The Mexican Year

The coastal highway isn’t living up to its name yet. I’m still landlocked in these winding lanes of asphalt. Around me is a blurring tedium of truck traffic and road signs in Spanish and little crosses that memorialize the victims of fatal accidents. 12 hours of driving has foreshortened my perception. I don’t even notice the landscape anymore — maize plots ringed with beavertail cacti, verdant forests cut through with footpaths, little hills turning into big hills and back again, Indian villages that pass like glimpses of the 19th century, extinct volcanoes topped with crater lakes. Good thing I have a baggy of polaroids from the last time I was here.

This is my second trip through the state of Nayarit. Nick and I followed this autopista two months ago, but going in the opposite direction. Funny how everything becomes strange and unfamiliar when reversed. Even the smoldering hump of Sanganguey is only vaguely itself. If I didn’t know I was retracing our route, I’d suspect a wrong turn back in Guadalajara.

These hours were shorter with Nick. The odometer tracks my exhaustion. I stare at things from behind my sunglasses, especially the oncoming traffic. Why can’t I be going the other way again? That’s when I was happiest. Me in the passenger seat, him behind the wheel. Grinning beneath his Kangol hat. Regaling me with another of his stories about Mexico. Squeezing my thigh occasionally, as if to remind himself that I was real. Love was a wide-open horizon. We traveled into it lighthearted and silly. My pregnancy was just a hope then, a fear.

Now that Nooshin — his Nooshball — seems as bygone as the 18-year-old who married Saman with dread in her heart. Those versions of me flicker like old home movies from Iran. A toddler moving jerkily in too-vivid colors. Lips moving but no words to hear. Right eye frozen sideways in her face. Mom lingers in the background, inhabiting that lost country of haftseen tables and flowered courtyards and views of the Alborz Mountains. She tilts down at me with glowing affection. It’s a look I haven’t seen since grade school, when I was still an Iranian like her.

My tummy is getting pinched by the seatbelt. I adjust its diagonal strap, beaming into the rearview mirror at the trucker I just passed. The pregnant bulge is everything right with my life. Then I crest the next hill, where thunderheads are stacked like pillows, plunging the interior of the Explorer into shadow. The same pregnant bulge is everything wrong with my life. Still a wife, but also a mother-to-be — with a man who isn’t my husband.

My cellphone rests on the passenger seat. I long to call Nick. The day’s loneliness is wearing on me. But his distance is further than geography and the crappy signal on my phone. He’s receding into the family he ran away from. The father and mother who injured their children. The sister who lives on cigarettes and anti-depressives. The brother who lies in a hospital bed between worlds. All that suffering, all that tragedy. It claims him a little more every time we talk.

I turn on the radio for distraction. The Spanish of the djs and commercials is too fast for my tired comprehension. I find some music, but it doesn’t suit my mood. Too much crooning about drugs and heartbreak. I reach into the backseat for a tape instead. My music collection is a shoebox of bootleg tapes acquired from street vendors. The ones on top are the newest. My Mexico City purchases. Most were chosen at random. The music rarely matches the label anyway.

I settle on a plain white cassette with Las matas / Auge de la medianoche scribbled on it. I’m expecting the usual. Narcocorridos or the latest Mexican pop sensation. Instead the Explorer fills with the minimalistic stop-start rhythms of an American band. Something dark and affected, from a world of nightclubs that I’ll never know. I fast-forward through the songs, sampling the female singer’s lyrics, the male singer’s backing vocals. I’ve never pictured my life that way. Woman in front, man in back. It’s always the other way around.

Deciding this isn’t my kind of music, I push the EJECT button. I frame the cassette with dirty fingernails and try to translate its Spanish. Las matas — The Kills — must be the name of the band. Auge de la medianoche is something Of The Midnight. Or maybe just Midnight something. But I can’t complete the translation. I don’t know what “auge” means.

I drop the tape into my trash container, an empty Hipermart bag. I could’ve just tossed it out the window. That’s the way most disposal is accomplished on Mexican roads. The ditches are full of litter and other discarded junk. Even though Nick’s rule is do as the Mexicans do, in this case I refuse. Their country is already polluted enough.

A Pemex sign hovers over a canopy of willows. I check the gas gauge. The truck doesn’t need to stop, but I do. My eyelids are leaden, the muscles in my arms are cramped from gripping the wheel. I scan the turnoffs for a possible dinner. My choices are limited. Taquerias or fruit and vegetable stands. The thought of healthy food makes my stomach turn an unhappy somersault. Guess it’s the Mexican version of fast food for me.

