by Jan Baross

José looks up into the cavern of darkness above us and scratches his matted hair.
"There is one way out," says José, "but it will be dangerous for you."
As José waits for my reaction, Gabito drops into the dust beside me.
"Tortugina," says Gabito. "The Virgin's eyes are open holes. You can escape!"
"Your father is here," I say to José. "He says the eyes are the way out."
"Yes," says José. "Where is Papá? I want to see him."
"He is standing next to me," I say.
"Papá?" he says. José stretches his hand in the space beside me. "I just feel air."
Gabito blinks as José's fingers slide through his transparent face. José is shaking from the excess of wine and too little food. "Papá, help me save Mamá."
"He will help us, José," I say. "Tell us what you want us to do."
José takes a deep breath and slaps his cheeks to sober himself. Retrieving a dusty old rope, he ties it around his waist and mine, like the umbilical cord that once bound us.
José lights the candle on the miner's hat and adjusts it, but it is too small and sits high on his head. He looks up, shifting the pale candlelight along the brick walls so that we can see a little more of the journey that awaits us.
Long, narrow shadows waver up the walls. It will be like climbing the inside of a lighthouse. The candlelight from José's miner's hat illuminates a slight outward curve of bricks that must describe the woman's hips.
"Mamá," says José. "There is scaffolding above us, at the waist and breasts, just a few logs across, not a solid floor like this one." He stomps on the floor of the womb, and dust rises. "If we make it as far as the neck, you can rest on the inside of her chin."
If?
"Stay very close to me," I say silently to Gabito.
We follow José to his finely built wall. He shines his lamp on an iron spike jutting out from the bricks. It sticks out far enough for a handhold or a footrest. And there is one above it. José moves his light upward, showing a ladder of spikes that rise up the Virgin's spine like iron vertebrae.
"This is how I moved up and down her body as I built the woman," he says proudly. "I am used to it, but you must climb very carefully."
He waits as I tighten my loose sandals then slips his fingers around the first spike, then the next, one hand reaching over the next as he starts our journey. I pull myself up after him in jerks. Through the long rope, I feel the tremor of José's straining body. The bottom of José's sandal slips, sprinkling my hair and eyes with loose dust.
"Slowly, José," I say.
Gabito hovers at my elbow. The three of us form our own little ascension: father, son, and the unholy little turtle.
We climb, our toes taking the place of our fingers. The iron is rough and cold against my fingers. The rope tension slackens, and we find a rhythm.
On the floor of the womb, the kerosene lamp sputters in a wavering pool of orange, growing smaller as we make our way upward.
José's miner's candle spreads light against the smallest, gentlest of curves inward at the Virgin's waist. Two rough, rounded logs span the slightly narrowed space. But there is no place to rest and catch my breath. The spikes leave small cuts on my fingers as we climb up the spine, through the Virgin's invisible stomach without a pause, and with no intestinal rumblings but mine.
By the time we reach the breasts, my arms and legs tremble so badly from the strain that Gabito is practically pushing me up. From the spine, we can look across a support log to the Virgin's dry chichis.
Gabito's breath warms my neck against the cool drafty air. Failing muscles and cut fingers make the climb endless. When my foot slips again from weariness, Gabito replaces it on the iron spike.
Echoes of our blood pumping fill the silence as we forge upward through the barren space where the Virgin's giant heart would be.
José's hat lights the logs across a narrower, tunnel-like structure above us.
"Once we pass through these neck beams," José says breathlessly, "there is a flat platform where the chin juts out. Soon you will rest, Mamá."
He pulls himself through the wooden beams and climbs onto the ledge of the Virgin's chin above me. He is safe, thank God.
José reels me in like an exhausted tuna. Every muscle is shaking. My fingers feel wet. It must be blood.
Kneeling near the edge of the chin platform, José reaches for my hand. The candle from his miner's hat shines in my eyes. With the help of the kerosene lamp from below, I can see through the beams, but I cannot reach José's fingers. He stretches a little farther. The metal miner's hat falls off his head. It strikes me between the eyes. A red slash of light.
"Mamá!" yells José.
The flame of the candle sears my eyelashes. I lose my foothold. "Gabito!" I reach for him in the air but he misses my hand.
As I fall past Gabito, José is jerked off the ledge by the rope attached to my waist.
In the faint orange light, the wild shadows of our bodies seem to slow into a dance as José and I plunge downward.
