Margarita Wednesdays: Making a New Life by the Mexican Sea (18 page)

M
E:
I refuse to play games with you, Noah. Nobody put you in this place. You put yourself there. It’s time you take responsibility for your actions. I know it’s hard. It’s hard for me, too.

Part of me, the part that made my entire insides ache when I pictured Noah’s impish smile, wanted to hop on a plane and rush to the rescue. But I knew that bringing Noah to Mexico was probably the worst idea of all. I’d seen sober people turn into drunks practically overnight in this town, a place where beer is cheaper than water. And the fallout from the violence surrounding the drug cartels was making jobs harder to find for everyone, let alone someone who didn’t speak a word of Spanish. No, there were plenty of safety nets for Noah in the States. I just prayed he’d fall, gently, into one of them soon.

A
S SOON AS
I
HEARD
a healer was coming to town, I knew I had to go. El Maestro Constantino would be here for five days, and between my own issues and my anxiety about Noah, I felt I could use all the help I could get. I called everyone I knew to invite them along. Most of them thought I was nuts, but I didn’t care.

Now, though I consider myself to be a somewhat spiritual person, I wouldn’t call myself a spiritual person in the way that people toss that term around these days. I know I’d never be able to keep quiet long enough to meditate—I don’t have a whole lot of sit in me—and I’m really not the chanting type. Scrubbing floors in a cold monastery on my bare knees? Not a chance. Enlightenment is probably going to have to fall into my lap, preferably while I’m shopping or something, and my spiritual leader will probably be someone I meet while he’s
having a beer at the bar. But I don’t close doors, because I do believe that anything is possible. If nothing else, I’m observant. Celebrations, ceremonies, rituals, and rites have always held a particular fascination for me. I’m pulled to them, whether it’s Hindu body piercing in India, Shinto naked gatherings in Japan, or the Hungry Ghost Festival in China. They make me want to know more. What are these people seeing? What are they feeling? Personally, I do believe there is some bigger force, some higher being out there. And I’m not about to rule anything out. In that way, I have a lot in common with the Mexicans, at least the ones I have met.

But six o’clock in the morning is not my favorite time of day. The line outside the dance hall was already snaking around the block when I met up with Bonnie and Cheryl, my only two friends to live up to their promise to join me. We had just settled into our folding chairs when I heard Sharon’s voice, yelling down from the terrace of Casa de Leyendas. “Ya healed yet, Deb?”

Very funny, I thought to myself. She’ll be sorry she chose not to join me.

“Hungry, guys?” she shouted.

“Yeah!” I yelled up, just then realizing how hungry I was.

Fifteen minutes later Sharon was at our side with a trio of juicy sausage sandwiches and three steaming cups of coffee. I had just unwrapped mine and was starting to wrap my lips around it when a loud “Noooo!” rang out from behind. I turned to see a short, dark-haired man shaking his finger in my face. “Muy horrible. No puede comer eso!” He was staring at my sandwich.

A hefty woman behind him stepped out of the line. “You can’t eat that. And no coffee. No caffeine, no meat, no eggs. That is what El Maestro believes. This is a spiritual healing, and you’re polluting your body before you even begin?” She shook her head in disgust and went back to her spot. Bonnie and Cheryl sheepishly rewrapped their sandwiches and stuffed them into their purses, and I reluctantly followed their lead.

“Have fun,” Sharon said, as she turned and left us there to starve.

But the four hours we had left to go in that line, which was now snaking its way down the street and around the corner, were proving to be more than my willpower could take.

“Save my place, guys. I’ve gotta pee. Be right back.” I could feel my friends’ suspicious eyes following me as I trotted off around the corner toward the privacy of my friend Sonja’s kitchen, clutching my purse under my arm and my coffee cup in my hand. And when I came back half an hour later with crumbs on my shirt, they were barely speaking to me.

We were finally herded into the hall, everyone abuzz, excitedly anticipating the arrival of this powerful man. There must have been more than two hundred people there.
Palms up, open your hearts, and breathe in,
we were instructed. So we did.