Danny’s Tacos is just like every other taqueria I’ve seen along the highway. Painted brightly to grab your attention at 110 kilometers per hour– red roof, yellow walls, blue lettering. The building is open on three sides, with rolled-up tarping to keep out inclement weather. Ordering takes place at a long counter. The seating is cheap patio furniture. There’s enough gravel in the parking lot to accommodate semi-trailers, but only cars are scattered around right now.

It takes me a while to decode the menu. Apparently you buy a plain taco, then top it yourself. This is confirmed by the elderly Indian ahead of me. He receives a pair of tacos on a paper plate, then shuffles down the counter to bins of salsa, guacamole, tomatoes, onions, even cabbage. Not that I’m allowed to get any toppings. Everything has been tainted by tap water. The vegetables have been washed in it, the salsa and guacamole made with it. The baby doesn’t need any nasty microbes, and neither do I.

I eat my plain beef taco at the farthest table. Once I’m seated no one pays much attention to me. My height is obscured, my tummy hidden. Even my sunglasses fit in. The sun has retreated enough to reach underneath the roof. Hatbrims are tilted down, eyes are shaded beneath hands.

Afterward I return to the Explorer and my long sojourn to Tijuana. My sudden burst of energy seeps away once I’m behind the wheel. The interior is the perfect temperature for basking — the heat of the day is dissipating, but the sunshine is still warm. Basking quickly leads to yawning. I recline my seat, tempting sleep. Do I start driving again, or take a nap first? Another yawn makes the decision for me. I lock the doors but keep the windows cracked for fresh air.

That’s how I overhear the teen boys. Their Spanish carries on the wind. They wake me into an evening grown overcast and threatening.

“I smell a girl,” one teen says in a reedy voice.

“Are you high?” his older friend sighs. “There aren’t any girls around.”

“Maybe it’s a whore, then. In one of the semi trucks.”

“You’re such a retard.”

But they start looking for the girl anyway. I can hear them scuffling around on their bikes in the gravel. After a while the scuffling stops. Their voices are close now. The topic changes from smelling girls to thunder rumbling in the distance. How much rain will come? The teens make bets.

I’m almost asleep again when the younger teen suddenly says, “It’s back again.”

“What? What’s back again?” The older one sniffs audibly. “Hey. Do you smell that?”

“I smelled it first, you butthole.” His reedy voice is triumphant. “I told you there’s a girl around here.”

“Come on. Let’s follow the scent.”

It dawns on me that they’re smelling my perfume, which I apply liberally when I haven’t bathed. In rural areas like this only unmarried women wear perfume. The teenagers must think they’re on the trail of a senorita not much older than them.

I listen to their bikes scuffle closer on the gravel. First one face appears in the window above me, then another. They’re peering straight across the shadowy interior. I’m invisible in my reclined repose.

“This is it,” says the younger teen. “It’s definitely coming from this truck.”

“There’s nobody inside,” the older one says in disappointment. Then: “Did you hear that?”

I’m groping in the backseat for Nick’s camping flashlight. When my hand closes around its plastic bulk, I click the flashlight to life and sit up. The teens look like shined deer in the beam, staring at me open-mouthed and motionless. They have broad Indian features and skin darker than the dirt stains on their t-shirts. Then they swear into action on their BMX-style bikes, pedaling so furiously that gravel pings off the side of the Explorer. My antique Polaroid camera isn’t fast enough to catch them.

If I could do it all over again, I’d tell Nick sorry, forget it, I’m staying here forever. I don’t care if I give birth on the air mattress on Inez’s mom’s floor. Anything is better than risking the traffic of Mexico City. It wasn’t bad an hour before dawn, when I said goodbye to Inez and her mom. The streets of their neighborhood were deceptively quiet then. But the further I drove in Nick’s truck, the more taillights appeared in front of me, the more headlights filled my rearview mirror. Now the sun is up and the streets of Mexico City are half parking lot, half race track, and all war zone. If Nick loved me even a little bit, he’d fly back down here and drive me out of this mess, the same way he drove me into it.

My cellphone shrieks to life, a plain ringtone at max volume. Otherwise I can’t hear it over all the honking and engine noise and traffic cop whistles.

