The Exquisite and Immaculate Grace of Carmen Espinoza Read online

  I wasn’t only feeling alone right now because of geography. I was alone no matter my position on the globe. That thought, that knowing, was the cold wind filling my empty cage. No one was sending me letters from back home.

  I really hated Debbie.

  The Basilica de la Soledad was beginning to buzz from the collective activity of tourists and day trippers’ admiration. My family photo, which had enjoyed a protected and sheltered life hidden away in my mother’s drawer for so many years, was beginning to show signs of deterioration around the edges. I would need to find something to keep it protected in my bag. Studying our faces once more before returning it to the pocket, I wondered again about my miserable expression.

  It had been my birthday for God sake. We were at an amusement park. Why on earth was I so unhappy? What irritated me was the fact that this was my one and only photo of us all and I looked as if I hated the world. I wished I could go back and tell my four year old self to knock it off and put on a happy face—one day, when your mother goes insane, your brother dies, and your father leaves you in the dust, this photo is going to mean more to you than you could possibly imagine. I ran my thumb once over Daniel’s image, unzipped my pack to put the photo away, and stopped.

  Aside from the giant white castle in the distance, I had never really noticed any of the other figures in the background. Blurred figures, people half turned, a child sitting on the curb eating what looked like ice cream—now, something behind my image and to the right caught my attention. Was it a person, or a trick of the light? It looked like a shadow, transparent so that I could see the planter and blooming begonias behind it, but the shape looked human.

  Someone rushed past me and swept the photo from my hands. A whirl of red. The picture landed on the floor several feet from where I stood. Automatically, I rushed to recover it before someone stepped on it. Once it was back in my hand, I looked up to see what had just come crashing through. In a crowd near the door that led to the church’s small religious museum, a shock of blonde hair and a bright red shirt was racing on tiny legs.

  Recognition physically hit me before my brain had a chance to dismiss it. The adrenaline that pumped hard through my body made my fingers explode in a thousand pin pricks and sent my legs into motion after him. I was halfway across the church before the impossibility of it registered with me completely.

  He wove in and throughout the people and disappeared through the door. “Excuse me,” I said as I pressed past an elderly Mexican man. The crowd around me seemed to thicken as it bottlenecked through the museum doors. I stood on my toes and craned my neck, trying to catch sight of him again. When a glimpse of red flashed between the legs of two woman talking, I was overcome with the irrational impulse to yell for him, “Daniel! Daniel it’s me, Carmen.”

  The harder I tried to get through, the greater the crowd’s strength seemed to be. Simultaneously realizing that I was both ridiculous for even entertaining the thought that the boy could be Daniel and catastrophically frustrated with the glut of bodies surrounding me, I gave up trying to shove past anyone. “So stupid,” I muttered.

  “Hey now,” the man in front of me turned around, his expression angry, “Who are you calling stupid?”

  The quick shift from disappointment to embarrassment made me suck my breath. “What?…Oh, no…I,” shaking my head I tried to think of a logical explanation for my behavior. “Not you,” I blurted. The crowd around us shifted closer to the door. “I meant me. That I was stupid. I thought I saw someone…someone I know. Knew. I thought I saw someone I knew but that would be impossible and so I realized I was being stupid for getting all worked up and trying to shove past everyone when it didn’t even matter because there was no way it could have been…”

  From almost the moment I had begun rambling, his expression had been one of amusement. “Hey,” he laughed. “I was only kidding.”

  “What?” I asked still not catching on.

  “Jo king,” he enunciated. “I knew you weren’t calling me stupid. Just a bit of a laugh.”

  “You did?” My embarrassment began to shift into anger. He was making fun of me. While I had rambled on and on in front of him and all these people about insanely thinking that my dead brother, who died thirteen years ago, was running through the church, looking just the same as thirteen years ago, he was, “having a bit of a laugh,” about me—in front of all these people.

  He nodded. “Just kinda of opening the door you know?” his face was bright and smiling. He shrugged and stuck out his hand, “I’m Joe.”

  I stared at him a moment longer before considering his hand. “Opening a door?” irritation peppered my tone.

  The tiniest cloud of worry floated past his shiny smile. “Well, yeah.” He bobbed his head back a forth a couple of times like a boxer entering a ring, “You know, a laugh to break the ice and then we chat while we wait in this enormous mob and afterward I’d let you buy me a gelato.”

  My response erupted, “Wow,” I said in the snottiest tone I could muster. “I was wrong, you actually are stupid.”

  Shock evaporated what remained of his smile and he took a step back.

  No longer needing to see the boy to know it wasn’t Daniel, I turned in the opposite direction and headed for the church’s east entrance.

  By the time I reached the sun baked court yard, the epiphany had struck. “That,” I said under my breath. “Is exactly why you don’t have any friends.” I leaned against the pillar behind me and let my head fall back with a thud.

  On some level, I understood that other girls, other people, just rolled through a social exchange like that. Girls like Debbie. Debbie from Nebraska would have known how to handle that guy. She would have smiled, immediately, and produced her soft, chime like laugh of approval. A sound that drove the guys in the Sol Abroad! group mildly insane with their attempts to make her produce it just for them.

