Carry Me Like Water (6 page)

She moved toward the water. As soon as she immersed herself she felt as if she were floating out of herself. Her eyes closed, and when she opened them she found herself floating in the air, looking down at her body in the bathtub. She was weightless; was free of her history, had no anxieties about her future with or without men; she had become an intimate part of the air and the light and the steam. She felt as if she had become a pure and simple prayer, so pure and so simple that she had actually regained her original innocence. She stared at her body in the bathtub. How strange it was to be outside of it, to see it, watch it, examine it. She floated down toward that strange and foreign and abused and hated body lying in a bathtub. That’s me, she thought, then laughed and floated away from the motionless shell that always had to be cleaned because it was always getting dirty in the world. She was indifferent toward that material thing—neither attracted to it nor repelled by it. It was nothing more than a wordless stone, a monument to a dead, nameless stranger. She willed herself to float over her apartment and found she was free to move anywhere by simply manipulating her mind—though she was not sure she had a mind. She was no longer ruled by the physical world, by the rules that governed it. She was free of the poverty of her body. When she thought right, she moved right; when she thought left, she moved left; she thought “out the window” and found herself floating into the night. “I am going into the night and I am not afraid. I am beyond all fear. I have become the night itself.” She thought of Conrad and found herself moving toward his apartment. The trip took no more than a few seconds,
and entering his apartment, she immediately sensed where he was. She discovered he wasn’t alone. She did not recognize the woman who was making love to him. She watched them and smiled. She felt no anger, no sense of betrayal. She watched them enjoy each other, the two bodies rubbing against each other, the searching hands, their skin moist with sweat. She laughed and half-expected the couple making love on the bed to hear her, but her voice was beyond their hearing. What a strange thing to have a body, she thought, what a strange thing to need one. After this, would she want one?

As she watched the pair of lovers on the bed, her thoughts left them. They were entitled to their privacy—they could keep it, she thought. She thought of Salvador caking her palm: “Check the records—Mission Dolores. You know …” As soon as she thought the words, she was out of the room floating toward the mission. The rectory was closed. Everything was dark. She would have to wait until tomorrow—and then she laughed at herself, realizing the boundaries, the rules, the way she did everything had changed. She could do anything she wanted. A locked door could not keep her out. “How to find the records? What kind of records?” Miraculously, she found dozens of old leather books neatly lined up on a bookshelf. Each book was labeled with a year. She had no body, no hands, no fingers. She half-remembered a dream where she could not touch because she had no hands—touch whom? Had it been a dream? She focused on the books. How could she look through the books? She concentrated on the book labeled with the year of her birth. The book came down from the shelf and opened because she willed it to open; the pages turned because she willed them to turn. The names of the baptized, the godparents, the parents were all listed. If she had been born on August 10, 1955, then she could have been baptized anytime after that. She looked not for her own name, but for Salvador’s, as if her own name did not matter. She found it easily. Everything was so easy. The body meant work. Now she was free of it. Jesus Salvador Aguila was listed as having been baptized on August 22. His date of birth was listed as August 10. She stared at the next entry: Maria de Lourdes Aguila, also baptized on August 22, date of birth also August 10. The parents were not listed for
either child, but the name of the godparents appeared: Juan and Gloria Silva. There were no other baptisms recorded on that date. She thought of Salvador as he touched her palm. She remembered how familiar his hand had felt, and she suddenly became acutely aware that she had no palm, no body. She wanted, inexplicably, to clothe herself in her own skin again.

She willed the book back on the shelf. She wanted to leave, to rest. She was tired, and had become afraid, and she felt the need to get back. She was outside again, and as she hovered over the church, she imagined what the inside looked like, and she had the odd feeling that she had been in that church somewhere, perhaps in a dream, but the dream frightened her, and she did not want to think of what she had seen there, so she willed herself to move away from the church as quickly as possible. As she floated through the sky, she felt again as if she were a part of everything in the world that was not human. It was good to be a part of the sky.

