Tom Cardona had been in Mexico for exactly forty minutes when the old woman approached his rental car and pressed her face against the window. Flattened by the glass, her cheeks were like weathered mahogany, cracked and pitted by the elements, and framed by a curtain of stringy hair. She opened her mouth to speak, but her voice was drowned out by the roar of a landing jet. Assuming she wanted money, Tom leaned across the seat, rolled down the window and placed a five thousand peso bill in her hand. The claw-like fingers retracted, then returned, groping for the door handle. It took Tom a second to realize that she was trying to get into the car. Panicking, he grabbed her withered paw and pushed it away as his foot hit the gas pedal. The car bolted forward, but when Tom looked in the rearview mirror the toll plaza was empty. He joined the torrent of traffic and consulted his map, Guanajuato was roughly 200 miles from Mexico City, a trip that he calculated would take at least three to four hours. Even if he started now and skipped lunch, he would be lucky to get there before dark. Which meant there was no way he could avoid spending the night, which meant that his return reservation was useless.

"Terrific," Tom muttered to himself, suddenly annoyed at the traffic, the smog, the absurdly heavy Mexican coins that tugged on his trouser pockets. The whole God-forsaken country. The tangled freeways and flat skyline--so eerily similar yet different from Los Angeles--only heightened his sense of dislocation. He was a stranger in a strange land, except that the natives looked just like him. He felt uneasy in his own skin. This is what he had feared, this was why he had procrastinated for years, telling himself that he couldn't afford the airfare, couldn't spare the time. No one could blame him for putting his job and family first, for taking care of the home front instead of Estella's pointless goose chase.

Two hours out of Mexico City the terrain became Alpine, a vertical landscape of sheer gigantic peaks and evergreen pines. Sunlight blinked through the treetops, casting helioscopic patterns on the rock cliffs. Eventually the mountains gave way to rolling hills and the road opened up, giving Tom a view of the broad sloping valley that led to the flatlands around Queretaro. Off to the west he could see a thunderhead moving swiftly across the plain, a dark funnel of rain dragging behind it like a widow's veil. A stubble of young corn grew over freshly-tilled fields and if it weren't for the pitiful shacks lining the road Tom could have been back in the Golden State.

He missed it already. His wife and kids and friends were all back there, waiting for him while he wandered unmarked roads in a foreign country in a rented car. And all for what? The futility of it had struck him from the moment his grandmother had pulled the box of pictures down from the closet and showed him the faded photograph of a light skinned Mexican girl with wide oval eyes and arching eyebrows. "That was my nanny, Blanca Morrell, who raised me when I was a little girl. We told each other everything, even the deepest secrets."

Estella had paused, searching Tom's face for reaction, but he only shrugged, trying to stifle his impatience. He was just home from college and anxious to unpack and call his girlfriend.
"That's great, grandma. But I've really got to go."
But Estella had held him there, clasping his hands in her own. "I told her that no matter what happened I would never forget her," she said, her voice thick with emotion. "But for years my letters have been returned unopened. I will not rest in peace until I know what has happened. I would go myself, but I'm too old. You are young and strong. You can go to Mexico and make sure she doesn't need anything. Not now ; don't worry. Later. I'll give you the money. There's no hurry. Promise me, mi'jito. Promise you'll put your grandmother's soul to rest."

It came up a few more times in the ensuing years, always when Tom and Estella were alone, always with the same conclusion. By the time Tom was married and his visits to Estella's house limited to holidays and funerals, her references to Blanca became less frequent. And after the birth of his first child, to his great relief, she had dropped the subject altogether.

The day Estella died--they found her in her garden, her arms spread as if in mid-flight to heaven--he had assumed the whole matter was moot. There was no one left to care, least of all himself, who regarded the fate of his grandmother's nanny about as relevant as the courting habits of the Aztecs. After all, he was an American, the son of an American, born and raised in the elevated suburb of Fullerton Hills. His house had a swimming pool and two cars in the garage--three if you counted the tri-wheel off-roader he'd bought for laughs the summer before. He listened to classic rock and roll, cheered for the Lakers and had voted Republican in the last two elections. He'd gone to night school for his engineering degree and had worked hard to become regional sales manager for the world's largest tire manufacturer. You wouldn't see him with his hand out for welfare. He cringed whenever a robbery suspect on the local news was identified as a "Hispanic male."

