Red Glass (8 page)

The White Dress

The next day we went to the single tourist attraction in town: ancient ruins of a Mixtec city, complete with temples to climb on. It was a hot, cloudless day, and I’d forgotten my hat. We’d left in the cool green morning before the sun was strong. But within an hour, by the time we reached the top of the hill, the sun was shining relentlessly overhead. I’d forgotten my sunscreen, and my face was already burning. Normally I would have hidden in a little patch of shade, swept up in a panic over skin cancer—all it takes is one bad burn, they say—but Ángel said my cheeks looked pink and nice. “Taste the berries and forget about falling off the cliff,” he told me.

We watched Pablo jump from stone to stone, run along walls, up and down steps, breathless, sweating, laughing. A wild thing. All the pent-up energy from a year of sullenness suddenly let loose. Dika and Mr. Lorenzo sat under a gnarled tree looking at the sea of rooftops in the valley, pointing and speculating on our hotel’s location.

Ángel and I wove around spiky shrubs toward the temple, and sat on a stone step. There were no shadows here in the center of the ruins. Everything was exposed.

“I don’t feel empty anymore,” he said. “Like I did last night.”

“Good.”

He set down the wooden box on his lap and absently ran his fingers over it. “You know, I never feel completely empty,” he said. “My mother’s always with me.” Then he tilted his face to the sun and said, “This place reminds me of dying of thirst. You know what it’s like to be dying of thirst?”

Pablo used to stare at the aquarium for hours at night, hypnotized by the sound of gurgling water. I said, “I imagine, sometimes, how Pablo felt.”

He nodded. “The third time I almost died was when my dad and I crossed the desert to come to the U.S. The coyote suddenly took off. He left us there. Some people went one way, some another. Me and my dad went off one way, what we thought was north. We ran out of food and water—the coyote had told us it would only take a few hours to cross. But twenty-four hours had passed when he abandoned us. Then another day passed. All I thought about was my mother. I thought of her when my guts were empty, all tied in knots. My tongue was dry and felt huge in my mouth. My lips were cracked and bleeding and when I tried to speak only creaks came out. I thought of my mother and the towels she would put on my head when I had a fever, green scraps of towels that felt cool and wet.

“We passed a little pond. It was dark and murky, with things hidden underneath, hairy plants, green slime. My dad said, ‘Don’t drink it,
hijo
.’ But he couldn’t resist. He ran and scooped water into his mouth. ‘Don’t drink it,’ he said. Water was running down his chin, down the front of his shirt. But I drank it anyway. It stank but we didn’t care. A minute later, our stomachs were cramping like fists squeezing everything out of us. Vomit poured out of our mouths and we shook, and the whole time I thought of her, watching me, the way she watched me sleep when I was sick. The way the beads on her necklaces clinked together when she leaned over me.”

He ran his hands over the box. It made me think of a Buddha’s belly, worn smooth from so much praying and rubbing.

We sipped our water bottles, and after a while, I said, “That was the third time you almost died?”

He nodded.

“What about the second?”

“I never talk about the second.”

That night, Dika moaned, “
Mein Gott!
My legs fall out if I make one step more!”

Mr. Lorenzo said, “Oh, I need rest too. I am very sleepy.”

“So you children go to eat without us,” Dika said, eyeing Mr. Lorenzo and smiling, not very subtly.

I felt tired too, my face warm and pink from the sun, not too burned, just a glowing feeling. I changed into a green fitted shirt, a present from Mom that I’d never worn outside my house before. The shirt had seemed too daring a leap from my usual shapeless amoeba clothes. Tonight I felt bold for some reason. Maybe because I hadn’t gotten a sun rash after all. Or because the slimy cop had liked my eyes and asked what color they were. Or because Ángel had said I had
chispa
—spark—even though I wasn’t exactly sure what that meant.

Pablo and Ángel and I went off to find some dinner. It was dusk, and yellow streetlamps lit up the zocalo—the main square. The zocalo was full of huge bushes trimmed into shapes of horses bucking and dinosaurs stretching their necks and long wavy snakes. It gave me an Alice in Wonderland feeling.

