“Mama!” Pablo shrieked, piercing the morning tranquility of the playa. “Mama!” Without thinking, Tessa jumped up from the chair, her heart racing. A small wave had knocked her six-year-old son off his feet, but the hovering father of his playmates had already lifted him from the water. Under a thatched palapa, she held her arms out to Pablo, wiping his tears and hugging him until he was calm. The father went back to his neighboring palapa, and the children resumed excavating a sand cave that flooded with seawater as rapidly as they shoveled.
Reclining on the beach chair, Tessa tucked loose strands of her dark ponytail under her straw hat and reached for Neruda’s The Captain’s Verses where it had fallen to the sand. Gazing toward the horizon, seeing neither water nor sky, she was transported by a vivid memory of Cheo reading from its pages, she lazing in a hammock. Awash in the splendor of the verse, the cadence of his voice, she had been tipsy with happiness on their first vacation together only a few short years ago.
“Mama! Look at me!” Pablo called out as he splashed in the water. Tessa adjusted her sunglasses and beamed at her son. Every day the darling boy was more like Cheo. Same sturdy soccer player legs, same cheerful disposition that turned obstinate when tired. Pablo’s dark curls drifted into his eyes as he chased the gentle waves. She had meant to have his hair trimmed before the trip but everyday tasks seemed impossible even now.
Wisps of not-quite-clouds clung to the jungle-blanketed hills circling the turquoise bay. Zijuatanejo was as beautiful as Tessa remembered. Oiled sunbathers basting under the morning sun. The magenta explosion of bougainvillea at the hotel entrance. The busy pier at the north end of Playa La Ropa. She ordered a mezcal margarita – Cheo’s favorite – from a waiter who wouldn’t meet her gaze. He was obviously ill at ease with a single woman, even one wearing no make-up, a faded green swimsuit, a gold band on the third finger of her left hand. A young boy at her side. It wasn’t difficult to read the server’s thoughts: Where is your husband?
Soon, she thought.
#
The day Cheo had sauntered into Galería Libertad with a portfolio under his arm, Manu Chao was on the radio singing “Clandestino,” a punkish reggae anthem to the displaced peoples of the world. Funny the details that stick: October, the season for summer heat. Tessa on the phone, arguing vociferously with her printer. Cheo in jeans and white tee, those unruly black curls and dark skin. Whistling as he admired the exhibit of serigraphs by Rosa Quintana from Oaxaca. When she was off the call, he asked, “Are you the curator?”
“Curator, accountant, janitor,” she said cheerfully, holding out her hand. “I’m Tessa.” She had seen him around at Mission events.
Cheo came right to the point: he wanted a show. Tessa informed him – politely – that the exhibition schedule was already set for the next fourteen months.
“Pues, aver si estas fotos te convencen,” he said.
Tessa smiled. She was used to pushy artists.
Setting his portfolio on the table, Cheo extracted a black and white photograph of a group of danzantes, copal smoke billowing from the incense burner on the sidewalk. The lens had caught a feathered dancer mid-step, her face expressing pain or elation or something Tessa couldn’t define.
“Where was this taken?”
“Not far from here. Last November. On 24th Street in the House of Brakes parking lot, in honor of Mauricio Aviles, an organizer who had recently passed,” Cheo said. “My photos are focused on Mission culture. Late night taquerias, poetry readings, protests, low-riders, powwows, Carnaval and Día de los Muertos . . .”
“They’re good,” Tessa said, her admiration clear. The gallery had few visitors that day. As Tessa viewed Cheo’s work, they drank black coffee and discovered the many people they knew in common. Cheo lived in a flat on Shotwell with roommates, teachers from Buena Vista Elementary School.
“I grew up on Shotwell and Sixteenth,” Tessa said. “My mom was a working single mother born in New Mexico, so I was pretty much raised by my abuela Lorencita who passed five years ago.” She touched her heart. “She still looks after me.”
