Carlos’s house is turquoise – the exact color of the middle stripe of ocean in Acapulco, in between the light sandy stripe near the shore and the darker blue at the horizon when you stand on the steps at Plaza España and look out on a sunny day. The house feels big and modern even though it’s attached to an identical purple one on the right and an identical peach-colored one on the left. Carlos carries their bags inside.
Carlos’s wife is named Meredith, and she’s white. She’s from Estados Unidos, and that’s a fact Luca could’ve gathered without being told, just from the quick glimpse he got of her in church before Carlos took them upstairs. Her voice, her clothes. Her way of holding people by the shoulders and shaking them slightly while she speaks to them. Luca investigates the empty house, the family photographs, a closer look at the three boys, who all have Meredith’s pink complexion and Carlos’s dimples. The middle one looks about the same age as Luca. Meredith eventually arrives home without those boys (who stayed behind for even more church), and with her comes Luca’s first experience of proprietary grief.
Proprietary is a word Luca knows (in Spanish, but not in English) because he knows lots of words other eight-year-olds don’t, like viscous and bombastic and serendipity. But he’s never truly understood the meaning of the word propietario until now. He’s never felt the feeling before. It rumbles through him like a steamroller with a broad, flattening crush. Because who is this woman, crying for Papi? Who is this lady with her quivering features and her leaking eyes and her trembling hands and her need to be consoled? It surprises Luca – his ungenerous interpretation of such raw emotion. After all, she’d been Papi’s friend at one time. Or at least she’d married Papi’s friend. And she’d liked Papi well enough to make him the godfather to her eldest son. So why shouldn’t she be saddened, even traumatized, by the news of his unexpected and violent death? Why shouldn’t she weep and lament and exhibit her devastation? Luca cannot, therefore, explain why the display of it irritates him so. When she tries to hug him, he can’t endure it, and Mami doesn’t make him. She intercepts him and takes him to the bathroom and splashes water on his face, and when they return, Meredith has composed herself. She urges Mami to sit while she makes tea for everyone. The tea doesn’t move from the cups, but the conversation goes on for a long time regardless, and Luca lets most of it pass him without landing.
Meredith met Carlos when she was a college-aged missionary from Indiana, and she’s still involved with that faraway cornfield church. That summer she first came here, she fell in love with Carlos and with his country. She liked the way Mexicans were easy in their faith. She liked the sense of being in a country where it wasn’t controversial or weird to talk openly about God. In Mexico, prayer was normal then, public. Expected. To Meredith, those cultural conventions felt miraculous. So she and Carlos married young, and then she made it her life’s work to preserve the link between Chilpancingo and that Indiana church community, to share the experience of this place with others.
In fact, right now there are fourteen Indiana missionaries visiting here for spring break. Those missionaries are being hosted in Chilpancingo by the church Carlos and Meredith attend. Meredith is the chief coordinator of this annual visit, and two additional ones each summer. It’s a nonstop wheel of blond Indiana missionaries, cogging their way through Guerrero. The current group will fly home to Estados Unidos Wednesday afternoon, so the church’s three passenger vans are scheduled to depart for Mexico City at seven o’clock Wednesday morning. This is where the conversation takes on amplified urgency. Luca sits up in his chair and fiddles with the handle of Mami’s teacup.
Carlos says, ‘They can go in the shuttle, of course. It’s perfect.’
Meredith says nothing with her mouth, but conveys plenty with her eyes, and none of it is very accommodating.
And then Mami says, ‘We’d be safe getting through the roadblocks, if we were on the church shuttle.’
‘They’d never expect you to be with the missionaries,’ Carlos says.
Mami shakes her head. ‘They wouldn’t even look.’
And then Meredith uses her mouth. ‘Safe for who? Maybe safer for you, but I’m sorry, I can’t put all those kids at risk.’ She shakes her head, and Luca has the notion that she looks nothing like the woman who was crying for Papi just a few minutes ago. She’s different colors entirely, and her spongy features have hardened into new shapes.
Mami opens her mouth but manages to close it again without speaking. She fidgets with the loops of gold at her neck.
Carlos taps his pointer finger on the table between them. They all look at that finger. ‘Meredith, there’s no other option for them. I understand your concern, but this is the only way to get them safely out of Guerrero. If we don’t help them, they could die.’
‘Could is an understatement,’ Mami says.
But Meredith crosses her arms and shakes her head some more. Her hair is some color between brown and gold, and it’s pushed back from her face with a black headband. Her nose is red, cheeks red, eyes hard blue. Mami lifts her teacup and tries a sip, but when she sets it back down, Luca can tell she didn’t swallow any.
‘I’m sorry, it’s too risky,’ Meredith says. ‘It’s not fair to do that to the kids, to their parents in Indiana. This is exactly the kind of thing those families fear, sending their kids down here to Mexico. Do you have any idea what it takes to placate those fears? We give them our word their kids will be safe. I personally guarantee their safety. I tell them this kind of thing will never happen.’
Mami clears her throat and her face looks like a bomba about to go off, but she breathes through it. ‘This kind of thing?’
Meredith presses her eyes closed. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t mean. I don’t even know what to say.’
‘Sebastián is dead, Meredith,’ Carlos says. ‘My friend, your friend. He’s gone. And fifteen more besides. This is not the kind of thing that happens, ever. Not even here. Do you know anyone else who’s lost sixteen family members in one day?’ Meredith glares at him, but he plows ahead. ‘We have to help them. If the suffering of our friends means nothing, if those kids can’t be allowed to see us, to see Mexico as it really is, then what are they even doing here? Are they just drive-by Samaritans?’
‘Carlos, don’t,’ Meredith says, and Luca has the feeling this is a very old conversation between them.
‘They just want to make pancakes and take selfies with skinny brown children?’ Carlos asks.
Meredith slaps her hand against the table, and the tea ripples in the cups. But Mami intercepts the rising anger between them. She speaks like a void, like she’s left the conversation entirely, and only her voice remains behind. She chants without any expression. ‘Sebastián, Yemi, Alex, Yénifer, Adrián, Paula, Arturo, Estéfani, Nico, Joaquín, Diana, Vicente, Rafael, Lucía, and Rafaelito. Mamá. They are gone. All gone.’