The Mexican Year

“Mucous plug!”

I glance over at Nooshin, a mess of bare mosquito-bitten limbs folded into the passenger seat of the truck. Past her is the spiky emerald blur of sugarcane fields, which blanket the coast of Veracruz. In her new sunglasses is the shimmering reflection of the Gulf of Mexico. “What did you say?” I ask warily.

“Mucous plug,” she repeats brightly, waving her copy of What to Expect When You’re Expecting. “Isn’t that so weird? I have a mucous plug in my cervix!”

“That’s what I thought you said.”

Nooshin reaches over to tap the other pregnancy book, the Mexican one, adrift on the seat between us. “This book probably told me I have a mucous plug too, but…well, you know.” Bony shoulders rise and fall beneath her loose tanktop straps, a resigned shrug. “I can’t read Spanish very well. In one eye, out the other.”

“Enchufe mucoso,” I offer.

“Really?”

“Yeah. That’s the literal translation, anyway. Enchufe is plug and mucoso is mucous.”

“Enchufe mucoso,” she repeats thoughtfully, as if groping for a mnemonic. Then she goes back to her reading. Sunbeams play across the long inky cascade of her hair, across the softcover book molded to her thin thighs. She turns the pages with a delicate hand. The other is splayed across her poochy stomach, feeling the baby.

I seethe with a helpless rage. Nooshin shouldn’t have to read a goddamn book to find out what’s happening to her. She should have a female support network — her mom, her sister Nasrin, her female relatives who’ve had kids. Instead she’s hurtling down a Mexican highway in the direction of the equator, owner of half a suitcase and a mostly-empty bank account, utterly alone.

Well, except for me. And I don’t know jack shit about having a baby either.

My cellphone lights up with a familiar number. Professor Emeritus Hercules Gutierrez, my dissertation advisor — and where the Korea Textile maquiladora archive is concerned, my boss. I’ve been avoiding Hercules since Guanajuato, four weeks and 400 miles ago. Letting his calls go to voicemail. Ignoring my email inbox. Pretending he doesn’t exist.

Nooshin knows who’s calling without looking up from her book. “You’re going to have to talk to him sooner or later.”

“And I pick later. After I finish the last chapter of my dissertation. I’m going to email Hercules the whole thing, and the zip file of the archive. Then I’ll talk to him.”

“That way he won’t kill you?”

“How could he?” I grin jauntily, projecting a confidence I don’t feel. “Not only is the maquiladora archive digitized, but I’ll have the first draft of my dissertation. You know what a big fucking deal that is? It’s only been three months. Academics take longer to wipe their asses. Me, I did my fieldwork and wrote my dissertation. I’m like…the fucking Marines, that’s what I’m like. I do more in three months than most grad students do in three years.”

She flips pages, not saying anything.

“What?” I ask.

“I wish you weren’t rushing to finish it. You didn’t rush your introduction, and it reads great.”

Nooshin doesn’t have to finish the accusation — the rest of your dissertation reads like shit. Not even an accusation, really. A statement of fact. But all my ambitions to write a praiseworthy doctoral dissertation have vanished in the rearview mirror. I knocked up my research assistant, for chrissake. The equivalent of pissing on the University of California’s academic code of conduct. It’s about academic survival now, not academic greatness.

“Nick, you silly. Don’t look at me like that.” She smiles down into the pregnancy book. “You should keep your eyes on the road.”

The narrow coastal highway is a deathtrap of buzzing cars and overloaded sugarcane trucks and buses with luggage stacked on top, but I keep getting distracted by Nooshin. She’s beautiful in a whole new way. A pregnant dazzle who almost slipped away from me. My heart flutters with a potent mix of desire and panic. I’m never losing her again.

Nooshin’s face snaps forward. “Um, hey?” she says warningly. Then hoarse with alarm: “Nick, look out!”

Bad news when I refocus on the road — we’re an accident about to happen. The Explorer is bearing down on the rear of a lumbering six-axle truck, its high wooden-stake sides bulging with sugarcane. Clouds of diesel exhaust and a wall of spiky sugarcane stems are rushing at us.

I veer slightly left, hastily checking for traffic in the oncoming lane. There’s a gap disappearing into the grille of an oncoming semi. Moment of decision. Gun it around the sugarcane truck, or stomp on the brakes and wait for a safer opportunity?