Cheo taught photography at City College. Born in Mexico, his parents lived in Arizona, his sister was in New York. “The Mission is my home, I’ll never leave,” he said with a rueful laugh.
Their eyes locked and Tessa flushed. She was glad she was wearing her red dress that emphasized her small waist and her dark coloring. Tessa thought briefly about the self-absorbed poet she’d been seeing off and on, then moved the poet into the past. “Come dancing with me at El Rio tonight,” she said. “There’s a great new band, La Doña. You’ll like them.”
“Ok! See you tonight, chica!” Cheo said, draining his coffee cup and packing up.
“I’ll meet you in front at ten-thirty. If you’re late, I’ll be gone,” Tessa teased. She watched Cheo as he jaywalked across Valencia Street to his blue Honda.
Gracias, Lorencita! she whispered.
#
A shadow blocked the Mexican sun. Momentarily disoriented, Tessa opened her eyes and gazed up into the weathered features of an itinerant vendor in a white huipil and gold earrings. Eager to return to the boisterous outdoor patio at El Rio where she and Cheo had been dancing cumbia, she waved the vendor away, but the woman ignored her. In her thick white braids twined with orange ribbon, she laid a blanket on the sand, anchoring the corners with white stones. Moving serenely, she withdrew several black clay parrots from a basket, methodically lining them on the blanket. The smallest was the size of a child’s fist, the largest was life-sized, all gaily decorated with Zapotec motifs.
Just as Tessa shook her head with an impatient no, Pablo ran up and threw himself on his knees next to the blanket, scattering sand everywhere. “Can I have a parrot?” he said. He seized a small parrot with a red beak and yellow wings, grasping it in his sandy hands.
“¿Le gusta el périco, muchachito?” The woman gently ruffled Pablo’s curls with gnarled fingers.
“Mama, please?” Pablo begged.
In a kindly voice, the vendor said something in a language Tessa couldn’t understand. It could be Nahua or Mixteco or any number of languages from the region. A memory of her grandmother’s voice flashed in her mind. No matter.
“Put it down, Pablo. We have lots of time to buy souvenirs.”
Pablo finally gave up and trudged back to his friends, who were pint-sized replicas of the Danish father, all bleached eyebrows and pale ribbed chests.
The vendor shrugged, packed up her wares and ambled along the blistering sand toward the marina. What a pesky woman. Tessa took another swallow of her drink, the ice already melted.
#
Just after their son’s second birthday, Cheo was invited to exhibit at the prestigious InFoTec Gallery in Tribeca. He would fly out for a week to work with the curator, staying with his sister Elena in the Lower East Side. The night Cheo left, Tessa bathed and dressed Pablo in pajamas, while Cheo tore the house apart searching for his wallet.
Tessa held the dozing Pablo as Cheo ducked into the Lyft idling in the driveway.
“Take care of your mama,” Cheo said. “I miss you already, mijo.”
“You’re going to miss your flight!” Tessa said, “Go!”
“I’ll call you from Elena’s,” he said.
The car accelerated. Tessa’s heart lurched. In the chaos, she was certain she forgotten something.
Tessa was watering dahlias in the garden when the phone jangled so loudly her insides quaked. She ran into the house, heart pounding. The ringing emanated from inside a closet that strangely lacked a doorknob. The ringing continued.
Tessa woke up and reached for the cell on her nightstand. “Hello?” she said with a crushing dread. There was a pause, then her sister-in-law’s voice stating that Cheo had been killed in a collision on the way from Newark to Brooklyn. Elena delivered the information dispassionately as if she were a news anchor before she broke into sobs.
Tessa clutched the phone and rocked and rocked. Not true. She went to check on Pablo in his crib. Not true. She let her fingers linger on his downy cheek. With rubbery legs she tottered into a chair and waited. Waited to wake from the worst nightmare imaginable. Waited for a call saying it was a mistake, that she had heard it wrong. Waited to hear that Elena – sweet Elena – was playing an inexplicably cruel joke. Not true.
