Miriam Toews - Irma Voth

Les gusta este lugar? he said.

Sí, sí, I said.

Me llamo Gustavo, he said.

Do you trust him? Aggie asked me in Low German.

Why not? I said.

You don’t even know him! she said. What if—

So what? I said. We’ll scream if he tries anything.

Aggie reminded me in Low German that we didn’t have any bathing suits. Ximena woke up and started kicking and punching. Soon she’d be into full-blown wailing but she was still just frowning and sputtering and quiet enough that the car horns and music everywhere drowned her out. She stared at me with one dark eye like a pirate and tried to claw my face. I held her to the window so she could focus her wrath on the outside world. I’m not sure she saw anything except for a blur of cars and buildings and sky.

Que bebé tan hermoso! said Gustavo.

Sí, gracias, I said. Babies weren’t called beautiful in the campo. I put my ugly face next to Ximena’s and together we looked at the city of Acapulco and I remembered the lyrics of a song I used to sing in church with my parents when I was a kid. Beautiful words, wonderful words, wonderful words of life. Words of life and beauty teach me faith and duty. Beautiful words, wonderful words, wonderful words of life.

Tell him we have to stop somewhere to buy bathing suits, said Aggie.

I told her that for some reason I was kind of embarrassed to ask Gustavo to stop and Aggie said it was more embarrassing to show up at a beach without bathing suits and she had a point. I liked her life theory of decision making — choose the least embarrassing option — and so I asked him if we could quickly stop at a shop along the way. Yeah, it was no problem, he said. He would hold the baby while we ran in and grabbed something. It was just a little beach hut along the side of the road that catered to tourists. Aggie bought a white bathing suit in two pieces. There was a gold chain around the waist of the bottom piece with a little fake combination lock and the words RICH BITCH in shiny gold letters across the top. Mine was yellow with a big blue anchor on it.

When we got back to the cab Gustavo was talking to Ximena about his childhood. I heard him tell her that she would have to be strong as the daughter of a single mother. My life is hard to lead, he said, but in the end there is happiness. That to truly know happiness is to know the fleeting nature of everything, joy, pain, safety and happiness itself. Ximena was lying on the front seat glaring at him like a female prisoner with her hands all balled up into fists but at least she was quiet, entranced by his voice. Aggie and I got back into the cab and Gustavo told all of us a story about how he used to be a mailman in Mérida and one day he had just lifted the lid off a mailbox to put the letters in it and a bird flew out and it scared him so much that he screamed and fell over backwards and down the stone steps of the house. He lost consciousness and when he woke up he was in the hospital and couldn’t remember anything. It took him six weeks to get his memory back and when he went back to work they told him that his job had been given to somebody else. He became angry and then depressed, too depressed to look for another job, and then his wife became frustrated with their poverty and left him for another man and took their son with her. He never saw them again but his son sometimes visits him in dreams and sometimes Gustavo hears him whispering into his ear while he drives his taxicab around Acapulco.

Just one little bird, said Gustavo. Ximena looked at him suspiciously. I picked her up off the front seat and we drove to the beach where the real people go.

Aggie jumped around in the waves and I sat in the shade with Ximena who lay naked on her sunset towel, churning and shadowboxing. She never stopped moving. I took a peek at my body. Not good, I thought. I was so pale and bony. I looked like a skeleton in the sand. Like something only an archaeologist would be thrilled to get his hands on. Gustavo had brought us mango juice and fish tacos that he got from a man in a palapa . They were friends. When he handed me the juice and tacos he told me I looked sad.

No, I said.

No? he said.

Estoy un poco triste, I said.

Gustavo smiled and nodded. He turned for a second to watch Aggie in the water and he waved and she waved back. Then he pointed at my stomach.

Nice anchor, he said.

Thank you, I said.

Do you know something? he said.

No, I said.

My wife and I used to come here when she was big and pregnant with our son. I dug a hole in the sand for her belly so she could lie on her stomach. It made her so happy. Our little son was incubated in the cool sands of Patricio Beach. When she lay there like that with her stomach in the hole nobody knew she was pregnant.

Then Gustavo prepared what he called his beach station. It was an elaborate performance and there were many steps involved. He set up his beach chair, the long kind you can recline on, by adjusting the back of it so that it was at a perfect angle. He left for a few minutes and returned with a little plastic table that he stuck in the sand next to his beach chair. He spread his towel over the chair so there were no wrinkles and it hung evenly over both sides. Then he left again and came back with another mango juice and some fish tacos and a newspaper which he carefully arranged on the little table. He adjusted his sunglasses. He re-straightened his towel. He kissed his fingers and pointed them at the sky. He lay down on his chair and then spent a long time wrestling his newspaper into submission against the wind. He was quiet for a few seconds, reading. Then he decided to reach for his mango juice and as he did that something snapped and his beach chair collapsed and he knocked the little table over and dropped his newspaper which went flying off towards the water in several sections, entertainment, sports and crime.

I hadn’t laughed in so long. I couldn’t stop. I tried to. Ximena stopped wriggling and stared at me. Gustavo swore and turned around to look at me. One of the lenses in his sunglasses had popped out.

You did that on purpose, I said.

I did not! he said. Now I have to start again!

He went through the same process again and managed to maintain his position on the chair for a bit longer before another disaster struck. This time seagulls surrounded him and one even landed on his stomach and he called for help. But I had seen him deliberately put little pieces of fish taco all around his chair to attract them.

Help me! he said. I’m being attacked!

I loved Gustavo. If I’d been his wife I wouldn’t have left him just because he was feeling depressed and not making any money. If I was his little son I’d be in the streets looking for him right now.

Why are you laughing at me? he said. My God! Help me!

It was time to go back to the airport. After Gustavo’s performance he had offered to watch Ximena while Aggie and I jumped in the waves together, holding hands like little kids and shouting at each other over the wind like we used to do in the back of pickup trucks. Gustavo gave Ximena a bottle while Aggie and I changed out of our bathing suits behind some trees near the palapa .

Look at this, said Aggie.

What? I said.

She held up her hand and there was blood on her fingers. She curled her fingers to make a claw and made a feral animal sound.

Oh, I said. You’ve started. That’s okay.

I don’t have anything, she said. We have to stop again.

I was counting the money that was at the bottom of the plastic bag we used for all of Ximena’s stuff.

I guess that’s it for me, said Aggie.