Nadxeli Caridad

by Nadxeli Caridad

First published in The Blank Page Writing Club Anthology Spring 2024

para mi nana, primero muerta que sencilla

With one hand Mary Louise palms the base of her bare neck. With the other she lovingly rubs her wrinkled thumb across a black and white photo. It is tucked into a corner of the mirror’s wooden frame. The free edges of the print are curled and yellowed, evidence of the decades passed since the camera flashed. The image is of Mary Louise, young with porcelain skin and long, dark hair, sleek and parted in the middle. She wears a color blocked shift dress. Beside her is a deeply tanned man with thick hair. A bright white smile peeks out beneath his brushed mustache. The top two buttons of his striped shirt are left undone.

            Five years have passed without him. Five years alone in a house he built for them long ago when her belly was swollen for the second time. She had been so worried to cross, with their little boy and another on the way, but he’d assured her that this land was full of promise. This was their chance, he’d said, to build a secure life. In the years since, the house had been filled with beautiful chaos and noise. The sound of sizzling oil for chiles rellenos, chimichangas, and flautas was near constant. The shrieks and laughs of rowdy children who eventually bore them multitudes of mischievous grandchildren still echoed through the walls. But that is all that really remains now, echoes.

            Below the mirror is her dresser and on it sit her various face creams for skin tightening and lightening that she’s used religiously since her youth. Beside them rests a worn makeup bag filled with bold lipsticks, a few vibrant eyeliners, a clumpy tube of mascara and an old eyelash curler. But front and center is a tray housing two accessories she never, ever, leaves home without. CHANEL COCO MADEMOISELLE and a pair of gold hoop earrings. She has lived her whole life by a philosophy that has always made her granddaughter laugh, una mujer sin aretes es una mujer sin calzones. And she certainly can’t harp that a woman without earrings is a woman without underwear only to leave the house without them! That would offer up a golden opportunity for her nieta to joke that her nana had gone commando. But today, like most days now, she doesn’t have plans to leave the house so there is no need to wear them or worry.

            She opens a drawer to retrieve the turquoise palm print swimsuit she bought from Costco the summer prior. She grabs at the hem of her cotton nightshirt and pulls up, but it’s a struggle to raise her arms above her head. Some days she tries to yank it down instead and awkwardly shimmies it down her body. The last time she did this though, the fabric bunched up at her middle and she got stuck. So she tries raising her arms again, and after a few huffs, succeeds. Now she performs the real challenge of getting the suit on. At least she can step into it. After it’s tugged over her butt she leans over and scoops each breast in. By the time she’s lifted the straps over her shoulders she feels about ready for a break.

            In the kitchen Mary Louise cracks two eggs into a hot skillet and scrambles them with a metal spoon. As they cook she turns the old switch of another burner, making it click click click until a blaze appears. With her bare hands she places a tortilla over the heat and watches as spots bubble and brown and crisp until it is ready to flip. She has never feared the flame and a lifetime of touching it has smoothed her fingertips. She could get away with murder, her inked thumbprint would render a solid black oval.  

            Done with breakfast, she stabs at a large watermelon she brought home from El Super the day prior. As she does so she remembers the summers when she’d cut it into triangles and sprinkle them with tajín while her grandchildren swam in the pool. She would bring them out on a platter and serve each little dolphin that came to the edge hungry. Hours later the dehydrated rinds would litter the surrounding yard, evidence of a childhood happily consumed. Now she cubes it up and adds the chunks to a blender. When it is smooth she pours the agua fresca into a tall glass filled with ice. She knows it will melt fast under the Arizona sun so she downs the refreshment and refills it before grabbing a towel and stepping out.

            At the edge of the pool she slips out of black chanclas and exposes her misshapen toes, the result of a career spent constantly on her feet as an elementary school cook. She enters the cool water and walks a few paces back and forth on the first step, acclimating, before she moves down to the next. Once waist deep she swings her arms back and forth and hops from foot to foot until she is ready to submerge. The first plunge is always her favorite. The feeling gives her scalp an invigorating chill that reminds her she has not yet gone stale, she is still alive.

