Black Rainbow Read online

  “No. A gentleman.”

  “Old?” For an insane moment I thought my father had come to find me.

  “Ummm hmmm,” she said with a twinkle. “I don’t want to spoil a surprise, but he looks like your grandfather. He said that he would be in the cafe and that you should join him.”

  “Of course,” I said, and set off. Both of my grandfathers were dead. Perhaps it was an Armenian ghost come to instruct me about my fate.

  I had not been in the cafe before, but it smelled pleasantly of hamburgers and fries. There, sitting on the cracked red plastic of a booth, was Mr. Deukjamian.

  “Mr. D! Oh, hello. How nice to see you. What a surprise.”

  “Rania, come sit down. Would you like something to eat?”

  “Some French fries, please.” I smiled as he ordered for me.

  “Rania,” he began. “I’m not quite sure what you’re doing up here in this wild country all alone.”

  “I’m not alone. I’m at the youth hostel.”

  “You know what I mean. You aren’t visiting your grandmother at all, if you even have one.”

  “She’s in New Jersey.”

  “My point exactly. Now, do your parents know you are here?”

  “They haven’t known where I was for ages.”

  “Does this have something to do with a boyfriend?”

  “No. My boyfriend lives in New York. His name is Michael. You’d like him; he’s smart.”

  “Then why in the world are you here?”

  “Mr. D, it’s complicated. My mother is here.”

  “Your mother? But isn’t she in New Jersey too?”

  “That’s my stepmother. My real mother was killed when I was born. This other woman kidnapped her and took her up unto the mountains and strangled her until she was dead and then cut me out with a knife and said I was hers.”

  A look of pitying comprehension crept across Mr. D’s kind dark face. “That terrible story that was in the newspaper so many years ago. Are you the child?”

  “Yes.”

  “What a terrible story.” He shook his head.

  “Yes.”

  “Rania,” he looked me straight in the eye, “I am very sorry for you. But terrible things, tragic things, happen to people all the time. Suffering is not an excuse to run away from your responsibilities. You still owe something to your father and stepmother. They must be worried sick. Think how your father has already suffered.”

  “I’ve suffered more.”

  “It was your mother who suffered the most.”

  “Yes.”

  “And so you’ve come to find the murderer? The one who killed your mother?”

  “Yes.”

  “She lives up here? In Pilar.”

  “I’ve found her,” I said, “but she won’t talk to me. She won’t let me in.”

  “You can’t blame her,” said Mr. D. “After what she must have been through.”

  “Doesn’t anybody care about me?”

  Mr. D just shook his head in a worried fashion. He picked up one of my French fries, dipped it in ketchup, and ate it with the detachment of a philosopher.

  “Would you like to go to Taos?” he asked.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Go to Taos.”

  “What for?”

  “I have to go on business, check on my other store, and deliver a chair. That’s why I was passing through and stopped in to check on you. Besides, there is an Indian dance you might like to see. I try and go as often as possible.”

  “What’s an Indian dance?”

  “A Turtle Dance. It will be at Taos Pueblo. It’s a wonderful place. It makes me feel better about the world to see someplace that doesn’t change.”

  “Sure,” I said. I had no idea what he was talking about, but I loved Mr. D, his mustache, his sadness, his scholar’s fingers tired out from touching rugs.

  The old sedan purred smoothly up the hill. We still followed the river north and then ascended a steep incline. When we burst out on to open blue plains I gave a gasp that made Mr. D smile. Spread out before us was the vast Taos mesa. The sharp triangle of Taos Mountain loomed in the north. Mr. D told me that midway up the mountain sat a blue lake, sacred, forbidden to anyone who was not from the pueblo.

  “Ah,” Mr. Deukjamian exhaled with pleasure. “Nature. Miraculous nature.”

  “Don’t you believe in God, Mr. D?”

  He fingered his mustache. “What kind of God could tolerate this century, Rania, or any other one, for that matter? No, it’s nature that is unfailingly refreshing with her wonders, her miracles.”