Suddenly the room fell silent. In walked a teeny bearded guy in white robes and combat boots. As he got closer I could see rings on every finger and a beanie covering his head. A white scarf tied around his mouth and nose made him look like a bank robber. Trailing behind Constantino were three women in long, flowy white skirts, all of them waving incense in the air. We stood as they formed a little circle in front of a makeshift altar watched over by images of saints and the Virgin and Jesus himself. Constantino and his women bowed their heads in prayer. Then he began to approach his eager followers. Over and over I could hear him ask the question, “Qué te pasa?” They would lock eyes, the healee would share whatever ailment they were seeking relief from, and then Constantino would poke them.
Really?
I thought.
He’s healing with a poke?
And I’m not talking just a little nudge, I’m talking a full-force jab, one that had some people reeling so hard that those standing behind had to catch them to keep them from falling.

I braced myself as my turn approached. What should I say? What
wasn’t
wrong? How could I describe it? My own wounds weren’t visible to the outside world, at least not usually. There was no way
to explain it all in one sentence, or even two. All I knew was that sometimes I felt like I was two people, and was living in constant fear that the functioning one could fall off a cliff at any moment and become the other one, the one who was needy, scared, and an emotional mess.

Then, before I knew it, the little guy was right in front of me. “Cuál es tu problema?” The room seemed to fall silent again.

One of the women in white repeated in English, “What is your problem?”

I could feel the entire crowd, including my friends, lean in around me. “My mind needs to be healed,” I whispered.

“Mande?” Constantino barked.

“It’s my head,” I answered, a little louder this time. “I’m suffering from things that happened. I want to be cleansed of my past. I need to get strong enough to deal with the present. You see, I was in a war zone, I’m not sure—”

His two fingers were on my chest. “Look into his eyes,” instructed the flowy-skirted woman.

And when I did, electricity shot through my body as if I had stuck my wet finger in a socket. I heard myself let out a wail like a cow in heat. It was as if everything I had been hiding inside since I arrived in Mexico had come rushing to the surface and was spewing out into the dance hall through the tears that poured from my eyes. The anguish of loss, the guilt about my girls, the shame of failure—all my grief about leaving Afghanistan seemed to come gushing out all at once. But Constantino didn’t budge. He just stood there and pressed. Just when I started to think I’d faint, he pushed me into a chair and said, “It’s finished. Your pain is finished.”

I
RETREATED TO
M
ACAWS A
little shaky. The whole healing thing had not been what I expected. I wasn’t sure what being healed was supposed to feel like, and I certainly wasn’t convinced that all my
problems had disappeared in a poof. But I did sense that something inside me had shifted, as if the channel had been changed on my internal TV.

I checked my phone while I waited for Analisa to bring me a cup of coffee. Three more messages from Noah. I couldn’t even bring myself to read them.

“What is the matter, Debbie? You don’t look so good.”

“Nothing. I’m just tired.” I knew that Analisa was the last person with whom I could discuss my problems with Noah. She’d throw herself across a track smack in front of a speeding train if her son asked her to. She shrugged her shoulders and left me alone to stress. But it wasn’t long before Sharon plopped herself down in the chair next to mine.

“Healed?”

“We’ll see.” I didn’t quite know how to explain to Sharon what I had gone through. “But it was quite an experience.”

“You do look kind of wiped.”

“You go to the healer, Debbie?” Analisa asked from across the patio. “My aunt, she was there. Cancer.” She looked down at the ground and shook her head.

“Does she believe in this stuff ?” I asked, rubbing the spot on my shoulder that had been poked.

“Why not? You don’t?”

“I don’t know. I just thought with everyone being so Catholic down here . . .”

“Catholic, Mormon, what is the difference? If someone is healing, you must go get healed. Especially if it cost nothing.”

