brick red floors and white walls

with bougainvillea bushes leaning against them, to forage my way the two blocks to the

beach. I pass a billiard hall full of smoking laughing men, a store with two loud parrots,

green and yellow, dangling outside in a cage, the corner where the two bus depots sit

across from each other, and one of the main streets that leads to the right all the way back

to Puerto Vallarta. To the left the road leads into the heart of town. I cross another main

street and arrive at the beach.

Families gather in shadow groupings along the sand. The sun is soon to set. The

beach stretches in a scythe cutting the line of the bay. Barra de Barcos. Bay of Ships. The

Spanish fleet, in the seventeenth century, found a harbour here and it is from here

galleons set off in 1564 to find China. Five hundred years later, a middle-aged Canadian

lands here looking for other exotic riches.

Tourists - mostly Americans - try to capture the colours of the dying day, while

missing the stillness of the moment. They want to take the green "after glow" home with

them. But the Mexicans seem to like these visitors who, unlike me, dare to be entities in

the world.

The sun goes down. The path of blood from the dying day swims across the sky, a

slow death crawl. Shades of blue lift above the red.

30

The next day, after buying an avocado and a tear-shaped bun and a plastic knife

from the store with the parrots, I go back to the hotel. I sit on the couch and make a

sandwich, wishing Claire was here to chat with.

A woman about my age comes out of a door number 12, bringing her knitting

with her, and sits at the end of the couch. She has very short hair. She's not thin, but she's

stylish in her green hoop earrings and green and black bathing suit wrap.

"I'm Maggie," she says with a smile. "I'm from Oregon."

"Sara. B.C."

"Don't tell me - you're here for a couple of weeks, you're going to go explore the

interior of Mexico, see a few ruins, then you're going to come back and rent a cabin on

the beach and what ... paint?

"Write. God, am I a type?"

"Aren't we all? Try me."

"You're divorced. Flexible work hours, can vacation in the winter. Must own

your own business."

"Clothing store."

I hand her a sandwich. Within minutes we bypass all the small talk. Women

alone, women of a certain age we know instantly that we've been through babies and

irresponsible men and standing up for ourselves against the world's limited view of us.

We always get to the loves of our lives. Maggie's current love is Roger.

"How did you meet?"

"He was my gardener and then he just moved in one day."

"Very sexy!"

31

"Well, yes and no. My son still lives with me and Roger is not pleased with the

setup. Neither am I. Both of them are slobs."

"What do you love about this guy?"

"When my mother died -1 don't know what I would have done without him. He's

such a good listener. That's when he stopped being just the gardener. It was a pretty sexy

time. He's been in Mexico for about three months traveling around. He's coming to Barra

to be with me for awhile."

"That's romantic."

"Yes. I hope so. We're trying to mend things. He's got a lot of problems. What

about you? Are you with anyone?"

"No."

This is the part I hate. It's something women did in World War Two or the Dark

Ages - going without a partner for so long. Yet I'd always loved sex. I just hadn't always

like what it was connected to. There, I would say that. And tell Maggie that I was a single

parent those years, too busy to take on another "child" of a man.

"And before that?" she asks.

"First my daughter's father, a skinny alcoholic that I thought I couldn't live

without. He looked like Jimmy Page. Then a hefty mechanic who thought he was too

good for me - or his mother did. She wouldn't let me in her house at Christmas time

because I was an unwed mother."

"God, I didn't think anyone thought like that anymore."

"Me neither."

"And then?"

32

"And the last boyfriend I actually thought might work out because we started as

friends. Turns out he was addicted to cocaine and always liked sex in this one strange

position. I'll spare you the details."

"Isn't it weird," says Maggie, "We go out with these guys for years and then later

we can sum each one of them up with a line - or a joke."

I smirk: "All mine were jokes."

Maggie has a nice full laugh.

She switches positions, puts her feet up on the table, and begins to knit. I take out

my sketchpad and start to draw Maggie's feet, as they cross each other, bare, short and

pretty.

Harley's feet are long and slim. His skin, because of his mother's Ojibway

heritage, is the color of ripe sumac berries - and smooth. We make love the very first

time behind a beaded curtain, on an East-Indian-bedspread, in the acid house. Harley's

green eyes narrow into mine, my body adjusting to this new pressure, the milky

mushroom tip of him as it reaches into me. I feel every synapses in my brain fired up, my

body electric.

"Can't you move or something?" Harley snaps at me, waking me from a dream

of connectedness.

I don't know I haven't been doing anything. I am not sure what to do. I run my

hands down his back and buttocks which he responds to, pushing harder into me and

writhing in his own pleasure, his neck suddenly going limp and his head falling onto my

shoulder. He turns on his side and lies like a young child at my breast. I know the first

33

time is never the best, but I know something has happened that changes everything; I'm

not going to die a virgin. I hold him to me like he is sent from the gods.

Eventually he rolls over onto his back.

He asks me for the first time about my trip.

"It was cool. Ken, well, he's crazy, as you know. And Diana - she's very sweet."

"Yes," he says looking up at the ceiling. "I really love her."

"Me too," I say, but I know already that things are getting messy.

I'm startled into the present by Maggie taking her feet right off the table, which

makes me smudge my rendition of her left heel. I am about to ask why when I see that a

man, a friend of Maggie's, has shown up. They hug and wrestle, and he tosses Maggie an

orange. Stephen. He's a tall Alaskan, lean and graceful with big blue eyes and brown

hair, and a little shy with me, I notice, when he has to be verbal. He tosses me an orange

as well, immediately looking at ease again when he communicates in action.

"Oh dear," Maggie says repositioning herself and her feet. "Sara has been

sketching my feet."

"Good choice," he laughs and comes to lean over my sketch.

"Stephen's an artist."

"Well, I'm not. I just do this to generate ideas."

I resist the urge to cover up what I'm doing.

"Hmm. Not bad. If you want to accent the soles, take that line out farther and

shadow just under there."

34

I start to do this and already it makes a difference. Meanwhile Stephen is back in

a chair by Maggie.

"He's helping organize the beauty contest that's part of the main festival. It's

giving him a chance to work with Mexicans and learn the language."

His eyes look over at me while he's talking to Maggie. I know I shouldn't read

anything into that. But it was nice having him lean over my shoulder, helping me. Maybe

Stephen could help me reinvent myself just like he helped me with my sketch: 'Keep this

from your youth. Throw this out; it looks silly now. There now you look sophisticated

and yet youthful.'

I'm disappointed in myself. The first guy I meet and I'm already imagining a

relationship with him. I did not come here for a relationship; I came here to write. Before

I can excuse myself Maggie and Stephen are already getting up to leave.

"Oops, sorry, I forgot about the feet!"

"That's okay, I've got enough to work with."

"Stephen wants me to help him pick out some plastic tablecloths at the Tangies-

the big market. It's only on Thursdays. Want to come?"

"No, thanks," I lie. "I want to finish up with this sketch and then write my

daughter."

"Well, check out the market later, if you have time. It's pretty neat; it's right off

the main avenue. You can't miss it. Oh, and if you want to go with me for supper, meet

me back here at six."

In the silence that is never silent here - always a car squealing and blasting,

blaring music, loud talking, dogs barking, and the ocean pounding onto the shore, audible

35

even two blocks away, I write a letter to Raven describing the town, the laundry, the

parrots and Maggie. I make myself sound cheerful.

I could always tell Claire the truth: she'd sense it if I didn't. If she were still

around I'd tell her that I am feeling off balance right now, convinced that one's neuroses

and failings in life follow you everywhere like sad little shadows no matter how bright

the sun. If that were not the case there'd be no need for therapy, in fact there'd be no

sorrow or pain. She wouldn't try to fix the problem; she'd just listen.

When I go out to look for a post office, I discover the town is shaped like a long

finger that pokes between the big bay on one side and the lagoon on the other. I walk

along one of the main streets beside the little restaurants and nightclubs by the sea, until it

meets the other main street and stretches out to a point. I walk the point past a sandy

beach, the tumultuous sea pounding against it and walk out on this jetty of stone to look

back at the town's quaint palm trees interspersed between low buildings and gentle hills.

Behind me now, on an island, is a monstrous hotel shaped like a pink and white tiered

cake. I sit on a bench and look across at it. According to the guidebook rumour has it that

- for a hefty price - you can get a virgin to go with your room.

Harley isn't thrilled that I'm inexperienced. But I am learning, and he is

unselfconscious in showing me, and the sex is better all the time. I now know how to

stroke his body in the right way, how to suck toes and kiss and bite and try every

position. And all this touching, all this pleasure, is connecting me right to my heart, and

my heart to Harley's. The more I know of him, the more I love him: his tales of

36

childhood poverty, seeing him a cowboy of the sky when we are on LSD, scraping up

enough money together to witness many of the incredible bands of our time.

When the Coliseum doors open at 8, Harley grabs my hand and we make a dash

to get as close to the stage as possible, as do all the other hundreds of people who'd been

waiting outside for hours. Diana, with Forest in the Snuggli, and Ken, meet at a spot

directly in front of the stage. She puts down a red blanket. Harley, Ken, and I drop acid.

And we wait.

The walls and walls of sound equipment make me wonder if our ears will be

blown into pink bits of shells, our bodies broken too by sound, tortured into the particles

of dust from which we came. Diana is not Diana anymore. We are surrounded by angels

and fairies, pixie-faced and gentle, and she is one of them. Forest is curled in a green leaf

of a blanket, a fairy child. Ken is kindly and wizened. Harley's veins are blue stamens.

Papa John Creech fiddles us into dancing, crossing arms with strangers, square

dancing as if we knew how. When The Grateful Dead comes on, seamlessly I begin to

peak. Lovely years go by, sweet years with Jerry Garcia at the helm. He is kindness and

light and holds a community of love in his voice. A woman joins him, stands in a fog

singing to the heavens.

Diana is tapping on my shoulder. Diana huntress, Goddess. She's saying

something, maybe something prophetic. I try to understand. I just want to be lost in sound

again.

"Ken. Have you seen Ken?"

I shake my head.

She asks Harley; he doesn't know.

37

Harley and I try to act responsibly, we try to pull ourselves away from heaven, but

heaven splits into a kaleidoscope of new sounds and sensations, new inner visions.

Diana disappears, meets us after the concert. She's really worried. And everything

is now a rush of shame, of self-involvement, of remembering Ken.

Harley puts his arm around Diana: "I'm sure he's okay."

When we get home, Ken is there. He's under the covers. He walked all the way,

up and down a ravine. He had to get out of there. He thought everyone was dead;

everyone in the Coliseum had been walking zombies. It was just a matter of time before

he was brainwashed too. He couldn't stand Jerry Garcia and Bill Weir "spooning" like

that.

Harley pulls up a chair beside the bed.

"Spooning, huh?"

"Yeah."

Harley brings Ken Timothy Leary's Psychedelic Experience, an acid take on The

Tibetan Book of the Dead. He reads Ken a part about the different visions and how they

are just part of the ego and not to be feared. He gets Ken out of bed and draws around

him an imaginary circle, encouraging Ken to talk, but also to stay still in the centre of this

circle.

As I watch, I believe Harley could turn dry rivers to running gold, dead air into

sound. He is the sun. Without him I think my world will go black. As he brings Ken back

to himself, I see that Diana, who has been sitting beside me, thinks so too.

38

Walking back through town I take the other main street beside the lagoon, I find it

has a heart and soul, but no centre. The zocalo is a big ugly concrete square with a large

monument to some Mexican statesman, not even a revolutionary. No one seems to use

the square on a daily basis. Children play ball as they pass through it.

On a side street, the church is pastel pink adobe. Its old wooden doors are wide

open. Simple brown backless benches act as pews. There is a crucifix, but it is broken.

Jesus' arms are wrenched from his cracked shoulders, arms and shoulders broken apart

yet still held together tenuously. Perhaps someone dropped it during its installation.

I walk across the street to a cage of postcards and find one depicting the broken

Jesus. On the back it says that this "non repaired" Jesus is symbolic. When, twenty years

ago, a hurricane shook the town so hard the town's people thought it might be The

Second Coming, the town survived. The people, when they saw the injured sculpture,

believed it to be a sign that Jesus held the town in his arms all night. I wonder what it

would be like to have such faith. Maybe I already knew; it was dangerous.

I believed if I loved Harley as much as I did, that love would have to find its way

back to me; it would have to be reciprocal. He had thought me beautiful once. His Lily

Woman. That was before he thought he had a chance with Diana.

At the end of the summer, the "Future House" can no longer maintain itself. Ken

and Diana take their baby and head back to Ontario. Harley - without consulting with me

- decides to go with them. He needs to start earning some money. There are always jobs

on tobacco farms. There is no mention of me going with him, or Harley sending for me

later. Or returning to me at some point in the future. I have to assume it is over.

39

My heart is now a cage of unrequited love. I cross the Burrard Street Bridge

remembering how we'd amble over it after concerts, imagining his brilliance like that of

some famous mathematician who walked with his wife in the early hours and whenever

he got ideas wrote them on the side of the bridge in chalk, in case he forgot them when he

got home. Harley was a genius of the head world. I should never have put so much faith

in him.

"Trust me," says Maggie, leading me into the restaurant, Bananas. "It's slightly

touristy, but you can count on all the vegetables being purified - and it's right on the

beach."

As Maggie settles into her chair, the setting sun shines on her face and the spaces

between her eyelashes spill golden patterns on her upper cheeks. She tells me about her

town in Washington, a town of artists. As we spend a warm evening sharing personal

histories, our eyes are drawn again and again to a table nearby. A man with strong facial

bones and big lips touches his date on her arm, listens to her intently, looks into her eyes.

"He's so ...passionate about everything," says Maggie.

"So attentive," I agree.

On the way home Maggie taps my arm and guides me with her eyes to look to my

left. The same man is in a doorway with another woman; they are madly kissing. Maggie

laughs: "So much for our Dream Man. He's just another Casanova."

Another night passes full of roosters at four in the morning, trucks clanging at

five, and me staring at the flicker of the fan above me.

40

Maggie's boyfriend arrives: a bald, large-stomached man. Maggie is suddenly

wearing flowing red skirts and painting her toenails to match. They disappear into her

room. For days.

I buy a bottle of mescal and drink the whole thing. I make lists of things I must

do. I am the only one left in the house the house that welcomed me into the future. Some

future. I have two weeks before I have to be out for good. The drugs still in my system,

Harley still in my system, it is difficult to make decisions.

Five days before I have to go somewhere, Harley phones me.

"I miss you," he says.

He puts Diana on the phone.

"Hi Sara. We all miss you."

And Ken: "Hey, Sara. We've moved to the farm. My Grandma died, she left me

lots of money - I've got cash to burn. Come join us. I'll pay for your ticket."

Harley gets back on the phone: "What'd you say? We can have our own

commune right here. Come, okay?"

I take a deep breath: "Okay."

I stay up all night clutching an album of The Psychedelic Experience, the whole

book read by Leary with additional comments from both him and Stephen Alpert. I found

in Gastown. It will be a gift to Harley to celebrate our reunion. I am saturated with

happiness. Buoyed up again by this joy of being included.

41

It's Saturday morning. Dad and I are the early risers. He makes me aflat egg, my

favourite. And he's invited me along with him to check his experiment of beehives. As

long as I am quiet, as long as I don't bother him.

Buttercups, meadowlarks, a blue racer slipping across the road. Round the other

side of the lake we go.

He gets out of the finned Chevrolet and I follow him to the trunk and watch him

put on what he calls his white "Zoot suit" which I repeat with a giggle, and an

unexpected snort. He smiles, before covering his face with the hood, and I think he must

think I'm cute.

"See you later."

I skip, run, and jump down a dirt path. I can see our house way across the lake;

its white stilts, yellow and white front. Fruit tree blossoms are peaking pink and heavy

frills everywhere: against the plate blue sky. When I lie on my back and look up I can see

a thousand blossoms all at once. Fruit tree blossoms are on the ground too where I've

caught some in my hair and socks. I skip and jump to make them fall off me and they do,

snowbirds of pink diving towards the ground. I smell the lilac bush that leans against a

decaying fence. It is the biggest wildest lilac bush I have ever seen. I inhale it so it goes

into my body down to my foes. I take breaks, pausing to memorize the skyline, before I

inhale the heavenly smell again. The meadowlark's note pierces the air with its clarity. I

decide to look for a meadowlark's nest. They nest on the ground, but they camouflage so

well no one can find them. I hunt low, stepping carefully through the blond grass that's

as tall as my hips. There is a sudden movement pushing the grass in one direction,

42

closing and opening again farther ahead. I follow the grass opens again onto the dirt

road.

A rooster - bright brown - with a vivid red head stuns the subdued desert colours

around him, the pale grasses, the sage green of all the wild herbs, the dusty brown of the

road. He is a magnificent proclamation of himself, of boldness.

I follow and imitate him as he struts dips and cocks his head, pecks at the ground.

I name him Beauty.

"Beauty," I whisper after him.

Already it is time to go. Already father has put away his "Zoot suit" and is calling

me.

We ride in the long Chevrolet; the windows open to the smells of dry hills and the

lake sparkling in the morning light.

Father quotes loud and bold in the car: The year's at the spring/And day's at the

morn/ Morning's at seven; The hillsides' dew-pearled; The lark's on the wind; The snails

on the thorn;IGod's in his heaven -All's right with the world.

That is it exactly. This day. This day that I get to have. This father that I also

have. A father who studies insects and recites poetry. This perfection.

I run upstairs - the others still sleeping. I change into my polka dot bathing suit,

but first write in my journal about Beauty. This new love of mine that split the grasses,

strutted and impressed me. That came to me as a gift.

When I go downstairs Mum is up in her housecoat, sitting drinking a coffee with

Dad on the balcony.

"Swim?"

43

1 nod.

"We were just talking about a phone call from my friend this morning, Nan, you

know from Edmonton. She says hi."

I say "hi" and then giggle.

"Nan said she thinks you 're very good looking. Isn 't that odd? "

Dad laughs and shakes his head.

"Well," Mum smiles. "We're all getting a little older. Strange though. Have a

good swim, Honey. Don't go far."

I run down the log steps, my black cat at my heels, tears of unrequited joy. I run

to the end of the pier and dive in. Lake water, chilly and perfect, envelops me.

I head back to my hotel. One whole cross street is filled with tables and wares and

big tarps of shade under which families sell wooden tools, fire starters, Tupperware,

herbs, and piles of secondhand clothes. Lean, beaten little dogs sleep everywhere,

underneath tables, beside chairs, in the middle of the street. This must be, I think, the

"Tangies" Maggie told me about it. The big flea market that happens once a week. It is

Thursday then. I avoid the crowd by taking the beach route.

Along the beach, I am followed by a tiny Indian woman, probably from the

mountains, meticulously, humbly and femininely dressed in her native costume of blue,

white and yellow, with puffed short sleeves, big gathered skirts, and white frilly apron.

Her two little girls, dressed exactly like their mother, follow. They are trying to sell me

strings of blue beads, also meticulously put together. Over my shoulder I see the sweet

little girls with their big brown eyes -just like Raven's. In fact they look a great deal like

44

Raven did as a child: berry coloured skin, straight black hair. They are being gently

pushed out in front.

"No, gracias," I say repeatedly, breaking their hearts and their stomachs no doubt.

I land in Toronto with nothing but a small pack, a few items of clothes in it, and

the record I am sure Harley will love.

It is not Harley who greets me, but Ken, in new clothes.

In the brand new blue and white van I see Harley in a pair of sunglasses. The

afternoon light hits the apple of Diana's right cheekbone. They are both in the back seat.

Baby Forest is between them. For a second I think I see some handholding, but on second

glance I am mistaken. They give me friendly "Helios" but Harley doesn't get out; he just

leans over and kisses me quickly through the open window. He doesn't seem to know

that I've been waiting for his kisses.

They take me first to Ken and Diana's old apartment in Durham with the

authentic fisherman's net on one wall and a mural Diana had found in the trash, a watery

vision of a woman reaching out to lift another woman up. Ken and Harley have a toke.

Forest is in his crib and Harley leads me over to look at him. I don't look at

Forest but at Harley, trying to ensure a moment alone with him.

"Harley, what's going on?"

He looks disgusted with me.

"Don't you even care about him?" he snarls his head nodding towards Forest and

leaving me to look, tears stinging my eyes, into the pale blue baby eyes that look past me,

indifferently, to the door.

45

I decide I must be reading too much into everything. Harley isn't demonstrative;

it doesn't necessarily mean what I had been imagining it means. We'll move out to the

farm soon and everything will be as planned. They invited me; they paid my way.

Ken takes me to a farmers' market where he bids on ducks, some chickens, and a

nice brown mare. But I keep wondering what Diana and Harley are doing while we are

gone.

In the van Ken takes my hand and says: "You're a real loner, aren't you?"

And the tears come because it's the closest thing to compassion I've known.

The grocery boy is very kind to me as I get more pan from the store. The two

parrots however gossip side by side in cages probably making fun of what I do with the

Spanish language. Surprisingly, though, I am understood. The boy hands me my bag of

goods and a cheery: "Hasta la Vista!" Back at the hotel courtyard I sit on the couch. I try

not to look overjoyed when Maggie and Roger make an appearance.

Maggie looks radiant. They stand by the couch, obviously not about to stay long.

They are thinking of traveling together for a while.

"You really need Spanish," says Roger.

"He's fluent." Maggie looks at me for support, "He thinks everyone can learn a

language just like that."

He shrugs. "Otherwise you're just a tourist."

"Ah, but I have you." she teases. "Roger likes the big grungy cities, like

Guadalajara. He thinks that's the real Mexico."

"It's how most Mexicans live."

46

"There are Mexicans here too you know."

Maggie would rather just stay here in this beautiful town by the sea rather than go

wandering off into the pollution of industrialized Mexico, yet Roger is determined to go

and Maggie is determined to be with Roger.

"Oh, we saw an incredible beach today - all sorts of colourful, native birds. It's

just over there," she points to the south.

Roger nods: "It's quite something."

"Well, we want to shower and eat. See you."

They go into room twelve and shut the door.

This is what I thought I wanted. Time to think, to write, to be a genius. Nothing as

petty as loneliness is supposed to come into the equation.

Although it is only late afternoon, the square is already filling with people

anticipating the night. A big stage has been put together with planks and steel girders. I

will myself not to have any desire to see Stephen. It is always better that way. To desire

nothing. To decide - after a reasonable number of tries at it - that if one's fate is to have

none of the lion's share of life, then one can get on with the every day things and hope

the next life's bigger. Desire only leads to pain. But settling for a small life is kind of like

trying to sit on a tiger.

Harley has all sorts of desires and Ken tries to fill them. When Ken buys Harley a

car, he wants a motorcycle. When he offers him a job free life on the farm, Harley wants

more stimulation: a drum set, a stereo, and a billiard table. The deprived child inside

Harley demands that the world make it up to him for his wretched past. And Ken grows

47

weary of trying to be the world to him. He probably thought sharing his wife would be

enough.

And my desire for Harley has only created this woman who is so sad she might

crack the dry earth in two with her tears.

And Diana's desire for Harley is soon overshadowed by her need for peace. Her

family has lived in this county for generations. She can't explain to her grandmother or

her aunt why she is walking down the street holding hands with Harley, yet still married

to Ken.

She paints a farewell picture for Harley. He is a green man of the woods; he has

roots and mathematical symbols and words coming out of his head. The wind is blowing

up his hair and pages of books around him. She and Forest are sprites hidden in trees,

waving good-bye.

When Harley and I leave the farmhouse it returns to being what it has been for

over a century, a single-family dwelling. Ken and Diana and baby Forest reform their

nuclear family; put barn boards on the wall, paint the floors green, sew real curtains for

the baby room, put the horse up for sale, start a garden, and grow sunflowers along the

dirt driveway.

And, by default, I have Harley back.

It is me Harley sleeps with. It is me Harley turns to for comfort. He reaches out to

me in the night, his long feet warm against mine. His curly head tickling my neck. Like a

child he has no concept of how he's hurt me with his vagrant affections. He demands

from me a mother's love - or at least a martyr's. I try to be that for him. I try to stretch

48

out my heart as wide as that broken Jesus' arms in Barra's pink church. And inside the

hurricane of emotions, I hold him safe.

The lasso artist is confidently swinging and circling his rope to deafening taped

Mariachi music. Someone comes out with a mop and pail to clean the stage while he is

practicing.