#
The night before the funeral marked Cheo’s first visit. The house was silent. Pablo was asleep in his crib, her mother Concha in the guest room. Tessa paced in the shadows, unable to sit or stand, trying not to imagine the morning: the black hearse, a droning priest who hadn’t known her Cheo and never would, people attempting to console the family. At midnight, the clock in the living room chimed, shattering the stillness – where else but the living room, she thought later. Tessa glanced toward the mantel, and there he was, reflected darkly in the mirror, Cheo sprawled in his chair, gazing into her grief-hollowed eyes.
Hola, chica, Cheo whispered.
Cheo! Tessa whirled around and flung herself into Cheo’s arms, kissing his face, savoring the familiar green apple scent of his skin, the warmth of his neck. She squeezed him tightly, not wanting to let go. Tessa didn’t find his appearance frightening or strange. Quite the contrary. She had known all along that Cheo wouldn’t forsake her and their son just when they most needed him. Of course, Cheo was still here! Weren’t his sweaty t-shirts still in the hamper? A half-full jar of his homemade salsa macha in the refrigerator, just as he had left it last Sunday?
Tessa now lived for midnight. After dinner and tucking Pablo into his crib, she showered, pulled on a nightgown and turned off the lights. Curled on the sofa under a blanket, she drifted in that realm between waking and sleep, until she felt Cheo’s arrival, an unexpected cigarette in his mouth trailing smoke.
Death hadn’t changed Cheo – or so it seemed at first. He would take a drag off his cigarette, exhaling slowly while narrowing his eyes in that familiar way that made her stomach flutter. You can’t very well ask me to give up smoking for my health now, verdad? he teased. Tessa bit her lips to stop her tears. She hadn’t cried when Elena called her, and she wouldn’t start now.
Tessa wanted to make love to Cheo, but he held her off, gently saying that it wasn’t the time. Instead, they talked about their precious son and current politics. But as the months went by Cheo became impatient hearing about the recent City Hall scandal, climate change or Tessa’s outrage about the impending war.
Brecht was right: When the leaders curse war, the mobilization order is already written out, Cheo said. As though to say, What can you do? Where was the passionate Cheo she had fallen for?
Only Pablo and Tessa concerned him. Once, finding the house in disarray, Cheo told her he appreciated the irony of it, not that it matters, but you were always hounding me to pick up after myself. Now, so many dirty dishes in the sink, chica, it’s somewhat out of hand.
Hearing this, Tessa clapped her hands and roared. Are you kidding? You were worse! Catching herself, she abruptly stopped laughing, wondering if she should have said are instead of were: You are worse. She ached for not knowing the answer to this question. And others: Where do you go when you leave? Do you hurt like I do? These questions she kept locked inside.
If only I had remembered to give you Lorencita’s lucky silver dollar to keep you safe, Tessa lamented.
Come on, Tessa. Do you seriously believe in good luck? He stood and took her hands, catching her gaze in those gray eyes. She felt like she was treading water. Luck is luck, chica, neither good nor bad. Where I was born, where you were raised, the year, the day, the hour, the moment we met, all happenstance. I might have decided to walk past the gallery instead of going inside that day. A carefully drawn map leads to death, a wrong turn to love. A gust of wind, a green light, an earthquake, it is all the same sort of luck, chica. One move leads to another, the music fades only to surge again stronger than before. Sometimes it doesn’t.
This was not what Tessa wanted to hear. It infuriated her to hear Cheo talk like this! She wanted to shake him by the shoulders! No! How could luck be neither good nor bad? She yearned to ask Cheo if he had seen Lorencita or even Neruda – they were in the land of the improbable, after all – but she thought better of it. Cheo at midnight was a gift she didn’t want to jeopardize by asking questions. Instead, she stood behind his chair, watching Cheo’s face in the mirror while applying pressure between his shoulder blades the way she used to do after he had spent hours hunched over the darkroom sink. She wanted him so much.
