Carry Me Like Water (37 page)

She brought her journals the next day. For two weeks, she read him sections, different entries, she smiled as she read pans of them. It didn’t seem that it was her life at all. She laughed at some of her entries. They seemed to have so little to do with anything that was real. Well, what was the harm? She liked reading them to Joaquin—it made her feel as if she were keeping him alive. He would stop her sometimes and ask her questions. “You have bad taste in men,” he said once.

“Well, not always,” she said. “You’re a man, aren’t you?”

“Queers don’t count.”

“
You are a man.”
she said deliberately, “a man. And queers count.”

“OK,” he said.

Joaquin looked up at his lover as he bathed him. He almost enjoyed the feel of his soapy hands on his skin. He was calm and steady and careful. “I won’t break,” he said.

“You might.”

Joaquin smiled. “How did it come to this?”

Jake stopped washing him, and sat down on the bathroom floor staring at his lover. He tried to imagine Joaquin as he used to be. He was the same man. He was not the same man.

“Don’t look at me,” Joaquin said.

“What will happen if I look, J?”

“If you look at me too hard, you’ll make me want to live.”

Jake looked down at the floor. He stared at his hands.

“It’s hard for you, isn’t it, Jake?”

“I’m not dying, you are.”

“I’m the future.”

“J, if you’re the future, I could do a lot worse.” Jake placed his hands in the water, cupped them, and held as much water as he could in them. He lifted his cupped hands in the air. If I hold my hands very tight, he thought, then the water will stay. But already it was pouring through his fingers. He slowly let the water go back into the bathtub. Joaquin stared up at the ceiling as if he were trying to imagine himself somewhere else. “Joaquin, are you afraid?”

“Someone in the village where I was from was always dying. They used to ring the church bells and we’d go. I grew up kissing other people’s caskets before they lowered them into the ground—that was my life. And how many friends have we lost, Jake? Death after death after death. I’m sick of it. I’m sick of grieving. You want to know if I’m afraid? Sometimes. Sometimes, I’m terrified. But most of the time I’m not. Why the hell should I be afraid, Jacob Lesley? Hell, I’m more afraid that this will go on forever.”

Jake looked down at the floor as Joaquin spoke.

“Look at me. Don’t look at the floor. You’ve spent enough time looking at it—you stare at that floor as if you might find a cure down there. It isn’t there, gringo, I know you don’t want me to die.
but
I
don’t want to live, anymore. I don’t. I don’t. Look at this body. I’m suffering, Jake. I know how to spell that word now—
I
know what that word means.
I
know every letter of that sad and ugly word. Do you understand? Do you know what that is?”

Jake nodded. “Let me help you out of the tub.” He helped Joaquin up, his bony body trembling. He imagined that the drops of water dripping from his body were tears. His body was crying. He dried them off. He carried him to bed, and stared at his eyes. They were still the same.

December 24, 1972

It was a cold night to be crossing the river. Joaquin could see his breath in front of him, and he tried to catch the warmth with his hands, but his hands were too small and too slow. His coat was too thin for this weather. His mother whispered that the desert was being unkind to them tonight. She had always said the desert was a fickle god not to be trusted. She stopped and rubbed his arms and legs. She whispered words in his ears that sounded like prayers. He hugged her when she finished and told her he was not afraid. He lied, but he did not want her to know. He had never felt so strange, nor had he ever felt this scared. He was glad it was cold: His mother would think he was shaking from the cold. He wanted to go back to the village. He wanted to go back to the house where he had been born. But he did not tell her what he felt. She should not be worrying about him, not now. She was doing this for him. Yes, that’s why they were doing this. He watched his mother as she walked through the desert. He thought there would be nothing when she died. She had always been there from the beginning, and the world seemed hard to imagine without her smile or her touch or her voice. He smiled at her. When she died the world would end. He told her he was fine. He was fine. The man leading them said they had to hurry. They walked quickly like pilgrims reaching their shrine—at last—happy at last because they had been afraid they might not find what they were seeking. When they reached the river, his mother made the sign of the cross. The river was not very wide. He thought it would be much bigger, much wider. It was not far to the other side.