Our fall is cut short by the rope looping over the Virgin's breast beam. We swing side by side, like two pendulums. My body is the counterweight to José's dangling limbs. Above us, the wooden beam creaks.
The taut hemp cuts my waist, and blood flows backward, away from the sudden lasso of organs. José and I both pull upward on the rope to relieve the terrible pain. He grabs for an iron spike on the Virgin's spine, but it is just out of reach.
Gabito stops my swinging, wraps his arms around me, and carries me like a baby, upward. As my body rises, José, attached to the same rope, slides downward, descending toward the womb.
"Mamá?" he yells up to me. "What are you doing?"
"Patience!" I yell back.
Gabito carries me through the logs at the Virgin's neck and presses me over a raised crossbeam on the rim of the ledge that becomes her chin. I sit up, brace my feet against the beam, and straighten my legs. My waist is numb from José's weight. Gabito and I drag the dusty rope toward us. José is borne upward, inches at a time.
José hanging in space, supported only by the rope, by me, by Gabito whose life once hung by the waistband of his yellow goodluck swim shorts. The rip and the awful fall. In this family, someone is always at the end of a tether.
My legs start to buckle toward the neck hole. José's weight is too great. The rope slides away in jerks, burning my palms.
Suspended over the darkness, José screams, "Mamá! I do want to live! Please, please!"
Gabito and I find new strength to pull then lose it again. The strained rope see-saws back and forth over the rough wood crossbeam, back and forth, fraying the woven plaits, until the rope begins to unravel. I see it happening, but neither Gabito or I dare loosen our hold.
We yank with all our strength. The rope breaks and fires back at me. My spine slams flat back onto the ledge.
José's scream falls away from me into the womb. "OhBlessedVirginGodinHeavenhelpJosé!"
The past falls on my heart, as Gabito fell, as José falls!
I hear a distant echo from the womb. Strained, painful gasps that move closer, closer, and finally stop at the neck. I scoot to the dark shaft and lean over the crossbeam at the edge. Below me two heads rise into the dim light. Gabito ascends, puffing like the old tortilla machine, holding José with the torn rope dangling at his waist.
Gabito's fingers touch José's body in the way flesh meets flesh. They are two solid men with no transparency between them.
José stares at his father with wide eyes. Gabito pushes José's muscled body over the beam at the edge of the chin. José sits up beside me and reaches to help Gabito. Catching their breath, my two men sit on the solid beam at the rim of the Virgin's neck and trade winded smiles.
Gabito, beautiful in the dim light, leans his solid body toward José. He gingerly unties the rope around José's bloody waist.
"Papá, you saved my life," whispers José.
I unknot the tight rope around my bloodied belly.
"You let him see you, Gabito," I say out loud. "What miracle is this?"
Gabito puts his hand on José's shoulder and is careful to keep his good side toward his son. "It was my son's life," he says, as if it had always been that simple.
José places his hands lovingly on Gabito's face. Deliberately, he turns his father's face to him with the scarred and unscarred sides showing equally
"It is all right, Papá," he says. "These are the wounds of living with Mamá. Yours are only on the outside."
Gabito is crying from so much happiness that his loose eye threatens to float onto his cheek. José lightly cups his hand over Gabito's socket so the eye cannot drop further then nudges it gently back into place.
Gabito's body shakes. "My boy! My boy!" he sobs.
Gabito pats José's hair, and as though it were a second thought, he uses a little magic to fluff José's filthy clothes, dissolve the brick dust off the boy's smooth face.
"Now, my son, you are better prepared to meet your wife," he says.
José reaches down to his waistband and extracts Pilar's letter, stained with his blood.
"Papá," says José, "I never thanked you for the gift of Pilar."
He holds her envelope in the dim light, slowly crushes it, and raises his fist as though he means to throw it back into the darkness he has just escaped. His eyes fill with tears.
"Papá," José whispers to Gabito. "I have disgraced my manhood with her." Gabito wraps his arms solidly around José's strong body and they pound each other's backs.
"Never give up for a single failure," says Gabito. "Look at me. There is more magic in us than we know."
When they pull apart from the rough embrace, José stares for a long moment at Gabito, smooths Pilar's letter, and tucks it back into his waistband. He looks up at the blue light that shines through the Virgin's eyes, and his shoulders gradually soften as though a great weight is being lifted.
"José," I say. "I want to get out of this woman's body."
His thoughts are broken by my voice, but he smiles sweetly at me and helps me to my feet.
Gabito and I follow him up the few spikes on the wall of the Virgin's cheek to the twin holes of light filled with sky. We climb onto a ledge and become the Virgin's eyes, witnessing the scene she sees every morning, the sunrise flattened across the sky.