I’ve been shooting gaps like this in Mexican traffic for five years, so it’s reflex to put the pedal to the metal — except this time the Explorer clanks and shudders and goes nowhere fast. The dying gasps of an engine with 140,000 very hard miles on it.

An air horn blares in staccato panic. The driver of the oncoming semi, frantically warning me off. He has too much momentum to stop in time. Too much momentum to do anything but hit us head-on. The Explorer’s clanking and shuddering and going-nowhere-fast V-8 will be slammed right through our bodies and onto the highway behind us.

Now the pedal I’m stomping is for the brakes. The brake pads are squealing like tortured ferrets, and the steering wheel is violent in my hands, and the Explorer is almost fishtailing, first toward the ditch, then back toward the center line. Beneath my bootheel I can feel the antilock mechanism pumping madly.

Our dangerous momentum bleeds into sedate tailgating. The smell of diesel fumes and burning rubber and freshly-cut sugarcane fills the cab. After a few heartbeats the semi whooshes past in the oncoming lane, air horn still blaring. A local radio station is pouring annoyance through the speakers — classic Menudo, for chrissake — but I discover I can’t turn off the stereo. I’m so stiff with panic that my hands are claws welded to the steering wheel.

Nooshin is readjusting her seatbelt across her swelling tummy, fitting our kid into the angle made by the lap and shoulder straps. “See what happens when you rush?” she says with mild reproach, and goes back to her book.

The world is becoming water again in a heavy and unrelenting deluge. The 18-hole golf course designed by Jack Nicklaus is turning into 18 floodplains, with sand traps like miniature lakes. Waves of rain lap across empty tennis courts. The outdoor pool is overflowing onto its concrete apron and threatening rows of patio chairs. But somehow I prefer the resort this way — denuded of people, sinking into a jungle sea. These watery vistas fill my head with fantasies. I see a place where schools of fish jet across the fairways, where mermaids beach themselves on the tennis courts, where Atlantis sleeps in the swimming pool.

Humanity has retreated into the great indoors. Many guests are enjoying the spa and its various treatments, like “hydro-active mineral salt scrubs” and “aromatherapy contour masques”, which I read about on a placard outside the smoked-glass entryway. Other guests are torturing themselves in front of mirrors in the gym, or doing yoga with some kind of celebrity instructor named Vikram, or sitting in semi-darkness in the soundproofed meditation room. And there’s always the restaurants — three of them — with double-digit entrees and triple-digit wines, and the disco that pulses from noon until dawn, seven days a week.

I’m alone in the open-air tiki bar next to the tennis courts, surrounded by four walls of rain sheeting off the rectangular pole roof. The wind is tossing plastic chairs around and misting me with droplets. I sit with one bare foot tucked underneath me, the other disappearing into the rising water. First my toes were underwater, now my arch. Suddenly I’m filled with apprehension. Leeches! I hastily fold my legs Indian-style in the chair.

The pose creates an uncomfortably pleasant wind tunnel, right under my robe and up my thighs. I shift the terrycloth folds of a men’s size XXL monogrammed with the PUJAL RESORT AND SPA logo. Blame it on my freakish height — their women’s robes don’t even reach to my butt. Meanwhile the t-shirt and jeans and hiphuggers I’ve been wearing for the last two weeks are drip-drying after I handwashed them in the bathroom sink. Tomorrow I’ll have clothes again.

Tomorrow. The word is a chilling reminder of my poverty. It costs $250 a night to stay here — and that’s for the cheapest room at the resort! Every tomorrow costs me 1/4 of what I make in a month as Nick’s research assistant. I can’t afford to linger in Pujal. The realization is a dull thud somewhere inside me. I need to start moving again, before I’ve even completely stopped.

Maybe because I’m leaving here tomorrow, I gaze at the brightly-lit windows of the resort in desperate attention. Who are those figures inside? Their shifting silhouettes make me feel as if they’re slipping from my grasp, and with them the only loved ones I’ve ever known — my family, Saman, Nick. Especially Nick. But I don’t know whether he slipped from my grasp, or I slipped from his.

A figure presses against one of the windows, hands cupped around face, peering out into the rain.

