Bridge of shadows, p.9
Bridge of Shadows, page 9
She hugged a pillow close to her stomach and wished she was stronger, older, wiser. Other curanderas might have been able to unravel the dream, or to listen more carefully to Jamie’s words. Perhaps she was not yet ready.
A bone ached in her hand, that phantom bone that Jaime’s spirit had placed there. It pointed out sickness of body and spirit; it pointed to another world of knowledge and wonder. She wasn’t sure why she’d been chosen by the bone, but all the curanderas were chosen like that, unexpectedly and decisively. If she’d been given a choice, she would have turned away from it. Her power. Her knowledge.
Her life.
And who would have seen the stain on Pete’s spirit? Not an Anglo doctor, for all their machines and medicines. They could treat the effects, but not the illness—they didn’t even acknowledge that such a thing as susto, the disconnected soul, existed. But she saw it in Pete’s eyes, felt it in his touch. He had lost his way.
She would help him as long as she could, while they both lived. She and Jaime owed him that much.
Though she waited until after sunrise, Jaime didn’t come back, and the dream slipped away under daylight like a guilty shadow. She waited until eight o’clock to brew the coffee Peter liked, lit the candles, and waited for the sound of his knock at the door.
He didn’t come.
The candles burned low, the coffee soured. Esmeralda tried to tell herself nothing was wrong, but she couldn’t forget Jaime’s warning the last time Peter had visited—great trouble, many dead. At the center of it Ana Gutierrez, who held Pete’s heart still, though he didn’t want to admit it.
She had no telephone. She dressed warmly and walked to the bridge, where glassy-eyed touristas crossed into crowds of trinket sellers and beggars. She knew most of the people selling fresh vegetables and crafts, and spent time talking and watching passing Anglo faces for one she knew would not be there.
Late in the afternoon, she returned home and unlocked a battered metal box and took out the day pass that Peter had given her in case of emergency; it was still good for the rest of the year. She had never used it, never set foot on the American side of the border since she’d seen Jaime buried in it. The land of gold had become the land of graves.
The Mexican border guard passed her with a bored glance at her papers—she was carrying nothing with her, not even a shopping bag, and so could hardly be considered suspicious. She slowed her steps as she came near the halfway point of the bridge, the mysterious seam where lives fractured and countries warred.
She felt no different when she’d crossed it.
The man in the uniform of la migra on the other side waved her through the steel cage of a turnstile, and she was in the land of the free. The land of her son.
She didn’t know where to go. Fear almost made her turn back, but she forced herself to walk off the bridge and into the cold street. Cars were parked up and down both gutters, new cars with Texas license plates. The Americans hesitated to drive their expensive toys into Mexico, where they might be stolen or vandalized, though that wasn’t as likely to happen as they wanted to believe. So they left them here to be stolen and vandalized. She saw two teenage boys prying a license tag free from a glossy black pickup truck; the younger one gave her a hostile, blank stare, and they didn’t hurry as they left.
Peter’s phone number was written on a card in her pocket; she put an American quarter in a telephone booth near the corner and dialed it. After four rings a machine asked her to leave her name and number; she hung up on it, confused, and rocked back and forth in the chilled-metal silence. She had only a few dollars American, and not many more pesos, not enough to call a taxi. She might be able to take the bus, but she didn’t know how to get to the address Peter had given her.
The telephone wouldn’t give back her quarter, which she thought was strange—did it make you pay to talk to a machine? She found another coin in her pocket and dialed again. This time when the machine beeped, she said, in halting English, “Pedro, I miss you this morning, I fear—”
The telephone popped and crackled in her hand, and then a weary man’s voice said, “Esme? Where—where are you?”
“I—at the bridge. In America.” Tears burned in her eyes at the sound of his voice. “I was so frightened.”
“Stay there,” Peter said. “I’ll come get you.”