“Hi.” The only greeting I can manage. I’m focused on everything all at once — the huge golden -RONA- of a Corona delivery truck boxing me in, street vendors pushing carts through the idling traffic, all the street signs and their stupid contradictory arrows.

Nick’s voice is deliberately calm. “Heya babe. Where you at now?”

“Not much farther than the last time you called.”

“How much farther?” he asks, still calm. Soothing. “Got a cross-street for me?”

“There’s a gigantic traffic circle up ahead. Avenida Insurgentes, I think. It’s got a 10-story winged statue thing in the middle.” My heart sinks. Vehicles revolve around the statue’s base in brutal honking combat. Omigod, I hate traffic circles. Hate hate hate them! “Who invented traffic circles, anyway? Who could’ve possibly thought traffic circles are — ”

Suddenly all the vehicles around me lurch forward. I’m only a heartbeat late on the gas pedal — but that’s all the delay it takes. A green-and-white Volkswagen Bug taxi angles in front of me. Then another one, darting after the first. My hood and its passenger door are on a collision course. I brake and yell at the driver in Farsi until I feel better.

“What’s going on?” Nick asks, trying to keep the concern out of his voice. And failing, mostly.

“Taxis just cut in front of me! Again!”

“Remember what I told you.”

I slump in defeat. “I know, I know. Stay on the bumper in front of me.”

“And what else?” he prods.

“Anticipate. Or…be an asshole? Something like that.”

Nick’s laugh is forced. “Close enough.”

The next time traffic moves I’m ready. Anticipating. Ready to be an asshole, just like all the assholes around me. I snap forward in a 20-yard drag race — that turns into wide-open asphalt, when I drive through a gap between two electric buses, dawdling in a shower of sparks from the overhead wires. There’s nothing between me and the traffic circle ahead, yaayyy! Go me, go me, go –

STOP!!!

A kid carrying a shoulder-rack of pinatas darts into the street RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME. I stand on the brakes and yank the steering wheel hard left, away from the curb and into oncoming traffic, tires squealing, omigod omigod…

Then I’m past the kid and yanking the Explorer back onto my side of the boulevard, but too sharply, the cityscape goes all wrong, the truck tilting, I must be on two wheels — and then a jarring impact, the seatbelt grating across my clavicle, back on all four wheels again.

Holy crap! I’m already at the traffic circle, plunging right into the slowly-rotating wall of vehicles, the stink of graphite and burning tires filling my nostrils, but not stopping fast enough, another green-and-white VW Bug taxi dead ahead, there’s nowhere to turn, I can’t avoid —

A sea parts for me. I screech to a halt in the milling traffic, prompting a few tepid honks. In my rearview mirror the taxi driver is busy chatting with his passengers. They just witnessed an out-of-control SUV almost kill a street vendor, then almost swerve into a head-on collision with onrushing traffic, then almost flip over in a flaming ball of metal and flesh, then almost plow into a jam-packed traffic circle. Just another day on the streets of Mexico City.

My cellphone is squawking somewhere on the floor. I lean down to pick it up, squeezing around my pregnant tummy. I pin the silver clamshell to my ear, breathing heavily.

“Nooshin! What the hell happened? Are you okay?”

Tears are blurring my vision. “I’ve almost run over so many people, they just, god…”

“The street vendors. I know. They’re fucking maniacs. Are you using your horn?”

“Um…” I start to say. Truth is, I’ve forgotten all about it.

“Come on. You gotta use it. Anytime you go fast — ”

“Okay, okay! I’ll remember to use it next time. Promise.”

He gives my right ear a pep talk while I paw at my cheeks, wiping them dry. The Explorer goes into a vehicular spin cycle, revolving in the traffic circle. Instead of the convenience and sanity of a stoplight, four oncoming streams of traffic have to jostle around and through and past me. Forget progressing down the boulevard — it’s all I can do just to avoid an accident! I make one trapped circumnavigation, then another. Everywhere I look bumpers are millimeters apart. Not even a glimmer of space, no hope of escape whatsoever. I feel my pulse flutter in panic. I’m going to die of old age in this stupid traffic circle.

“No you’re not,” Nick chuckles, and I realize I was thinking aloud. “Find somebody going your direction, somebody big, and tuck in behind them. Let them do the dirty work.”