I throb with the relief of connection, even just an imaginary one. Someone is lonely. Someone is lonely like me. I wonder if –

Then the figure vanishes back into silhouette, rejoining the crowd of shadows lost to me. My despair is a long useless feeling. Overhead the rain tattoos the metal canopy in a violent beat.

A door bursts open in the back of the resort, spilling light across the watery surface of the tennis courts. A tall poncho-clad figure splashes through the bright reflections, beelining toward…me? I glance over my shoulder in confusion. Nothing back there except a half-drowned golf course.

He’s running now. Definitely right at me. I slide my feet into the water swirling around my chair, ready to flee, my heart palpitating, he looks scary, he looks like…

“Nick?” I whisper tremulously, not daring to believe it, omigod omigod, but it’s TRUE, it’s really HIM, and suddenly I’m yelling “NICK!” at the top of my lungs as he arrives beneath the canopy’s shelter in a splashing rush. “What on earth are you doing here?”

He strips off his poncho and tosses it aside, incredulous. “What the hell do you think I’m doing here?” His fervent embrace almost breaks me in half, and I don’t mind at all. “I finally caught up to you!”

I’m clinging to him, almost crying, still happily stunned. “But — but how did you find me?”

Nick dips into his breast pocket for a polaroid, the rarest kind — a picture of me snapped in defenselessness, my veil of bangs pulled back in a ponytail. “Usted ha visto a esta gringa?” — have you seen this American girl? — he says, with a practice that matches the dirty fingerprints around the edges.

I snatch the polaroid away and hurl it into the rain. The motion causes my robe to sag open.

“Whoa. Are you…?” He moves in close, nuzzling me and peering down the front of my robe. “You are!” His hands slide down the lapels to the knotted sash, untying it.

“Nick!” I giggle, trying to hold my robe closed.

“Nobody’s going to see.” He tugs my arms out of the way.

My robe falls open, letting in the cool moist air. Letting in his gaze. I hover awkwardly, blushing, naked for him. He cups my cheek, pulling me into a gentle kiss, then lets his palm slide down the flat contours of my body…

“Look,” Nick says quietly. “You’re showing.”

“I am?” I stare down past my boobs — the part of me I want to get bigger, although they’re still just bumps — to the gentle swell of my tummy. Wait a sec. Gentle swell? Where’d that come from? I swivel my hips around, experimenting with the angle, and try sucking in my stomach. But the swell doesn’t go away. “Wow,” I murmur. “I didn’t even notice.”

He makes fists and presses them to his eyes, breathing deeply. “I thought I lost you, Nooshin. I thought you were gone, you and the baby, oh god…” For a painful heartbeat he seems to hover on the verge of tears — but then he drops his fists, and his angular features align into exasperation, and he’s harping on me. “What the hell were you thinking, anyway? Just taking off like that? And walking through the fucking jungle? The jungle, Nooshin! Look at all your mosquito bites! How many goddamn times have we talked about malaria — ”

“I got so hungry I almost ate a grub,” I say, pulling my robe closed.

He blinks at me, defused. “What?”

“A big juicy one. Except only almost.”

Nick collapses into a chair, making a noise that could be anything at first, but then turns into laughter. “All this shit goes down, and what’s the thing you remember? You almost ate a grub. You’re such a Nooshball.”

I pull a chair next to his and settle myself, snaking a hand into his lap. Our fingers entwine, a gesture which feels utterly and completely perfect. Together we watch an ocean sluice from the darkening sky.

“Nick — ” I start to say.

“No, it’s my turn,” he interrupts.

His knee pistons, that hiking boot heel splashing water. Minutes drag off the Corona Light clock hanging above the tiki bar. Our grasp starts to become clammy, then downright sweaty.

Finally his knee stops pistoning. “Alright, here’s the deal — I’m not leaving you, and you’re not leaving me.”

I nod and repeat after him. “I’m not leaving you, and you’re not leaving me. Got it.” Then I start to think about it. I find myself squeezing his hand a little tighter in excitement. “Like, we’re not leaving each other…forever?”

“Yeah.” Nick grins lopsidedly, half-confident, half-terrified. In the murk his eyes are cerulean and bottomless and I just want to fall in. “You cool with that?”

“Okay,” I say happily.