Do you still read “Good Night Moon” to Pablo? This from Cheo, on a winter night, months after the funeral. They were drinking Modelos in the kitchen. “Good night walls, good night socks,” he intoned in the gravelly voice he used to make Pablo giggle. It’s Pablito’s favorite story, he added in his regular voice. “He’s growing so fast.”
Of course, Tessa said, making a mental note to locate the book. She tried, as she invariably did, to seduce Cheo before daybreak, to pull him down on the bed and straddle his body, to make love to him. He pushed her away gently but firmly, entwining her thick dark hair with his fingers, kissing her forehead instead of her mouth.
I’m in a different place now, Tessa.
At the first hint of light, always mindful of her distress, Cheo left through the doorway instead of walking through the wall or levitating through the ceiling. I want to go with you, she said, her voice husky with emotion, but he was already gone. In the last year his nocturnal visits had become fewer and increasingly unpredictable, and when he did appear he seemed preoccupied, as though he had business elsewhere.
Tessa slowly realized that life equaled desire. The problem was that Tessa was agonizingly alive and all she longed for was Cheo. In the mornings, she emptied the cigarette ashes from the ashtray and dumped empty beer bottles into the recycling bin. Her heart, bones, pelvis, even her skin ached. Her brain hurt.
Widowed at thirty-six, Tessa wafted through her days, as if she were a mote of dust. She didn’t notice how days become months, months stretching into years. She hired an assistant to manage the gallery at the corner of Valencia and Liberty, and turned down invitations to movies, dinner out with girlfriends, birthday parties, weddings. At home, clumps of dust collected under the furniture. In the refrigerator, yellow cheese turned green then powdery white. Her mother Concha came over to cook, take Pablo to pre-school and the park and gave Tessa unwanted advice. Sometimes Tessa would silently mimic her mother: “Take some time off. Buy some clothes, you’re still young. Take a vacation with Pablo, your son needs you, mija.” If Concha only knew. Pablo grew into a helpful boy who put his trucks in the toy box without being asked.
#
Clouds gathered in the early afternoon. The atmosphere was thick, as if made of thumbs. Tessa grew anxious for the approaching night. Pablo found a tarnished coin in the water. The boys gathered around him, impressed. “Lucky boy,” said the father. Pablo beamed and gave it to Tessa for safekeeping.
Tessa covered her sunburnt legs with towels. The Danish father rented a huge inflatable yellow banana and asking her permission to take Pablo, swam it out into bay with the three boys in orange life jackets clinging to its slick rubber sides by ropes. Tessa watched them squeal with fear and happiness. Fortunate children, enjoying life. She adjusted her chair in the shifting shade under the palapa, pulled her straw hat over her face.
Remember, Cheo, how the birds made such a racket? The land screamed with colors: greens, blues, reds, purples. Remember the buzzing insects, the taste of salt on our lips when we kissed? Now everything is muffled, as if shrouded in smoke. Do you remember, we vowed we’d meet back here again someday?
Tessa was keeping her promise, knowing Cheo would meet her in Zijua. When the sun lowered in the sky the Danish father came by Tessa’s beach chair to deliver Pablo. Tessa stood to thank him. His boys were wrapped in soggy towels, impossibly brown beneath corn-silk hair. Pablo wore his towel like a cape, and he too was walnut brown and glowing, as though the sunlight had penetrated his skin.
“Shall we see you again tomorrow?” the Danish father said.
“Yes, absolutely, we’ll be here after breakfast,” she said with a grateful smile.
Pablo squatted next to her chair, happily unearthing seashells with stubby fingers. She ordered an orange juice for Pablo and another margarita for herself. The sky was overcast except for a band of rosy light at the horizon. A pair of swimmers sliced through the bay left to right and back again, like a metronome. As if time were stuck, she thought, closing her eyes.
Pablo crouched beside her with his shovel and bucket, unearthing seashells and unfortunate creatures. He pulled her arm. “See, Mama?” A tiny crab scrambled in his cupped hands.