It was just that he considered his ethnic origins a footnote, a given part of the social equation. As a second-generation Chicano he had moved from point A to point B, just as his children would go on to point C. And on and on until it didn't matter where you came from or who your grandparents were. That was progress, the American way. Point A, the past, the world of Estella's youth, was dead and buried under the parched hills of central Mexico, deep in the silver-plated heart of the country. Or so he had thought. Then the lawyer called about the money and Estella's posthumous request.

His grandmother's instructions were unsentimental and succinct: "I hereby leave $30,000 to my grandson, Tomas Cardona, on the condition that he travel to my birthplace of Guanajuato, Mexico, and ascertain the fate of my childhood nanny, Blanca Morrell."

Tom told himself that he wasn't doing it for the money, that he was doing it for Estella. But who was he trying to kid? Thirty grand was thirty grand. Within minutes he resigned to the journey, mentally booking a plane, packing light. He had to hand it to the old girl. Unable to persuade him while she was alive, Estella, in death, had finally bent him to her will.

Making good time, he pulled abreast of a young Mexican family in a silver Mercedes sedan. A little girl, her neatly-braided hair gathered in ribbons, waved to him from the side window as he passed. Tom waved back. It was hard for him to believe that the girl and the wizened crone at the toll booth were from the same century, let alone the same country. The thought of rich Mexicans stirred something in him, a twinge or pride that said that brown-skinned people could drive German cars. Tom mentally applauded. Drive fast, don't look back.

The sun was slouching over the horizon when Tom reached the turn off to Guanajuato. The land had become hilly again and he traveled past small towns perched on steep inclines, their stucco church belltowers anointed by the day's dying rays. The road dipped into a narrow canyon bounded by oak and flowering cactus and the car was soon shuddering over the cobblestone streets in the center of town. Even in the murky twilight Tom could tell that Guanajuato was an unusually beautiful city. It was just as Estella had described it: ornate colonial buildings painted in orange and lime pastels, narrow, winding streets and tree-lined plazas with gurgling fountains. And there, off to the right, was the famous Alho'ndiga de Granaditas, the grain warehouse where the Spaniards made their last stand during the War of Independence.

Tom followed Estella's written directions, driving back to the main square and into the descending ramp that became Calle Miguel Hidalgo. He had read about Guanajuato's mummy museum and underground streets, but was still amazed to find himself driving through a subterranean causeway, its jagged rock walls illuminated by an occasional lightbulb. The road snaked under the city, twisting and looping like a giant's entrails. Then the mouth of the tunnel suddenly yawned and Tom was back on the surface. He followed the street into a well-to-do neighborhood of proud mansions and serene villas draped with clusters of bloody bougainvilla. He found the house, a faded pink manor decorated with stone statues and urns, on a quiet avenue that limned a placid lake. The lights inside were on, and through the slightly parted curtains Tom spied the seated profile of a young woman, her hands fluttering like doves as she spoke to an invisible listener. Tom lifted the heavy brass knocker and dropped it against the door. A resounding thud echoed through the house and a few seconds later he heard the scrape of a chair being pushed back on the wooden floor. Footsteps approached and the door swung open. The girl was in her early twenties, her hair and clothes fashionably up to date.

"May I help you, please?" she asked in Spanish.
"Hablas Ingles?"
"Yes, Can I help you?"
"I hope so," he said. "My name is Tom Cardona. I'm here because my grandmother used to live in this house. Her name was Estella Cardona, and I'm trying to find out what happened to her nanny."
The girl let out a high giggle of disbelief.
"Are you serious?" she inquired in English.
"Yes, I am. I know it sounds crazy, but it was my grandmother's last wish. She died two weeks ago. I flew here today from Los Angeles."
The girl opened the door a notch wider.
"I'm not from around here either," she confessed. "I'm studying at the University. But Mrs. Velasquez--she's the lady who lives here--might know something. The house has been in her family for ages. Please, come in."