I stop to use the street phone at the edge where the town abruptly ends and the

wide stretch of sea begins. The ocean is very loud as it thuds and rolls about. Palm leaves

rustle high above in the soft wind. The sun is in my bones. Left of the phone, and only a

few feet away is an outdoor restaurant with its round tables and white plastic chairs

stamped with Coca Cola logos. A few people have begun to fill the chairs.

I try to make a call through the operator.

"You have to get one of those phone cards."

He is in one of those white plastic chairs. He is only a few yards away, yet he's

yelled at me as if I were deaf. An American.

"I'm making a collect call," I say trying to hush him up. The ocean continues to hit

the shore with a thud. Other tables are beginning to fill up.

He waves a plump hand in front of his face, his gesture as exaggerated as his

voice.

"Doesn't matter. Bad time to call. All lines are plugged up by eleven. Early

morning is best."

People are beginning to look at me amusedly, like I am a stupid tourist, which of

course I am.

49

He is relentless: "You can get one of those cards in any number of stores around

here: Twenty, fifty, one hundred pesos. If you call collect the card just uses the first few

minutes."

I wish there were old-fashioned phone booths here - ones where you could shut

the door. I try to put my face inside the metal frame, turning my head away from him into

the metallic digits and my ear into the indecipherable Spanish of the operator's voice.

"It's a lot less expensive to make a call to Mexico."

I turn part way back to glare at him. He is immune. His big straw hat and dark

bearded face combine with his heavy midriff making him look like a thug, I think

meanly.

"You could send them some money or pay later."

He talks at the pace of a snail, drawing every word out as if he is enjoying this

painstaking business of giving a poor woman unwanted advice.

"If you were going to call collect anyway, it'd save them a buck or two."

He has a thick accent I haven't yet identified.

"Faxes are also cheap and reliable."

Now he is an infomercial.

"Here. I'm just finishing up."

He stands up, pulling change from his pocket.

"I can come and show you where to buy the cards and where to find the fax

machine."

My right hand juts out before I realize it, in a "No, stay" gesture like one would

use for a dog.

50

I hang up and walk away intent on finding a quieter phone. It would be good to

hear Raven's voice. Find out how she is. Tell her I am okay.

He catches up to me on a rickety old bike, his heavy body looking ridiculously

out of proportion on the fragile machinery.

He grins.

What is he grinning about? I let him show me the fax place and shake his hand,

following the path of least resistance. I hope I don't run into him again. He could be a

nuisance.

51

CHAPTER THREE

I plan, when I get home, to have a nice long nap, shower, and change into

something celebratory - maybe my short flowered skirt and blue top with layers of thin

fabric around the neckline. The beauty pageant is going to be a cultural event and

whether Stephen spots me there or not I want to engage in the evening. Mexicans take

time with how they dress; even when they're just going to the store, they look well-

groomed, clothes pressed, hemlines smoothed, shirts buttoned and tucked. It's in honour

of them, my hosts, that I want to look nice.

The boy at the corner store waves at me. The couple that run the cafe across the

street yell out "Hola, Sara!" The hotel clerk smiles at me.

Home is now, strangely, a room in Mexico. Home is where you have to make

sure you keep your mouth closed when you shower because one drop of contaminated

water could give you "tourista", dysentery, or worse. Home is where you always have to

wear your flip-flops and never touch the walls in the dark in case a scorpion stings you.

"It's amazing," I think, checking my pillow for any bugs before putting my head

down, "what one gets used to."

Our new apartment on Joseph Street, in Anpta, belongs to the house Harley's

mother, Beulah, and father, Casey, rent out. It was once a traditional farmhouse. In its

current state it is close to being condemned. Beulah is constantly cleaning the downstairs.

She's tenderly covered the dilapidated couches with doilies and calfskins, the pillows

with new pillowslips. Round rag-rugs decorate a wall-to-wall carpet that no amount of

52

scrubbing could ever make look clean. Homey sentiments: "Home is where the heart is"

and "There's no place like home" hang in red and white needlepoint on the cracked walls.

Up the narrow stairway is our suite. Two high-ceilinged rooms with narrow

windows over-looking brown grass, a dying elm tree, and behind it a small hill

attempting to hide the slew of factories stacked like cereal boxes. On the other side, the

kitchen and the bathroom look directly into the face of a ghost factory, formerly a felt

factory, with its blackened walls and broken windows.

As conscientiously as Beulah, a petite First Nations woman, uses her spare time

(away from work and visiting her six grown children from her first marriage) to put the

house in order, Casey, her common-in-law husband, heedlessly takes that order away.

But I don't understand Harley's severe distain for his father; he seems friendly enough -

a high-spirited French Canadian from Newfoundland. And whether he uses the coaster

Beulah sets out for him or not he seems to create nothing more than small annoyances. I

can see where Harley gets his curly hair and height. What's more Casey has no qualms

about telling people how much he loves his wife, which I think is sweet. He works very

hard at whatever labour jobs he can get; right now he's at a shoe factory. Harley hasn't

found anything yet and we're both living off my part-time dishwashing.

Payday weekend, Harley is sullen. I have tip money and take him out for a beer.

By eleven we are back at the blue table sharing tea with Beulah. As we sit there talking

about our days I hear something I can't decipher. I think maybe someone has been

injured down the street in a violent way, beaten, maybe stabbed. I'm afraid to go look and

the sound only escalates into a painful roaring stream of words I cannot decipher.

"Should we call an ambulance?"

53

Beulah ignores me. After taking the teacups and rinsing them calmly, she walks

past me, and shuts herself in the downstairs bedroom.

"Come on!" says Harley.

Confused, I follow him upstairs where he barricades the door with the mattress

and muffles the air-waves with Jefferson Airplane - Blows Against the Empire - Grace

Slick hammering out "Two thousand years, two thousand years of your goddamn

glory..."

But even Slick can't cover up what I can now distinguish as Casey's voice,

singing at the top of his lungs, louder and closer. The kitchen door slams.

There are silences in Casey's concert of the absurd. Silences in which I watch

Harley retreat into a wounded place as he looks through boxes of his record collection,

reading the backs as I'm sure he's done a hundred times before. I am invisible to him.

The silences are broken by explosions of wailing or wild loud talking about the mines,

about the time one fellow died. Sobbing. He wails at the top of his lungs, talking to

himself in between, about how much he loves Beulah: "Cutest little woman I ever saw."

"For fuck sake, shut up," Harley yells into the direction of the staircase. "Fucking,

Fucking Asshole."

I am let in on the family secret: Casey is more than an annoyance; he's a low-

down, binge-drinking, bad-assed drunk.

The announcer's amplified voice carries up into the starry sky. I did not expect

such a crowd, triple what it had been in the afternoon. Inches in front of me, a two-year-

old child sits on his mother's shoulders. He is playing madly with his mother's short hair.

54

He scrambles the hair rapidly, pulls it to make it stand on end, rubs his face into it. On my

left is a bicycle cart of painted yellow metal and old plywood. Chairs are tied on the back

where four children of various ages from three to eight sit, eagerly anticipating "the

show".

There was a time I thought the world would have changed by now; long gone

would be such beauty contests that objectify females so blatantly - at another time I

certainly would have boycotted such a contest.

However awkward they are in their high heels and bathing suits, all the young

women are beautiful. Some have the old standard criteria for Mexican beauties: large

backsides and hips. It is nice to know that many men in this part of the world are still

attracted to this rounded sensual female. I heard that in the formal national and

international beauty contests some Mexican woman are paying to have their bottom ribs

removed, and bum reductions, as they just don't fit the mold for today's standards: small-

framed all over, except maybe the breasts. I root for the curvy ones, my voice hooting

and hollering into the noisy crowd.

A white tourist grumbles next to me: "What's the big deal? I've seen similar stupid

little contests in redneck prairie towns... so boring."

His comments inspire me to go wild with my camera. I snap a picture of a very

dark Mexican girl dressed in a massively frilly dress, fifties style; she's wearing a tiara. I

catch the children sleeping in the bicycle cart, and then a row of toddlers in strollers,

kicking and bouncing to the music. Then there is the slew of Mexican lovers, old and

young, fat and lean, stroking, holding, touching each other - always.

55

I jump up and down hours later when my favourite wins. It seems a victory for

both Mexicans and women alike.

I walk to the fairgrounds adjacent and, in conjunction with the beauty pageant,

snap a few pictures of the old, rustic machinery. The rides look as if they are from

another time.

"Pretty scary, huh?" It's Stephen coming up beside me. "Most of this equipment

was deemed unsafe by U.S. standards, so they sold them off down here." There are

screams from the Ferris wheel and little roller coaster.

We walk through the grounds. He's interested in my writing, how my poetry is

coming along. He suggests a spot to write peacefully: "The lobby of the Sands Hotel is

nice. There are benches there and a mural and greenery. You can hide quite easily."

He walks me there to show me then suddenly he has to go: "I promised to help

with the clean-up."

The last ten years has been like that, a series of near hits and inevitable misses.

After Harley, I had a few short relationships.

One was with a rebel mechanic who lived in a school bus parked in the country.

We spent all our summer weekends sleeping under the stars by a river, a river he threw

Raven into once to teach her to swim. She liked him. He betrayed me with one of his

customers.

I bedded a sexy astrologer to get back at the mechanic. I found myself too quickly

in love with his steady eyes and earthy lifestyle: sheepskin rugs, pottery, a fireplace in the

bedroom, and his tender bedside manner - he brought me flowers and soup when I was

sick. When I tried to return the favour he yelled at me under the wind chimes at his front

56

door: "Don't ever drop by unannounced again." I soon found out there was a Libra inside

and that he regularly seduced as many different representatives of the zodiac as he could

possibly manage - and blamed it on his Scorpio moon.

My last boyfriend seemed nice, but I wasn't attracted to him. I thought that might

be a better base to start from, that the attraction would grow. I became more and more

repulsed by him. I'd stay up as late as I could so I could avoid sleeping with him.

The first of "the seven barren years" were a relief. I was in university for four of

them, struggling to make the bills and Raven's school needs on a meager student loan.

But the last three...

I met a red-haired widower, a nature photographer at a school party.

"Sit?" He saw me struggling with a plate of food and made more room on the

leather couch.

"Such a drag about John Lennon, eh?"

I loved how he jumped right in.

He lived in the North West Territories. We talked about everything from John

Lennon to female circumcision. He drove me home. He suggested I come to up north just

to see how spectacular it was. I could stay with him. We planned to have tea in a few

days and discuss this possibility. I considered asking Claire or Alma if either one could

take Raven for a week. In between our talk and our plans for tea his wife's best friend

swooped in on a plane from Whitehorse and scooped him up.

There was an ex of Claire's - and with her blessings. We dated for a few months.

We even got naked and gave each other full body massages using coconut oil scented

with lavender. He told me he'd be there if I ever needed him. I was house-sitting in a

57

beautiful home overlooking the sea. There was a full moon. Raven was at a sleepover. I

phoned him.

"I need you," I said.

He said he was too tired to take the bus out to me.

Then nothing. Maybe I just didn't trust myself not to pick another loser. Maybe I

was getting too old. Maybe my low income made me feel inferior and I sent off some

weird anti-pheromone signals.

I saunter back to my hotel, safe and invisible amongst the dispersing crowd. The

warm heat of the evening feeds my sensory self, my whole body feeling radiant, ready. I

step over a cracked dry palm leaf.

The ground is slippery with wet leaves. I follow Harley around like a ghost.

Though the sun is out signs of rain have trampled any full enjoyment of its warmth. Even

in the little park that I am crossing with Harley, he walks too fast as if he has somewhere

to go. I follow like a maid, Faust's servant. I admire his walk, nevertheless. His arms

swing and his body bounces from side to side. His curl of black hair swings above his

shoulders, just above the wing bone. I can barely keep up, my feet sliding on the oily

surface of wet leaves. I will never catch up to him completely and he will never look

back. I want him to look back, to wonder how I am and how I'm doing. There is nothing

else left of me but this longing for Harley's love. And the horror and grief that his love

lays elsewhere.

)

58

Under a dripping tree, a man sits, dirty hands covering his face. He is sobbing.

Harley hasn't seen him. In fact, I think, Harley's world is better than mine. He's able to

narrow his vision to Nature's patterns, to sounds streaming through the little stereo at

home, to his First Nations mother, her soft cluck-cluck as she prepares meals. It is only

me, it seems who cannot censor - cannot separate the good from the bad, the ugly from

the beautiful. It is only me who has to filter out the factories, the breweries, the cigarette

package that swims in a puddle, the cracks in the wall, and Harley's disdain for me

amplified on weed, the weed I smoke because it's the only time Harley is still. And it is

only me who has become the target of Casey's cruel words:

"You're nothing, you know that?" he says to me one time. "Harley's going to tire

of you; I sure have."

"It's the alcohol talking," says Harley. "Just ignore him."

When he's sober he never apologizes to me. It may be that he remembers none of

it. Yet, after every binge, I see his beady sad eyes looking to Beulah for forgiveness.

I stay up reading, wishing I were drunk.

Lord Jim of all things - the only half-interesting book I could find at the book

exchange. He did a terrible thing leaving all those people to die. Hoping they'd die so he

wouldn't have to be accountable. Yet he seemed so nice and heroic. It's difficult to tell

the good guys from the bad guys. I've never had a knack for that. Stephen seems like a

good guy. But who knows. If he is attracted to me, he's probably not going to pursue me,

too much work I guess.

59

"It is when we try to grapple with another man's intimate need that we perceive

how incomprehensible, waving, and misty are the beings that share with us the sight of

the stars and warmth of the sun," says Mallory of Jim.

Oh, Stephen is "waving" and "misty" all right.

The rooster training to be a rooster wakes me up again. I know there have been

snide remarks from many of the hotel guests about how they'd like to make dinner out of

him. But I sort of like him. Although he's in someone's little rustic backyard, I imagine

him on a hill somewhere believing in his heart of hearts, like Rostand's Chantaclare, that

he is responsible for making the sun rise. He reminds me that I have a purpose here,

however delusional.

I want to phone my parents some time today and let them know I'm okay. Of

course I can't tell them about my interest in Stephen, but just thinking about talking with

them about him Jets me imagine what they might say. Mum would respond with her

emotions: "Well, if this Stephen seems nice and you really like him, maybe you should

stick around and get to know him." My father would look at my situation like a scientist,

spying it as he would one of his specimens, a beetle on a pin - "You're drifting with

these romantic notions, procrastinating. Do something practical. You planned an inland

trip, you planned to work; do it." He'd say it like a criticism, dismissing my petty

problem with logic.

And what would Claire say? Pretty much the same thing. Only in a different way.

She'd say: "Trying to find a man is the same old, same old. Be brave. You came here to

collect poems. They are scattered over Mexico - go get them." She was more the poet

than I could ever hope to be.

60

I look all day and I think I find my place on the beach.

I run into Stephen on the street and we go for a juice.

I tell him about the place I've found in Obregon, between Barra and Madrina.

"When do you move in?"

"Not until after I get back."

"Get back?4' Stephen looks uneasy. "From where?"

"I thought Maggie would have told you. I'm going to travel to the interior for a

few weeks and then return to settle by the sea, hopefully get travelling out of my system

for a while so I can get my writing done."

"When do you leave?"

"The day after tomorrow."

There is a silence.

I can hear his wheels spinning. Perhaps he has been waiting for me to move into

my beach place, where we'd have some privacy.

"I go back to Alaska in two weeks." His eyes are downcast, his shoulder hunched.

But he had shown no signs of real interest. He must know that, be aware that he

has made no overtures towards me. It is too late to flow into romance at the non-existent

pace he has been going. But he could still take charge. Seize the moment. We could start

something. It could lead to e-mails and phone calls and plans to meet again. I try to be

suggestive, take his arm as we get up from the tall stools and say our farewells to the

juice lady. But I am not used to being so forward and certainly out of practice in any case.

And a skittishness has set in with him. I've hurt him with my plans.

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"I have to make the final arrangements on my beach bungalow. I could sure use a

translator." I beg gently, trying my best to put in a seductive edge, but hearing it come out

plain.

We walk the beach to Obregon, a small village between the two small towns of

Barra de Barcos and Madrina. We pass the lagoon where, supposedly, an alligator lives.

The thick yellow sand sinks beneath our feet. The strong pull of the wild sea causes the

shore to permanently maintain a sharp slant. As a result, there is a crookedness to our

walk, as though we are constantly being steered off course even though we are moving

directly forward. We try walking closer to the water's edge. We watch the pelicans dive

and the fishermen push out their boats.

It is ideal, my little place: half a duplex, a palapa and a hammock in front on the

beach. Between the two duplexes is a cement "tunnel" that leads to the owners' outdoor

kitchen in the back.

Fidel and Blanca are well fed and beautiful. They welcome me with big smiles

and hugs and ask if Stephen is my boyfriend. Their three children, Fidel junior, Louisa

and little Santiago, cling to their parents as they lead Stephen around to the front and

show me the duplex that will be mine. Stephen explains to them, in case I have not made

it clear to them, that I will be travelling for three weeks first.

I put the money down, retaining a receipt. They even allow me to store some of

my heavy items so I can travel light.

"Don't worry," they say kindly, Stephen translating. "Have a wonderful trip."

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Years of single parenting and envying other people's lives as I counted every

penny and now I'm spending money on a tropical vacation, a creative quest, on just plain

fun. Not even this miscarriage of a romance between Stephen and me can taint my joy.

Stephen and I stop on the way back to do yoga. I know he's watching me from the

corner of his eye as I stretch out on the sand and do my sun salutations before the

sparkling sea. He follows my lead. We could still have two days and two nights together.

It could be sweet.

On the stairs up to my hotel room the cleaning women obstruct us with their mops

and pails. We have to move to the left and are forced closer together, Stephen right

behind me. I want to lean back onto him but he makes no offer. Why does he have to be

so stilted, so hesitant, so polite? I feel him sniff my hair and look at my shoulders, back,

buttocks. I reach behind me to take his hand as we ascend the stairs, but when I get to my

door he pulls his hand away and puts both of them in his pockets.

He says he'll say good-bye to me at the bus stop on Thursday at nine in the

morning.

Casey sits in the living as if nothing has changed. Beulah makes as much noise as

she can banging pots and pans. I help with breakfast while Harley sits, reading the

cartoons, in an armchair across from his dad. Casey tries to strike up conversations, but

everyone ignores him. I try to forget all the hurtful things Casey said to me while he was

drunk; he seems to have forgotten. Each binge it's worse and even though I know it is the

alcohol, not really how he feels, I can't shake his words off. I seem to be his target. One

time he told me Harley wouldn't put up with a dog like me too much longer. Another

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time he told me I was from some stinking rich family. Not true, I protested. When he's

drunk, I try to avoid him as much as possible but he seeks me out like some kid playing

with an insect. He finds me, pulls me apart. Harley continues to shrug it off: "He's an

asshole, what can I say."

One afternoon, Diana is in town and drops by with Forest. She looks even taller in

her wedge heels. She plunks Forest down on the living room floor and I go make tea.

When I come back in Diana and Harley are laughing about something Forest did. Diana

lays him on a little blanket and rolls him over. She takes off his diaper and pulls another

one from her diaper bag.

Casey, already nursing his fourth beer yells at her: "You born in a bloody barn!

You filthy cow! Think you can use my floor like a bathroom? You dirty cow."

Harley jumps to his feet and screams into his father's face: "Don't you ever speak

to my friend like that! Understand?"

Casey stands up and pretends to box, and Harley pushes him down.

"Ever! Do you understand?"

Diana, in tears, has gathered up Forest and her things and runs out the back door.

Harley runs after her.

I watch them through the kitchen window. He's wiping tears from her cheeks. I

can't help the petty refrain inside me, knocking against my ribs: Not once had he stood

up for me. Not once.

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Stephen is true to his word. Why did he have to be so goddamn true to his word?

Why couldn't he have thrown caution to the wind and said: "To hell with it, I want to be

with you now."

Thursday. We don't touch. He stands close while I buy my ticket to Guadalajara.

We are both holding possible humiliation at bay. I wish we'd just gotten drunk last night

and done it. Then we'd always have that between us. I'll forget him now. He'll certainly

forget me, about any of this. I won't even remember what he looks like. I wish something

magical would happen, that one of us would say or do something unexpected and loving.

I guess I do respect him for not just barreling on ahead. It was the honourable

thing to do. Fuck honour.

He waves me off. I spin around in my seat to wave back at him, but he is already

gone. I feel cheated. He could have at least stood there looking as I am driven off

between the rows of palms towards Madrina and ultimately to Guadalajara. I imagine the

loss of me hitting him. I imagine him realizing how special I am, how much he needs to

find out who I am, if I am the one. I imagine him getting on the next bus. Being pursued

like I've never been pursued before - like in a corny romantic movie. I cry as the bus

chugs forwards. I decide I must give up these wild imaginings forever. "Summer sang in

me a little while..." "Oh couldn't it?" I plead to the Mexican countryside. "Couldn't it sing

once more?" Trees flash shadow and light against the windowpane.

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CHAPTER FOUR

Guadalajara. I drop my things and wander out amongst the twelve million.

Somehow I find an art gallery, closed, but with metal benches and chairs outside that

have the forms of bronze people melting into them. I sit on one of the benches and lean

my head back on the head behind mine. Mexico is like that: one civilization built on top

of another, people dissolving into generations at the same spot.

There are a few people milling about the main zocalo called the Plaza de la

Liberation. How appropriate; I am a liberated woman traveling alone in a foreign

country. Galleons of colonial buildings surround the square. One corner hosts a

newspaper store and concert office. Kitty corner is a theatre: The Teatro Degallado.

I walk between giant pillars towards the huge carved mesquoi doors. One door is

ajar. I hear instruments tuning. I walk up red-carpeted stairs, and look in on an orchestra

practicing and laughing with the conductor. Behind them, stretching twenty feet up the

wall is an orange and yellow and red Aztec mandala. I sit in the back row. The orchestra

is having difficulty with a number from Candide. Then the conductor says something

and a young woman in a pencil skirt and black glasses comes in. All the men whistle and

clap; it is a polite whistle, an expected whistle, an acknowledgement of her femaleness

and her youth. And her piano playing helps the orchestra to learn the complicated piece.

I envy her youth, but more than that - her sense of purpose. Maybe if I had a

whole orchestra depending on me I'd get to my writing. She has best of all possible

worlds.

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I slip out and walk up to another level where I step out over a glass floor feeling

my heart panic at the illusion of nothing beneath me.

Back in my room I sit on my bed and look out the wooden shutters to the clutter

of buildings and listen to the cacophony of city sounds. I remember a public presentation

and slide show I went to about India. How the speaker was in his room in Calcutta and he

heard this one true note. He was a saxophone player and had never heard such a lovely

sound. He got up from his grass mat and looked out at the rickshaws, the women in their

saris, the children running in front, and suddenly he realized that one note was the sound

of the city itself.

I try to hear the one note of Guadalajara; but it is only noise to me. Maybe I'm a

failure at this travelling thing. I'm certainly not a city girl. Maybe if I spent time in the

Mexican countryside - so dry, like the land of my childhood - connecting with the flora

and fauna...

I've heard about those desert flowers that only bloom every three hundred years

or so - if they get to bloom at all. How - after waiting so long, opening each morning to

collect the glorious dew, hoping that today will be the day. I wonder how they know

whether their time to bloom has passed or not.

I'm forty-two years old. I don't know what I'm doing here. Or what I should be

doing with my life. Maybe my time to bloom has long passed - this trip is just a

diversion. If I were a poet, I'd be making poems. Instead I keep searching against my

own best nature, for what I thought would come to me easily, what I must have thought I

was entitled to because of my middle class roots: a real home, a good husband, a sense of

security.

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I look at Guadalupe's compassionate face in the painting hanging above the bed.

She has that "Claire-like" wisdom in her eyes.

"Guadalupe. Tell me what to do. Tell me what I'm here for. Teach me - if it's not

to late - how to live. And if it is too late, teach me how to live with that."

Over the din I hear a man's voice. I shrug it off as more chaos from the streets

outside. I look for my guidebook, if there was nothing left to seek in life, I might as well

be a proper tourist.

I hear the male voice again. It couldn't possibly be from outside. Perhaps I was

having a religious auditory vision. Maybe this was a reply from Guadalupe herself. The

man who is speaking above the din is letting me know he is on his way; he will be with

me soon.

"Please," the voice says distinctly, desperately.

But this is not the form I wish "my man" to take. The last thing I need is someone

needing me to take care of him. I look at Guadalupe and shake my head at her. I've done

that. If this is being offered by the gods, well, forget it. I'll hold off as long as I can. It

really is better to be with no one than to get myself all jammed up again.

But I am tickled to be having a mystical experience, a story to tell. Unless I've

gone mad.

