The House on Carnaval Street

  “Oh. Well, from what I’ve learned, it can come to anywhere from three to five thousand dollars before they’re done, depending on what’s included: equipment, uniform, tuition . . . you know.”

  Renee paused for a second. “Put me down for three.”

  “Three what?” I asked.

  “Three students.”

  “But that could be fifteen thousand dollars!” I saw myself frozen in the mirror with my mouth hanging open like an empty coin purse, a strand of Renee’s Ukrainian hair dangling from my motionless hand.

  Renee just nodded. “You know, Debbie, I’ve been coming to my house down here for three years now. I love this place, and I’ve been trying to figure out a way to give something back. This, I can do. I can get the money. If there is one thing I know I’m good at, it’s getting my friends to say yes.” She smiled a sweet smile that left me no doubt about that. “It’s time for me to rally the troops.”

  It was time for me to find more girls! And it was time for me to put my money (or rather Renee and her friends’ money) where my mouth was. I had been planning on starting up slowly, and small, just to see how things went before I began hitting up my own friends and clients for donations. So far I only had one girl, Rosa, enrolled. I had heard about her from a few of the expat gang who had gotten involved with La Casa Nueva Vida, the home for girls. She was only fifteen years old, and had seen more trouble in her life than most of us do in an entire lifetime. Things got so bad at home that the social services therapist recommended she be removed from the situation. She was getting lots of support at the Casa, and she seemed determined and responsible enough to take beauty school seriously. But I was paying her tuition a week at a time, just in case.

  I didn’t want to rush into a decision about who to choose as Renee’s girls. This was a lot of money we were talking about, and I wanted to find girls who would be sure to stick with the program, who would do us proud. I already had one in mind. Lupe had been in an orphanage since she was seven years old. Now she was seventeen. I had heard from several clients who volunteered there that this girl would tell anyone who would listen that she wanted to become a hairdresser. Perfect! But I didn’t want her starting alone. Mexican women, I knew from watching my Tippy Toes staff, worked better in teams. They hated doing things on their own. Everything was always in pairs. I’d send Selena to the beauty supply store for polish, and when I’d turn around Daniela would be gone, too. I needed to find a partner for Lupe. For weeks I kept my eyes and ears open, and asked everyone I knew for suggestions. I felt a lot of pressure to make the right choice.

  One morning, as I entered Tippy Toes I saw Martha and Teresa deep in conversation. Teresa was clucking her tongue and shaking her head, clearly concerned by something, or someone. “What?” I asked Martha. “Is something wrong?”

  “It’s Gaby. Our niece. You know, Luz’s little sister.”

  “What’s the matter with her now?” I’d heard some rumblings about Gaby before.

  “We are worried, Debbie. She is sick, she does not leave the house. She won’t eat. She does nothing all day. Her mother is very upset.”

  “Is she sick-sick? Has she been to the doctor?”

  “Yes, but it’s not like that, Debbie. She is unhappy; she is shy. She doesn’t go to school anymore. We don’t know why she is so sad.”

  I pictured tall, beautiful Gaby lying around day after day, with nothing to get out of bed for, no reason to venture out of her house. It broke my heart that she was joining the ranks of so many other kids on The Hill, dropping out just a few years after they’d gone through the mandatory six grades, and then what? How could they possibly figure out a future for themselves? Then it occurred to me. Here I’d been searching high and low for my next beauty school candidate, and there had been one right under my nose all along. I had no idea if Gaby had any interest in hairdressing or not, but I knew it was just the ticket for her low self-esteem and lack of confidence. I told Martha my idea and sent her off to talk to her niece.

  I filled in Renee on my plans. We were on our way to the orphanage to meet with Lupe and the nuns.

  “Don’t worry, Deb,” she said when I expressed my worry that Gaby might already be too deep into her depression to latch on to a dream, and my frustration at not being able to communicate directly with her. “I’ve got a team of prayer warriors who will start praying for Gaby this very day. We’ll get her off that hill and into school in no time.”

  “Well, I haven’t heard a word from her yet. I’m going to leave the door open for one more week, and that’s it. We’ve got to get things moving!”

