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  For Valentina

  For Emiliano and Guillermo

  CONTENTS

  Epigraph

  It Will Be Awesome Before Spring

  Okie

  Origami Prunes

  I Clench My Hands into Fists and They Look Like Someone Else’s

  Deers

  Better Latitude

  Her Odor First

  Barefoot Dogs

  The Arteaga Family Tree

  Acknowledgments

  Our textbooks confirmed this:

  Mexico, as can be seen on the map,

  is shaped like a cornucopia, a horn of plenty . . .

  A future of plenitude and universal well-being was predicted,

  without specifying just how it would be achieved.

  Clean cities without injustice, poor people, violence, congestion, or garbage.

  Every family with an ultramodern and aerodynamic (words from that era) house.

  No one will want for anything.

  Machines will do all the work.

  Streets full of trees and fountains,

  traveled by silent, nonpolluting vehicles that never collide.

  Paradise on earth.

  Finally, utopia will have been found.

  —José Emilio Pacheco, Battles in the Desert

  IT WILL BE AWESOME BEFORE SPRING

  It is the year everybody’s planning to spend the summer in Italy. Tammy and Sash will take a photography workshop in Florence and Jen will take a cruise around the Mediterranean with her family, and mine will rent a house in Tuscany. We’ve already made arrangements to meet in Milan for a couple of days and perhaps drive to Portofino and hang out there for another day or two—Italian highways are the best, we’ve heard, and no one cares about speed limits there, same as here, but highways there don’t suck, so everybody agrees it will be awesome. Before spring breaks, we’re already taking Italian conversation over cappuccinos at Klein’s on Avenida Masaryk once a week with this beautiful middle-aged Genovese woman I remember as Giovanna but I’m sure that was not her name. She looks like Diane von Furstenberg when she was in her prime, only with much less expensive clothes. She wound up in Mexico because she met some guy in Cancún, and has been trying to make a living here since, teaching Italian and any other language to foreign executives, because she’s a polyglot. Whenever we want a break from class we ask her to tell us stories about her other students—she’s an avid raconteur too, so she can talk and talk for hours on end—and she comes up with the wildest tales. My memories of that year have started to blur and I can only recall the story of the Danish executive who’s taking English conversation and fashions a grinding, horrible accent, our teacher says, flapping her branchy hands over our cappuccino glasses as if they’re logs on fire and she’s trying to turn them into embers. Irregular nouns and verbs make this poor Danish lady crazy, Diane—let’s call the Italian polyglot that—admits with a frown that makes the crisp features of her face look worn rather than sophisticated, so every time Diane asks her to talk about her morning routine, the Danish lady says, “Well, firrst ting rright out of my bet, I torouffly wash my teets.”

  It is the year there’s only room for Italy in our minds, and so every Thursday evening after Italian conversation, we thunder into Mixup and sort through the World Music section, looking for CDs from Italian pop singers as if we’re British schoolgirls and the Beatles’ real names are Umberto Tozzi and Gianluca Grignani and Claudio Baglioni and Zucchero. We buy every Italian tune we can, from Lucio Dalla’s number ones to the latest from Laura Pausini—we only buy her albums in Italian, though, and pretend to ignore the appalling fact that her songs in Spanish are as mainstream as Luis Miguel’s—and spend long weekend hours at Sash’s or Tammy’s learning cheesy lyrics by heart, mastering our accents, dreaming of Milan. It is the year we check out all of Fellini from the university’s library and watch Il Postino and La Vita è Bella and Cinema Paradiso so many times we can reenact scenes from those flicks on the sidewalks of Paseo de la Reforma at 4:00 a.m. after partying at Bulldog, where we dance on the tables, vodka tonics in hand, lip-synching to No Doubt’s “It’s My Life” or Outkast’s “Hey Ya!” or Nirvana’s classic “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” thinking how cheap and tacky these songs are, how insignificant they sound compared to the subtle honeylike grandeur of Fiordaliso’s “Non Voglio Mica la Luna.”

