Bridge of Shadows Read online

  Chapter 4

  October 27, 1996

  Peter Alan Ross

  Pete Ross walked, as he always did on Sunday mornings, from El Paso across to Juárez, Mexico, with two bags of groceries. There wasn’t as much foot traffic at this time—no day-pass workers, no tourists. Most good Catholics were at mass. Around noon the temperature and the traffic would both pick up, but for now he was glad of solitude and the warm wind-breaker he’d remembered to put on. The wind was cold as a thin-bladed knife, drying out his throat and nose. When he swallowed, he tasted blood. Years here, and he still hadn’t adapted to the altitude and climate.

  The turnstile creaked as he pushed through it under the eyes of a suspicious, bored colleague. This one was the cautionary poster child for sensitivity training, a tall, hungry-looking Anglo with cold gray eyes and the stare of a concentration camp guard. He shifted his gaze from a passing Mexican woman to Pete, no recognition, just curiosity.

  “Let’s see that stuff,” he ordered, coming out of his chair. Pete stepped to the side and handed over the plastic bags, waited while the patrolman searched through boxes of crackers and bags of potato chips, canned tuna, and toilet paper. He held up a box of feminine napkins, frowning like he’d never seen them before, which considering his charm and general appearance might have been true.

  He stuffed everything back in the bags, not too neatly, and handed them back.

  “Pass,” he said. Pete suppressed a wild urge to tell him go long and took his groceries without comment, following the big-hipped sway of the Mexican woman ahead of him. On the other side of the bridge, the Mexican border guard made the same desultory search of his bags, even to eyeing the Kotex.

  And then he was in Mexico, where the wind seemed a little colder, the day a little grayer, and the world a little less hopeful. He followed the street down into the tourist district, past closed shops selling quart bottles of vanilla and cheap serapes, velvet paintings, and tequila by the case. One stall was open, a milk stand. One glance in a mug was enough to kill any thirst Pete might have had for that; the skim on the top looked spongy as old carpeting.

  He turned at the next corner, onto Calle Gavanza, and then up a dirt path to a small, painfully neat house painted aqua blue with bright green trim. A cardboard Halloween witch, faded with sun and time, cackled on her broom in the front window. A window box of herbs breathed basil and cilantro as he climbed the steps.

  In the window, below the cardboard witch, a hand-painted picture of an open palm, the lines painstakingly drawn. And below it: CURANDERA.

  He knocked.

  Esmeralda Sanchez opened the door, saw his face, and smiled, and some of the gloom of Ciudád Juarez vanished for him. He kissed her cheek and handed her the plastic bags, and her smile deepened, showing dimples. She was still pretty. The American doctors had done a good job with her bums, and the scarring was minimal, only visible if you knew where to look. Pete did. His eyes traveled the map of her face, finding the faint outline of blisters and bums.

  “You don’t have to bring me things every time you come over,” she said in slow and heavily accented English. “I like you to visit.”

  “And I like making sure you eat,” he said in fluent Spanish. He appreciated her gesture, but they were both more comfortable in her native tongue. “You look beautiful today.”

  She accepted a kiss on the cheek, and they hovered together for a few seconds, drawn by each other’s warmth in the morning chill. Esmeralda was the first to step back, cheeks flushed. She took the groceries into the kitchen.

  He remembered how she’d acted the first time he’d visited—flustered, afraid, unsure what to do or what he wanted. That had been before she’d become a curandera, though. A long time ago.

  He wondered if she measured time the way he did. Everything was either pre- or post-desert for him, and the only thing at the center of it was her.

  “Business good?” He followed the restless flicker of candles into the sitting room, where a crucifix hung on the wall with a shelf of flowers, candles, and rosary beads below. Her couch had seen better decades. She’d covered the stains with a clean hand-knitted afghan in bright pinks and greens in ornate cross patterns. In the center of the room was a huge oak table with heavy chairs; the wood was polished to a high sheen. In the center of the table, a gold-framed portrait of a small, eagerly smiling boy with Esmeralda’s delicate bones and big brown eyes.

  Pete took a new votive candle from his jacket pocket, lit it, and put it next to Jaime’s picture, then removed a yellow carnation from inside his wind-breaker and placed it beside the candle.