The voice becomes too strong now to be simply in my head.

"Please. Help."

Now I am worried. The voice sounds like it is in my room yet I can see no man

anywhere. A shiver runs up my spine. He is in the bathroom. How has he gotten in? Is it a

trick? I'd go to see why he needs help and be trapped, attacked in the bathroom.

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"Please!" He calls again. "I've locked myself in. I'm in the adjoining room. The

key to get out doesn't seem to be working. Could you help me?"

The fear falls away, as does the magic. I go into the bathroom. I see there is an

opening at the top of my bathroom where the joining wall has a three-foot gap above it.

"I'm really sorry to bother you, but could you get the landlady?"

I decide not to stay to see him released. I leave and as I do I think tongue-in-

cheek about the possibility of him and me. We'd have such a fun story to tell about how

we met. In our fabulous state-of-the art dining room, with our clever artsy friends, a glass

merlot, and platters of gourmet food - artichoke pate and stuffed olives.

I'd exaggerate my questioning of Guadalupe, the surprise encounter with his

voice, and my terror in thinking someone was in the bathroom. He'd tell of how foolish

he felt and the kindness of this stranger with the beautiful voice. And how, when the door

was finally opened, he knew right away that we were meant for each other. How he'd

taken me out for a thank you dinner and how we just hit it off, instantly intimate. Like

how it happens to people under duress in wars. And we'd quibble about how it was

hardly a war, but the feelings were the same - the same intense, amplified, intimate

feelings. Everyone would gasp and laugh appropriately. And whenever the artsy beautiful

looking friends brought new acquaintances over they'd beg my husband and me to tell

our story again.

Over the years, however, he'd begin secretly to cringe inside every time we told

the tale. The story is, after all, the story of a man at the mercy of a woman. Some of those

women with their shiny flattened hair would start thinking that he was a little pathetic,

maybe even inept. They might start talking behind his back about his inadequacies. The

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men might even be worse - or at least cruder: "Got himself locked into something. What

would he do without her? He's an ass. I bet he's like that in the bedroom too; he can get in

but doesn't really know what to do once he's there."

It would start to wear him down. He'd start dreaming about meeting some young

thing that he could rescue. The roles would be correct. He would be a man again.

Everyone would envy him. Eventually, inevitably, he'd leave, making his dream a reality.

See, I tell myself with a smile as I step down the stairs and out the door, I'm doing

the right thing. I've saved myself a lot of pain.

I dream about leaving Harley until I see him again.

Harley is reading on the little park bench, the only park. The trees cling to the

edges, their fragile leaves seeming to struggle as if the very city itself depended on their

little out breaths of oxygen. They try to reach perkily toward the sun, which seems, itself,

to have been half eaten up by belching residue of the breweries and factories. And Harley

sitting beneath them looks fragile too.

He brings me words. And after four hours with my head over a steaming pile of

dishes, words are what I need. He's reading science fiction. He tells me a story about a

love that lasts beyond the bounds of time. Everyone in the future is bored because they

can manifest whatever they want: gorgeous sunsets, moonlit nights - anything. They've

even conquered death. There is no mystery left in the world. So the main hero travels

back in time and falls in love and decides to stay there, accepting the price of mortality.

I like it best when we drink. When we go for beers at the pub not far from home

and we drink and then we dance and Harley holds me close and says, in my ear, that life

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is bearable because of me. And the anticipation builds because I know we are going to go

home and we're going to have sex, dizzy with the beer, uninhibited and open and loud

and loving sex. And each time, with each orgasm, we triumph over the crushing blow of

circumstances and our crippling inadequacies to do anything about them. For those few

hours, we are dancing free at the edge of time.

And then we wake to the pounding hideous reality once again. And he looks at me

as if I am to blame.

Every two weeks, on cue, we brace ourselves for Casey. We stay out as late as

money and energy will allow, but we always beat him home. Casey returns drunk, yelling

out and singing, crying and raging; if the house wasn't surrounded by empty factories he

would wake the entire neighborhood, he'd be carted away to jail, he'd have us all evicted

by now. But instead he is allowed his barbarity. No one in the old rundown house at the

end of the block with its overgrown garden - no one will interrupt him.

He is stupid and therefore, in his drunken rages, more terrifying than Harley,

although Harley's fits of anger are increasing and have an undertone of physical danger:

objects flung against the wall, sarcasm hurled around like medieval weapons. Whether it

is out of a sense of self-preservation or compassion, I want to help him. To heal him. To

prevent him becoming what he hates so much - his own father.

He wakes again and again with a curse on his lips. I am usually already awake

having heard his father, anticipated Harley's reaction. It is as if we are in a weird episodic

sci-fi show in which we repeat the same behavior over and over. I touch his arm as if to

say: "It okay; we'll live." But he shakes me off violently, throwing off the covers,

including mine, and gets up to look for his smokes.

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I wish I'd left him then. Found my own way.

Simple ineptness is not going to prevent me from exploring. With unfriendly bus

drivers and not knowing east from west, I somehow find my way to the Hotel Francis. In

the lobby, there are clay pillars curving into wooden arches. Wood and iron balcony

railings divvy up the floors. There are many of us, Canadians and Americans mostly,

moving through the rooms. Some rooms are small and dark, others large suites, but all

have the ancient tiled floors, the ceiling beams, and tall colonial windows that look out

over Guadalajara's historic centre. Nothing has been changed and more than one tourist

grumbles about the lack of modern conveniences, missing the McMansion Hotels they

are used to. But this is not commercial, not a tourist trap. I want to scream at them. The

century-old-wrought-iron elevator takes us to a roof terrace where there is a view of the

whole city. I hear one man say to his wife, spotting a cockroach, "Tequila can only fix so

much." The hallways are decorated with colourful modern murals and giant tin-framed

mirrors. The courtyard has fountains and a pool. I am weary of the other sightseers

and worried about how I'm going to get back to my room. I am exhausted from

pretending I'm having a good time.

Every day with Harley I pretend things are okay. I pretend to cope. I pretend I am

easygoing like Diana. And even though I don't have her big lips, or blue eyes and high

cheekbones, I pretend to feel beautiful. I walk like Diana with that relaxed yet sensuous

gait, my hips and buttocks engaged fully, my shoulders pulled back and down, everything

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aligned. I try to talk like her with a kind of breathless enthusiasm pointing out things in

the here and now. I try to create like her, every day writing something new. But nothing I

write has an ending. Inside I am certain that my future is non-existent and that I have

started on a path from which there is no way out. Only Harley can save me by loving me

back. And he never will.

Mushrooms. Back in Durham with Diana and Ken. Just for a visit. Just a reminder

that she has everything, including Harley's love. I'm on the roof of the van. The stars are

tugging coldly at me, calling my name. Scared, I twist my elastic body, slide feet first

from the roof through the window, and contort to land seated beside Ken who is

drumming on the steering wheel. The backseat is already pulled down and made up.

Diana is on her side. She is wearing an old chenille housecoat matching the pink in baby

Forest's cheeks. He sleeps in the curve, hip to waist, of her long lean body. Married.

Madonna. Eighteen. Harley is beside her. Ken, oblivious, turns up the music, continues to

drum with his hands on the steering wheel, dashboard, the seat, the roof. I think, as my

heart is breaking: Who was it that said, "Hell is other people?"

As ugly as Anpta is, I am still relieved to be back. No beauty shoved in my face,

no reminders of what life could be like if I wasn't so messed up. I am messed up. And

life sucks and everything around me is a reflection of that. But it is better than a reflection

of what I missed out on in life. And, as much as Harley might love Diana, he can't have

her; it is me he's living with.

I embrace this wretched life. Find an interest in learning more about Beulah. She

curls her hair and never speaks Cree though she is fluent. I want to draw the history out

of her.

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I go out one evening with her to an outdoor Bingo game in the park. She is

excited and dressed up, as always "neat as a pin", in her little narrow skirt and white

ironed shirt. As we wait to begin she tells me her father worked for the Hudson Bay

Company, a French man, and her mother was Cree. She had a privileged life up there;

they even had butter when it was too expensive for most people. I love Harley even more

knowing this about his mother.

At the picnic table and Beulah runs me through the game. The announcer has a

mike, is calling out numbers when suddenly we hear Casey's voice shouting out over the

park. It's not payday. It's not late. He's taken to drinking randomly now. We can't even

count on his clockwork binges anymore; we have to be braced against him at all times.

Before I realize it, he's taken the mike. He starts calling out numbers exaggerating

them, finding words that he hopes shock everyone: "Under the b for bitch, under the n for

nigger", and then picking random letters: "Under the p for piss, under the s for slut". The

announcer, a small older man, is trying to get control: "Sir, just put the mike down please.

Sir, we'll have to call the police. This is a public function. You can't just..."

Casey belligerently holds him back with one hand as he continues to call out

random phrases that make him laugh: "Under the c for cunt", "under the f for fag."

"Damn him," Beulah says as she tidily packs up her things, and goes up to the

front to claim him. Because it is Beulah, he comes with her.

I am writing to Raven on the postcard I got from the hotel. I'm telling her about

the sculptures and the theatre with the orchestra and how much I miss her. All the while

Guadalupe's eyes are on me and they don't look so compassionate any more. They are

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looking at me questioningly: why didn't you do something with your life, why didn't you

stand up to people, why did you stay?

One night Harley and I are really drunk. I'm in a pair of striped socks and nothing

else. I'm on top. Bad Company is pumping out its rhythm. Harley and I are not shy with

our ecstatic sounds. He's halfway up the stairs when Harley's head turns instinctively

towards the door.

"Fuck!"

The door opens.

When I wake up, it's morning. I'm on the mattress, a sheet over my body. Harley

is not there.

I wrap the sheet around me and go look in the other room. Harley is asleep on his

back, his blankets tucked around him.

"Harley, wake up!"

He tries to rub his eyes but finds his arms too tightly tucked and has to shake his

blankets loose.

"Isn't that weird?"

"You didn't tuck me in?"

"No. And you're in here."

"That's pretty weird."

"Remember Casey came in when we were doing it?"

"Oh, fuck. Yeah. What an idiot."

I sit there staring at Harley.

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"What?"

"Do you think he... raped me, Harley? Do you think he tucked you in and came

back and raped me? God, Harley, why did we get so drunk?"

"Don't be stupid. Dad's an asshole, but he's not evil. Maybe he just got

embarrassed seeing us together naked and all."

"So he put you in the other room and tucked you in, but not me?"

My whole body knows it happened. I don't feel right. I feel dirty inside, I feel

dead. I feel like all my organs have shrunk up inside me, pressing against each other to

try and get away from something. But my mind has no memory. I don't want to ever

remember. I need to throw up.

"Jesus," is all Harley says when he hears me retching.

He pushes by me to shower.

I know I have to find a means out of here.

I want to go home, which for now is anywhere out west. Vancouver. By the end

of the week I'll have enough to take a bus part of the way, probably have to hitchhike the

last third. I don't even want him to know. He took off for Ontario without even

considering me. He brought me here not at all concerned how it might be for me. He

knew I was in love with him. He knew I'd come. Like a little dog. He exposed me to his

asshole father and never stood up for me. I owe him nothing.

I'll end up in Vancouver without any money. Without knowing anyone - but my

parents won't be that far away. I'll have to humiliate myself, at twenty-one, beg them to

let me stay with them. They'll take me in. It has to be better than this. I'll have to be

realistic though; I'm never going to get what I need from them.

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I'm thirteen years old. I have on an orange dress, umpire-waisted, puffed sleeves.

I wonder if I look too straight. Mother has insisted I always wear my hair up in a bun

because otherwise I look a mess.

I've organized the whole dance. Made posters, delegated the all female committee

to get bales of hay, made "Ma" and "Pa" signs for the washrooms, created human size

scarecrows, found chaperones, and booked a DJ. I can do all this, but I can't say hi to a

boy.

Dad's driving me. I hope I don't sweat under my puffy sleeves.

He's so confident. There are pictures of him in the air force: slender, one hand on

his hips. His hair is like mine only shaved short so just the top is thick and curly. The

other arm is around his buddy. He is talking to whoever is behind the camera. His mouth

is in "you" position. He looks arrogant. He's young and handsome and knows it. I wish I

had some, some of that unquestioned sense of self worth.

He sings as we weave along the country roads: "You've got to walk that lonesome

valley, you've got to walk it all alone..."

Normally I hate going into town, leaving the lake, the quiet, but tonight part of me

is excited.

I want to ask him "Do I look okay? Will boys think I'm cute?" If he tells me he

thinks I look nice I think I could be brave. I could risk asking a boy to dance.

Instead I say: "I'm nervous." Hoping he'11 read between the lines.

"You're such a worry wart," he says. "Lighten up, for God sake."

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/ enter the dance room without any sense of balance, on a tightrope of nerves, of

what ifs. I work the coat checkroom all night. When Dad picks me up and asks me how it

went I say "Fine." Because that's all he wants to hear.

I am really leaving him. I arrive at the Anpta bus station and it is just as it was

when I first arrived to attend university, all my childhood poems lost - or probably the

suitcase they were in stolen - along the way. The man in the bus depot had been kind to

me as I checked every day to see if my suitcase had been found. He was a songwriter and

knew what it was like to lose work.

Of course he's not here anymore.

I keep just enough money to take a bus through BC after hitchhiking across the

prairie. There's only one bad incident of a driver taking my hand and putting it on his

crotch. I got out of his car with tears. I don't even want to think about it now, I'm proud

that I got here.

Off the bus the air smells like the sea. It is chillier than I remember. I go wait for

the underside of the bus to open. The bus driver unloads the baggage and I spot my beat-

up canvas pack but - before I can reach it -someone else grabs it. I turn quickly ready to

strike, the rage of all my lost poems right at the surface.

I am face to face with Harley.

"What? How?"

He's enjoying my confusion.

"I borrowed from my mum for a plane ticket. I've been checking every bus out

for hours."

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"Why?"

"Because I love you."

I've waited two years to hear this.

I pack up my guidebook and the few clothes I've taken out of my pack, hand the

key back to the landlady and flag down a little "VW Bug" taxicab. There is no use in me

attempting to take the city transit out to the bus depot. I am off to San Miguel. Several

people in my papier-mache class have been there. Highly recommended - and if you go,

said one, could you pick up one of those blue glass chandeliers - only 15 dollars in our

money, I'll pay you back. There'll be glass sculptures and art everywhere. Lots of ex-pats

so Spanish isn't so difficult.

I am looking forward to it.

There are no buses to San Miguel, my intended destination, until tomorrow.

Reluctantly I buy a ticket for Guanajuato, a small city along the way. Sleeping, at last,

with the motion and the knowledge that there is nothing for me to do, again my life and

time is put in the hands of a competent bus driver, aware that one should never put one's

life in anyone else's hands unless you have to.

"Live with me. What else are you going to do?"

What else am I going to do? Besides, it isn't really Harley I am trying to escape

from, but Anpta, and Casey, and the lack of beauty, the lack of nature, the lack of joy in

life. The only reason I needed to get away from Harley was to escape the pain of loving

someone who didn't love me back. But if he loves me back is there any need to run

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away? He came all this way; maybe he really has had a realization that I have always

been there for him.

We find a cheap hotel. He gets a bottle of wine. Tomorrow I'll look for work and

an apartment. Maybe welfare temporarily. Harley is no longer a factor one way or the

other. I need to start building a life of my own.

I find a job in a plant nursery. It is way up by Marine Drive on an acre of land.

There are mounds of rich earth, sawdust for mulching, and manure, greenhouses for

potting and beds and beds of perennials and annuals. Young adults like me haul hoses or

carry trays of bedding plants. The sea is visible through the sweep of willow trees and

pines.

Harley walks me to the bus every morning, but what he does all day eludes me.

He reads, I guess. He goes into bookstores. He goes for coffee with the money I leave for

him. He sometimes meets me at the bus when I return from work again. He smokes. He

thinks. He gets stoned sometimes. He looks at record covers; records he can't listen to

because we don't have a player. We don't have furniture. We don't have much of

anything.

At work I think about leaving him.

We are in an apartment building I never would have chosen on my own. Harley

found it. Off Fraser Street. It looks like a slum both outside and in, with its rotting wood

frame, its fraying white paint, its tiny interior with linoleum floors and pipes taking up

half the kitchen. Water spouts and cranks its way out of the taps.

Four months into our "reunion", I start looking for bachelor apartments.

Meanwhile, I make the best of it. I'm sick of making the best of it.

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I find a space that has a big rounded stain glass window and wood floors, a

kitchen that overlooks a tidy garden.

And then I start throwing up. Every morning.

"Don't leave me," Harley says, stroking my hair in the morning before I am up.

"I'll take care of you."

But it is me who looks for places again. Me who keeps the money, as little as it is,

rolling in. It is my parents who help us with the damage deposit and first month's rent on

a decent one-bedroom apartment. Me who finds midwives. Me who studies pregnancy

and birth and early childhood. Me who studies the statistics on homebirths. Me that

organizes the sterilization of sheets, the ice and tea and pots for the midwives. It is me

that gives birth.

"Harley, I think I'm in labour." It's about 9 pm. I had some back pains earlier and

a big meal of brown rice and vegetables. I'm ready.

"It's just those fake labour pains, beforehand. The midwives said you'd probably

get those."

"Maybe... oh fuck I don't think so."

"Christ," says Harley getting up to dress and going out to the pay phone to call the

midwives. I try to remember what I learned about breathing. I go into the bathroom and

throw up. The pain is erratic, somehow not how I expected it, coiling around my

abdomen, biting me in the back. I can't breathe. Tears slip into my mouth. Like

everything else I'm going to botch this up.

I hear footsteps. Harley's but others too. Coming up the narrow staircase. Two

midwives, one in training. They get down on the floor with me, breathe with me, and

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show me how to breathe through the contractions. It works - it's so much easier. They

lead me back to the mattress on the floor in the bedroom. They anticipate everything:

each contraction I am congratulated on how well I do. When I worry they reassure me the

baby is fine. When I'm thirsty, angry, uncomfortable, they bring me fluids, comfort me,

and help me change positions. They bring Harley into the process, getting him to sit

behind me or massage my back when I'm on my knees. There are candles and the light of

the full moon through the window. The sheets I sterilized in the oven are laid on the

mattress.

She's born, swimming out of me, long and lean and chirping. She looks at the

flowered curtains, at Harley and then at me.

I sleep with her across my belly. In the morning the doctor comes to sew up my

small tears and make sure Raven is okay. That evening Harley goes to a Led Zeppelin

concert.

Fifteen days later, I leave him for good.

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CHAPTER FIVE

I close my eyes. The golden light slips off the hills and lowers over the city of

Guanajuato as I am taken down on subterranean roads that were once viaducts, big canals

of stone and cobble, and up again beside huge statues of heroes and sculpted fountains,

glorious gardens, clusters of houses chasing up the side of hills, staircases disappearing

beside them. Up top, I can see the blazing sky and the shadow of darkness progressing.

Dim lights ease on until Guanajuato looks as if it were turned on by candlelight.

I open my eyes. The horrible fluorescent bulb buzzes. I am in the most ugly hotel

room in the most beautiful of cities. Fake wood paneling closes in on me, as does the

stench of the urinal. Stuffed on a shelf above the toilet are hubcaps and old nets. The

water around the toilet leaks into what I suspect was not originally a brown carpet.

Saving my flashlight for night emergencies, such as spotting creeping/crawly things, I try

to read about Guanajuato by the light of one candle. I know I can't spend another night in

this room.

My parents' place has fuzzy wall-to-wall carpeting that makes my nose itch. It has

perfectly sealed windows that don't let in a whisper of air. It is indistinguishable from all

the other houses on the cul-de-sac - carbon cutouts of pretend Tudors, stuccoed with

swirled cement.

They adore baby Raven. But they look on me with either pity or shame. I am the

daughter who didn't make it, the daughter in trouble. And I look at them as these kind

aliens. As if I've just been let out of a circus with its huge colourful air-ballooned ceilings

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and dusty trailers full of tormented - yet poignant - freaks. It has become my world.

Nothing in the "normal" world makes sense to me anymore.

I've kept Claire's number for over a year now. Smudged and crumpled I can still

make it out. I wish I'd known how much I would want it now; I would have kept in

touch. She might have moved somewhere else by now. I don't have her last name. It's

still worth a shot.

"Sara!" she screams. "Of course I remember you. How are you? Are you looking

for a place? Because there's an apartment right next to mine coming up. You'd love it

here. Four of the houses on my street are rented out to single mothers. We might create a

revolution! You'll fit right in."

At daybreak I am back to the Pasado Kloster, the first place I looked at yesterday.

There is a lineup and the man ahead of me is Tim. He's been staying in an overcrowded

dorm at his Spanish language school and has been waiting several days for a room.

"No, no." The little Mexican woman shakes her head.

Tim, medium height, short hair, glasses, and a small piggish nose, turns to me and

shrugs.

"She says there will be a room available this afternoon, but that it is for two.

Because there are so many people wanting rooms she cannot rent out a double room to a

single person."

He offers double the money, but she still refuses.

"Why don't we share a room?" And, before I censor myself: "Until more space

opens up. You're trustworthy, right?" I half jest. I know I can't go back to that smelly

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room. Yet I'm not sure what this presumably Catholic Mexican woman will think of my

suggestion, let alone a straight American man.

"Tell her we're a couple."

He nods, surprised, speaks Spanish again.

The woman looks dubious, but unlocks the door.

We have been let into heaven. There are rooms downstairs and upstairs in a

wheel-like design, each room facing the inner court. A bright unpretentious quiet office

awaits us. We do the paper work and are told our room will be ready at two o'clock.

Tim turns to me and says: "Want to catch some lunch, Roommate?"

"Si."

We exit the blue gate where we had waited for hours and walk down a golden

street.

Trutch Street is a short street lined with the full-bodied green of cherry trees just

past blossoming. At my feet are pink and brown petals. The houses are grand old

mansions that have been left alone to peel and sink following the natural course of aging.

Trutch Manor is in the centre of all the "women's houses" but is not one of theirs. It is

magnificent with its path up the hill and its overgrown garden of thyme, lavender,

rosemary and lemon balm. The manor is at the top and must have once looked over an

extensive estate.

Claire's house is on the left of Trutch Manor, as is her apartment. I walk up the

side steps worn in the centre; I open the first door as instructed. The inside door is oak

with a frosted glass insert. I turn the iron bell. A shadow appears behind the window.

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Claire, pony tailed, thinner, in cutoffs, T-shirt and flip-flops opens the door.

"Sara!" she squeals like I'm a long lost friend. "Come in! Come in!

As I move by her, I see a little boy attached to her leg.

"This is Sean."

He ducks his head when I say hi.

"He's a little shy. I'm dying to meet your baby. First things first."

She grabs a set of keys.

"I'll show you your apartment. And then, if you like, I'll help you apply for

Welfare." Sensing my mortification she adds: "We do all this work of raising people, I

for one refuse to feel shame because I get paid a pittance for it."

I move in at the end of the month. I think my parents are as relieved as I am.

Raven sleeps in a pretty crib in a Victorian room with its lovely wood floors. I

have the living room as my bedroom. It has an old working fireplace. There is a huge

cherry tree outside my bay window. After years of staring out at the dying elms, and slum

neighborhoods, after Harley's craziness I am suddenly here with all this beauty. And

women. Women with children. Women like me.

He leads me to an East Indian restaurant that has a vegetarian comida every

afternoon.

Things spill out too soon and I wish they wouldn't. I tell him about my years as a

single parent. Tim tells me about his travels. He's travelled in Thailand mostly. He was

married for fourteen years to a woman from Japan. He's divorced. They have no children.

Tim tells me I'm brave sharing a room with him though he swears he is a good type. We

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exchange a few horror stories we've heard: the woman and son killed in Thailand by a

stranger, drugs planted on others in Mexico, years spent in prison, tortured with cattle

prods.

At one point in the conversation he says he loves Thailand and that: "There is no

rape in Thailand because sex is freely gotten."

I want to speak up, but am silent. I tell myself it's not my job to educate men. I've

been there, done that. Got my bonnet in a knot. But I feel nervous now - it could be

dangerous sharing a room with someone who truly believes there is somewhere in the

world that is safe from violence against women. What does he have to tell himself, how

much does he excuse, in order to believe this?

Out in the bright sun surrounded by history, all seems safe again.

At the pasada, I sit on my bright pink, white and red bedspread while Tim

unpacks. The tall doors are open onto a patio filled with aloe vera plants in big clay pots

and singing yellow birds. A television is on quietly somewhere. The woman who let us in

clicks by with clean towels.