  It is the year we take internships in museums across the city because we dream of becoming artists after college. Sash and Tammy land gigs at Centro de la Imagen, and Jen at Museo de Arte Moderno, and I get the best of all, at Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso, helping to curate the first-ever solo exhibit of David Hockney in Mexico, which is beyond amazing and makes my three stupendous friends rattle with jealousy. I boast about my job even though all I do for those ten hours a week is mail invitations for the opening reception, organize large boxes of leaflets into brick-thick stacks, fax documents overseas, drag superheavy crates to storage—tedious and exhausting chores I’ve never had to do before, the novelty of which feels exciting and paramount. I feel like I’m carrying Hockney’s posterity on my shoulders, like his success in Mexico depends on me. I get a taste of what the real city feels like, and I think it’s not as bad as it looks from the outside.

  It is the year I’m nineteen. It is the year life will change for us, but we don’t know any of that yet.

  It is the year we meet people that don’t live in the same neighborhoods as us, Polanco, Lomas, Tecamachalco. It is the year we get to know real artists who rent studios in dangerous districts on the other side of the city, and it is the year we socialize with historians and anthropologists and performance artists and book editors who live paycheck to paycheck and don’t have cars; these are fascinating, glamorous people who ride the subway and take taxicabs. It is a new and unexplored world within the same city we were born and have always lived, and every time we venture into it we feel as if we’re crossing an invisible fence, trespassing into a forbidden side of ourselves: messier, wilder, sexier.

  As we start mingling with the native people of that other city, we learn it is also the year everybody’s talking about kidnappings; the wave of panic of the late nineties is back with a vengeance, they announce. They’re all sharing the stories they’ve heard, gory details about what’s happened to this or that friend the last time they grabbed a taxicab. At a party in an abandoned building behind the Metropolitan Cathedral, the associate curator of Viceregal Art at Museo de la Ciudad de México tells the fresh story of a dear friend of his: It’s around nine o’clock at night and this woman, a young photographer who had just returned from the Sierra Tarahumara, where she’d been working on a multimedia project to premiere at Art Basel in Miami, catches a cab, a little green-and-white Beetle, on the corner of Álvaro Obregón and Frontera, and asks the driver to take her to Barracuda Bar, “The one by Parque España,” she specifies. A friend of hers is celebrating his birthday there—actually, the very curator who’s telling the story—she explains to the driver in a jolly mood. The guy pulls resolutely into the traffic and feigns interest in her conversation, but when they’re only one block into the ride he halts at a stoplight and a couple of fat guys step into the taxicab and fill the minuscule space of the backseat on either side of her.

  “My frie
nd hasn’t realized what’s going on yet when these motherfuckers start beating the shit out of her,” the curator says, “fists into her torso and her face as if softening a pillow, like when you’re getting ready for a sweet night’s sleep. Next they take her on a merry-go-round of ATMs,” he explains, “forcing her to withdraw all the cash she can with a knife pinching her lower back, until she reaches the daily limit on the three cards she carries in her purse. The guy at the wheel says they need to wait until midnight to continue, and in the meantime they drive my friend around Colonia Roma and Colonia Doctores, just making time, listening to old ranchera music, whistling to the rusty tunes that pop from the speakers,” the curator says. “Then one of the other guys drops something like, ‘I’m fucking starving, aren’t you guys?’ and so they stop by a taco sudado stand to grab a bite. The hungry one takes everybody’s order but my friend’s,” the curator says, “and out he goes to fetch the food while the other two stay inside, watching over her to make sure she doesn’t escape. The hungry one comes back with a bunch of tacos wrapped in brown paper in one hand and three bottles of Coca-Cola dangling from the other,” the curator says, and I can imagine the scene clearly, the sound of soda bottles clinking against each other unnervingly. “The driver pulls back into the traffic jam and the three motherfuckers have dinner while cruising streets,” the curator continues, “these three pigs and my friend crammed into this little Beetle taxicab that reeks of damp taco and sweat of swine. They finish dinner but it isn’t midnight yet, and they’re growing bored. A couple minutes later one of them says something like, ‘Hey, guys, we didn’t have dessert! What if we all fuck this little cunt instead?’ The three of them take a look at her, as if considering if she’s worth the effort. ‘Nah, she’s not that hot,’ the driver says, but they have nothing else to do until midnight, so in the end they all vote for the go,” says the curator with a broken voice. He has to pause, he looks shaken, like he won’t be able to continue the story, and everybody around him is silent looking at him with wide eyes, everybody thinking, This is a joke, right? and I feel weird because the story is so horrible it can’t be true, but I realize that this is what living the real life of the city must be like, and this makes me feel grown up and wild and independent. I look at Jen and Tammy and Sash, who are listening as well, and I catch the confused signals on their faces, fascination, horror, and disbelief in their eyes.

