second. Hope should call herself a kidney while she’s at it!
Ouch. Prying had its drawbacks.
She was wrong anyway. Already in the short time since that first painting, I’d done several quick studies in charcoal and ink. I was experimenting with the introduction of new colours to my oil palette, the vivid colours of Mexico. Helping at the market with the children was actually feeding my work, too; the crafts, for me, were a new exploration of old materials. And I’d taken a few bios of artists out the day I showed Faith the way to the library: Frida Kahlo, Georgia O’Keeffe, Debora Arango. She was the one who said a nude is a landscape in human flesh. Oh, and La Malinche. But she wasn’t an artist. I was just curious. Plus, I was going to be able to teach José something now. That Malinche wasn’t a traitor, not really. That she’s the mother of the majority of today’s Mexican people, her child the first mestizo — mixed blood — and that my blood is as mixed as the rest. And how did Faith know I’d been keeping a record of my favourite quotes?
Even when she was absent, she had the knack. I felt like I’d been caught in the bathroom playing cockroach killer and amateur spy when the studio was where I should really be at.
I rolled the sheets back together, slipped them into the plastic bag, and pushed it back into the recess, shining the light first just in case. Faith would never know. Meanwhile, I might actually have to hide my quote book.
V
Faith’s retching filled my ears and nose. We’d pulled off the road. José was standing next to the car and looking over the roof while I stood next to Faith on the other side, holding her forehead as she doubled over, all her weight pushing against my hand. This was a first for us. Back in Montreal, during my CEGEP years, I was always the one down on my knees hugging the toilet bowl, Faith’s hand supporting me. Of course, mine was always due to too much Baby Duck, too many rum and Cokes, or a record night of beer chugging. Like today, my warm beer to give me courage for the reunion. Faith never over-indulged, over-imbibed, over-anything that I knew of. Always in such control.
It wasn’t like she was one to get carsick either. That too was my specialty on our yearly holidays, trips across the entire breadth of the country (to become true Canadians we had to know the whole of Canada, Papi said. Papi never did anything by half measures) or, on one occasion, all the way back to Mexico. On the first day of driving, we’d inevitably have to stop by the side of the road at some point for me to throw up. That was on good days, when Papi managed to find a place to pull over soon enough. Faith hated it when he didn’t make it in time. I was too far gone to care.
On our first night out, the ritual was always the same. Vacations, Mom decreed, were her time off from mothering, so Papi washed my matted hair — somehow I never remembered until the second day to tie my hair back — in whatever cheap motel room we’d managed to find, always, again, at Mom’s insistence. Left to his own devices, I think Papi would have driven through the night. We called it being hyper. In the moisture-sucking prairie provinces, on top of the upchucking, my nose would start to bleed and keep on bleeding for days.
Papi didn’t seem to mind the vomit or the blood or the dust. He took delight in helping me make soap-beehive hair-dos, shampooed French buns, spikes on either side of my head, then he’d hold the mirror up for me to admire our creations or fly into uncontrollable fits of laughter. Afterwards, my favourite part, two parts pain to three parts bliss, I’d stand shivering between his knees, one towel wrapped tight around me, another in his hands, while he attacked my hair, wringing every last drop of water out. He always rubbed too hard, but the pleasure was never less than the pain.
I wondered if poets ever stopped to consider the pain or pleasure they wreaked on their muse. Not that the pain was Papi’s fault, he just didn’t know his own strength.
That’s what holidays were, frequent pit stops, strong thighs holding me upright as stronger hands buffeted my scalp, a Grand Prix family on the move. Until Papi left.
We were on the crest of a hill. In the valley below lay Cuernavaca, the City of Eternal Spring instead of eternal pollution. The sky was blue, not the grey haze of Mexico City, and the space above the car hood shimmered in the heat. We could actually see the volcano el Popo, which José said would be visible from Mexico City too if we ever had a day without smog. Together he called el Popo and the dormant volcano beside it the Sleeping Woman, said each one of the four peaks was named after a part of her body. I tried to focus on the volcanoes, breathe in clean air, and block my ears to sick-making heaves. José was right, the four mountain peaks did look like a woman asleep.
In art, to anticipate is to lose the truth of the movement, the gesture, the landscape, all the telling details. I had anticipated too long and too hard this trip, seeing my mother in a home I’d never known, imagining the three women of our family finally joining forces to track down a missing father and husband in his homeland. Now, instead, I concentrated on the distant volcano.
Faith stopped heaving. Her head — clammy not hot — lay heavy on my hand. I tried to imagine what could have brought this on, whether Faith said anything or gave any sign before her strangled plea for José to pull over.
José was into what must be his highway driving mode. Much more relaxing than his kamikaze city style. Faith hadn’t been taking part in our conversation. I thought she’d dozed off in the back seat. It was as though José and I were alone in the car.
“When did you last see your parents?” I asked as we drove.
“My mother. My father died two years ago.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
José shrugged. “We weren’t that close.” The tone of his voice seemed to contradict his shrug. I waited.
José glanced over, put both hands on the wheel. “It felt like I spent most of his last few years trying to connect. The grown son he’d imagined would have stayed close to home, worked the land with him or, at the most, got a job in one of the water-bottling factories nearby. That son wasn’t me. He didn’t get it, what I was doing, who I am, what I’d become. We were both disappointed all the time. We quit trying. It got so I started finding excuses to stay in the city. Then he died. At least I made it back before the end. Anyway, this is one of the few holidays my mother insists on me driving down for.” A pause. “Families, huh.”
I watched the way he crossed one hand over the other as he turned the wheel. Switched from one topic to the next. “I guess I’d better explain how you and Faith can get around Cuernavaca. You’ll be minus a chauffeur once I’ve gone.”
I got the message. The subject of families was closed.
“It’s easy to get around the city, just hop a bus, they call them rutas, for two pesos and you’ll be able to go just about anywhere. Out to the San Antonio hacienda that Cortés built. Or to Tepoztlán, you’ll have to go there, just outside Cuernavaca. A great hike to the top to a tiny pyramid that marks a sacred site. Worshippers go up there to watch the sun rise and pray for the gods’ intervention.”
“People still believe in all that?”
José looked over at me, even slowed down a little. “Well, yeah. Why not? What do you believe in?”
That was when Faith called out, “You’ve got to pull over. I’m going to be sick.” I didn’t have time to say what I believed. Even less to decide if I did.
