Body and Bread (30 page)

Six months before I arrived, a heavy rain had unearthed a major discovery thirty-three miles northeast of Mexico City, in
Teotíhuacan
. At its peak in AD 500, this metropolis had covered eight square miles with a population of 200,000, making it larger than its contemporary, imperial Rome. Sometime between the birth of Christ and AD 150, the Pyramid of the Sun and the Pyramid of the Moon had been built, and the city’s main axis, the Avenue of the Dead, had been extended to three miles. The 1971 discovery occurred at the base of the Pyramid of the Sun, a structure 738 feet square and twenty stories high.

My anthropology professor, who’d been part of the original team, later invited me along with two other students to crawl through the man-made entrance they’d uncovered. Standing at the foot of that truncated monument, I remembered the hobo’s pyramid of stones at my family’s farm and the one I left the same day by the tracks, all three, ours and the
Teotihuacanos’
, expressions of gratitude meant to honor.

Just inside, the cramped enclosure required light from our spelunking helmets. We crawled down an ancient stairway as though rappelling a mountain, the steep stone steps cut into the walls of a shaft twenty-three feet deep. Although each ledge held, my foot barely had space to balance; every dusty surface felt on the verge of disintegration. Our professor, his helmet’s light probing, his voice soaking into rock and mud, led us to a tunnel at the bottom that turned out to be 112 yards long.

I stayed as close to him as possible while we crawled through the damp darkness, my knees throbbing, picturing Long-tailed shrews, albino salamanders. The air thinned—we could’ve been, instead, on a mountaintop—and I grew dizzy, gulping, my lungs filling but not getting enough oxygen. I curled against the tunnel wall, refusing to move. Patiently, the professor, his ray of light aimed at my feet, guided me through a regulation of my breathing. We crawled for another fifteen minutes, his light beam roving crags ahead. When he finally stood, his head disappearing as he rose, my heart lurched; then we joined him.

The cavern, he said, his voice echoing, had been formed by an enormous bubble of gas in lava that streamed from deep within the earth. Dark as a blank and humid, it was huge, our lights illuminating its regions. Attached to the floor were ceramic pieces surrounding a flagstone, situated directly beneath the pyramid’s center. When light from the monument’s narrow entrance had flickered across the stone, shamans, perhaps the city’s founding fathers, had held elaborate rituals. I wondered how their ceremonies compared to the ones at the White Shaman site in the Lower Pecos. An amorphous shape had appeared there, and now I hoped it would reappear here. Our voices ricocheted; our lights streaked across walls slick as obsidian and a ceiling covered in what looked like fossilized toucan tongues.

The cave ended in a four-petal flower shape, the chambers like those mentioned in
Tōlēteca-Chīchīmeca
history. Inside, skull carvings and jaguar sculptures, symbols of death, had waited centuries to be found. A greenstone figurine with inlaid pyrite eyes had also lain undisturbed, alongside basalt blades and a conch shell.

The
Teotihuacah
believed that the cave was the womb from which the sun and moon first arose. When the pyramid was built over this holy place, the structure became an
āltepētl
or “water-hill,” around which the community then settled. In other words, the pyramid was the center of the universe. Now, we stood in the footprints of its shamans, Christ’s contemporaries.

As we squatted inside a chamber, the professor described an archeologist’s first attempts in the early 1900s to excavate the pyramid. “At its highest level,” he said, “skulls of children, none older than eight, were found at each corner.” The victims’ tears had been shed for
Tlāloc
, the god of water.

I gathered a fistful of groundcover and sniffed: dust, alkali, metal. So, I thought, this is time, its dark elements, and I’m like Jonah inside the whale’s belly, like the mouse inside the bass’s sac, like Sam inside his paralyzed body. Was this cave anything like the one at the Caley Creek battlefield, where 240 Caddoes, Kickapoo, and Comanche had been
routed
? Was my father’s kettle of bones so different from the shrines atop the pyramid? I pictured the man in his overalls, hanging, then Otis lying stiffly, and the cadavers in my father’s lab. Like Houston, they’d all lifted, become stars.