She ushered him in into the paneled foyer and asked him to wait. He could smell the inviting aromas of dinner, and Tom's stomach noisily reminded him that he hadn't eaten since breakfast.

The mansion, which he guessed was at least two hundred years old, had not aged gracefully. There were watermarks on the plaster ceiling and the floorboards creaked from a million human footsteps. But the furniture had been freshly dusted and the cut-crystal chandelier sparkled. A servant slipped into one of the rooms carrying a silver coffee service. The place reeked of old money--the miserly, slightly tarnished lucre of wealth no longer interested in appearances or the effort required to keep them up.

Tom could hear the girl speaking to someone in the dining room. When she returned she was smiling. "You should feel lucky," she said as she escorted him in. "Mrs. Velasquez doesn't usually receive visitors without an appointment. But when I told her you were visiting from American, she agreed to make an exception."

Mrs. Velasquez was a paraplegic woman of some 65 years, with long braided hair and an imperious manner. A pair of half-moon reading glasses dangled from a silver chain around her fleshy neck. The girl introduced him and Mrs. Velasquez nodded impatiently.

"I think I can assume that you've already met Celia," she said in a slightly nasal English. "She comes twice a week to read to me and keep me company in my old age."
"You are not old, Señora," Celia protested.
"Oh, hush, you young thing. What do you know about age? Your life is still ahead of you. The world is your oyster, and I am just a shriveled up old clam."
Her tirade over, Mrs. Velasquez turned her attention back to her guest. "Mr. Cardona," she said pleasantly, "would you like some coffee?"

"Muchas gracias."
"Hablas Español?"
"Only a little."
"Que lastima. It's a pity when we lose the tongue of our ancestors."
A servant appeared with a cup and saucer. The service was of delicate china decorated with a coat of arms that Tom assumed was the family crest.

"Are you by any chance familiar with the name Morrell?"
Mrs. Velasquez regarded him over the top of her glasses.
"My dear, the Morrell family built this house. My father bought it from them in the 1940's, long before you were even born. Sugar?"
"Are you sure?" Tom said.
Mrs. Velasquez made a sour face. "Of course, I'm sure. I may be a crippled old woman but I'm not senile yet."

Tom groped for the words. "I'm sorry...It's just that...You see I'm here at my grandmother's request. Her name was Estella Cardona and her nanny was named Blanca Morrell."
Mrs. Velasquez's face became a mask of scorn.
"I don't know what you think you're doing young, man, but your joke is not the least bit amusing."
"So you know Blanca Morrell?"

Mrs. Velasquez rattled her cup in her saucer and leaned forward.
"I didn't have to meet her to know that she was a disgrace to her family. They tried to save her by sending her to live in the United States but she had come back and humiliated her relatives. It's because of her that the Morrell's sold this house and left, so maybe I should be grateful."

The cup suspended in Tom's hand became impossibly light, as if it would float away if he didn't hold on tight.

"Do you know where the Morrell's went after they left Guanajuato?"
Mrs. Velasquez placed her hand on her sequined breast.
"My dear boy," she intoned. "I had expected you to tell me. If they had any sense at all, they went back to France. That's where I would have gone." Her voice acquired the tinny echo of a vintage gramophone.
"They say that the French are cold, but I disagree. I'd take Paris any day over Rome, or even my beloved Madrid. How I miss the charms of the Champs Elysees, the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower. Ah, now there is a city made for summer dreams." Her gaze focused again. "I must say that I fail to understand why on earth anyone would want to know anything about Blanca Morrell."

