In the mornings, Rodriguez worked on the fencing and the brick work in the garden. By afternoon, when the rains inevitably fell, however, he was safely inside the house, placing tile, stuccoing the chimney, or painting the bedroom. On Tuesday, he seemed particularly unsettled for some reason. He was usually a very industrious man who, despite the heat, always insisted on finishing a particular task before going on to something else or before taking a snack or even a drink of water. Rafaela noticed him several times in the afternoon, standing on the veranda, looking past the garden through the drizzling rain—his old eyes cloudy but concentrated, shaking his head.
“What is the matter, Señor Rodriguez?” she asked. “Are you worried about something?”
“I do not know how to tell you this,” he paused. “But you will notice it sooner or later, and I fear you will be very angry with me. I cannot afford to lose this job, but I know you to be a very fair person. I am a very skilled worker. I cannot understand what has happened. Perhaps—” His voice broke off. He looked as if he were about to cry.
“Señor?”
“I am not such an old man. I have done this work all my life. I have made some mistakes, but you see my work all over these parts. I come recommended.”
“Of course. Of course.”
“I cannot receive my pension so soon. Do you understand?”
“No, I really don’t.” Rafaela tried not to sound exasperated.
“Do you know the ways of the curandero?” He asked suddenly, almost darkly, accusingly. “Maybe it is not me. Maybe it is this place.” Rodriguez had worked himself around his own conversation and now stared accusingly at Rafaela as if the source of his confusion were no longer a vision he had been observing through the drizzling rain.
Rafaela stepped away from the man’s stare. Perhaps he was referring to her palm reading, but it was nothing really; something she had always done for fun. Yet, she wondered if the man sensed her own fear, a fear of intuitions too keenly felt. Lately she read fearful things in the palms of others, things she dared not speak. And for example this morning, sweeping the house as usual of its entourage of insects and animals, she remembered feeling her body twist as the snake curled first to the right, then to the left. She spoke quickly, “Perhaps you are tired. This has been enough work today.”
“Yes. Yes, maybe that is it.” He shook his head and began to gather his tools. “Nothing has been right today. First it was the crabs. Then the eggs.”
“Crabs? Eggs?”
“Two crabs. Can you imagine? Two crabs in the house this morning. And then the eggs. Two yolks. All the eggs this morning had two yolks.”
“Crabs are not normal?”
“Of course not. Who ever heard of such at thing? It would take a man many hours to walk to the beach. But a crab!”
Rafaela watched Rodriguez hurry off, a small sack of his belongings on his back. She saw him pause near the brick foundation of the fence he had been working on in the morning and then run off in agitation. She smiled to herself. Rodriguez reminded her of Bobby in that he was so conscientious, so proud about his work. She remembered that Bobby loved his work no matter what it was. To want a better kind of work didn’t make sense to Bobby. No work was better than another. She had been thinking about Bobby and his good points lately. She was beginning to miss him.
By now the rain had subsided, and Rafaela could see Doña Maria closing her umbrella and nodding to Rodriguez as she hurried along the brick path toward the house. “Oregano and tarragon,” she pressed a plastic bag filled with dirt and plants on Rafaela. “Lupe sends them,” she added. “I would have been here sooner,” she said out of breath as if she had anything else better to do. Of course, she could have sent Lupe, but she came herself. “But you can’t imagine the amount of traffic on the highway. Cars and trucks, one after another. I was afraid to cross.” She looked back toward the highway. “Where is that Rodriguez going so early? You are much too easy on the man. And with all this work to do,” she said looking around at the unfinished projects around the house.
Rafaela wanted to defend the old man, wanted to say that after so many years of work, perhaps he deserved some rest, deserved to leave work early. But this was México. This was the way of her country. Her relationship to Doña Maria depended on her ability to pay Rodriguez and to get what she paid for. She remembered her arguments with Bobby. They had a business together. They had to agree to pay the people who worked for them and to follow the rules, American rules about paying them, and there were so many others. She couldn’t remember anymore. Were they arguing about the rules? And what were the rules? If she asked Doña Maria, the woman might say that she was a God-fearing person and that the poor would always be with them. But Bobby would never say that. Sure Bobby thought he was one of the poor, and he wasn’t going away, but he wasn’t going to lie down and die either. He was going to take care of himself, so he wanted to know why she wanted to take care of everyone else in the world. “Take care of Sol first,” he said.
She asked Doña Maria instead, “Are you thirsty? Would you like a drink? A cold glass of passion fruit?”
“Perhaps a little. Passion fruit makes me sleepy. Where is Sol?”
“Taking a nap.”