“You like Zijua?” The margaritas had left Tessa pleasantly buzzed, but alone with her son she felt tentative, unsure of how to be with him without morning cartoons on television to distract him or her mother showing him how to pit strawberries or clean pinto beans.
Pablo freed the struggling crab on the sand. “I love you, Mama.”
“Love you, mijo.” Freckles had darkened in his flushed cheeks. She closed her book and sighed. He looked tired and she had stared at the same two pages all day.
“I’m hungry,” Pablo said, digging into a bag of chips.
With a pang, Tessa realized it was almost dinner time.
“There’s a nearby restaurant called El Topil . . .” She faltered, recalling golden and silver harbor lights twinkling in the dark bay, night jasmine in the air.
“Is it Mexican?” Pablo said playfully.
Tessa laughed as if this were the most outlandish idea. “Do you think it might be Mexican?”
The boy giggled, a tired giggle that went on too long. Lightning crackled in the distance. Tessa tasted copper on her tongue. It was still hot and humid on the beach. Most of the sunbathers were gone, the fishing boats were docked.
“Return the towels, Pablito? Then we’ll have a quick shower and eat.”
Pablo’s feet left indentations in the sand as he trudged to the towel booth located a few yards behind the palapa. Under the hat that smelled like damp straw, she closed her eyes and heard waves crashing, children laughing in the distance.
Soon. Soon it would be midnight. With every minute passing Tessa felt another stone lifting . . . Cheo . . . The low crash of the waves tangled her thoughts – this time she would ask – no, she would demand – to go with him, wherever that was – a woman sang a high keening song – waters swelled under a curdling sky. A circle of people clapped in unison, singing.
A sharp flap of wings and a seagull’s piercing shriek brought Tessa back to the beach.
“Pablo?” She shot straight up in the sand, profoundly aware that Pablo was gone. Adrenaline exploded in her veins. She quickly swiveled to the towel booth. The hut was shuttered, the attendant gone. How much time had passed? A handmade wood sign said Cerrado in crooked letters.
“Pablo?” A gust of wind carried her voice back to her. Louder, “Pablo?!” A tall woman and white-haired man tossed a beach ball to each other as water foamed at their ankles.
Tessa ran up to them, her eyes darting about the beach as she asked, “Have you seen my son?” Reacting to the fear in her voice, the couple ran their eyes down the beach and over the scrubby hill behind the hotel. She saw what they saw: a few clumps of people sitting on the beach, separated by stretches of empty sand. Pablo was not among them.
Where was he?
“Pablo!” Running down the beach, spinning in all directions she yelled, “Pablo!” Pablo knew not to go into the water. Pablo knew. He knew, didn’t he?
There was no movement except for the roiling waves, no sound except for the surf breaking on the shore. The waves surged, crashed, receded, surged, crashed, receded, larger and more powerful with every passing moment. In the midst of the cloud-shrouded mountains, a jagged fork of lightning blazed neon white and died. She felt the waxing moon pulling at her blood. Tessa turned again and ran, uncertain whether she was running in the right direction. No matter, she had no choice. The breeze was stronger, saltier, bloated with moisture. Sunlight skimmed the indigo water so the surface flashed like the flanks of an enormous golden fish. The gunmetal clouds were tinged a lurid red. The swimmers were gone. The light was fading. Soon it would be too dark to see.
Tessa ran towards a bald, tattooed man sitting cross-legged on a towel.
“Por favor, señor. ¿Has visto a mi hijo?” she pleaded. “Tiene este altura. Por favor. He’s this tall, have you seen my son.” By the time he shook his head, Tessa was running in the opposite direction.
A ponytailed teenager in a baggy t-shirt descended from the hotel.
“Señorita, ¿has visto a mi hijo arriba? Ayudéme, es chiquito, ¡por favor!” Tessa’s hoarse voice quivered, as her hands indicated how small her son was. Small, he’s so small. The darkening coastline made her nauseous.