  The orphanage gate was halfway open when we arrived. They must be expecting us, I thought. The shaded courtyard was filled with picnic tables, climbing bars, swings, a slide, and in the middle a huge statue of a saint, or maybe a priest. Inside, boys were playing video games, older girls were comforting littler ones, and a bevy of nuns who looked like they had been inside those walls for a hundred years kept a watchful eye. “Lupe?” we asked of everyone we passed. Finally we were pointed to a picnic table out back, where a pretty young girl with long dark hair and perfect makeup sat quietly next to a tiny nun in a crisp blue dress and a gray pixie cut. The nun’s eyes were glued to a laptop. She barely looked up as I made our introductions.

  “What is this beauty school?” she snarled. “What kind of school is this with a surfboard in the front?” She turned the screen around to face us. I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing. The nun’s research had led her to my Trip Advisor page for Tippy Toes, which shows an image of the Margarita­ville Adirondack chairs and surfboard we have out front for “atmosphere.” It did sort of look more like a bar than anything else.

  “No,” I quickly assured her. “That’s not the school.” I pulled a brochure from my purse. “This is it. Instituto de Belleza. This is the school I’m thinking of for Lupe.”

  Now all we needed was Gaby. I had promised the nun that Lupe would be attending school with another girl. At first Martha had told me that Gaby had said no to the idea, she was too afraid. Working at Tippy Toes might be okay, being among family and all, but going to a place filled with strangers, that was just too scary. Now I was even more worried, not so much about the project, but about Gaby. She was too young to give up. Because it’s acceptable down here for children to stay in their parents’ homes for life, too many of them don’t feel any pressure to make anything of themselves. A lot of the girls just figure if anything’s going to get them out of the house, it’s going to be a man. There is no need to become independent. Even Martha, who was always a hard worker, didn’t move out until Noah came along. Maybe Gaby didn’t want to be a hairdresser, but I knew that just doing this would be a life-changing experience for her, no matter what. I dug in my heels and sent Luz to talk some sense into her sister. Luz was thriving at Tippy Toes. She never missed a day of work, and was never late. And by now she even had earned enough money, and gained enough confidence, to go to tattoo school at night. Judging from what I saw in Luz, I knew that if we could get Gaby to commit, she would take beauty school seriously. Her mother, Alicia, would make sure of that, as would just about everyone else on The Hill.

  The next Monday Renee and I enrolled the girls at Instituto de Belleza. Gaby, with two days left to make up her mind, had finally said yes. I was more than relieved. The two girls sat silently in the back of the Mini as we wound our way through the crowded downtown streets. Though I had asked my friend Lisa to come along to translate, she bowed out at the last minute with a stomach bug, so I was going to have to rely on Google Translate to make this happen. And it almost didn’t. The guy who sashayed up to the door of the school greeted us with an attitude befitting a Hollywood diva. He rolled his eyes when he saw it was me again. We had met before, when I dropped by to check out the school and get the tuition rates. The first time I was there, someone had taken me into the office and rattled off the list of rates, then immediately
slashed everything on the list and gave me a new set of prices. It felt like a time-share presentation. I was confused, so they waved the diva guy over, assuring me that he spoke English. I offered my best smile and said, “Usted habla inglés?”

  “No,” he said with the wag of a finger. “No English.” Then he turned and left the room.

  This time he led us to a tiny plastic table. Doubting he’d have the patience to wait while I typed my questions into my phone, I instead called Lisa and asked her to translate via speakerphone. He then started pointing at pictures in a binder as he explained the curriculum. Or at least that’s what I gathered he was doing, because about two minutes in, Lisa’s voice came booming through the phone. “Deb! This guy’s speaking so fast I have no idea what he’s saying. It doesn’t even sound like Spanish to me.” We moved on to the price list. I wrote down what I had been quoted and handed it to him.

  “No,” he said. “Es más.” It’s more.

  “But that’s what the other guy told me!”

  “Es lo que dijo el otro hombre,” Lisa translated.

  “Lo despidieron,” he replied almost before she had the words out.

  “He’s been fired, Deb.”

  “Ask him if I can speak to the manager. Maybe if I tell him we’re nonprofit he’ll cut us a break. Tell him we’re going to be sending lots of students here.”

  Lisa asked. “He is the manager, Deb.”

  “Then ask if we can speak to the owner.” It was only later that I learned from Martha that in Mexico you never, ever ask to speak to an owner of a business, as they will suspect you might be a kidnapper out for ransom.

