A Manual for Cleaning Women (16 page)

She missed her own firm bed, the efficient lull of cars on the distant freeway. What I really miss is my morning crossword puzzle. Oh, Mel, what am I going to do? Quit teaching? Travel? Get a doctorate? Commit suicide? Where did that thought come from? But teaching is my whole life. And that’s pitiful. Miss Gore is a Bore. Every year a new student invented that, gleeful. Eloise was a good teacher, dry, dispassionate, the kind that years later the students liked.

Cuando calienta el sol, aquí
en la playa.
At any lull in the music sounds from nearby rooms came through the shutters. Laughter, lovemaking.

“Mr. World Traveler! Mr. Know-it-all! World Traveler!”

“Honey, I do! (ah dew),” the Texan drawled. A crash then and a silence. He must have fallen, passed out. The woman laughed throatily. “Praise the Lord!”

Eloise wished she had a mystery book. She got up and went to the bathroom, cockroaches and land crabs clattering out of her way. She showered with coconut soap, dried with damp towels. She wiped the mirror so she could look at herself. Mediocre and grim, she thought. Not mediocre, her face, with wide gray eyes, fine nose and smile, but it was grim. A good body, but so long disregarded it seemed grim too.

The band stopped playing at two thirty. Footsteps and whispers, a glass shattering.
Say you dig it, baby, say it!
A moan. Snores.

Eloise woke at six, as usual. She opened the shutters, watched the sky turn from milky silver to lavender gray. Palm branches slipped in the breeze like shuffled cards. She put on her bathing suit and her new rose dress. No one was up, not even in the kitchen. Roosters crowed and zopilotes flapped around the garbage. Four pigs. In the back of the garden Indian busboys and gardeners slept, uncovered, curled on the bricks.

She stayed on the jungle path away from the beach. Dark dripping silence. Orchids. A flock of green parrots. An iguana arched on a rock, waiting for her to pass. Branches slapped sticky warm into her face.

The sun had risen when she climbed a hill, down then to a rise above a white beach. From where she stood she could see onto the calm cove of Las Gatas. Underwater was a stone wall built by Terascans to protect the cove from sharks. A school of sardines swirled through the transparent water, disappeared like a tornado out to sea. Clusters of palapa huts stretched down the beach. Smoke drifted from the farthest one but there was no one to be seen. A sign said
BERNARDO’S SCUBA DIVING.

She dropped her dress and bag on the sand, swam with a sure crawl far out to the stone wall. Back then, floating and swimming. She treaded water and laughed out loud, finally lay in the water near the shore rocking in the waves and silence, her eyes open to the startling blue sky.

She walked past Bernardo’s, down the beach toward the smoke. An open thatch-roofed room with a raked sand floor. A large wooden table, benches. Beyond that room was a long row of bamboo alcoves, each with a hammock and mosquito netting. In the primitive kitchen a child washed dishes at the pila; an old woman fanned the fire. Chickens darted around them, pecking in the sand.

“Good morning,” Eloise said. “Is it always so quiet here?”

“The divers are out. You want breakfast?”

“Please.” Eloise reached out her hand. “My name is Eloise Gore.” But the old woman just nodded. “
Siéntese
.”

Eloise ate beans, fish, tortillas, gazing across the water to the misted hills. Her hotel looked blowsy and jaded to her, askew on the hillside. Bougainvillea spilled over its walls like a drunken woman’s shawls.

“Could I stay here?” she asked the woman.

“We’re not a hotel. Fishermen live here.”

But when she came back with hot coffee she said, “There is one room. Foreign divers stay here sometimes.”

It was an open hut behind the clearing. A bed and a table with a candle on it. A mildewed mattress, clean sheets, a mosquito netting. “No scorpions,” the woman said. The price she asked for room and board was absurdly low. Breakfast and dinner at four when the divers got back.

It was hot as Eloise went back through the jungle but she found herself skipping along, like a child, talking to Mel in her head. She tried to remember when she had last felt happy. Once, soon after he died, she had watched the Marx Brothers on television.
A Night at the Opera.
She had had to turn it off, could not bear to laugh alone.

The hotel manager was amused that she was going to Las Gatas. “
Muy típico
.” Local color: a euphemism for primitive or dirty. He arranged for a canoe to take her and her things across the bay that afternoon.