It seemed an agonizingly long time to wait, but she did as he said, stayed next to the telephone booth, rocking back and forth against the cruel slap of wind. There was no color on this side of the border; everything was gray and brown and weary. Only the cars glittered. The few people who walked were either Anglo touristas who watched her with frightened eyes or, at the corner, an angry-looking man with a bottle in a brown paper bag. A police car drove by, and the men looked at her with the blank disinterest—not seeing her at all, but only her skin, her clothes, her behavior.
She thought of Jaime, and sadness overwhelmed her. She’d left him here alone, no one to talk to him, to remember him. No flowers to brighten his grave.
Está bien, Mama. She could almost feel the warmth of his breath on her cheek, the heat of his small fingers wrapped around hers. You remember.
She opened her eyes as a brown car pulled to a stop at the curb. For an instant she didn’t recognize the man inside, so pale and unshaven. He leaned over to unlock the passenger door.
“Peter?” She took a tentative step forward. “Dios mio.”
In all the years she had known him, she had never been to his apartment, but she was not surprised by what she found. Peter was a man caught in limbo, and the small rooms reflected that. Nothing permanent, nothing hung on the walls, boxes still hiding in the corners like sad, neglected children. He had a big leather chair, a lamp, a television, a stereo. In the bedroom, a small, unmade bed just wide enough for one.
It was the home of a man with nothing to hope for.
“What happened?” She turned on him as soon as he had shut the door. Her fingers itched to touch him, but she could tell he wouldn’t welcome it. “I in fear for—”
“En Español,” Peter said wearily, and dropped into that language. “You shouldn’t have come, Esme.”
Manifestly true. Instead of arguing, she went around the half wall into the kitchen. She felt sick at the bleakness of the counters, the blank stare of the cabinets. A kitchen was the heart of a home, and his was empty. She opened doors until she found some tea and a pot and put the water on to boil. The warm glow of the burner cheered her a little, and the burble of the teapot reminded her of better times.
“You shouldn’t have come,” Peter said again. He was standing behind her, very close. “Thank you.”
She turned and put her arms around him; she felt relief tremble through him, and his head rested against hers, fever hot. He needed a shower and, she thought, a long, dreamless sleep.
They stood that way until the kettle screamed for attention, and she turned away to put tea bags in to steep. He found a forlorn bottle of honey hiding in a nearly empty cabinet, two mismatched mugs in another. She fixed the tea and commanded him to drink it down, all of it, then poured him another cup before allowing him to retreat to the barren living room.
There was only the one chair. She pushed him down in it, set her tea mug aside, and put her newly warmed hands on his head. So much darkness in him today, so much anger. She closed her eyes and tried to draw it out of him, but it was stubborn as a root.
“Headaches?” she asked him.
“No,” he said. “Heartaches.”
And then he told her about the dark, dark night, and the Black Bridge, and the wounded child. Not again, she thought, stricken. Hadn’t Jaime’s death been enough?
“She is not—”
“No, she’s going to be okay. Time, and therapy.” Pete’s voice did not seem lighter with the knowledge. “But it shouldn’t have happened, Es. She shouldn’t have been there, it the middle of that. And we shouldn’t have moved with her in the cross fire. You should have seen the headlines today—‘Mexican girl critically wounded in government gun battle.’ I was told to stay home, keep my head down. That’s what I’m doing.”
“They mentioned you?” she asked. “In their article?”
“Articles, plural. I’m on the national wire services—Pete Ross, one-time civilian hero, gunning down a defenseless child——”
“Peter,” she said sharply, and tilted his head up to stroke her fingers over his brow. “You know that isn’t true. Why let this hurt you?”
“Never mind me. What about my friends? What about my family? I hate to sound stupid, but I joined the Border Patrol for a reason. I wanted to keep what happened to you from happening to other Esmeraldas, other Jaimes. This—” He struggled for words and finally gave up. Esmeralda continued to gently rub his temples until his eyes closed. There was a troubled frown on his face that would not smooth away.
Unexpectedly, she felt Jaime next to her—not the sweet and loving child who was her spirit guide, but another Jaime, sterner, unsettlingly angry. His touch burned. She let her hands fall away from Pete, startled, and began speaking words she did not recognize as her own.
