by Jan Baross

The heavy chain rattles as Papá opens the double doors onto the Plaza de Allende. Stale fumes empty out of the aisle into the morning mist. As the day arcs, a dusty rectangle of light will stretch over the slump of burlap grain sacks and up the wall of canned goods.

I am surrounded by a colorless collection of earth-tinted buckets, barrels, bags, and cans. Where is the adventure in selling dried vanilla beans or gnarled fingers of ginger or the white and purple necklaces of flaking garlic? There is no challenge in black beans, red beans, garbanzo beans, coffee beans, sesame seeds, poppy seeds, scabs of dried beef, or buckets of night crawlers.

Papá curls the stems of his half-moon reading glasses around his ears. He unlocks a drawer, takes out the sales ledger, and reaches for a pencil. He rubs the key to his aguardiente cellar on his jacket and returns it to the drawer. Below the store, in the cool darkness, are hundreds of bottles of the clear, fiery liquid. Though I never tasted it, I have watched Papá distill the molasses made from sugar cane and mix it with anise, adding more sugar to make the sweet "burning water" that he sells at high prices.

Mamá harnesses herself into a green canvas apron, pulling the straps tight enough to give her a figure. The embroidered yellow flowers on the apron have been frayed against produce boxes and the sides of dented cans. Mamá stacks brown beer bottles in the glass-door refrigerator because, as she never tires of telling us, cold beer sells faster.

Véronica draws a dull knife through the lid of a cardboard box that holds a dozen cans of tomato sauce. She stacks and spaces the cans so evenly, her concentration could warp labels. She tosses me a brown cloth.

"Tortugina, dust the cans on the lower shelves."

Never before have I cleaned with the idea that it could fill my day. This is a thought that tightens around my chest like Papá’s heavy chain. I marvel at the serenity in Amanda’s face as she hums, giving herself completely to the gentle arrangement of white toilet paper next to the blue bleach boxes.

The metallic sound of a cane ticking against the floor rouses Papá from his ledger.

Señora Estonia, a bent, frilled wreck, shimmers on the doorstep. Her long, wilted breasts make strange bulges in her expensive silk blouse. Had she been a street dog, her nipples would have left trails in the dust.

Señora Estonia leans on her cane as she shuffles to the counter. Gravity and sex have bowed her brittle legs. Finely crafted shoes support her long flat arches. Her acrid perfume fumigates the far reaches of the store. I sneeze and rub my nose.

Papá bows. "Señora Estonia. My humble shop is yours."

She is taller than Papá by a head.

"Yes, if you do not pay your mortgage, Señor Gomez," says Señora Estonia, "your shop is indeed mine!"

Her dry laugh is more brittle than her bones. Señora Estonia was once the most beautiful madame in the richest whorehouse of Porto Gillo, far north of El Pulpo.

Mamá whispers to me through a smile, since the Señora is nearly deaf.

"See how I smile, Tortugina. Let me see your best effort."

Mamá elbows me toward the old whore. I give her a wide smile with so many teeth showing that I think my lips might split.

"Good day, Señora Estonia," I say.

Her watery gaze finds me. She clicks her ivory dentures into a smile under the twin sunsets of her rouged cheeks. The red wig shakes on her head, not from a sense of rhythm, but from the ravages of a slow sex disease that dances her toward the grave.

"Well, Tortugina, are they letting you work as though you were a normal person?"

"I am pleased to help Papá," I say.

"Aha, Señor Gomez!" says Señora Estonia. "You will have a worker for life. No one marries a loca like Tortugina!"

Mamá pats my shoulder. "Tortugina is very helpful, Señora."
Señora Estonia's filmy cataracts are dull with menace.

"You have invited chaos, Señor Gomez," says Señora Estonia. "Tortugina, if you are not as stupid as you look, you will join my old profession and get paid for it. Everyone knows Gabito and his divers use you like a sheep."

Papá drops Señora Estonia's fresh coffee beans on the counter.

She says it so convincingly, I am almost persuaded that I am no longer a virgin. Papá looks at me with a narrow squint. His suspicions cut deep like the sharp hatchets he sells.

"Papá! I am a virgin! She's a liar!"

Mamá slaps my head. "Apologize to Señora Estonia!" she says.

Señora Estonia's angry red wig shudders like a cock's comb.

"Señora Gomez, you make wild animals of your children by not punishing them enough!"

Papá's hands have hardened into fists. Mamá does not answer. Instead she calmly scoops the scattered coffee beans off the counter into a piece of paper. She folds the paper and hands it to Señora Estonia with a big smile.

