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Baggage
by Joan Fry
I met her in Terre Haute, where I was born. She was the woman whose
husband had left her for his twenty-something secretary, and she stood in
her front yard and stripped naked. As she yanked off her underpants, she
screamed," He told me he had to work late, the son of a bitch!" The
neighbors called the police.
I saw her again in Boston, where I went to college. She was the girl in my
English class who laid our professor because he bragged that his work came
first, wife or no wife (he didn't have one at the time). The girl didn't lay
him to get a higher grade. She did it because she wanted to see if she
could--if his work always came first.
No. I'm lying. The truth is, I was that girl--the one who laid him.
 When I lived in Guatemala, a Mayan man told me a story about her. She was
beautiful, he said, dressed in nothing but her own brown-satin skin, and she
would stand by the side of the jungle path and smile. Funny, but no woman
ever saw her. Only the men. And they always followed her--they knew what
that smile promised. But she was as elusive as the scent of night-blooming
jasmine and stayed just out of reach, luring the man deeper and deeper into
the jungle until he couldn't tell which way was out.
"Wait," he panted, slashing through the bush with his machete--bush that did
not slow her down, did not seem to exist for her. Finally she let him catch
up with her. But when he spun her around to face him, his breath turned to
stone in his throat. Her skin--her face, her smile--had hardened, plaqued
with scales. He was fondling a tree. The man who told me the story admitted
she terrified him--he didn't want to be lured into the jungle and left there
to die. I, on the other hand, was filled with admiration. This woman
understood revenge.
In Mexico she has a name--La Llorona, the Weeping Woman. Some historians
claim she's Malinche, Cortés's mistress. (The Spaniards found her real name,
Malintzín, too hard to pronounce.) Cortés, the Spanish explorer--first name
Hernán--came from his warships with five hundred soldiers, looking for land,
lost souls, and treasure. He found all three in the cities of the Aztec.
Conquering them was pathetically easy--Cortés and his men had firearms. The
Aztec did not. Cortés and his men wore armor that no weapon of the Aztec
could pierce. Cortés and his men had horses. The Aztec had never seen one.
To them, a Spaniard on foot was human. A Spaniard on horseback was a god.
Why did Malinche bed Cortés? Historians suggest she was a peace offering.
When Cortés accepted her, what did he think? That she was a slave? A
play-thing? Maybe she was a prisoner of war and wanted him to slaughter the
Aztec. The historians don't answer. In the absence of fact we ask
questions--and imagine.
Maybe Malinche went to him of her own free will--it's not every day that a
god pops up in your backyard. Historians surmise that Cortés looked like his
men, the skin of his face pulled tight as rawhide, black-fringed Spanish
eyes, beard and hair a rabbity brown. But the Maya to the south--Cortés,
working day and night to find treasure, would conquer them, too--hold a
ceremonial dance each year they call "El Cortés." For centuries the
mask-makers have given Cortés blue eyes and tousled ringlets, blond as a
Swedish schoolboy's. Imagine such a man among the Indians. No wonder the
Aztec thought him a god. No wonder Malinche wanted to take him to bed. She
was testing herself, to see if she could divert his attention. She laid him
to see if she could.
I did that myself, once.
After Cortés got what he wanted from the Aztec, he turned south. Every
night, in Malinche's arms, he asked her the same question: "Is there more
treasure? Where?" Saving the Indians' damned souls for the Pope or claiming
land for his King no longer interested him. He had looted so much gold from
the Aztec that the horses stumbled under the weight of it, but he wanted
more. His lust consumed him--necklaces of gold. Ear plugs of gold. Gold from
the pyramids, the tombs of kings.
Had Malinche really been a slave? Maybe she was a bored Aztec princess,
looking for a little fun. Maybe she enjoyed the sight of Cortés's soldiers
torching the grass-roofed huts of her enemies the Maya, the crack of the
Spaniards' guns, women screaming.
Or did Cortés march south because Malinche swore to him that's where he'd
find treasure? It wasn't true--why would she say that? Maybe because she had
diverted his attention once and wanted to do it again. Or because she was so
crazy in love with him that she lied to keep him with her.
That's what happened to me.
Once the rains started, the troops slogged from one muddy village to the
next--no more gunfire, no looting, no rape. They were too tired. Near Lago
Atitlán, in Guatemala, one of the horses fell. When nobody could prod it to
its feet again, Cortés left it with the villagers, who fed it flower petals
and wild honey. When the horse starved to death, they dragged its body to
the lake and pushed it in. As it sank, they tossed handfuls of bird of
paradise flowers on the water and begged forgiveness for killing a white
men's god.
Finally Cortés gave up and turned around. What did Malinche think as they
trudged northward? She knew what was coming--Cortés would load his men and
their horses and their treasure in his ships and return to Spain. Did she
ask to go with him? Did he smile fondly and call her a silly woman? Or did
he humor her, unwilling to confront her with the truth? "Of course you can
come home with me, my beloved."
At last the Spaniards marched into the surf, launched their boats, and left
the New World. Did Malinche fling herself into the water and swim towards
her lover as his men rowed him to his ship? Did Cortés ignore her? Or did
she crouch in the jungle and watch, too proud to beg, spitting curses at
him? She was already crying--convinced, finally, of his treachery. She had
given Cortés her people. He had given her a bible and a no-name bastard son.
Why do we cry? No. Why does Malinche cry? Her tortured sobs are what I'm
talking about, not mine. She's here in California--I saw her last week in
Lancaster, by an off-ramp of the 14. Three children clung to her arm, and
she held a sign that said PLEAS HELP. Her eyes were as old as the air in the
Aztecs' tombs. The day before yesterday I saw her at Vons--no teeth, hair
bristly as cactus, a pale circle where her wedding ring used to
be--clutching an ice chest as she rummaged through the manager's discount
specials in the meat department.
When the wind blows, I hear her. The wind is Malinche without a voice,
testing all that's man-made, man-ufactured, man-handled. When the Santa Anas
blow, I hear both of us weeping. Does Malinche cry because Cortés betrayed
her? Is that why I cry? Maybe motive is irrelevant when love catches you
unprepared.
But Malinche's anger runs deeper than her grief. Mine too. We cry because
the men we loved went away, beyond our reach.
We cry because we can't get even.
* * *
Reprinted by permission
Tales of the
Green Jackalope (Round-Peg Square-Hole Press, 2003)
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