  I didn’t know, instinctively, how to interact with other people. It was why there were no friends at home and why everyone from the group, especially the guys, pretty much avoided me now.

  It was her fault—my mother’s. Because she kept me cloistered up in that house of religious nuttery. Overwhelmed and embarrassed, a fresh round of tears rose up and then down my face. I’d never had the chances Debbie did.

  I could hear one of the other tourists coming out the church’s door. Mortification washed over me. I turned away, wiped my face and tried to stand up a little straighter.

  The person lingered by the doors.

  In a too late attempt to look like nothing was wrong, I started digging through my bag for my camera. Why didn’t the person just move on and leave me alone to fall apart in private? My hands shook, but I managed to open the zipper on my bag and pull out the camera.

  A second later, it slipped through my fingers and hit the cement, an expensive sounding crack filled the air. It bounced twice more before coming to a rest several feet from where I stood. Shocked, I could see that the display screen had splintered into a glass web of destruction.

  I didn’t make move, I just closed my eyes and continued to cry.

  I had never owned a camera before. This one had been a gift from my Spanish teacher back home, a kind, elderly man who was surprised by my request that he help me apply to Sol Abroad! and thrilled when we found out I had been accepted on a full scholarship. He saw the way others avoided me in class, left me out of group activities, pretended they didn’t hear if I asked to borrow a pen, but whatever his suspicions about me or my problems both at school and home, he was decent enough to never voice a single one. Despite my dysfunctions as a person and my utter failure to make any progress towards commanding even the most basic Spanish, he had been nice to me. Now, because I was so stupid, and clumsy, and a complete and utter freak, his gift was broken.

  Just like me.

  I heard the tourist moving to rescue my camera but I couldn’t bear to open my eyes. Maybe, if I stood very still, they would just put the remains at my feet and leave me to
my grief. They had the camera and a second later I could sense that they were right in front of me, the faintest scent of a spicy aftershave floated in the air around me.

  Please, I thought, just keep moving.

  Seconds passed while I stood, painfully exposed, wishing the person away.

  They took a breath, “I’m sorry,” he said. His voice was careful, as if he were dealing with a wild animal—or a mentally ill person teetering on the edge. When I opened my eyes I could see that it was the man from inside and his handsome face was full of pity. His hand held my broken camera, waiting for me to take it from him.

  Without a word, I held out my hand and when he placed it in my palm, I could tell he was being careful not to touch me. He took a step backwards. “I really am sorry.”

  My eyes kept to the ground but I managed to nod my head once, a silent acknowledgment that I had heard his words even if the rest of me had frozen up.

  Then, he turned and left.

  With his back to me, I finally looked up and watched him leave. Regret settled in my chest. I wanted to call out to him I’m the one who should be sorry, but I hesitated while the words lingered on the edge of my lips. I couldn’t decide what exactly to say.

  I’m sorry I lost my temper.

  I’m sorry, I sometimes have a hard time reading people.

  Maybe just an I’m sorry too, would be enough.

  The first word filled my throat and prepared to burst out of me with enough force to carry across the distance of the courtyard between us—but he was really far away now. I watched as he stepped from the courtyard into the busy street, and I realized the opportunity to at least try and make amends had been swept away by my hesitations.

  I was too late.

  Chapter Three

  Day of the Dead

  I was eating my oatmeal too fast, and so, Graciana eyed me suspiciously. I forced myself to slow down, to match the slug like pace of my two younger host siblings but because my body vibrated with the desire to escape, to run back to my self-imposed seclusion, making myself slow down and uphold even basic breakfast table courtesies felt like prolonging a torture.

  My host family hated me. At least I was pretty sure Graciana and her husband Hector did—their two kids, Sergio and Anna, often just stared at me with a confused mix of interest and apprehension, like I was a caged animal in zoo. They didn’t get too close

  Graciana narrowed her eyes and lowered her spoon, “Do you have class today, Carmen?” she began her investigation in Spanish.

  I took a few extra seconds to swallow my mouthful of cereal then reached for my small glass of milk, as if it were impossible for me to answer this question until my mouth were completely clear. In truth, I needed my head completely clear. Graciana watched me closely, she could tell I was stalling. I smiled apologetically and made a show of wiping my mouth with my napkin before saying, “No, no class today,” I answered in Spanish.

  By the expression on her face, I could tell she expected me to offer up more information about what I would be doing today. When she could see this wouldn’t be the case and I took another bite of cereal instead, she sighed loudly and placed her napkin on the table.

  “Then will you be volunteering at the food bank?”

  Sol Abroad! encouraged all its students to volunteer in the community in some way and the food bank was the activity I had chosen.

  Graciana knew I was there just yesterday.

  She had stopped by, to check on me, on her way home from the market. Her bags had been filled with fruits and vegetables, pounds of sugar for the sugar skulls, cacao beans and cinnamon for the cafe de la olla, and the bright orange and yellow buns of marigolds that would be used to decorate the graves and ornament the ofrenda for Day of the Dead festivities beginning tomorrow.