            Mary Louise’s routine begins with a few laps around the pool. Considering she does not actually know how to fully swim on her own, these laps do not consist of butterfly or backstrokes… Instead, she clings onto the edge and places one hand over the other until she has orbited the entirety of the oval pool bit by bit. Sometimes she props herself up on her elbows, kicks her legs behind her and creates her very own little wave pool. Back at the shallow end she does arm circles until they turn to jelly. When she gets breathless she sits on a step and grabs for her agua fresca, all the ice gone.  

            As her fingers prune she visualizes the memories of her grandkids jumping in. She would yell at them not to run, warn that they could slip and fall. Of course they never listened. Worse, they got creative. They swung in using a forgotten rope from a past piñata. From high up on the roof they leapt in. Once, she caught one of them stomping over a floating storage bin before crashing into the water. When she asked what it was doing in there two others came out from under it gasping for air. It’s a miracle none of them drowned and all of them graduated high school.

            Sometimes they would beg her to jump in with them. She’d always decline and walk away shaking her head as they’d cheer “e-na-na! e-na-na!” over and over like a mini mob, drunk on Coca-Cola. Some part of her wishes she had, at least once, satisfied their request. She can imagine the shock, excitement and giddy achievement that would have appeared on their tiny faces. But they were no longer small and would never ask of such a thing from her now. Now they were worried adults, but not quite worried enough to consistently call or visit.

            Mary Louise wonders how they would react to her now if she jumped in. She lets out a laugh as she pictures it. It did seem like they always had so much fun, and she can’t remember the last time she experienced that type of unrestricted joy. The fact that she has lived a full lifetime without ever having jumped into a pool begins to bother her. What has been her excuse? All the answers seem silly now. She questions whether she can claim she has truly lived if she has not performed this one basic act.

            A naughty curiosity lures her out of the pool and she walks to the deep end. She peers over the edge and looks down into the water. Her eyes scan back to the safety of the shallow end. Then in an instant she decides she must do this now for she fears otherwise she never will. If she thinks about it too much her mind will tell her she is too old, too fragile and the time for such childlike pleasures has long passed. Before the thoughts can get any louder she pinches her nose and jumps in. Her chunky feet barely lift more than a few inches but she still feels a rush from the millisecond of airtime before she plummets down. Underwater she has a moment of fear, but it quickly dissipates when her body is naturally buoyed up to the surface and her hand grabs a secure hold of the edge. Clinging onto it she takes a few big breaths before bursting into cackles.

            She does it again. With growing confidence she leaps a little further out from the edge for the third jump. And on the next one she hugs herself in an attempt to roll, as much as her limited flexibility allows, into a cannonball. After, she is only briefly disappointed that she wasn’t able to see the splash from impact herself. She imagines a panel of judges, all holding up white signs with the number 10 boldly printed in black ink. Back at the shallow end she does a twirl and gives them a small bow.

            Mary Louise gets back out for another jump, but this time she wants to fly. She lunges forward like a runner ready for the cracking sound of a starting pistol. When her imagination plays it out she runs, her flat feet slap onto the wet ground as a massive grin grows on her face. But then she slips and her ankle twists in a way that isn’t right. Pain immediately shoots up her leg and, though she tries to recover with the next step, she is unbalanced and gravity pulls her down. She is only halfway across the pool, the depth there is too shallow. Her arms flail out in front of her as she dives in. Water floods into her gaping mouth and fills her nostrils and before the terror of it all peaks, her skull makes impact and all goes dark.

###

She is frantic as she pumps her arms through the water, desperate to get to the surface. She tries kicking her legs but they feel bound and heavy. She is almost there, she can see the sunlight filtering through in an almost perfect circle. Just as she is about to run out of air she breaks through. She coughs and clutches her chest as she tries to control her breathing. After she settles she looks around and is utterly confused. Domed walls of limestone surround her. 

            Then a glint of light below her shifts her focus back down to the water. A thick iridescent fishtail whips towards her and she immediately heads for safety on a distant rock formation. Once there she cuts her forearm on a sharp edge and curses herself for likely increasing the creature’s appetite. With hesitation she slowly looks back, hoping and praying that it is gone. Much to her horror, it is not.

