Signal to Noise(17)

Though he was not particularly musical, Sebastian thought of a song. Duncan Dhu, singing En Algún Lugar, and for a reason he did not understand he had this image of Meche stepping onto a plane. He put an arm around Meche’s shoulders, holding her tight.





MECHE WOKE UP the next morning with the giddy excitement of a child heading to open her Christmas presents. She brushed her teeth, combed her hair, rolled up the sleeves of her sweater and put on her shoes. Then she bounced towards school, eager to meet up with Sebastian.

He was waiting for her at the street corner and they walked together, as they usually did, quiet and filled with hope.

Hope began to disintegrate around noon when it became obvious that nothing had changed for them. They were still the same losers as the day before, still sitting in the same corner of the schoolyard, still looking forlorn at the more popular, more beautiful, more-everything kids. When the bell signalling the end of the day rang, Meche could barely contain herself. Jaw locked tightly, she hurried back home.

“Hey,” she heard Sebastian say, but didn’t slow down to let him catch up with her and she dashed home, hands tight around the straps of her backpack.

They had failed.

She stomped up the steps towards her apartment, rushing into her bedroom and tossing the backpack on the floor. Meche put on a record and listened to Frank Sinatra promising to fly her to the moon. Tears threatened to leak from her eyes so she rubbed them. She hated crying. Hated feeling weak.

Meche sniffled and cleaned her nose with the back of her hand.

She had seriously thought it would work. She had pinned her heart on a stupid record, like a modern-day Jack showing off his beans.

Of course it would never work.

They would always be the same.

Life would always be this dull shade.

Meche turned her head and looked out the window, at the fragment of mocking grey sky. Birds sometimes dropped dead in Mexico City. That’s how polluted the city was. Because of the overwhelming smog, you couldn’t even hope for a glimpse of its snow-capped volcanoes.

Meche draped a blanket around her shoulders and went to sleep. She did not bother changing out of her uniform and into her regular clothes.

When she woke up it was dark and there was the smell of food wafting into her room. Meche walked towards the kitchen and found her grandmother busy, humming over a pot. She smiled at Meche.

“I’m making chicken soup today,” she said. “It has the potatoes and carrots all nicely chopped, the way you like them.”

“Thank you,” she muttered.

Meche’s grandmother filled a chipped bowl with soup and Meche began to eat. The warm food soothed her belly and she slowly started feeling better. Her grandmother poured her a glass of lemonade. Meche sipped it, holding the glass with both hands.

“Are you getting sick, Meche?”

She shook her head.

“Okay.”

Grandmother was quiet. She didn’t push or ask questions. But her silences pulled the truth out of you anyway, made you speak despite the desire to remain silent. So Meche spoke, her hands sliding against the cool glass.

“Mama Dolores, what did you mean when you said magic will break your heart?”

“You’re still going on about that?” she asked, placing a bunch of tortillas wrapped in a warm cloth by Meche’s plate.

Meche peeled open the wrapping and pulled out a tortilla, dipping it in the broth.

“Maybe.”

“Magic gets you what you want, but it doesn’t solve your problems.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“It does,” Mama Dolores pulled out a chair, sitting next to Meche. “There was a man in my town who wanted to get married but he could not find himself a bride. He went to a witch and asked her for a charm. Something that would get him a wife.”

“Did it work?”

“It did. He was married within a month’s time.”

“Then it did solve his problems.”

Mama Dolores cut a lemon in half and carefully sprinkled a bit of sugar on it.

“No. Because one year later she ran away with another man.”

“That’s a bad story.”

“Blame the magic, not the story.”

Mama Dolores bit into her lemon.

“But you also told me witches fly through the night, they turn into animals, they put curses on you—”

“True. They do all that.”

“But then?”

“Nothing, that. But a man may turn into a coyote as many times as he wants and may steal chickens from the farm, but the chickens won’t be his and they will still be stolen. And the coyote will still be nothing but a large, ugly dog.”

Meche sighed, staring into the contents of her bowl of soup. She didn’t understand what her grandmother meant.

“If I was a witch—”

“Ugh, it’s pouring outside. You could not believe the rain,” Meche’s mother said, shaking her umbrella out as she entered.

Even soaked and with her mascara running, she looked very beautiful. Meche’s mother had once held aspirations to become an actress, make it big in the movies or maybe a soap. Natalia certainly had the looks. She only lacked the talent. She had given up on her dreams several years before and had gone to work at a department store. Now it was the pharmacy, where she worked as a cashier and part-time model: her photos adorned some of the flyers advertising the pharmacy. This was not as much an achievement as a form of charity because the owner of the pharmacy, Don Fernando, was Natalia’s godfather.