Vacation with Graciela

You found me that first night in the bar across the plaza from Teatro Juárez. You talked. I drank wine, watched the fútbol and the other crowded tables. When I thought I could sleep, you led me to the rooms at the hotel San Miguel de Allende. While I hung up your dress and the slip with the secret pockets, you removed from a suitcase the framed picture of “my lady” and in your favorite city of Guanajuato, appealed to her for our continued safety.

In the morning, while the others showered and dressed, loaded cameras and daypacks, enjoyed breakfast, exchanged money, boarded taxis and tour buses – I searched for your teeth. From a chair by the window overlooking the stone alley, you recited the miracles of the prodigal dentures: returned by a cabdriver in Akron, Ohio; from a dressing room of the downtown Sakowitz, Houston; and after a four day disappearance, pulled from the cage of your brother’s eighty-seven-year-old parrot.

“This isn’t helping, Tia.”

Down to the plaza at last, the rug vendors were already crowding the benches, the jewelry sellers pushing their trays across the tables toward the tourists. You clapped the time for the strolling mariachis; sang, with the gray-haired músico, an old canción, then paid him with half of your toasted bolillo, warm with queso, chorizo, and while he finished your coffee, I wrote the names of the streets he told you would lead us in the afternoon to the shop where we chose the blonde, gentle-voiced guitarra. She rode on my back like a little sister, silent and shining, while you leaned on my arm, chattering and smiling.

Returning, at Irapuato, the porters transferred our luggage. You stood beside the broken bus, cursing and striking the dusty tire with your black travel cane. The others pushed me toward you, “You sit with her!” I offered you both of the almond cookies and the cheese from my bus company lunch sack. Only after it grew dark would you let me help your feet into the tiny house shoes from the woven bag beneath the seat.

At two a.m., I closed the door of the final taxi. In the back, they pretended to sleep that last hour while you discussed with the driver the health of the Pope, the approaching elections, learned the names and a history for each of his children and he learned from you, who have never driven a vehicle, the best route for our crowded car through the sprawling City of México to the ancient neighborhood of Coyoacán, to your red door that opens to face the iglesia, the church San Juan de Bautista, built by the men of the conqueror, Cortés. I held our baggage in the dark street while the driver continued to listen politely as you revealed another chapter in your never ending story, “No church would welcome him until he built this little one, here. So he could worship, kneeling beside his whore.”