            Her scream arouses a few of the hundred bats hanging above her which she did not notice previously. She cowers and shields her head with her arms as those disrupted fly around her, flapping their black velvety wings. The others remain huddled tightly, dangling upside down. They blink at her curiously. Curled into herself she whimpers and wishes she’d never had the careless idea to jump into her pool. Where did it get her? Stranded alone in a cenote without legs.

            The sunlight begins to die out and she knows that night is approaching. There is nothing much she can do other than lay on the rock. She is much too exhausted to try to do anything more than that anyway. Through the round opening above her she watches the sky turn from blue to orange to purple to black. The stars are so bright, like pinpricks in a dark sheet laid over a flashlight. The moon is luminous and full. If she tilts her head at a certain angle it appears right in the center of the cave’s opening, making the combination look like a glowing eye.

            Suddenly she hears something splash in the water. She whips her head around to the direction of sound but can hardly see anything. She does not move and waits. When nothing else happens she lays back down and tries to tell herself it was nothing. But then there is another splash, and it is much closer. She sits up and tucks her tail into herself. She scans her surroundings and squints into the darkness.

            Just above the water’s surface a yard away a pair of eyes stare at her intently. Mary Louise is scared frozen. The eyes come closer.

            “Stop!” she shouts. They do.

            Slowly, the eyes come up to reveal a woman’s face. Long wet tendrils frame her and float in the water around her. She swims to the rock and looks up at Mary Louise.

            “Who are you?” Mary Louise asks. The woman doesn’t respond.

            “What do you want?” The woman points a finger to Mary Louise.

            “Listen, I don’t know who you are or what you want with me but I am not supposed to be here, I don’t even know how I got here, I need to go home-” The woman nods her head vigorously.

            “Do you… know how to get me home?” The woman nods again.

            “Take me, please-” The woman puts up her hand to silence Mary Louise. Then she brings up her other hand and in it is a clump of what appears to be seaweed.

            “What is that for?” The woman points to Mary Louise’s bloody forearm. She extends her palm in request. Mary Louise offers her arm and the woman gingerly wraps the seaweed around it. Mary Louise isn’t sure if she is imagining it, but the skin beneath it begins to feel soothed. 

            The woman turns away and dives into the water. A big scaled tail flips up into the air and trails behind her. Mary Louise is in awe of the sight. Further away she resurfaces and motions for Mary Louise to join her.

            “I, I can’t swim.” Mary Louise stutters out. The woman cocks her head, incredulous.

            “Well, I mean… I couldn’t, this morning.” The woman nods sympathetically. Then she waves her hand again, beckoning her into the water. Mary Louise takes a shaky breath, tells herself this is all just one big mishap and forces herself to trust that this sirena can get her home.

            Once next to her the woman grabs hold of Mary Louise’s hand and swiftly brings her underwater. Mary Louise begins to panic in the dark waters, she is fearful she’ll run out of air. The woman rests her palm on Mary Louise’s chest. The woman’s face is calm as she takes a deep breath. She urges Mary Louise to do the same. Mary Louise hesitantly obeys and is shocked to find out that the act does not cause her to drown. The woman smiles, though Mary Louise can barely see it. The woman squeezes her hands into fists and when she opens them orbs of warm light shine out.

            Mary Louise follows her through an underwater tunnel. They weave around various stalactite and stalagmite formations. A few small fish occasionally swim beside them. Shells of all different shapes and sizes are sprinkled throughout the sandy floor. Then she sees a calavera but the skeleton does not frighten her for it is donned in a beautifully embroidered folklórico dress. They eventually pass another wearing a sombrero. Mary Louise smiles to herself as she roams the tunnel in search of more treasures. She finds an abandoned molcajete and a set of intricately painted cantaritos.

            The woman taps her shoulder and motions for Mary Louise to follow her to the surface. Mary Louise was so distracted she hadn’t even realized they’d made it to the end. When she looks up she sees dozens of other fishtails swaying. When she comes up the first thing she notices is a gold throne molded into a massive oyster shell. Strung around it are colorful papel picado banners. The sirenas all look at her excitedly, a few have happy tears in their eyes. One of them holds up an intricate crown of shells and shouts, “¡María Luisa! ¡La reina ha regresado!”

            They pump their arms into the air, clap their hands and splash their tails as they cheer.

            Their queen has finally returned.