  “They drive off into what looks like Colonia Portales and they park somewhere on a lightless street,” the curator finally says, “and they take turns and get her as dessert. At some point midnight arrives and they resume their pilgrimage to the ATMs, but my friend’s credit and debit cards are maxed out in the first attempt, and rage overtakes them. ‘You’re fucking broke, bitch?’ the driver yells at her.” The curator says his friend doesn’t reply because, at that point, she’s realized that crying or begging won’t make a difference. She wants to believe they have nothing else to take from her. “They pull up somewhere around Eje Central, and she seems to be right because they swing the taxicab door open and throw her onto the sidewalk. She’s already lying on the ground when one of them steps out of the cab and pulls down the zipper of his pants and pisses all over her. She doesn’t remember feeling anything at that moment,” the curator says—everybody around him, including myself, is now looking at him with tears in our eyes—“she only gets to hear the other motherfuckers cracking up, howling in celebration inside the taxicab. The guy finishes, squats down by her side, and whispers in her ear, ‘We’re keeping your purse, muffin, so if we feel like visiting you one of these days we know where you live.’ He gets back in the cab, and she watches from the corner of her eye as the little Beetle fades away. And here comes the worst part of the whole thing,” the curator says. “A sense of glee she’d never experienced before takes over her when she sees them disappear into the night.”

  It is the year we realize we’ve never traveled by subway or taxicab. In Mexico, that is. We’ve ridden subways in places like Paris or New York, on vacations. I’ve taken taxicabs in London and Frankfurt and San Francisco, I say to Jen and Tammy and Sash while we listen to Jovanotti’s CD Il Quinto Mondo, which is playing on Sash’s Bose stereo. Tammy adds that she took cabs and the subway in Tokyo with her parents two summers before, and taxicabs there are definitely best. Jen visited Japan the summer after graduating from high school and agrees with her. “I did both too. The Tokyo subway is very clean,” she points out, “but the taxi drivers there wear gloves; they reminded me of the bellboys at The Plaza. So glam!” Sash intervenes to remind us that some subway stations in Paris smell like piss and sweat, and we all nod and exclaim, “Yeah!” with a tone that means yeah and yuck at the same time. She adds that she had a similar experience in Barcelona the previous summer. We look at each other and admit we’re wondering whether the subway in Milan will be filthy too, and one part of my brain struggles to understand why subways in such nice cities have to smell bad, but then Jen says, “I don’t even want to think what the subway here smells like!” and we all yell, “Ewwww!” and crack up really hard.

  It is the end of the semester and we feel June approaching fast. We get antsy thinking we’re not ready for Italy. Summer’s in peril, but Diane tells us there’s nothing to worry about, we’ve made such great progress in recent weeks, we’ll do great (If you already speak Spanish and French, Italian is a piece of cake, we all agree that evening before Diane arrives, but we refrain from sharing this with her because we don’t want to hurt her feelings). We’re discussing the Larousse book of coniugazione that Diane suggested we buy when Tammy asks her if she’s ever ridden the subway in Mexico City. Diane looks at her in disbelief. Then she replies, “Ma che domanda è questa?” and I explain we’ve noticed that everybody’s talking about kidnappings, and we wonder whether she’s afraid to live in the city now. Diane pauses for a moment, as if giving serious consideration to Tammy’s question, and then replies that she doesn’t know whether she’s afraid or not, but she couldn’t live elsewhere now because Mexico is the place where she found the love of her life.