Rrrrr-knock, rrrr-knock, rrrr-knock…

The hood is up and I’m bent over a hot shuddering engine, trying to diagnose the loss of power that’s suddenly afflicting the Explorer. It’s sluggish and unresponsive when I step on the gas — even when I flatten the pedal to the metal. Not good. Last thing I need is a truck that dies on a dirt track in the Mexican rainforest.

Next to me there’s an alcoholic gust. “The timing is off. It’s missing on a cylinder. Maybe two,” the bus driver slurs. The latest tequila bottle wrapped in his fist isn’t empty yet, but it’s getting there fast. He points with the neck. “I don’t like the looks of that belt, either.”

I hadn’t noticed the belt, actually. It’s stretching like black licorice in the heat. “I’ll just adjust the tension pulley. No biggie.”

He grunts in approval, a minor problem solved. Then he takes another swig of tequila, contemplating the misfiring engine. “You ever think about replacing this thing? Getting a used engine and dropping it in?”

“I think about it more all the time.”

“Yeah, well. That’s good. Just baby it until then, you know?”

Don’t ask me how you’re supposed to baby anything on these treacherous jungle roads. I’d rather fix the timing. Now. I back out from underneath the hood and glance around at the whitewashed buildings, boiling in heatwaves. “I suppose there’s no garage in this village.”

“There’s no cars in this village!” the bus driver guffaws.

No shit. The streets are empty — except for parked burros, and dogs loping with tongues hanging out, and women sweeping in front of their homes with straw brooms. And like a scene from a spaghetti Western, a small figure approaching at a trot, materializing out of the heatwaves.

The little Indian kid’s huaraches skid to a halt in the dirt. “Senores!” he announces respectfully, not even breathless — not even sweating — in the pulverizing heat. Then he emits a stream of babble, staring up at me with earnest almond eyes.

The bus driver has to do the talking, since he knows Nahuatl and that’s all the kid speaks. There’s a couple minutes of back-and-forth — punctuated with slugs from the tequila bottle, surprise surprise. Eventually the bus driver wipes his mouth on the back of his hand. “Your girlfriend went south by herself.”

All that conversation in Nahuatl for six words in Spanish. I don’t know whether to be grateful or suspicious. “What’s south of here?”

“Pujal. It’s a tourist trap.” He condemns the place blearily, as if the tequila and triple-digit heat and inevitable dehydration are finally getting to him.

“What kind of tourist trap?”

“Oh, you know. The usual crap in the Huasteca. Supposedly Pujal has the very best whitewater, and the very best cliff walls for rockclimbing, and the very best everything else.” The bus driver guffaws again. “Whatever keeps the gringos coming.”

Meanwhile the kid is rubbernecking between us, tracking an exchange that’s as incomprehensible to him as Nahuatl is to me. His humble face pools with expectation when we fall silent. He says something I can’t interpret, but can still understand. Greed is a universal language.

When we arrived in this pueblo, I handed out dollar bills to all the kids, promising a follow-up tenspot to the first one who could tell me where Nooshin went. Talk about incentivization — the American greenbacks are nothing to me, but a small fortune to an impoverished Indian family eking out a life in the rainforest. Now I’ve got my compass heading. It’s time to pay out.

The kid stares at the $10 bill as if it might scald his fingers. Then he raises his almond gaze in an almost plaintive look of disbelief. I nod reassuringly. Yes, this miraculous amount of money is truly yours. He gives a shriek of relieved delight and sprints into the heatwaves, dwindling into a blurry silhouette, then nothing at all.

So this is what it’s like to plod through the jungle. I’m trapped on a featureless treadmill of rainforest, putting one Nike in front of the other, again and again and again, never going anywhere. Hours later I’m still plodding the same dirt road, still swatting aside the same thick undergrowth. The heat is stunning. My nostrils are filled with the gross smell of rotting vegetation. Mosquitoes swarm around me in a bloodthirsty humming fog. During cloudbursts I try to catch rain to drink, since I don’t have any water. It works when I use a big leaf as a funnel. If only the cloudbursts lasted long enough to wash me clean of mud and grime. I haven’t showered since Guanajuato, and I’ve been wearing the same clothes for a week.

