“If you cannot control your emotions, Noah,” he said, “I will have to control them. You are a guest under this roof. Act that way.”
Noah did not care.
“I want Eli. I want to know where he is right now.”
“He’s fine. He’s safe. Ask his teacher.”
Noah looked at Muñoz, but the man would not lift his head to meet the gaze. He seemed smaller than before.
“You see, Noah,” Manillo said, resting a burning hand on the back of Noah’s neck that couldn’t be shaken, “Eli’s fine. You can calm down.”
“Yes, calm down, Noah,” Sonia said, a hint of mockery so slight Noah suspected only he could notice. “There’s nothing wrong with Eli. He likes it down here.”
“I don’t care if he likes it or not. He shouldn’t be here. You shouldn’t have taken him. He doesn’t belong to you.”
“He’s a boy, Noah; not a car. He doesn’t belong to anyone.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Do I?” She glanced at Muñoz. “Haven’t you even wondered why, Noah?”
“Why what? You took my son? No, I just want him back.”
“You don’t understand.”
“Make me understand.”
She looked at Manillo, who only nodded in response. Then the priest put his sweating hand on Noah’s shoulder and glared at him. The message was clear.
“Muñoz,” he barked at the shrinking teacher.
“Venga conmigo.”
The two men retreated, leaving Noah and his ex-wife alone. The rest of the spectators resumed their crafts.
Sonia’s head was in her hands, the greasy wisps of hair falling over her unwashed arms. She did not seem capable of being awake, let alone taking care of their son.
“After we—after the divorce, I can’t explain to you how lost I felt. I was doing what I could to keep up appearances, but inside I was broken. I think if I’m being fair, I was always broken; you just had the bad luck to come across me when I was hiding it better. There’s always been something missing, some piece of me left empty, unfilled. I’ve always felt hollow, but I’d been that way for so long I thought that was how everybody felt. Do you feel that way, Noah? Do you feel hollow?”
“I can’t say I do.”
She looked up at him, her sunken eyes bloodshot and pleading. He’d never seen her like that before; it unnerved him. “Seriously. Think about it. Don’t you feel like something is missing?”
“I do, Sonia. I’ve felt it ever since you took Eli from me.”
She looked down again with what he hoped was a grimace, but might have been something worse.
“I had to take him. You won’t understand.”
“Probably not.”
She stood and paced, rubbing her hands along the legs of her jeans. She moved back and forth between pews, fidgeting with one of the large papier-mâché creatures that were perched on them. She tenderly ran her fingers across the colored tissue paper.
“I needed something to fill the hole, Noah, and I found it, of all places, in the Coniston Public Library. Or at least in the newspapers there. It was a tiny article, no bigger than a column, and it laid out the plight of the Tletliztlii and their worship of Ometéotlitztl. Something about it spoke to me. Maybe because of the way they described the country, vast but lonesome, or maybe I just felt the need to fill the hole with experience. Anything to recharge my battery. By that point, there was nothing left for me anywhere.”
“And some cult saying God was born from the other Mexican gods was the best place for you?”
“It’s not a cult, Noah. And who told you about the child?”
“Your friend Father Manillo did. If he’s even a priest.”
“Oh, he is. But he didn’t tell you the whole story.
“Even if I understood why you’d want to join a cult—”
“I told you: it’s not a cult.”
“
Even if
I understood why,” he continued, “I don’t understand why you’d want to steal Eli from me, too. Why did you have to take him? What good could have come from that, other than to hurt me?”
She put her hand on his, and though his skin instinctively curled away from her touch, he did not move.
“Noah,” she said. “I didn’t want to hurt you. Honestly, you didn’t cross my mind at all.”
Noah felt the baking heat multiplied tenfold across his skin, igniting the fire in his brain. He thought he might burst into flame. Manillo’s warnings echoed in his clouded mind, the only thing keeping him from unleashing his fury. That, and the number of Tletliztlii around him and Sonia.