A man, bigger than his father had ever been, carried his mother on
his shoulders. Another man carried him into the river. The water was cold on his legs and he thought he might freeze. He wondered how the men could be so strong. They laughed softly as they crossed. He wanted to be strong like them, laugh like them. They were afraid of nothing. No one spoke and it was so quiet. The world had ended. There were not many of them, twelve. Before they had crossed the river it began to snow. Joaquin looked up at the snowing sky and caught a snowflake on his tongue. “It is a sign,” one of the men said. He did not say what the sign meant, but his mother nodded. The whole earth was red from the glowing sky and he thought it was the end of the world. He could see everything from here. When they reached the other side of the river his mother said everything would be different. “We will be richer here,” she said, “but we will not be happier. And even if I have to live here—I will never die here.” And then he knew. It was the end of the world.

The cold summer left them. Autumn was warm. The Day of the Dead came and went, and still Joaquin breathed. Miraculously, a day before Thanksgiving, Joaquin rose from his bed and wandered into the kitchen where Lizzie and Jake were drinking coffee, his IV at his side. “Who’s going to make the turkey?” he asked. They stared at him.

Jake hugged him and smiled, then looked at Lizzie. “She is,” he said.

She had planned to be with Maria Elena, Eddie, and the baby. She nodded. “And Jake will make the stuffing.”

“He’s a terrible cook,” he whispered.

“It’ll be good,” Jake laughed, “I promise.”

He nodded. “Fine.”

That evening, Lizzie baked a pumpkin pie, following her mother’s exact instructions. Joaquin, who had somehow received a few ounces of strength from some unknown source, sat at the table and watched her roll out the dough.

“Have you ever made tortillas?”

She laughed. “No.”

“You have the hands for it,” he said.

“Oh?”

He stuck his hands out for her to see. “I do, too.”

Jake watched them as he stood at the door. He held two bags of groceries in his arms.

Lizzie looked up at him. “Did you get everything?”

He nodded. He placed a turkey in front of Joaquin. “Is it OK?”

“It’s wonderful, it’s a wonderful turkey.”

The next day, Joaquin actually ate. He ate slowly, but he ate.

“He’s going to live,” Jake thought. But Lizzie knew Joaquin had gathered all his remaining will to pay a last visit to the living. He wanted to eat with them one last time.

“He wants a priest, Lizzie. How the hell do I get one—and when the hell is he supposed to come? Shit. Shit, shit, shit.” He ripped the newspaper he was holding in half.

Lizzie took the pieces of paper from his hands. “I know one,” she said softly.

“You do?”

“Well sort of. I met one when
I
went to Salvador’s funeral.”

“Salvador?”

“My brother. I told you the story.”

“Yeah. Right.”

“Why do you have such a hard time believing my story?”

“Maybe because it’s more than a little strange.”

“You mean, as opposed to
your
life story.”

“I haven’t told you my life story.”

“But if you told me, what would you do if I just dismissed it because it was so outrageous?”

“It is outrageous. I don’t believe it myself.”

“You don’t believe your own life? Well hell, no wonder you don’t believe mine.”

They both laughed—hard—as if they could have just as easily been screaming or crying.

Jake looked up at Lizzie from where he sat. “How is it that he’s lived this long?”

“He’s waiting for you to let go.”

He nodded. “Will you call that priest, Lizzie?”

“I’ll go see him. I’m sure he’ll come.”

“Peace be with this house and with all who …”

The priest’s sober voice filled the room. There was something calm about the whole scene. Everyone was still, motionless, out of respect for the ritual, but also out of a kind of discomfort. Ritual was a place where Joaquin had lived, the rest of them were only onlookers, distant participants. Mrs. Sha held a candle in her hand. Mr. Sha had his hand placed on his wife’s back. Lizzie stood at the foot of the bed next to Jake. She held his hand. They almost looked like husband and wife. The priest blessed a bowl of water and sprinkled it with a branch of cedar.

“Like a stream in parched land, may the grace …”