My facial muscles are sore from frowning. It hurts to remember those wonderful day hikes and camping trips with Nick, back in San Diego. I always thought his careful prepwork and safety precautions were kind of anal. Bringing a couple day’s worth of food and water on an afternoon jaunt into Canyon Sin Nombre? Treating a weekend camping trip in the Laguna Mountains like a Victorian expedition to the darkest corner of the globe? Like I said, kind of anal — right?

Now I know better.

Note to my stupid self — never again plunge into the Mexican rainforest with no map and no water and no food and no mosquito repellent and almost no money, only the clothes on my back, carrying a backpack full of dead useless weight, like a laptop computer that can’t possibly survive this heat and humidity. Because being cotton-mouthed and starving and bone-tired and stinky and coated in mosquito bites like this, it just plain sucks.

And still I plod on my jungle treadmill, wondering when it’s going to stop. I just want it to stop, please god, just let me get somewhere already. “Argh!” I groan in miserable frustration, then scream it — “ARRRRRRGH!!!” My voice is smothered by the thick foliage. I struggle into an awkward sprint, rushing down the dirt road, my backpack jouncing on my shoulder…

…but I only have the strength to run a couple dozen strides. Then I collapse into a panting ball, blinking away sweat. I stare at the jungle. The jungle stares back. There’s probably a veritable supermarket out there, pitcher plants of water to drink, fruits and berries to eat. I just don’t know how to identify them. Only banana trees and coconut palms, and I haven’t seen any of those.

A big juicy-looking grub is wriggling in the dead leaves nearby. At first I think ewww! Then I think hmmm…

But when I reach for it, I notice my bare arm is hairy with mosquitoes. Time to get on the jungle treadmill again. Standing up is a tiring process, like dragging myself into the air, and when I finally get there I’m lightheaded for a few moments. Meanwhile my lower body is moving all by itself. Panic flares in my chest. Did I get turned around when I stopped? Am I going the right way? The treadmill looks the same in both directions. Through the canopy I can only catch glimpses of the sunlight filtering down, not enough sky with the sun in it to orient myself. Finally I realize I’m leaving footprints behind me, not walking into them. This must be east still.

After a while I fixate despairingly on Nick, a dizzying out-of-control spiral of scenes in my head that suddenly and jarringly stops, freezing into focus before starting again. The handsome icy-eyed stranger on Avenida Revolucion who invites himself into my life. Waking up next to Nick in the rippling fabric of a tent in the Laguna Mountains. Following him to a dusty heat-wracked house in a country where I don’t know the language or the customs or the money. The slick heaven between us as he finally — finally — plunders my desire. His awkward joy when I show him the pregnancy test.

I need to cry until I’m absolutely finished. But I won’t. I refuse. Because crying until I’m absolutely finished means we’re absolutely finished. A finality that will break my heart.

Instead I keep plodding on my jungle treadmill.

And just like that, the road dumps me into a clearing. I find myself wandering into a village of good omens. The streets are lined with whitewashed buildings instead of wooden shacks. Wires are strung overhead, maybe for electricity, maybe for telephones. Animals live in fenced corrals instead of roaming free. The faces staring at me are still Indian, but I can overhear conversations in Spanish, not just the impenetrable strains of Nahuatl.

Then I lurch to a halt, staring.

At a Hummer. The monstrous SUV is parked at a jaunty angle in front of a rustic stucco-walled store, shining brilliantly in the hot sun. It has an opalescent paintjob and Texas license plates and two kayaks, neon-red and neon-blue, strapped to the roof. The staging is so perfect I feel like I’ve stumbled into a commercial.

The Hummer is the first vehicle I’ve encountered since the converted schoolbus washed off the road. No one can afford cars or trucks here. The Indians don’t have two pesos to rub together. Besides, what happens when you run out of gas? I haven’t seen a Pemex station all week.

“It’s nice, huh?” a cheerful voice calls in English. A curly-haired man showing a lot of sunburned skin emerges from the store. His arms are filled with several lumpy bags. Looks like he stocked up on handwoven blankets or throw-rugs. “I bought it a couple months ago. Got a great deal.”

“Yeah. It’s…nice.” I can think of a million other words for the SUV — otherworldly, jarring, escapist — but nice works too.

His approach falters. He looks me up and down, scrunching his lean face into an expression of distaste. “Is everything okay? You look like you got lost in the jungle.” At least he’s kind enough not to say I smell like I got lost in the jungle.