Hmmm. I glance around the traffic circle, four lanes huge but crammed with five lanes of vehicles. The biggest thing I see is a riveted silver hulk with tiny bulletproof windows. Looks like that Banamex armored truck is going my way. It bulldozes around the traffic circle, honking incessantly, even tapping a bumper or quarterpanel every now and then. I veer after it desperately — and so do about 20 other cars, thinking the same thing as me. At first none of us are going anywhere. Then suddenly we’re a jailbreak from the traffic circle.

“Nick, I made it! I made it. Omigod…” My body fizzles with relief. I briefly peel the phone away, wiping my brow with that forearm.

” — knew you’d do great,” he’s saying, when I clamp the sweaty clamshell back to my ear.

I drift down the street, impervious to a swelling chorus of honks. In my rearview mirror I can see the giant concrete calves and sandals of the winged statue in the traffic circle, forever poised to stomp us all to scrap metal. Another green-and-white taxi cuts in front of me, then another. It’s not worth racing ahead to stop them. It’s not worth it, period.

I risk a glance at the map of Mexico City lying on the passenger seat. Even though Inez illustrated my route with a fat yellow hi-liter, I’m still pretty clueless about my progress. All I know for certain is that I haven’t reached the highway yet.

Luckily I have Nick, my distant navigator in Minnesota. “If I just passed Avenida Insurgentes, how much farther is it to the highway?”

“Not much farther,” he says cheerfully. “Just stay focused on the driving. The distance will take care of itse– ”

“Nick. How much farther.”

His voice wavers. “Uh, a little ways. Not too far.”

“Nick! Just tell me!”

“Well, you’ve probably got another hour to the highway, maybe two, then…” A pause elongates in my ear. In the background I can hear beeping, raised voices, a tinny intercom — Dr. Lavell to the ICU, Dr.Lavell to the ICU. Then Nick’s voice again. “I gotta go. Call you later.”

The Explorer is stuck in gridlock again. Exhaust fumes boil up like heatwaves into the cool morning sky. A middle-aged street vendor knocks on my window, holding up a churrito in wax paper, startling me. “Desea el desayuno?” — do you want some breakfast? — he asks through the glass.

I’m left holding the phone to my ear, still listening to the buzz of my severed connection with Nick. I try to imagine him saying goodbye to Brian, but it doesn’t work. In that hospital bed there’s no Brian left to say goodbye to, just a shell of the big brother Nick used to know. Instead I imagine his memories of Brian growing truncated and gray, stretching out over a span of years, slowly dissolving into broken moments of sentiment.

I toss the cellphone aside and close my eyes, as if doing so will finally bring the experience — his and mine — to an end. I want to cry, but the sobs stay locked in my ribcage. From the sidewalk I can hear schoolgirls twittering about cute boys. “Seguro, el es TAN especial” — oh sure, he’s so special — a voice chirps. The girl is being sarcastic, but she also means it.

I’m leaning over the tiny balcony that juts from the apartment building’s facade, basking in another warm Mexico City night. The railing presses comfortably against my pregnant stomach, taking some of the weight. Traffic is ebbing tiredly through the cobblestone street below. Teenage girls flash teeth and skin as they giggle down the sidewalk, followed by a pack of boys in floppy clothing. On the corner an enterprising vendor is selling peeks through his two telescopes, one labeled “Luna” and the other “Venus”. Kids are lining up with grubby fistfuls of centavos. Don’t ask me how you can see ANYTHING through this smog, but maybe that’s what he’s really selling — hope.

Spanish spills out of the cramped living room behind me. Inez and her mother are bickering in their affectionately hostile way, a ritualistic cadence of accusations and denials. Their conversation is a raging river with familiar phrases bobbing in it.

I wish my Spanish was the fluent kind, effortless and perfect, but it’s not. Not even close. Instead I have to beg “un poco mas despacio, por favor” — a little slower, please — until the words stop blurring together. My head becomes a confusion of machinery, translating everything into English and then back into Spanish. Even when I know exactly what to say, I don’t always say it right, struggling with pronunciation that’s nothing like English or Farsi. I punctuate with facial expressions and wave my hands a lot, a frustrated need to communicate that boils into gesturing.

Eventually their back-and-forth dwindles into quiet. I can hear the flipping noises of Inez’s mom reading the newspaper. A black-and-white picture of Andres Manuel Lopez Alvador, the leftist mayor of Mexico City, is splashed across the front page in a telegenic grin. Her two legs jutting out from beneath the newspaper are still trim and shapely, tapering into fluffy pink slippers. I find myself wondering why she never remarried.