She was dismayed when they neared her peaceful beach. A large wooden boat,
La Ida
, was anchored in front of the palapa. Multicolored canoes and motored pangas from town slipped in and out, loading from it. Lobsters, fish, eels, octopus, bags of clams. A dozen men were on the shore or taking air tanks and regulators off the boat, laughing and shouting. A young boy tied a mammoth green turtle to the anchor line.

Eloise put her things in her room, wanted to lie down but there was no privacy at all. From her bed she could see out into the kitchen, through it to the divers at the table, out to the blue green sea.

“Time to eat,” the woman called to her. She and the child were taking dishes to the table.

“May I help you?” Eloise asked.

“
Siéntese.
”

Eloise hesitated at the table. One of the men stood and shook her hand. Squat, massive, like an Olmec statue. He was a deep brown color, with heavy-lidded eyes and a sensuous mouth.

“
Soy César. El maestro.
”

He made a place for her to sit, introduced her to the other divers, who nodded to her and continued to eat. Three very old men. Flaco, Ramón, and Raúl. César’s sons, Luis and Cheyo. Madaleno, the boatboy. Beto, “a new diver—the best.” Beto’s wife, Carmen, sat back from the table nursing their child.

Steaming bowls of clams. The men were talking about El Peine. Old Flaco had finally seen it, after diving all his life. The comb? Later, with a dictionary, she found out that they were talking about a giant sawfish.

“
Gigante.
Big as a whale. Bigger!”

“
Mentira!
You were hallucinating. High on air.”

“Just wait. When the Italians come with their cameras, I’ll take them, not any of you.”

“Bet you can’t remember where he was.”

Flaco laughed. “
Pues
 … not exactly.”

Lobster, grilled red snapper, octopus. Rice and beans and tortillas. The child put a dish of honey on a far table to distract the flies. A long loud meal. When it was over everyone except César and Eloise went to hammocks to sleep. Beto and Carmen’s room had a curtain, the others were open.

“
Acércate a mí,
” César said to Eloise. She moved closer to him. The woman brought them papaya and coffee. She was César’s sister, Isabel; Flora was her daughter. They had come two years before when César’s wife had died. Yes, Eloise was widowed too. Three years.

“What do you want from Las Gatas?” he asked.

She didn’t know. “Quiet,” she said. He laughed.

“But you’re always quiet, no? You can dive with us, there’s no noise down there. Go rest now.”

It was dusk when she awoke. A lantern glowed in the dining room. César and the three old men were playing dominos. The old men were his mother and father, César told her. His own parents had died when he was five and they had taken him in, taken him underwater his first day. The three men had been the only divers then, free divers for oysters and clams, years before tanks or spearguns.

At the far end of the palapa Beto and Carmen talked, her tiny foot pushing their hammock. Cheyo and Juan sharpened speargun points. Away from the others Luis listened to a transistor radio. Rock and roll. You can teach me English! He invited Eloise to sit by him. The words to songs weren’t what he had imagined at all. Can’t get no satisfaction.

Beto’s baby lay naked on the table, his head cradled in César’s free hand. The baby peed and César swept the urine off the table, dried his hand in his hair.

Fog. Two white cranes. Rippling of the turtle tied near the boat. The wind flickered the lantern, lightning illuminated the pale green sea. The cranes left and it began to rain.

A young long-haired American stumbled in from the wet, shivering, out of breath. Oh God Oh God. He kept laughing. No one moved. He laid his pack and a soggy sketch pad on the table, continued to laugh.

“
Drogas?
” Flaco asked. César shrugged and left, came back with towels and cotton clothes. The young man stood, docile, while César stripped and dried him, dressed him. Madaleno brought him soup and tortillas; when he had finished César led him to a hammock and covered him. The young man fell asleep, rocking.

The compressor for air tanks was banging and clattering long before dawn. Roosters crowed, the parrot squawked on the outside pila, vultures flapped at the edge of the clearing. César and Raúl filled tanks; Madaleno raked the sand floor. Eloise washed at the pila, combed her hair in the reflection of the water, silver now. The only mirror was a broken piece nailed to a palm tree where Luis was shaving, singing to his smile. Guantanamera! He waved to Eloise. “Good morning, teasher!”

“Good morning.
Dí
‘teacher,’” she smiled.

“Teacher.”

In her room she started to put her rose shift on over her suit.