Mamá whispers to me, "See how I smile, Tortugina."

She whispers to Señora Estonia's deaf ears, "Señora Estonia, here are your coffee beans. May you drink too fast and die for insulting my daughter."

Señora Estonia leans closer to Mamá. Phlegm rattles in her throat. "What did you say about your little tramp, Señora Gomez?"

I throw my dust rag across the counter at Señora Estonia's sagging breasts and yell loud enough for her to hear, "You should die, you wingless old bat!"

I burst out of Papá's store into the warmth of the morning sunshine. Sergio, son of the sweets baker, whistles through the wide gaps of his rotten teeth. He moves his mountainous flesh toward the candy in Papá's store and sings,

"Puta, puta, you are a whore, Tortugina!"

Why does everyone think Tortugina is a whore! Does Señora Estonia spread rumors?

Then let there be reason for it! I run up against Sergio's big belly and twist his ears toward my face. I open my mouth over his lips. When he tries to scream, I stick my tongue between his lips like the pictures in Señor Duro's back room. Sergio's mouth tastes like chocolate. He struggles, but I hold on to his ears.

A wicked blow from behind knocks me to my knees. Sergio spits my kiss into the dust.

"Tortugina!" says Mamá.

Her thick bristle broom pins me to the cobblestones.

"Sergio called me a whore, Mamá!"

"She attacked me!" yells Sergio. "Hit her again!"

I am already flat on the ground when Amanda runs up behind Mamá and grabs the broom. Her gentle touch always tempers Mamá.

Señora Estonia in her well-built shoes shuffles toward my head. The bright copper tip of her cane stops inches from my nose.

"No need to grovel, Tortugina," says Señora Estonia. "I accept your apology."

Her crackle makes me want to break her thin ankles. Papá clasps Señora Estonia's elbow and steers her toward home.

Humiliating Tortugina in public is nothing new. If Mamá doesn't do it, somehow I do it to myself. Poor Mamá wipes the sweat off her upper lip as I rise in front of her. My freshly ironed green dress is covered in dust. My back aches from the broom.

"Tortugina," says Mamá, "what am I going to do with you?"

She steps toward me. I step back. For every step Mamá takes toward me, I take one step back. Finally she stops and I stop. Her nostrils flare like two white rings. I wish they would explode and leave a hole in her face.

I cannot help but smile at the thought of Mamá without a nose.

"I do not know what I expected," Mamá sighs with exhaustion.

Quietly, a growling laughter tickles out of her throat. If Mamá or I start laughing, the other cannot resist. My horse-snort breaks into a big field of laughter. Amanda's sweet clucking makes us a crowing barnyard chorus. It has always been like this. Mamá, Amanda, and I lean against each other as our howling weakens us. I am never sure we are laughing for the same reason, but I know the laughing sweeps ugliness away better than Mamá's broom.

Sergio slowly turns his mountainous rage toward Papá's store.

Mamá blows her nose into a small handkerchief, her sign that the respite is over.

"Tortugina," Mamá wipes her eyes, "I cannot stand any more of you today. Go pluck mussels. Tomorrow we start your training again. As a clerk!"

Dark clouds roll across the horizon from the north, as though a shroud was being laid over the sky. A light rain paints the rocks black. In the Forbidden Cliff, I lean against the jagged window ledge of my secret cave and lick the salt from my arm to taste the sea.

Tomás dumps his catch in the small rocky pool of fresh water. He jumps up and down to warm himself by the fire. Skinny Vicente and Big Luis slap each other to stay warm in their threadbare jackets.

Under my black hood, I watch through the old telescope and begin to build layers of protection around Gabito's body with prayers.

He is tensed for the jump. Wind flattens the curls against Gabito's head. The goodluck yellow trunks flutter, thin and threadbare, against his thighs and his lump that the boys call their big dog, burro, stallion, as if it were something they could feed and tame.

With no warning, a sharp pain ricochets above the bones of my woman's mound. It is a deep cramp. I am as bent as old Señora Estonia. It hits again so hard that I drop the telescope and slide to the cave floor. The pain holds me to the damp stones.

Could this be a heart attack like Señor Molino's? Does it start between the legs and gradually strangle everything up to the heart? There is dampness between my thighs. I take the black hood off my head and lift my skirt. My fingers touch a spot that is wet and warm. It is too dark to see anything. I slide my panties down my legs and hold them up to the jagged rim of light. There on the white crotch is a beautiful puddle of my own bright blood. The badge I thought I would never wear!

