"No. Seeing somebody, but not that serious. Definitely not married. He was once, awhile back, for a year or two, I think. No kids. He didn't tell you?"
"I never asked."
"Her name was Cissie. She didn't deserve him." Emelina peeled off her Dallas Cowboys sweatshirt (actually John Tucker's). It was cave temperature down there, only 55 degrees but much warmer than outside, where it was predicted to drop below freezing that night. A woman near us was wearing a mink coat.
"I wasn't about to leave it in the car," she said to us, without provocation.
Loyd had never mentioned even a large personal fact like a previous marriage, whereas this woman in mink felt compelled to explain herself to strangers. That's how it is: some people are content to wait till you ask, while others jump right in with the whole story. It must have to do with discomfort. Once while I was waiting to file off an airplane, a grandmother came down the aisle carrying a doll in one arm and a little boy in the other, and she actually took the time to explain to us all as she passed, "The doll is his sister's, she's up ahead." I could relate to the urge. I remembered all my tall tales to strangers on buses. I was explaining in my own way; making things up so there would be no discussion of what I was really.
At last our guide spoke some encouraging words and the little crowd followed him down into the cave. As he walked he told us about an outlaw who'd ducked in her to hide his loot, back in the days of Jesse James, and apparently had never come out. This was meant to give us a thrill of fear, but it seemed more likely that there was a back door somewhere and the bad guy got away with the money. That's how things go. I still believe Adolf Hitler is living in the South Pacific somewhere with sanded-off fingerprints and a new face, lying on a beach drinking mai-tais.
Emelina hadn't seen a cave before and was very impressed. There were delicate stalactites shaped like soda straws, and heavy, hooded stalagmites looming up from the cave floor. She kept pointing out formations that reminded her of a penis.
"You've only been away from home three days," I whispered.
"I didn't say it looked like J.T.'s," she whispered back.
The sound of trickling water was everywhere, even over our heads. I shivered to think how many tons of rock and dirt were up there above us. I'd forgotten that caves were not my favorite thing.
The highlight of the tour was the Drapery Room, which was admittedly impressive in size. The guide pointed with his flashlight to various formations, which had names like Chief Cochise and The Drapes. The walls and ceiling glittered with crystallized moisture.
Then, for just a minute-they always have to do this-he turned off the lights. The darkness was absolute. I grabbed for Emelina's arm as the ceilings and walls came rushing up to my face. I felt choked by my own tongue. As I held on to Emelina and waited for the lights to come back on, I breathed slowly and tried to visualize the size of the room, the distance between myself and the roof that I knew was there. Instead I saw random images that didn't help: Emelina collecting the little fast-food cars for her boys; the man in the cafe who'd suggested I marry him. And then while we all still waited I understood that the terror of my recurring dream was not about losing just vision, but the whole of myself, whatever that was. What you lose in blindness is the space around you, the place where you are, and without that you might not exist. You could be nowhere at all.
Chapter 18
18 Ground Orientation
Loyd and I were going to spend Christmas at Santa Rosalia Pueblo. Snow fell steadily as we drove north through the Apache reservation. It enclosed translucent desert trees in spherical white envelopes, giving them form and substance. It was surprising to look out over a landscape that normally seemed empty, and see a forest.
When I closed my eyes I saw papier-mache peacocks. I'd been helping out on the pinata assembly lines. I'd had nightmares again and wasn't sleeping well; I figured I could be useful. We didn't turn out five hundred pinatas in ten days-that was a little ambitious-but we passed the halfway mark. The last fifty or so were the best by folk-art standards. By then we'd already used up every scrap of blue crepe paper from the attics and bureau drawers of Grace, and so had to be enterprising. Some women cut up denim jeans. Mrs. Nunez made peacock wings out of the indigo-colored flyleaves of all twelve volumes of the Compton's Children's Encyclopedia. To be sure, there were no two alike.
I also sweat blood over my mimeographed broadside. I wasn't a writer except by default. Viola refused to help, saying I was the one that went to college so quit whining. I tried to include all the things that made Grace what it was: the sisters coming over with their peacocks; their blue-eyed descendants planting an Eden of orchards in the idyllic days before Black Mountain; the confetti-colored houses and stairstep streets-everything that would be lost to a poisoned river. All in one page. Viola wouldn't let me go longer, claiming nobody would read it. There was some argument over whether to put the note inside the pinata, like a message in a bottle. I said city people didn't buy art just to crack it open; I was respected as an expert on city people. So my modest History of Grace was rolled, bound in ribbon like a diploma, and inserted into each peacock's beak.