“No, don’t dress—we’re going for clams.”

César carried the heavy tanks and weights. She had the masks and flippers, a string bag.

“I’ve never been diving before.”

“You can swim, can’t you?”

“I’m a good swimmer.”

“You’re strong,” he said, looking at her body. She flushed. Strong. Her students called her mean and cold. He strapped the weights around her waist, the tank onto her back. She reddened again as he brushed her breasts, fastening the clasp. He told her the basic rules, how to come up slow, how to turn on the reserve tank. He showed her how to clean her mask with spit, adjust the regulator. The tank on her back was unbearably heavy.

“Stop, I can’t carry this.”

“You will,” he said. He put her mouthpiece in her mouth and drew her underwater.

The weight vanished. Not just the tank’s weight but her own. She was invisible. She flippered, using fins for the first time, soaring through the water. Because of the mouthpiece she couldn’t laugh out loud or shout. Mel, this is wonderful! She flew on, with César next to her.

The sun came up through the frosted glass surface of the water, a pale metallic glow. Slowly then, like stage lighting, the world underwater came into being. Fuchsia anemones, schools of blue angelfish, blue and red neons, a stingray. César showed her how to relieve the pressure as they went deeper, farther out. Near the Terascan wall he swam down to the sunny bottom where he began to jab a spike into the sand again and again. When a bubble appeared he dug out a clam and put it into the bag. She motioned for the spike, swam along poking as he gathered clams until the bag was filled. They swam back toward shore through myriads of fish and plants. Absolutely everything was new to Eloise, each creature, each sensation. A school of sardines splintered into her like crisp jets of water. Suddenly she had no air; she forgot about the reserve tank, panicked, thrashing. César caught her, held her head, pulled her air cord with the other hand.

They surfaced. The green water showed nothing of what was beneath it. By the sun she realized that they had not even been down for an hour. With no weight you lose your self as a point of reference, lose your place in time.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Thank you—we got a lot of clams.”

“What do you charge for lessons?”

“I’m not a diving teacher.”

She nodded toward Bernardo’s sign. “Lessons 500 pesos.”

“You’re not at Bernardo’s. You showed up to us.”

And that’s it, she thought later, at the breakfast table. The acceptance she felt from them wasn’t because they liked her or because she fit in. She had simply shown up, like the young man, who had since disappeared. Maybe it was because the divers were so much underwater, among such vastness. Anything was expected, of equal unimportance.

Yellow air tanks rolled and clanked in the bottom of the boat.
La Ida.
Not a name but
The Going
, the going out.

The fishermen were laughing, knotting and reknotting the rubbers of their spearguns, strapping knives onto scarred brown legs. Hiss of the tanks as César checked each one for air.

They told stories. The Peine. The killer whale. The Italian diver and the sharks. When Mario drowned, when César’s air hose broke. Even Eloise was to hear them again and again, the litany before each dive.

A manta ray played with the big boat. Madaleno veered sharply, keeping just out of its path. It flopped over high into the sky, white belly glistening. Parasite fish exploded away from it, ricocheting into the boat. Out to sea a pair of deep green turtles were mating in the waves. They stayed locked, rocked dreamily on and on, blinking sometimes in the glare.

Madaleno anchored in the north part of the bay, away from the rocks. Fins, masks, weights, tanks on. They sat in a circle on the rim of the boat. Flaco and Ramón went back first. They just fell back and disappeared. Then Raúl and Cheyo, Beto and Luis. César saw that Eloise was afraid. The waves were high, navy blue. With a grin he shoved her off the boat. Cold. A flash of blue sky and then a whole new translucent sky. Reality of the boat and anchor line. Deeper, colder. Go slow, he motioned.

A suspension of time. A multiplicity of time because of the gradations of light and dark, of cold and warm. Down past layers, strata, each with a distinct hierarchy of coexisting plants and fish. Nights and days, winters and summers. Near the bottom it is warm, sunny, a Montana meadow years ago. Moray eels bared their fangs. Flaco showed her what to look for. The glimpse of a blue lobster feeler. Wait—watch for the morays. The divers floated in and out of the crevasses like dancers in a dream. Eloise waved to the closest men when she spotted a lobster. Occasionally a huge lora or pargo would glide past and one of the divers would shoot it. A flash of blood. Shimmer of silver as it slid onto the rope line.