Inez is curled on the loveseat-sized couch and nursing an alarmingly large glass of amber liquid — tequila, I guess. Her head is wrapped in a black towel with even blacker tendrils of hair plastered to her forehead. Nick finally told her she looked stupid with that aluminum-can-in-a-blender dyejob, so tonight she switched back to her natural hair color. I’m discomfited by her inner sadness, as if a deep perpetual moan is wracking her body but never escaping out her mouth. That’s me, if Nick ever cheats or leaves me with this child.

The phone rings.

Inez’s mom is sitting closest to the old-fashioned thing. She folds the newspaper carefully and lays it aside, then raises the receiver daintily, the way a queen might. Her aquiline face is disapproving. She sighs “Aceptare las cargas” — I’ll accept the charges — and waves me over.

“Nick!” I say breathlessly, already knowing who it is.

“Hey you. My flight just got in. You wouldn’t believe how much this airport has changed.” I picture him glancing around the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport with bleary red-rimmed eyes.

“How’s…your brother?” I ask trepidatiously.

“He’s still alive. I guess the doctors had to do another surgery. They’re trying to stop all the bleeding in his brain, but…” Nick sounds like an old man, even though he’s only 27. “Wendy thinks he’ll be gone before I get there. She’s sending her boyfriend to pick me up.”

Suddenly I’m heartbroken. “I wish I was there with you.”

“Yeah. Me too. I — I…” His voice fades into the hiss and crackle of long distance, then comes back again. “I wanted him to meet you.”

I feel a warm tear trickle down my cheek, and brush it away. Inez is looking at me oddly, an expression of curious disgust that I’ve seen in a million faces before hers. My right eye is fluttering around in its socket, just like it always does when I’m overwrought.

Nick’s voice is booming in my ear. “Okay, let’s talk about you driving back to Tijuana. First, Mexico City. I know I’ve said all this shit about how it’s the most dangerous place on earth to drive, but here’s the deal — you need to be an asshole, Nooshin. I know it’s not in your nature, but for a couple hours you need to be an asshole. You cut in front of people, you don’t let anybody cut in front of you, you even bump another car if you have to. Be a total fucking asshole!”

I’m nodding fervently into space, psyching myself up. “Okay! I can do that!”

“Leave first thing in the morning, before traffic gets insane. Then take the toll highways all the way back to Tijuana. No shortcuts, no sightseeing, no picking anybody up. Just go flat out. You can make it in two, maybe three days.”

“Straight back to Tijuana on the toll highways! Got it!”

“I’m borrowing a bunch of money from my sister. I’ll pay off the cellphone so it works again, and put the rest in your checking account for gas and food and motels.”

“But…that’s a lot of money. Like, maybe even a thousand.” Our cellphone bill alone is $500.

Nick’s voice softens into a tortured affection. “Look, just be careful, okay? And call me every couple hours. No, wait — every hour. I want to know where you are! I want to know you’re okay.”

After he clicks away the apartment is like a tomb. Inez and her mother scrutinize me with muddy eyes, waiting for a report. Traffic noises filter in through the open balcony door, muffled and sluggish in the night. I think of this place called Mexico City, how vast and abstract it seems to a foreigner like me. My imagination opens in a single spot — me behind the wheel of the Explorer, lost in a vehicular war zone. For a moment I’m in a limbo of fear and dread. When I glance across the cab, I’ll only see the empty passenger seat which is my usual station. My fear and dread turn into loneliness, so strong it makes my heart stutter. But then I glance down at the swell of my stomach, at the miracle growing inside me, and I feel a calmness there. I’ll never be alone again.

Lost. I’m lost in Mexico City. The kind of lost that seems almost existential, like God is having a bad hair day and taking it out on me. Because really, how else do I explain getting lost when the stupid cab dropped me off right in front of the internet cafe? Sure, the name painted on the window wasn’t an exact match to my pronunciation. Like that means anything. I’ve pronounced “Wal-Mart” wrong in Spanish and still gotten there. And sure, Nick and Inez weren’t waiting for me inside. They were just delayed somewhere in this delay-prone Land of Manana, I’m sure. All I needed to do was hang at the definitely-probably-maybe-right internet cafe and wait for them, right?

