The sisters walk by instinct, and they’ve become good at it, following the signs and the people, wending their way into the denser parts of town in search of la plaza central. They feel safest where it’s clean and crowded. A hotel, a hardware store, a bus station, a statue of a winged angel attacking somebody with a sword, and the daylight descends from pink to purple. Beside a fruit vendor, a man sits astride a milk crate wearing a white cowboy hat. His accordion grows and shrinks in his hands like flamboyant lungs. He makes the music the whole street moves to. A lady is grilling meat nearby, and the aroma makes Luca’s stomach twist in hunger, but they keep walking as the streets become narrow instead of broad, stone instead of tarmac. Paper lanterns stretch across the spaces overhead, affixed to the wrought iron balconies and bobbing in the urban breeze. It’s different from Acapulco in every conceivable way except one: it’s like a sensory postcard of a Mexican town. The sun sets west at their backs, making everything blush.
Luca squeezes his mother’s hand. ‘Mami, I’m hungry.’
‘Good timing, chiquito,’ Soledad says. ‘We’re here.’
Here is the Plaza Principal of San Miguel de Allende. They duck beneath the arched stone portico of a cinnamon-colored building and take a moment to rest. Luca lets go of Mami’s hand and leans his pack against the wall behind him. In the plaza, people are eating tortas and drinking Cokes. They’re chatting and laughing. Three mariachi bands in competing colors – orange, white, powder blue – keep just enough distance between them to be heard above their rivals. They stroll the corners of the plaza and romance the tourists with the brightness of their music. There’s a band of odd trees that fills the square between them, their trunks tight and compact. The weird spread of their limbs above blends their foliage into one thick, spongy green ceiling. A riot of pink spires topped by a golden cross rises from the canopy like a fairy palace. It’s the Parroquia de San Miguel Arcángel, and the church makes a stunning silhouette against the dusky sky.
‘Crazy.’ Rebeca says the word they’re all thinking.
It’s one of the strangest places Luca has ever seen. And just as the last ray of sunlight lifts diagonally from the Plaza Principal and slides up the steeples on its way out of town, all at once the studded lampposts blaze to light. The strings of lights around the tree trunks pop and glow. It’s overwhelming, to be in a beautiful, festive place like this. Lydia is overcome by guilt. Because it feels incongruous and seductive and wrong to witness the simple charm of a pretty place. She can see that same kind of notion land across Luca’s features, and she reaches for his hand. His mind does this awful thing to remind him not to be enchanted: it floods him with the helpful memory of all his dead family, the endless roll of gunfire through Abuela’s bathroom window, the screams outside, the futile press of Mami’s hands against his ears, the single spot of his bright red blood against the green shower tile. Everyone gone. Luca is gone with them for a moment, so he doesn’t hear Mami when she says his name. He doesn’t see the faces of Soledad and Rebeca swarm toward him in sisterly concern. He’s unaware of his own sobbing, the way he clamps his hands over his head. He doesn’t know how long he’s gone, but when he returns, he’s tucked into the curl of Mami’s body and she’s rocking him. Her hands through his hair, her voice a hum of tight comfort in his ear.
‘Sh, amorcito, it’s okay,’ Lydia says.
He nods. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m okay now.’
But she doesn’t let go.
Soledad catches Lydia’s eye across the top of Luca’s head, and some byway of recognition darts between them. They perceive each other, the unspoken trauma they’ve both endured, their reasons for being here. It’s as subtle and significant as a heartbeat.
And then Soledad says, ‘Rebeca, let’s hurry now, and get him some food. Figure out where to sleep.’
Lydia funnels gratitude into the slow blink of her lashes.
The sisters return quickly with dinner. It’s like a magic trick, so that Lydia can see for the first time some benefit to their beauty. It’s the best food Luca and Lydia have eaten since the quinceañera, because the sisters have learned important things. They don’t bother with the street vendors, whose generosity might be contingent on feeding their own families first. Instead, Soledad and Rebeca have learned, it’s best to find a fancy restaurant, and befriend a young man there who may emerge for a cigarette break or to make a delivery. That young man may find himself beholden to the beauty and raw need of two young girls who are alone so far from home. Very often, the sisters have learned, that young man will disappear momentarily and return with two heaping containers of hot spaghetti, still steaming and tossed with garlic, oil, and salt. Perhaps there may also be a spoonful of Bolognese or some vegetables. A heel of warm bread. There is always a smile, a blessing, a flare of recognition from the hardworking young man who, because of the way beauty begets empathy (among other things), imagines his own little sister or cousin or daughter in the place of these girls. He bids them a safe journey, implores them to look after themselves. Sometimes he also provides forks. The girls are always effusive in their thanks. They call all of God’s blessings down upon the young man’s head.
On the broad pink steps of the elaborate church, Luca and Lydia, Soledad and Rebeca fall gratefully on the spaghetti. They eat in silence, sharing the two forks, until every morsel is gone. Lydia thanks the girls, and her spoken gratitude feels entirely insufficient, because what she really needs to say is that the food, yes, but also their kindness, their humanity, their very existence, has nourished some withered, essential part of herself. Rebeca and Luca have wandered over to rinse their hands in the fountain, but Soledad is looking directly at Lydia’s face.
‘Maybe we should stick together for a while,’ she says.
Lydia nods. ‘Yes.’
Night collapses over the city. The bars and restaurants empty and shutter their doors for the night, and eventually, even the lingering mariachis disperse to their homes. As the lights of San Miguel de Allende falter and quench, the four travelers move their packs and their bodies toward the center of the plaza. They stretch themselves out on the municipal benches. Like bums, Luca thinks. It’s their first night sleeping outdoors, and it doesn’t feel like an adventure at all. He wants his bedroom with its stack of books on the floor and his balón de fútbol lamp. He wants Papi’s warm shadow on the wall. But his belly is full and his head is resting on the squishy part of Mami’s thigh, and Luca is exhausted. There’s a tug-of-war in his heart already, between wanting to remember and needing to forget. In the months to come, Luca will sometimes wish he hadn’t squandered these early days of his grief. He’ll wish he’d let it pierce and demolish him more. Because, as the forgetting part takes anchor and stays, it will feel like a treachery. He’ll mistakenly believe it’s his own cowardice erasing Papi’s details – the mole above his left eyebrow, the tight, rough little curls of his hair, the timbre of his voice when he laughs, the sandpaper feel of his jaw against Luca’s forehead when they read together at night in Luca’s bed. But Luca doesn’t know any of that yet, nor does he know that, no matter what he does right now, that creeping amnesia is inevitable, it’s not his fault. So, in fatigue, he pushes those memories away and shuts them out. He recites to himself the geographic particulars of Nairobi, Toronto, Hong Kong. Soon, he’s snoring softly on his mother’s lap.