Oh, Gabito, at last I am honored with the full cup of womanhood! We can marry! I will give birth to our child in the sea so he will keep the talent of breathing underwater.

I hold my panties delicately between my fingertips. The day is a witness to this proud flag! You see, Mamá, I am not the son Papá wanted. I am not a circus freak! I am a woman!

I can barely wait to tell Gabito. I lay the precious panties on the ledge to dry in the breeze and tie the black cloth around my loins to catch my trickling womanhood. At last I pick up the telescope and return to my job.

"MotherMarypleaseprotectmybelovedGabito."

I am well into the fast rhythm of prayer when a strong cold wind whips past the ledge. Dust blinds one eye, but worse, it whisks my underwear off the ledge.

I blink and grab, but the panties are spread like a kite in an updraft. Caught in a narrow shaft of sunlight, the crotch turns as rosy as stained glass. It is as though a holy relic has taken flight.

A whirlwind hovers my panties just above Gabito's head. He looks up from his dive. His body is a horror of imbalance.

"No, Gabito!" I yell.

He whips his arms backward. He is angled too far over the edge of the cliff to stop himself.

Tomás runs up behind Gabito and clamps his hairy fists on the yellow waistband.

"Gabito!" I scream.

Gabito falls over the cliff. Tomás keeps his grip. He falls flat on his belly but holds on to Gabito's hanging body. They are both going over.

Big Luis grabs one of Tomás's thick ankles. Skinny Vicente seizes the other. They brace themselves, their bare feet anchored against stone. The taut rope of Tomás's arm is all that holds Gabito above the lava spears. One, two, three, the boys pull backward on Tomás's ankles.

Tomás roars with pain as his muscles stretch between the hanging body of Gabito and the divers pulling at his heels. Gabito knows to hang limp and not stir. Little by little the divers pull Gabito up the windy cliff.

My fingers hurt from holding on to the lava rock, as though that could help the boys' straining muscles.

A cormorant swoops past. Gabito's head rises. I think he is looking up at me. His face seems to say, "Tortugina. I am safe now."

Through the brass telescope, I watch his body suddenly fall out of frame. Tomás is left holding Gabito's ripped yellow shorts.

"Gabito! Gabito!" I scream.

Gabito's naked brown body flies down the face of the cliff. He straightens his long back as he falls. Hands together, he plunges toward the sea. Gabito tries to shape his body thin as air to fit between the rocks, but this time his perfection does not save him. Blood rises black in the dark gray swirl of waves crushed between the lava spears.

Tomás holds the yellow shorts to his chest. I scream and scream. I cannot stop screaming.

Black suits, black crepe dresses, black hats, black heads bow over Gabito's grave. All our lives, Gabito and I played in this cemetery behind Saint Assisi by the Sea. We ate fallen pomegranates with goat cheese, slept in the sun on warm marble slabs that cover the village bones. It is a cemetery of cement Virgins, wood crosses, and marble headstones with inlaid portraits of the dead in black and white.

Gabito's headstone is black with the only photograph of him, taken on the day of his First Communion when he had a terrible cold.

Fat Padre Abstensia's wooden teeth rattle Latin over Gabito's coffin. He sprays wet prayers on the Bible. A breeze lifts his words and his cassock, but grief weighs him to the gravesite.

The coffin is closed and empty since Gabito's body was washed out to sea and never found.

I watched from the shore all day and night in the foolish hope that my prayers would make him return. By now crabs and barracuda have cleaned his bones, but we can stand here and remember his beauty.

I slip a fresh brown egg out of my pocket. It is tradition for a woman to breathe sorrow for a man into an egg and then bury it to be free of the sorrow. I hold it with both hands as though I am praying. A tiny yellow feather flutters, stuck to the shell by a streak of dried hen blood. I blow my heat on the curved surface, fogging the albumen inside, and whisper to the marigold yolk.

"Forgive me, Gabito."

Later I will bury the egg with the prayer that I will reform my selfish, sinful nature, so as not to spend my life scooping eggs into shallow graves.

Amanda, smelling of lemon powder, touches the small of my back. Her forgiveness weakens me almost to tears. Véronica's fingernails pinch my arm. I am grateful for the distraction of this simpler pain. Papá looks down at his black leather funeral shoes. They have not spoken to me since I walked back to the store the afternoon Gabito died and told them, "It was an accident."

Mamá cried in front of Papá's valued customers. Papá hit me once across the face then could not stop. It is Amanda who holds me these nights. I cannot sleep. The dreams are gone.