  Taos itself was a dusty little town. The plaza was just a row of shops selling curios and postcards. Mr. D’s shop was on a dead-end alley off a side street. Carved pillars guarded the doorway and the sign over it read “DEUKJAMIAN AND SONS.”

  “But Mr. D.”

  “What is it, Rania?”

  “The sign, you don’t have any sons.”

  “No, I have three charming daughters.” He sighed.

  “Then why the Sons part?”

  “Everyone should have a dream.” He reminded me suddenly of Mary Rose, who also invented children.

  “And you wanted sons, not daughters?”

  “No, no, no! I love my daughters. It’s just that I wanted someone to take an interest in the business, to carry on the family name, the trade handed down to me by my father and of course his father before him.” He sighed again. “None of the girls is remotely interested, too-old fashioned for them, and they’d rather do work that ‘helps people’ and still brings a steady income. America, ahhh.” He looked off into space.

  “But what does Mrs. D think?”

  “She never comes up to Taos,” he said briskly, slapping his hands together. “Now give me a hand with this chair.”

  Inside, he introduced me to his manager, a quiet woman with black braids wound with purple string. He left the upholstered chair with her for a client who would certainly admire the orange and blue rugs cut down for the seat. They discussed receipts for a moment and then he announced we were off to the Turtle Dance.

  Mr. D drove us and asphalt turned to dirt. The ribbon of road curved under cottonwoods that were almost showing green. Taos Pueblo was a small town itself, sitting over a stream. The adobe houses were closed and serene, with turquoise shutters set in their thick walls. Mr. D paid a dollar to park. A pack of mangy yellow dogs came over to sniff our heels.

  The central plaza was blue with dust. There was still snow on the mountain. Smoke rose from the chimneys, scenting the air with pine. The hornos, earthen ovens for baking bread, squatted outside each house like great beehives.

  A little cluster of people stood expectantly on the plaza. Old ladies hugged themselves in flowered shawls. The tribal cops leaned against a car. A few tourists looked on, as well as some ordinary locals, some speaking Spanish, some in cowboy boots. Kids ran everywhere.

  The air held a crackle of expectation. There was a rattling noise, a step, the starting out of drums, a low chant. And then the dancers appeared, a moving line, from an old man down to a tiny child. They stepped in the dust. Three old men stood to the north. They drummed thick and slow on great stretched drums. The red bandanas around their heads were soon soaked in sweat. The dancers shook rattles made of turtle shells. A line of women appeared in dark dresses, moving west. Brilliant shawls of rose and iris flowed off their shoulders. On their heads they wore wooden tablitas, brightly painted headdresses.

  We stood all afternoon in the light, smelling the dust of the pounded earth, swaying to the drums which seemed to enter the very soles of our feet. When the last dancer disappeared over a crest of earth towards the mountain, I was almost too tired to stand. I was grateful that Mr. D was quiet on the ride back. I sank into the car upholstery and relaxed. I almost didn’t notice when we had reached the hostel. The river foamed below, noisy, persistent.

  “Did you like it, Rania?”

  “It was wonderful. You were wonderful to take me. Tha
t dancing, the pueblo, I’ve never seen anything like it. Of course there’s nothing like it in New Jersey. How do those little kids do it, dance for all those hours? Thank you, I’ll always remember it.”

  “Rania,” said Mr. D. I could hear the lecture coming into his voice.

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “What are your plans?”

  “You know I have to see her.”

  “But will she see you? Is it wise?”

  “I have to do what I have to do. You’re the one who is always talking about understanding the past.”

  “Yes. Just be careful” He smiled softly. “Rania, I’d be proud to have you as one of my own daughters.”

  “Thank you, Mr. D. Send my regards to Mrs. D.”

  “I will.” He kissed my forehead with his prickly mustache. Then he was gone into the forgiving dark.

  CHAPTER 29

  MORNING DAWNED WITH THE SWEET SMELL OF EARTH. I knew what I had to do. Mr. D was right with all his philosophy. I had come here for a reason. I didn’t want to be an old lady, carrying around the same unanswered questions.