Tim methodically folds his pants over hangers and his shirts in a classic arms-to-

back position. Very anal. He is pleasant and completely unattractive to me. We play

house together, organizing which space belongs to each of us. After it is all arranged, Tim

goes to his Spanish class.

I write Raven a letter and find myself philosophical: "There are these lulls in time,

probably everywhere, but most noticeably in Mexico where it is hot and dusty and the

days seem long. These lulls are hard to allow as they can mirror the desert inside, that

sense of going nowhere, reminding one of one's mortality and time and nothingness. But

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if you trust these quiet states, something or someone, like a surprise breeze, comes along

to change the whole day.

I'm staying with a man - not what you think, we're just friends and it's just to

save money - in this ancient city. Very beautiful. I am about to explore it today. I'll tell

you about it.

As always I wish you were with me."

I hold Raven tightly to my chest as, on her front step, Claire introduces me to

Jean, a short freckled woman who has a baby about Raven's age in her arms. Raven is

asleep in her stroller.

"Jean's our youngest recruit - eighteen."

"Nice to meet you," she says with a generous smile, she looks healthy, free. Not

my idea of a single parent on welfare. "This is Marta." Jean looks at Raven. "She's

beautiful - what's her name?"

"Raven."

"Raven. Perfect."

Claire lifts Sean up. "He's been getting peckish lately. Listen, we're all going up,"

Claire says, trying keep Sean's fingers out of her mouth, "to Courtenay because the

Annual Women's Festival starts this afternoon. It'll be a great place for all of us to get to

know you. You have to come! You remember my old VW bug? You can go with me."

"Nettie," Jean says, " - you'll meet her if you come up, she's such a brain -

anyway, she's giving a presentation at the university today and I said I'd support her. So

we'll meet up there tonight."

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She skips down the stairs.

I start to make excuses; I've barely unpacked. I don't have time to organize, but

Claire cuts me off before I've had a chance to sound like a fuddy-duddy.

"I've got lots of diapers; don't worry," she says anticipating some of my worries.

"I've got a car seat for Raven. And extra bedding. Food's free. It'll be your initiation to

the gang!"

It is fitting that my "initiation" into The Trutch Street Women will be secured in

the same little car that Claire rescued me in a year-and-a-half ago. There are wildflowers

in a cup by the gearshift.

"You've got to hear this! There are so many amazing feminist singers now."

She flips her long straight hair off her face and hands me a cassette cover as she

pushes the button.

"I adore her. Listen."

I stare at the cover. A woman with bangs dressed in earth tones, moccasins and

beads, sits on a mountaintop.

Lean on me, you are my sister. Lean on me, you are my friend.

Halfway up to Courtenay. Raven and Sean wake up and we stop to feed them.

Raven suckles from me near a willow tree. Sean runs around and falls over and over, the

soft breeze lifting and dropping his feathery hair.

"And for the kids," Claire says as we head off again, handing me another cassette

cover as she changes tapes. "Sean loves this song, don't you Honey Bee?"

"Boom, boom" sings the confident voice, "Baby goes boom boom, Baby goes

boom boom down. You might fall, but everybody does it; everybody boom booms down."

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I wonder what I've gotten myself into.

I wander out, scanning the city: the cobbled streets and sidewalks, the narrow

alleys, the faded pure colours of stone and mortar and brick, the people hanging out on

balconies or crowding the squares, the bells of the churches. The giant statue of El

Papillo, his arms raised in liberation as a whole history of people unfolds on every street

beneath him, the cobbles themselves worn from so many of years of foot traffic, each

building a piece of history.

I walk up a set of steps that compel me to do so. The sun is climbing as I climb.

The steps zigzag the hills. Any street could be a piece of the puzzle to the top. Small

options of homes dangle beside the steps. How do people find their way back each night?

I imagine some getting lost forever, settling into another home on the hill, hoping they'll

run into their family at market one day.

Then I take a bus to the Mummy Museum. The minerals in Guanajuato's soil are

unique, acting like a strong preservative. I go through the striped awning into a room of

big glass display cases. Gradually my eyes adjust to dull light and begin to see the muddy

forms of dead people, positioned standing, sitting, resting. One can see the wrinkles in

foreheads, lines around mouths, pockets with fingers in them, creases in dresses, and

expressions on each face at the moment of death. Not too many expressions are peaceful.

Children are not exempt in these displays.

I start looking at the dates: most are hundreds of years old. But some are not.

Some are only five years old. Some three. Poor people perhaps that could not afford

proper graves or coffins, certainly not plots in the graveyards. Maybe they were paid a

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small fee to have their child on display. I wonder if many of them regret that decision. Or

made that decision to keep their children close. Mothers and fathers using up their

meager pay to come and look and look again, grief a tyrant unable to let go.

It's too creepy for me - so I head out to see the other sites: the opulent Iglesia de

Cayetano, an incredible church in "churrigueresque style." It is an abundance of floor-to

ceiling carvings in white cedar covered with eight-karat gold. I stand outside the granary,

the Corn Palace, the doors of which El Papillo dared to break when the Spanish took

refuge here. Not long afterwards the heads of the revolutionaries were hung in iron cages

on the four corners of the building as an example to the people. Now the corners host

sculpted heads in honour of these same rebels. The museum is immense - featuring pre-

Columbian relics to regional crafts. I have a quick lunch and then - having saved it for

last - trek out again to see the home of the famous muralist, Diego Rivera. There are

drawings he made when he was a child. Since he was ten years old he was dedicated to

his art. I feel a fake.

Tim and I meet in the late evening back in our hotel room. We are like an old

couple discussing our day. Tim has had a good class. We talk about the fact that we only

have two days to find a new solution, as the room is booked for Mexican tourists. Tim is

possibly going to be placed by his Spanish school in a family home. He will know

tomorrow. I say I might just move on if no rooms become available here. He nods

approvingly, but when I tell him it is San Miguel I wish to see next he turns up his nose:

"Full of ex-pats. It's more like a resort for them than a Mexican town. I mean it's

pretty and all but nothing like here. People go there to get plastic surgery, to escape

whatever is going on in their lives. They don't even have to learn Spanish to live there.

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Why not go somewhere different, somewhere really Mexican like Real del Catorce? If I

were you I'd go somewhere off the beaten track."

My whole life was off the beaten track. Being off the beaten track just beats you

down. I want to get on the track. On the frigging track before it's all over.

I feel deflated, mad at myself that I would let a near stranger poke such a hole in

my plans. He falls asleep quickly and, for a while, I hate him. I focus on his breathing. He

is a big breather. I notice all his involuntarily tossing and turnings. Maybe he'll even say a

word or cry from the inner chambers of the subconscious. Maybe he'll say something

incriminating that I could blackmail him for. Or I could just smother him with a pillow.

But then I soften. Sleeping near someone is like being let in on a secret about the

person that even he doesn't know about. He takes in air easily, releasing it slowly. I try to

sleep but am still unsure of this new situation.

Bare-breasted women are hoisting up teepees. In fact, everyone is either bra-less

or in muscle shirts. Claire and I split up in order to get rides to the waterfall. I go in a

truck with a strong looking driver with muscles like a man and a lumberjack shirt with

the sleeves cutoff. She ran a collective herb farm for years "up this way." She seems in

charge of her life - and her truck.

Naked women warm themselves on the rocks beside the waterfalls. Claire and I

let a young girl take care of our children; she is very gentle and slow with them. We lie

back listening to the little giggles.

The afternoon passes. I had forgotten what safe felt like; my muscles unclench, I

allow the present moment in: the sound of water, women and children, the sight of clouds

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moving above, the warm heat of the sun on our skin, the smooth, warm rocks under our

towels, the cool smell of fresh water, the scent of wild roses and cedar and pine. Women

everywhere standing, walking, swimming, without the coyness or meekness they put on

around men.

As I lie on my back staring up someone a few rocks over shakes a bright blue

towel into the air. Claire's eyes are closed. Her mouth wears a smile.

But back at the Festival Headquarters, I start to feel insecure. Everyone who is

anyone is bare-breasted and proud walking with that extra "oomph" of one no longer

bound by coyness, timidity, or even courtesy. I kind of miss the courtesy. I feel I stick out

like a sore thumb. I might as well have written "breeder" on my t-shirt.

Claire introduces me to one of the teepee women - my truck driver, Alma. She's

Nettie's partner and they live in the apartment in the house on the other side of Claire.

Alma has a headache. I suggest white willow bark forgetting the woman is an herbalist

herself: "I know that," she snaps. "Believe me, it does not help a migraine."

I want to say: "I don't give a flying fuck about your headache and you can't be

much of an herbalist it you don't know what to do." Instead I smile politely.

"Sorry," she says in an offhanded, not very sorry tone. I know if I were a beautiful

handsome dyke I'd be treated differently. It's exactly the same with men, looks are all that

matter.

Claire looks at me as Alma goes inside the teepee. "Forgive her. She's in a lot of

pain. She's actually really nice."

Alma comes back out again and takes my hand: "I am truly sorry," she says this in

such a sincere tone, that my anger quickly dissipates, then she goes back into the teepee.

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"Come on."

I follow Claire into the woods, our children safely napping at the Free Daycare.

There is a small clearing where we sit on a log.

"How are you doing?" she asks.

"I guess I expected to feel safe here. I only feel half safe here."

"Don't worry; you're not crazy," says Claire, brushing a blue and yellow

caterpillar off the log. It struggles on its side a movement, but then sets out as if the

ground is where it intended to be all along.

"Women do act strangely with each other at first when we're separated from

men. A pettiness, I guess, criticism of and by our mothers comes back to haunt us.

Internalized Oppression. Nettie says that you don't really get a chance to see it as clearly

in the big bad world because we're constantly fighting against the "male viewpoint," the

male attack, the male perspective of just who we are and aren't. But when we're just

amongst each other - where you'd expect to feel safe - out come all the messages we've

been told about ourselves and we project them onto each other: weak, ineffectual, etc.

They come at us even though we're getting to the union, to sisterhood. It's part of the

process. We just have to go through it. We have to stay proud and loving of who we are."

I still wonder if I've gotten myself into some kind of cult; yet it makes sense,

what Claire is saying.

Claire looks at me, suddenly very serious: "Can you give me some attention

while I cry?"

I've committed myself to living next door to what may be a group of fanatics.

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Claire cries about being Sean's mother and how proud she is and how parenting is

the best, though most underrated, job in the world.

Then it's my "turn". Claire asks me about the 'Alma snapping at me thing' and

for some reason the tears come up immediately. I'm embarrassed, want to run away and

cry by myself, but Jean keeps looking at me respectfully and I keep crying. I'm not sure

what I'm crying about. I blurt out that I guess I'm crying because I feel like a misfit

again. And that men have never been that attracted to me. I was so grateful to get a crumb

from one of them. They could smell it on me - my insecurity. And here I am again, only

this time I'm feeling the same way around women.

When the crying slows down Claire asks me: "Have you ever seen For Colored

Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/ But Find the Rainbow is Enuf? "

I actually had, in a church basement in Anpta. The Wallflower Dance Collective.

Before I met Harley, for the feminist course I audited.

"Remember when each of the performers start to get empowered and claim

something strong about herself."

"Yes. I think one of them said: 'I'm complicated'."

"Let's stand up and try it."

I just want to go back into my shell again. But Claire won't let me. She helps me

to stand with her on the log.

"Try saying it."

"What?"

"I'm complicated."

"I'm complicated," I say flatly, feeling trapped.

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"Okay. Now say like this." Claire puts her hands on her hips, imitating the black

woman in the play. She juts out her chin in a "don't you mess with me" manner.

"I'm complicated," she says defiantly. She looks and sounds the opposite of how

I've been feeling. "Try it."

My body feels awkward, I have to open my legs to balance on the log - with my

hands on my hips I have nothing to grab with anymore. When I jut my chin out I have to

bend my legs deeper in order to keep my equilibrium.

"I'm complicated."

"Louder."

"I'm complicated."

"Fiercer."

"I'm complicated.'

"What's complicated about you?"

"I'm so complicated I have to write poetry to express all that I am."

"What else?"

"I'm so complicated I lived with an impossible man and lived to tell about it."

"Me too," she exclaims.

"What else?" I turn it back to her.

"I'm so strong and complicated," she says proudly, "that I know my way around

any wilderness you put me in, it's like a sixth sense.

Back and forth we go, more exaggerated, trying to outdo each other, yet laughing

and encouraging.

"I cry at the sound of a meadowlark."

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"I am so patient I can sit for hours studying a blossom. Yet, if anyone has ill

intentions toward Sean, I can leap and run faster than anyone." She leaps off the log and

runs, stopping to turn back at me, making a flourish with her hand to indicate my turn.

"Once in Anpta, in the rain, I was so fed-up and so angry with everything that I

chased a potential mugger," I leap off the log and chase Claire in a circle, "down the

street." I stop for emphasis. "And he ran away from me."

I am flushed with excitement like a child and Claire laughs at my antics.

"You can't be put in a box, My Dear," she says, putting her arm around me as we

walk back to the Festival.

"I'm much too complicated for that!"

"Yes," Claire laughs. "You certainly are."

Jean and Nettie, a tall woman with chin-length black hair join us at the lodge and

we all have dinner together and talk about what it's like being here. Nettie has come

across a feminist author who says flat out that you can never be liberated in this culture if

you have children. And we flat out disagree.

Five days we spend secluded from the Patriarchy. Five days in Sun Salutations in

"the temple" - a large circle of stones. Five days of hanging out at the waterfalls. I even

jump into the water from a fair height to the applause and admiration of the crowd of

females below. Five afternoons of leisure and reading subversive, radical, feminist

journals full of poetry and self-love. Five evenings of women's music so exquisite it

would put anything else to shame. Five processionals to the outdoor theatre area where

women reinvent old plays: Romeo and Juliet as two women, Lysistrata without the men,

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or the war, or any abstinence, The Seven Deadly Sins imploring women to give up falling

for the traps:

Protecting the Darling Man.

Wasting Time Dreaming of a Common Language.

The Attempt to Change or Re-educate a man.

Our last night. There is a roaring fire in the lodge's stone fireplace and firelight.

As the recorded music thank you, for taking me dancing, across the floor fades a woman,

her whole body covered with fine white hair, sings a cappella. The full moon lights a

patchwork design by the window. We women gather, some with arms around each other,

lovers leaning backwards into arms, others holding hands. A woman with a perfect body

dances alone, naked, in a trance.

We all begin to sing and the group's voice is harmonious, touched by her spark.

Someone brings out a guitar, another a fiddle. We sing songs that have double meanings:

"Hey you've got to hide your love away..."

Suddenly the music changes to heavy Rock and Roll. The back door opens and a

bunch of guys come in, posturing and strutting. My heart beats fast in my chest; I want to

protect myself and look for the nearest exit. But their exaggerated movements soon give

away that these are not men at all, but women playing men. They have mustaches and

beards and shirts and boots. Some are in suits their hair slicked back. Some in fedora hats

or baseball caps. I recognize Alma and Nettie among them. A very handsome young

"man" with long blond hair and a mustache comes over to me takes my hand and pulls

me onto the dance floor.

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Couples form all over the room. Dancing and flirting with these "non male"

males. The body is confused. Hormones surface. It is sexy and safe. I accept a toke from

"my guy" who winks at me as I pass it on. "He" looks into my eyes as if he really is

happy to be just with me. It is unnerving; no man I was ever with could hold his attention

that long. I look past him and see that Jean is dancing with a dark haired "man" in an

argyle sweater; "he's" kissing her hand and she's laughing. Claire is slow dancing with

bearded Nettie; she's wrapped her arms around "his" neck as if they're madly in love.

"You know so much," Julie teases Michael, "you make us a meal then."

I am out with a woman I met while struggling with the latch at the bottom of the

stairs outside the pasada, and with two men who were on their way inside at the same

time. The club is full of ladies shoes from women who had dared to drink out of them. It

is also full of big sculptures of glass and the candlelight that glows off them and our beer

glasses.

"I can and I will," his French Canadian pride and 'joie de vive' puffing him up

with confidence. "I love to cook and you, My Dear," he says taking her hands," will be

the first to sample my next creation."

It is painfully obvious to me that Julie has fallen; her cheeks are flushed, her eyes

sparkle. She laughs at everything Michael says, touching his arm at any opportunity.

"So," I say trying to establish what is pretty much evident, but seems to have

somehow bypassed Julie, "you two live together then?"

"Yes," says Tom, the tall one. "We live in a beautiful district outside Quebec

City. In a house Michael designed."

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We walk down the old canal streets past the movie house where we just saw the

new Romeo+ Juliet shot in Mexico City. Michael separates us into couples. I keep one

eye on Julie as Michael shows her up close the place where two fabled lovers kissed over

the veranda; it is good luck to kiss here. Michael and Julie apparently don't need any

luck. I hear Julie's laughter tinkle as Michael presses his body up against hers. Tom and I

look up at an impressive stone wall. I don't think I am wrong, but I am puzzled why a

gay man would lead on a straight woman. And why his partner would allow him to. Julie

laughs again. I ask Tom for more clues.

"How long have you two been together?"

"Twelve years. Michael is a wonderful architect. He did his graduate work here. I

had no idea it would be so beautiful. Quebec is lovely too. You really would be welcome

to come and visit us. It's hard to describe the house without seeing it."

On the way home, Tom and I might as well be invisible. Michael buys a rose from

a street vendor and gives it to Julie, brushing a strand of her hair behind her ear with the

flower and kissing her lobe. At the gate, Michael pulls Julie to him, stares into her eyes:

"It's been a fantastic evening. Thank you so very much."

Julie, between kisses, says she had a wonderful time too. Tom and I stand around

awkwardly and thank each other before we all go into our separate rooms.

The next day, on the way back from the shower, I see Julie's door open. She is

dressed attractively in a sexy low cut T-shirt and short-short cut-offs.

"I'm going sight-seeing with Michael."

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"Julie..." I feel I need to inform her, but am reluctant to burst her bubble; she's so

darn happy: "Did you ever think... do you think it's possible that Michael and Tom

might be a couple?"

Julie looks at me. All the happy lines in her face fall.

"I might be wrong, but I don't think so. Tom says they've been living together for

twelve years."

The corners of her lips slope down, she's fighting back tears. Surely she must

have suspected as much. Maybe telling her was the wrong thing to do. I try to comfort

her.

"I guess it's possible they just share a house."

Now the truth of it can't get past her. She looks so sad.

"Possibly he's bi..."

"Well, that's comforting," she snaps back and then looks kindly at me.

"I'm sorry. I know you guys really hit it off."

"Or so it seemed."

"Or so it seemed."

"How do you know?" The denial was coming back in, the hope resurfacing.

"Well, I don't know for sure. They built a house together. They share food,

vacations...everything it would seem."

She's sunk again.

"How could I be so... No. I'm not doing that to myself. Thanks. Thanks for telling

me, Sara."

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A half an hour later, sitting in the courtyard, I see Julie leave for her date. She has

changed. She is wearing a very boring pair of long navy shorts, a short-sleeved white

polo shirt, and collar up close around the neck.

The next time I see her she ignores me.

I can't help thinking that we Trutch Street Women would never have let

something as trivial as a man come between us.

Lemonade and chips in the backyard. Claire is lying in the kiddy pool. Nettie and

Jean are sitting on the back steps of "Claire's house" under the wisteria. I'm on the lawn

on the shady side of the blanket. Alma, in a big straw hat, is working the garden. We are

discussing the subject of looks.

"My father used to tease me," says Nettie, "you know, all in fun because of my

skinny frame and big nose."

Claire jumps in, splashing some water in her direction: "Your nose is terrific,

regal, just right, and you are not skinny, you have a gorgeous body. I wish..."

"Right, Claire," Jean says from under the wisteria, "You've got the hourglass,

long-legged cheerleader body that every girl dreamed of having in high school."

"My boobs are too big and my hips are too small. I'm always fighting off ten

pounds. I'm the dud in my family - have you seen my sister?"

Nettie sighs: "You are perfect. And admit it you were on the squad, I was there."

Jean claps her hands. "I knew it!"

"I did all that stuff. Sure. In grade ten. But I couldn't live up to my gorgeous

younger sister. So I became a radical, wild, hippie chick - with Nettie."

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"I was already a hippie chick. I initiated you."

"Yeah, but I was a better hippie chick than you. I had that whole go with the flow

thing down pat. You were always the nerd turned hippie."

Nettie stands up fighting a bee away from her until she's onto the lawn near

Claire. "Fuck off! I was the one who embraced the ideology. I did acid in grade ten - you

didn't dare for a whole year. You faked it based on what I told you. You just liked the

free love with all the cut boys - and the wild clothes."

"Didn't I look cute in them?"

Claire winks at me.

"What about you, Sara? What were you like as a teenager?"

"I was pretty shutdown. It was always implied that I was the homely one in my

family because I am so pale and washed out."

Everyone gasps a sincere gasp, which is healing enough, but they go on.

"That hair," says Claire. "All you have to do when you go out is wear that hair.

And we all got a glimpse of your breasts at the festival."

Comically, I cross my arms over my chest.

"People kill for breasts like those."

There is a collective "Mmmhmm."

Jean says: "You look like a Celtic princess."

I learn that Jean, slim now, became a fat child after her parents divorced. Kids

were cruel to her and she learned the hard way never to judge anyone on the basis of

looks.

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Alma says her grandmother always told her she was beautiful and she never really

thinks about it one way or the other now. She figures she got that need met.

"Yeah," says Nettie, "I don't want to spend half my life thinking about whether or

not my butt looks okay in a pair of jeans. If I rate as a woman I want it to be because of

something more than my looks."

"Hear, hear," seconds Claire.

One of the kids is crying and we start to disperse, collecting cups and bowls.

"Hey," says Alma. "What's everybody doing tonight?"

"You mean," quips Claire, "besides doing the most important job on earth trapped

and without any real societal support?

"Yeah."

We get a babysitter. We get dressed up wacky in some crinolines and wigs of

Claire's, and we go out to Harpo's.

Our big crinolines hog space on the dance, but no one seems to mind as we amuse

the crowd. Alma and Nettie do a crazy jive. Jean, Claire and I dance free form in a circle.

It becomes pretty clear that Claire - even in her clownish costume still looks stunning.

And, although the men in the place might be laughing at the rest of us, it is clear that they

are not laughing at her. But we don't care. She doesn't belong to a man; she's ours.

Tim is leaving this morning having been placed by his school in a Mexican

family.

"Bye, Schweetheart," I say in what I hope is a Humphrey Bogart voice.

He looks uncomfortable until I shake his hand and tell him it was great to know

him. Then he smiles and gives me a big hug goodbye.

His neat orderly world is gone; I am free. I should have gotten rid of the old coot

years ago, I grin to myself.

But when night comes I am not so sure. The room is bigger with only me in it.

The door that I'd left ajar for fresh air I shut and bear the stuffiness for a sense of safety.

But I can't shut out the past.

Three o'clock in the morning there is a knock. Across the room I no longer care

that the frosted glass is beautiful; I wish I had an iron door with dead bolts. Behind the

glass is a shadow.

There is another pound on the door, making the shadow shiver with the

reverberation.

"Let me in, I want to see my daughter!"

He's drunk or stoned or both.

"Come back tomorrow and we'll talk. It's the middle of the night." I talk as slowly

as I am able.

"I want to see my daughter now!

"Harley," I try to reason with him though I know it's futile and tiptoe towards

Raven's room to check on her. "Remember what the social worker said? You've got to

make arrangements with me."

"Fuck you!"

His fist goes through the glass, shattering it everywhere. His face, the face I once

thought the most beautiful in the world, looks sinister and twisted in the frame of jagged

glass.

I realize I just screamed. Raven wakes up.

"Daddy?" she says, rattling her crib.

"You better leave. Now." It's Nettie's voice.

"Screw you, sister," Harley wobbles on the little porch.

"We've called the police."

"I brought my poems to read; I want to read my fucking poems to my fucking

daughter if that's okay with you."

"It's not okay; you're drunk."

"And you're ugly. But I'd still fuck you."

The police arrive.

Meanwhile I've grabbed Raven and hold her tight, facing her away from the

window through which I can see Harley with the two officers taking him down the stairs.

"Hey, listen to this will you: the world is like a god damn bell that rings in the

night and keeps everyone awake. Isn't that fucking perfect?"

"Yeah, yeah," says the officer in a deep baritone. "You're a poet."

"Bloody right. A better poet than that stuck up woman in there. Hey, I want to see

my daughter."