I couldn’t argue. But it did worry me that there were so many desperate-looking people in that hall asking for help, people who were in all probability, I now understood, lacking the resources to pay a doctor. The whole thing felt so sad. My phone vibrated with a little hop across the table. I was scared to look. What I should have asked Constantino for was a healing by proxy for my son, I thought. “Be glad
your kids are the four-legged kind,” I sighed to Sharon, reaching down with one hand to pet her wiggly Shelties.

“What’s going on, Deb?”

“I’m just tired. Haven’t slept very well for the past few nights.”

“Well, I hate to say, but you look more than just tired. I think that healer guy must have really done a number on you.”

I dabbed my napkin at a tear I could feel escaping from the corner of my eye. Though I was sure Sharon would be sympathetic, I feared that once I started talking I’d fall apart. Noah was a mess, and trying to help him by denying him help seemed to go against every drop of maternal instinct I carried around inside. Intellectually I knew it was supposed to be the right thing to do, but when my mind would go to that dark place where I’d imagine Noah squatting in front of a bank begging for change, or unconscious in a ditch, all bets were off. I went back and forth and back and forth from being angry to frightened to guilty to ashamed, and all that ricocheting around just left me feeling so overwhelmed that I admit I often found myself desperately trying to simply shut Noah and his problems out of my mind.

“So how did the Art Walk go?” I asked with a shaky voice, in a feeble attempt to change the subject.

Sharon kindly played along. “The Art Walk? Oh, it was good. More crowded than the one last month. We had good business that night.”

As she went on about the pros and cons of running a business in the old part of town, I began to notice something happening across the street, behind Sharon’s back. The city gardener at the museum was holding a huge iguana up by its tail. I could see its long green body squirming and writhing helplessly in one hand, as the gardener held a machete in the other. I kept waiting for the gardener to release the poor thing, but he just stood there. I tried not to look, and struggled to concentrate on what Sharon was saying. But suddenly I couldn’t bear to watch this cruelty any longer, so I pushed back my chair, apologized to Sharon for the interruption, and ran, yelling, into the street. “Stop! Please!” Halfway across I watched as the gardener
straightened his arm. That’s when I noticed the red gash across the iguana’s neck, so deep I could see the bone underneath. The gardener’s eyes were moist. He shook his head sadly. I quickly looked away, as a million thoughts flooded my brain.
I should just walk away,
something was telling me,
back to Sharon and back to the comfort of Macaws. Don’t get involved. If you look too closely, you’ll have no choice. Once you really open your eyes, you open your heart. There’s no turning away. You’ll have to take responsibility for that poor animal. I don’t want an iguana! I don’t even like iguanas that much. What do iguanas even eat? Where do they sleep? Why am I even doing this?
But, as if my body had been taken over by some other, more benevolent being, instead I yelled as loudly as I could for Glen, who came and picked up the maimed lizard in his arms and marched it back over to Macaws. We placed it gently down on the bar and asked Cesar the bartender to call the vet. By the time he arrived the bar top was littered, thanks to everyone who was there that afternoon, with enough pesos to cover the emergency on-location surgery, right there between the bowl of limes and the pile of cocktail napkins.

Later that night I called Noah, and made him a deal. Though he’d clearly be way more work than a crippled iguana could ever be, I opened the door for him to come down to my house on Carnaval Street.

H
AVE
I
MENTIONED HOW MUCH
I love to shop? I am so, so good at it. Just point me in the direction of a nice boutique or gallery or crafts fair, and I’ll come out with my soul full, even if my hands are empty. And malls? They are just about my favorite places on earth. I used to fly from Kabul to Dubai just for the malls. I didn’t even have to buy. Simply sitting anywhere among the Sephoras and Victoria’s Secrets and Bath & Body Works and Sunglass Huts of the world, sipping a coffee, people-watching or reading a book, is to me what being on a yoga retreat is for other more disciplined, more flexible women. I relax. But in Mazatlán, shopping has its limits. No decent sheets, not one affordable lamp, and forget about those size-nine shoes. Apparently drag queens were the only ones wearing pumps that big down here. By now I was well versed in every item to be found in Centro, and was itching to move on.