“There was something about the Tletliztlii that spoke to me as soon as I read about it. People from all walks of life came on a pilgrimage, all needing to fill the hole in their lives. Ometéotlitztl offered something nothing else did. Ometéotlitztl offered fire. But when I got here I realized it was much more than that. So much more. I don’t know if I can explain it. I don’t know how to make you understand what my sisters and brothers and I understand. I came down to Mexico an empty shell and found myself transformed by what filled me. I’m so much more than I once was. I like this feeling, Noah. I want to keep hold of it.”
“What about Eli?”
“What about him? I’ve always felt a strange connection to him. Not like mother and child but something else. I can’t explain it, and he’s too young to do it for me, but Eli and I have a relationship that is built on different foundations. This is one of the things I realized while I waited for my life to begin again, and I wondered what that made me. Was I some sort of a monster?”
“You don’t want me to answer that.”
Sonia let go of his hand and paced again, lightly stroking the animal effigy. Noah watched closely for signs of the woman he’d once known, once been married to and shared a child with. But it wasn’t her. It wasn’t who he remembered. This woman, this person in the shape of Sonia, was a stranger, and he did not understand her. He could not predict her. She had his son hidden somewhere, and Noah knew then that Rachel was right: she would never tell him where.
“You can keep your crazy cult for all I care. I just want our son back.”
“Noah, you don’t understand anything. You’ve never understood anything. That’s always been your problem. You move without thinking about what you’re doing, about who you’re hurting. You’re like a blind bull, and I hate to tell you this but you can’t always get what you want.”
“Where is he?” He was becoming more agitated, his head spinning on his shoulders. “Where’s that fucking Manillo gone?”
“Noah, stop it. Look at me.”
“I want Eli. I need him and I’m not leaving without him. Nobody is kidnapping my son!”
“I told you: he’s not kidnapped. Everything is fine. Eli needs to stay here with me. I need him more than you ever could.”
But Noah was not listening. His fists clenched in rage, he screamed for Manillo to show his face. All the Tletliztlii were watching, and they started to laugh, and their laughter only further fueled his anger. He grabbed Sonia by the wrist hard so she could not struggle away and jerked her close. Her breath was fetid but barely registered through his bloody haze.
“You could
never
need him as much as I do. Take me to him now, or—”
“Or what? What are you going to do? Besides turn around and leave? Save yourself: Get the fuck out of here and take care of the
other
Eli you have on the way.”
Noah stood and punched one of the misshapen piñatas with all his strength, breaking it in half.
“I don’t want another Eli. I want mine!”
“You can’t have him,” she said. Laughing.
Noah’s brain shut down, unable to comprehend what Sonia was saying, what she was doing, how far he had travelled only to be blocked by a wall of insanity. He heard the crying of children filling his mind, even though he knew their voices couldn’t be real. But the cries only grew, intensified, bursting his skull amid Sonia’s mocking laughter. He squeezed her wrist tighter, squeezed his eyes shut tighter still, trying to surface in the tidal wave of anger flooding over him. He was drowning in it, deaf and blind and dumb and full of hatred. He opened his eyes long enough to see Manillo had returned, and his enormous fist was travelling straight at Noah’s face.
Noah remembered little after that. Just an endless series of fists and feet raining down on his crumpled body.
“Where’s Eli?” he tried to spit out, but the blood in his mouth choked him, and he could barely emit a gurgling cough. “Oh, God,” he cried, and Sonia laughed even harder.
“You stupid man. Don’t you get it? There is no child of a hundred gods. He was aborted; never born. There is no God.”
She then spat on him and kicked him hard in the face. He felt the clammy lithe arms of unconsciousness grab hold of him from the cold darkness below, and they pulled him close into her waiting bosom.
5. This Blasted Heath
Noah and Eli lay on the soft green grass, staring up at the clouds slowly moving across a picture-perfect sky.
“See that one? That’s a horse, Eli. What sound do horsies make?”
Eli brayed, then laugh uproariously. Noah laughed too, the feeling of his son’s body wriggling against him filling him with never-ending bliss. Noah couldn’t remember how long they’d been lying there—it seemed like forever—but he never wanted it to end. Couldn’t imagine the world any better.
“Are you two going to goof off in the grass all day?”
