The Falling Woman (32 page)

"I'm crazy too," my daughter was saying softly. I shivered in the darkness. "Shadows follow me. The old woman follows me."

"Not crazy," I said, but the words were an effort. The chill of the water had filled my bones and my voice was stiff with the cold. I could not stop shivering.

"Call it what you like." The light moved, as if she had shifted position. "What difference does it make?

I'm lost up here and you're lost down there. I can't get down. We're not going anywhere. It doesn't matter."

"Salvador will find you."

"I doubt that."

I closed my eyes against the light. Surely it would not be so hard to pull myself out of the water. The limestone sloped at a gentle angle. Not so hard. I would die, but I did not want to die in the water. I opened my eyes and planted my hands against the bottom of the pool. The first shove moved me two inches higher on the slope and made me cry out like a beaten dog. I took a breath and pushed again, gaining another inch.

Again. I knew that if I stopped, I would not begin again, and so I did not stop. I lost count after the tenth time I pushed. By that time, the cries had given way to a constant whimpering that rose and fell with the pain.

I stopped when I was stretched out on dry land. My leg was more or less straight. It was easier to bear the pain when I was still than when I was moving. I rested, then realized that my daughter had been talking to me for some time now. Coming back from the faraway place that I had been visiting, I opened my eyes.

"What?"

"Do you remember the Christmas that you gave me a quetzal shirt from Guatemala?"

I lay on my back, listening to the dripping water. "Yes."

"Why didn't you let me come with you when you left?"

There are questions that have no right answers. "I couldn't."

"That's not a good enough answer."

I closed my eyes and remembered that Christmas. Diane had followed me to the car and asked me if she could come. Her face had been open, vulnerable, filled with raw need. "I couldn't take care of you. I could barely take care of myself. I wanted you to be safe. I knew Robert would protect you."

"I would have taken care of myself. I wanted—"

"You wanted too much." The words came out as a shout. "You still want too much."

The shivering had returned and the pain was increasing. I kept my eyes open now—when I closed them I was alone with the pain. The cold water had numbed the leg, but that had worn off.

"I'm sorry," I said then. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have been a mother. I-—"

"Why did you leave?"

"I had to."

"Why didn't you take me?"

"I couldn't take care of you." I was tired, so tired I wanted to die. "I couldn't." The same questions, the same answers, over and over. The pain rose in me and I said softly, "I'm not sorry I left. I had to leave. I loved you and I wanted to stay, but I couldn't."

Her words drifted down like snowflakes on a winter day. "I hate you."

"All right," I said softly. "I understand that." Perhaps Zuhuy-kak was right. She and I did have much in common.

We had both made sacrifices that were unacceptable. We had both failed.

I closed my eyes and began to find my way back to the distant place where I could not feel the pain.

"Mother?" The cry called me back.

"I'm here."

"What are the shadows that follow me?"

"Shadows of the past," I muttered to the darkness. I tried to raise myself up on one elbow, but the movement shot a new pain through my leg and I sank back down, letting my cheek rest on the cool rough stone. "You'll get used to them."

There was more I wanted to tell her, but I could not remember what it was. She seemed far away, farther than she had ever been. I closed my eyes and went away.

Chapter Twenty-four: Diane

When one hunts for man as I have done, even dead men and their ruins, one goes up, high into the mountains where they may have fled and built in some final extremity, as at Machu Picchu, or down into deep arroyos where their bones may protrude from the walls, or their mineralized jaws gape in the gravel fans. Or one enters caves and with luck comes out again, but not necessarily with treasure.

—Loren Eiseley,

All the Strange Hours

M
y mother lay broken at the base of the limestone wall and I did not know the way out of the cave. She did not respond when I shouted at her. "Liz? Mother? Goddamn you, you can't leave me here. You have to help. Liz?"

The cavern echoed back my words and the darkness was filled with curses. "Wake up. Get up. Just get up!" The words rolled like thunder from wall to wall to wall, crashing and repeating. I shone the flashlight down at her crumpled body.