In her apartment again, Lizzie stared at the body in the bathtub. She no longer felt indifference toward that shell of fragile bone and skin. She felt a great and sad love for it. She went near the body, and wanted to touch it. She willed to be a part of it again. She opened her eyes. She touched herself. She felt her wet hands wrinkled from soaking in the water. She rubbed them against her wet skin, shivered, and stared at herself. She felt heavy as she picked herself out of the tub. As she dried herself, Lizzie smelled soap and lilac. The maid in her childhood felt close, and she half-expected to hear Salvador’s voice reverberating through her body, “What’s happening to me? My God, what’s happening to me?”

8

O
N WEEKENDS
Diego slept late but always managed to wake in time to watch the sun come out. No Vicky’s on weekends, no dark kitchens, no smell of pine cleaner, no boss’s face to make him feel unworthy of breathing the air. On Saturdays, his body didn’t tremble as much; his inner earthquakes let his body rest.

He sat at his desk, which he had placed directly in front of his only window. He drank a second cup of coffee, letting the familiar bitterness seep into him as he watched the sun cast its light, creating pink and purple shadows on the Juárez mountains. He thought of Carlota’s jewels. He could almost see them sparkling in his hands, feel their hard surfaces almost melting against the touches of his fingers, see his own reflection in them. He dressed himself in a hurry, not caring or even noticing his body or his clothes. He did not take the time to smell himself and did not worry whether he needed a bath. He started walking toward the river—just like he did every Saturday. The walks toward the river were rituals he attended to as if he were an old priest saying Mass, an old priest who was no longer conscious of the sacredness or necessity of the act. Somehow the ritual simply helped to keep him alive.

The river on Saturdays was better than San Jacinto Plaza that sat in the center of downtown. He did not like San Jacinto Plaza anymore. He had liked it as a boy, but back then it had a fountain with
alligators in it—alligators whom he had feared and loved. They did not belong and yet they were there. He felt close to those alligators as if they were personal pets. One Saturday night some drunk soldiers from Fort Bliss had managed to slip into the fountain and slit the throats of the sleeping alligators. After that, the park was never the same. And anyway, there were too many pigeons who did more shitting than flying and too many people asking him for cigarettes and money. He was tired of giving his cigarettes away to people he didn’t know—and there was no money to give them.

At the edge of Sunset Heights, Diego passed the steps that went nowhere. He supposed that the houses the steps led to had burned down. He pictured the fires in his mind, the flames lighting up the night like a huge candle with a crooked, wild wick. He wondered if anyone had died inside the burning houses. The people, perhaps not wanting to return to the memories, decided not to rebuild their houses and left the ruins, forgotten, at the top of the steps. They sat there, abandoned and noticed only by children and people who had nothing to do but explore. Diego climbed to the top of one set of steps and walked through the ruins. The bricks were so soft that they broke beneath him as he stepped. Weeds were growing everywhere. Some things can grow anywhere, he thought, even without rain. He saw crumpled rubbers where teenaged lovers had left them after sex. He tried to picture their awkward passions. Once he had caught a couple having sex here. He kicked the bricks beneath him and walked back down the stairs. For some reason, Diego could not pass by the steps that went nowhere without climbing them. It was another one of his rituals. Something in him half-expected to be surprised by something up there, but nothing was ever different, except that time when he’d seen the couple with no clothes. When he first moved to Sunset Heights, he had hoped someone would grow a garden where the houses used to be, but now he thought it had been a stupid, romantic idea. The only thing that had a right to grow here, he thought, were the weeds that needed no caring, that needed no rain. Now, he felt the steps should always lead to nothing.

He walked slowly toward the Santa Fe Bridge enjoying what was left of the cool. He passed the bright red warehouse where he bought
his clothes for thirty-five cents a pound. He stood at the very top of the bridge where the American and Mexican flags flew next to each other. The wind wasn’t blowing today, but on some days the winds twisted the flags in every direction and they almost touched for a second in midair—they almost touched like dancers who reached endlessly for each other, dancers who knew they would never couple.

