Masses

FICTION

by Mary Luna

Movement I

          Natalia takes the bus from Guanajuato back to Mexico City. From her window, she waves down to her daughter wrapped around her mother’s hip. Soon her daughter will be too big to be carried this way, her mother too old to carry her daughter this way—and Natalia will be away for most of it. As she watches her daughter’s teary eyes she feels guilt, but she knows in two weeks she won’t want to come home. She waves until mother and daughter become small figures, indistinguishable in the background. As the bus drives through the tunnel out of the city, she feels a pressure in her chest lift.
          Her father wants her to move back to Guanajuato. You decided to open your legs and become a mother, he says. What are you going to tell your daughter? That you chose to read some books instead of being a mother? That you chose to still act like a teenager? She wants to tell him that if it had been up to her, she would have had what was then an intrusion inside of her taken out. The bus travels up the mountain. From above she sees the yellow basilica, buoyant and bright, like a colonial sun on sandstone. 
          The bus descends. She looks out the window at the barren landscape, the orange landscape, where the mountains meet the sky. The cacti sprouting upward. She thinks about Rafael. Guilt is replaced with resentment. He still hasn’t told his family she has a daughter. Just say she’s your sister, he tells her. No one is going to take your work seriously if they know you have a daughter. They’ll ask you to cook at meetings. What he didn’t say was that his family would never accept her; his parents would look down on her even more if they knew she had a daughter—a stain on their son’s predetermined life. Already they refer to her as Rafael’s girlfriend from the provinces, as if Guanajuato was the campo. 
          A man a few seats in front of her coughs and continues to cough until it sounds like he has no more breath to give. He stands up to use the bathroom at the back of the bus. When he comes back his cough subsides; he settles down. The sun is becoming stronger; it reflects off her face so that she has to move closer to her neighbor to avoid being burnt. On the bus window, she sees the outline of a heart someone must have drawn in the morning dew. The bus gets on the highway that will take them all the way to DF. Her legs feel stiff, so she walks to the back of the bus to have something to do. Almost every passenger she passes has their eyes closed. On the bathroom door, she sees small dots of blood. She walks back to her seat. The bus gains a steady rhythm, a lulling silence. Her head falls heavy, gestures toward the sun for sleep.

