Just one week later, it was the start of Carnival time in Mazatlán. This being my first Carnival, I was jazzed. But it was clear that it was going to be a challenge finding people to join me for the celebration. There had been a lot of chatter about a threat of violence, something about a rival drug cartel out to make a big statement, to hurt Mazatlán during the city’s biggest holiday celebration. The beach had been completely blocked off, and there was a rumor spreading that a major cache of weapons had been found in a cave.
“Be careful, Debbie,” said Analisa as she declined my invitation to the parade.
“Cuidado,” warned Martha after she demanded that Noah stay home.
The last parade, on Sunday, was scheduled to come down toward Centro, my neighborhood, right past Olas Altas. Denis and I, along with a handful of friends, got to the patio in front of the Hotel Belmar early, to grab a front-row seat right up against the little cement wall that separates the café from the road. Though the sidewalks were soon lined with people peering with anticipation down the wide, empty street, everyone was commenting on the fact that it was way less crowded than usual. We watched as the federal police stood guard by the temporary gates that had been set up, patting down the men and searching through the women’s purses. The marines were already stationed down by the water, their huge boats patrolling back and forth along the shoreline. But apparently the parade wasn’t going to start before dark, so we settled in for a long afternoon. Lucky for me, I could easily pass the time with a little tableside bargaining, thanks to the army of eager vendors who were out that day. One Oaxacan woman, with an adorable pigtailed baby strapped to her back, an infectious laugh, and perfect English, became my pal that day as she passed back and forth tempting me to buy. Carmelita was a pro, and soon I had yet another new purse I probably didn’t need.
It wasn’t until hours later, when the sun finally melted into the Pacific, that we first heard the bottle rockets that, fortunately, I had been warned were simply a signal that things were getting under way. I could see the lights sparkling in the distance as the floats approached. The first one arrived, a spectacular rolling temple in the moonlight. Everyone oohed and aahed at the revelers on board as they passed, with their brightly feathered headdresses and shimmering jewels. Then came the second float, a twisted, giant sea creature with fiery eyes, even more magnificent than the first. Then nothing. Everyone was straining and squinting into the distance to spy the next float heading down the Malecón, but you could have shot a cannon down the street and not hit a soul. “What’s going on?” I asked nobody in particular. Nobody answered. The crowd became eerily quiet.
Then, all of a sudden, I turned to see a wall of people thundering toward us. Parents were grabbing their babies, strollers were flying through the air, street vendors were flinging their wares right and left. It was raining jewelry and cotton candy all around us. Everyone was running, screaming, diving under the tables on the patio, and pushing their way into the restaurants. It was just like one of those old horror movies where the monster or giant wave is coming. Sheer terror. But I had no idea what everyone was running from. The stampede seemed to be a mile long, and it wasn’t ending. The only thing I could imagine was that there had to be an army of gunmen, shooting wildly into the crowd, behind it all.
By now I could see boatloads of people pressed shoulder to shoulder against the restaurants’ plate glass windows. “Get behind the wall! Dive! Dive!” I shouted to my friends. But the ground beneath our table was already crammed with more panicky people. “Get down!” I yelled at Denis as I pushed his head toward the pavement. “Everyone duck! Keep your heads down!” I shouted from my own spot flat on the cement. “Just wait this out. Don’t move!”
After a couple of minutes, the commotion seemed to end. All we could hear were crying children. It wasn’t long before more rumors started to fly, fueled by the cell phones that were lighting up all around us. The one that seemed to be gaining the most momentum was that the Carnival Queen had been shot.
By now, all the floats were coming through, but without a soul on them. As I stood and brushed the dust off my skirt, I found myself next to a familiar-looking woman frantically dialing her phone.
“Mi bebé! Mis hijos!” She was sobbing.
It was my purse lady, Carmelita. “Where are they? Dónde?” I knew a desperate mother when I saw one.
She turned her tear-streaked face toward me. “They are lost! My son and daughter were with their aunt, and I tried to find them, and the baby was pulled from my hand!”
I turned to search the street around me. It seemed like everything was moving in slow motion, as if hours were passing instead of minutes. As Carmelita desperately combed the sidewalks calling out her kids’ names, I heard someone knocking on the restaurant window behind me. A man inside pointed to a woman standing next to him, who was cradling the pigtailed toddler safe in her arms. I gathered up the baby and stayed put right in the place where Carmelita had left me, where, thankfully, she eventually returned, with the rest of her family in tow.
LATER THAT NIGHT, AFTER I had shut the door to my little house on Carnaval Street behind me, I gave Cynthia a call and filled her in on what had gone down that day.
“What the hell is it with me that I can go all commando when everyone around me is freaking out, but when the most threatening thing around me is a steep escalator or a freshly mopped floor I’m the one having a total meltdown?”
“You know the answer to that, Deb. We’ve talked about it. Today was a perfect example of a situation where you were on high alert.” I could hear Señorita and Max yapping in the background. “And by the way, what did happen? Why the stampede?”
