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"Isabel's Enigma"
© 2003 T. Adams
In June I saw the first indications of rain. Clouds from the northeast began building in the late afternoons before dissolving halfway across the lake. I spent most days in my office, in front of the fan, working on projects and dodging Chuya.
"¡Mira!" she grunted one afternoon, summoning me to the front part of the terrace where pots of plants lined the edge. "Look, look, this plant has had too much sun." She searched my face to see if the reprimand had hit home, turned, and continued her sweeping. It had been a plant I'd put there.
A hedge of blue plumbago along the terrace had recently been cut back so heavily that sun now poured into the porch for most of the day. The potted plants, once protected by their shade, now lay limp in their pots. Having seen the harsh pruning, Isabel predicted that several of the hedges would die and they were well on their way; two were now no more than sticks in the ground. The gardener was Chuya's teenaged son, Beto. He was a source of endless frustration for Isabel who warned me after seeing his handiwork that some people shouldn't touch plants. "They kill them, you know," she'd said, with a horrified look that revealed how serious that crime was in her book.
Beto constantly left tools out in the garden to rust or to be run over by our cars. He wore the look of the dullard that some boys assume early in their adolescence and no amount of contact seemed to change the way he went about his work. Advice, warnings, admonishments, and praise, all failed to affect him. Isabel constantly grumbled about how hard it was to train him. But Chuya was the one I watched. Beto was the oldest child of a demanding woman. While she staunchly defended her son to Isabel, I saw her once berate the boy in the walled area where our clothing was hung to dry. It had been a private moment between them I wished I hadn't seen.
Finally, six weeks to the day after the chicharras had begun their irritating whine, it rained. The first two or three were petit events, dampening the sidewalks and patios with modest sprinklings. After that the rains came every night and most afternoons. The villages along the Lake visibly relaxed as they let go of their pent up heat and breathed in the exquisite air.
The twelfth rain of the season turned into a rare hailstorm. The sky hurled balls of ice the size of limes that broke tiles and shredded the fist-sized flowers of the Tabachine tree that stood outside my window. I lay in my bed listening to the racket and watching the ruined blossoms fall to the ground. The storm lasted no more than 15 minutes but it had been fierce enough to leave mounds of hail in the garden. A walk of the grounds revealed a precise 25-foot circle etched out in the southwest corner, as if a giant ice chest had been upended onto the lawn.
I looked at the Tabachine blossoms that lay shredded beneath the ice. Their crushed red petals looked like puppies run over on the highway and for the millionth time I thought how cheap life could be. The in-your-face-reality of dead animals on the road between Guadalajara and Chapala unnerved me. The week before I'd seen a car roll over a young dog's paw while his owner, a rancher, was crossing the highway on horseback. He looked over his shoulder once at the shrieking dog and never broke stride. My sentimentalism didn't mean much to rural people who worked hard to survive and needed animals to function like machinery. A downed dog was cheap in a country of bigger tragedies. Losing myself in a sudden fury, I kicked at the ground in a rage, shoving the ice deep into the soggy soil.
That night I dreamed of my sister. Frames from an old 16mm film clicked and flashed a day from her life as she tilled up her garden and talked to someone away from the camera's lens. Her voice, filled with irony, barely concealed the tenderness that lay within. Suddenly she laughed and looked directly at the camera. I gasped. Before I could call out her name, the reel changed as it does in dreams and I saw her running through a forest of trees, light and swift with music behind her. I, heavy with life, could not keep up. I stopped, held my chest, and watched her leave with a sob deep in my throat. When I woke, hot with sorrow, I headed outside to the garden. I stood there a long time looking at the pole star, fixing my position and breathing hard.
Read the complete article . . .
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Miguel de Allende