Harley is guided into the police car and driven away. In my heart I still want to

save him. I know it's only his pain that makes him crazy. But I can't save him. I've tried.

And never again will I try at the expense of myself - or Raven, who s awake, but very

quiet.

"You okay?"

"Nettie is followed by Claire and Jean, holding a sleeping Marta. Nettie takes

Raven from me. Jean places Marta down on my bed and gets the kettle on while Claire

sits with me.

"I'll be fine. Thanks for calling the police." Then I see the mess of frosted glass.

"Crap I've got a big hole in my door."

Jean finds the back of a blackboard in the kitchen and nails it over the hole.

"That'll do for now."

Nettie has Raven wrapped up and puts her across one shoulder. Jean hands her

Marta whom she holds on the other shoulder.

"I'll take them over to our place. So you can have a good session. We'll have a

baby party!" Nettie smiles at me as she goes out the door.

Raven, half asleep, waves bye-bye.

Jean gives me a cup of mint tea in the cup with the painted roses. The warmth

between my hands is comforting. She sits by my other side.

The telephone rings. Jean takes my cup.

It's Alma's deep voice: "Just wanted you to know I'm with you kiddo!

"Thanks Alma I'm fine." And just as I say fine the phone drops out of my hands

and I begin shaking violently.

"That's good," says Claire. "You're releasing the fear. Hold on to me."

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She hugs me to her and I cling to her as I shake, Jean looking lovingly into my

face. When the shaking subsides I start sobbing deeply, peeking out every so often to see

Jean still there for me. I notice I've got snot all over Claire's back and half-laugh, half-

cry.

"Don't worry about it, keep going."

But Jean runs and grabs some toilet paper anyway.

When the tears finally slow down for good, Claire says: "Try saying: 'Get out of

here or I'll kill you."

I start timidly, shakily in fact, as the terror comes up in full force again. My voice

constricts so that only a whisper of it comes out. My heart is tight too. Jean, instinctively,

puts her hand over it.

"You're safe now."

And the warmth from her hand opens my throat too as I try again.

"Get out of here or I'll kill you!"

"Fabulous," says Claire.

"That sounded really strong."

"How about," Claire asks, "saying it standing up?"

After many repetitions on my feet, I start stomping. An inner burning of strength

comes from the ground up into my legs, my body. I can hear how angry and fierce I

sound, a force to be reckoned with. Jean and Claire clap and hoot.

Claire sleeps beside me, saying I shouldn't be left alone. She leaves early the next

morning, after making me breakfast. I sweep my whole place clean. I phone around to

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find a replacement for the window. I phone the social worker about getting a restraining

order.

Julie is sitting in the courtyard; her eyes are red from crying. I go over and sit

beside her.

"You can stay in my room if you like," she says. "If you want to stay here longer;

I really don't mind. I'd enjoy the company."

Then the tears come.

"You were right. How could I be so? Why did he kiss me like that? Why did he

wop me? It was just so.. .so romantic."

"I know. I have no idea. Shit, eh?"

I am surprised that Julie leans right into my shoulder.

I suddenly forget everything about supporting, about allowing the person to figure

things out, about just listening and encouraging the feelings. I want her to stop crying

over a man. I want her to pull herself together. And I want to fix it for her. Like a

properly conditioned male, or a frustrated parent, I come up with a complete red herring,

a diversion to shut her down: "Want to go to Real del Catorce with me?"

It works; she stops crying and looks up into my face: "Where's that?"

We meet early morning. She has a cousin in San Miguel Allende so we decide

we'll stop there along the way so she can visit and I'll spend a night at the hostel.

When we get there, after sleeping most of the way, I take a cab straight to the

hostel even though the guidebook warns against staying there - too many young people

partying. How bad could it be for thirty pesos a night?

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"Communal is thirty-five pesos a night. The private room is forty-five. Both

include breakfast and any of the staple foods you need: rice, spaghetti etc. We usually

cook supper together. There was a big party last night and the big boss has banned all

alcohol for now. Should be a quiet night." He looks almost apologetic.

"Oh and you're expected to do a chore a day. It'll be assigned."

"Can I see the private room?"

"Sure."

He has a swagger. Probably a great salsa dancer. When he isn't hung over. I

follow him back outside and over to a little yellow building and up some stairs to a porch.

Inside, the space is dirty, but otherwise perfect. I have a small suite all to myself,

with its own private toilet shower and sink, bright windows and little living area outside

the big bed.

"Because it's dirty you can have it for forty pesos."

I pull out my tape recorder and listen to Sheryl Crow, using borrowed rags and a

broom and mop to clean the place thoroughly. I imagine I am cleaning out all my

negative fears to the words: "All I want to do is have some fun."

Then I shower, wash my hair, put the clean sheets on the bed, leaving the others

on a bundle on my porch and placing a clean pink blanket on top of the bed.

I crawl naked between the sheets; the sun spills lazily through the white drapes. I

run my fingers down my clean taut traveler's body. I touch myself in circles starting with

my belly, my waistline, and my breasts. I hug myself in the privacy and sunlight, so

happy to be alone. I let my hands slip down between my legs, gently bringing myself to

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the pulsing tingling high of an orgasm that spreads out to my whole being and, in the

afterglow, relaxes me. I fall asleep naked and alive.

Julie meets me at the bus, but without her pack.

"I'm sorry, but I'm going to stay here. My fiance..."

"You have a fiance?" I am trying to hold my anger in check. If she wasn't

committed to this trip I might have stayed longer in Guanajuato.

"I've been in Mexico, partly to look for a place to get married. I think San Miguel

is it. Isn't it a great place?"

I hadn't really noticed.

"But Michael... you were so heart-broken."

"Just my pride. I'm sorry this all must seem so weird to you."

It certainly does I want to say. Bitch I want to add. I guess it serves me right for

wanting to rescue her. From now on I'm taking care of number one.

"I just wanted some romance back in my life."

I see the bus coming.

"Romance - you're getting married!"

"To a man I've been with for six years. He's great and everything, but the sex is

sort of dull. I just wanted a thrill, you know, before FOREVER. I know. I'm bad. I'm a

flake. Please, don't catch this bus. There's one tomorrow. Stay. Please. Explore San

Miguel. Let me make you supper. My cousin's left today for a week. My fiance isn't

coming until tomorrow. Please let me do this for you, you've been so kind."

I shrug; I guess it really doesn't matter.

Her cousin has a collection of D.H. Lawrence.

I l l

"I know; it's fantastic. Read me something."

"What?"

"Pick one of the books and read to me while I cook. I love being read to, don't

you?"

I pull out Kangaroo.

"Good choice."

I open it randomly. As Julie chops purified veggies for the black bean soup I read

about Somer and how he takes three pages to say over and over that he's not sure he

wants to be mates with this bloke. After a strenuous argument with another man, he goes

into a deep philosophical depression and finds himself at home with Heriot, his wife, and

the cheery company of a young woman who has a crush on him. He tortures himself

about the reasons he does not act on this: Honour or Cowardice? After she leaves, he

takes off all his clothes and, in the dark, immerses himself in the sea. And Heriot, seeing

his little white body running by the window, goes out to give him a towel, and mentions

that she might have joined him if she'd known he was going for a swim. And then they

have sex. It's implied. Afterwards, Somers is content not to feel cozy with her.

We are hysterical.

"Aren't men weird?" Julie screams, chopping between her laughter.

It is hard to stay angry with her; she is so vulnerable and fluid. Maybe this is how

men feel around women.

We eat, and afterwards awkwardness sets in again.

"Here," I say clearing a space on the table. I crumple up an end of the tablecloth.

"I'm going to read your fortune in this tablecloth."

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She smiles, a narcissistic little child of a woman with a pixy face.

"Okay, I see. Mm. I see you with a baby within a year! I see you living in a

different city than where you are right now."

"Yeah, right. He will never leave his little cabin in Maine."

"Success. I see great success."

She laughs. "Let me now." She crumples up her end of the cloth.

"I see you with a man. He's got a big beard. I think he's older. You have this

crooked relationship, but very happy.

"What the hell do you mean crooked?"

The tears streaming down her face are not from hot peppers in the soup, but from

laughter.

"Well, look."

She points to the two human headed shapes and a crooked fold between them.

"As the resident psychic I interpret that to be crooked or funky, kinky, you know.

Oh, but, dear me. I don't think it lasts all that long. But at the end of the crooked line is

another man. He's the one."

"My partner?"

"Yes."

"Oh. And your books will be great successes."

"You just made that up."

She looks at me with an "of course this is all made up" look and I laugh from my

belly like a child.

"Nooo..." Julie draws it out, which keeps me laughing.

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"See. Here. A little book and a star beside it."

It's a stretchout I can see it.

I finish my beer. She has the bed and I have a couch that unfolds - both in the

same room. I am strangely moved by her changing in front of me, lifting her loose orange

top above her head, the dark areola of her nipples, the V-patch of her pubic hair.

We hug each other in the morning and I leave, a neighborhood dog yapping after

me.

Alone again.

As the bus drones on I realize I am tired of all these short-term meetings with

people. I think it's making me odd. Odder. I think about Julie again, it's almost like I

desired her. Yet, hours before that I despised her for her lack of morality, her flippancy. I

had no right to pass judgment or assume she should be like me. Me. I haven't had sex in

so long I'm practically a virgin again. If Julie is going to be stuck with mediocre sex for

the rest of her life and she wants to have a sexy fling - well maybe more power to her.

"God," I think out loud, "I need a life."

The bus driver looks at me quizzically through his rearview mirror.

I've switched to a smaller bus that can fit through the tunnel. The new driver puts

on Andean music and turns on twinkling dashboard lights as he takes me through the

long tunnel to the place beyond time.

I walk out into a landscape of stones, a few peddlers, a sky beginning to have that

glow of dusk, and the hills all around. The streets of Real Del Catorce are on a slant.

Everything here is made out of stones, the same colour as the hills. Human life melts into

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nature. No cars, only horses and donkeys. It's quiet. Like the quiet I haven't heard since I

was a child, climbing up into the Okanagan Hills. A young Mexican boy leads me to the

oldest hotel in Real: Hotel Abundancia. The town's gas lamps are lit and all the donkeys

with their bundles of sticks trot on home, led by small Mexican men in straw hats. The

boy and I saunter down a trail, surprised by small domestic horses and little pigs under

big leaves, tiny stone homes covered and blended with dust. I see in the distance a green

patch, which must be Catorce itself, peyote land, sacred and not accessible to the

uninvited.

I have tequila in front a huge stone fireplace. The young owners sit with me. She

is Mexican and he is Swiss. They tried to open a restaurant in Switzerland, but she

couldn't adapt to the rigid culture, she was homesick every day. So he compromised and

they bought this place. They've kept the history; decorated the grand hall with medieval

tools and weapons and paintings of the town as an avant-garde city, women in long silk

dresses and bustles. Real del Capture was a booming gold town in the sixteenth century.

There was even an opera house.

My room makes it possible to imagine such a time. It is a castle of a room, redone

with Mexican tiles and decorated with Oaxacan weaved rugs and alpaca furs. The half-

moon window is barred and through it the full moon casts its magic.

It is Raven I think of now. Her birth that full moon. I was on my haunches. The

midwives, the candles, I already knew her. I'd already dreamt her. Already a load had

been lightened. I saw the ancestors, her ancestors beside me. Birth after birth. I saw the

generations to come. I was connected to all the creatures of the world that cared for their

young.

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My parents came over to Vancouver five days after she was born, making their

way up the narrow staircase to find her awake in her little canvas chair. Mum burst into

tears and Dad said: "In all of history this has happened only once."

Harley never calls us again. He never phones - night or day. He never drops a

card in the mail for her birthdays. He never even phones my parents to ask how she is.

He certainly never sobers up for her.

She wakes up screaming at four in the morning for weeks. I check out all

possibilities: gas, colic, teething, I take her to the clinic. There is no other explanation.

At a year and a half she is in deep mourning. I pace with her in my arms, I sing to her. I

put on Van Morrison and dance with her. She misses her father and there is no consoling

her.

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CHAPTER SIX

The way to Barra de Barcos seems much longer than I remember. There are lots

of winding roads through mountains. The country gradually gets greener. Eventually,

when I close my eyes and open them again I see a wash of sage green mountains

everywhere. Though I know if one were to stop by the side of the road and really look,

there're a zillion different species of wild flowers and cacti, not to mention insects and

birds. I can make out the tall fence post or pipe organ cactus. Pipe organ. Perfect name

for them.

We call ourselves "The Women in Charge Group". We take Alma's new mini-van

she bought with the sale of her share of the herb farm. Nettie and Alma are going through

their radical phase; they're talking about separatism - women creating their own colonies

away from men. Alma's hair any shorter would have been a shaved head, but on her it

actually brings out the roundness of her First Nations cheeks and makes her look more

feminine, though none of us would dare to tell her so. Nettie is wearing a bright red scarf

and a leather jacket with double-headed axe embroidery glued onto the back. Even as a

radical, feminist dyke in leather Nettie still looks stylish. She is always in competition

with Claire, of course, who can't be beat with her bangles and her hand-designed

leggings.

We sing along with to a tape: / get to thinking our love's like a polished stone/

you give me a long drawn look/1 know pretty soon you 're going to leave our home/ and

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of course I mind/ Especially I'm thinking form my heart/ But life don't clickety-clackl

Down a straight line track/ It comes together and it comes apart.

"It's so sad," says Jean speaking for all of us.

We stop for pie in a mountain town where the sign says: "Stop Here For Pie,"

which we find funny as we tumble out of the van. Even funnier is the waitress telling us

that there is no pie. We had seen some cooling on racks as we came in. "Too hot still,"

she says. "We'll wait," says Claire. "Sorry. Those pies are taken already." Alma's eyes are

getting big and I am worried about an explosion from her.

"Just bring us a menu," Claire says.

As we sit there we see a couple come in and sit down. Within minutes they have

two triangles of pie on plates in front of them. The menus seem to be taking a long time

coming.

"Come on," says Alma getting up. Nettie nods.

"Ain't gonna get no pie here," Alma says with a dumb southern accent, conjuring

up movies of the Deep South and blacks being persecuted.

"Shouldn't we at least hold our ground?" asks Jean, a fighter under her gentle

demeanor. "You know, like Rosie riding the bus for civil rights and all."

"Naw," says Claire and Alma. "You gotta pick your fights. This one isn't going to

make the news. Believe me."

"At least we could leave with an attitude," pleads Jean.

"Sure," says Alma, putting on her butchiest John Wayne walk.

We follow her swagger out the screen door into a downpour.

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We climb in the van and Alma starts it up. As we begin to back out, there is a

clumping sound.

"Damn it."

We all scramble out again.

There is a distinct L slashed into the back right tire.

"Do you think...?"

"Of course," Alma snaps. "L for lesbian. Anyone here know how to change a

tire?"

"No."

"No."

"Not really."

"I thought I did, but now I don't."

"Christ."

"Well, Alma, one would think..."

"What 'cuz I'm a heavy duty dyke I should know how to change a tire?"

"Well, yeah." says Claire.

And we all double over in laughter, our bodies getting soaked with rain.

"Well, aren't we the Women in Charge Group. In charge of what, I'd like to

know?" Nettie's glasses are speckled with water and she sounds so much like everybody's

mother that we start laughing again.

The restaurant door slams loudly as if to say shut up.

"We need to get out of this creepy town," says Jean, "so let's figure this out."

"Better yet," says Claire, turning and running after a young man.

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"Sir, sir could you help us?"

"Oh, God," says Alma knocking her head against the van. "It's come to this."

The man is very obliging, offering to show us how, but ending up, because of the

rain and time, doing it for us. Claire holds an umbrella over him while Jean puts his suede

coat in the dry van.

We shower him with thanks. He grins a big First Nations grin and Alma melts too

and shakes his hand before handing him his coat.

We ride in silence for a while trying to digest what just happened.

I grab a sweater from the pile of clothes in the back. I make a finger puppet by

draping the sweater in loops over my fingers and re-enact the whole scene as a puppet

play: the group driving through the mountains, starting with the fateful sign. Their

laughter eggs me on, and it gets sillier, until puppet Alma drawls: "Ain't gonna get no pie

here!' By then we're in convulsions.

Jean kisses me on the cheek.

"Hey," says Alma, looking at us through the rear-view mirror, I thought you guys

were straight."

The Judy Chicago exhibit is worth the strange sojourn to get here. It is an

invitation to dine at a huge "dressed" table - forty-eight feet each side of its triangular

shape - the triangle, the symbol for a woman's "Yoni". Nettie practically dances around

the room reading all the banners about women's history on the white table clothes and on

the walls. Claire hovers over the textiles. The table is set with dinner plates glossed and

fired. Each plate has been designed individually to metaphorically represent thirty-nine

historical/mythical women from prehistory to current times. All the women are

represented in plates as fanciful cunts: Emily Dickenson's is all pink and frilly.

Theodora's is green and blue and pewter with touches of yellow in a mosaic bird shape as

if looking from underneath as it flies overhead. Virginia Woolf's fleshy pink folds are

centered with a pod of teardrop peas. Boudacia, Esabella de-Este, Isthar and on it goes.

On a "heroic scale traditionally reserved for men." Floor tiles hold the names of nine

hundred and ninety nine other important women figures. We walk over them like it is

sacred ground.

In Guadalajara I switch buses, stretching my legs in between, for another six-hour

trip. This time I opt for a seat with television viewing, regretting my decision

immediately. Three movies play; two involve Chuck Norris as a Spanish speaking action

hero. The universe is kind to me and lets me sleep. But the past won't let me go.

Three years go by. Three summers full of lemonade in the backyard where we sit

under the multi-coloured cloth diapers, dyed with natural dyes of course, under Claire's

direction, and now flown over our backyards like flags of defiance. In the backyards or

on rainy days at Nettie's and Alma's or Claire's big kitchen, we share stories about our

children, about our men - or our women, and expand our political awareness. We have

three glorious springs on Trutch Street a street that becomes, in spring, a procession of

cherry trees in full bloom, pink and ruffled. Three years of breakfasts out the last

Wednesday of every month, at our favourite place, Goodies. The kids have their own

table with crayons and paper placemats.

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Claire picks us up one Welfare Wednesday in a golden Cadillac she's borrowed

from her rich boyfriend. We are being our usual obnoxious, funny selves in Goodies, our

kids running back and forth from their table into our arms. The more coffee we drink, the

louder we are. And we are obviously irritating two businessmen at the table beside us.

One of them actually comes over to tell us we are a bunch of lazy welfare bums and why

don't we get jobs. Jean snaps at him: "We have jobs, Asshole. We're mothers." The other

guy yells over: "Too bad they didn't sterilize the lot of you at the get go." The waiter

looks at us sympathetically.

Goodies has a huge front window and, by luck, we have parked right out front.

Joyously, we pile into the golden Cadillac, making sure we wave and blow kisses at the

men as we drive off.

At Claire's boyfriend's apartment where we've been invited for the night while

he's away, the kids are asleep in the four bedrooms, and "Jim" has left us snacks and

videos to watch if we want to.

"Must be some job Jim's got," says Nettie picking up a blown glass sculpture.

"He's in real estate. Sometimes he's rich; sometimes he's not. Depends which

way the wind blows."

"I think he's rich."

Jean pipes up: "There's nothing wrong with having nice stuff, Nettie."

Nettie sits down on the plush white loveseat. "I'm just jealous. I have another five

years of student life, and then enormous student loans to pay off before I can even think

of buying nice things. And I hate that I want them. I really hoped the world would have

changed by now and greed and capitalism would have been long gone. There'd only be

shared wealth, or at least a guaranteed living income for everyone. Boy, growing up in

the sixties gave us a fucked up sense of reality."

Claire sighs: "But wasn't it fun? Wasn't it great to think we'd all be free of it by

now? No more slums or starvation, just love."

"Easy for you to say - you've got a boyfriend with a designer apartment!"

"You're gong to be just fine. In six or seven years, you'll be an independent

woman of means fighting for the underdog. A Doctor of Women's Studies. And I'll

probably be married and divorced from Jim - hey, maybe I'll get a good settlement!

Alma says, putting another log on the fire: "You better not depend on that. Don't

depend on men for anything and you'll be okay. That's my motto."

Jean, cross-legged on the ottoman, sticks her neck out and asks: "Alma and

Nettie, how did you become lesbians?"

Claire shrieks at her: "One doesn't become a lesbian!"

Alma joins Nettie on the loveseat; Nettie curls up under her arm.

Nettie says: "Well, in my case that's exactly what I did. A lot of lesbians make a

political decision to be with women only. Actually that would make a great dissertation. I

met Alma at a rally, thought she was sexy and took her home. But Alma has a much more

exciting coming out story."

"I bet there's a stunning squaw story in there," Claire adds, filling our wine

glasses with mango juice.

"There's got to be a better word than squaw," I say it quickly beating Jean who

says: "Yeah, one would think."

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Nettie pretends to scold us, wagging her finger: "Have you all forgotten

everything I passed onto you from Gynecology 101?"

Claire rephrases in order to reclaim any words that have been turned against us: "I

bet there is a stunning, awesome squaw warrior of the world story in there."

"That's better."

"Women!" says Jean. "Do you want to hear Alma's story?"

"Damn right."

Nettie smiles at Alma: "You heard Sara: Damn right."

Alma starts in without any fuss: "I met Vicky up in northern Saskatchewan. Vicky

knew about all the old ways: snowshoeing and trapping, and living in the bush. She lived

on her own in a cabin in Northern Saskatchewan and had only come into town for

supplies. She could have been a model and here she was hunting and trapping and living

like a hermit. In the store she was haggling like the best of them over flour and coffee

beans. I was having a cup of hot cocoa and there weren't many places to sit, so she sat

down beside me.

Jean is leaning forward: "And then?"

"And then we got to talking about this and that?

"This and that?" asks Nettie.

"Yeah, I dunno. All that stuff you Whities don't get.

"Hey," jokes Claire, "I represent that!"

"And then she asks if I want to come up north to her place and experience real

wilderness living for a few days."

"There's a line."

'It was a long time ago. I was between things. I was young and restless. So I said

'Sure.'"

"So," I ask, "how did it happen?"

"We'd been out snowshoeing. It's magical up there when you only hear nature

sounds. Silence so rich it fills your soul."

"Wow," it's Claire again. Nettie has gone quiet. "And I thought Sara was our

token poet."

"We can have more than one. As long as she's from a different ethnic

background."

"Sh..." says Jean, "Wymen."

"We were warming ourselves in front of the fire in this cabin full of fur rugs and

cushions. Only candlelight and firelight - a whole night of darkness outside the window.

There was coffee - with a little whiskey in it. We're alternating between talking and

comfortable silences. She leans over and starts kissing me. I was completely taken by

surprise. I stood up. I moved as far away from her as I could. She says in this sweet

voice, talking Cree, that she's sorry. She had assumed wrong. You can't tell these days.

We're friends right?"

"So," Jean asks, "how long did it take you to come around?"

"About two hours."

"I thought you were going to say five minutes."

"Felt like it."

"I bet. So... How?"

"I climbed into bed with her."

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We all scream and Claire says: "Alright Alma."

"I told her I was really unsure about all this but I really, really liked her and

wanted to give it a try."

"And?"

"I won't reveal the details, I'll just say it was the greatest thing I ever experienced

up until Nettie, of course." She holds Nettie closer.

"I mean the world made sense to me, you know. Here I was trying to love men

and it felt wrong."

"Yeah," says Claire, unable to resist, 'so?"

Everybody laughs.

"I mean in my body. I never got those thrills that build and looking back I always

was looking at women. I always had a kind of longing for them."

Jean has tears in her eyes: "How romantic. Did you stay together long?"

"Well. We wrote each other lots. We had a few visits after that but she was one of

those free spirits. And I was so young - eighteen - 1 wasn't really looking for a

relationship. I was eager, after that, to experiment. But Nettie is the only one who stole

my heart."

"I think," Nettie says slowly, "you gave it rather willingly."

"You betcha," says Alma kissing her full on the lips.

Alma wins my. heart when she offers to come over to talk with Raven who was

caught stealing a glittery pencil case at playcare.

126

Raven clams up with me about it. So I stay in the kitchen and let Alma deal. I

listen by the door.

Alma sense what it's about: "I notice you're not wearing your native bead

bracelet."

Raven is silent, but then suddenly speaks up.

"What's a squaw?"

"A squaw is just a female, a girl Indian. I'm a squaw. But some people who have

taken that word and made it into a mean word."

"Why?"

"Because they're afraid. Because they don't know much about our people, so they

made it a bad word."

"Julie called me a stupid squaw."

