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  “Hello. Deukjamian’s Fine Rugs. May I help you?” It was a pleasant motherly voice.

  “Mrs. Deukjamian?”

  “Yes?”

  “You don’t know me…” I gave her my full name with its convincing Armenian syllables. “I’m all alone in the Albuquerque airport. My grandmother was supposed to meet me. She lives up north, near Taos, but she’s sick and when I called she told me to take the bus but there isn’t one until morning and I…I’m just so tired. I was looking for a motel when I saw your name and it sounded like home, so I’m sorry I called and intruded…”

  “Now dear,” the voice warmed up, “I don’t like the idea of you being in a strange place all alone. How old are you?”

  “Fourteen.” I lied, subtracting.

  “Just a moment.” She put her hand over the receiver, but I could hear her murmuring. Her soft, cultivated voice reassured me. “Dear,” said Mrs. Deukjamian, “we think you should come and stay with us and have some dinner.” She gave me the address of the rug store. “It isn’t far. We’re just in Old Town.”

  I hailed a cab waiting outside. Not far from the airport we turned off the strip and into an older section of town. There were pawn stores and places selling turquoise and cowboy hats. Around a plaza were narrow streets, adobe houses, high walls, enclosed gardens, and the rug store. Deukjamian’s proudly displayed rugs in a courtyard. Rugs were hung over gates, spread against walls, even hanging from the branches of a thick tree.

  The rugs were enormous. They were woven in zigzags, in stars, in dense lines, in doves on branches, in the tropical colors of Mexico and in the pale bold hues of Central Asia, as well as the clear psychedelics of the Navajo.

  Mrs. D came towards me, holding out her hands. She had a kind look on her face, a colorful sweater, and a strand of pearls.

  “Come in, dear. I won’t be a moment. Help me bring these rugs in, won’t you. Thank you. I’m closing a bit early today. My goodness, your hands are freezing. And you look awfully young to be traveling alone. Well, another day done. Some good sales, too, even though this is the slow season. This way, yes, yes, the apartment is behind the store. You know, you look a little like my second daughter did at your age, though she is long grown. This way.”

  We went out to the back of the store and through a small courtyard. Mrs. D unlocked a wrought iron gate, and led me into an adobe house. A climbing vine looked ready to bud. Birds made an evening noise in a fruit tree against the wall.

  Mr. Deukjamian greeted us, a portly man with a mustache, who smelled of aftershave and cigarettes. He kissed my hand and offered me a glass of dark, faintly bitter, wine.

  “Our young countrywoman,” he beamed. “The world traveler. And where do you hail from?”

  “New Jersey,” I said. “Bergen County. But I was born right here in Albuquerque.”

  “And you still have a grandmother in…”

  “Pilar,” I said firmly.

  Mrs. D fluttered about, preparing dinner. “See, I knew it was the right thing,” she told him. “Look how young she is! Suppose something had happened to her. Doesn’t she remind you of Denise? I’m sure I would have wanted someone to help my girls had they ever been traveling all alone.”

  “Young women are different today,” said Mr. D. “More independent.”

  “But the world has changed. It’s a rougher place. The world isn’t what it used to be.”

  “No, the world is exactly the same,” said Mr. D. “You just refused to face facts when the girls were young. Now history will show us…”

  “History! Always history! May I remind you that you are a rug dealer, not a professor?” snapped Mrs. D. She was setting out linen napkins on a blue tablecloth. “You’d think that with all the blessings that life has brought you’d…”

  “You are my greatest blessing,” Mr. D twinkled at her. “Particularly when you argue.”

  “I’m serious. You take a pessimistic view at all times, you insist on it, why can’t you…”

  “There’s no life that can’t be ruined in a day and a night,” said Mr. D solemnly, although his eyes still smiled.

  “Is that a proverb?” I asked.

  “No,” said Mrs. D. “And now dinner is served. Please come to the table before things get cold.”