  “Yellow,” Esmeralda said from the doorway. She had two cups of coffee. He accepted his and sat with her on the couch, the attention of both focused on the picture, the candle, the flower. “He will like that, a little brightness on a cold day. Thank you.”

  The coffee had a chocolate taste to it, subtle and rich. She probably drank thin instant most of the time, except on Sundays. Except with him.

  “I saw Ana,” he said after two or three silent sips. Esmeralda nodded. “At the hospital.”

  “She’s well, then?”

  “She told me to go to hell.”

  A knowing, dimpled smile. “Ah. She’s very well, then.”

  “I don’t know why I try, Esme, I really don’t.”

  “You talked to her, though?” Esmeralda asked. “Told her?”

  Pete shifted. The couch muttered, grumpy at the movement; springs creaked and stabbed. “I didn’t have a chance.”

  “Did you really want one?”

  He let the question pass. She knew the truth. No sense in either of them denying it. He finished his coffee, let her take the cup and put it aside, and then gave her his hand. She turned his palm up, smoothed it with her fingers, traced the lifeline thoughtfully. Her brown eyes were distant and luminous.

  “Read my future,” he said. She shook her head, a frown forming. “Why not?”

  “No jokes, Peter. Please.”

  She stood up, still holding his hand, and he let himself be led to the massive oak table. She touched her fingers to her Ups, to Pete’s, then to the picture of Jaime set on the table. Pete, after hesitating, did the same. Her lips felt warm and satin soft under his fingertips, and he was reminded of how she’d looked that terrible afternoon in the desert when she’d come out of that metal cocoon. Blistered, ruined lips.

  So little sign of that now, except for the faint, ghostly scars and the picture of Jaime.

  “Sit,” she said, and he did, settling into the big, heavy chair without releasing her hand. She took a seat near him. “What do you want to ask?”

  “I want to know about Ana.”

  “Ana.” A flash of annoyance crossed Esmeralda’s face, temper and mischief in her eyes. “Let Ana take care of her own troubles, Peter. You aren’t her husband anymore.”

  “Come on, Esme, I need to know.”

  Esmeralda sighed and reached over to grasp his hand with hers. Her fingertips stroked his lightly, not quite a caress. “I should never have told you anything,” she said, shrugged, and bowed her head. “Pray with me.”

  He did, putting his mind at rest the way she’d taught him to do, walking in his mind through a peaceful church into stained-glass light, letting the silence wash through him. He was dimly aware of his heartbeat slowing as she prayed, of the subtle pulse of her own life through their joined fingers. That made him think of the pulse at her throat, and how her skin felt on her neck, growing softer as it disappeared beneath the modest neck of her blouse. Seeing Ana had left him feeling—hungry.

  “Stop that,” Esmeralda murmured. He realized she’d stopped the prayer some minutes ago; the only sound he heard now was the conspiratorial whisper of their heartbeats. “Be a vessel, Pedro. Not a bubbling pot.”

  He breathed out and let the longing go, let it fall away.

  “Mijo,” she said, and there was such love and peace in her voice that he opened his eyes to look. She was staring at him, past him, into that place he couldn’t reach. “Welcome, Mama loves you.”

  Pete did not believe she really talked to her lost son, Jaime; he couldn’t forget the reality of the dead child in his arms, the emptiness of his glazed eyes. But he knew Esmeralda believed, and sometimes that was enough. What he did believe was that for whatever reason, through whatever power, Esmeralda was able to help him where no one else could.

  Esmeralda cocked her head to one side, still oblivious to him. A smile lifted the corners of her lips, and Pete felt insignificant against that blinding joy. She reached out with her free hand to touch empty air, as if stroking the face of a child.

  “Jaime, poquito, you remember your friend Pedro. Pedro is troubled. You remember what you told me about Señora Ana? About the black cloud?”

  No reply, to Pete’s ears, but then, there never was. There was only Esmeralda’s half of this strange, disjointed conversation. He waited until she focused on him.

  “Jaime says it’s starting, as he saw before. There is a sickness inside Ana, not like yours; she is going dark in the spirit. That’s what he says.”

