Epilogue : Marie
How did the end surprise you both? How did it form, how did it coalesce? What decided that you should live, that you should be given a second chance?
Escape was never questioned; it happened, sooner or later, though you cannot tell which. There are numbers on your wrist, which certainly would point to later, but no scars cement the theory. It is immaterial, the exact details. You have learned he will only let you remember so much anyway. If you try to cross the boundaries, there is a barrier, a wall within your mind. It takes the form of his presence (so much stronger now, another point of suspicion. You imagine this is the reason you have no scars; he stole them all.) It takes the sound of his voice.
/Let it go, Marie. It's over. We have other lives to live now./
Yes, you would say, but what about your old lives? What if you forget them? Does it mean they never existed, that you never knew the people involved? You will always have tomorrow; a whole string of them piled end to end. It's yesterday that's in constant jeopardy. Endangered.
All of your new memories are south of the border.
You remember the back room of an old stucco church that smelled of chickens and stale incense. Twenty miles outside of Mexico City, or maybe thirty. A new pink sundress is involved, as is an exchange of words followed by the kissing of the bride. The rings come later; at that point he can't afford them. It took everything he had just to get you both out of the States.
You remember the honeymoon: three hours in a dusty motel room. Afternoon heat sliding through the metal fan blades, quivering waves of light above the curve of the sheets. Outside it is one hundred and twenty degrees in the shade. A radio plays to hide the rattle of the fan and a woman sings in Spanish, which neither of you understand. Not that it matters; you aren't listening to the music anyway.
You lie on your back beside him, your skin sticks to the sheets and to the mattress as you hand him another piece of ice. Passing it between your palm (bare) and his (bare) until a second skin of moisture forms. Through this, you are allowed touch. In this manner you share an entire bucket of ice, letting the chips melt on your foreheads, down your necks, across your mouths.
The room is golden in the sun. He is golden in the sun. You smile.
The metal fan blades spin circles in the stagnant air and the light runs off the sides of the bed into shadow and for the first time you can remember, he smiles back.
There are other memories, less involved. The three months, five months, nine months as nomads, wandering from town to town, eventually from country to country. A slow but steady draw to the south that stopped, at last, in a three room flat in Panama City. The water tastes of iron and the cockroaches are the size of your hand but there is no need to look over your shoulders. No need to wonder if they will catch up with you, somehow. That was always a fear, even in Mexico; it was too close.
In the two months after you move into the flat, other signs of normalcy appear. Jobs surface, some more legal than others, but he isn't in a place to choose and you aren't in a place to complain about his methods of provision. After all, it takes money to live, and there will be additional expenses in the near future: your stomach has begun to swell, and every so often something inside it kicks.
A baby girl, or at least that's what the old woman who lives across the hall claims. She hands you packets of dried herbs to put under your pillow (to ward away the spirits) and woven charms to hang in your window (to bless the ancestors) and a crucifix to nail by your door (to garner the aid of the Holy Mother.)
You draw the line when she wants to rub corn whiskey on your womb. Your Spanish may have improved but your enthusiasm for the local customs has not.
(But it will give the nina strength,) she says, bone arms waving energetically from the folds of her shawls. (Strength and good lungs.)
(If she takes after her father, she'll be strong enough without whiskey. Ah, he is a strong one, your hombre.
If I were younger, and still had all my teeth, I would give you a run for that one. Believe it or not, I was beautiful too once. A very long time ago, before the children widened my hips. You must watch the hips, after the birth. They will want to swell. But there are charms to prevent it. You would like them?)
(I would.)
(Ah, good. Now you must drink this tea. It has a very strong herb in it and will take away the aching of the back.)
In a way she is a fairy godmother-- pesky and a nuisance and persistently underfoot but always bearing some sort of redeeming gift. The tea, after all, does make your back ache less.
And so time continues to go by, always in the present, always moving to tomorrow. The past is over, he says, let it go.
But you can't, not entirely. There are still afternoons when you wonder what happened to the others, the man and woman and child. It is easiest to believe that they made it out, just as you have, that somewhere Jean is having the same trouble making tortilla shells as you are, that Scott is as frustrated as Logan at the newspapers that are entirely en espanol. It is simple to build for them an entire life, a decidedly happy ending.
Although there are other ends to the story, not so picturesque.
There is no use wasting time between the two, because you will never know for sure. You will never see them again, even if you sometimes think you spot one of them in a crowded market. You will never be able to ask (did you make it?) because if they did then they will have disappeared. Just like you, they will have packed up their old lives and stacked them on a shelf. They will have moved on, but not completely. At times, at stray moments, they will catch themselves wondering the same things about you. They will think you are alive, or they will think you are dead. It is that simple.
In the end, you decide you do not need the truth. And you're not looking for a happy ending. Happiness will never be there, not in completion, there will always be things like pain and hard days, and nightmares. The numbers on your wrist, for instance, will not go away nor do you really want them to. You want proof, of some sort, that you have survived. You want something to tell the children.
And what will you tell them? How much, how little? Not all of it, certainly. Some things are meant to be buried, kept secret, taken out only between you and your husband and even then very quietly.
You will tell them this--
The point of this story, of any story, is not the ending but the journey. It is the people you meet, those you hate and those you fear and those you love. It's the love that will get you through, it always has before. Don't worry, you will say, if it seems to disappear because it is only in hiding. It can be found again, by looking. Or by opening your eyes to see what is already there, what you have forgotten.
Yes, you will tell them this.
Even though you do not know how your story ends, you are sure you will find out eventually. You are sure, as well, that you will never be alone, not anymore. You believe it; he has promised.
And what more do you need? You know enough to live. No more is needed, no more is asked.
The End
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