But then I started to panic, the kind of panic that begins with a foreign country and empty purse and no cellphone. A goosebump here, a goosebump there, until my skin was a carpet of fear. The big digital numbers on my runner’s watch were counting down the daylight — 3:39, 4:06, 4:41. I didn’t want to be trapped inside, clinging to hope and fluorescent lights while the city sank into a predatory darkness. So I circled the block, checking for other internet cafes and Nick’s Explorer with the Iowa license plates, and that led to crossing the street and circling the opposite block, and then the block after that, and next thing you know…

Like an idiot, I’m standing on a busy streetcorner and consulting a tourist guidebook and rubbernecking in confusion. Nick’s first rule for surviving Mexico City (or is it his second rule? or 14th? I lose track…) is NEVER EVER ACT LIKE YOU’RE LOST. Always walk with a purpose, as if you know exactly where you’re going, and duck into a store or restaurant to consult a map if you get lost. But detouring indoors every half-block gets old after a while, and this jutting tummy feels more like a bowling ball than a baby boy, and maybe someone will take pity on me and give me directions. So I lean against the hot metal of a lightpole and flip through my guidebook with a broken-nailed finger. Eventually I find the chapter titled “Zona Rosa”, which describes this posh district in between Chapultepec Park and the Aztec-old city center:

The Zona Rosa was named after all the buildings painted in varying shades of pink…

I glance around tiredly, really not caring about colors at this point. There are still pinks everywhere, but the palette has diversified — honey-colored yellows, watered-down purples, mint greens. Even more riotously colorful are the flowers blooming in decorative sidewalk planters and big concrete urns. This is the only place in Mexico City where I can’t smell the smog. Although I can still taste it, a grainy soot of vehicle exhaust that coats my mouth.

You will know that you have arrived in the Zona Rosa when you find yourself walking along streets that are named after European cities, like Geneva, Dublin, Oslo, Warsaw, and Nice…

Actually, the streets on this side of the Zona Rosa are named after famous rivers — Tiber, Congo, Mississippi. I’m standing at the geographic impossibility of the Nile and Amazon. Not that I’m complaining. Nick told me Mexico City has 100,000 streets and a third of them aren’t even named! Now if I could just understand why the block numbers on this side of Avenida Rio Amazona are 3800s…but the other side is 700s, beginning with that Citibank skyscraper, a towering inferno of reflective glass catching the sunset.

The Zona Rosa is the financial heart of Mexico City, where the bolsa (stock exchange) and many bank headquarters are located…

All I know is ATM machines are everywhere, embedded into facades, with beggars sitting conveniently nearby. They seem to constitute half the population of the Zona Rosa, human miseries parked on cardboard scraps with their palms upturned. Back in Tijuana my heart used to break for them, especially the impoverished dirty-faced kids. I’d burst into tears of dismay and frustration, wishing I could do something — anything — to alleviate their plight. But millions of beggars later, I’m just numb. I see them without seeing them. They’re part of the landscape that I blank out, like the garbage-strewn alleyways and ditches.

Be prepared for a lively and diverse nightlife, since the Zona Rosa has also become the heart of Mexico City’s gay and lesbian community…

What gay and lesbian community? The half of the population that isn’t begging is dressed in business attire, coats and ties and blouses and skirts, or just slumming in the tourist’s wardrobe of jeans and t-shirts. The blandness of urban fashion is disorienting. I could be back in LA. I could be anywhere, really. But no one is advertising their samesex orientation with a leather outfit or butch hairstyle or rainbow pin. I can’t spot a single person who looks even vaguely gay.

Finally on the next page — a stylized map of the Zona Rosa. Rose-colored streets grid across a pale pink background. Tourist traps are marked with miniature 3D drawings. In the upper righthand corner, a comedic skeleton is drowning in an outsize sombrero and clenching a rose in its teeth. It takes me a moment to realize its bony limbs are pointed in the cardinal directions. Despite the saccharine-cute design, all the streets are clearly labeled. I’m not as lost as I thought.

I force myself into motion, slogging through the slanty sunlight and long shadows. No time to waste. Dusk is creeping up the skyscrapers. I let panic fuel my tired legs, striding fast…faster…fastest. My momentum deflects a would-be purse snatcher, who steps out from the blackness of an alley and bobs alongside me, almost jogging, falling behind. I don’t bother to stop for a yellow-turning-red light, barging in front of bumpers, turning the intersection into a parking lot. Horns blare — until I glare at the brown faces swimming behind the windshields. I’m six feet tall and pregnant and evil-eyed. No mexicano wants to mess with me. I might, uh…shoot deathrays from my crooked eye, or whatever.