  “Going dark?” Pete repeated, mystified. “How do I keep her from—going dark?”

  “Keep her in the light. She wants to follow her heart, and that is bad; that goes into darkness, she will not survive.” Esmeralda frowned, her eyes gone far away again. “Not so quickly, Jaime. Tell me slower.”

  Whatever she heard, it upset her; he saw the shock ripple across her face, felt the sudden tension in her hand. Her eyes blinked rapidly.

  Two years ago Esmeralda had looked up from her coffee with an expression like that. She’d told him Jaime said there was something bad in his head. She’d shown him where it was, drawing a circle at the base of his skull. He still remembered the light coolness of her touch.

  And a month after that the headaches had started, and the doctor had come back with the bad news. They’d insisted on surgery. And chemotherapy. And radiation.

  Jaime—Esmeralda—told him that the surgery would leave him hooked to machines for the rest of his life, a breathing shell of a man. She had proposed another way. He hadn’t believed in Esmeralda’s cure, but he’d tried it. Couldn’t hurt, he thought, to wait a couple of weeks. Inside of two weeks MRIs had shown the tumor shrink. Since that inexplicable event he’d come every week, sat at this table, and let her massage his head with those cool fingers, seeking the tumor, squeezing it into a tight, tight ball, then a pinpoint—

  And now the doctors admitted that it was in remission. There were no more headaches, though he kept the medication in his pocket as a precaution.

  Nobody said the word miracle. It wasn’t scientific.

  He listened to her with his whole attention now as she said tensely, “Jaime, mijo, you must be sure when you say this. Are you sure?”

  He saw the reply make her flinch. She focused on him and blinked.

  “There is great trouble coming,” she said slowly. “Very bad. Many will die, Peter. And it will be Ana who does this thing, this thing that makes so many die. You must stop her. You must find out what this thing is.”

  “Jaime doesn’t know?”

  She shook her head mutely. Her empty right hand curled into a fist in frustration.

  “There is more than Ana. There is—a Chicano man—a white man—the hate consumes them in fire. There is a child who sings. There is danger everywhere, Peter, and this was not so before. Something important has happened. Something terrible.”

  He could tell by the grief on her face that her connection to Jaime was fading; there was always that terrible loss in her dry eyes. The doctors had repaired most of the damage, but they hadn’t been able to repair her tear ducts. Her eyes were always dry. Just now the whites were slowly flushing with distended, irritated capillaries. Stress made them bloodshot.

  “He’s gone,” she said, and sat back with a sigh. “Did that make any sense to you?”

  “None.”

  “Me neither. But Jaime doesn’t lie. He can’t. He doesn’t know how.”

  She was still frowning, and scrubbed her eyes with the palms of her hands, an unconscious gesture of frustration. Pete reached over to a side table and found her eyedrops; she smiled in gratitude and closed her eyes. False tears drew silver paths down her cheeks.

  “Did he say anything more specific? A time, a place?”

  She considered it carefully. “Only—something about a bridge.”

  “An international bridge?”

  “El Puente Negro,” she said, and then in English, to be sure he understood. “The black bridge.”

  Pete sat back. She resisted his attempt to free his hand from hers. The feel of her skin was suddenly distracting.

  “What is it?” she asked. He didn’t reply, lost in thought. After a few moments he felt her hand slip free of his. She stood behind his chair and put her hands on either side of his head.

  “You don’t have to—” he began. Her hand slid forward to cover his mouth, silencing him, then back to It’s place on his temple. Her fingers began to slowly move in circles on his scalp.

  His skin shivered into gooseflesh. He let himself be soothed by it, like a child, and lost himself in the soft whisper of her singing, in the vision of the quiet church and the sparkling stained glass, the jeweled light.

  He sank into a healing sleep, safe.

  Chapter 5

  October 27, 1996

  Dr. Ana Gutierrez

  Ana helped her mother down the steps of the Socorro Mission, her mind still on the mass. She couldn’t call herself a good Catholic—she didn’t go to mass nearly enough for that, and confession was a dim memory—but there was a kind of peace in sitting inside the ancient walls that remembered the Indian wars. The roof beams were black with age. Though the church wasn’t large, it had a kind of dignity that a more contemporary building couldn’t pretend to have.

