Under One Sky

Chapter 39

39

NOVEMBER 2018, XALAPA, MEXICO

In a private room on the sixth floor of the Hospital ángeles, Hector sits in a wooden chair, leaning stiffly on low rectangular armrests. He has sat in this chair for too long now and still can’t find a comfortable position. His forearm bends and slightly bulges. On his bicep is the tattoo of a hand with elegant fingers mid click, a flame igniting from the index finger at the top. Hector had the tattoo done years ago, after he stopped working in Jugo’s California, to remind him of the brilliant ideas and decisions he is capable of making: choosing the newspaper over shady deliveries; deciding to further his education and go to university; to stay in the back of the car when he’d probably been tempted to sit alongside his mother up front. Now he can add to his mental list: quitting drinking and smoking to be a better husband; sending samples of his drawings to the children’s author in Mexico City; shelving his dreams of running away to Europe to answer his phone and rescue Pilar.

Cramped into the low wooden chair for another day, the clicking fingers don’t make him feel triumphant; instead, he is empty, void of good ideas. His creative mind feels barren; his body is a tired shell. He pulls his military cap down over his eyes and reads The Psychopath Test , hoping to fill in the blanks of his brain, waiting for Pilar to wake from an induced coma. Tubes and wires weave in and out of his wife, connecting her to machines, where monotonous beeps punctuate every line that Hector reads, disturbing him so that all he can think of is death.

Are you coming?

Hector’s parents died on the Day of the Dead, a day on which they were out honouring lives lost: Victor’s mother Maria, Lupe’s grandfather in Monterrey, their friend Ariel, who they had watched unravel to brain cancer in the Hospital ángeles earlier that autumn. That Day of the Dead was a sombre celebration for Victor and Lupe Herrera, raw from the loss of their friend; excited to be expecting another baby – if it was a boy they would have called him Ariel. They’d taken a basket of pan de muertos to the festival in Ariel’s home village of Las Vigas, an hour down the road. They ate tamales and corn on the cob. Hector remembers tiny flashes of it. A large bottle of fizzy orange pop left with the pan de muertos at Ariel’s family home. The smell of tamales . How a thick rain cloud made night-time come early, and soaked the colourful cut-out papel picado hanging across the cobbled streets of the village. The sudden jerk as their Beetle skidded off the bend and tumbled over itself like the drum of a washing machine, down into the ravine.

This year, Day of the Dead came and went while Hector was waiting for Pilar. Alejandro brought him pozole in a flask; they drank a tequila shot each to the memory of his parents, of his unborn brother, of Abuela. Pilar didn’t die, but she didn’t wake up either. Doctors thought she was too weak to wake up for now; she had stopped breathing for a little while, in the time it took Hector to find her, and they didn’t know what her brain would be like. So they waited. Still, Hector waits. For his family. For his future.

Every few minutes, tangled in another line of his book, Hector looks up to see if anything has changed. Whether Pilar’s mouth moved, or an eyelid flickered. But still she lies, as she has for the past sixteen days and sixteen nights. All the time and all the coffee Alejandro brings Hector, and all the space for reflection doesn’t change how he feels in the pit of his hollow stomach: he desperately wants Pilar to wake up. This isn’t the girl he fell in love with.

Hector met Pilar more than six years ago, when she walked into the orphanage under the weight of a ring-bound folder and a pile of books. Hector had popped in to see Sister Miriam, Sister Juana, Sister Virginia and the kids during his lunch break from the newspaper, as Sister Miriam had asked him to put up a shelf. Hector was a handy man to have nearby. Many of the past inhabitants of the Villa Infantil never came back to see the women who had brought them up. Benny never bothered to help out, but Hector always loved to drop in, to see the children who were staying. The first thing he noticed about the birdlike girl with the red lips and the pencil skirt was her accent. She wasn’t from round here, and Hector was instantly hooked.

Always the foreign girl, always the extranjera.

He could hear Ricky’s words. He could see Benny’s contemptuous face, but he couldn’t help it.

‘ Gallega? ’ he said, laughing at her Iberian lisp.

‘Yes,’ Pilar said, trying not to blush as she rolled her eyes at him.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘I’m here to meet the children who’ll be joining us for the new term. Is Sister Miriam available?’

‘Not here here. What are you doing in Mexico? ’

‘Why not Mexico?’ she said with a sassy smile. She was the sexiest schoolteacher Hector had ever seen, way cuter than the teacher he had when Sister Miriam used to drop him and Benny and the other children at school. There were fewer children at the orphanage back then, and the sisters did the school run themselves. But Pilar was visiting for her first transition meeting, and there were eight children starting Primaria that September.

‘Ahhhh, you must be Miss Cabrera, do come in,’ said Sister Miriam from behind her tiny wire-frame glasses.

‘Your caretaker was just letting me in,’ Pilar said with a lisp as she looked at Hector’s soft muscular arms in his faded T-shirt.

‘Hectorcito? He’s not the caretaker, he’s an old boy, still comes to help us out.’

‘I’ll get the broom,’ Hector said with a playful smile, and Pilar was struck by his face. He was the most handsome man she had seen since arriving in the country two weeks ago.

Soon Hector was sketching cartoons of SupaPila and sending them to school with the children. ‘Make sure Miss Cabrera gets this!’ he’d say, while giving them a little circular disc of De La Rosa marzipan for their efforts.

A cautious double knock taps the door and Hector turns with a start.

‘Come in!’

The door opens unsteadily and Xochitl peers through it. Her face is as round and flat as the moon and her long black eyes are separated by a small straight nose. Her lips are a deep shade of oxblood; her sombre beauty is accentuated by sadness.

Hector stands and removes his cap. ‘You took your time.’

Xochitl walks into the room and puts her hands to her face. She’s horrified to see her friend, so tiny and lifeless, lying on the bed; tubes going in and coming out of everywhere, so it seems. She gasps and leans on the bar of Pilar’s hospital bed for support, then turns to Hector with solemn eyes.

‘Hector, I was scared.’

Hector thinks of how scared he’s been feeling. Of Pilar not waking up; of never meeting Cecilie.

‘Scared of what?’

‘What they’d do to me. What my parents would think.’

Hector gives Xochitl a dismissive glance and turns the corner on the page of his book and shuts it, launching it onto the chair.

He turns back to see the depth of Xochitl’s sadness and softens.

‘They won’t do anything, Xochi, they don’t care about you.’ He motions to Pilar. ‘They don’t care about her. They’re too busy involved in all their shit to think about this… this… inconvenience. ’

‘Hector, I’m sorry I left her that night, I don’t know what I was thinking going off like that, that behaviour isn’t me. And now… look at her! Is she gonna be OK?’

A soft moon crumples and a tear runs down her face. Hector walks over and holds Xochitl tight. She sobs into the curve of his arm, and the inked flame on his bicep warms her forehead.

‘Shhhhh, it’s OK,’ Hector says, not sure if things ever will be again.

‘I’m so, so sorry,’ she says, sobbing.

‘Shhhhh, don’t worry. That shit isn’t you, Xochi. Get out now while you can. You’re better than this.’

‘Oh, Hector, I thought you’d be mad at me.’ She wipes tears and make-up from under her eyes as she pulls back, leaving snot on Hector’s khaki T-shirt.

‘I’m not mad at you. I’m not even mad at her any more. I just want her to wake up.’