Dancing with the Tiger Read online

  Anna screamed. The hand slammed her face to the floor. “Si gritas, te mato.” If you scream, I will kill you. “Dame la máscara.”

  “No la tengo.”

  The hand released. Anna turned slowly around. Her attacker was a man in a tiger’s mask, the man who’d stabbed the dancer, set the widow on fire, chased Anna in the mountains. He was pulling stuff out of her bag. Anna cowered, knees to chest. Her cheek was bleeding again. The pain felt good, familiar, hers. See, you’ve hurt me, that’s enough now. Go away. The Tiger yanked a chair over and sat, twirled a machete on his thigh.

  “Where is the mask?”

  “I don’t have it.”

  “It’s here somewhere.”

  “Someone stole it from me.” Her Spanish was disintegrating. Masculine. Feminine. Who the hell cared?

  “Déjate las macanas.” Cut the crap.

  “I swear someone stole it. Don’t hurt me. It is dangerous to hurt Americans.” Anna couldn’t remember whether herir was the right verb. She might have just told him it would be dangerous to boil Americans. “If you hurt me, there will be . . .” The only word she could find was “consequences.”

  “¿Señorita?” The clerk.

  The Tiger hacked his machete down her shirt buttons, cutting an inch of fabric. “Answer him,” he hissed.

  “Todo está bien.” She hoped the clerk could hear the subtext, the fear. “I have changed my mind and will stay another night.”

  “Bueno. Como usted lo desea.” Footsteps drifted off. The idiot had left her. The Tiger went to the closet and lifted her mother’s urn. “What’s this?”

  Anna whispered, “Nada.”

  He tipped it, threatening to pour the contents on the floor. “Do you think I’m stupid?”

  “Stop. It’s my mother,” Anna cried out. “She’s dead. She wanted to be in Mexico.”

  “Then I will take your dead mother with me. When you bring the mask, I return her.”

  “I am leaving tomorrow.”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Please.”

  The Tiger righted the urn, but did not put it back. “I give you until Friday. Meet me at Monte Albán at midnight. By the Danzantes. Come alone. If you do not come, I will pour this dirt down a toilet in a whorehouse on the highway to Guerrero. You understand?”

  Anna repeated her mission. “I am going to bring you the mask.” This was the easiest way to form the future. I am going to find the mask. I am going to die in this crappy hotel room. I am going to lose my mother forever.

  The Tiger wedged his machete into the chair. “If you trick me, I will kill you and your pretty boyfriend and his ugly mother.”

  Anna risked a joke. “The mother, too? You promise?”

  “A present.” He stood, stopped himself. “Are you a virgin?”

  “Do I have a Virgin?” She fingered San Antonio.

  “No. Are you a virgin?”

  She had thought this nightmare was nearly over, but perhaps it had just begun. “No,” she said, her voice barely audible.

  He jiggled his knife between her legs. Anna gave a short cry. Skin. It was no protection at all. “Too bad,” he said, turning away. “I have no interest in la chingada.”

  —

  For a good while, Anna didn’t move; then she got up and couldn’t stop—pacing the patio, circling the maimed angel, smoking, swearing, messing with her hair. She had come to Mexico to bury her mother’s ashes, but had lost them instead. Well, technically, she had not lost them. They were being held hostage by a drug lord’s hit man. It was terrible. Crazy. Terrible crazy.

  Two cigarettes later, she collapsed at a table, head buried in her arms. Mom, mom, mom. After twenty years, she had so few memories left. Tea parties. Her mother poured sweet apple tea in little cups she’d painted by hand. She’d put on a corny southern accent. “Bless my heart, Miss Anna. You are a sight for sore eyes.” Her mother, who loved the beach, who taught Anna to sing periwinkles out of their shells. Her mother, who knit doll blankets, collected vintage tablecloths, ferried spiders outside. Her mother, who felt none of the same sympathies for criminals. “Throw away the key,” she said, as she refolded the newspaper after reading about some murderer. “Just make him go away.” (She would have abhorred the drug violence in Mexico. How much money does anyone need? Are these drug lords happy? Sleeping with guns. Their own children aren’t safe.)