In English, in which she was not fluent—but Jaime was.
“You almost saw,” she said. Peter jerked upright, startled, and turned to stare at her. Whatever he saw made him go pale and still, his eyes all pupil. “The Black Bridge. The child. Fire. You didn’t stop it. Now there will be death.”
It should have been a frightening sensation, losing control so suddenly, but Esmeralda felt numbed and insulated from the fear on Pete’s face. Jaime, she tried to say, but the child was not hers now, he was God’s.
“I tried—” Peter began.
Her voice cut him ruthlessly short. “The dead won’t care how you tried. It will be harder now, but you must stop it.”
“Tell me!” Peter almost shouted it at her. He stood up and put his hands on her shoulders, the crush of his fingers distant and unimportant. Esmeralda stared deeply into his eyes and saw the frightened, angry child he was, the one who took on the weight of the world. Eh, bien, if he wanted the guilt of the world, he would have to be It’s savior, too. That was Jaime’s message.
“I have told you as much as I can,” Jaime said tonelessly. “I can’t tell you more.”
And then he was gone, melting away from her like an outgoing breath. She reached out blindly to hold him close, and her hands touched Pete’s.
She said, in Spanish, “I’m afraid.”
Though he didn’t answer, she felt it in his fingers, like a chill at the edge of winter. She gently massaged his hands, feeling the bleak tension melt, the skin grow warm, and she was not innocent; she knew what he was thinking as he looked at her, what he was dreaming. She let herself think of it, too, a brief, hot moment of possibility, and saw his lips quirk in a smile.
She did not have to move far to kiss him, and their lips melted against each other, hot as blood, sweet as the honeyed tea, an undertone of seriousness to it that made her heart pound and her legs grow weak. Pete’s hands traced lines down her back, slid down to her waist, drawing heat down between her legs. She swayed against him and opened her mouth to his tongue.
The telephone rang. Though they continued the kiss for a few more seconds, she knew he would have to pull away, and he did, with a sad, sweet smile, and turned away to speak rapid English to someone on the other aid. When he was finished, he put the receiver back and stood in silence, head down, a new tension in his shoulders.
“What?” she asked, and took a step to him. Something told her to stop.
“I have to go,” he said, “I’ll take you back to the bridge, Es. I’m sorry.”
Something cold and gray under the words, completely erasing the heat of their kiss. She swallowed hard and tired to pretend it didn’t mater.
By the time she returned across the bridge to Mexico, she felt weary and wilted, drained by Peter’s empty grief. So much broken in him, depths she couldn’t fill no matter how hard she tried. Susto. She had heard about it all her life, from her curandero grandfather, from friends, even form her priest. Children and women were the most vulnerable to susto, having a closer connection to the spirIt’s; when they became badly, deeply frightened or shocked, they lost their way. Physically, susto might take many forms—physical illnesses, like cancer and heart attack, or sickness of the mind. Peter had been severed from his spirIt’s for a very long time. The longer it went on, the worse the risk—the common people knew that, though the bright, shiny American doctors did not. They spat on ideas like susto and It’s more fatal form, espanto. They called the healers frauds and witches.
But the people still believed. Esmeralda still believed.
There was a thin young man and a little girl sitting on her porch when she came up the gravel walk; he rose respectfully and nodded shyly to the girl. She was a quiet, earnest-looking child too grave to be pretty, and her eyes took in Esmeralda without interest. Perhaps twelve, and small for her age. One hand clutched a much mended rag doll, the colorful cloth faded and stained.
The young man started to speak to her, but Esmeralda stopped him with a shake of her head. She knelt down on the cold concrete beside the child, stripped the gloves from her hands, and put her palms on either side of the child’s face. Such big, empty dark eyes. Esmeralda did not like what she saw there.
“You are welcome in my house,” she said gently. “Come inside. You’re cold.”
The girl’s coat was new, brightly colored. Esmeralda took it from her and laid it aside on the couch, stopped at the shelf under the crucifix to light the row of votive candles. It was cold in the house. She turned on the electric space heaters Peter had given, her two years ago, and the smell of baking iron stung her nose, warring with the vanilla of the candles.