  A few weeks pass and it is one of our last Italian conversation classes before summer starts. It is late May and daily thunderstorms will soon overtake the city. Next week, we’ll have a graduation dinner at La Cosa Nostra and Diane says she’ll miss us all but has no doubt we’ll have the best Italian summer ever. The class is drawing to a close when she asks whether one of us could do a big favor for her. “I am a bit embarrassed to ask for this, but I think you’ll understand,” she says. She grows soft and frail, the features of her astounding visage crumple, like a puppy’s begging for forgiveness. “You can ask for anything, Diane!” we reassure her in both Italian and Spanish, cheering with anticipation. I wonder whether this means we’ll get to know more about Diane’s private life at last, and the mysterious lover for whom she left her life in Italy behind. I wonder why she insists on keeping his identity from us, and sometimes I wonder even whether he really exists. With so many metropolises she could live in, why would she choose Mexico City? She was living in the very Milan when she met this guy! Diane sighs in relief and tells us that her mamma lives in Genova—she actually called her madre, but it sounded so Spanish, so ordinary, that I prefer to remember her saying mamma instead—and she hasn’t seen her since she moved to Mexico three years ago, and as much as she’d like to visit her, she doesn’t think that it will be possible in the near future. “Lezioni di conversazione don’t make people rich,” she says, as if admitting for the first time that her life is not as glamorous as it looks from the outside.

  Diane’s mamma worked as an executive assistant for the Municipalità Genovese for forty years and is now retired; she lives alone in the tiny flat on via della Maddalena where Diane’s family has always lived, in the historic heart of the city, close to the piers. Diane’s mamma is a widow, the polyglot’s dad died ten years ago, leaving the two of them with no one to look after them but each other. “I am an only child, too!” Jen rev
eals, and Diane makes an effort to receive Jen’s comment with enthusiasm, but I can tell she prefers to go on with the details of her own story. Diane’s mamma gets a retirement check from the Italian government every month, but recently she’s been struggling to make ends meet. The euro has raised the cost of living to the skies and she could use some extra help, but MoneyGram and FedEx are so pricey they’re not really an option for Diane. So now that her favorite students are traveling to Italy, Diane was wondering, wouldn’t it be great if she could put together a suitcase with new clothes and shoes and even some facial creams and over-the-counter medicines for her mamma, along with some cash, and wouldn’t it be fantastic if one of us could deliver all that to her in Genova?

  “I’d be forever grateful,” she says in a voice so low that the words greet the evening air in a whisper. “We all could go visit your mom!” Tammy exclaims right away. “It’d be great to meet her!” Jen adds. “We could even take her out to dinner and practice conversazione on her!” Sash offers, making the idea sound immediately like The Truest Italian Summer Experience Ever. I volunteer to carry the bag, and we decide we’ll iron out the details of our expedition to Genova over chianti the following week. “Molto grazie, i miei amori!” Diane exclaims, back to her original marvelous self again. She refuses to let us pay for the cappuccinos that night. I’m excited to meet Diane’s mamma and venture into her past, but I’m shocked to learn she doesn’t have the resources I’d assumed she had from looking at the fierce features of her face, the exclusive shape of her body, the European self-confidence she carries herself with around Mexicans.

  In the evening we bypass Mixup and head directly to Tammy’s, where we discuss Diane’s petition with curiosity and fascination while listening to La Traviata. Italy has never been closer, the summer of our lives has already started. I get home later than usual, dying to tell my parents about Diane’s mamma, but they are not there (Nicolasa, my younger sister, is not at home either; she’s in Costa Rica on an end-of-school-year trip with her class).