  When Anna’s father traveled, she and her mother stayed alone for long stretches. Her mother seldom lost her temper, though nothing made her angrier than when Anna complained she was bored. “Read. Draw. Write a letter. Ride your bike.” The list had infinite variety, but always ended with Go climb a tree, her mother’s way of saying, Leave me in peace. Her mother was earning a degree in museum studies, and spent hours poring over dull books, taking notes, pleading for Anna to give her an hour of quiet.

  So Anna climbed trees. Until one day she climbed a pine tree so high she couldn’t get down. Twenty feet up, she got stuck on a branch, sap smeared on her jeans, palms sore, so high she could see the shingles on the roof. Climbing up had been easy. Don’t look down. And she hadn’t, until her mother ran out and stood beneath her, small and worried, hands on her waist.

  “Sweetie, you’re up awfully high. You think you can climb down?” Her voice was serious but calm. She was wearing her favorite thrift-store shirt, red checks, rolled sleeves.

  Anna sat sideways on a branch, like a swing. She didn’t dare turn to dangle a leg to the next limb down. The branches were making her dizzy. The wind had picked up. Rain was coming. She tried not to cry.

  “Can I jump to you?”

  Her mother looked horrified. “Jesus Christ. Don’t move.” She tore off to the house, hair flying. A minute later, she was back.

  “The firemen are coming. Just hold tight.”

  “What fire? I want to come down now.”

  What happened next surprised Anna even more. Her mother started to climb. Anna had never seen her mother climb a tree, but her arms were strong and she made short work of it. She was athletic, a tennis player in college. She could still do a split.

  The branches thinned at the top. When her mother touched Anna’s blue sneaker, she stopped, and together they waited for the bucket truck, breathing in the earthy scent of needles and bark. “Two Christmas ornaments hanging off a pine tree,” her mother would say later. “All we needed was a star.”

  When they were down, her mother rocked Anna in her arms, whispering, “I’m so sorry. It’s all my fault.” Anna decided it was worth feeling that scared to feel this safe.

  “What did you learn today?” her mother asked when she tucked Anna into bed that night. Her hands smelled like Nivea.

  “Don’t climb trees?”

  Her mother shook her head, then kissed Anna’s cheek. “Next time you climb a tree, take me with you.”

  —

  The laundry girl rolled past with a cart full of dirty towels. Anna missed her mother so much her teeth hurt. If only it were possible to summon the dead, from dreams and stories, memories and photographs. A solid made from ether. Even for a day.

  Next time you climb a tree . . . Take me with you. Take me with you.

  And Anna thought: That tiger can have the death mask, but not my mother.

  She would do what she had to. She would do what she must.

  Anna walked to her room, opened the closet, removed the Malinche mask Thomas had given her. What had Doña Marina done when the murderous Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés and his army of marauders attacked her beloved city?

  La Malinche had slept with the enemy—and survived.

  twenty-six THE GARDENER

  Hugo took a seat facing Jesus. After leaving the American, he had stumbled into the first church he’d come to, exhilarated and ashamed. True, his rock prayer had gone nowhere, but maybe for a prayer to succeed, you h
ad to get out of your car. He bowed his head. He prayed he had not hurt the girl. He prayed for the dead. There were so many. The dead outnumbered the living tenfold: the Mexicans who died at the border; the young women of Juárez who disappeared, feminicidios, sold, some believed, for body parts; the police gunned down by drug dealers; the dealers gunned down by police; Hugo’s own father, dead and gone; his mother, too. The dead haunted his sleep. Pedro’s mother, wailing as she cleaned Montezuma’s floors. Pedro hammering. His revenge. In the afterlife, he’d become a blacksmith, fashioning hooks and latches and skeleton keys. He prayed for the girl’s mother, ashes in an urn, hidden in the backseat of his car.