  At breakfast, the foreign students were jovial over their granola. They all wanted to practice their English on me. The two German girls invited me to go to some hot springs on the other side of the gorge. I said maybe.

  After breakfast, I took the path to the trailer. The place looked deserted, but the door was open. The sink was full of dirty dishes, so I went over and washed them. Bubbles of lemon soap caught the light. I dried the dishes, put them away. I found a vacuum cleaner in the pantry closet and ran it carefully over the indoor/outdoor carpeting. It felt good to clean up. At home, Grace was always trying to get me to help with housework and I hated it. But here it was up to me. I made the bed neatly and filled a jam jar with a budding branch of forsythia.

  I poked around the trailer, casing for clues, for signs of her life. A Sierra Club calendar hung near the phone. This month’s picture showed a band of big-horned sheep climbing over rocks. According to the calendar, she was at work most days until four. She worked at a place called The Springs.

  “What’s The Springs?” I asked at dinner at the hostel.

  “Why, it is a hot spring!” exclaimed the livelier of the German girls.

  “We invited you already,” said the quieter one in braids.

  “What’s a hot spring?” I asked. Certainly such things did not exist in New Jersey.

  “It has healing waters. Very natural. There are many in Europe, famous spas. At this one there is the arsenic water, which is good for the complexion, and usually found only at Baden-Baden. There is also the lithium water; it is good for the mind.”

  “Roman physicians used to treat psychotic patients with it,” chimed in a nerdy guy who had arrived on a bicycle. “The springs are caused by thermal action. The Jemez Mountains were volcanic, and some of their activity still produces hot springs in this region.”

  “And it costs only $5.95.”

  “You mean you pay money?” I asked incredulously. “You pay money just to take a bath?”

  “It is special,” the German said primly.

  “I’d love to go.” I couldn’t imagine what my other mother was doing at the hot springs.

  “Come with us tomorrow afternoon,” they said, and it was settled.

  I spent the morning at the trailer. I stocked the refrigerator with a dozen eggs, orange juice, and cheese. I bought these items at the store with my own money. I made tuna fish salad and left it in a plastic container. I made it special—not too much mayo, a dash of mustard, bits of celery and apple, a sprinkling of chopped olives. Monique had taught me about the mustard and olives.

  Of course I also rifled her bureau drawers, medicine cabinet, shoeboxes. But there was not much to find. I discovered no letters, only a postcard of flamingos from someone named Hank, postmarked Fort Lauderdale, Florida. She kept no diary, no address book, no checking account. She took Bufferin, favored medium beige pantyhose, and slept in fifty-percent polyester sheets covered in blue flowers.

  I piled into the backseat of the German girls’ rickety VW. The shocks were shot, and the terrain was all up and down, a bouncy ride. A pink stuffed bear hung from the rearview mirror and swung wildly with each turn. But the blond with the braids was a good driver, her foot quick on the accelerator, smooth on the brake. The road led toward Taos and then straight across the Rio Grande gorge.

  Across the river, the land was a little tamer. There were more houses, adobes flanked by fruit trees that were just coming into bloom. Fields were green. A graveyard of hard packed earth marked by rickety white crosses and plastic roses lay open under the turquoise sky. At the turn-off to the springs, cottonwoods graced the banks of a small river. A cluster of whitewashed buildings, the whitewash peeling badly, sat beneath a skinny butte of red rock.

  We paid our money in the office and took our grimy tickets to the door of the baths. We went in the women’s side and left our clothes in white cubicles. The air was thick and warm and steamy. It smelled of sulphur, and a faint metallic taste lingered under the tongue. Hot water ran continuously into a bank of individual white porcelain tubs. I got into one that was twice as big as I was. I lay down, my skin protesting at the first rush of heat, then relaxing. Drops of water were condensing and dripping: drip by drip. The water ran from the tap and drained. I could have lain in that tub for the rest of my life. The water was never-ending.