“Dear thing.” Doña Maria followed Rafaela into the kitchen, but not before adjusting the lace doilies over an antique chest and fingering the wooden candlesticks placed as an altar to Frida Kahlo. She stared at the monkeys and Frida who stared back, but she never understood what tourists saw in that woman. Frida was an old fixture, but the doilies, candlesticks, the array of glass and porcelain vases, hanging clocks, and framed reproductions of Van Gogh and Picasso were Rafaela’s doing. So were the sunflowers placed in vases all over the house. Maybe Gabriel had been trying to achieve a rustic old México look what with that heavy dining table, the big leather chairs, and that giant mirror framed by a colorful Quetzalcoatl, not Doña Maria’s personal preference; she liked what she called a French Mediterranean look—marble staircases, Louis the 14th cherrywood side tables, silver candlesticks and porcelain figurines behind beveled glass. She saw her two blue velvet brass-knobbed chairs near the fireplace and nodded approvingly, “The house has a woman’s touch now. I can tell you have done a nice job, Rafaela. Gabriel, what was he thinking? Such a sweet young man, but here all by himself. Sometimes there were others, but he never introduced me. There was that gringo couple, and then I remember an African woman. No really, African. She had her hair like long twisted black noodles in a beautiful blue scarf. Do you know what I mean? The last I remember was the Chinese woman. Gabriel, Gabriel,” she sighed as if he were her own son. “He really should be married by now.”
Rafaela didn’t know who these friends of Gabriel might be, but the Chinese woman must be Gabriel’s current girlfriend, Emi, who wasn’t Chinese but probably Japanese and Japanese American at that. Rafaela didn’t care to gossip about Gabriel with Doña Maria and only nodded and smiled. The Gabriel she knew in L.A. was self-assured and assertive. She was grateful, but even his helpfulness was assertive. “Do it this way,” he seemed to tell her. Now, in México, in the disorder of his dreams, it occurred to her that maybe Gabriel was rather lost. She understood how Doña Maria might think of him as her son, that he seemed to be the sort that required mothering.
“Doña Maria,” Rafaela wanted to change the subject, “Rodriguez told me that crabs are not usual here.”
“Crabs? How funny for you to say so. The first time in all the years I have lived here, there is a crab in my house. Where did it come from? How did it cross the road?”
“Are they good to eat?”
“Eat? I don’t know. But how could this crab be a crab in the ordinary sense?”
“Perhaps the crabs fall out of the trucks coming from Mazatlán,” suggested Rafaela, wanting an explanation.
“Crabs? This was just one crab in my house this morning. It is very strange.”
Rafaela remembered Rodriguez’s stare. She did not want to say how she swept a crab out—not to mention everything else—from the house every morning.
But Doña Maria was more interested in gossip of the human rather than the animal kind. “The Chinese woman was always in a bikini. But that was the dry season. Hardly any mosquitos. Think of her now.”
“Mami!” Sol’s voice could be heard across the corridor.
“Sol’s up,” Rafaela announced.
“I will say hello to Sol and be on my way.” Doña Maria bustled down the corridor, adjusting Gabriel’s hanging assortment of black-and-white photos, oblivious to their scenes of a distant childhood in East L.A., and greeted the boy tugging at the neck of his T-shirt. “Sol,” she said patting him on the head, “such a sleepyhead. When are you coming to my house? I may have a surprise for you.” She nodded at Rafaela. “My son sent for men to put up a satellite dish. They are doing it right now! Imagine, two hundred channels! How many with cartoons, yes, Sol?” Sol followed Doña Maria to the veranda. “I just hope it doesn’t take me so long to cross the highway again. When you walk out there, be careful with Sol. Well, you will see,” she waved to Rafaela, scrutinizing a giant potted cactus, the health of trailing ferns, and toeing the corner of a throw rug into place. Retrieving her umbrella, she turned suddenly, “How silly of me. I almost forgot to tell you. The very reason I came here. The hotel called to say that you have a package waiting there. The bus left it this morning.”
“It must be from Gabriel.”
“Bring a strong sack with you. It is not such a big package, but they say it is heavy.”
Rafaela smiled. Sometimes the woman’s probing ways could be helpful.
Rafaela pulled the small straps through the buckle on Sol’s sandals. The other foot dangled back and forth, Sol watching it from one side of the milk bottle planted securely in his mouth. She found a strong canvas bag, the umbrella, and the folded stroller. Sol might make it to the hotel walking, but walking back was another thing. She had had to carry him all the way back the other day. She was taking the stroller today. Then again, Sol might refuse to get in the stroller, and she would have to carry him and the stroller and the bag with the package all back home again. And if it rained, she would have to do so and hold the umbrella above their heads. That was a chance she would have to take.
Indeed it was as Doña Maria had said; the highway was unusually busy that day. The noise of trucks and cars rumbling and whining down the searing asphalt road never seemed to stop. The pungent smell of tar stung Rafaela’s nose.
