Into the Beautiful North(7)

Chapter Four



Tía Irma headed down the sidewalk like a parade float, and they hurried to keep up with her.

“Crab day!” she called as she motored along on squeaky shoes, thinking the people who smiled at Nayeli were smiling at her.

Crabbing was like going to heaven. A whole day immersed in the clear lagoon, with barrels of ice full of soda and beer, the thatch-roofed huts in the sand swinging with hammocks, the big pots boiling crabs to be eaten on stiff fried tortillas. There was nothing better than crab day.

They boarded the two boats at the sloping little dock. Nayeli had stopped at the graves of her grandparents and pulled a few weeds, shy red-legged tarantulas feeling their way between the monuments.

The river water was deep green and sluggish as it moved by, carrying pollen and leaves. The banks here were dark mud flecked with a scatter of white shells. Fat green frogs, the eternally grinning type destined to be shellacked into bizarre poses while wearing mariachi hats and holding toy trumpets and guitars and then sold in tourist traps all over Mexico, jostled lazily in the dappled shadows. Brilliant egrets and blue herons stalked the reeds on the shore.

La Osa settled into the first boat, tipping it alarmingly but refusing to note the hubbub she caused. She wore a vast straw hat upon her head, and she snapped her 10,000th picture of a tree orchid with her ancient plastic Kodak. “Each flower,” she lectured, “as distinct as a snowflake!” Not that any of them had ever seen a snowflake.

Behind Tía Irma sat Nayeli’s mother—a well-known hypochondriac since her husband left.

“María,” Irma said. “How are you today?”

“Oh,” Nayeli’s mother said. “Not very well.”

Irma snapped, “You’ve been dying for years. Why don’t you get it over with?”

In an hour, they had come to the bend in the river where the boats could be beached and tied to bushes, and the party disembarked and grunted over the slope, breaking suddenly, amazingly, from jungly dark to a dazzling white cove that had at its center a wide oblong lagoon of brightest turquoise. Beyond the far end of the lagoon, the thundering surf of the deadly beach could be seen, dark ocean water exploding in spray and foam with a relentless basso roar. Everything seemed woven of purest sunlight. The coconut palms bobbed with their bright green harvests nestled among the silky-looking fronds. Beyond the coconuts, hibiscus trees stood twenty feet tall, burning with crimson blossoms. Little thatched huts sagged at jaunty angles, and Nayeli wasted no time getting to them, prying open their storage boxes, and unfurling the mesh hammocks stored inside. The breeze never stilled: miraculously, no one could tell how hot it was, or how humid. The faint whiffs of rotting porpoise occasionally spoiled the Edenic effect, but otherwise they had reached the most perfect spot in the world.

Irma said to María, her niece: “Your husband should have come here before he left. He would have stayed home. ?En México lindo!”

Nayeli’s mother replied, “You cannot eat beauty.”



Yolo and Nayeli were in the lagoon. The water only came up to their hips. Tiny fish sniffed and nibbled at their thighs. Nayeli’s hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail. Yolo had cut hers for the summer. On the white sand, Tacho had a fire going, and he was boiling seawater with onions and secret sauces. Yolo nudged Nayeli: Tacho was wearing a cloth wrapped around his waist like a sarong. The girls laughed.

They moved deeper into the lagoon. They watched their bellies and hips wobble and distend in the water. The reflected light made Nayeli’s skin look white. She regarded it fondly.

Yolo said, “Remember when Mateo the Missionary came here with us?”

“Ay, Matt,” Nayeli sighed.

“He was so cute,” Yolo said.

“That crab pinched his toe.”

“He was screaming.”

“I had to bite the crab’s claw open.”

“Nayeli,” Yolo said, “you were always the strong one.”

“Do you think he remembers us?”

Yolo gestured at her own body.

“Who could forget this?” she boasted.

But Yolo wasn’t blind—she’d seen Matt’s eyes as he tried not to look Nayeli over.

“You kissed him,” Yolo said, poking Nayeli in the arm.

“I did not!”

“Yes you did.”

“No I didn’t.”

“No seas simple, Nayeli,” Yolo scolded. “Everybody knows you kissed Mateo!”

Nayeli smiled.

“So?” she said.

Yolo gasped and splashed her.

“So it’s true! You did kiss him!”

Nayeli shrugged with one shoulder.

“Maybe.”

The kiss—Matt would remember that, she was certain. His mouth was delicious, with his cherry cola lip balm. Soft lips. Those soft curls, too, smelling like apple juice from that girls’ shampoo he used. She liked to think of Matt’s mouth as having American lips—labios Americanos. It could be a power ballad by Maná.



La Osa’s comadres were across the water, moving toward them. Everyone was hunting for crabs. They each carried a stick. Between each pair of women floated a big straw basket. The notorious girlfriends’ open basket already held ten furiously scrabbling crabs. The armored creatures wrestled one another, and when one seemed about to climb out of the basket and make its escape, the others would grab it and haul it back down into the endless battle.