The child stood where she’d been left, staring down at the floor. The father gently urged her to the big oak table and sat her in a chair that nearly swallowed her. Esmeralda took a clean white taper from a box and put it in the holder beside Jaime’s picture. She closed the girl’s Angers around a match and helped her strike it. The two of them held the flame to the wick as it sputtered and whispered and Anally burned steadily.
The girl said, hesitantly, “I’m not supposed to play with matches.”
“We’re not playing with them, querida, we’re honoring my son. This is Jaime, do you see? He’s a little older than you, but not that much. He’s a very good boy, just as you’re a good girl, and, he’s going to help you get better. You feel sick, don’t you?”
The girl’s satin hair rustled as she slowly nodded, once.
“The doctor says there is nothing wrong with her,” the father said anxiously. “But he doesn’t know. He doesn’t understand.”
Esmeralda reached over and warmed his hand with hers. She smiled at him until he hesitantly smiled back.
“I’m Victor,”’ he said. “Victor Carrasco. This is Angela.”
Esmeralda nodded and reached over to hold Angerla’s hand—such an unresisting little hand, limp as a corpse’s.
“Did Angela have an accident?” she asked. “A shock? Anything like that?”
“Her—” Victor looked reluctant to continue. In the flicker of candles, his face was drawn and unhappy. “Her mother. She passed.”
“Recently?”
“Seven months ago. But—Angela found her.” His voice lowered. She had to lean close to catch his words, which crept away on the cool air. “She hanged herself.”
Suicide. No wonder there was so much rage in the girl’s placid eyes, so much blackness in her small, fragile heart. If her mother had died in grace, she might have become a spirit guide for Angela, the way Jaime had returned to Esmeralda. But Angela’s mother was gone, and whatever spirIt’s Angela heard now, they were not spirIt’s of light.
“She—hurts herself,” he continued haltingly. Angela seemed not to hear any of it; her eyes were focused on the crucifix on the wall, the candles glowing beneath. “I gave her a kitten. She drowned it. I think she—I think she is cursed.”
There were still a few who believed in the mal de ojo, the evil eye, and Esmeralda had no doubt that a powerful will could bring ruin to a weaker one. But there was no need to blame evil on anyone else; this, she felt, was from a wellspring in Angela’s soul, fractured at it’s root.
“Angela,” she said, and squeezed the girl’s hand lightly. The solemn brown eyes turned from Jesus’ face to hers, “I’m going to say a prayer. Will you pray with me?”
Angela’s shoulders lifted ever so slightly in a shrug. She didn’t resist as Esmeralda took her other hand and began to pray to the Virgin for the repose of the lost soul of Angela’s mother.
She was only halfway through when the girl tugged at her hand, trying to free herself.
“Stop,” Angela said. “The Blessed Virgin doesn’t want to hear about her.”
“Why not?”
“Because she—she—” Angela’s eyes suddenly sparkled with tears. “She was a coward. She ran away. The Virgin wouldn’t have anything to do with her.”
“God forgives all things to those who approach him with a true and contrite heart, Angela. Don’t you think your mother went to God sorry for what she’d done?”
Angela’s cheeks reddened. The fury Esmeralda had sensed under the ice of her false placidity exploded. She came at Esmeralda, small hands curved into claws, surprisingly strong. Esmeralda fought to keep the girl’s fingernails away from her face while her father leaped up and came to subdue her. As the child struggled, Esmeralda opened a chest of stoppered bottles, removed a vial of rosemary oil. She smeared the oil on Angela’s forehead in the shape of a cross; Angela let out a piercing scream and pitched forward, dragging at her father’s arms, fingers clawing now at her own face instead of Esmeralda’s. Between the two of them they held the child until her struggles subsided. Esmeralda left her in her father’s care and mixed up some strong hot tea, closed with soothing herbs, and had Angela drink it. There was no further resistance, but tears ran down the girl’s cheeks, steady and heart-true, and her father rocked her like a baby as she fell asleep.