Rafaela watched the undulation of their shadows across the steaming green undergrowth at the side of the road. It occurred to her that the sun was still somewhat low for that time of the day, actually still west. But the afternoon rains had come and gone, and Rodriguez had come and gone as well. And Sol had awoken from his afternoon nap. Rafaela paused and looked back. No, the hotel was south down the highway, of course. The long shadows were disconcerting, but she continued on, Sol prancing forward with the simple pleasure of moving his legs.
She signed for the package. It was small but heavy as Doña Maria had warned. The hotel manager seemed to be waiting for Rafaela to open the package. “What could that be anyway?” She decided to open the package, a small concession to the manager who might find the pleasure of knowing its contents payment enough for his trouble. She pulled the newspaper from around the thing and uncovered a pair of faucets. The shiny chrome reflected the manager’s gaze. They were modern-looking things with a sort of industrial look, the sort that Gabriel seemed to like. Rafaela was indifferent to this style. It still had a surface like any other that had to be cleaned.
The manager took the liberty of turning the fixtures in his hands and then stopped and chuckled. “Hecho en México,” he read with amusement.
Rafaela sighed and shook her head. “I’d better be going. It will get late.”
“Yes,” agreed the manager, “before the afternoon rains.”
Rafaela looked up with a start. The big clock above the hotel desk read 11:45.
“Oh, it’s a little fast. How far do you have to go?”
“Not far, but that is the correct time?”
“Ten minutes fast, I’d say. But what difference does it make?”
Rafaela felt Rodriguez’s mixed expression of confusion and fear in her own features as she wrapped the faucets back into their newspaper packaging.
About halfway down the road, Sol began to drag his feet and then to cry. “Sit here, Sol.” She offered the boy the open stroller. This was not satisfactory at all. Sol grabbed her blouse and pulled and jumped. Rafaela slung the bag with the package into the stroller, pushing it with one hand and cradling Sol next to her hip. Now the sun was pulling itself to the ceiling of the sky, and the shadows were almost nil. Across the horizon however, Rafaela could see the great billowing wall of an approaching thundershower. The sun’s intensity would not last for long. Thin streaks of lightning darted across the approaching wall. “Sol, how about the stroller? Please?” She pleaded, trying to get the boy to sit down.
Sol kicked and struggled, grabbing her neck with tenacity. She wanted to leave him in the road, but shifted him to the other hip and pushed the stroller and the heavy faucets with the other hand. Small drops of rain flew around the sunlight. A great rainbow pulled itself across the sky. “Look, Sol, a rainbow.” But Sol wasn’t interested, and he was getting heavier every step, and the stroller with the faucets wandered clumsily along the dirt road, jammed in the gravel and the frequent ruts.
The great rainbow slipped into oblivion, and the black sky approached with a vengeance. Rafaela put Sol down, to his great displeasure, and frantically worked at the rusty catch of the umbrella. The umbrella flew open and out like bat wings—good for hanging bats, bad for pouring rain. Sol was stooping near her feet and screaming as if he were hungry and very tired, as if he had never had his nap. Finally she picked him up and got him momentarily concerned about having the responsibility of carrying the umbrella. This turned out to be a bad idea because Sol wanted to hold the umbrella by himself, but the wind and downpour tossed it violently in every direction. Rafaela clung to the boy and blindly managed her forward momentum, alternately drenched and pressed against the embankment, fighting to avoid being flung onto the highway. The path was soon awash, and Rafaela could barely see anything. Vehicles careened through the rain and sprayed the greasy water from the asphalt in sheer walls. Rafaela struggled to higher ground and then crouched there in frustration, rivulets of mud flowing around the stroller and through her sandals, Sol sobbing unhappily.
Suddenly she noticed them. Just like the crabs she swept from the house daily, but hundreds of them, large and small, crawling frantically sideways in every direction, washing down with the river of rain. Rafaela forgot the necessity of the umbrella’s protection or the value of the heavy fixtures in the stroller. She hugged Sol, securing her hand over the back of his head and ran, crabs grappling the earth and crunching beneath her feet.
Approaching the house, Rafaela looked for the usual landmarks: the orange tree, Rodriguez’s brick work, and the new fence. Perhaps it was the rain—a thick wet lens through which she perceived this wet world. She was not sure, but the fence was somehow curved, or maybe even longer, or stretched. That was it. The fence stretched south in a funny way, like those concave mirrors in drug stores and 7-11s in the States. Rafaela was not sure.
Stripping off Sol’s clothing and encasing his body in a dry towel, Rafaela looked through the starched lace curtains at a hazy visage of the world and remembered. The orange. That orange. It was not there.
Out across the garden, the sun’s light began to dapple through the parting clouds and rising mist. Somewhere a snake slid into a shadow. And it was still morning.