Noah rolled over and looked up at Rachel sitting on her wooden chair. She wore a deep, knowing smile and had one hand over the edge of the crib beside her, the other wrapped around her full belly. She sat in the afternoon light, the nursery around her so bright he wondered if he should draw the blinds.
“We’re seeing animals playing in the air!” Eli shouted, then cackled at his own antics. Rachel smiled too, then gently shushed him.
“You’re going to wake the baby, Eli.”
He laughed again.
“You don’t want to do that, do you?”
Only laughter. Noah grabbed the boy around the waist and threw him into the air.
“Of course you don’t. That’s my favorite boy. That’s my favorite Eli.”
Then they both laughed, both rolled on the green grass, and Noah could smell it on them like the smell of summer, and knew that if he kept rolling nothing would ever change.
But there was a noise, the sound of a tree branch breaking. Noah put Eli down and looked at the beach but saw nothing out of the ordinary. Just Sonia walking along the shore, holding the hand of a small child he knew looked familiar, but could not place.
The park around them was crowded with people, all standing on the grass barefooted, all staring up at the sky. Some wore old clothes, worn away to almost nothing, while others were dressed in suits and evening dresses. All stared up at the clouds expectantly.
“They must be looking for the horsies too,” Noah said, but when he turned he found Eli had vanished. Noah’s smile faded. “Eli?” he called, looking for someone who might have his son. But no one would look at him. They each held a small child by the hands, all staring upward. Noah cast a glance too, long enough to see that the white clouds were moving past so swiftly he barely recognized their shapes.
“Eli, where are you?” he called out.
More people filled the beach, packed to its edges, some up to their knees in water, and when he called out Eli’s name they gathered around him, all holding a small faceless child by the hands, cutting him off.
“Eli!” he screamed, squeezing his way through the mass of immovable bodies. Through gaps he saw Sonia in the distance, wispy auburn air fluttering as she led a small boy by the hand, a small curly-haired boy dressed in his favorite green cap and blue Oshkosh B’gosh overalls. Somewhere behind Noah was the sound of Rachel crying, the crackling sound of paper being crumpled, and a heat that blanketed everything, charring bodies and the ground to deep black ash. Noah was thrown forward by the wave, landing in the darkened nursery. Rachel had gone, the crib was empty, the shelves with nothing left. There was just a window, a large rectangle framing the blasted heath beyond. The sky was a deep blue, the air so clear he could make out every detail of the world beyond in excruciating detail. Insects creeping, rodents scurrying, grains of sand blowing though mounds of ash, and in the distance speeding toward him at an impossible rate was a column of black flame, stretching from the ground upward into oblivion. The dervish spun and spun, consuming everything in its path. And it was aiming straight toward the house Noah was hiding within. But where was Eli? A mewling sounded behind him, coming from the crib, and Noah felt the joy of relief. He turned around and put his hands into the crib, so full of shadows it was like putting his hands into a well of tar. He felt something squirm in his grip, resist him, but he struggled to get Eli free. A small body broke the surface, covered in paper and shaped like some amorphous, brightly colored animal. It mewed again, staring upward with painted-on eyes before catching fire and burning to cinders in Noah’s quivering hands.
Noah’s swollen eyelids did not part easily, and when they finally did he wished they hadn’t. The fluorescent lights were harsh and they stung, and he turned his head from them to see where he was. Somehow he had made it back to the doctor’s house, though he had no clear recollection of how or why. His half-memories were of manic and leering faces, all laughing at him. He tried to lift a hand, but it felt weighted down, and it wasn’t until he gathered enough strength to move his head that he realized why. His arm, from elbow down, was wrapped with thick plaster and bandages.
The air was sour with sweat and ash, and his entire body felt overrun by a dull aching pain. He called for help, but his shriveled tongue prevented anything more than a choked grunt and cough. His chest exploded in pain.
Noah slowly pulled himself up to sit, resting every few inches to rediscover his equilibrium and to slow the shards of pain that sank more deeply with each jarring movement. He began to remember what happened and everything that had come before. He only felt sicker.