  So we got off on the wrong foot. But after all the schools I had checked out, this still seemed like the best one, so I sent Martha to iron out the details. She came back mad as a hornet, insisting we change schools.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “The Argentinian,” she answered, her lips curling in disgust.

  But that day, nothing mattered but what happened when the Argentinian diva told Lupe and Gaby that they could start tomorrow. At first Gaby’s look was one of sheer terror. But then something shifted. She stood up a little taller, her shoulders relaxed, and I could almost see a sense of purpose and pride filling up her insides bit by bit. It was as if she had gone in an instant from a scared little girl to the person in charge. And for the first time since I met her, Lupe smiled, revealing a mouthful of beautiful white teeth that I swear would glow in the dark. Renee and I struggled to fight back our tears.

  Now it was time to go shop for uniforms and shoes. The pants were easy: black and sturdy enough to withstand ­multiple washings. Then it was upstairs for the shoes, sensible shoes that would help a person survive standing on her feet all day. I knew all about that, and Renee, a former nurse, knew all about that as well. But the girls balked at the sneakers and walking shoes we pointed them toward.

  “Zapatos de la abuela,” I overheard Lupe whisper into Gaby’s ear. Grandma shoes. I took a stiletto from Lupe’s hand and placed it back on the rack.

  We tried another store. Renee shook her head at the red patent ballet slippers Gaby was eyeing. “No arch support, no school,” she said, shaking her head. The girls looked outraged by the whole ordeal, as if insisting on comfortable shoes were a form of abuse. How I wished I knew how to say get with the program in Spanish. I was a little embarrassed by the girls’ behavior, as I had so wanted them to make a good impression on Renee. I tried using the eye I used to give my own kids when they misbehaved in a public place, but Lupe just wouldn’t quit with the heels and platforms and wedges. Gaby must have known from hearing about me that this was a battle she wasn’t going to win, and luckily she took charge in the nick of time, before I totally lost it. A few choice words into Lupe’s ear and we were good to go, with two brand-spanking-new pairs of sneakers under our arms.

  Back at Tippy Toes, it was time for a pep talk. “Tell them that they need to wear their uniforms every single day,” I instructed Martha before sending the girls off. “Including the shoes. And under no circumstances can they ever be late.” I remembered my no-tolerance policy in Kabul. It was a suicide bomb, they’d claim. It was a rocket attack! You live in Afghanistan, I’d tell them. These things happen. If you live in New York, you plan on traffic. You just leave earlier. I was not going to change my rules for Mazatlán.

  And then came Jessie. Down here there’s always some story about someone’s brother’s sister’s cousin’s sister’s mother’s son’s stepchild who did something or needed something or saw something, so when Martha started telling me about how she was sort of related to a girl named Jessie in some convoluted way that I doubt included bloodlines, I was barely listening. But when she came to the part where she asked me to send Jessie to beauty school, my ears perked up. Martha is not the bleeding-heart type, so I knew this girl’s story had to be serious. And it was. Jessie was fourteen when her mother died. She and her brother were shipped off by their stepfather, to go live with their father in Mazatlán. He had no interest in raising his children, so off they went to stay with their other brother and his wife, Celina, a couple barely out of their own childhood. Jessie was forced to help the little group survive by selling pots and pans door-to-door. Between that and caring for her little brother, there was no time for school. Besides, when she had been sent north to Mazatlán all her school records had been left behind. Nobody had bothered to retrieve them. Now Celina was pregnant, and things were about to become even more desperate.

  So down to Instituto de Belleza Martha and I marched, a solemn Jessie lagging slightly behind, squinting in the mid­afternoon sun. But once inside, she continued to squint, her eyes tiny slits piercing her broad, smooth face.

  “I don’t think she can see, Debbie.” Martha frowned.

  I pointed to a diagram of fingernails posted behind the desk. “Ask her what that says.”

  Jessie just shrugged at the question.

  “Oh my Lord,” I said out loud. “You have got to be kidding.”

  On our way to the optician Martha got the rest of Jessie’s story. She used to wear glasses, but around the time her mother died her eyes worsened, and her glasses broke. There was no one around to get her another pair, so for three years she had been walking around nearly blind. The eye doctor told us she could barely see two feet in front of her.