  Billions of people had died the world over, and still all these souls believed their lives were precious. Men and women dreamt and loved and ate and saw the world through their eyes and watched their bodies age, wither, and return to the ground, all but a lucky few forgotten, trod upon by the living, who labored and fucked, burdened by the crushing weight of their endless desires. The living owed the dead their peace. What right had he to steal their finery?

  Hugo turned to the Virgin. The Mother of God soothed him like a balm. When he looked into her face, he knew what he could not do: when the American brought him the death mask, he would not give it to Óscar Reyes Carrillo or Thomas Malone or Lorenzo Gonzáles. Not for love or money, guilt or gratitude. Not even to ensure the caresses of the papershop girl. Only two omens remained—the two-headed monster and the burning temple. The empire, Hugo now understood, was his own sanity, the delicate kingdom of his mind. The path to salvation was so simple it was childlike. He could hear his mother scolding him after he’d left his toys strewn: Hijo, put things back where they belong.

  —

  When he barged into his house, he found his wife collapsed on the floor. Sliced apples lay scattered around her.

  He knelt before her. “¿Qué te ha pasado?”

  “I felt dizzy, but I am okay now. Resting. I have good news.”

  He shook her arm. “Are you crazy? You are sick on the ground. What good news?”

  “The Virgin sent us a child.”

  Hugo fell back on his heels.

  “I am pregnant, but don’t worry.” His wife’s voice gained strength. “We can still go to the other side. The baby will be born with an American passport. The Virgin answered our prayers.”

  Hugo assembled some kind of expression. Proud husband. Proud father. Where did a man go to procure such a face? He laid his hand on her stomach. “I don’t feel anything. Are you sure?”

  “He’s only a few weeks old. A grain of rice.”

  Hugo helped her to bed. “Rest now. I’ll check on you in a bit.”

  He escaped to the yard, picked up a fallen orange, and hurled it into the darkness. The stars blinked a message he could not decode.

  The mature man:

  a heart as firm as stone . . .

  From his Aztec history book, he was memorizing the Huehuetlatolli, the ancient truths and teachings of the Nahuas, lessons designed to teach young men how to live a good life. They were recited in school. They were recited when a loved one departed.

  Tears filled his eyes, for himself, his wife, his unborn child, for the American girl carrying her dead mother, for the papershop girl in her yellow dress, the sun around which his world revolved, beautiful, young, and bright.

  He wished the baby were hers.

  His phone rang a text. Reyes. I’m waiting. Your wife has beautiful hands.

  With a moan, Hugo rolled into a ball, pressed his face into the dirt.

  twenty-seven THE HOUSEKEEPER

  “Santísima Virgen, take pity on me. I told Hugo a lie. The words rose up before I could stop them. Forgive me. Allow me to prove myself worthy of your blessings. I have seen inside the chapel and understand now why the señor needed water. Every night the light in the chapel shines, I watch and pray. Gruesome things call my attention. Evil is as confusing as goodness is plain. The señora refuses to see. Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is open your eyes. I understand the test you have laid before me. This good work I do in your name. In return, I beg you, Virgencita, make me an honest woman. A lie is a lie only as long as it remains untrue. I could be a good mother.”

  twenty-eight THE COLLECTOR

  Frost covered the open fields of Connecticut as Daniel Ramsey drove to the airport, where his electronic ticket was waiting. His dry eyes shifted from road to speedometer to vodka bottle in the passenger seat. Damp wind smacked his face. Wake up, wake up, wake up. He had not slept. Thomas Malone, the name a curse in his mouth.

  Route 1 was backed up. Accident or roadwork. He shifted into park, plotting his revenge. He’d be cordial, shake hands, accept a patio chair, before calmly levying his accusations. I think you sold me some worthless masks a while back. You and Gonzáles. If Constance heard, so be it. Let her know what kind of man she’d married, a liar, a cheat. Thomas would feign confusion; deny everything in his creamy voice: I realize you’ve had a tough time, and I’m genuinely sorry for that, but surely you don’t blame me for your troubles?

  Traffic picked up, but barely. He was late. He should have taken the interstate. The last thumb of vodka sloshed about. Sometimes a man needed a drink to get off his ass. Shakespeare had known this. Churchill, too. His knees ached. The vodka was annoying him. Finish the damn thing. In a single swallow, he did.

