When the bus stopped at the town of Pensacola, before leaving the state of Florida, a woman got on the bus and I understood who she was. My mother’s voice said, It’s happening.
I felt the woman’s presence before I saw her. I felt her step on the three-step stairway leading up into the bus. Then she appeared at the end of the aisle and slowly walked toward us.
I looked at her and knew the woman fed the birds every morning. She knew when it’s going to rain. Too much was expected of her.
The woman was about sixty years old and very beautiful. She had dark brown eyes and gray, braided hair. The two long strands reached her waist. She probably had not cut her hair in decades. The woman was dressed in a black, long sleeved T-shirt and long, black skirt. She had a tattoo on her left hand, which extended out onto her fingers and disappeared under her sleeve. The inking was vines and flowers.
She sat right in the seat across from us so Corazón and the woman only had the narrow aisle between them.
When Corazón began to talk to her, I looked out the window but listened to every word.
Where are you from? Corazón asked.
The woman said she came from tideless water muck land and that she had swamp ways because she grew up in the Glades.
She said there was a moon for everything, even for murder, and that she came from a place where all a human being needed was tobacco, coffee, sugar, salt, and matches.
Oh, well, yes, Corazón answered, and then looked down at her hands and kept quiet. She knew she’d opened the door to a crazy.
After a few minutes the woman leaned over and asked, So who’s the little girl? Huh?
She’s my daughter, Corazón said.
She doesn’t look like she belongs to you, the woman said. What are you? A Mexican, right?
Yes, I’m Mexican, Corazón answered.
I believe you.
Don’t believe me then.
I said I believe you.
Okay, Corazón said.
In Florida, the woman said, we know never to dip your feet in river water. We’re a place of big rain, big wind, big thunder, big hates, she said. In Florida you need to look sharp at what you say. Be careful, predators look for the lonely, sad child.
She’s safe with me, Corazón said, and placed her hand in my hand.
Then the woman looked right at me and said, Little girl, move at the speed of knots, water velocity, not land velocity.
I listened.
She said, I want to be worthy of death. And this can only happen if we put aside the fear, the fear of the living, of living the careful life. Don’t be too careful. We just happen to be stardust.
I listened.
When the bus approached Mobile, Alabama, there was a general commotion as people stood and pulled down their bags from the racks above the seats.
The woman continued to talk.
We’re just stardust, the woman repeated. Have you heard of Halley’s Comet? Do you know about that? It’s coming back. Watch the sky. It will be here in 2061 and how old will you be then? Or will you be dead?
I’ll be dead, Corazón answered. You can bet on it.
I watched the young husband and wife in the seats in front of us stand up to leave. They’d been asleep for the past couple of hours. The scent of fields and pastures and grassy hills left with them.
This is my stop, the woman said.
She stood and leaned way over Corazón to get close to me.
You, she said, and pointed her finger right at me.
Her finger was inked with a slender ivy vine that started at her nail and worked up her finger, hand, and arm.
You, she said again, and almost poked me in the face. You know the songs, don’t you? I can hear them. You sure like a little fuck song, don’t you?
Then the woman moved away, waved her tattooed hand at us, and walked down the aisle, off the bus, and into the city. I knew she was my goodbye-to-Florida oracle.
Who was that woman? What was that all about? Corazón asked. I really should not talk to strangers. I could be talking to the devil.
She was an Indian.
In the old days they didn’t know as much about the devil as we know now, Corazón said. She smelled like vinegar.
She was a real Indian ghost, I said.
She smelled like vinegar. That’s the smell of heroin. I know that smell, Corazón said.
Then she sat up straight in her seat and quickly patted both her cheeks with her hands. I couldn’t tell if it was a gesture of comfort or punishment.
Or, you know, maybe it wasn’t the devil or an Indian. That woman could have been an undercover cop looking for you, Corazón said. Listen to me, I could go to jail for kidnapping you out of that foster house. There could be one of those real Amber Alerts by now. Maybe none of this was such a good idea. Ray always says my Mexican logic is too Mexican.
Nobody’s looking for me. I don’t even have a birth certificate.
So did your mother ever tell you, you know, who your father was?
No, she never told me. All I know is he was a schoolteacher.
Yes, that’s right. He’d have gone to jail for rape, you know. Your mother was an underage kid.
I don’t know.
So, you really liked that Indian woman. I could tell, Corazón said. But I figured it out in one second. She’s buying and selling like everyone, practically everyone on this bus.
What do you mean?
Heroin. She was hoping I’d sell her some tar. She was trying to figure us out, but she didn’t know what to think of you. I know these people. After she went to the bathroom, she was nodding. She was really gooching—that’s the word.
I don’t know, I said.
Well, I do know, Corazón said. In my town in Mexico, well outside town, we grow the poppies. You walk on the hillsides covered with those beautiful red flowers and you know only one thing for sure: God forgot to give that flower a smell.