Tomás, Gordo, Luis, and Vicente lower Gabito's empty coffin into the ground. Tears drop onto their wool jackets as they cover the coffin with red earth. The divers pack the mound, beating the earth with their shovels. If Gabito were in his coffin, he would be holding his ears.

While the grave is being filled, Padre Abstensia sprays his Latin incantations to God. Then the service is as complete as it can be for an unfinished life.

We follow the Padre out of the cemetery over the rocky sea road toward Gabito's home.

Tomás and the divers carry their diver's funeral wreath. It is big as a wagon wheel, made of dried grape vines woven with branches of rosemary. Gabito's torn goodluck shorts are tied into a curved branch. The divers' mothers and fathers, Mother Mary Inmaculada, Señor Aves with his guitar, the mayor, the sheriff, the bandleader, the repairman and his son Gordo, the garbage collector, street cleaner, shopkeepers, all attach notes to the wreath of remembrance.

They wedge objects into the weave. Silver amulets, wooden crosses tied with black string, tiny plaster figures of the Madonna. Señora Grosera shoves in her famous beef and hot chilies on a stick that Gabito loved. Peg-legged Señora Porcion catches up to the wreath. Between two silver fish heads she ties a stack of tortillas wrapped in yellow cellophane. She will miss the heat of Gabito's smile over her blue counter.

Señora Estonia, the cheap old whore, leaves one tin amulet rattling on a dry grape branch. She and her cane thump next to me, a sunken smile on her lips. She could not be happier to see me disgraced.

Gabito's brother, Tomás, carries his six-year-old brother, Salvador, and walks next to his father, Señor Emilio. Señor Emilio is a handsome man with a full head of gray hair who was, like Gabito, the best diver of his time. Tomás guides the old man's slumped shoulders toward their home.

Gabito's stone house sits on a cliff a hundred feet from the sea, a good place to be in a storm. The old house was built by Gabito's great-grandpapá, the first diver in the family. It is the sturdiest house in the village because it has to be. It was large enough for the lives of three boys, a man, and the memory of a dead mother. Now it must make room for another memory.

Señor Emilio stands on the porch in solemn welcome. The villagers file up the stone steps into the house. The muscled butcher helps old Señora Estonia in her shaking red wig.

Papá, Mamá, Véronica, and Amanda, outcasts by association, wait silently with me. If my family is not allowed to share in the village grief, it will be the biggest insult imaginable, worse than not being invited to Padre Abstensia's Christmas party.

When everyone else is inside, Gabito's father puts his hands in the pockets of his wool pants and stares down at us. Finally, he nods consent to Papá. The family climb the stairs and move slowly through the stone portal. A guitar begins inside.

Before I enter, I whisper to Señor Emilio, "It was an accident. I am sorry. I loved Gabito."

Gabito's father hears my apology. He chooses to obey the terms of silent banishment. The old man steps inside and shuts the door in my face.

The porch is cold. For once I will miss the warmth of my family.

I hurry around the side of the house, away from the wind. Big black Coriander growls, guarding the shallow-rooted vegetables: lettuce, tomatoes, radishes, sons of radishes. Gabito planted them all.

To stay warm, I circle the house so many times that my breath creates a fog. The icy wind is just enough torture that I do not have to think only of Gabito.

A wooden bench sits beneath the kitchen window. I stand on tiptoe, nose pressed against the thick glass, and watch the figures inside. Papá and Mamá are a solid silhouette near the glow of the fireplace. Their hearts have brought them this far together. They are like an octopus, eight limbs between them, welded by good luck and bad luck. Gabito and I will never have eight legs.

Señor Aves plays his guitar and sings the divers' song.

Ai, Ai, Ai, Amigos.
We belong to the sea.
The sea belongs to us.
Faithful mistress is she,
Who gives us oc-to-pus.
We will die in her arms.
We will die in her arms.
Ai, Ai, Ai, Amigos.

Gabito's father cries. His hard stomach has gone soft against his belt. Gabito's belly would have gone soft too, and together we would have grown toward the grave.

I have become frozen, my eyes wide with cold tears, my feet to the icy bench.

The guitars are silent. Thundering waves below the cliff are my funeral song. I lower myself slowly off the bench and count the painful, stiff steps, past the house, one hundred, and one hundred more to reach the edge of the black cliff. Icy spray blasts from the mouth of the monster sea. I am wet from my shoes up.

"I am coming, Gabito. My death will pay for yours."

I close my eyes and take a step.

To be continued

**************

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