The Last Karankawas(44)

Are you married? I asked him. ?Tienes familia? ?Ni?os? That I would have to ask such a thing of my own son.

No. I— He hesitated a moment, and I sensed a story there. But then he pursed his lips and it was gone, another one I’d never hear. No. It’s just me.

And are you happy, whatever you’re doing? Did you find a happy life? Away from us.

I’m fine, Mama. My life is fine.

Fine no es felíz.

He smiled, almost the boy I remembered. I know.

Where are you living?

Beaumont. For now.

A car drove by; Mrs. Suayan honked and waved. I smiled and waved back, praying she wouldn’t stop to talk, wouldn’t ask who this was. But she drove on, gracias a Dios.

The smile was still on my face as I asked, For now? So you will leave again.

I have to. The work will move again in a few months. And then I don’t know. Wherever I want, I guess.

Wherever you want, I repeated. What about what your family wants? ?Tu madre, tu hija?

Is that what you want, Mama? For me to come home?

Marcos asked with his face turned down. He tapped a booted foot—they bore scars, too, and stains that I wondered were oil or blood or elements I didn’t know, couldn’t understand. In the silence Chente Fernández sang, in my own mind, and this time the song I hadn’t wanted. Come back, come back, come back.

No, le dije. Simply, truly. Power in my words as I gave them to him. No, I don’t want you to come home. Not anymore. (This story is not a happy one, ves, and I am not the hero of it. I never said I would be.)

I couldn’t tell if I had hurt him. His face didn’t change, didn’t slip. He nodded as if he had expected it.

Pero I want you to be happy, mijo. And if you want to come back, we—

I don’t, Mama, he said. He took a long breath, and I wondered if he smelled the salt or hidden jasmine también, or if he smelled nothing except home, the home he had always known, and wished it were the scent of somewhere else. I mean, I do. I miss you. I miss Carly. And her. He slumped a little. I miss her, too.

I knew who he meant. You miss us. A veces.

A veces.

Pero not enough to be here. To stay with us, or to go be with her.

No.

No crying, Nena. Warriors, we. But my boy’s words hurt; they pierced deep, you see. Yo, clavada. I clenched my teeth to keep back tears.

We sat there together, him blowing out air like it should be smoke, me watching him do it. Years he had been gone from us. Years when I held you and her—his child and his woman—as you cried for different reasons. I watched Maharlika drink herself away until she was nada, hollow inside, nothing left except her longing for the home where she belonged. And so she left.

If she had told me, had said anything at all to me, I would have let her know I understood that cruel power of love, how we burn up for it, become ashes of the people we once were. Yo lo sé. Though I know, too, the gift some of us have to rise. I rose. After your grandfather, every tear, every slap of his hand. I rose after he died; I remember Marcos, only twenty-two, weeping over his coffin while I gave a silent prayer of thanks to the ancestors for taking Cesar away, finalmente, so many years late.

Your mother rose by going home. I cursed her long ago, for making you cry, for leaving us both, but now I think differently. I see the ashes of what she was after Marcos, and I like to think she became a whole woman again back with her people. And you, ni?a mia. Didn’t we rise together, after all that?

The sun slipped out from behind a cloud and pierced him, and that’s when I saw it. How the light beamed through him. How he didn’t reflect it or absorb it; he filtered it. I should have seen it, sabes. It fell into place as I stared at him and the light emanating from the dark body beside me—los se?ales. Saint Anthony, his arrival. Something lost. Like us riding the ferry to Bolivar and a scrim of salt forming on the car windows, cast up by the water, you trying to look through it. Or like a haze of smoke rising from a cauldron in a castle, and three brujas reaching through it to grasp hands. ?Ves? Marcos was not you but the salt, not the witches but the smoke.

You’re not here, are you. I said it simply. Eres un espíritu.

He turned to me. Those cold eyes again. Mama, he said, and shook his head sadly. Still with this, I see. He tried to smile, but his voice broke.

I have always wondered if the dead feel pain. I saw then how he seemed not only to feel it but to exist from it. It radiated from him like an aura, la tristeza.

You are, aren’t you.

Ma—

Es verdad.

Ya, Mama. There were tears in his eyes. Stop. I’m here, aren’t I? Here with you now.

Pues say what you came to say. I had to clear the way, open the channel for him to speak. I saw that now. I heard the ancestors, their whispers, guiding the way. I’m listening, I said.

He sighed. Clenched and unclenched his hands on the white knees of his jeans. So real, my boy, this man seemed. As if I could lean closer to feel warmth from his body, or smell the Vitalis in his hair like his father. Both men of mine reborn and redead before my eyes.

I’m sorry, Mama. Really, I am.

For leaving, you mean.

Yes. I had to. I—I had to. You won’t understand.

Ah, no? I had to laugh. To think I had never felt the urge to leave, to run and keep running. Maybe he was the kind of spirit who only knew some things. Ay, mijo. I understand. You had to get away. It’s us, nuestra familia. It’s in the sangre. Destined to stay yet always wanting to go. So, some of us do. Go. And some of us don’t.