“Nooshin!” The voice is husky and female and Mexican, pronouncing my name as an exaggerated Noo-sheeeen! “Nooshin, over here!”

I escape the crosswalk onto the sidewalk, and vehicular motion resumes behind me. Exhaustion is coagulating in my limbs. I slow and stumble and stop. My backpack slides off my shoulderblade and freefalls to the crook of my elbow. I glance around.

Inez is carving through a sidewalk throng at me. Her spiky hairstyle is melting into a silvery lump. She’s dressed like a skate punk, wearing layered t-shirts over jeans with a wallet chain. Her lips are painted a glossy oxide white and twisted into a wavering line. I can almost feel the agony radiating off her. And Nick… I glance around, but Nick is nowhere to be seen.

Up close Inez’s eyes are pink-lidded. “Nooshin, I…he had to leave for the airport, his brother tried to commit suicide, he shot himself in the head and lived, oh god…” Her voice strangles away, then comes back again. “He got a call from his sister while we were waiting for you, he had to fly back right away, he…”

I’m more lost than ever. What Nick told me about his family can’t fill a memory. I don’t even recall his older brother’s name. No, wait — Brian. I think his name is Brian.

Inez is pressing something hot and metallic into my palm. The keys to the Explorer. Nick’s keys. “He wants you to drive back to Tijuana, right away. And…” She fumbles in a front pocket, digging into her jeans for a slip of paper. “Call this number. This is where he’ll be.”

The area code is 641. I imagine a numeric overlay on rural Iowa. Somewhere in that flat vastness of corn and soybeans is his family’s homestead, where Brian grew up and stayed. The same farmstead — the same family — that compelled Nick to leave and never look back. Until now.

A solicitation touches my elbow. “Nooshin? Are you okay?”

What am I supposed to say? I’m very NOT okay? I’m burning with resentment that Nick is suddenly abandoning THIS family — me and the baby — for the family he claims to hate? I’m super incredibly pissed that he just blew all our money on a last-minute plane ticket? I’m wishing he took me with him?

Instead I stare down at a phone number in his handwriting, and all my resentments crystallize into a single word — “Shit!” Inez doesn’t care, doesn’t even notice. Maybe a Muslim girl swearing is no big deal to her. Or maybe her thoughts are focused on Nick, just like mine are. In my mind I’m chasing after his presence. His receding presence. I already realize my life has changed again, tilting back into uncertainty.

The father of my child is drunk.

At 11:37 AM, according to the slanty digits of my runner’s watch.

On a Sunday, with church bells pealing through the smog, a holy appeal to the vast and overwhelmingly Christian population of Mexico City.

Not that Nick cares about the religious implications. He’s an agnostic when it comes to the beliefs of other people, but an atheist for himself. He refuses to acknowledge any higher power in his life. There is no God to make or unmake him, only Nick Roberts. The “ultimate accountability” he likes to call it.

I’m not amused by his ultimate accountability right now. As far as I can tell, it’s indistinguishable from just doing whatever he wants. This morning he wants to get drunk with Elliot Parner, his new best friend. After he got drunk with Elliot last night, which is why we stayed overnight here. I’ve already heard their excuses. Last night it was drowning the pain of UCLA’s defeat in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. This morning it’s fending off the hangovers. I’d have more respect for Nick and Elliot if they just admitted it — right now their lives seem better drunk than sober.

Elliot I can understand. He smiles without using his eyes, laughs too loud, brags. Every five minutes another reference to missing his wife and kids, missing America. Then why take a job here in the first place? For the money, Elliot claims. But I don’t believe him. He’s fleeing from his life. All the way to Mexico City and into a bloody mary with a beer chaser.

Nick doesn’t have that excuse. His life is happy now — or it’s supposed to be happy, anyway. As happy as mine. We’re in love and having a baby! I understand why he worries about the future, because I worry about it too. Finishing his Ph.D. and supporting a stay-at-home mom, if that’s what I turn out to be. But is that any reason to get drunk and stay drunk? Grandfather’s voice is booming in my memory, a Farsi proverb. Lotfan be rajioye zaban velayat, moraa-je’e konid. Every day is full of worries, and just as many joys.