My heart drops. I am full of rage. I want to run in the room screaming, threatening

to find out Julie's last name, but I manage to hold myself back. I peek around the corner;

little Raven has tears flowing down her cheeks.

"That must have hurt."

She nods.

"It hurt bad, huh?"

She nods again and I am holding my heart.

"You know what? Being an Indian means you are part of a great people. Brave

warriors, very smart squaws - in fact there is no such thing as a stupid squaw. And you

know something else?"

Raven tears have stopped and she is waiting to hear, as am I.

"Whenever mean people hurt you, there is always love. You can find it here with

your mom and with me and with people who care about you. Okay? You have any

questions you come to us you beautiful, smart squaw. You understand?"

I take that as my cue and come in with sandwiches and juice. Raven eats as if

she's been starving. I squeeze Alma's hand.

Another time Nettie steps up. Because of holidays and an extra week in the month

most of us are down to nothing. Claire is too proud to ask her boyfriend for a handout.

And I am too ashamed to let my parents know I'm not coping as well as they had hoped. I

certainly haven't been blowing my money. In fact, I can make twenty dollars stretch a

whole week if I have to and often do. I've learned to buy in bulk: rolled oats, powdered

milk, and brown rice. The garden, of course helps. I always save a little money for fruit

as a treat. And a few snacks so we aren't deprived. I've also learned that all the white

stuff is cheap: pasta, sugar salt. I can make baked macaroni, boiled macaroni. Baked

potatoes, potato soup. Rice casserole, rice pudding, stir-fried rice.

But this week I don't think I'm going to make it. We'll have to eat rice and salt

for the long weekend and Raven will suffer. I'm sure I'm a terrible parent.

I get Raven ready so we can go to the corner store and ask for credit, beg for it if I

have to. I've done it before, but then it only sets me back for the next month and it's

difficult to get out of the cycle.

When I open my door I am confronted with a brown box. Raven has already

squatted down in her pink boots and is running her hands over it.

"Let Mummy see."

I open the flaps. Inside is a note: "My student loan can be stretched to help my

sisters. The Big Man is never going to know." Under the note are two loaves of bread, a

jar of peanut better, a carton of eggs, cans of soup, and packages of cheese, laundry soap,

and toilet paper. And a bottle of essential oil with another little note attached to it: "Give

us bread, but give us roses." I open the bottle and sniff. Geranium.

The descent to sea level. As my eyes open again I see lush groves of palm and

banana trees, cows grazing on low hills and, finally, the ocean sparkling in the dying

light. I do not trust that I know where Obregon, and my little cabin, is except from the

beach, so I decide not to get out but to wait until the familiar turn of road stretches

straight into Barra, from there I will walk the beach "home". My body aches from sitting

and the idea of exercising my limbs in familiar territory, even carrying my daypack and

satchel, is appealing.

The pelicans dip down, some of their finest fishing done at this hour of the day.

The sun, low and yellow, is perfectly centered in the middle of the bay. The waves crash

dramatically on the shore. I know where I am. Alone. Liberated.

The sun suddenly drops down, turning the sky and ocean pink in its wake.

Not ten minutes after it has set, darkness comes. I have forgotten that there is no

dusk in this part of the world. I feel unnerved. I remember the news of a woman raped on

this very beach. There were warnings to stay off it after dark. Suspicion remains that the

perpetrator was someone from the military - or a tourist. The darkness is deep and

difficult to make my way through. The ocean is an ongoing rage of blackness on my left,

occasionally broken by a flash of whitecaps.

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As I walk, I hear running behind me. I try to speed up. Should I drop my bags and

run as fast as I can? Before I even finish thinking this thought the man is at my right side.

He says a few words in Spanish. It is so dark I cannot see his face. I try to go around him,

but he intersperses, pointing at my bag.

"Please, please leave me alone."

I struggle to recall the line in the Lonely Planet mini dictionary. The lines to give

on a date if you are not interested: get lost, I don't like you, don't bother me.

His face is becoming a little clearer in the dark. He is smiling and still pointing to

my pack. He just wants my stuff. Well, he can have it. I drop my pack and he picks it up

giving me some running time, but he still comes after me. He wants the satchel too. I

hesitate for a moment remembering the poetry I had begun before letting the satchel slip

off my shoulder onto the sand. He picks that up too and sounds breathless now as he tries

to talk and run behind me: "Adonde va?" Where are you going?

"None of your business, get away," but I know he can't understand me and even

if he could.. .1 run faster and he runs faster too.

When I get to Fidel and Blanca's property he is still behind me. If he just wanted

my stuff he would have run away with it by now. And if he wanted to harm me - well,

that, too, would be done by now.

Blanca is in the kitchen and gives me a warm smile and hug. She knows the man

carrying my pack and bag, and they greet each other and shake hands. He shakes my

hand. I blurt out "Gracias" and he is gone.

"You tired?" Blanca asks in Spanish.

"Yes."

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She explains in broken English that my place will be ready tomorrow; tonight I

will be in a room. This is not what I was expecting, but I am back a few days early. I help

feed the littlest child, Fidel junior, part of his cantaloupe while Blanca cleans the room.

Three days go by and then they lead me to a suite at the back of the building

facing the road - not the sea - and tell me that this is my place now. I try to talk with

them, tell them this is not what I paid for, but they just smile and leave. They are such

"nice" people but I should never have paid in advance. To calm my nerves, I take one of

the little buses into Barra de Barcos.

I hop off and am confronted by a waving hand and a grin. The plump bearded guy

with the eastern American accent and slow way of talking, the one that had given me

unwanted advice by the telephone that day weeks ago, is sitting in the restaurant one

block up from Hotel Pacifico. He waves and smiles and gestures for me to "dog gone get

over here and tell me about your trip." The gesture makes me laugh out loud. Then I feel

a twinge of anger as if I'm being manipulated, trapped by his enthusiasm. After so much

anonymity and having to start at square one with people, the pretense of easy familiarity

is compelling. And I can't pretend I don't see him now.

The open cafe is the one that is like a large garage, shaded from the heat. Inside, it

is equipped with plastic white tables, dressed in white and pink linens and elegant

glasses. As I get closer I see he is sitting with a woman.

He puts his hand out. "I don't think I told you my name; it's Saul."

"Sara."

"Where have you been?"

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I sit down in the third chair. He introduces me to a lean faced woman with straight

ash blond hair, in her late forties.

They talk about the changes Barra has been through in the last few years.

"I won't be back," she says.

"Yes, you will."

They start arguing.

"See," Saul says to me, "there'd be no point in us getting married; we already

argue way too well." He laughs a hearty laugh.

The woman smiles and slaps him on the back as she gets up. There is no

chemistry between them. I realize that I know this instinctively.

"Coming to see me off at the bus station tomorrow?"

"What time?"

"Ten."

"I'll be there."

She pats him again and leaves.

He turns to me. He's too forward, I think again, too in my face, too comfortable,

irritatingly comfortable.

Too something else; I'm not sure if it's sleazy or smooth. He looks at every inch

of me without breaking eye contact for more than a second. He seems to delight in what

he sees. I know this, also instinctively. Maybe my senses have been heightened because

of my travels, or his presence brings this sensitivity out in me. I shake off that thought,

not wanting to give him any credit. He is still fat and annoying.

I tell him the predicament of my beach place.

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"You can't win," he says flatly and with conviction. "Never pay in advance with

Mexicans. Money is something they use expediently; their uncle needs it for repairs, a kid

in trouble needs bailing out and the money's gone. They don't think about the future the

way we do."

I want to argue, but am speechless. All I know is that I want the place I paid for.

He's telling me to give up, that's just the way it is. Be a victim. Accept. I refuse to accept

that crummy little suite in the back when this may be my once in a lifetime trip.

Saul says he's off to see his "land" today which is suppose to intrigue me, which it

sort of does. Visiting a place in Barra I haven't explored yet could offer a break to what

might shape up to be a long day. But my pride won't allow me to bite.

"And I've got some writing to do."

He looks a little disappointed for a few seconds then bounces back. "All right

then. I'm off." He grins and walks slowly, but deliberately pushing his bike alongside

him, in the direction of the "barrio," the far end of town where the poorer people live. I

note that the slowness with which he moves no longer bothers me. I wonder if he is right

about my situation.

Before I leave Barra to walk the beach to Obregon, I run into Maggie and Roger

who are back from Guadalajara and having a juice at the corner stand. Roger listens

intently to my dilemma. He gets me to say several times: "Give me my money back or I'll

shoot you!" which makes me laugh each time I say it. This is familiar. Empowering.

I thank both him and Maggie, who had been making encouraging sounds, and

march off along the beach. The sea is to my left, the landscape to my right changes from

homes to a barren arid stretch of land fenced in with post and barbed wire. Colourful

birds dart in and out of the brush. I walk past a small lagoon in which, allegedly, an

alligator lives. I am not afraid of it. I push on determined to win back what is rightfully

mine. I am soon close to the rise of concrete buildings and clumps of palm trees, the

beginning of Obregon. A horse stands steady and powerful in the foreground beneath a

coconut tree.

I pad to the back where Fidel is cooking a fish over an open grate. He is bare­

footed and bare-chested and has on bright green shorts. His weight seems just right for

him. He has a smooth round dark belly and sturdy well-shaped legs and arms. He is

plumpish and healthy. His skin glows. He smiles that dazzling relaxed smile that can

catch one off guard.

Perhaps that is why I burst into tears instead, saying: "It's not fair. What you've

done is not fair." I can feel the anger rising.

He looks puzzled.

I try to say what I need to say in Spanish and he tries to understand. "I trusted

you. I paid for that room in advance and that is it no different than stealing." Perhaps I've

gone too far, but I can't stop.

Fidel speaks slowly, so I can understand his Spanish: "But there is only you and

many other people want the accommodation too. What difference does it make?"

I am struggling with my Spanish, but determined: "One apartment is beside the

road and is small and ugly the other is beautiful and on the beach. I paid for the beautiful

one."

He does not understand my fascination with being right by the ocean. It is

common to him; he can see it any time.

"I'll see what I can do. Maybe I can move the new woman in the front."

"Yes, it is only fair."

I am practically choking on the tears.

He puts an arm around me. "We'll work it out." He kisses the top of my head.

Mexicans. They know how to go straight to the heart.

So what's his name, Saul, is wrong, I think.

While I wait for my duplex to come up, I write each day at sunset, trying to get to

my poetry. I write about how the gulls don't cry here like they do back home, how they

don't have that mournful screech, but a more quiet kind of "churple". Huge swarms of

birds migrate every so often across the waterfront. Pelicans dive straight down.

Prehistoric looking birds with dinosaur wings and white chests have two tails that flip

across each other from time to time though normally held in a V. I write about the ever-

present ocean and its constant recapitulation. I attempt to describe the palapa, the sound

of palm leaves rustling together when you swing in the hammock under them.

I write about Eli and Isabel, the couple next door who are madly in love. Eli fly

fishes and Isabel paints. Or sits on the beach under an umbrella watching Eli. Sometimes

they float off together in the hammock. When one of them drives off in their old beaten

black car, it is only a matter of time before he/she appears back again with groceries and

big kisses. I also write about how I am thinking about my own sex life - the absence of it.

I am walking down a street in Obregon thinking sex for me is over forever, when,

just around the corner I see a herd of bulls. I head for the sidewalk where a little girl

squishes into her mother. The bulls are inches away and one bull wants to get up onto the

135

sidewalk. The cowboy rides around and taps the bull with his rope while a little dog

keeps the others moving forward. The cowboy smiles at me.

I write about that. I write more about Eli and Isabel and how Eli has sold his

business and they have no idea where they are going to live or what they'll be doing when

they get back to Long Island, although Isabel's artwork does bring in a little money.

I make a note of all the people I've met in little cafes in Barra: an ex-con, ex-drug

dealer, abandoned by his girlfriend. He's not sure what his next step in life is going to be.

A nurse who left her job in Ontario and doesn't even know if she'll go back. Maybe, I

think, we could all form a band. We could call it "Caravan of Fools", or something

similar, and tour the U.S. singing sad Mexican songs.

I write about the Mexican men that hang around on the beach. They don't appear

to be peeping Toms or exhibitionists or even that voyeuristic, but one wonders what they

are doing and thinking and why they are so inert. I write about how it's such a relief when

the fishermen come out and set to work.

I even write about how my shoes have messages in them: "Dedicated to

tomorrow's dreams." I've never noticed that before and the back of my scribbler says:

"You've got to be who you've got to be."

And I collect a letter from Raven who is doing well and planning a "snow"

camping trip with her staff where they'll drive up into the mountains and make a snow

cave. She thinks it'll be cool. She says the weather in Victoria has been nothing but rain,

and it's getting everybody down. She misses me. I read it over a few times, the clear up

and down of her writing. The way she likes to write Mom instead of Mum. Her nice wide

spacing.

I sit in the hammock when Eh and Isabel are not in it. I rock myself back and

forth telling myself: "All is well."

I hear Claire's voice - raised. I look out the front window. Nettie is on the

sidewalk and Danny in a stroller. Claire is standing in front of it, getting in their way

every time Nettie tries to pass her. I run out the front door and down the steps and find

Jean and Alma there too watching from the edge of the grass.

"Stop it," Claire is yelling now, "You can't do this!"

I can see now that Nettie has dressed Danny up in a white dress, a bow in his hair

and is about to take him to a children's play day.

"Get out of my way, Claire."

She tries to push the stroller around Claire again who gets in the road. Frustrated,

Nettie stops and puts her hands on her hips and tries to use a calm voice.

"You're only upsetting Danny. Use your imagination. The world treats girl

children more softly, doesn't it, Sweetie? See he likes it. Professor Janet Starkey has two

boy children and she's been dressing them like this since they were born."

"She's a fanatic." Claire is trying to keep her voice controlled for Danny's sake.

"Don't do this. When the world finds out they are really boys, they'll be treated like hell.

And so will Danny.

"I don't believe he'll be any worse off. He'll have been socially validated by then,

he'll know how to handle it."

"Like a girl."

137

"Which you still use as a curse word." It's Nettie's voice that is getting loud now.

She moves away from Danny to make her point, trying to lower her voice again. "Can't

you see I'm fighting for my son's freedom, his right to grow up without the heavy slam

of male conditioning: Don't be delicate, don't be soft, don't cry or want or need. Be hard

and coarse and unmoved by hurts. Push on ahead even when you can't think anymore.

And by all means despise feminine traits in everyone else. By all means hate women

down deep and thank go every day that you're not one."

Claire counters: "I'm trying to protect Danny too. I want to protect Sean. But this

isn't the way, Nettie. It'll be worse - the shock of believing something that isn't true. The

betrayal when he finds out. The lie that the world is soft and good towards men. That

everything beautiful in the world belongs to him too. Protect him from the fact that men

have been used as fodder in all the wars, that men's lives are supposed to be dispensable.

If he doesn't wear the armor that comes from knowing that, he'll be teased, shamed,

bullied to death."

"Butt out!" Nettie threatens as she goes back to the stroller and pushes past Claire

who is standing now in tears.

Jean, Alma, and I hold hands. For the first time since we've been the team of the

Trutch Street Women we don't know what to do or who to support.

I am finally established in my gorgeous beachfront property outside my gorgeous

large room with kitchen and bedroom and own bathroom with shower. I'm on a big red

and black flannel sheet I've had with me for years. I'm up on the second level of sand.

The first level slants down to the sea where the ocean rolls and splashes and pulls sand

back with it. I've gotten out The Hound of the Baskervilles. just for fun, from the book

exchange. I close my eyes, listening to the sea as it breaks against the shore.

Days can go on forever here, broken up by meals and shopping for meals. I soon

realize eating out is probably just as cheap as eating in (if I eat at the right places). I

decide, to stop me from becoming too much of a hermit, I will eat at least one meal out a

day.

I am hot and the sea close. I see people not too far away and I am a good

swimmer I remind myself. I walk down to the water's edge and step in. The sand slips out

from under me at such a speed I nearly lose my balance. I have watched Fidel senior

fishing, standing for hours, while throwing his net again and again. So I try to relax as I

walk in, the large waves thumping against my thighs. I topple in. I rise up over a wave

and back down. Before I've even settled, another wave comes. I notice a clear patch out

farther and swim towards it - the waves not so rough there. I can ride them, swim

sideways, and float on top. It is gloriously warm and salty and blue, the blue of sky

touching it with just the hint of a puffy white cloud on the horizon. I am aware of all the

life forms that must live in such ideal conditions, the splendor of fish, the mosaic of plant

life. Out a little ways - dolphins and whales and, most likely, sharks.

As I get to shore I stand up in what I think is appropriately shallow water. A wave

hits me from behind. I spin under, disoriented as to which way is up. As I grapple to the

surface, another wave bangs me under. My head is ground into sand, if I don't get out

soon I'll be out of breath. I swim under water to what I hope is shore. Standing up, my

bathing suit top has been pulled down around my waist. I run to shore as another wave

hunts me down. I pull my top up quickly before collapsing on the blanket. Did anyone

139

see? I don't know which is worse: someone seeing me with my top stripped right off, or

no one seeing me at all. I could drown here and no one would know or care.

My face pressed into my blanket, I breathe in the smell of cotton and sand. I wait

for my heart beats to slow down. My fingers grab at the sand as I try to get a sense of

earth beneath me. I miss the loamy island soil of home.

I lift my shovel, worms dangle off the heavy lump of soil. Claire and I are helping

Alma with her new gardening business. We've got on our gumboots and plaid shirts,

which please Alma, no end. We've been hauling wheelbarrows full of weeds and rocks,

turning the soil. We're exhausted and demand a break.

"Sure. Sissies," teases Alma.

We sit on a stone wall in the backyard of someone's house in the Uplands.

"Did you ever do Ballet?" I ask of Claire.

"Mandatory lessons. My mother always says: "When in doubt, plie."

She stands up to demonstrate. As she does so she loses her balances and collapses,

Alma catches her before her head hits the ground.

"What's going on? What is it?"

Alma brings her back to sitting and then leans Claire's weight onto me.

"You hold her; I'll be right back. I watch Alma run towards the house.

Claire whispers into my shoulder: "I can't see. Everything is black." Then she

seems to go limp.

I push the hair off her face, run my dirty fingers over and over her forehead until

Alma returns. She has a sugar cube and places it in Claire's mouth.

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"Nettie told me. It's scary I know. But it passes. She's gone into a kind of coma.

She's had diabetes since she was a child. It's freaky, but it doesn't last that long. This

going blind thing is new. She's got to be more careful about her insulin levels. Her uncle

went blind at forty. Hey, see. She's coming round."

Claire lifts her head; her eyes have light in them again. She grabs my arm: "Don't

tell the others; they'll just worry. It's hard for people to understand; I mean I look normal

and everything."

Alma and I look at each other.

"Claire," Alma says, "get this through that thick skull of yours - you always look

way better than normal."

I fall asleep beneath the gentle rays of the late afternoon sun. When I awake I hear

muffled talking and happy laughter. I look around and see Eli and Isabel. They are sitting

together in the hammock under the palapa wrapped around each other talking quietly and

laughing. If one were in peril - say drowning - the other would help. They are always in

each other's arms or looking across at each other as if they wished they were. They are

both incredible to look at. She is young, sexy with a soft, oval face, long brown hair, and

perfect bikini-clad body. She has her easel out most days, painting from life or from

photos. She studied painting in Florence. He is built like a model, shoulder length dark

hair. He's from Long Island but played baseball for big bucks on the Swedish team. "You

know what the Swedish team is like," he laughs: "Well, I'm not that good but they sure

needed me. It was an adventure. It was fun." Between them there is this thing. Joy?

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Between them one wants to butt in as a naughty puppy would and lap up that special

thing. Love? But it is only for them, their secret world.

I am woken by a scream - this time from the backyard. And this time instead of

Nettie and Claire, it's Nettie and Alma.

"Alma, please, please listen to me."

I'm in my housecoat on the back porch.

Alma pushes Nettie away from her and runs in the dark to the garden where she

starts pulling out all the vegetables and throwing them at Nettie, dark hurling forms of

blackness.

"Alma I love you. I do. I'm just, I'm just not who I thought I was. I have to figure

out who I am before it's too late. I never meant to hurt you... I... please...

Alma stands up screaming: "Get out of my life forever, you Dirty, White, Lying

Bitch."

Alma collapses and Jean and I go running over to try to comfort her while Claire

holds Nettie who's sobbing and shaking.

Fidel has caught a giant sailfish. It is out on a table in front of the palapa. His

young daughter and son are helping clean off all the specks of slivery white meat

attached to the skeleton, while Fidel dissects the large steaks. Blanca watches and talks

with two of her friends laughing every now and then, sweetly, at Fidel junior's antics. He

carries a palm branch like a train behind him, hamming up the kingly role. "You must

come out fishing with me soon" says Fidel. "Usually the dolphins ride beside us."

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"I'd like that."

I want to tell him the loneliness he senses is not the kind of loneliness he could do

much about.

The day's catch seems to take up most of the afternoon and then there is a big

feast after; Fidel barbecues fish steaks and corn. Blanca has brought beer. We all sit in the

'tunnel' away from the sea. The two lovers have disappeared for the day. I wish I knew

where they have gone. I wonder what small things delight them today.

My days are very long. I put down The Hound of the Baskervilles and step

outside. My body, my bones have been aching a lot lately. I wonder if it is a reaction to

whatever they sprayed the room with - or the beaches - to keep away scorpions. Or is it

just from the stress of continually walking along a slanted beach with no arch support.

"We always wear good runners, even in the heat."

It's Maggie and Roger. They are dressed identically like the tourists one sees in

cartoons: Bermuda shorts, t-shirts, caps with peaks on them, and cameras around their

necks.

I like their company: they are kind to me, with no signs of pity. I go with them on

a boat past the monstrous pink hotel where they say Robert Kennedy Jr. used to stay.

Bush and Mafia tycoons have their hands in it. It is excessively over-built with tennis

courts, a huge golf course and long roadway with ceramic-based lampposts. We walk

beside the hotel on a special path - no one is allowed on the grounds but customers - to a

very long, very dangerous beach where some archery types are shooting targets.

On the way back, we walk through Barra. I m going to catch the bus to Obregon

to change before meeting them in Madrina for dinner. As we pass a little street cafe, a

familiar voice yells out a big hello. There he is, sitting again, his warped bicycle leaning

up against the side of the cafe.

"How are you?"

I give an awkward introduction to the Maggie and Roger, who cheerily tell him

what we've been up to and where they are going. I want them to be quiet.

"Oh, say, which restaurant are you going to?"

"Well," says Roger, "we don't really know. Any suggestions?"

Of course he'll have suggestions, I think meanly, he's Mr. Busybody. But part of

me is curious. He has come here year after year; he must know something of the town's

inner workings.

"There's a great little place along the square. See, if you're coming off the bus..."

He grabs a pen out of his pocket and draws a diagram on a napkin.

"They have the most wonderful pozole made from a tomato base and topped with

chopped tomatoes, lettuce, cabbage, radishes and peppers. The soup base is made with

homele, which is a type of corn. It is so filling and you can get it with chicken or beef or

just plain. But you have to get there early because the place is that popular."

Is he ever going to shut up? It is amusing the way he enjoys drawing out a tale.

He reminds me of an old storyteller out of some 1940s movie, when times were simpler,

entertainment cheap.

"The Mexicans love it and that's a good indication of just how good the food is

there." And we may never get there if he keeps talking in such a slow manner.

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"Say," he hesitates almost as if theatrically planned, "would you mind if I met you

there and had dinner with you? I love that place and haven't been there in a while."

Maggie and Roger heartily nod and agree. Trapped, I smile.

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CHAPTER SEVEN

We wait in a lineup. The place is alive with people, mostly Mexicans at white

painted wooden chairs and tables covered with bright woven cloths. An ample-sized

vibrant woman in a multicolored caftan and dark thick, layered braids, which make her

look more African than Mexican, cooks facing the crowd. Several young women run

behind her helping her.

Saul calls to us, peeking around people and between tables: "I've got us a spot, but

it's hard to save because everyone sits with everyone here." He laughs as if this is a big

joke.

The heat of the night is intensified with so many bodies in one room. An

enthusiastically doting family surrounds an elderly man dressed in a white suit. He smiles

over at us, a gaping tooth of a smile.

I am a little embarrassed for Saul. He has dressed himself up, I suspect, not for

Maggie and Roger. He has a carefully ironed powder blue short-sleeved Indian shirt with

needlework around the throat where he has a chain and a shark's tooth hanging into the

dip in the shirt. The shirt covers his stomach. He has clean pressed pale brown shorts on.