"It's just that I'd assumed she'd be poor."
"Ha!" Mrs. Velasquez grimaced through layers of rouge and lipstick. "She was a rich woman with common characteristics."
"What do you mean?"
"She lived a whore's life and died a whore's death before she reached thirty."
Tom leaned back in his chair.
"But it doesn't make any sense."
"What sense can there be in self-destruction, the final sin of a damned spirit?"
"She committed suicide?"
"Yes." Mrs. Velasquez reached for her cup with a trembling hand.
"Can you tell me how?"

She shuddered, as if shaking off a bad memory. "I'm sorry, I can't help you. I'm too old to consort with the devil's darlings. If you are smart, you'll go back to America, Señor. Those who wake the dead pay the demon's due. Goodnight!"

Before Tom could respond, she closed her eyes and started to moan.
"Celia!" she called. "I'm getting another attack!"
Mrs. Velasquez's hands were still over her face as Celia wheeled her through the door and disappeared down the receding hall of mirrors.

Tom was famished. Even his disturbing audience with Mrs. Velasquez had failed to blunt his appetite. He retraced his path into the center of town and checked into a small hotel on the edge of the central square. The evening was cool, but not unpleasantly so, and the sidewalks were alive with children's voices and lovers strolling hand in hand down the bustling avenues. Tom took a lungful of the fragrant mountain air, so unlike the smog that smothered Mexico City, and felt the muscles in his neck unwind. A person could live well here, a long and happy life, unless something intervened and cut it short. Something that caused old women to cover their eyes and grow faint.

Determined to get himself a proper dinner, he followed the aroma of grilled meat and cilantro to a crowded cafe decorated with pottery and Indian blankets. Taking a seat near the kitchen, he ordered enchiladas suizas and pork carnitas and two Dos Equis to wash it all down. The food was rich and intoxitcating---nothing like the fast-food burritos he was accustomed to--with a pleasant chile afterburn that left his whole mouth tingling. His hunger finally sated, the implications of what he had just been told began to sink in. According to Mrs. Velasquez, his grandmother's nanny was a rich woman, a suicide, and a whore. Impossible. But why would the old woman lie?

Tom paid the check and ventured out into the square. Most of the restaurants and stores had closed, but the bars were still full and he could hear the distant strain of mariachi music coming from a saloon at the end of the block. Unaccountably, he had a momentary sensation that he'd been here before. When Tom was a baby, his parents had traveled with him in Mexico, but that was such a long time ago. Had they come to Guanajuato? He couldn't possibly remember. And yet . . . .

He was about to turn back toward the garage when he noticed a storefront with the lights still burning. A sign over the door identified it as a venue for the construction and sale of funeral caskets. Succumbing to curiosity, Tom approached the threshold and poked his head inside.
"Come in, come in," urged a mellifluous voice. "Don't be timid. Take a look around. If you don't see your size we can have one custom-made to fit your dimensions."

Tom did as the voice asked. The room was long and narrow and filled from floor to floor to ceiling with rows of polished coffins. There were ornate coffins with gleaming lacquer patinas and brass handles, simple coffins made of unfinished pine, coffins in basic black and others in powder blue, purple, and cream. There were long skinny coffins, extra-wide coffins and coffins that looked small enough to bury a doll.

An overstuffed man in an overstuffed chair beckoned from the end of the room. He had jovial eyes and a wide, licentious mouth. His body was series of convex forms culminating in a spherical belly that tortured the buttons of his starched guayabera. When he spoke his ample stomach jiggled in agreement. His plump fingers held a similarly-shaped cigar.
The fat man smiled and shifted his bulk in the chair. "It's obvious you are not from Guanajuato. Texas?"
"California," Tom said.
"Ah, California," the fat man pronounced the word like something delicious. "The Golden Gate, Hollywood, Mickey Mouse. El raton Miguelito, we call him." I lived in Texas for a while, many years ago. But it is not the same, I think."
"No, It's not the same."
"You are too young to be shopping for yourself. A relative perhaps? I have many customers there. Shipping is no problem. If you do not see what you like, I can build it for you. Very fine workmanship. You cannot find quality like that in the USA, not even for double the price."