Around us, people were strolling arm in arm, not worried about getting anywhere, just happy making slow circles around the zocalo. Vendors in palm hats pushed carts selling ice cream and popcorn. Boys offered shoe shines and three tiny packs of
chicles
for one peso. A woman in a red and white woven tunic knelt on a blanket with jewelry displayed in neat rows. A nearby streetlamp bathed her face in light, making her dangly earrings sparkle and the ribbon in her braids shine. The jewelry on her blanket was made of smooth discs of what looked like polished wood, the color of chocolate flecked with caramel. The discs were coconut, the woman told me. “Only ten pesos!
Lléveselo, güerita
.” Take it, white girl.

So I did. I chose a necklace and a bracelet that made me think of beaches lined with palm trees and jungles.

Ángel bought Pablo a purple wooden turtle. We decided we’d use chewed-up gum to stick it to the dashboard so that its head would wiggle around as if it were rocking out to the music. For himself, Ángel picked out a gold Virgin of Juquila pendant. The patron Virgin of Oaxaca.
“Muy milagrosa, esta Virgen,”
the woman assured us. Very miraculous, this Virgin.

And then, as we walked away, she called out, “Wait,
güera
!”

I turned.

She held up a white dress. A breeze caught it and filled the skirt and made it float there, a little cloud. “This is perfect for you,” she said.

It was fitted cotton with a flared skirt and low neck. White embroidered flowers circled the neck, and more flowers ringed the hem. Usually buying clothes was a long, stressful event that made nervous sweat trickle down my sides. I would try on something while Mom waited, then we’d walk around the mall and I’d think about it while my stomach wrung itself out, then I’d try it on again, and then, back home, I’d try it on once more and feel sick. The problem was, if it made me look like the same old Sophie—lost inside droopy fabric—then I got a little queasy, as though I were looking at slightly moldy three-week-old leftovers in the fridge. But if it made me look how I
wished
I looked, then I’d think, Who am I trying to fool?

The woman held up the dress, and pressed it against my body with her palm. “Perfect,
güera
!” Her face lit up.

I looked at Pablo, who was sprawled on the ground, playing with his purple turtle. “What do you think,
principito
?”

He glanced up at me, his mouth still half open in concentration. “Wow,” he said.

Ángel agreed. “Wow.” He whistled softly through his teeth. “Buy it, and let’s go eat.”

I bought the dress, just like a confident, normal person. I wondered: If I act like this enough, will I actually turn into a normal, confident person? Maybe it would happen someday without me realizing it, the way day can turn into night, and after you notice it’s dark, you can’t exactly pinpoint the moment it changed.

We turned down a side street and passed a cozy-looking place to eat, just a few tables and a grill outside someone’s house. Over a square metal fire pit, a giant pot of something steamed. It smelled like chocolate and cinnamon. A little girl stirred the pot with a long spoon, and then ladled white foamy liquid into a paper cup.
“¡Atole!”
Pablo cried, sniffing the air like a puppy. “And
picaditas
!” He bounced up and down and pointed to a grill sizzling with meat and small, thick tortillas sprinkled with guacamole and salsa and crumbly white cheese. Behind the girl, a stout woman in a checked apron smiled at us through the smoke.

“Let’s eat here!” Pablo said.

He picked out a table covered with a plastic cloth, the color of a tropical ocean on postcards. We sat down on wooden chairs. Ángel set his box on the table and tapped his finger on the plastic. “This here, this is the color of your eyes, Sophie. Right, Pablo?”

Pablo studied my eyes, then the tablecloth, then my eyes, and finally nodded, serious.

“See,” Ángel said, “I would never have to ask what color your eyes are, Sophie.”

I didn’t know what to say, but at that moment the girl came to our table to take our order. Ángel and I got Coronas with lime and three
picaditas
apiece, and Pablo got two
picaditas
and some
atole
.

While we were waiting, Pablo said, in Spanish, in his most angelic voice, “
Por favorcito
, can I touch your box?”

Ángel made a show as if he were thinking about it, and finally nodded. Pablo brushed his hands along the edge and poked his pinkie finger into the keyhole.

“Can I hold it?”

Ángel moved his head close. “You can shake it.”

Pablo picked it up as though it were made of glass.

“But only three times,” Ángel said. “And gently.”