From the cold draft inside her head, we climb outside onto a flat, narrow eyelid where we can barely keep our footing. Breathless from the height and the effort, I fill my lungs with the warm sweet air.
José shows me how to shuffle very gradually to the edge of the eye where I can step onto a ladder of iron spikes that leads to the top of her head.
Our movement up the Virgin's brow becomes reptilian, our bellies pressed against the curve of her forehead. At the peak of her head is a flat roof, and I gratefully rest in the morning breeze.
I had almost forgotten there was a world of such beauty out here. The red sea stretches out below us. The view is long both ways, the black Forbidden Cliffs to the right, the white village of El Pulpo to the left. José is on one side of me, Gabito on the other. I am filled with a peace that has been a long time in coming.
A voice I had been hoping for all night is carried up on the wind.
"José!"
Pilar stands at the feet of the Virgin in a tight, pink ruffled dress that flutters in the wind. She smiles and waves her big pink hat.
José can barely speak. He waves her letter.
"Pilar," he sighs. "My wife. She is so beautiful."
Pilar throws him a kiss. He throws her a dozen kisses. Perhaps he will have no fear now to lie with Pilar and grow his seed above her small hips. Beyond that, I hope they will live long lives and die with many grandchildren to mourn them. Death to life. The shift is always quick.
"Pilar! I love you!" shouts José. "I am coming. Don't move!"
Church bells ring the old alarm. The village is awake. Small groups of people tramp toward the Virgin with ladders and ropes. People point at us. Mamá and Papá are still in the distance. Is that sweet Amanda next to them? She looks so pregnant or so much fatter. If my arms were snakes I would send them winding down to my dear sister for one more hug.
"Tortugina," says Gabito, "we have done our job well."
He embraces José and says in his ear, "Never forget whose son you are."
Gabito steps to the edge of the Virgin's head and pumps his legs and arms as he used to on the cliffs so long ago.
José, horrified, watches his father's perfect dive. Arms and legs together, Gabito slices down the cliff through morning mist with such grace, his brown body looks unbroken as it turns back to ghost.
Gabito's voice, deep as eternity, is swept to me on the wind. "Dive, Tortugina!"
José moans. His dust-red fingers reach for me as I follow Gabito to stand on the edge.
"Mamá, no."
He moves behind me and holds on to my waist like Tomás held Gabito by his goodluck yellow swim trunks.
"José, I love you. You are the best of sons. Now let me go."
José is crying behind me as he steps away. I pump my arms and legs to loosen kinks from our crawl up the womb and say silently to my son, "José, you are stronger than you know."
I lean forward into the warm air. The morning breeze is soft against my tears. The horizon blurs in endless waves.
"Mamá, what will I do without you?" says José.
The space between my mind and José's is stretched so thin we hang on to shredded air. "You will be a man, José."
With a push of my toes, I dive off the Virgin, arms together, legs together, toward the sea like a hollow-boned bird. This is the dive I have been waiting all my life to make.
Feather-bright, the air rushes through my skin, through my blood. I am tempted to soar. As dark cliffs slide past, I fall in the thin territory between life and death.
Let them all witness the diver I might have been.
The wind whips my damp hair against my head.
In the crimson sea below, Gabito's golden epaulettes shine as he treads the warm current and waits for me.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My gratitude to all the Dangerous Writers Group of Tom Spanbauer's workshops with whom I worked over the years. My undying gratitude to my writing mentor: Tom Spanbauer, a dangerous writer, who taught me the craft of writing. And to my original editor and teacher, Carolyn Altman, who was there for the long haul with compassion and humor, and showed me how, as Ray Bradbury once said, "to be drunk with writing." A special appreciation goes to my Fat Thursday critique group who cook as well as they write: Bonnie Comfort, Lily Gardner, Tamara Greenleaf, Peter Korn, Carolyn Kurtz, Diane Ponti, Liz Scott, Susan Whitter.

Others who helped were Dave Cantrell, Joanne Tracy, Gage Mace, Robert Hill, Roger Larson, Ketzel Levine, Grace Paley, Pauline Peotter, Reed Mathis, and Lilia Trapága Tenney. Thanks also to Andrew Stuart of The Stuart Agency, New York, Elizabeth Udall of the Walden Fellowship, and the facilitators and participants of the following conferences: Willamette Writers Conference, Flight of the Mind, Squaw Valley Writers Conference, Santa Barbara Writers Conference, Fishtrap Writers Conference.

And finally, thanks to the storytellers of my childhood: Bertha Seiferth Bannett, Lena Carlson, and my parents.

To be continued

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