“I have no idea. Either nobody’s talking, or nothing really happened. But honestly, I didn’t really think anything was going to happen. There were just a bunch of rumors going around.”
“I understand that. Maybe your head had doubts, but your body was in high gear. And when everyone else started to panic, you jumped into action, because you know how to act in a situation of unreasonable risk.”
This wasn’t the first time Cynthia had talked about that. “So, what, if I just stay on alert all the time things like what happened in the mall won’t happen again?”
“That’s not the point, Deb. You really don’t want to live your life like that. You don’t want to walk around all pumped up like a Green Beret all the time, do you?”
“I guess not. So what can I do?”
“You’re already doing it. Look at it this way. The body has a natural impulse toward healing, a resilience. Acknowledging the trauma is the first step. And you’ve come further than that. I hear it in your voice. I see it in the choices you are making, the people you’re surrounding yourself with, your relationship with Denis.” Cynthia paused, the sound of crunching chips unmistakable through the phone. “And by the way,” she continued, “you were already on your way when you made the decision to move down here. That Indian guy up in Oregon was on to something, Deb. Trust me on this one. That time in California was good for you.”
“But I’ve told you how miserable I was there,” I whined.
“Yes, you were miserable. But you allowed yourself to tune in to your own feelings, maybe even for the first time in your life. Whatever those feeling were—disconnection, isolation—you felt them. And you knew that place just wasn’t right for you.”
“That’s for sure,” I said, laughing.
“And buying the house in Mexico was another sign of your evolution.”
“I do have to admit it was one of the more practical decisions I’ve made in my life. But it didn’t really feel so practical at the time.”
“It’s true, it was sensible. But don’t discount that ‘pull’ you talk about as well. There is a sort of spiritual part of the healing process, a part that can only be accessed when you unclutter yourself. After you get rid of unhealthy behaviors and relationships, that’s when you start to get your answers from a deeper place.”
At fir
st blush Cynthia’s words sounded a little like mumbo jumbo to me. But then I remembered the feeling of those powerful sensations that seemed to engulf me in Pátzcuaro, and suddenly I felt shivers go up my arm.
“Cyn?” I said in a quiet voice. “I’m going to come visit again. Soon. As soon as I can. Is that good with you?”
“Anytime, sweetie. Anytime. You know you’re always welcome here.”
WHEN THE DAY CAME FOR the baby shower I arrived at Cahoots early, eager to get everything set up before the first guest arrived. Though I had been under the impression that Teresa and I were to be sharing the hosting responsibility for this event, she had been totally missing in action, so I was on my own. And I was nervous. What did I know about Mexican baby showers? I didn’t really know Martha’s mom or her other family members, and I was anxious to make a good impression. All I knew was that showers were normally large affairs, and usually held in a restaurant. So I invited everybody, including all of my friends, who had become quite fond of Martha and Noah and were excited about the baby, seeing as how there weren’t too many of those crawling around in our circle down here.
I PLACED MY OWN PILE of gifts under the arch of pink balloons I had purchased from Amigos Dulcería that who else but Sergio had already delivered. When I had told Denis I was going shopping for things to decorate the baby’s room, he laughed. “Just like when you did Zach’s?” He loved the story I had told him about when Zach, at nineteen years old, had come to Kabul to stay with me. He had been going through a rough time in Michigan, so I got him a job flipping burgers on a military base. I thought it might be nice to fix up his room before he arrived, to make him feel welcome. I was waiting for Sam at a job site, a lot where a new hospital was being built, when I came across a bunch of discarded old bombs that had been dug up and placed in nice, neat rows along the side of a shipping container. Zach would love these, I thought. He always had a thing for collecting anything old that looked like it had a story to tell. These would be great for his room. I could put a little shelf across them, and there was one really big one that would make a perfect lamp. One was just interesting to look at, with its little whirly-bird thing on top. They would be so unique, so Afghanistan.
“Here, grab these!” I shouted to the driver who was waiting by the car. I started tossing big ones, little ones, noticing him jumping and ducking as he strained to catch each one before it hit the ground. “Just throw them in the trunk,” I told him.
On the long drive home, the driver’s snail’s pace was beginning to irritate Sam, who started to berate him in Dari.
“What are you saying?” I asked.
“I told him his mother was a donkey’s ass.” He scowled, sighing loudly as the driver slowed even more to avoid one of the hundreds of ruts and potholes in the road.
I had to agree that the guy was driving like an old woman (though I never did understand why mothers always had to be dragged into these kinds of insults). By the time we got to our compound Sam stomped off into the house in a huff. I asked the driver to unload the trunk and bring everything inside.
“What the . . .” Sam pointed to the rusty canisters the driver was cradling in his arms like a baby.
“They’re pretty cool, right?” I said. “I found them by the shipping container, all used up. Perfect for Zach’s room. He’ll love them.”
“All used up? What were you thinking?” He gestured to the driver, who gently placed the bombs on the salon floor. Sam bent down to take a look. “Some of these are still live. What is the matter with you?”