  The accident was impressive. A white sedan lay in the median like an enormous wounded gull. He passed the carnage, accelerated, making up time, going fast enough that at the intersection he sailed under a red light. Cars careened forward, greedy bastards, not waiting for traffic to clear. A maroon minivan shot into his path. Through the window, he made out a child’s pale face in a pompom hat. He swerved, overcompensated, ran onto the curb, then crashed back to the road. He gave a girlish cry. His hands trembled as he patted his chest, checking himself, his heart. No accident. No injury. He merged into the slow lane, chastened but still moving, and that’s when he heard sirens. And he thought: Thomas Malone is the devil and no one can stop him.

  twenty-nine THE LOOTER

  He could tell it was a big deal for Chelo to be out at night with a man. She ordered limeade and a slice of chocolate cake. He had a beer with a side shot of whiskey. They had spent the day strolling the city, stopping for shaved ice, snapping silly pictures of each other. By six, they collapsed in a café. Tomorrow, he’d track down Malone, but he wasn’t feeling ambitious today. He bought a rose from a woman with a basket on her head. Full price. No bargaining. Chelo pressed her nose into the flower’s curled heart, set it down, as if she had many suitors, many roses, as if she had a collection.

  The looter tried to relax, but paranoia chipped away at his good feeling. Who knew when Reyes’s ugly face might materialize? If Chelo could show up on a bus and make everything good, then Reyes could show up in a café, guns loaded. Chelo had promised to help him, but she couldn’t protect him from Reyes or take him to Malone. Maybe he should pray.

  “Tal vez debería rezar.” The looter skimmed the pride from his voice. “For help finding this friend of mine, this thing.”

  The girl nodded like she’d been expecting this. “God could help if you asked.”

  “What should I say?”

  The girl tapped her painted nails against her straw. “Speak in your own voice. Nobody else’s.”

  “What voice?”

  “Who you are.”

  “What if that’s not good enough?”

  The girl pursed her lips. “Be a better man. Earn his respect.”

  This comment pissed him right off. He’d been looking for reassurance and she’d made him feel small. She was knocked-up but playing it chaste.

  “What do you know?” His voice came out mean and he didn’t try to fix it. He would not be judged. Not by a girl who couldn’t scrape two pesos together.

  The girl’s eyes turned cold. “I kn
ow God.”

  “Nobody knows God.”

  “I do.”

  The looter scoffed, fished for a cigarette. Chelo sat centered, hands on her Buddha belly, like everyone should rub her stomach for luck. All at once, the looter didn’t care if he hurt her—or the baby. She was nobody to him. She was a tramp he’d met on a bus. She didn’t know he’d dug up one of the greatest treasures in Mexican history. She didn’t know that he’d sold it, stolen it back, sold it a second time, and now, even as she sat sipping limeade, was devising a plan to steal it a third time, not for profit but to honor the Virgin of Guadalupe, her Virgin. What had Chelo done in her life? Spread her legs, peeled potatoes, passed judgment. He didn’t have the Spanish vocabulary to express all the ways she was inferior to him. He just said: “And what does God say about your baby?”

  The girl’s face hardened, a security wall eight inches thick. Her lips covered her braces. “God says my baby is His son.”

  “Your son is an hijo de la chingada.”

  It was one of the most insulting things you could say to a Mexican. Your son is a son of the whore, not any whore, La Malinche, the Indian who slept with Cortés. The girl bent her head like he’d smacked her.

  He threw down his money and left her, too furious to steer. When the market appeared, he dove in, pushing past synthetic T-shirts, past chorizo dangling like vulgar necklaces. He hated this country. Mexicans had nothing. Nothing but land they soiled. Nothing but animals they killed, relics they pawned, drugs they pushed. Nothing but God, who did nothing. The looter shoved past sleepy children awake too late at night. Go to bed. Go to school. Stop eating candy. He thought of his mother. The calamity of his life was her fault. She had not made him into the man he wanted to be.