Pablo held it next to his ear and shook it once. No rattle, no clink, just the soft whisper of something hitting the side. Paper, maybe. He shook it twice more, then laid it back on the table and looked at it, thinking hard.

“Can I open it?” he asked.

Ángel shook his head. “Only I open it. And I won’t open it till Guatemala.”

“After you come back from Guatemala can we see what’s inside?” I asked.

He didn’t say anything.

Our food came, and Pablo pounced on it. As we ate, a few curious people stopped by our table, full of questions. “What are you doing all the way down here? Are you from
el Norte
? Do you speak English? How long will you stay? What do you think of our pueblo? I have a brother working in Chicago, a sister in L.A., a son-in-law in Washington,” and on and on and on. We got an invitation to two weddings and a fifteen-year-old’s birthday party, all of which we declined since we’d be leaving for Pablo’s village the next day. Ángel had a second beer, and then I did too, and then Pablo licked the last bits of grease off his fingers and slumped asleep in his seat. The streets grew emptier, and we were the only customers left. We sat in the smoke, talking.

I realized, all of a sudden, that I hadn’t squeezed any lime on my
picaditas
, but my stomach felt fine.

After our second beers were done, everyone else had left, and the stout woman and her daughter started to clean up. Ángel picked up Pablo and laid him over his shoulder. “Will you carry my box, Sophie?” he asked, and I felt honored, even though he kept glancing over to make sure I had a good grip. The plastic bag containing my dress was securely looped over my wrist.

On our way back to the hotel, the streets were almost deserted. I felt light as a leaf. The world moved around me like a series of photos: Ángel’s arm muscles; Ángel’s hand on Pablo’s hair; streetlamp reflections in Ángel’s sunglasses; the glow on his cheeks; fantastical animal bushes in the background. I tilted my head back and looked at the sky. “Did you know you can buy your own star?”

“Really?”

“I saw an ad once. It’s thirty-four ninety-five per star. And you can name it after yourself. You get a certificate and a star chart and everything.”

“I’d pick that one,” he said, pointing with his chin. “Right over the tip of that church steeple.”

“I’d pick the one next to it,” I said. “Just to the right.”

I looked at Ángel’s face, and then, in one swift, impulsive movement, pushed his sunglasses up on his head. He couldn’t stop me because his arms were holding Pablo. His face looked naked.

“Ángel, tell me the truth,” I said. “Are you staying in Guatemala for good?”

He kept looking at the sky, but I could still see his eyes, how they crinkled around the edges, as if the moonlight were too bright for him.

“I think so, Sophie. I think so.”

The sky looked huge, and I thought of how our stars were so tiny and giant at the same time. I felt very melodramatic, like Dika, and inside my head, I asked how one particular star—which until last week used to be like any other star—could suddenly matter so much.

Back in the courtyard, the lights were off in Dika’s and my room. “She must be asleep,” I whispered to Ángel. I opened the metal door slowly so that it wouldn’t clank too much, and Ángel followed me in to put down Pablo. Once our eyes adjusted to the dark, we saw the room was empty. Ángel pulled back the blanket and laid Pablo on the sheets. He unlaced Pablo’s shoes and pulled them off gently, then tucked the covers around his neck.

“Where’s Dika?” Ángel asked in a low voice. Our heads were close, and I breathed in his skin, which still smelled like sunshine and sweat and dusty stone from earlier today.

“Maybe they went out for food.” I wondered if he noticed the warmth of my breath.

“Or maybe…” He walked out the door into the courtyard and I followed. The light was on in Mr. Lorenzo’s room. The windows were open, the thin curtain over the window blowing in slow motion in the breeze. We glimpsed, through the window, Mr. Lorenzo and Dika, sitting close on the bed. It was as though they were lit up onstage and we were hidden in the wings. They appeared to be getting dressed, leaning over to slip on shoes. Mr. Lorenzo’s chest was bare. It looked more solid and compact than I would have expected. Dika wore a cropped spaghetti-strap tank top that exposed thick beige bra straps at her shoulders and rolls of tanned fat hanging over the waist of her white capri pants. Of course, I’d seen her in a bikini, and usually looked away, but now my eyes felt glued to this scene.