          When she steps off the bus, she feels lightheaded from sitting too long. It takes a few seconds to locate herself in relation to the parking lot. She looks at her watch. It’s only noon. She adjusts her velvet miniskirt and walks to find a car. She should be going to Roma but she tells the driver Condesa. She prepares for the taxi driver, a small brown man, to make small talk with her. To ask her about where she’s from, if she’s a student, to say something about Diaz Ordaz. Instead, he says something about this week’s rain, the traffic up and down Reforma, and plays Tchaikovsky from the cassette. 
          The sunlight glistens off the Angel of Independence, glistens off the trees with blooming white flowers, glistens off the metal benches cleaned by yesterday’s rain and off the windshield so that she has to squint to see outside. She missed this drive, these tall buildings and the feeling of purpose, the city heavy under the spell of anticipation and languor, as if summer never ended. At the traffic light, there is a group of schoolchildren, in brown tweed, crossing the street to have lunch in Chapultepec. In front of the park, there’s a food vendor selling a torta to a woman and a small blonde girl. The vendor looks like he could be her age. The blonde girl drops her sandwich and cries. The fourth symphony plays as the car drives away. 
          She waits in front of the pink house before Enrique comes to open the door. She can hear his small dog barking. When he opens the door, he lets her in without saying a word. The small white dog jumps on her legs, scratching on her leather boots, begging to be picked up. She follows him up the stairs. When they get to the top, he calls out for his housekeeper, who’s making some sort of soup, to take out the dog. This is his code to tell her to leave the house for the afternoon. The apartment, with its sparse furniture, feels colder than usual. The housekeeper comes over to Natalia and without acknowledging her picks up the dog to leave. Only the dog talks to her, yells at her.
          He takes out two beers from the small fridge. Sorry, they’re still warm, he says. His hair is longer and curlier than just two weeks ago. His eyes are red. His red eyes mean he hasn’t been sleeping, mean he’s in a sensitive mood. She realizes this beer is the only drink she’s had all day. I just got back from Guanajuato, she tells him. She looks over to the living room. There are open books and pages scattered on the floor and on the coffee table. What are you writing? she asks. I’m not writing anything. I’m editing the book, he responds. He takes a sip from his own beer and looks at her and for the first time his gaze softens. He smiles. His smile undoes her. 
‍ ‍I’ve been writing, she tells him. 
‍ ‍Oh, yeah? How’s that?
          He drinks half his beer in one swig and moves to sit down on the couch. His jeans hang loose so that he steps on them as he walks. His movements remind her of too large limbs on a growing pup.
‍ ‍I’ve been writing about the movement. The students, the deaths. 
‍ ‍But what about it?
‍ ‍It’s my account.
‍ ‍Sounds like journalism, he says. 
          She knows he says this as a way of saying, no I will not read whatever derivative shit you’ve written. She hates him. She wants him to embrace her.
‍ ‍What are you doing anyway, over there at that university?
‍ ‍All the other professors support the students. 
‍ ‍I support the students. I just think you’re all children reading Che and acting like you don’t know what country you live in. Next you’re going to start reciting a Celaya poem at me. Listen, I know you think you’re fucking the next Che Guevara but I can’t talk about this. I haven’t been sleeping.
‍ ‍Rafael studies philosophy not medicine. 
‍ ‍At least the college girls wear miniskirts now. 
          He stands up to pull her onto the couch. For a moment, she thinks she sees something beyond desire in his eyes, perhaps sadness. He moves to kiss her but she averts his kiss. He smiles at her again. I don’t have to kiss you, he says in his mocking way. We don’t have to do anything. She takes off her shirt, and allows her hips to dig into his until she feels his dick get hard. That’s good, he says.
          Afterwards, when they’re naked on the couch, she catches herself feeling at peace. She knows it’s dangerous to feel this way, so she says, Are you seeing anyone? 
‍ ‍No one important.
‍ ‍A student?
‍ ‍She’s a professor. 
‍ ‍So she’s old. 
‍ ‍As old as I am.
‍ ‍Are you going to ask about your daughter? she asks feeling her cheeks blush.
          He shifts away from her. 
‍ ‍Okay. How is she? 
‍ ‍She had a cold last week. 
‍ ‍Is she better?
‍ ‍Yes.
‍ ‍Good. He begins to put his pants on. You want another beer?
‍ ‍No, I should get going, she says and puts her shirt back on. She smooths out her skirt before stepping out the door. You can visit me with the girl, he says as she’s shutting the door.

          Before taking a taxi to see Rafael, she walks through Parque Mexico. She loves how quiet Condesa is, the French-style houses, the art deco. She would never admit this but often, after seeing Enrique, she imagines herself one day living with him, or living near him, working at the university. He’ll write his books about sad, alcoholic men with sad, alcoholic fathers, and she’ll write poetry about wanting attention from sad, alcoholic men and violence and sex and drugs. She’ll take her daughter to the park, walk hand in hand around the pond and watch miniature sailboats ebb and flow where the green water meets the dirt. 