  Dinner was meat cooked on skewers with green peppers, tomatoes, and onions. There was yellow rice and green salad. An unfamiliar touch was a bowl of salsa, a kind of Mexican relish that burned my tongue. For dessert there were cut-glass bowls of vanilla ice cream served with hard sugar cookies. After dinner, Mrs. D cleaned up and puttered around. I offered to help, but she just told me to rest. Mr. D was reading a huge volume, a history of something or other. His feet rested on a hassock. After a page or two, he caught me watching him.

  “He who does not understand the past is condemned to repeat it,” he intoned.

  “That’s a proverb,” I said.

  “Sure.” He patted his mustache. “But it is also true. As an Armenian you should know that.”

  “I know all about the Turks.”

  “But it’s more than that,” Mr. D continued. “Each person should know his or her own history. For example, you were born right here in New Mexico.”

  “Yes.”

  “So in a way you’ve come to find your origins.”

  I nodded, stricken.

  “Why the worried look?” asked Mr. D.

  “Something terrible happened to me here…when I was born…up in the mountains.” I choked out the words.

  Mr. D just looked at me thoughtfully. He didn’t jump all over with questions or offer answers. I was grateful for his quiet, his kindness. After a while he just said: “And so you’ve come all this way to find out what happened?”

  “Yes, I have.”

  “Then I think you are doing the right thing. He who does not understand the past…she who does not…what I’m trying to say is that nothing is so terrible once you understand what made it happen.”

  I nodded mutely. I knew he was right, or at least I hoped so.

  Mrs. D had been listening to us for a few minutes, drying her hands on a dish towel. “You must be tired, Rania. There is nothing like a good night’s sleep when you’re traveling. Let me show you your room.”

  The guest room had once belonged to the third daughter, but now all three girls were grown up and married. Mrs. D proudly told me she already had four grandchildren. The room was thick with carpets, like the rest of the house.

  I took a long shower before getting into bed. I sampled all of Mrs. D’s toiletries: the herbal shampoo, the lavender soap, the fancy dusting powder. I smelled good, too good to be worried or homesick. I slept soundly through the night until Mr. D woke me in time for the morning bus to Taos.

  “Tell me about your grandmother,” Mr. D quizzed me as he pulled in and out of traffic on the way to the bus station.

  “I usually only see her on Christmas and Easter or something. She comes to New Jersey.”

  “Then you’ve never been to Pilar?”

  “Oh no. I mean yes.”

  “What’s her house like?”

  “Nice. Pretty big. I mean not too big. It’s nice. And it has a nice garden.”

  “Is she ill, that you’re going to visit?”

  “Ill? No. Oh yes, she’s sick of course. Arthritis I think.”

  “Rania, take good care of yourself,” he said at the bus station. “Keep an eye on her,” he instructed the driver, “and see that she gets off safely at Pilar.”

  My last sight of him was of a mournful figure with a mustache, solemnly waving good-bye to me under a turquoise sky.

  CHAPTER 27

  THE MANZANO MOUNTAINS WERE EMPTY. They loomed to the east as we headed towards Santa Fe. They were dry lumpy mountains, the place where I was born. They were hollowed out, and then filled with missiles, warheads, bombs that could make Hiroshimas thick as stars. Trains ran on soundless tracks in and out of the caverns. Men bent under yellow lights, drawing on graph paper, splitting
or fusing an atom, trying to make another sun in a world that had one already. The Manzano Mountains were an ark of a different kind, without even a pair of centipedes or black widow spiders, prairie dogs or fire ants.

  The motion of the bus lulled me. I slept through Santa Fe and when I awoke we had stopped in a little nowhere town called Espanola. The depot was a ragged cement building with peeling blue paint and the word BUS hanging from a busted neon sign. Two old ladies, loaded down with parcels, including what looked like a fruit tree with its roots wrapped in burlap, climbed on just before the bus pulled out in a cough of blue smoke.

  The highway began to follow the gorge of the river. Snow-covered mountains loomed. The Rio Grande boiled and bounded in a gorge of redrock walls. This time of year, it was full of mud and the carcasses of trees. Pilar sat on the east bank of the river, overlooking islands of cottonwood and tamarisk. The bus driver left me off by the shoulder of the road. The air was so fresh and clear. Green was coming to the tips of the trees.

