The House on Carnaval Street

  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 Macaws 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.

  Have 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.

  So when Sharon suggested I join her on a road trip to ­Pátzcuaro in search of Catrinas, with a stop at the mall at Morelia, I had to hold myself back from kissing her on her pale pink lips. So what if I didn’t even know what Catrinas were, and who cares if it was a ten-hour drive? I was in.

  We left the following Thursday in my Mini, looking like a couple of shoplifters who had scored big-time, our clothes bulging with the cell phones we’d stashed in our bras, the wallets we’d hidden in our underwear, and water bottles we’d stuffed in our pants. We weren’t about to take any chances. Some friends of Analisa’s had just been carjacked the month before. The banditos took their purses, their jewelry, everything, leaving them stranded on the side of the road in the middle of the desert. The only thing they were left with was a warning: Walk away, hand in hand, and whatever you do, do not turn around.

  So we were prepared, at least physically. It was an early departure from Mazatlán, which is always an interesting process. We had just braked for the first stoplight when a snot-nosed kid in cowboy boots flung himself onto the hood of the car. A splash of dirty gray water hit the windshield. “Go away!” Sharon yelled, as she lunged to turn on the wipers in an attempt to minimize the damage. The kid laughed, the light turned green, and he jumped off the hood, the early morning sun bouncing off his enormous silver belt buckle as he held out his hand for a tip. Sharon stepped on the gas, only to find herself trapped by the next stoplight, victim to the next window washer on the strip. “No!” I wagged my finger out the rolled-down window. No was no in Spanish, right? “No!” I yelled, even louder. We drove on to the next light with an even muddier windshield, and so it went, block after block, until we finally reached the highway barely able to see the road in front of our faces. But we were on our way.

  You can get to know someone pretty well over ten hours inside a locked vehicle. Sharon and I talked about everything, probably divulging more than we would have had we not been relying on the fast-paced chatter to help keep our nerves from falling prey to the dangers of the Mexican roads. At least we were in the Mini, which I figured was too small to appeal to banditos. Really, how many of them, and their drugs, and their guns, could fit inside one of these things? There was no way they’d get my car up those steep mountain roads, and it was too small to run a roadblock. Not like my friend Carolina’s SUV, which was used in ten murders before the police returned it to her, with advice to sell.

  But some of the personal horror stories we shared that day made the drive down Highway 15 look like a game of Candy Land. The two of us were one-upping each other like a couple of bragging kids in the schoolyard. And I have to admit, even though I was pretty confident I could easily top Sharon when push came to shove, she did have quite a story. I had just finished my own tale about being trapped in an elevator in ­Pakistan with a lecherous policeman when she took over.

  “Well, did I ever tell you about my creepy first husband?” Sharon settled into the passenger seat with a can of Pringles. It was my turn to drive.

  “Um, no.” I figured this one had to be good for at least fifty miles.

  “Yep. I was only eighteen when I moved in with him. Wouldn’t allow me to work, would barely allow me to even leave the house. We didn’t even have a phone.”

  “Are you friggin’ kidding me?” I had dealt with a couple of control freaks myself, but I doubted I ever could have survived that kind of situation. I would like to think I would have walked right out, but then again, I was well aware of just how complicated things can sometimes be.

  “Nope. He was crazy jealous of everyone, my family, my friends, even strangers on the street. I always had to wear my shirts buttoned up to the top, and forget about a bathing suit. He bought all my clothes. I never went shopping.”

  “Why the hell did you marry him in the first place?”

  Sharon laughed. “You are asking me that question? Miss ‘I Do, I Do, I Do’?”

  “Okay, okay. But seriously, you so don’t seem like the type to—”

  “Deb, I was so insecure back then that it didn’t even occur to me that the situation wasn’t normal. And you know what finally woke me up? He actually accused me of incest. Incest! Can you imagine? One afternoon he walked in on me and my brother watching TV from the couch, and just lost it.”

  “Jeez, what a wack job!”

  “Uh-huh. I am just so grateful I met Glen.”

  “So you just met Glen and that was that?”

  Sharon lifted her bare feet to the dashboard. “Oh, it was a lot more complicated than that.”

  Thank God for those complications. They managed to keep me awake and entertained for the rest of my shift, all the way to Guadalajara. Sharon hadn’t managed to fully extract herself from her marriage until two long years after that afternoon with her brother, and it had been her creepy husband’s own mother who introduced her to Glen, who wooed her with flowers and walks in the park, something she had never, ever before experienced with a man. The relationship did have its fits and starts. But one night, after a long separation, ­Shar-on walked into the bar where Glen was playing. The music stopped. Glen handed over his drumsticks to a friend and took Sharon in h
is arms. They danced, and lived happily ever after. Well, at least from my outsider’s point of view happily ever after, but I was pretty sure theirs was a good marriage. They were a real team when it came to their commitment to Casa de Leyendas and Macaws, and I loved the way Sharon’s blue eyes sparkled when Glen made her laugh. I wondered if I’d ever find that in my life.

  Sharon was already familiar with some of my stories, but she didn’t really know all that much about Noah or Zach, at least not before this trip. But by the time we switched places again, halfway to Morelia, she was well up to speed.

  “Wow. You’ve got quite a dilemma, Deb,” she said with a sigh.

  “Tell me about it.”

  “You know, there are times when I wish I had had a kid, but then again . . .”

  “Yeah, they can break your heart. And even worse, they’ll give you gray hair while they’re at it.”

  Sharon laughed.

  “So why didn’t you guys ever have kids?” I asked, a little worried that I might be crossing the line with the question. But so far nothing had seemed off-limits in this conversation.

  “Just didn’t happen for us.”

  “Yeah, that happens,” I said, imagining what a good-looking kid Sharon would have had.

  “You know, Deb, I was pregnant once.”

  For once I stayed silent, giving Sharon the space to continue, or not.

  She dug under her seat for the Pringles can. “Actually, I can’t believe I’m telling you this. It’s a story I haven’t shared with anyone down here.” She paused and looked out the window for a minute. “It’s so strange. You’re probably not going to believe it.”

  “So try me.”

  Sharon hesitated, then began. “You know, when Glen and I moved down to Mazatlán, it wasn’t the first time I’d been there. Forty-five years ago, my mom brought me down to Mazatlán for an abortion.”