Movement II

          Rafael lives in a two-bedroom apartment his parents pay for. Natalia lives there too but she likes to pretend she only visits. She keeps a toothbrush at his place and a toothbrush with one of her girlfriends who lets her rent out a room for dirt cheap, though she hasn’t been back to that room since late summer. Outside Rafael’s front door hangs a banner that reads: Down with mummies! Don’t Shoot Soldier: You’re One of the People Too. She can hear people inside and music she’s never heard before. When she opens the door, she sees the usuals, Chucho, Pepe, and Virginia, scattered throughout the small living room and kitchen. What is this? she yells through the music. 
‍ ‍Thai rock and roll, Chucho yells back. Chucho, like her, wants to be a writer. His claim to fame around town was that his father was Trotsky’s friend and neighbor before he died. Chucho claims his father was the last person to see him before his death, but no one believes that.
          She sets her bag down. 
          Rafael comes out of his room. They make eye contact, and he motions to come back into his room. She moves toward him. She doesn’t care if everyone else thinks they’re about to have sex. He closes the door behind her. 
‍ ‍My dad wants to send me to Spain, he says after they kiss hello. His room stinks of cigarette smoke.
‍ ‍What are you talking about? 
‍ ‍He got word there’s a file on me. 
‍ ‍There’s a file on everyone. Why does that matter? 
‍ ‍I don’t know. I’m just telling you the conversation I had an hour ago.
‍ ‍And are you going? 
‍ ‍No. I don’t know. We’ll see. It would just be for the rest of the fall. I would come back before the New Year. 
          There’s a long pause. She refuses to say anything.
‍ ‍You could come with me, he says.
‍ ‍I’m not going to Spain. 
‍ ‍But if you wanted to. 
          Here’s what she’d been waiting all summer and fall for. You’re not worthy, she thinks and she wants to tell him that all rich kids are the same, but instead, she kisses him. She wants to call him a pussy. Instead, she grabs his cock. He hugs her tight and he moves her to the bed, and she worries that he can smell Enrique’s body on her but if he did, would it matter?
‍ ‍I don’t have a Spanish passport, she says.
‍ ‍It’s okay. They like Mexicans there. Especially Mexican girls.
          He kisses her neck. 
‍ ‍But we can’t leave this, he says after she takes her shirt off. They need us.
          She wants to tell him that no one in the movement needs a rich half Spaniard but she knows that’s unfair. That he, like their friends outside the door, would take a bullet for each other and spend days sleeping on top of each other’s filth and blood. 
‍ ‍Paco got picked up last night, he says. Paco is Rafael’s younger brother. He studies horticulture. Sometimes when he stays over at Rafael’s apartment, he wakes up early to make chilaquiles for everyone. 
‍ ‍What happened?
‍ ‍He went out for a pack of cigarettes and never came back. They let him go this morning after beating the shit out of him. 
‍ ‍But what did he do? 
‍ ‍What kind of question is that? He’s young. They don’t need more motive than that.
          She nods.
‍ ‍How were your folks? he asks her. 
‍ ‍The same as always. They want me to move back there. 
‍ ‍And the girl?
          The men in her life never call her daughter by her name.
‍ ‍She misses me. 
‍ ‍I missed you.
          She shifts from under him. She kisses him again, a deep kiss, a real kiss. Natalia, Natalia, he says into her ear. 