"All right then—you can be dead. I don't care. You can be dead!" Then with a rush, words abandoned me and I was wailing in anger, a cry that began as a low moan, growing louder and rising to a shrill keening that hurt my ears, joining echoes on echoes on echoes. I tried to stop the sound, but it would not be contained; it spilled from me like water overflowing a dam. I beat my open hands against the ragged edge of the limestone cliff, feeling the pain and letting it feed the howling. My face was wet and hot, and I could not stop crying. It was my mother's fault, all of it—the anger, the howling, the blood on my hands, and the terrible pain. Most of all the pain.

Through the tears, I saw a shadow moving at the edge of the flashlight beam. The old woman stood watching me. I fumbled for a loose rock to throw, found nothing, and with a quick movement snatched my sandals off my feet and hurled them at her—right foot, then left. She faded back into the darkness and I laughed, a sound akin to the howl of pain.

My mother lay broken at the foot of the cliff. She would not wake up. She wanted to leave me here, alone in the dark. I would not let her. She had to wake up and talk to me. I looked about for something to throw at her to wake her, but there was nothing. My sandals were lost in the darkness behind me, and I did not want to throw the flashlight. I studied the limestone cliff and decided to climb down and stop her from leaving me alone again.

The wall was pockmarked and uneven, studded with fossil shells. I wedged the flashlight in the back pocket of my jeans and lowered myself carefully over the edge, feeling with my feet for holds. My breath came in short gasping sobs, like the panting of a dog after a hard run. The sharp edges of the limestone etched new cuts on my feet and stung the gashes on my hands. The flashlight in my pocket moved with the movements of my hips, and its beam chased shadows on the cavern ceiling.

About halfway down, a foothold gave way beneath me, leaving me dangling by my arms and scrambling for another hold. A little farther, a rock came loose in my hand and I clung to the sheer face, groping with my worn and bloody hand. I found a protruding rock, tested it by pulling gently, then tugging hard. Then I trusted my weight to it and continued down.

My arms and legs were trembling when I reached the bottom. I was breathing heavily and tears blurred my vision. I stood over my mother and looked down at her. She lay on her back, one arm crossed over her chest and one stretched down to rest on the thigh of her injured leg. Her face was very pale in the flashlight beam. I knelt beside her and laid my hand on her forehead. Her skin was cool and moist to the touch.

"It's not that easy," I muttered. "You can't get out of it that easy. I won't let you." I was talking to myself, a low continuous murmuring of curses and abuse. I knew that I was talking to myself, but decided that it was all right. No one would hear. I was not myself just now. "Goddamn it, you're not leaving me here. I won't let you die."

I could not remember what to do for shock victims: elevate the feet or the head or both? I left her as she was. She moaned softly and tried to move away when I used her pocketknife to slit her pants so that I could examine her leg. The flesh was purplish and swelling around a lump in the middle of her calf. She moaned again when I pulled on her ankle to straighten the leg. I had nothing to splint it with except for a metal folding rule from her pocket, but I tied that in place with strips of cloth cut from her pants leg. My hands were shaking, but I ignored that. It took me three tries to knot the last strip of cloth. All the while I muttered curses and wiped sweat out of my eyes.

Her face was still and calm. Her wet shirt clung to her and I could see how thin she was—frail and small-boned and weak. I swore at her as she lay on the limestone floor, telling her that she couldn't get away with this, she couldn't run from me this time.

The cloth strips that held the splint in place were marked with dark spots; my hands and feet were still bleeding. With cool water from the pool, I washed the blood from my hands. The water stung at first, but it seemed to numb the cuts. I washed my face and splashed water on my arms.

I turned off the flashlight for a moment and sat in the darkness, listening to my mother breathe. Shallow and rapid, but steady. She wasn't going anywhere just yet. I heard the sound of wings and flashed the light toward the ceiling in time to spotlight a bat as it flitted past. I switched the light off and heard the sound again, another bat hurrying toward some unknown destination.

I didn't mind the darkness so much. It was restful, sitting beside my mother. I held her hand for comfort and listened to the bats. I had grown used to the darkness by the time the lights came—faintly flickering points of yellow and orange in the distance, moving as erratically as fireflies or glowing spots before my eyes. I stood up and peered toward them. They did not come from the cliff I had climbed down, but rather from deeper in the cave, through a tunnel I had not noticed. The lights bobbed toward us, growing larger and brighter.