His thick grey-black hair is newly washed and fluffed so it's quite large, making his head

look even bigger. He has trimmed his beard. I wonder: does he think this is a date?

Nothing he says is very interesting and he seems to take so long to say it that I

feel exhausted at the end of the meal, which is incredible good, I'll give him that. I have

the thick corn soup, with properly washed lettuce, tomatoes sprinkled on top and a bottle

of Squirt. While we are eating, the square fills with vendors and musicians and

craftspeople - not to mention the normally huge crowds that mill about in the evening

making the little square the centre of the world, the centre of everything. Maggie, Roger,

Saul and I walk around the square once, taking in all the characters and the lovely wild

children. Saul says that was one of the first things he noticed when he travelled Mexico

on his motorcycle at nineteen, how natural and unafraid the children were, and how wild.

He calls them "greasy and wonderful" and laughs again.

He seems to be up to something. He certainly makes it clear that he is

unabashedly interested in me - without saying anything directly about it. I feel like being

cruel, telling him that I don't want anything to do with him so he can knock off the

routine. It does seem like a routine, practiced and smooth. Was it Addison who said:

"This smooth discourse and mild behavior oft conceals a traitor." It's good that I'm not

attracted to him. I wish I'd meet a nice guy I like who also has the balls to come on to

me. I sigh. So much water has gone down the Ganges. He's staring at me.

Maggie and Roger decide they want to go off by themselves to check out Mexican

stuff for Maggie's store. I want to go with them, cling to their legs like Raven used to

when I'd get an evening out. I want to scream like she did: "Don't leave me."

This man isn't about to leave me. He gestures that we sit on the concrete bench.

He's trying to read me and gives me more space than he seems to want to. I sit as far to

the end of the bench as I can. He grins.

"That little girl over there in the pink dress..." I look. She is around seven years

old and dressed in an outrageously frilly calf-length dress. Just like Raven was at that

age.

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"She reminds me of a girl I saw in my travels through rural Mexico. All the

females used to dress even more feminine than they do now... Here was this little girl all

in crinolines and lace, carrying a cow's head over her own... to take home for dinner."

That was interesting, though the telling seemed rehearsed; he paused at certain

points to peak interest. Nevertheless, the image is powerfully placed in my mind. I try to

dismiss its power by asking myself: how many times has he told this story?

I am trying to come across as cold and dismissive but Saul seems to interpret my

behavior as shy and demure. He is relentlessly happy with my company. I don't want him

to get the wrong idea.

Maggie and Roger return with new engraved leather belts. Saul suggests he and I

get together soon. I don't respond.

"Well, good-night," he smiles slowly, a big overbearing smile. Americans. He

shakes Maggie and Roger's hands. When I hold out mine he makes a small sound of

appreciation, almost like a purr, looks into my eyes as he takes my hand. His hand is

large and firm and warm. I run to catch up my friends.

"How do you let someone know you just aren't interested?"

"They're not interested in us; they're not going to listen to us," says Claire.

"We'll make them," insists Nettie.

"Who would do this?" Jean is crying. "This is our home."

"A big development company that completely wants to revamp the Trutch house

and make a modern complex. I phoned as soon as I got my eviction notice."

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"Thanks. Thanks, Nettie." It's Jean again working herself into anger. "They didn't

even have the guts to tell us in person. It's going to ruin the whole streetscape, not to

mention disrupt our entire lives. We should take it to the press."

We all agree to help - except for Claire. Jean offers to phone the radio station.

Nettie is going to the newspapers. Alma is going to try and get an interview on the local

television station. I am going to phone city hall.

"It's no use," says Claire. "We'll never win."

"Well," says Nettie, "that's the nature of political action. You never know. I'd

like to think I was at least leaning on the side of right."

"I don't know what you're talking about. In fact, that's all we ever do is talk."

Jean is pulling on the grass beside her, trying to contain her rage: "That's not true

Claire!"

"No. We also complain. A lot."

"Claire!"

"It's true. We talk about this great system we're going to create when we're too

snowed under by survival stuff - getting our kids food on the table to do much of

anything but talk. For a while there we couldn't band together to change anything but

another diaper. I think I'm just going to change myself- like Jim says. He's into the IS

Program. If we take one hundred percent responsibility for our lives that's when things

will change."

Nettie's face is turning all different shades, from red to almost purple; she's on

the top step of her house.

Claire. You cannot change the world with only personal work; you have to do

political work too. You know that. It's the whole basis of feminism. Of liberation. What

have we been doing all this time?

"Like I said - talking."

"Shut up Claire!" Jean looks like she might run over and hit Claire so Alma grabs

her hand just in case. "It not true either. We've gone to lots of rallies. We made the front

of the paper with the Take Back the Night Walk. We've written letters, picketed."

"Besides," Nettie tries to rescue Jean, "even if we'd done none of that, we've

changed people one person at a time by talking, by being proud to be single parents for

one thing."

"You're one to talk," says Claire. "You're climbing the educational ladder, what

could be more patriarchal than that?

"Tell that to Mary Daly. She got her PhD by fighting through an incredibly male

system. She writes books about it. She'd hardly brainwashed. At least I'm my own

person. What are you going to do? Marry this guy?"

"As a matter a fact I am. I won't be helping out with the house thing because I

have a wedding to plan. Oh yeah - and you're all invited."

We watch Claire storm out of the backyard.

"Holy flipping Christ," says Alma.

"What happened to Claire?" Jean still looks like a broken doll. "She used to be

such a fighter."

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"It's that IS stuff," says Nettie, sitting back down on the step, putting her face in

her hands. They actually use brainwashing techniques borrowed from the army. She's

giving up all her values for this redneck guy that has money. She's an idiot."

"Nettie," says Jean, "she's your best friend."

"Well, it's true. She cries and cries. And everyone comes running and then she

goes right back to the same behavior again. You wait. This guy will finally show his true

colours and she'll be devastated. You know she's had three abortions. Three. I went to

the hospital each time with her. She's so strong and so brave, blah, blah, blah, blah. She's

stupid."

"She saved my life once," I say.

"Mine too," says Jean.

"You too are so naive. You haven't been stung by the Claire Stinger yet

obviously."

"Oh, yes," says Alma. "The Claire Stinger. She apologizes great though, after she

rips your heart out."

"Anyway, Women," Nettie stands up again waving her eviction notice, "we've

got houses to save."

I've heard every seventh wave is the large one. I'm not sure when you start

counting. A large wave comes up, very different from the rest and almost reaches the

bottom of my blanket. I move my stuff back while counting. Sure enough the seventh

wave is biggest, reaching where the blanket once was.

I am invited out with a new couple that moved into the place at the back.

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We walk far along the beach, Marcus and Nicky drinking a beer along the way, to the end

of the bay where all the rich sailors park their boats. We walk up a plank and into a place

called "The Pelican". Apparently it is written about in all the guidebooks and is run by an

American couple and a Mexican cook.

"A pitcher of margaritas," orders Nicky in English.

My mouth drops. Marcus pipes up: "Don't worry, it's on me." I smile knowing I

cannot reveal my normal tea-totting self. I hear English everywhere. I look around at all

the rich, wrinkled white skins who spend all their time in the sun drinking alcohol. There

is no attempt at all to speak Spanish. The waiters all speak fluent English. The white

interior is decorated with paper streamers cut in strips like those across car sales lots.

I reach a point in my drinking where everything flattens out and takes on a certain

placid beauty. The sea laps away in its blueness. Boats gently rise and fall in their

stations. The little streamers flap about in the sea breezes. Marcus seems interesting as he

talks about exploring the Aztec ruins. He also knows about a secret nunnery that ran for

years outside of Pueblo. Nicky's pale hair and tanned skin look lovely against the tropical

background of sea and sky.

She turns her big blue eyes on me: "How are you feeling?"

"Real nice, like I'd like to stay this way," I say noticing Marcus is taking an

interest. "I don't feel really tipsy and drunk anymore, but just kind of nice."

"Yeah," says Marcus, "That's the state you want to retain."

Nicky nods.

"It's all a balancing act," he says, "from now on. You don't want to drink too much

because then you just get to a point of sickness and black out and you miss all the fun you

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might have had. No. You want to drink just enough so that you don't start to come down.

When you find that balance you can stay drunk for days, just that nice state."

We all raise our glasses in a toast to this state of alcoholic bliss. I am drinking

purified water to try to combat some of the poisonous effects of the alcohol. Marcus is

perturbed by this and orders a round of tequila and beers. When they arrive he says:

"Now sip on the beer, but when you find yourself coming down just a little, have a shot

of the tequila followed by a swig of beer."

I nod, thinking I would like to come down soon, but he keeps a close eye on me as

if he were training me for some important task, like a marathon. Nicky is his assistant

coach.

Marcus starts talking about the beggars he's met in his travels.

"Disgusting. You know what's the worst part is the children. They've been trained

to wear these victim faces. They begin at five or six in the morning, or even earlier. They

have these long pathetic faces their parents train them to wear.

"Maybe that's what poverty looks like," I suggest suppressing a rage.

"No. No. They're usually not starving."

"Would you rather they were?"

"Well, yeah, I guess it's the only justification for begging. Their parents could find

work to do, create something. If they weren't such victims, they'd figure out a clever way

to start their own business. There are certainly enough tourists down here - they could

figure out what to sell. I don't give them anything, ever. It's my policy. I don't want to

contribute to that victim look."

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Marcus orders ribs. Nicky can't decide and he snaps at her before he gets up to go

the bathroom.

She turns to me in tears.

"I don't know what's happened. He used to adore me. Now he treats me like shit."

Inside I am thinking: "Get over it kid. It's the course of things. Relationships

always start on a high. You see each other without patterns and then as you get closer

patterns appear. You have to do personal work, not just drink yourselves into a stupor. I'd

be sick of you too, if that's all we did." But instead I go through the motions of saying

things like: "You sure don't deserve to be treated like that" and "He's lucky to have you."

Nicky cries, which normally I would think a good thing, but with so much alcohol in her

system, I don't know what good it'll do her.

Finally, after watching them pick away at charred dead animals, I can go home.

They bicker all the way back, Nicky asking silly questions like: "Don't you love me

anymore?"

I am happy to be alone again. Tired from the alcohol, I have slept late into the

morning. My little kitchen is all to myself. I see a gecko on the wall by the flower shaped

openings high up. I bustle around making tea and toast and juice, with only my screen

door shut, looking out at the ocean. There was a tidal wave here once, after an

earthquake. Apparently the whole sea pulled back for miles and all the animals headed

for the hills, they knew what was coming.

I have just put Raven down for a nap and I am about to try and get some cleaning

done, when there is a knock at the door.

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It's Claire only different. She's wearing a scarf like an old Polish lady and a pair

of sunglasses. Her bottom lip is purple and gashed.

"Sorry," she says pushing past me; "I didn't know where else to go."

She takes off her off her scarf and sunglasses and throws them on my coffee table

as she sprawls out on my futon couch, looking up at the ceiling. Her right eye is so deeply

bruised it is black.

"Nettie's at school, besides I don't want to tell Nettie. Ever. And Alma-1

couldn't face Alma. She and Nettie were right. Jim can be a dangerous guy. He pulled me

out of the bathroom by my hair because he thought I'd been in there too long. I think he

would have pushed me down the stairs if I hadn't grabbed the railing. Oh God, Sean saw

the whole thing.

"Where's Sean, now?" I feel like I've left my body, the way I used to when I was

young to escape humiliation - or danger. I am afraid for Claire. I want to scream for her;

she seems, other than talking way too fast, strangely placid about everything.

"I took him to my mother's. The bitch. All she said was "Typical of you." She's

right though. It's so typical of me to keep sabotaging myself. I do spend way too much

time in the bathroom. How can I face Nettie and Alma? Oh God and Jean - sweet Jean.

Jean trusts me, you know that, to have a head on my shoulders - even when she disagrees

with me."

"Your mother's wrong. And all of us women love you; none of us are going to

abandon you."

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"I brushed you all off. With the whole eviction thing. God. Don't tell them

please. I'm going to make this work. He's doing IS. Maybe if we do a refresher course

together."

I'm astonished that she's even considering staying with this guy.

"Claire," I have to warn her, advise her. I sit on the edge of the coffee table, trying

to get her to look at me, "don't you think Counseling for the People or a therapist would

be better than some success training program?"

"I don't think any of this counseling business has done me any good whatsoever.

He certainly wouldn't go for any of that stuff. This is what is. I've created this one

hundred percent. I'm going to make it work."

"Claire..." I hesitate not sure how she's going to react. I feel like I'm dealing with

someone whose brain has been washed of all logic. "I think you need to get out of this

relationship."

Claire looks at me for the first time since she's come through my door. Her eyes

narrow.

"You are a nothing, you know that, I came to you thinking you of all people

wouldn't judge me. You're just a sponge for everybody else's thoughts."

"Claire!"

She's off the futon and walking towards me; I am unable to move my feet to back

away from her.

"When are you ever going to grow up? This is what the world is like. It just is, all

right." She's shouting into my face with her coffee breath like she's an army sergeant.

"It's slanted economically and politically towards men. We can't change it. Are you

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going to be a pathetic little single parent making money under the table, thinking she's

making some stand against the patriarchy - are you going to be that forever? I think you

need to end your relationship with victim hood and wake up to the world."

She grabs her scarf and sunglasses and slams the door behind her.

I realize I've just been stung by the Claire Stinger.

I'm busy packing. My parents have Raven for the last week so I can really

organize. I've found an okay apartment, not far from Trutch Street. Over the next few

weeks Claire tries to phone me; I know it's her, but I don't answer. She knocks at my

door, but I refuse to let her in. I think I don't ever want to see her again.

Alma shows up at my door and I open it before realizing Claire is with her.

I try to shut the door on both of them, but Alma's holding it open with her back.

"Hear us out."

"Us?"

"Me," says Claire her eye not quite healed but masked with a thick foundation.

"Hear me out."

"Why should I?"

"Because some day we'll be far apart. Some day one of us will be gone from this

earth before the other - me probably sooner."

"Especially if I kill you."

Alma laughs.

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"Yes," says Claire. "Good point." She looks at the floor and I watch her struggle

to compose herself. The point is - 1 just want you to know I was wrong, dead wrong. You

are incredibly valuable to me."

"I'm not a nothing?"

"No. Of course you're not a nothing. I know what buttons to push, that's all.

Remember I said I had a second sense about the wilderness - how I could be plunked

down anywhere and I would know what direction to go in? Well, it's like I have this part

of me - this evil part of me - that knows exactly how to hurt someone and when I'm hurt

or backed into a corner."

"So? This is supposed to make me like you again?"

"You saved me Sara. What you said. It made me think twice about marrying Jim;

I couldn't go ahead with it. I want to say thank you. And I am sorry. And without all my

women friends where would I be? Of course it all matters. Everything we're trying to do.

Just don't tell Nettie I said that."

Nicky and Marcus drop by and want to know if I want to come over for a beer.

Thanks but no thanks, I say.

"I've got writing and lots of chores I want to get done today."

After they leave, I go back to bed for a few hours to sleep off the rest of the

alcohol.

The day passes in a dream state. I fall asleep yet again on the beach.

I wake to Nicky approaching me shimmering on the horizon.

"Marcus is being awful to me again."

"Oh, dear."

"He just doesn't realize what a gem he has. I love him so much."

Why? I want to ask. He's an ass, a generous ass, but an ass.

"He used to, you know. He used to adore me. All the waiters at the Pelican have

known me for years because I used to come here all the time with my parents and they

think I deserve to be treated like a treasure."

"And you do. Of course you do."

I just want to be left alone with my book and the evil entomologist. Are all

couples this annoying? Marcus and Nicky had some lust between them once. It's over.

They should break up and get some individual therapy.

"What should I do?"

"I don't know? What's your bottom line?"

She begins to whimper.

"I think he's crossed it already. He almost hit me last night, over nothing."

Nothing. Being trapped for twenty-four hours with a woman who wants to be

adored all the time. That's not nothing.

"Oh, dear." I cannot think of what else to say, but that seems to do the trick.

"Can you spend a few days apart to think about what you want to get from this

relationship?"

"Oh. I think we just need to talk. Thanks."

And she wanders off. Why did she waste my time? I should talk. I am the

Mistress of wasting time.

We save the streetscape, but not our homes. Or those of the old men that live next

door. The men we barely noticed all these years have to move out of their homes too.

They've been there for decades in the old Trutch Manor that once belonged to the

aristocrat Joseph Trutch. With their raggedy old cats these men had probably been

plotting revolutions of their own. We decide to help them.

They come out silently as if both surprised and grief-struck that they haven't been

forgotten. We don't know if they are grateful for our help or not. We decide they are in

shock. We drive each of them to separate doors on separate streets and help them unload.

One has only a bed in a downtown shelter. Another - a basement room with a hotplate,

low ceilings, and a tiny window. One looks humiliated as he pounds on the door of his

son and daughter-in-law. By the end of the night they have all disappeared into separate

spaces, separated from each other by streets and address, buses and taxis, isolated by the

depth and breadth of the distance between them. And then we move ourselves.

Everyone else seemed to know what to do. Jean went into counseling and has her

own private practice on Saturna Island somewhere - I've never managed to get over

there, although she's come over to Victoria and dropped by a few times over the years.

We used to phone once a week; now it's more like once a month. Nettie followed her

plan and did her PhD, after which she got a job in Toronto - and a husband, a fellow

academic. We tell each other things - in Christmas cards. Usually I have to make things

sound better than they are. Nettie and Alma managed to share the parenting of Danny for

quite a number of years despite their falling out, and she still phones him all the time.

Alma completed a nursing program. She had to go back and do her grade 11 and 12

sciences. It took her a while but she's making good money now and she has a house with

her new partner, a gardener, so their back yard is pretty spectacular. I see Alma the most

of all of them.

Claire moved to Montreal. She wanted to learn French. And textiles. She wanted

to travel too and you can pretty much go anywhere from there. I don't know where she

got her money - probably gifts from Ann - but she ended up in Italy, and the French

Riviera. Morocco. Tunisia. In Turkey they confiscated her insulin bottles, thinking she

was smuggling in drugs.

She'd come home to her mum's during the holidays and she'd always make a

point of seeing me. She never pressured me to tell her anything. We'd sit in Ann's parlor

and drink tea. Some afternoons we'd draw the drapes and watch Detective Clouseau

movies. Her eyes were getting bad.

When she was back in Montreal I would get the occasional crazy letter from her.

The wildest: "Guess what? I'm married." In her wedding photos (a private affair) she's

wearing a nineteen twenties fringed, knee-length, white dress. Her hair is long enough to

be in a French roll. Her husband, a Somali, is in a golden caftan. A marriage of

convenience: she needed someone to keep an eye on her, and he needed his papers. He

got what he needed. And then the marriage became inconvenient for him.

An hour has gone by, I can pretty much guess the time by the sun now. Nicky and

Marcus are walking up the beach towards me. They must have talked. I start to hunch; I

want to hide. But I pull myself up to wave and smile. They are going to the Pelican again

tonight, would I like to go with them?

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" "No, I'm a little under the weather," I say so they won't take offense.

After a late siesta under the sun, I decide to walk to Barra to check my mail; there

would still be time to get back before sunset.

I plod along the lopsided beach with its coarse yellow sand clutching at my feet

with each step. This sand walking must be building stamina, and muscles, particularly in

the calves. The ocean continues to hurl itself against the shore and I no longer find it a

comforting sound. To be honest, my soul seems shaken to the core with each thud of

wave as if it were saying: "You'll be dead a long, long time. When will you have the

courage to live the life you want to live?" And sometimes I hear Claire's voice inside the

sea reminding me to enjoy the moments while I still have them.

Claire, in her Montreal apartment, cooking her brown rice late at night. Probably

caught up in one of her favorite activities: reading or making fabric art. When she turns

on the stove, the long sleeve of her hippie dress catches on fire. Maybe already, her

system begins to shut down. With her whole sleeve on fire and her blearing

consciousness, some part of Claire remembers that old adage "Stop, drop, and roll" for

she gets herself into the next room and rolls herself up in the Moroccan carpet she bought

on one of her risk-taking adventures. Her neighbours find her dying, breathless.

Apparently she whispered: "Let me go."

And the sea echoes it back: "Let her go."

A fair-headed man khaki shirt and shorts and Tilley like hat, is sitting on the

beach. I noticed him in the grocery store the other day and thought he looked interesting.

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He says "Hello" twice. He is not as attractive as I had thought. He has a kind of goofy

expression on his face, he is bare-chested and a roll of flab hangs over his shorts.

"I'm going to have a toke and watch the sunset. Join me?"

"No, no thanks."

I hate toking. I don't ever want to toke again.

But I sit beside him so as not to be rude.

"I'm from Chicago. How about you?"

"Victoria."

"British Columbia." I always have to add with Americans who sometimes even

looked dazed at that, as he still does.

"Canada."

"Oh. Oh, yes. Which part?"

"The west coast."

"Near Vancouver?"

"Yes, near Vancouver."

"Oh, I met a guy from Vancouver. Ed. Ed Clark. Know him?"

"No. No, I don't."

"Nice fellow. I work for the railroad. I have a month off. My ex- wife and kids are

coming in two weeks."

The way he emphasizes ex makes me suspicious. Is she really an ex? Or does he

just want to get laid before she arrives. By anybody. Had his wife deserted him a while

ago and did he want to show her what a great time he could have without her? Would he

tell his "fill-in" which he's hoping could be me: "Whoops, my wife and I have made up

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again. Sorry." His personality makes his body more repulsive to me. It is flabby and

unkempt and he lets his belly hang over his belt instead of covering it up.

"What do you do?"

"I'm a writer."

"Oh. Really? Well. Well."

He doesn't know how to respond to this.

"Published anything?"

This question always bugs me. A writer is a writer whether he/she has published

or not.

"Yes. Poems mostly. I have a book of poems published."

"I just finished reading Stephen King's The Stand. Boy that's a scary book. Scared

the be Jesus out of me."

I nod and smile as I get up.

"Well, listen you make sure you give me the name of that book of yours before

you leave town. I'm nearly always here at this spot at sunset."

I make a mental note of that.

It is a relief to get to Barra de Barcos. The pretty town. The pink wall. The short

steps up to the main drag.

On the corner, the ice-cream cart draws me over. I buy a Popsicle. The hot air is

like the Okanagan, my childhood full of heat and fruit and feet in flip-flops.

I turn to go check my mail and Saul is walking towards me. He has spotted me

before I can pretend to not notice. He is pushing his ratty old bike and waving at me.

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After Mr. Chicago, it is nice to see that this hefty man is dressed in a way that

disguises and flatters his good points rather than letting it all hang out with no discretion.

He wears long neat shirts that flow over his belly and draw attention instead to his legs,

which are a little womanish in their shapeliness. I also feel happy at seeing him, which

surprises me. He seems delighted to find me here. Looking to be laid, perhaps.

"How are you?" he asks grinning from ear to ear.

"Good. Good and you?"

"I leave in three days, so I'm a little sad. It's always too short. I've been doing this

for fifteen years and it never gets easy."

There is a pause. He looks at me. Really looks.

"Would you do me the honour of having dinner with me tonight or tomorrow

night?"

I hesitate. His polite language is refreshing. His lack of urgency restful. I am

starving and down to about twenty pesos a day for food, which is entirely possible with

avocado sandwiches, beans and rice. But tonight I could have a real meal. And, if I go out

with him tonight I could avoid seeing the Chicago guy on my way back home. I'd take

the bus later. He is smooth, but smooth is better than crass. He is good with words, which

might mean he's manipulative, but it just might mean he is intelligent too. He has been

friendly to me for a long time now, even though he knew early on there was no hope in

hell of getting me to bed. Maybe he just truly wanted my company. He was honest about

leaving soon.

"Well. Okay. Tonight could work. I'll have to go as is because I don't want to go

back to Obregon to change."

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He hasn't expected a yes, or at least not tonight. He looks openly nervous, and

happy all at once.

"I was just going to check my mail," I say feeling scared, hoping he'll go away

now, wishing I could just check my mail and go back to my bungalow and hide.

"Great. I'll put my bike away and grab my wallet and meet you back here in a half

hour."

But he doesn't rush off as I thought he would. He lingers, as if absorbing me a

moment, and then walks slowly over to his bike.

What have I done?

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CHAPTER EIGHT

He is waiting, leaning against the ice cream counter, a big smile on his face, under

his suave straw hat. He's changed. He has on pressed, gray shorts, and another Indian

shirt, this one white, popular in hippie days. His dark tan shows up strongly against the

lighter shades of his clothes.