          Out in the living room there’s a debate going on about which girl in the political science department is prettier. El Pepe is on the couch telling everyone that he’ll hurt them if any of them try to sleep with his sister, one of the girls in the political science department, but no one takes him seriously; everyone knows his sister is having an affair with a female professor in the art history department. The Thai rock and roll tape stops playing and the student radio turns on. They are recounting the story of a student’s death. The official report was that he had slipped in the shower and died. That he already had a bad heart. In reality the kid died from being clubbed by riot police and a bad blow to his head. All the cigarette smoke stings her eyes. She opens one of the windows and feels the warm, fresh air. 
‍ ‍Natalia, where have you been? Pepe asks her.
‍ ‍Guanajuato. 
‍ ‍My uncle has a house there. 
‍ ‍I know. You tell me every time. 
          She lights a cigarette by the window and takes out a small notebook from her bag. She writes down the news from the student radio. The military still occupies the schools. A Molotov cocktail was thrown at the business school. A history professor published an article in support of the students. A professor in the business school has connections to the Ordaz government. If you or your comrades need food, go to the market and the farmers will hand out free food. It’s the first of October. 
‍ ‍What are you writing? Pepe asks. You just came back, you can put the pen and paper away. 
‍ ‍She’s probably writing the best line of poetry you’ve ever heard, you imbecile, Rafael says.
          Someone starts talking about what they should bring to tomorrow’s rally. 
‍ ‍I’ll pass out first aid kits, Virginia, Pepe’s girlfriend, says.
          At the start of all this, Virginia used to talk incessantly about bandaging a gunshot, her hands and dress covered in blood. Now she never does because students’ blood runs across the city. In a few months, she’s gotten a better education on first response victims than she would have had the university been open. There was one day when Natalia and Rafael were alone in the apartment and heard a knock followed by a moan. They opened the door to find Pepe and Virginia barely holding a half-conscious boy who couldn’t have been older than eighteen. Natalia and Rafael helped lay his body on the kitchen floor. The boy had pissed his pants and was calling out something no one could understand. The blood ran from his head onto the white tile; it seemed like the brightest red she had ever seen. 
          Chucho lights a joint and passes it around. 
‍ ‍I met with a few comrades at the plaza. There’s gonna be thousands and thousands of students. Every student in the city is coming. Every person who’s tired of this country’s bullshit. 
‍ ‍They canceled the march at Santo Tomas Campus. They don’t want to cause too much trouble, Pepe says.
‍ ‍They’re cowards.
‍ ‍Maybe they just don’t want to have the life beat out of them, Natalia says.
‍ ‍Like I said, they’re cowards, Chucho replies. 
          The room grows quiet for a moment. Thai rock and roll comes back on. Everyone is trying to do their best to appear relaxed. She thinks about Spain. She thinks about her daughter, her small body on a chair with arms raised toward her mother. 

          That night Natalia and Rafael drive across the city. He didn’t tell her who they were picking up or why they needed to be picked up. They drive south toward the university. For a moment, Natalia fears that they’re driving to UNAM to go bother the guards occupying the buildings, to go get shot and have her parents be told an absurd story, like the one they said about the high schooler shot in front of the National Palace—he ate a bad sandwich that day. They drive close enough to the university that she can see the central library with its mural representing all of Mexico’s past and future. The car moves away from the university, toward the airport. The streets are quiet only for the occasional taxi driving back from the airport. Here, the city feels flat and small; it’s the point of DF where life either closes in or expands outward depending on which side of the road you’re driving. 
‍ ‍Where the hell are we driving to? she finally asks him.
‍ ‍We’re picking someone up. 
          “Esta tarde vi llover” plays on the radio. Natalia whispers it to herself. Rafael taps his fingers on the steering wheel. 
‍ ‍Yo no sé cuánto me quieres
‍ ‍Si me extrañas o me engañas
‍ ‍Solo sé que vi llover, vi gente correr
‍ ‍Y no estabas tú
          They park in an abandoned lot. Rafael pulls out a cigarette. 
‍ ‍Would you really want me to go to Spain with you? she asks him. 
‍ ‍Of course. Would you leave the girl? 
‍ ‍I don’t know. 
‍ ‍You could bring her with you. 
‍ ‍No. Not that. Don’t act like you want to be a father at twenty. 
          He doesn’t say anything. He goes back to tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. The more time passes, the faster he taps on the wheel.
          From a distance, Natalia sees a figure of a man approaching her. His long, shaggy hair. The closer he gets the more rundown he looks, until he’s so close under the streetlight that she sees that the stains on his wrinkled shirt are dried blood, and the figure is Paco. Paco opens the door and lies down in the back seat. 
‍ ‍Francisco, Rafael says looking in the back mirror. She’s never heard Rafael call him by his full name. Do we need to ask Virginia to bandage you up? he asks. 
‍ ‍I’m fine. I need a shower and a cigarette, Paco says. Good to see you Natalia. He squeezes her shoulder and she squeezes his hand. They drive back in silence. Natalia stares at the lights in the city as if they were the stars.
          When they get back to the apartment, Natalia showers while Rafael and Paco talk about the arrest, the police, and the march tomorrow. As she dries her hair, she hears Rafael mentioning their father, how he wants to get both brothers out of Mexico, at least for a short while. She hears Paco call their father an idiot. That night Paco sleeps naked on the couch. Natalia and Rafael have sex. He finishes quickly, and she caresses his hair until he rolls over to softly snore.
          All of them wake up past noon the next morning. Paco makes coffee and eggs for all three of them. He asks Natalia how her writing is going and to send him some. He looks beat up but not half dead like he did the night before. You can read something if I ever write something good, she tells him. 
‍ ‍I think everything you write is good. One day I’ll get to say I knew the most famous Mexican writer, Natalia Rodriguez. 
          She thinks about Enrique calling her a journalist. He’s always treated her work with criticism and detachment. She used to think it was because he was pushing her to become a better writer; now, she suspects contempt. 
‍ ‍We’re meeting here then we’re walking to Tlatelolco, Rafael says. 