"Over here," I shouted. "We're here."

The cavern echoed my voice, and then was silent. No reply. The lights moved no faster. I flicked on the flashlight and waved it, but the lights continued on their steady course, bobbing toward us slowly.

I waited, watching the lights come closer. Torches, I could see now, dozens of them, each one burning with a yellow-orange flame that flared and wavered with the movement of the person carrying it. The light reflected from the walls, catching on the white seashells.

Shadows marched on the cavern walls. Enormous and distorted, like the shadows of hunchbacks and giants and fantastic animals dancing and swaying with the movement of the torches. The people carrying the torches seemed dwarfed by their own shadows.

Feathered robes caught the light and gave it back in pieces. Feathered headdresses swayed rhythmically.

Torchlight gleamed on sharp teeth—a fox head stared open-mouthed at the ceiling from the headdress of a fur-clad man. Beneath the fox face, the man's eyes gleamed red. A fox tail swayed between his legs as he danced. Other animals danced beside him: a woman wore the soft brown fur of a deer; a man waved the claws of a jaguar.

I could hear them now: the sound of the drums echoed from the walls so that each beat was multiplied many times, each sharp note repeating over and over. The gourd rattles sang in time with the drum, a steady susurration like waves on the beach. The chanting rose above the rattle and drum, human voices rising and falling in words that I could not understand. There was a wildness to the voices, a passion and urgency. Now and again, the chant was punctuated with a great howl, like a wild animal in torment. The howling seemed to spread through the procession as different voices took up the cry, the animals' heads tipping back to the smoke-darkened roof, and wailing to the gods.

The woman who led them did not walk; she danced, stooping and leaping and spinning in the torchlight, her shadow first a hunchback, then a giant. She wore a blue tunic woven of a thin cloth that let the torchlight pass through, revealing the moving shadow of her body within. She was my age, no older—young and swift. Though her skin glistened with sweat, she danced as if she were fresh, tossing her head so that the feathers laced in her hair bobbed and swayed.

She was coming toward us. I crouched at my mother's side, switching off the flashlight and moving closer to her, putting one arm around her thin shoulders. I could see the leader clearly now. One of her cheeks was marked with dark spirals, and the delicate skin beneath her eyes was painted with red lines, radiating outward like the rays from a child's drawing of the sun. Her black hair was tied back with a braided leather thong, and quetzal feathers were woven into the braids. A black object that looked like the head of a monkey dangled from a leather strap around her waist. A jade bead strung on a leather thong dangled from her right ear.

I recognized her then. She was the old woman whose face was on the stone head. Younger now, graceful and filled with life.

In a wide place on the other side of the pool, she danced. The others formed a circle around her, a respectful gathering of dark tattooed faces and glistening bodies. The air was thick with the smell of incense and smoke. The sound of the drums and chanting filled the cavern until the trembling in my hands seemed like a response to the sound. When the dancing woman threw back her head and howled, I clenched my fists and groaned at sudden pain from the cuts and gashes.

She held something high over her head. The torchlight caught on it: an obsidian blade. For the first time I noticed the rock formation around which she danced: a raised platform that made a natural altar. The animal cry began in the back of the crowd and passed like a wave through the sea, gathering strength until the limestone seemed to shake with it. The crowd swayed with the dancing woman, and the torchlight flickered on the bright murals that decorated the walls.

At first, I did not notice the child who stood beside the altar. I was watching the dancing woman as she used the blade to slash at her own wrists, making shallow cuts that bled profusely. With the blood, she anointed the altar, leaving dark smears that shone in the torchlight.

The child was dressed in blue, and her face and hands were smeared with blue as well. The little girl was watching the woman, her eyes wide and fascinated. Her face had been painted bright blue, the color of the sky in the late afternoon. The paint had been brushed on carefully; only her lips and her dark brown eyes were free of it. She held her hands clasped just under her chin, and they too were bright blue. The child moved with the rhythm of the dancing woman, rocking to and fro. Around them, chanting voices were as deep and low as the rumble of the earth.