Sam told Hugh that courage was being able to see yourself as something else, and now I did. The amorphous shape would not appear in the cave, I realized, because it was inside me.

C
HAPTER 21

A
T THE
R
OCKPORT HOUSE,
Terezie makes me go inside to alert my brothers that I’ve brought her and Cornelia. I’ve convinced them to come by saying they’ve been invited, which is, at best, an exaggeration. In fact, the last time I spoke to Kurt, he said, “For God’s sake, keep them the hell away from us.” My family doesn’t expect
me
today, much less their ex-sister-in-law and her daughter, but this is one Thanksgiving when, like it or not, we are going to sit down together. Somehow, we have to start talking again. Only then, can we figure out what to do for Cornelia.

After that, maybe we can finally share what we’ve heard about Sam’s secret. How long has Kurt known, I wonder, and why didn’t he tell us? Did Sam, upset over news of Ruby’s death, confide in him? Kurt must’ve told Hugh before they took Cyril to court; Terezie knows too, of course, and even Cornelia. What about Kurt’s wife, Randy? Did Hugh tell Debbie? Am I really the last? I’m an anthropologist. How did this happen?

“Do I know you?” Noreen says, standing at the door. Her ponytail hangs in perfect ringlets.

“I’m your Aunt Sarah. Now be a good girl and go get your father.”

“Man!” someone whoops from down the hall. “Did you see that?” Laughter.

“Daddy,” Noreen calls, shuffling toward the voice, her curls bouncing.

I turn toward the car and wave, give a thumbs-up.

“What happened?” Hugh says, suddenly materializing, frowning, barefooted. “What’s the matter?”

“Happy Thanksgiving to you, too, Hugh. May I come in?” I brush past him toward the room where our family always gathered. Our grandfather’s billiard table underneath a Tiffany island lamp; his portable bowling alley along one wall. The casement windows angle open, but logs crackle in the stream stone fireplace. As two White-faced ibis sail over the bay just past the dock, I remember our grandfather saying patients gave him Chinese pheasants, peacocks, and a pair of Japanese deer. Our father’s pear and plum trees still shade one side of the house.

“What the…” Kurt says, his feet lurching from the coffee table to the travertine floor.

I throw my hands up, slap my thighs. “Okay,” I say, “so I crashed your party. But this is my house, too, and we
are
family. Would it be terrible if I asked you to let me stay?”

Emma rises from her chair by the bank of windows, flapping her hands, her long face and prominent chin sloped as a crescent moon. She says nothing, frantically panting. Kurt approaches her, his arms resting at his sides. “You remember Aunt Sarah,” he says, his voice a bassoon. “We’re very glad she’s here. She’s going to have lunch with us.” Behind them, a White Pelican swoops toward the water then rises as though leaping from their heads, its pumping wings whispering
comfort, comfort
.

“I
thought
I heard a strange voice,” Randy says, the slotted spoon in her hand reminding me of Ruby in Gran’s kitchen telling my mother to leave. “Is something wrong?” She’s wearing designer slacks and matching knit top, complete with a coral necklace and paisley scarf.

“Only that I’ve crashed your celebration. Do you mind? I’m happy to help.”

“Aunt Sarah, way cool,” says Kurt Jr. walking past his mother. He puts something yellow in his mouth then licks his fingers.

“Kurt Jr. and I would be glad to set the table, right?” How am I going to tell them about Terezie and Cornelia? Surely, the doorbell will ring any second.

“Who’s that?” Noreen says, pointing outside the side windows toward the fruit trees.

Debbie walks next to her daughter then leans to look, her leather skirt hiking. “She’s right. It’s two women, and they’re doing something.” She bends closer, shading her eyes. “Are they digging? It looks like they’re digging. Hugh?”

I don’t need to join the others as they conjecture about Terezie and Cornelia. Hugh recognizes them first. “What are
they
doing here?” After a few seconds, the adults turn, synchronized as a Motown group.

“Look, it’s Thanksgiving,” I say, my arms stretched. Okay, yes, I’m hoping for a miracle. “All they want to do is have lunch with you. Nobody has to say anything about the lawsuit. What do you say; can I bring them inside?”