Movement III

          They walk fast, becoming more and more intoxicated with revolutionary spirit the closer they get to Tlatelolco square; on each block there are new waves of comrades, shouting and greeting each other, and the buildings grow taller. They walk through Chapultepec. Through the dahlias and cempaxochitl and the stone statue of a Roman god and old and young men making treats for children. She imagines how different she would have turned out had she been raised in this city and gone to preparatory school with the rest of her classmates. Students have filled the streets with chants they had all become too familiar with these past months. On different sides of the streets she hears different chants coming from different megaphones.
          MEXICO FREE-DOOM-MEXICO-FREEDOM-MEXICO-FREEDOM
          Down Reforma, Natalia sees different groups of students from various colleges carrying banners that read Freedom for political prisoners! The air feels crisp outside and the sun is at its peak, making it a perfect autumn day. There are groups of railway workers marching alongside the students and bystanders watching out in their balconies watching and cheering from above. Behind her, there’s a group of college girls chanting. 
          Tell me, tell me, Gustavo,                                          Che-Che-Guevara- Che-Che-Che-
          Tell me, why you’re a coward,                                   Guevara-Che-Che-Che-Guevara-
          Tell me why you’ve no mother.                                 Che-Che-Che-Guevera
          Tell, Gustavo, Please tell me.
          Once in the plaza, the crowd is inviting, easy to push through. On all four sides, they are surrounded by modern apartment buildings and ancient ruins—the spirit of Mexico. Overhead she hears the sounds of helicopters. She holds Rafael’s hand and guides him and Paco and the rest toward the ancient church with the large wooden door that reminds her of the basilica in Guanajuato. There they stand beside a group of high schoolers holding a banner. There are several men wearing white gloves. Outside the church, there’s a group of children chasing each other, unaware they’re in the midst of a demonstration. Natalia watches a small boy in a checkered shirt chase a girl wearing a blue dress. She sees the boy run and laugh until he falls on a rock. There’s a woman in a floral dress with long, flowing hair passing white roses through the crowd. From a distance, she sees the riot police pushing their way in but no one pays much attention to them. All around her are sweaty young people in collared shirts and loose, beat-up jeans. She can feel the warmth of the crowd heating up the square, the danger of it. The choir of voices becomes one voice, one voice directed at Ordaz. She doesn’t know where her voice or the outline of her body stops and the crowd’s begins. She can hear the blades sound closer and closer. 
‍ ‍We need to move closer in. We can’t hear the speaker from here, Paco yells. 
          They try to move closer in but she can’t tell if she’s moving forward or backward. She looks up to take a breath and sees flares in the sky like red shooting stars in daylight. She thinks about the first time she showed her daughter a shooting star. She was in Guanajuato at her parents’ house. At midnight, she woke her daughter up and carried her up the spiral staircase onto the roof. Her parents were already there, waiting for them. They all huddled together and watched the stars pass by. Her daughter wanted to go back to bed, but what she remembered was the joy on her parents’ faces pointing up at the sky. How her father smiled widely at her the way he used to when she was a girl. Then the sound of fireworks.
‍ ‍Get down, Paco says.
          A white-gloved man takes out a pistol. Natalia sees the pistol point straight at Rafael. One by one the men with white gloves turn against the crowd. The man fires his gun. The moment slows, the ringing in her ears becomes like a screech tearing down her eardrum. For that moment she fears looking at Rafael’s face and seeing that he has no face. When she does, his face is still there shouting something at her she can’t quite understand.