The story gets jumbled up in my throat. “The bus, it went off the road during that huge thunderstorm a couple days ago, and I had to walk the rest of the way…”

The man’s wariness is beginning to melt into concern. “Where’s the rest of your tour group? Are they still out there? Do they need help? Did anybody get, uh…hurt?” He blanches meaningfully.

“No no no, it wasn’t that kind of bus. It was just a local, for the Indians. I’m not with a tour — ”

A woman’s voice cuts me off. “Adrian! Help me with this!” Her drawl is coming from behind a tall bulky statue wrapped in two arms.

Adrian explodes into solicitous motion, dropping his bags and hustling over to help her. Together they muscle the statue — a weird polychromed Christ — into the back of the Hummer. I hover uselessly, hoping I’m downwind.

When they’re done loading everything into the SUV, Adrian gingerly reaches out a hand toward me — then thinks better of it. “I’m Adrian, and this is my girlfriend Wendy.”

“Hi,” Wendy says from a distance, looking up at me with wideset hazel eyes beneath a shag cut that’s supposed to be bouncy, but just flattens in this humidity. She’s a fireplug of a girl, wearing a tube dress that shows off her broad shoulders and thick muscular body. Her diamond earrings and matching diamond pendant necklace are grotesque amidst this poverty.

“I’m Nooshin,” I say, and turn to Adrian. “Are you a paleontologist?”

He stares quizzically at me. “What?”

“She’s talking about your tanktop, dude,” Wendy snaps.

Adrian glances down at his tanktop — emblazoned with a stylized fossil dig and the slogan GET DOWN AND DIRTY FOR A LIVING - BECOME A PALEONTOLOGIST. “Oh. This! My brother teaches paleontology at Montana State.” He preens a little. “Me, I’m a lawyer. A junior partner already.” When I don’t react, he adds, “At Meyer Schlusskind Farrell.” When I still don’t react, he shrugs in disgust and mutters, “They’re a very prestigious national firm.”

Wendy is back to scrutinizing me. “What happened to you? You look — ”

“I know, I know,” I interrupt tiredly. “I look like crap. I’ve been walking through the jungle for a couple days.”

“I don’t know why anybody would hike the rainforest when you can kayak it instead,” she says disapprovingly.

“Her tour bus got swept off the road during the storm,” Adrian explains, with a sympathetic glance in my direction.

“I wasn’t on a tour — !” I start to say, then just give up. This conversation is making me feel even more exhausted than I already am. Several Indians in white peasant garb stroll by, chickens slung over their shoulders. “Hay un banco?” — is there a bank here? — I call out to them, already guessing the answer. They wag their heads no.

“Banco is bank, right?” Adrian asks.

“Duh!” Wendy is rolling her eyes.

He glares at her, then turns back to me. “There are lots of banks in Pujal, just down the road. Some ATMs too, if you’ve got a cash card.”

Lots of banks out here in the jungle? Even some ATMs? It’s almost incomprehensible to me. “Is Pujal a big city?”

“Uh, not really. It’s pretty small, actually. But it’s the tourist mecca around here.” Adrian jerks a thumb at the neon-colored kayaks on the Hummer’s roof. “You know, for all the kayaking and rockclimbing and eco-tours.”

“How far is it to Pujal?” I ask.

“Only 50, 60 minutes,” he says brightly.

“We’d offer you a ride, but we’re going in the opposite direction. Up to Conechilco for the Easter festival there.” Wendy checks her diver’s watch. “We should probably get going. The guidebook said the festival starts at one o’clock.”

“Today is…Easter?” God, I’ve lost all track of time. I even forgot about Norouz, the Persian New Year. I wonder if my sister or parents tried to call me. Probably not.

“Enjoy the rest of your tour. I hope you get back with your group soon.” Wendy speaks in a tone of voice like washing her hands. She climbs into the Hummer, taking the driver’s side. I’m reminded that Nick has still never let me drive his truck.

“It was cool to meet you, Nooshin!” Adrian is calling out, in retreat around the SUV’s opalescent flank. Soon I can only hear his voice. “Good luck with everything!”