Needless to say, Zach ended up with a more traditional room, and my grandbaby would as well.
EVERYONE ARRIVED AT CAHOOTS LATE, and all at once, crowding in through the doorway of the restaurant like a bunch of chattering hens. I saw Martha’s mother, and rushed over to say hello, which was about all we could say to each other. Martha quickly came to our rescue, kissing her mom and bending over, not without some difficulty, to pick up the scarf her mom had dropped.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“A scarf ?” Martha replied.
“No, not that. That.” I lifted Martha’s shirt a little and pointed to the red cord, with a safety pin hanging from it, tied around her swollen waist. She and her mother looked at me as though I were nuts.
“What?” I asked.
“You don’t know what that is?”
I kind of thought it might be some sort of thong underwear, but I doubted she’d be wearing that at this stage of her pregnancy. I shrugged my shoulders.
“It’s for the moon. It’s to protect the baby.”
“The baby is in danger from the moon?”
“Do you mean the eclipse tonight?” Bonnie suggested, seeing the look of utter confusion on my face. She pantomimed two circles, one passing in front of the other, with her hands.
“Yes, of course.” Martha’s look dared me to mess with her.
“Oh, I know about this,” Lisa chimed in. “The Mexicans believe that if a pregnant woman is exposed to an eclipse, the baby will be born with a cleft lip. It’s an old Aztec superstition. They thought that an eclipse happened when a bite had been taken out of the moon. If a pregnant woman viewed an eclipse, a bite would be taken out of her infant’s mouth. They used to put knives on the women’s bellies before they went out at night, to protect them. Nowadays they just use safety pins.”
I nodded as respectfully as I could, suspecting that this wouldn’t be the last time I’d come up against a cultural challenge when it came to my grandchild. I turned around to see the two big tables filling up, my guests separating like two teams on opposite ends of the field. Mexicans and foreigners. English versus Spanish. My heart sank a little. An awkward vibe had taken over the room, but thank goodness I had a little something up my sleeve that I hoped would warm things up.
Now, I don’t do games. I’ve always hated those showers where they make you balance a balloon between your legs or guess how big the mother-to-be’s tummy is. No, it was my party, and we were going to do things my way. And when the five Trannies of Mazatlán came prancing into the room, you could almost feel the ice melting. These guys were amazing, and really quite beautiful, if not a little worn, in their sequins and silk. It wasn’t long before they got everyone hooting and hollering with their act. The Mexicans were clapping and chanting, and my friends had tears rolling down their cheeks, they were laughing so hard, especially when a platinum blond with boobs almost as big as mine lassoed Noah with a pink boa and pulled him up onstage for a dance. Martha was clearly having a blast. Fun is fun in any language, but I did worry a little about how this all was going to look in my granddaughter’s baby book.
CHANGE WAS DEFINITELY IN THE air. The cruise ships had stopped docking in Mazatlán, in reaction to the overblown reports of violence in the area. It was true that there had been a couple of stray incidents, the circumstances of which remained a little murky. And there was that shooting that happened down in a Golden Zone parking lot, unfortunately in front of a slew of tourists. But according to my friends, the exclusion of Mazatlán from the ships’ itineraries was an unfair and unwarranted blow, and some thought the move was no doubt financially motivated, a result of a battle over docking fees. “Hell, the crime rates against tourists in the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, and Cuba are all higher than Mexico’s,” Bodie told me. The travel advisory issued by the State Department didn’t help, either. “I don’t see any travel advisory for Tucson,” Glen pointed out, referring to the recent shooting that left six people dead and a dozen others, including Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, gravely injured.
I thought the whole thing was crazy. All you had to do was spend thirty minutes in front of the big-screen TV at Macaws, watching the news from Detroit, to realize how ludicrous the finger-pointing at Mazatlán was. I swear Glen and Sharon deliberately chose to point to the Detroit satellite feed in order to make their B&B guests feel safer where they were. A fierce pride had sprung up among all us expats, eager to defend our city against the f
earmongers and rumor junkies. A volunteer army of “Blue Shirts” was quickly formed to patrol the streets, assisting whatever tourists there were with directions and helpful advice, in an attempt to convince them that it was okay to venture out from the resorts. But for some, like Glen and Sharon, it was more than pride. It was survival. As word got out about the cruise ships, business started to drop like a rock. I worried about Noah and his ability to support his growing family.
I could also sense a change happening inside me, though this change was definitely for the better. Denis’s patience had paid off, and in fact became one of the many characteristics that made him, eventually, irresistible to me. It was clear to me that Denis was different from most of the men in my life, but it also was becoming clear that I was a different person from who I had been with those men. While I was wide awake one night analyzing my past relationships, one after the other after the other, after the other, my own special version of counting sheep, I came to the revelation that the relationships all had something in common. They had all started up during periods in my life when I was feeling particularly weak. I’m really not sure if it was my weakness that compelled me to seek a partner, or if the partners were drawn in by my vulnerability, but either way, it was, inevitably, a deadly combination.