‍ ‍Run, he says. Fucking run, he screams. She allows herself to be led by Rafael. Around them she sees soldiers closing farther in. Men and women falling. She sees Pepe run toward them, waving to turn the other direction. They’ve blocked our exit, we have to run to the ruins. The ruins in front of the ancient church, her church in Guanajuato, her daughter snuggled against her mother. She sees an old man fall to his knees with a bullet-sized hole in the middle of his forehead. Then the screams, screams from all sides, the choir now screams at the soldiers to stop, the screams that ask where their brother is, begging their brother not to let go of their hand. This is what hell must be, she thinks. Next to her a man still clutching on to a pamphlet screams at a white-gloved man, screams at the sky and the buildings that surround them. Enough, he says, enough, we say. When is it going to be enough, enough, enough, parra, parra, parra.
          Before they reach the church, Rafael stops running. 
‍ ‍Where’s Paco? Where’s Paco?
          She doesn’t want to look for Paco; she wants to close her eyes. Go inside there, he says pointing to an apartment people are scrambling to run into. She wants to tell him to stay with her but she just stares and watches him run, run toward his brother. She lets herself be carried away with the crowd, toward the apartment building. She walks up the stairs. The screams are muffled with each step. She loses count of what floor she’s on. 
‍ ‍Come here, mija, come here, an old man beckons her from his doorway.
          Inside, the old green furniture reminds her of her grandparents’ living room. She sees a woman and a small girl carrying pots of water to dump out the window. From the steam coming off the pot, she realizes it’s boiling water. We’re boiling the soldiers, the woman says. She imagines the soldiers disintegrating into the ground only to become mounds of clothes and guns. A young man and woman come in through the open door. She sees blood spattered on the girl’s blouse. Natalia, the young man says. She recognizes the couple, from organizing meetings, from seeing them in each other’s arms on the lawn in front of the English building. The young man guides his girlfriend to sit on the couch. Natalia recognizes his girlfriend’s look of shock as her own. We need to stay here until the shooting stops, the young man, whose name she can’t remember, says to the older couple. The young couple speak in whispers to one another. Are you hurt? She hears the question but she doesn’t know where it comes from. She sees a phone hanging in the kitchen. She sees herself dialing a number and the ringing of the phone, the ringing that goes on and on until she can’t stomach another ring. 
‍ ‍Hello, she hears a man’s voice on the other end. Hello, who is this?
‍ ‍Enrique, is all she can manage to say. 
‍ ‍Where are you? You need to get out of there.
‍ ‍That building is on fire, she hears someone say.
‍ ‍In someone’s apartment. 
‍ ‍You stay there until it all dies down and then you come here. 
          She nods. She hears his dog’s barks in the background. 
‍ ‍Do you understand? You come here.
‍ ‍Yes. Yes, she says and hangs up. 
          From inside she can still hear the chorus of screams and the sounds of bullets and the smoke that reaches the sky. She thinks about leaving for Spain and watching Rafael laugh at his brother this morning. She feels pain from her shoes digging into her feet and a warm liquid. She takes them off to see her blood create a small puddle on the kitchen floor. Her stockings are ripped up to her thighs. She shoves her foot back in. She sits down on a living room chair. She wonders if the light outside is coming from the sun or the flames. She tries to remember the lines from a Vallejo poem. When the battle was over, And the fighter was dead, a man came toward him And said to him: “Do not die; I love you so!” But the corpse, how sad, went on dying.