In the desert the sky is wide. I feel small here, small and weak and wordless. In San Francisco the fog erased the sky—but here nothing can spare you from the sky or the sun that beats us like children who must submit. There is more than space and time that separates me from my past. A month. I have been here a month—and already the desert has swallowed the yellow hills of California. I cannot picture them. California is dead to me, and somehow I know the path of the return has been obliterated. There is no going back, and nothing to go back to.
We climbed Mount Cristo Rey today in all the heat to spread out Salvador’s ashes. I’ve always wondered why the living follow out the prescriptions of the dead. Why do the dead have such power? Maria Elena says quite simply that the dead are not dead, that they are more alive than the living.
The climb up the mountain was hell and the sun felt as if it were hanging a foot above my head. The path was well-worn by pilgrims, and I wondered about the footprints all the way to the top. Maria Elena called what we did a pilgrimage. I didn’t much feel like a pilgrim. Pilgrims believe. I sometimes think the only thing I really believe in is believers. I believe in Maria Elena. Is that enough? I trudged up the mountain right next to her. We talked about our girlhoods. One hundred degrees—and we’re climbing a mountain and talking about our girlhoods. She talked a lot about Diego. She said she’d hated him because he was so helpless until she realized that she only thought he was helpless because he was deaf. But she only came to that conclusion sometime after she’d abandoned him. “After my mother’s funeral, I just walked out.” she said. When we grew quiet, she prayed a rosary in my ear. I listened to her whispered prayers as we climbed higher and higher. Looking down on the whole valley, I realized I was happy to be breathing, happy to have a nose and hair and sweaty skin. Despite all the rows of cardboard houses, the homes with bootlegged electricity that often destroyed entire neighborhoods in the night in flames, despite the pollution, despite the tamed and beaten river, the desert I was staring at was as sacred a thing as I had ever seen. Mama cried when she looked out over the desert. I didn’t want her to go, she’s so old and tired. She’s going away, but I don’t think she could go away without seeing the desert from the top of the mountain. She wanted to be there for the spreading of Salvador’s ashes, the child she had wanted more than me. She asked me to forgive her, and I told her there was nothing to forgive. She felt on the way down. I thought she would die there. I picked her up and Jake helped her all the way down. She looked so small next to him.
Eddie and Jake talked a good deal the whole way. Eddie laughed a tot—but he always does. He’s easily amused, and he seemed to be particularly amused by the hats we were wearing—that and the way the dust was clinging to our sweaty skin. He teased his wife. “I remember when you didn’t let me see you without makeup.” He laughed and wiped her face with his shirt. I love that man—for his kindness and for his laugh. Jake was very thoughtful most of the way up. He seems more vulnerable to me now. Ever since Casas Grandes, he seems a little more lost. I think he liked having Joaquin’s ashes in his room. I think he hated to get rid of them, though when I asked him about it he said I was being ridiculous. “People aren’t ashes,” he said. “What I loved of him is long gone.” Somehow. I don’t think so. I told Jake he didn’t have to come on another ash-spreading expedition. He said he’d been to several with Joaquin and that he didn’t mind them, and that he had been wanting to see what the statue looked like up close.
When we reached the top of the mountain, Maria Elena insisted on a prayer. It made me sad I hadn’t known my brother. The world we had been brought up in had made us strangers to each other and so we never belonged to each other. Sometimes I think the world conspires to keep us all separate from each other. We have to fight to belong to those we love—maybe that’s all we can hope for. I tried not to hate my father for separating me and Salvador because I didn’t want hate to be a part of the moment. I didn’t want any hate on top of that mountain—all I wanted was Maria Elena and Jake and Eddie—and Salvador’s ashes. When Nena finished the prayer. I flung his ashes in the hot wind. For an instant there was a gray cloud that came between me and the sun. And then the ashes spread like grains of sand. I placed the urn at the foot of Christ the King. No one said a word, and after we lingered for a white, it was time to go. It was getting hotter and hotter, and it seemed as though we were not welcome after we had completed our task. As I said his name, we started to climb down. His name has come to mean good-bye.
On the way down from the mountain, we passed a group of pilgrims. Maria Elena didn’t notice them. She was looking straight down at her feet and fingering her rosary. There was a woman among them, and she seemed too old to be climbing a mountain in the hot sun. But a young man had her by the arm and was helping her climb. Our eyes met as I passed him. I have thought of his dark eyes all day. I remember them from somewhere. Who knows? I sometimes don’t know anything anymore. I thought it might have been Diego, but I have come to the conclusion that I am a very bad seer.
About halfway down. Maria Elena had to sit down and rest. For an instant I knew what she was thinking: I think I’m pregnant again. I smiled at her, and I was certain she knew I had just read her thoughts. She walked right next to me the rest of the way down. She handed me a folded-up piece of paper. I started to open it, but she stopped me. ‘ ‘I woke up last night after dreaming some words. I wrote them down—I just wanted you to read them.” I asked her why she wasn’t giving the words to Eddie. “You don’t understand,” she said quietly. “The words in the dream were whispered to me.” She stopped walking, then paused. “It was Rose’s voice.” I stuck the piece of paper in my pocket. This afternoon I read the words she’d dreamed, the words uttered to her in Mama’s voice.
1 am writing these words onto this page, and I am giving Nena back the words she gave me. We must never lose them. I know what they mean. So does Nena. I must try to at least stay in my body through Mama’s final season.
I haven’t left my body for a week and I feel as though I’m suffering from withdrawal. I sat out on the front porch this evening and smoked a cigarette with Jake and drank a glass of wine. We talked a long time about Joaquin, and I wound up talking to him about Salvador, and how it was so strange that I’d wound up with my twin brother’s ashes. He’s still a little sore with me for having followed him and Eddie to Casas Grandes. He wanted to know if I had eavesdropped on their conversation. I told him I hadn’t, but I think he’s still trying to decide if I’m telling the truth or not.
Eddie said it was a sneaky thing to do and he and Maria Elena got into an argument over the whole episode the minute they discovered what had happened. But during dinner, Eddie wound up laughing so hard over the whole ridiculous event that he fell off the chair. “Tomorrow, Paris!” he howled. Maria Elena and I weren’t as amused. Mama went the opposite way. She wept openly that night, releasing all the tension of the day. “If you ever leave me while I’m still on this earth, Elizabeth Edwards, I swear I’ll die cursing your name.” She made me promise to “stay within my form.” I didn’t argue with her, though I am not at all sure I intend to keep my promise.