  At first glance, Pilar looked like nothing more than a general store and the red word CAFE. I went into the store. I looked at the old dusty man behind the counter as if I were suddenly struck deaf and mute. The strangeness of it all over-whelmed me. The man looked at me kindly. Each crease in his face seemed full of red dirt blown by the spring wind. He cleared his throat. Apparently a girl too shy to speak was nothing new here. “Yes?”

  “Can you help me?”

  “Sí.”

  “Is there, I mean, I’m looking…”

  “You want the youth hostel, yes?”

  “The youth hostel?”

  “It is nearby.”

  “Oh, wonderful! I can sleep there. You mean, a place to stay, a real youth hostel? That’s perfect. You know, I hadn’t even thought about where I was going to…I mean…”

  “You are looking for someone?”

  “Pilar.”

  “You are here.”

  Then I said her name aloud: the name of the woman who had killed my mother.

  “Sí,” said the old man. “Mary Rose is here.” He looked at me thoughtfully. “You want her?”

  “I want her.”

  “Her house is not far. You go about a half mile north, and then turn at the mailboxes. There is a path. It is easy, you will find her. But check into the hostel first.”

  “Thank you, thanks so much.”

  He nodded gravely. “Adios. Be careful, young lady.”

  “Thank you. Thanks again.”

  I took a path towards the river and then towards the low building of the hostel, adobe with a red tin roof. The river foamed muddy below. The woman at the hostel sold me a membership for five dollars, and then charged me a dollar per night for a bed. I told her I wasn’t sure how long I would be staying. I put my pack down on the narrow white bed in the empty dorm room and opened it to rearrange my things. Everything was as it should be, except the red Swiss Army knife. Damn. Where was it? I searched my pockets. Gone. When was the last time I’d had it? I couldn’t remember. Had I left it at Michael’s or in Babylon? I felt odd and unprotected without it, but there was nothing I could do just then. I’d replace it later.

  On my way out I stopped at the store again and bought myself two yellow packages of M&M’s with peanuts. This time the old man cracked me a smile; one of his front teeth was missing and one was gold.

  I ate M&M’s as I walked along a narrow rocky road scented with pine trees. The sky was unbelievable, so blue, so bright. There were patches of snow in the shade, but the air was warm against my face. A rustle startled me, and a pair of mourning doves fluttered out of my way.

  A trailer sat before me in a clearing. In the window was a sign: MARY ROSE—PALM READER. Suddenly my feet refused to move. I sat down hard under the nearest stunted pine tree, getting sticky needles on the seat of my pants.

  The air was still and cool. I dug a fingernail into the red dirt. “I’m not stupid,” I said aloud. I had found Monique, hadn’t I? So what if she had refused to go back with me. I could read Latin, I could take taxis, I had a boyfriend. I was practically sixteen years old. My great-grandmothers had survived the Turks. I had more mothers than most people. I got up slowly, rocking on my heels in the dirt. Then I went up to the porch of the trailer and rang the doorbell.

  The world was in slow motion: trailer, trees, doves—nothing moved as quickly as it should. I rang the bell again.

  She answered the door, a thin woman, blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. Her eyes were gray, set far apart, her nose was skinny, and her hands were small, with the nails painted in frosted pink. She wore blue jeans and a white sweater stitched with white yarn roses. She held her head to one side, examining me. “Yes?”

  “Are you…I mean, I’m…”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Are you the Mary Rose in the sign? I mean, I thought…”

  “Yes?”

  “Can you tell my fortune?”

  “Come in, please.”

  The trailer was tidy and suburban. It had green carpeting and a recliner chair. The only touch of the exotic was the smell of mint tea and Four Roses incense.

  “For ten dollars, I’ll read your palm.”

  “Okay.”

  We sat down at the kitchen table, imitation wood. I put a ten dollar bill between us. She didn’t pick it up, but left it lying there.

  She turned on a tensor lamp and examined the backs of my hands. “Hmmm…” Her voice deepened. When she touched me, I almost started, forced myself to relax. Her hands on mine were smooth and smelled of cheap rose water lotion. “You were born under the sign of Cancer.”