We walk, just before sunset, down Avenue L. where there is a procession of

beautiful people heading out for cocktails and dinner. Roger and Maggie are ambling

amongst them and Maggie sidles up beside me.

"He looks very interesting," Maggie whispers.

Roger has made a solo trip south to Chiapas and Mexico City, while Maggie has

stayed in Guadalajara, sick as a dog, with friends. On his way he lost his handmade

pouch with his favourite crystals and Sufi inscriptions. Almost two weeks later on a bus,

Roger sat beside a man who showed him what he had found - a small, handmade pouch.

Before he opened it Roger described in detail what was inside. The man handed it over to

him willingly.

"Just coincidence?" Roger leaves with that rhetorical question. I wonder if Saul

and I have been thrown together for a reason. I shake off the foolish notion; I'm not sure I

even like him.

The sun is low on the horizon and makes everyone look a little beautiful. He

turns, the sun flatters his tan, brings out the silver in his black and gray beard and his

thick hair that pokes out in waves beneath his hat. He's probably about forty-eight/forty-

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nine. He might have been gorgeous about ten years ago. I look for flaws. There is

sharpness to his thick eyebrows, a tinge of cruelty perhaps. In a few years he'll be jowly.

We have the sixties in common; he must have lived through them as a late teen, early

adult. My formative years. Maggie's words are in my head.

When he introduces me to people he stands a little behind giving me centre stage.

He introduces me to the owner of "the Sunset", an older Mexican man who sits outside in

the street on a lawn chair. He gives my hand a strong shake.

I am not dressed for the occasion; my plain two-piece bathing suit is under my

shorts and shirt. Just as well, I didn't want to give Saul the wrong idea. This was just

dinner.

We're in the Sunset. Bar. Peanuts and two beers each are placed on our table; it is

happy hour. I notice him looking at me again as I look out at the glowing sunlight over

the blue sea. I can feel him looking at me with not so much a longing as an appreciation

for the fact that I'm sitting there at all, that I am a bounty myself. When I look right at

him he is more discreet, yet more sexual, catching quick glimpses of my breasts, my legs,

my face as if I were as incredible a scene as the ocean itself. And he smiles - a huge

smile of gratitude.

I'm not sure what to do with this attention

A woman sits down a few tables away. She has long dark hair and lots of bangles.

She reminds me of Claire.

I tell Saul the woman reminds me of a friend of mine who died. Then I ask:

"What do you think happens to people after they die?"

"I don't know yet, he says casually. "It's just our first date. Ask me again on our

second one."

He laughs, his face crinkling up. He seems to have no shame or inhibitions. I

can't help but laugh with him. He lifts the beer to his lips.

He's not a guzzler. And this pleases me.

"I have a friend, Danny, well the son of a friend of mine," I start babbling again

when there is more quiet admiration going on, "an actor who came down to Mexico to a

beach near Oaxaca. I believe it was in Puerto Escondido. Anyway, he was on an empty

beach, lying in the sun when he was robbed at gunpoint. He was afraid for his life and

then and there he decided if he lived he'd only do what he really wanted to do with his

life. When he came back to Canada, he opened his own theatre company."

"That's funny," Saul says without missing a beat. "I've been held up three times at

gun point and I've never had the urge to start a theatre company."

It is. funny. I start to banter with him: "So is this your idea of taking a woman out

to dinner: peanuts and the beer?"

He guffaws, shaking his head: "No. No." He is aghast, lifting his thick hands open

at heart level in a stop pose. "Come on. Let's go."

I have not drunk all of my second beer; I'd better stay in control.

He orders a paper cup, pours my beer into it and we get up to leave. As we walk

outside he leans the cup my way and I shake my head. He takes a sip. We stroll past the

pink church across from Sylvester's Bar.

"The minister and Sylvester are brothers. They used to fight constantly about their

different lifestyles. But they're okay with each other now."

He stops to introduce me to Sylvester, an older black man who refuses to speak a

word of English. "You visit our country, you speak our language," he says in Spanish, or

so Saul tells me. We pass the local pharmacy where the local Pharmacia of forty years

sits out on a chair.

"Saulito," she rises and gives him a big hug.

"Hmmm," she says looking at me at arms length before taking my hand and

pulling me to her for a hug.

"Mucho Gusto."

We float down the street.

"She was the only medical person in town here for years. Delivered just about

every Mexican that lives here. Years ago she saved," he hesitates for a moment, looking

off to the left as if picturing the event in his mind. Or maybe he is weighing what he says,

"a friend of mine's baby from possible death. Caught an awful tropical virus."

We seem to be getting further away from "downtown", and on to more residential

streets. A few blocks from the lagoon we turn left. We walk without his bicycle, which

has felt, now I notice in its absence, like a chaperone. Along the way we meet Tequila

Tom: gray-haired bearded, short. He is the owner of the book exchange: Tequila Tom's

Text Trade. I have darted in here anonymously many times. I never saw Tom, or didn't

invite myself to wander into the back where Saul does to find Tom playing a game of

solitaire at his kitchen table, a bottle of tequila in front of him.

Saul introduces me, proudly announcing my name and how I'd just come back

from an adventure. Tom takes my hand.

"Enchanting." He then turns to Saul. "She's lovely."

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There is a stretch of dirt road, houses with thatched roofs, dogs sleeping under

laundry strung across trees no larger than big house plants. Saul beams at me. His

oversized American smile is sort of nice. I feel pretty.

I've been taken into the Mexican part of town. I have only skimmed the surface of

Barra, scurrying in to grab a quick meal at a sidewalk cafe or food at the closest grocer.

We come to a corner with a blue building, dark on the bottom and lighter, almost

white, on the top. Plastic tables are set up outside with woven blue tablecloths. Through

screen windows and dim lighting I can see mismatched wooden high back chairs looking

as if they were just carried out from a living room. Women are working the stoves at the

back.

"Inside? Outside?"

I turn. The moon hovers over a thatched roof across the street.

"Outside."

He seems pleased with my decision and we pick a table on the corner side so we

can see both the moon and the goings on inside, having the whole place to ourselves. The

moonlight hits directly on the chairs and Saul pulls one out for me.

Through the screen door, behind Saul's right shoulder, I watch the three women

cooking over a frying stove. One plumpish young woman with beautiful olive skin and

short gathered sleeves of a green blouse tucked under a navy apron comes out to serve us.

"Quiseramos... ah" Saul consults with me "You don't eat meat do you?

"No." I like that he has remembered that.

He orders quesadillas and we wait. It feels oddly comfortable to be with him. The

moon has risen a little even in the last few minutes. An occasional old beat up car ambles

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down the street. The cars are full of families, a father driving, one or two kids standing up

between mother and dad and several more youngsters in the back seat.

This ease between us makes me unnerved again.

I blurt out that I had spent an evening with a younger couple, how Marcus'

philosophy about the poor was still bothering me.

"He thinks one should not feed or give to the beggars because it might encourage

them to beg."

Saul laughs at Marcus' preposterous idea.

"Oh - and instead he's proposing we should encourage them all to go home and

slit their own throats," he laughs again. He laughs a lot. Unpretentiously. Fully. Like he

doesn't care who hears him or what anyone thinks of him. It's kind of refreshing after the

timidity, I think, of most Canadian men. He doesn't hesitate to have an opinion. An

intelligent opinion.

The quesadillas arrive. The waitress gives us two sauces, a green one and a red

one, avocados in a dish with baked onions. Three quesadillas to a plate. And hibiscus

flower juice. Sweet and red. The moon now sits right on top of the thatched home.

Children appear and disappear into that home. They seem to run freely without fear or

restrictions

He's from New York. Thus the accent. All his life he's been a New Yorker. Lived

in Brooklyn as a child and Manhattan the rest of his years.

"I also have a little trailer in Maine," he says, "where I spend my summers."

"How do you maintain yourself?"

He takes a deep breath as if he's told this tale many times before and is a little

reluctant to embark on it again. "I work seasonally, depending on supplies, selling

Mexican glass boxes at a major flea market in New York. Mostly just before Christmas. I

also have a little pension from an injury when I worked for the New York City Fire

Department. I'll tell you about that some time. The flea market money gets me here every

year and adds to my monthly income. It's not a real middle class life, but it gives me

freedom. The apartment is in Manhattan I bought as part of a co-op. It's priceless now.

And I've thirty acres in Central Maine.

"Thirty acres?"

"Thirty acres."

"You see this friend and I took our student loans."

"You were a student?"

"Well, kind of. I studied psychology at the college but I never finished my degree.

I was itching to travel. When I was nineteen, a friend and I took our student loans and

motor biked all through Mexico. At San Miguel Allende we bought a stack of glass

ornaments and an old van and came back to New York to see if we could sell them. The

first year, at the New York Flea market, we made over thirty thousand dollars - each. I

wrote a check for my student loan and then used the rest to buy the apartment and the

remaining nine thousand on the land. Best nine thousand dollars I ever spent.

"Nine thousand dollars for thirty acres!"

"That's right. Beautiful country. Hasn't changed much since then. And then I

bought that little square of a lot here in Mexico in case the crunch comes and I need

somewhere to hide from the government. And there's Mexico itself, I get to be here three

or four months out of the year and it saves me money in the long run. Not bad for a

meager income, huh? I've been lucky. The business thing is slacking off though. I haven't

had to buy new supplies for three years now. Usually I go to San Miguel Allende every

year to stock up. It's been slow. I'm getting a bit tired of it anyway."

His large fingers wrap graciously around the quesadilla and he holds it to his

mouth like it's a precious thing. I follow his lead using my fingers and taking small bites

of the best-tasting quesadillas in Mexico.

His lips are fairly large like his voice, like his opinions; still, something in the

way he's looking at me, playing me just right makes me uneasy.

As we share one quesadilla: "I don't know how to halve it."

"Just bite it," I say catching my opportunity to be the comfortable one, which

could also be his intention. We eat the same food from his mouth to mine, like old lovers.

I don't know this man. A few hours ago he was an irritant. My walls are coming

down too fast. Claire would say it is a sure sign that some old childhood distress is here.

That some unfilled need is surfacing. That I should counsel about it. Stay clear. She was

one to talk. I'm at the edge of something great or something dangerous I don't know

which. I have those fluttery feelings, that tingle in the belly. And whom would I counsel

with anyway? I've had two beers. I need to be on guard. I don't want to be on guard. I

wonder why I'm so uptight? Of course I know why. Claire could be right. The last time I

was in love I ended up with an emotionally abusive man, pregnant and on welfare.

He's looking at me again and it's hard not to throw caution to the wind.

As if reading my mind he smiles his wide smile and says: "Should we go out

dancing?"

And then he laughs with a glee so familiar to me, giving a sense of belonging

together, of ease.

I want to say yes, but instead: "I have to catch the bus by ten."

He looks, for a brief second, like I've just smacked him across the face, his eyes

pull in. Then his face unwrinkles and he composes himself.

I have heard rumours about taxicabs in Mexico at night - long stretches on the

dark road. I've also heard that the cabs don't run here past midnight. I'm worried I'll lose

track of time. Then I would be at Saul's mercy. Dancing sounds fun but I haven't decided

if I want to spend the night with this man or not. One date. Too fast. The last bus to

Obregon is at ten.

I want him to offer me options, to suggest he'd ride home in a cab with me. And

then take the cab back to Barra by himself. Or that he'd get a few people together, and

they'd walk me back along the beach. I want there to be options.

He offers none. He still seems stunned walking beside me to the bus stop. But

after all, I'd only said yes to dinner.

He mentions Hemingway and Love in the Afternoon, and how great that novel is

because it is about two middle-aged people who fall in love. He speaks to both to my

literary sensibilities and this longing to be a middle-aged woman in a loving relationship.

Even if he is playing me, that is flattering in itself - that he would put so much energy in

enticing me to move towards him. I could change my mind. He just needed to give me

options. Pursue me more. Beg me to stay.

175

I am intrigued now by the Hemingway story but don't want to be. Wasn't

Hemingway an ass when it came to women? I fear Saul's used that line before anyway. I

think I've made the right decision to go home early.

On the way to the bus stop he meets a young couple. She's blue-eyed, all

American, and so is her date.

"Hello! You're back again! Welcome."

Saul then stands very close to her as he pulls an eyelash off her cheek. She seems

not at all uncomfortable with his closeness, as if he's known her before. This woman is

far too young, twenty something. Her boyfriend looks as uncomfortable as I feel and, at

his urgings, the couple moves on. Perhaps Saul trying to tell me that he's had young

women before. Or maybe he is just drunk and being friendly with everyone.

At the bus stop an older woman, Icelandic looking, gives Saul a long hug.

"Where have you been?" he asks her.

"Oh, I've been dreadfully sick for about three weeks."

He introduces me to his "dear friend" Marilyn, and encourages me to go with her.

She'll help me get off at the right stop. He looks at me in a fatherly way as I wait to get on

the bus with Marilyn.

"Write to me," he says. "My address, in case I don't see you tomorrow...Have you

got a pen?" The little open-air rickety bus is loading. "Ask Marilyn to give it to you.

Write to me, okay?" I feel all stirred up as I sit beside her.

Marilyn is nice. I want to know who she is in relation to Saul. I wonder if Saul

and she are just good friends or if they also fuck.

"He's really got a good mind," Marilyn says, writing down his address and

passing it merrily over to me.

"Yes," I realize I want more of that mind, more of his quick jokes, his big

intelligent, understanding of literature and oppression. He's sexy as hell.

Why the fuck was I going home?

The little bus does its spin through town, down the main street, a block towards

the lagoon, and back up a smaller street, towards Hotel Pacifico and along that street

towards the bus station again. As it turns the corner by the Hotel, which I am looking at,

Marilyn taps my arm, smiles and points.

It's Saul. Posing for us. He's lying on his side on the low concrete wall. He's like

Burt Reynolds on a bear rug. Relaxed and inviting, grinning and waving. I want more

than anything to get off the bus. One night of great sex. How bad could it be? I stand up

involuntarily and wave back. I remember as a school kid, on the bus, seeing my mom in

the old ford at a stop sign. I stood up and said very loudly "There's my mom". Everyone

stared at me. I felt ridiculous. I feel ridiculous. I can't think of a way to get off the bus and

still save face. I sit back down. I smile inside at his outrageousness. Marilyn hands me his

address: New York, New York. I love his accent.

II

In bed I am restless and full of regret. I toss and turn like the sea. I touch myself

and then it feels too pitiful in contrast with being touched by an attentive man. So I stop

and cry instead. One night. I could have lost my seven-year "virginity" in Mexico. I could

have gone dancing with this man who knew how to be sexy, who knew the romance of

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things like food and conversation, who is left-wing and proud of it, not a flake. I could

have had a night to remember. Why was it so important whether it led to a relationship or

not? Celibacy certainly wouldn't.

In the morning I am still stirred up, restless. I sit out on the patio. The sea is

beginning to grate on my nerves. I don't know how to remedy this sudden longing for

Saul. I'd like to get to know him better. He is still going to be around for another night.

But we've already said good-bye. He told me to write him.

Eli is out loading his old station wagon. He looks like Tarzan as he lifts heavy

bags and equipment.

"Where are you going?"

"To the volcano?"

"The volcano?"

"The volcano. A few friends and I are going to sleep on the volcano."

"Would there be room for one more?" Here is a chance to escape my obsessing.

"Have you got mountain gear and a tent? It's cold up there, there's actually snow

on the mountain right now."

"No. No I don't."

"I'm sorry, I'm lending my extra tent out. Isabel isn't going either. Hasn't got the

boots. You need good boots. Otherwise your feet will freeze."

Isabel comes out and sits beside me. She has an idea.

"You could get a ride with them as far as Colima. Colima is a beautiful old

Colonial town. There are pyramids near there and from there you can see the volcano.

Then you could catch the bus back. It would make for an interesting day, I think."

I am sold on adventure again and the chance to escape the sea with its dark

continuous nattering. Colima seems the perfect solution.

Eli picks up a young couple in Madrina. They have all their gear. The young

couple is angry at the girl's parents for giving them an ultimatum: "Go to school and we'll

support you financially; stay in Mexico bumming around and you're on your own." There

is something ominous about the two of them, an angry young couple wanting to tent on a

semi-active volcano. They are dropping out. They might be full of regrets in years to

come. They don't know what years will come and go and take and give as much as their

hearts can survive. Will the young woman return after breaking up with this man? For it

seems inevitable, he wants to see nothing more than the whole world. She will no doubt

tire of the constant adventuring. Will her parents take her back? Relinquishing their

curse: "You were just crazed, our little girl gone crazy over a man. We've got you back,

that's all that matters." Or will they be relentlessly unforgiving? Or both, the illusion of

forgiveness combined with a subtle undercurrent of mistrust forever between them.

Colima is a formal, courtly city. Its big square is surrounded with handsome,

impeccable Colonial Buildings. Eli drops me off in front of a tourist bureau where I

explain to two young women that I want to go to the Volcano. They nod their heads and

talk Spanish so rapidly I can't distinguish any words. One points again to the map on her

desk and to a board behind her that lists overnight tours.

"No, no. Thank you. I wish to go to the pyramids. I wish to see the volcano from

far. I have no the equipment." I use lots of gestures to fill the gaps in translation.

Apparently the tour includes the equipment and it is only fifty dollars. But fifty

dollars I don't have. I wish I did. But I have less than that to live on for the next week and

a half. I shake my head.

I persist and finally make myself understood. They tell me there is a city bus to

the city square and a man in a van who, for a small fee, will take me the rest of the way.

I stumble out into the hot sun, disoriented and alone amongst the chatter of

Spanish. I find myself, away from the square, turned around and lost. Where is Avenida

Corranza? I stop an elderly, well-dressed woman who points. I keep asking people and

they keep pointing and talking indecipherably. Finally, I find the avenue. But now I don't

recall which direction I am to head. I turn the map until I'm sure I know and then see my

bus coming across the street. I run to catch it risking honks and screeching brakes.

This sitting by the sea, I think, has made me soft.

The man with the van is in his thirties, dimpled chin, talks with me in Spanish and

I try to tell him what I'm looking for, a trip to the pyramids. I'll pay. He shakes his head

and says other words. He goes around the van that has Piramides written on the side. He

seems busy shining the van, checking the engine. A half hour goes by. He seems

surprised to still find me there and again tries to tell me something. I say "No

comprendo." Another half hour goes by. Perhaps he's waiting for other people. Maybe he

doesn't do tours on Tuesdays? I have no idea.

When he sees me still there, he shrugs his shoulders and opens the van door for

me. He drives up through hills and past fields and through a gate into excavation grounds.

I go to pay him and he shakes his head. I am not sure quite what has happened, but I

thank him.

180

Another young man sleeps at the base of the little pyramids, a cowboy hat over

his face.

He shakes my hand as he sits up. I follow him around to the front of the pyramids.

There are seven stairs up, yet at the top the volcano is visible directly. Volcan Fuego.

Fuego: heat, passion, I've come to the god of passion to lay down my soul. Give me

passion. Let me have passion. The volcano spits out smoke. It must have been a

formidable sight when it exploded over and over again. I cannot understand the guide and

he turns to look past me at a couple that is joining the tour. The woman, luckily, speaks

English and offers me her translations.

"See these stones," she says pointing out boulders almost our height, these were

hurled out by the volcano thousands of years ago. Maybe even killed some of the people.

This pyramid was built to worship the volcano. Sacrifices were made to appease this fiery

god. See these drains? They caught the blood after people were sacrificed."

Stains of old blood have been petrified to the stones.

"When the place was excavated they found a lot of hands and thoraxes; hands for

working, thoraxes for the soul. So the people were giving the gods their means and

reason to survive."

I think about what I can give the gods to bring me a great love. Maybe my youth,

my woman's blood.

Old Fuego is formidable even from such a distance. I picture Eli up there with all

the right equipment. In more ways than one.

Lord.

"You better find me a good man quick," I pray silently to old Fuego.

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The pyramids have been the victim of vandalism and so have to be guarded night

and day. There are more, they believe tucked under the hill next to the huge circus tent of

hardware items. Odd juxtaposition. The Mexicans are good at that: putting Jesus next to

the CDs. Mother Mary in the flatware drawer.

Returning by city bus I watch the sun drop low in the green horizon of sky. From

Colima, the coach line takes me back towards Barra de Barcos. The bus drives past the

industry of Manzanillo, into the beauty of the town set between the sea and the steep

green hills behind the highway, the town where I have to switch buses.

There is a time lag between buses and I wander through streets and find many

friendly people out on their back steps cooking and eating. Delightful children seek me

out and I understand what they say: "De donde, Usted? Como se llama? "Where are you

from?" "What's your name?"

It was good to get away from the monotony of the sea, to try my feeble

knowledge of Spanish, to feel a traveller again in this strange wonderful world. I watch a

comedian on the little TV screen at the front of the bus. I laugh out loud over his antics.

He is pretending to be a schoolteacher to get close to a lovely widow whose husband died

from swallowing an avocado pit. The hero, who is slight and mustached, acts like he

knows what he's doing, but the kids see right through him. He's wearing a "kick me" sign

when he talks with the principal.

I lie awake in my bungalow. The sea torments me because it is right. Time is

relentless, it tells me. Time will swallow me up and spit me out. It doesn't care if I live

my life or not. It is indifferent. It is mysterious, but not kind. It is unforgiving and eternal

and will go on and on without me. I have to grab at life. I have to reach out. I see Claire's

words scribbled in her copy of Thoreau's Walden: "Any fool can give, it's what we take

from life that matters."

And then I realize it isn't completely over. Saul still has a bus to catch in the

morning. I could at least meet him at the bus stop and say good-bye. I'd have to have

some reason. I could give him a copy of my first book of poems. Yes. He wanted one and

I didn't have an address. I could say I lost the paper it was on, he doesn't have to know

that I've memorized it. As soon as I decide my course of action, I sleep.

I awake at eight thirty-five; I never sleep in so late. His bus leaves at nine. It's

probably already too late. Sometimes the buses leave early, sometimes late. Let them

leave late today; I pray to a force I hope is with me. I fell asleep in my bathing suit. I

throw on top of it a T-shirt and shorts, put on my running shoes, grab my book and run

along the beach from Obregon to Barcos, along the strip of road to the bus station.

When I get to the opening of road, I see him watching me, although he is talking

with another man. I see his look of surprise, his taking in all of me, my beautiful breasts

bobbing braless, my long lean legs, my blond flash of hair. The vision of myself through

his eyes is miraculous and instantaneous and positive.

"Hey, Hi!" he says when I get there. He laughs and puts an arm around me as if

we always met like this and introduces me to his friend a man with white hair who shakes

my hand, shakes Saul's again with obvious respect and discreetly disappears. I wonder if

I've misread the situation.

Saul looks at me with a big grin of delight on his face.

Speechless I hand him my book.

The bus begins to pull in and do its backing out and turning around.

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Saul very slowly thumbs through the book.

"I wanted to give you this before you left."

"This is great. I'll look at this on the bus."

I don't know what to say.

He hands me a pen.

My mind goes blank.

"What should I write?"

"Write: To Saul, Love forever, I'll never forget you."

I laugh at the preposterousness of the statement.

He grows serious: "You asked!" His eyes narrow as if I've hurt his feelings.

"Okay," I say, unsure whether it's a joke or not. I write as if creating a future with

the inscription: "To Saul, Love forever I'll never forget you. Sara." Strange to see my

handwriting saying this and knowing, in a way, it is already true.

He looks delighted and tucks the book into his carry on bag and gives me his New

York address on a scrap of paper.

The bus driver is now loading up.

We go to hug and our bodies come together in a rush of feelings, as if they have

been waiting for their owners to get out of the way. My head falls back; his arm holds my

back as I dip. The earth seems to come up through my legs and shakes me; my body

vibrates. He has to kiss me; there is no alternative. We stand up straight again. We both

look startled at what just happened. We do it again. And laugh.

Saul looks at me and then goes to talk with the bus driver. He nods at me and goes

to the ticket desk and comes back out. I think he has tried to get a later bus. But if he

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attempted to change his ticket for me, the attempt failed, and is not addressed. He puts his

luggage under and comes back to me to say good-bye. He whispers in my ear: "I really

liked you, you know."

"Me too," I whisper back.

"We'll just have to be pen pals for now."

And then he is gone.

The sea rushes to shore a block away. The blood rushes through my veins. I think

I'm going to faint and I sit down on a bench.

I am suddenly awake, awake to this moment, awake to the future. The past, I tell

the sea, has, at least temporarily, been abated. Old Fuego has answered my call.

END OF PART ONE