I scowl with resentment and avoid their rowdy presence. It’s easy to do. I’ve never been in a condo this big before. 3,000 square feet. Every room seems to lead into another room. Now I’m in a bedroom — the third I’ve discovered. Taupe walls angle together and apart at weird angles. The queen-sized bed hides under a goosedown comforter, a necessity in this frigid air-conditioning. A teak dresser wider than tall is empty. So is the walk-in closet.

Male voices invade my seclusion. “Nooshin!” yells Nick. “Nooooooo-shin!” echoes Elliot. I ignore them until I can’t anymore. Then I retrace my steps through the condo, marching angrily, until I reach the foyer. I grab my purse and slam the front door behind me.

The elevator discharges me into the parking garage. Oops. I meant to get off in the lobby. When I spin around, it’s too late. The metal doors won’t open again. Not unless I have a building key.

I follow the sharp incline, past rows of bumpers to the exit. It’s easy enough to duck under the gate arm. I emerge into the baking noonday heat. The cobblestone street pulses in rhythm to a nearby traffic light — awash in vehicles belching exhaust, then deserted, then awash again. I begin to stride down the sidewalk.

At the end of the block is La Casa Cultura — the House of Culture. The museum is unmistakable, an arabesque relic dwarfed by the grimly modern buildings that surround it. The portico greets me with a pair of immense wooden doors bound with iron. Convinced of their mass, I push forward with both palms…and discover they’re almost weightless on their hinges, losing my balance and stumbling inside.

The museum’s interior is quiet and cool and dim. Floodlit displays of natural history stretch from the Big Bang in the very first panel to the evolution and migration of humans in North America. About half of the panels are dedicated to cultures of Mexico’s eastern seaboard. Usually I’m underwhelmed by excavated ceramics, but one pre-Colombian culture made very unusual and beautiful pottery in animal motifs, especially feline and fish shapes. I’m surprised we didn’t see reproductions in the tourist markets of Veracruz.

At the far end of the museum is a stone staircase. I climb its worn treads to an overwrought wonderland. The entire second floor is dedicated to paintings and sculptures from the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, religious in nature and baroque or rococo in style. A Muslim girl can only take so much Catholic iconography, but I force myself to stare at every single cherub and saint. For a few seconds, at least.

The third floor shows a modernist shift. The traditional religious themes are gone, replaced by portraiture and landscapes inspired by the breathtaking beauty of Mexico, volcanic eruptions and craggy mountain ranges and flowered plains by glossy lakes. I linger in front of the landscapes, trying to identify their locales, wishing I could recognize them from my travels with Nick. But everything seems strange, unfamiliar, just plain off. Even panoramas of the Central Valley are unrecognizable, since Mexico City now laps over its rim.

On the fourth floor I arrive in the 20th century. There are several murals on display, all painted by socialistic Mexican artists in the 1930s. Another room features art from the 1960s — photomontages, soft sculptures, paintings studded with materials that project from the canvas. I circle the floor, trying to pick out my favorite work. Finally I decide on a cubist rendering from the 1920s. It depicts a train winding through Copper Canyon, the humongous gorge that’s four times bigger than the Grand Canyon and twice as deep. Squared-off shapes slide into each other, a dynamic rendering of massive green mountains and tiny orange train.

There is no fifth floor, no 21st century. I’m forced to retrace my steps down the stairs. My sandals echo in the deserted galleries. I feel a pang of disappointment when I discover the gift shop is already closed, its interior dark. That’s Mexico for you — employees close when they feel like it. The girl working the gift shop probably had a date with her boyfriend or something. I’m shocked when I glance at my watch and discover it’s past 4 PM, closing time. The entire afternoon passed unnoticed while I drifted through the exhibits, and the museum apparently closed without even a cursory check to see if everyone had left.

A security guard is sitting behind the entryway desk. I watch him admit a pair of visitors. Noticing me his eyes widen momentarily, then narrow to slits. “Vaya, vaya!” he says irritably, pointing at those heavy-looking wooden doors. I realize he’s illegally keeping the museum open after hours so he can pocket the entrance fee.

The street outside is empty now, only filled with long shadows and quiet. I sit on the curb in front of the museum, unwilling to return to Elliot’s condo. A lone street vendor is pushing his burrito cart down the opposite sidewalk. He pauses to wave at me. I shake my head. I’m not hungry enough to eat dinner — even though I missed breakfast and lunch. Around me is a forest of office and apartment buildings, all going dark darker darkest as the light wanes from the sky.