  “Right,” I couldn’t help agreeing.

  “But you like to travel, so there must be other influences. Sagittarius maybe. Anyway, you were born not far from here, to the south, near Albuquerque, somewhere up in the mountains. You are fifteen years old, although you lie about your age. You had a heart murmur as an infant but that has cleared up now, won’t give you any trouble. I see blood around your birth, but I can’t see why. Maybe a Caesarean.”

  She dropped my right hand and picked up my left, studied it closely, then shook her head. “I see two women struggling at your birth. I see blood, lots of it. I see a dark woman and a fair woman struggling…” She broke off. A tremor seemed to run through her. “Would you like some tea? Mint tea?”

  “Sure.”

  She got up and brought back two cups, the Japanese kind without handles. The tea tasted hot and bitter on my tongue. She turned my hands over, palms up. Her voice sounded sharp. “You have a line of rebellion here; you’re a bit selfish but you have a big heart. You’ll love someone a lot but won’t marry him; you’ll marry later in life. You should try and get more exercise. Swimming, maybe. Any questions?”

  “You didn’t finish,” I said. “You didn’t finish with my hands.”

  “Five dollars more.”

  I fished five crumpled bills out of my pocket and handed them to her.

  She dropped the money on the floor. “Go away,” she said. “Why don’t you just go away?”

  “Finish,” I said.

  She looked again at my palms. “I see a dark woman and a fair woman struggling. I see the dark woman falling, going under. I see the fair woman lifting you out of that womb, cleaning you off so carefully, taking you down the mountain in the soft sunlight.”

  “Why?”

  “What do you want?”

  “Just tell me why.”

  “Rania…”

  “How do you know my name?” I whispered.

  She hadn’t let go of my hands. We were clutching at each other. “Because I gave it to you,” she said. “I gave you your name. It was the right name for you. I could tell right away you were no Betty or Jane. So I named you Rania.”

  “But how did my father…”

  She laughed. “Oh, I told them your mother named you right before she died. But believe me, I’m the one who gave you your name.”

  “So you are the one. You’re her,” I sai
d stupidly. At that moment I wished passionately that I could tell Monique.

  “Yes. Now get out. Leave me alone. You don’t belong here with me.”

  “But I do. I want to talk to you, don’t you understand? I need to find out.”

  “There is nothing to find out,” she said. “I did what I did, and you were born.”

  “But there is everything. You know about my mother. You were the last person to see her. You know why it all happened. Didn’t you ever wonder? Didn’t you ever think that I …”

  “Get out,” she said. She was standing now, a tall supple woman. So I grabbed my money and fled.

  CHAPTER 28

  I LEFT, BUT DID NOT GO VERY FAR. I went back to the youth hostel and that evening ate a dinner of peas, mashed potatoes, meatloaf, and green Kool-Aid in the company of two Swedes, a German, a guy from Kenya, and a bicyclist from Massachusetts. They all spoke English, more or less, and were mostly interested in discussing fossils and local mushrooms. I went to bed early but I did not sleep. I lay and stared into the darkness and pretended that I had never been born, that I was still safe inside my own mother.

  I woke up late the next morning. The others had gone off in search of fairy cross crystals by an abandoned mine. I made a sandwich, walked down by the river, and sat on a rock. I looked into the water, but the foamy Rio Grande did not clear to give me a vision. Instead, it ran muddy and wild. Again, I had come a long way for nothing. Now I would finally be forced to return empty-handed. I thought of Babylon and the dancers twirling and embracing in a sea of bubbles and strobes. Did they dance every night? Had they danced last night as I slept in the narrow bed? What time was it in New York anyway? Maybe I should just call my parents and go home.

  I brushed myself off and went back towards the hostel. I would pack now and leave. The red wall of the canyon blocked me in. The desert refused to open. I had been born among mountains but I had been raised at sea level, by a salty river.

  “There is someone to see you,” said the woman at the hostel desk.

  I couldn’t imagine who she meant. “A lady?”