I watch the Hummer lurch into a cacophony of motion — engine roaring, kayaks rattling on the roof rack, hip-hop booming out the open windows. A chorus of village dogs bark in response. The calm seems utterly and irreparably shattered…but it isn’t, of course. Silence returns after the Hummer disappears into the jungle, heading north on a slightly wider version of my dirt road. It occurs to me to wave goodbye about the same time it occurs to me that Adrian probably meant 50-60 minutes of driving time to Pujal, not walking time.

“That’s my bus, right down there…”

I follow the line of the bus driver’s pointing arm. There’s a jagged gap in the walls of lush emerald jungle pressing against the road. A muddy swath of destruction leads downward. Trees are knocked out of the way, undergrowth flattened. At the bottom of a ravine is the converted schoolbus, its rainbow colors dirty with mud and leaves. The bus is miraculously upright.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” I gasp in English.

“Que?” — what? — he asks uncomprehendingly.

I ease my Ford Explorer to a halt, wary of the still-muddy road, and switch back to Spanish. “How the hell does a bus crash into a ravine and nobody gets hurt?”

“This is nothing,” the bus driver yawns. “When I first started driving, 10, maybe 12 years ago, I went over a cliff.”

I wait for the punchline, but there isn’t one. He’s a reclining figure in the passenger seat, not wearing his seatbelt, a half-empty bottle of tequila in his lap. Any more relaxed and he’d be comatose.

“Anybody get hurt that time?” I ask.

“Yep,” he nods.

We sink into silence — or as much silence as you get in a rainforest with the windows down. Invisible monkeys are howling. Birds dart through the thick foliage, exploding into histrionics. Overhead the canopy rustles in a distant wind.

I’m imagining Nooshin and a busload of Indian peasants, staring out rain-lashed windows as the world suddenly tilts and accelerates, the bus hurtling down down down through bone-jarring impacts, trees snapping like twigs, the screams of —

“You think my bus can be winched back up?”

I glance over at the bus driver. His inkspot eyes are roaming beneath a brow of sweaty ringlets, gauging the physics of weight and angle and leverage. The cruel physics. There’s no way in hell that bus will ever see this road again, and I tell him so.

“You’re probably right.” He tips the tequila bottle against his bushy mustache and holds it there for several swigs. The perfect que sera, sera gesture.

I’m noticing the footprints in the drying mud. They rise from the bus and pool in the road around us, then recede in the direction we came from — west, back toward the Manzanares Mesa. All of the footprints except a single set. Those long strides aim east. “That was her, huh?” I don’t have to specify the pronoun.

The bus driver nods. “I tried to talk her out of it, but she said she wasn’t going back.” He waves the tequila bottle in the direction of the rising sun. “Tlacoteotalpan is the next pueblo that way.”

“Tlaco…teo…what?”

“Tlacoteotalpan. It’s a long drive. An even longer walk.”

“How far?” I ask, stricken.

“A couple dozen kilometers.”

OH. MY. GOD. Suddenly I’m on the verge of tears, picturing Nooshin half-drowned in the deluge, wading even more deeply into the jungle, refusing to return to the same village that I can still see in my truck’s rearview mirror. She must hate me to death.

“I talk Nahuatl,” the bus driver is saying. “That’s all they talk in Tlacoteotalpan, far as I know. I don’t think there’s anybody left who talks Spanish. Does your girlfriend talk Nahuatl?”

“No,” I mutter, babying the Explorer back into gear. The engine sounds like a rockslide gathering momentum.

We lurch into motion messily, slipping and sliding down the road. The driving is treacherous, which I find strangely reassuring. This is just like spring on the farm back in Iowa, when the ground thaws and the fields turn into quagmire. My father’s driving lessons are still with me, like rusty nails pounded into my skull. Keep a firm hand on the wheel. Stay in the low gears. Don’t spin out. And his other lessons come flooding back too, the bitter lessons about failure and punishment. When I bogged the tractor or slid into the ditch, my father let me have it — with words, usually, although sometimes he used a belt or even fists. Over the years his angry prediction became a chant, the rumbling background noise of my life: “You’ll never amount to nothing!”

Until I met Nooshin I didn’t have anything to live for, only against. Now I’m going to be the father, and the new life she’s carrying will be my son or daughter. Time to break the chain of harms propelling me. I won’t abuse my kid as my father abused me, and my grandfather abused him. I swear it.