The teenager regarded Tessa’s face, shook her head sadly. “No, señora, lo siento.” Sorry. Sorry? Yes, she was useless and sorry. Tessa rushed to the shore. If Pablo did go into the water, and he wouldn’t, he couldn’t, but if he somehow did and was pulled into the incoming tide, he would be invisible in the waves that sifted up sand and white foam at the shoreline. Invisible.
Tessa felt sick at her complacency only minutes ago. She had been lulled by the mezcal, the heat of the sun, gallivanting with Cheo in a silly nightclub. Cheo! Cheo! Where is Pablo? She would not get on another plane without . . . the thought would go no further. He couldn’t be gone, vanished, a light extinguished. A strong wind, a green light, an earthquake, it’s all the same kind of luck, chica . . .
“Pablo!” Tessa was a fool, running up to complete strangers, asking if they had seen her son. She, above all people, should know where he was. Where was he? She was his mother. The one entrusted to keep the boy safe. A boy who had lost his father. A boy who. . . He had to be somewhere! “Pablo!” Here. Safe. Alive. “Pablo!” A gust of wind spun the boy’s name out over the water where it dissipated into nothingness. A fool. “Lorencita! Help me!”
A clump of figures appeared at the north end of the playa. As the mass moved towards her, she could make out a round figure in the center, a female. A swarm of children surrounded her, all moving awkwardly, arms waving, legs kicking up sand against the red setting sun. At first the cluster traveled slowly, oozing like a centipede, but before long Tessa realized they were running. The knot loomed larger every moment. Tessa sprinted across the expanse of sand that seemed to grab at her bare feet, pulling her back into the earth. As she neared, she recognized the parrot vendor with the white braids. The children at her side were yelling. She could not make out the words above the waves and wind, no matter how she strained.
“¡El niño!” the children shouted, “¡El niño!” The child. Her child? At last Tessa was near enough to hear, to see the bare back of a small boy in the woman’s dark arms. The child was wet, hair plastered flat against his head. His brown torso, the sturdy legs and arms – flesh so tender she wanted to fall to her knees – were coated with sand that glinted in the last light of the sun.
“Pablo!” Tessa cried. Her chest heaving, she reached for her son.
#
At midnight, just as Tessa slipped into that neither-nor state between wakefulness and sleep, the pungent aroma of tobacco and the creaking of the bedsprings announced Cheo’s presence. Tessa woke. Sitting up against her pillow groggy-eyed, hugging her knees, she told Cheo how she’d lost Pablo that afternoon, scared out of her mind that it might be forever. She glanced lovingly at their son sound asleep on the bed next to her.
La viejita found Pablo near the pier, lost, sopping wet and hungry. She fed him and gave him the little parrot he coveted, the one with yellow wings. He was only gone for five minutes! It seemed like forever.
Cheo listened, narrowing his gaze as he drew on his cigarette.
Cheo . . . Tessa began. She paused. Knowing what she had to do, she stood up next to Cheo and took a deep breath. Go, please! she said. Go!
Cheo nodded. The cigarette smoke thickened by the second, making his features indistinct. Then he was no longer in the room.
The next day, Tessa and Pablo flew to Oaxaca, ignoring the ticket agent’s advice against traveling to the region because the political situation was uncertain. That evening they ate mole negro in Oaxaca’s Zocalo. Pablo told her silly jokes and laughed hysterically before he could get to the punchline. Tessa laughed with him until tears rolled down her cheeks. She loved Pablo so much. A municipal band played traditional canciones on the bandstand in the center of the Zocalo, the um-pah-pah-pah of the horns swelling in unison. The smell of sweet sugar lingered in the air from the cotton candy vendors resplendent in traditional Zapotec dress. The world is immense and beautiful and alive, Tessa thought. This life is a miracle.
Laughing with her son in the Zocalo, Tessa touched her heart and gave thanks to her ancestors.