  When Jessie came by Tippy Toes a week later with her Coke-­bottle lenses perched on her nose, I wanted to melt.

  “Cómo están?” I asked. How are they?

  “She says she gets a headache,” Martha told me.

  “Well, remind her that the doctor said it will take time to get used to the glasses.”

  Jessie remained silent.

  “Tell her it will be okay, Martha. The headaches will go away, school starts on Saturday, it’s all good.” I wanted so badly to see this girl’s smile.

  As Jessie slowly turned to leave the salon, I was suddenly caught off guard by a memory so painfully overwhelming I had to sit. Seven years earlier I had shown up for a visit to the Kabul Welayat, a women’s prison in Afghanistan, loaded with a big box of Paul Mitchell gift bags stuffed with hair ribbons and nail polish and all sorts of girly stuff donated by church groups and schools back in Michigan. One look at the place and the women inside sent me reeling into a spiral of shame. Here these women had been locked inside this ­hellhole because they’d been raped, because they’d been beaten by their husbands, because they’d dared to run away with a man they loved, and I was all excited to be bringing them friggin’ goodie bags? What on earth had I been thinking? It was the same with Jessie, I thought. She needed so much more than a stupid pair of glasses and a beauty school diploma to hang on her wall. She needed someone to care for her, to love her, to tell her she was someone special. She needed a mom. And here I was thinking I was doing enough for her?

  I felt the tears start to roll down my cheeks. And it w
asn’t just her, I thought. It was all the girls. There was no way I’d be able to give them all everything they needed. A part of me wished I’d never heard their stories, wished I’d just stayed on the outside barely looking in, maybe writing a check here and there or plucking a card off an angel tree. It’s so much easier not to know, because once you do, you have no choice. You have to act. You have to figure out something to do about it. It’s like with that damn iguana—the minute you open your eyes and really see something, there is no turning back.

  I heaved a huge sigh and wiped my cheeks with the back of my hand. Keep your eye on the ball, Deb, I told myself. You’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing. Keep your blubbering to yourself. Stay focused. Keep the girls on course, and let them know you are there for them. And for God’s sake, learn to speak Spanish already, would you?

  The seasons had changed by the time I got back to Pátzcuaro. Of course, you’d never know it in Mazatlán, where it was still so hot that you could fry a tortilla just by dropping it on the sidewalk. But dropping a tortilla would mean you’d have to prepare for a lot of company, or so my girls told me. I took off on a Wednesday, as starting anything on a Tuesday, including a journey, they also told me, will bring bad luck. Why take chances? It would still give me plenty of time to spend with Cynthia before everything started.

  Cynthia had talked me into coming for El Día de los ­Muertos—the Day of the Dead. While in Mazatlán the Day of the Dead is celebrated with a parade, and by chasing a donkey cart down the street in pursuit of free beers (at least as far as I could tell), in Pátzcuaro it’s the real deal, and a huge draw for the thousands of people who flock there every November 1. I was curious and excited, but also a little trepidatious. Death had always creeped me out, going way back to that childhood fear of my parents dying and leaving me all alone. Their way of dealing with that was to do everything in their power to shield me from the experience of death, including bringing another, identical Chihuahua into the house when Spot died. To be fair, they did try to broach the subject of their own mortality after I was well into my twenties, but every time they’d start to talk about wills and “arrangements,” I’d cover my ears and drown out their words with a shrill la-la-la. In fact, I’d never had much experience with death, except for my father’s, and I wasn’t even around for that. He had been wheelchair-bound and suffering from Alzheimer’s for years before I left for Kabul, and since I was originally going there for only one month I figured nothing would change. Besides, my dad had always played the I could be dead tomorrow card, for all sorts of purposes, and by then I had learned to blow it off. When I heard my mom’s voice on the phone from Michigan, I could tell things weren’t going well. But she knew I couldn’t get home until the end of the month, so she never came out and said just how bad things were. When I checked in during a layover in New York, stuck in a storm, nobody told me he had already passed while I was in flight. Back in Holland, they took me straight from the airport to the funeral home, where Mom wanted me to see Dad before he was cremated. It pained me that we never got to say good-bye to each other. Though it had been nearly ten years by now, I still hadn’t really dealt with the grief, as I’d never been able to get past the guilt of being in Kabul, and not by his side.