  No, she already knew what I would be doing today—nothing. I would be in my room, alone, lying on my bed, trying to keep a grip on the tidal wave of depression that was drowning me. She wanted me to say it, to open the door on the conversation, because her facial expressions and body language had been communicating the message to me for weeks and since her earlier attempts to reach me had gone by completely ignored by me, she had reached the point of telling me outright.

  I wasn’t well.

  Trapped by breakfast table courtesy, a blanket of dread settled over me. I didn’t want to hear her say it. Out loud—clearly articulated. I was suddenly terrified that she was going to ask the question, and that question was going to make me start crying. Right here, right now, in front of all of them.

  Carmen, what is wrong with you? She would say. Even imagining it made a hard choking ball of tears form at the back of my throat.

  I had no idea of how much “parental” influence my host parents actually had over me but I imagined that if they grew concerned enough about me, Graciana and her husband Hector would have no problem voicing their fears, imagined and otherwise, to Vicky at Sol Abroad! And given the problems I had fitting in with the other students, missing classes, and my persistent insistence on remaining outside their shared experiences, Vicky would hardly be a defender of me. In fact, she would probably love a good solid reason to send me packing back to the United States.

  I could just hear it, “We are doing this for you, Carmen.” When, in reality, it would be because it was easier for everyone else at Sol Abroad! to be finished with a student that they so deeply disliked.

  Graciana hesitated, Sergio and Anna, her own two children, were still scooping slow mouthfuls of oatmeal, stretching out the time before they would have to leave the house for school. Graciana wouldn’t question the status of my mental health in front of them.

  What was the status of my mental health?

  I spooned up the last glob from my own bowl and washed it down with the remainder of my milk, “Excuse me,” I said. Ignoring Graciana’s surprised expression, I stood up with my dishes in hand and rushed to the sink to get them washed before she had a chance to decide she was going to say something, kids or no kids.

  Her eyes, I could feel the pressure of them on my back as I scrubbed the clots of oatmeal from my bowl so I changed the subject, “The ofrenda,” my voice was strained from the effort of keeping my tears back as I nodded to the decorated table pushed against the wall. “I’ve never seen one…it’s amazing.”

  The memorial alter to welcome the family’s dead back home sat beneath an arch of the yellow and orange marigolds that Graciana had carried home from the market the day before. On the table, Graciana had laid out her best table cloth and then the whole family had added the fruits and vegetables along with items that, according to mentor Vicky, were meant to represent the four elements. A glass of water for the souls long journey back, a candle, or fire, for each soul memorialized, food from the earth, and papel picado banners for the wind whose intricate cut designs reminded me of the paper snowflakes that kids cut out back home. The heads of sugared skulls and dancing skeletons dressed in bright Mexican outfits with cigarettes hanging out their mouths watched over the offerings.

  Graciana pushed her chair back from the table. “It would have been good for you to help us,” she said as she picked up a box of matches near one of the candles and lit the copal scented incense sticks. As she lit each of the five candles on the table, the woody scent of the incense drifted through the kitchen, its spicy kick burned my nostrils. For weeks now, large parade floats and mountains of marigolds had been collecting and growing throughout Oaxaca in preparation for the Day of the Dead celebrations that began today.

  Graciana blew out the last match, “Tonight we are holding the vigil at the cemetery, we would like you to come with us Carmen.”

  In the three months since they had taken me into their home, I had made almost zero effort to join their family. Aside from taking meals with them, and then, only when hunger drove me from my room, I had practically shunned their every attempt to include me.

  I finished washing my dish and shut off the water. My wet hands clung to the side of the sink as
I wished for some way to silently escape this moment.

  Graciana was waiting for an answer, but the only answer I wanted to give was no. I didn’t know how to be a real daughter to my own mother, what hope was there of figuring out how to be a fake one?

  “I’m not really feeling all that well,” I said.

  She didn’t answer me at first and the silence in the room behind me grew like an uncomfortable, pressing balloon. When I couldn’t take it any more, I turned from the sink and saw that Graciana was kneeling before the ofrenda and her lips moved with her silent prayers.

  Even Graciana wished for Debbie.

  After a moment more, she stopped, crossed her self, then stood up and faced me.

  “Carmen,” her voice punctured the silence with its authority. “You are to come with us tonight—God has told me.”

  I didn’t believe her, but I stared at her feet, brown like my own mother’s, and nodded my head anyway.

  That night, in town, the streets were flooded in festival. On every street it seemed cars were stopped by road blocks and thousands of people migrated to some common location. As we walked down the street, a woman dressed as an angel in bright white satin crossed in front of us. The bottom of her costume was cut into a flowing set of pants designed to accommodate the tall stilts that hoisted her high above the rest of the crowd. Everyone was careful to give her loping gait a wide berth so she didn’t come toppling down on top of them. Her feathered wings stretched high above her head and her face was painted a stark white with her cheeks collapsing under a death mask of black.

  “The comparsa,” Sergio said.

  Graciana was still at home cooking and preparing for the crowds of family and friends that would be coming in and out of their home tonight and the all of tomorrow. She had sent Sergio, Anna, and me to the parade so we would be out of her way.