  But I got up and went out into the narrow corridor and along the slippery tiles of the floor. A flight of stone steps led into the arsenic pool. An iron railing followed it down. I sank one foot into the clear blue water. I followed the steps down to the sand bottom, and then began to swim, very slowly, across the pond. I was the only ripple. The ceiling dripped. Heat made my heart beat faster, my lungs felt squashed. I rose out of the water and went to lie down on one of the wrapping tables.

  An attendant came over and arranged me on my towel. A heavy blanket, itchy wool, covered me completely. I began to sweat, a warm sleepy sweat. When I pulled at my head towel to let in a bit of cool air, my eyes focused again and I saw her. My other mother was bent over me, covering my feet. She wore a shapeless smock over her jeans, and her hair was tied back in a red scarf.

  She did not speak to me. Water ran down the walls in rivulets, leaving traces of mineral deposit behind. I was warm and cozy and half asleep, and the woman who had killed my mother was tucking me in.

  By the time the German girls were ready to go, I had sweated out of every pore in my body. “Goodbye,” I said to my other mother, “see you later.” And I slipped her a dollar bill as if she were just a regular attendant at the baths.

  Outside in the cool air, the German girls insisted on inspecting the water that flowed from a spigot. I could tell from the way it smelled that I wasn’t going to taste it. But they dutifully glugged some down and even filled two plastic bottles with the sulphurous stuff to take back in the car.

  Spring was coming. I felt it blow in the VW windows. Back in Pilar, I returned to the trailer and set about doing some more cleaning. I took her broom and swept the porch and steps of debris. I tidied up the woodpile, carefully avoiding anything that looked as if it might be a black widow spider. I put out the trash and weighted down the lids of the garbage cans with heavy stones to keep off the raccoons.

  Then, all tired out, I decided to lie down on the bed for just a few minutes. I fell into a deep sleep. When I woke it was dark outside, I had slept the late afternoon away. A woman was bending over me, awakening me with a mother’s kiss to my forehead.

  I held up my arms. She cradled me. We sat like that for a long time, on the bed in the dark. She gently stroked my hair. The palm of her hand felt cool and dry. “Rania,” she murmured once or twice, pressing me towards her.

  “Tell me a story,” I said.

  “Once upon a time, a long time ago,” her voice began low and soothing, “there was a woman who desperately wanted a child of her own. But she could not have one.” And so she to
ld me the tale of how she had kidnapped my mother and taken her into the mountains.

  “Then I took you. You were perfect, each tiny feature perfectly formed. I counted your ten fingers and ten toes over and over again. I could not believe how lucky I was, how happy. I had a baby!

  “You were my own, my very own. And I was so happy that you were a little girl—how I would dress you, the tiny barrettes, the smocking. But then they took you away from me.”

  “They took me away from you,” I echoed her. “How could you let them do that?”

  “I had no choice.”

  “You had no choice.”

  “No.”

  “A person always has a choice.”

  “They were too strong for me. I was soft, a woman who had just fallen in love, just found her own baby. They were too strong, and they took you.”

  “Give me the knife.”

  “What knife?”

  “I want it. By rights it belongs to me.”

  “There is no knife.”

  “Get it.”

  “No.”

  “I want it. I want something to remember you by.”

  “Rania,” she said softly. “You understand how much I wanted you? You do understand that, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I do. I do understand.”

  She got up and switched on the light. She went and opened a drawer and pulled out a red Swiss army knife and folded it into my palm. I tested the blades; each one was sharp and clean. There was even a little scissors that looked useful. It was better than the one I had lost. I pocketed the knife.

  “Rania, forgive me.”

  “It’s all right,” I said. “Don’t worry. I forgive you.”

  She sighed.

  “Thank you for the knife.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “I have to go home now.”

  “I understand.”

  “I’m glad,” I said.

  “Travel safely.”

  “Yes.”

  “And remember that I love you, Rania. Remember.”

  I stood in the doorway of the trailer. Outside the sky was thick with stars. A crescent moon hung there. My skin seemed to dissolve and my blood shone luminous. If I looked at the lines on my palm, they would all be gone. There was no past or future, just me in the darkness. My mother was dead and I had swallowed her. I touched the knife in my pocket.