  Her uncle Julio’s name was on the back wall of the church, the one dedicated to the sons of the church fallen in war. She’d forgotten about it until this morning; the sight of his name carved in stone, shrouded in silence and flickers of candlelight, still brought tears to her eyes.

  “Demon worship,” her mother said.

  “I’m sorry, Mama—what?” She dragged herself back to the bright, loud present with an effort. Cars were revving in the unevenly paved parking lot, coughing white smoke and rattling metal. Not a wealthy congregation at the mission—the children of immigrants, or immigrants themselves.

  “I said I never let you or your brothers celebrate a devil’s holiday. Father Tomás always spoke against it.” Her mother, a stoutly built woman, wheezed as she stepped down to parking-lot level. No matter how many times Ana reminded her about heart disease and stroke, she refused to lose weight. A good Chicano mother is fat, she’d told her, patting her cheek. Who trusts a skinny cook? Ana worried. Behind the humor, her mother’s breath sounded wet and fluttery, and she was too unsteady to bear all those extra pounds.

  “Father Tomás hasn’t been here for ten years, Mama.”

  “And the world, it changes, I know, I know.” Isabel Gutierrez sighed a pale white cloud of disapproval on the cold wind. “And you’re la doctora, I suppose you know best.”

  “Mama—” It was an old argument, and Ana abandoned it when she saw Tía Yvonne piling her three screaming children into a late-model Ford. Yvonne ran a grocery store near the high school, close enough that she had a steady flow of students buying snacks and sodas. That and her late husband’s pension kept her, as Mama liked to say, in tortillas and beans. Mama knew she hated that cliché, and so she delighted in using it at every opportunity.

  “And how is my sweet boy?” Mama beamed, and there was Gabe, wheeling himself out from beside Ana’s car. As Mama bent over him, her black lace shawl tangled in the arm of his chair, and Ana had to step in to save shawl and her own sanity. Mama gave Gabe two wet kisses, one on the cheek and one on the mouth. Gabe looked long-sufferingly at Ana, but she wasn’t sympathetic. After all, he’d “run late” and let her sit through mass alone.

  “I’m fine, Mama,” he said. “How was mass?”

  “Cold. The heat wasn’t on.” Mama’s sharp eyes turned fiery. “And Father Gregory talked about the harmlessness of Halloween. What kind of priest is that, who lets children celebrate the night of the Devil, I ask you? It’s not right. Ana, you know it’s not right.”

  “Yes, Mama,” Ana murmured. She fixed a frown on Gabe. “How’d you get here?”

  “A friend dropped me off. I’m in time for lunch, right?”

  “Of course you are.” Mama squeezed into the backseat of Ana’s car while Gabe maneuvered into the passenger seat. Ana folded up the light graphite wheelchair and opened the hatchback to store it. As she shut it, she caught sight of a late-model brown car cruising too slowly past the mission. Tourists? Most of them had the decency to come after mass, when they wouldn’t disturb the services. But there was something about the car, something familiar—

  “Ana!” Mama summoned her impatiently. “What are you doing back there? Your brother is cold!”

  When she looked up, the brown car was gone around the corner, but the image remained, naggingly unfocused, in her mind.

  Pete had a brown car, that was it. She was annoyed at herself when she realized the train of thought—as if what Pete did or said meant anything to her anymore. What had he said at the hospital? I have to talk to you. He’d looked so earnest. Was it possible that—

  No. It wasn’t possible. Not in the least.

  Lunch at Mama’s house was always an event—small family dinners fed twenty and, Ana thought, could be stretched to feed the downtown homeless, too. She sat with Gabriel in the living room while Mama heated up the feast she’d prepared on Saturday night—tortilla soup, tamales, menudo, enchiladas, fresh homemade guacamole. The tortillas were, of course, handmade; Ana remembered as a child learning the art of shaping the bread and baking it just so, not long enough to dry it or burn the edges. She tried not to think too hard about making the tamales and the menudo. Not before lunch. There were some secrets of home cooking it was simply best not to know.