He looked down at the Rio Grande that looked impressive only on a map. The river was old and lazy. It was neither deep nor blue nor beautiful nor wide. It did not reflect the sky or the clouds—and if it reflected anything at all, it reflected the color of the mojados who had learned to cross it faster and safer than the cars that drove across the bridge. The muddy river was now completely tame, and whatever bed it made for itself, the part of it that ran through the cities of Juárez and El Paso had now been replaced by a bed of smooth, hard, gray cement. The river was poor like the people, Diego thought, and though there was nothing beautiful to see in its waters, he liked coming here to visit it. Something about the river made him feel as though he belonged.

He looked for Luz, who often came here on Saturdays. Like him, she was addicted to the river. She loved it even as she laughed at it, even as she spit at its poverty, at its insignificance. She was loo tired to clean houses six days a week, so on Saturdays, she rested and came to watch the river and speak to it. Diego caught sight of her as she sat next to an old man who had a porcelain bowl placed in front of him. He watched as she pulled out two quarters and placed it in the old man’s bowl. She said something to him and laughed. He laughed with her. Diego could watch her for hours, the way she carried herself, the way she made people seem so important. He knew she must have been very beautiful when she was younger—and even now she had the kind of face that made people want to stare. Luz looked up and saw him. She waved him to come closer. When he was next to her, she looked up at him from where she was sitting on the concrete walkway. She pressed her palm on the concrete next to her and patted it. Diego recognized it as an invitation for him to sit next to her. “¿Cómo estás, Dieguito?”

Diego smiled and shrugged his shoulders.

“How long have you been standing there watching me? I don’t like to be watched. My first boyfriend used to follow me around—and watch. I hated that. It made me feel—I don’t know. I just didn’t like it.”

“I don’t follow you around, you know?” Diego wrote.

She nodded. “Sometimes, the past comes back just when you think it’s disappeared. Nothing ever disappears. I think we shrink when we get old because the years become so heavy—they don’t go away, they just twist us, bend us over until we can’t walk anymore.”

Diego nodded. He was afraid she would cry. He never knew what to do when people cried.

She placed her hand on his cheek. He thought of his mother.

She pulled her hand away and looked toward the immigration booths where border guards stopped people and asked their nationalities. “Well,” she said firmly, “they’re still trying to keep us out, aren’t they, my Diego?” She spoke English to him, and she always spoke clearly so Diego could read her lips—she never turned her back to him. She learned to read Diego’s handwriting as he wrote on his pad, so she could respond immediately to what he was saying. Diego never minded that she looked over his shoulder when he wrote. He knew she was not a patient person, not the kind of person to wait for things to come to her—not even his notes. And besides, Diego liked that Luz was not afraid to get near enough to touch him.

Diego took out his pad and wrote: “Why do you always speak to me in English? I know Spanish just like you. I had a teacher who taught me to read in Spanish, I used to go to her house after school. She taught me to read books in Spanish. It took me a long time. I spent three summers in her house—every day. She was old and patient and good. She died. Speak to me in Spanish. I worked hard, Luz.”

Luz stared at his pad and grinned. “Yes, you’re very intelligent,” she said, “but I’m a U.S. citizen ¿que no?” Yes, Diego thought, that’s true. She
was
a U.S. citizen. He remembered how the first time they met she had told him she had decided to live in Juárez because it was cheaper, and he remembered smiling when she referred to herself as an expatriate.

“So what if you
are
a U.S. citizen,” Diego wrote, “Spanish is your first language. Why don’t you speak to me in your first language?”

Luz pointed her lips at him: “Because you can’t make fun of my accent and you can’t tell if I pronounce something the wrong way. Besides, I like to speak English—I just don’t want the gringos to know it.”

Diego smiled at her and wrote: “Why don’t you want gringos to know you like to speak English?” He wrote quickly and clearly. Luz leaned over his shoulder as he wrote and watched the clean words appear on the white paper.

“Because,” she said, “they already think English is better. Don’t you know that? They think English is the only language in the world. I hate that, Dieguito, I really hate that. I don’t want gringos to ever suspect
I
enjoy their language. No, I want to enjoy English in my own private way. I don’t have to yell about it. And, anyway, Spanish is the superior language.”