“But what are they
doing
?” Debbie repeats.

“Sure,” Randy intercedes. “I say bring them on. There’s plenty of food. Why not?”

“Because it’s my holiday; that’s why,” Kurt says. He flops back in front of the TV. “I’m not going to spend my day off with people who’re trying to rob us.”

“You expect me to tell them to go? For God sakes, Kurt, they’re not ax murderers. She was Sam’s wife; doesn’t that count for something?”

“You mean that lady out there’s Uncle Sam’s wife?” Kurt Jr. asks, his mouth hanging open. “She’s real? I mean, a actual person?”

“This is between the grown-ups,” Randy says, shaking her head, walking toward the kitchen.

“I don’t get it,” Kurt Jr., says. “Why do y’all hate her?”

“Thanks,” Kurt grumbles.

Then Emma begins laughing, a giggling interspersed with hiccups. She bites her hand.

“Time out,” Kurt says, standing, floating toward his daughter. “Want to play puzzle?” he croons. “Let’s go to your room.”

Fingering her blouse button, she follows her father. “Room,” she says. “Room. Room.”

“Oh, my God,” Debbie squeals at the scene out the window. Noreen is standing next to Terezie and Cornelia, who both squat next to my father’s pear tree, its leaves crimson. Debbie runs out the door first, me right after.

“Honey, what are you doing?” Debbie asks while placing her arm around Noreen’s shoulder.

“They have to clean that up,” Noreen says, pointing to a hole near the tree’s trunk. “It’s a mess.”

“Now, don’t you worry, honey,” Terezie says. This tree’s going to be fine. As a matter of fact, loosening up the dirt will give it a little air so it can breathe.” She scoops soil into the hole and pats. “What’s your name? Mine’s Terezie.”

“I don’t think we’ve ever met,” says Debbie, “but I’m Debbie, Hugh’s wife, and this is our daughter, Norine.”

“Norine, honey, I knew your grandmother, and you don’t just have her name. Why, you lucky thing; you got her gorgeous green eyes, too.”

“Were you a friend of my grandmother’s?”

“Well, once upon a time, I was married to your daddy’s brother, Sam.”

“But he died. I know.”

“Yes, he did. And now I have a daughter of my own.” She rises and helps Cornelia struggle to stand. “Debbie, Norine, this is Cornelia.”

Norine frowns while holding and flipping her ponytail like a switch. “Why’d your mom have to pick you up like that? Something wrong with your leg? What’s that thing on your nose, there?” She points.

“Why you’re a regular Curious George,” Cornelia says, wheezy. “It’s a nose ring, and I’ll show it to you if I can have some water. What do you say, doll face?”

“Sure, come on. It’s okay; lean on me,” Norine says, grinning. Helpless to stop them, Debbie follows.

Terezie starts after them, but I pull her back. Somehow, I have to explain what happened in the house. “What were you doing?”

She opens her hand, and my Marcos point lays across her palm. I’d have recognized it anywhere, the beveling along its lateral edges, the scalloped grooves chiseling its rim. Sam said Tonkawa left it after camping at the farm.

“How did it get
here
?” I’ve always wondered what my father did with it.

“A few days after you found it at the farm,” Terezie says, “your dad drove to Austin and told Sam to put it back.”

“You’re kidding.” How could I not know that?

“Sam was furious. I thought it would kill him. That’s when he got thrown in jail in Laredo, remember?”

Is that possible? Did he go to Mexico right after that day at the farm?

“He kept the Marcos in his wallet until your grandfather died. Then we buried it here.” We look up, the tree’s tint surrounding us, its radiance the miracle I asked for.

“Here,” Terezie says, placing the flint in my palm then closing her hands around mine. “He would’ve wanted you to have it.”

I thumb its side and edges, planed as cut-glass crystal, and think,
silica, ashes.
This is an artifact of my family as well as the Tonkawa, present
and
past. While we walk toward the house, I say, “Don’t expect much of a welcome.” I hope Terezie will be more forgiving than I am.