The man fat pointed to a casket with an open lid. "Take a look," he urged. "We use only the best woods, the finest silks, the most luxurious quilting. All the stitching is done by hand."
"It's very nice," Tom said.

Having made his pitch, the fat man settled back in his chair, struck a match, and started to relight his cigar stub. "So, if it is not Molina's quality coffins that bring you to Guanajuato, then what does? You have come to see the mummies, perhaps? They are hideous but very interesting--preserved by the special minerals in the soil. I can arrange for a personal tour if you wish."

Tom shook his head. "I'm looking for somebody, a person who was born here."
Molina nodded through a cloud of blue smoke.
"Then you've come to the right place, my friend. I know everyone in Guanajuato--alive or dead."
"I'm glad to hear that, because this person is deceased. At least, I think so."

Molina exuded empathy.
"Do you have a name?"
"Yes, her name is . . ."
"No," Molina interrupted, "I mean your name."
"Tom Cardona."
"Tom. Like the actor Tom Cruise?"
"Yeah, like Tom Cruise."
Molina's body jiggled with amusement. "I know a Cardona family---a very respectable family--that lives near the University.
Professor Cardona was buried in one of my coffins. It was silver, with brass handles, and a dark blue lining . . . ."
"The person I'm looking for had the surname Morrell. She was my grandmother's nanny. I think she was known as La Blanca."
Molina's belly inflated. "Ah, naturally. La Blanca."
"So you knew her?"
"Everybody knows La Blanca."
"What do you mean?"
"Please," Molina waved Tom to a chair. "Sit down. Would you like some tea? A cigar perhaps?"
"No thanks."

Molina produced a fresh Havana, snipped off the tip, and torched it with a Bic lighter, sending smoke rings floating toward the ceiling. As he inhaled, his throat made the raspy whistle of air being forced through a narrow aperture.

"Everyone knows the legend of La Blanca. A Mexican ghost story. They say it's true." Molina hunched his bulky shoulders. "After all, the Morrell family certainly existed and the house still stands out by La Olla, the pot--that's what we call the municipal reservoir."
"Out by the Velasquez place."
Molina's mouth stretched into a leer.
"You know Doña Sara?"
"We've met."
"There are stories about her, too," he said with a wink, "But that is not what you came to hear."
"No."
Molina sucked on his cigar.
"According to the story," he began, "Blanca was the only daughter of Alain Morrell, a retired French soldier who owned several bakeries, and Rosa Vega, a Creole girl whose parents owned a silver mine north of town. Blanca was vivacious, reckless, and blessed with almost unbearable beauty. She was the flower whose perfume made the bees dizzy. The suitors came and went. Blanca would meet them, let them do their best to woo her, then reject them. She broke many hearts and made enemies that would one day contribute to her ruination."

"In any case, news of this unapproachable beauty spread through the mountains and reached the ears of Eugenio Sanchez, the dashing young heir of a wealthy cattle family from San Miguel de Allende. Eugenio's father, Don Arturo, had served as an ambassador to France and the family traced its lineage to the Bourbon court of Spain. The Morrell's were prominent, but the Sanchez clan was both rich and aristocratic. For Blanca's parents, it was an ideal match. With her looks and his money, the offspring of their union would be like royalty. An introduction was arranged, and Eugenio was instantly smitten. An expert horseman, he invited her to go riding with him and they were seen galloping together on the vast lands of the Sanchez estate. Two months later, Eugenio asked Blanca's father for her hand in marriage. Blanca's father accepted, and the town braced itself for the wedding of the century.

"The ceremony was to take place at the Cathedral with the Bishop presiding, the reception in the lobby of the grand Teatro Juarez. The guest list numbered more than one thousand, including many of Mexico's most distinguished families. To feed the hordes, Don Morrell had ordered five hundred chickens. fifty sides of beef and twenty barrels of beer, not counting brandy and champagne. An orchestra of thirty-six mariachis from Guadalajara had been hired to entertain, along with an assortment of dancers, mimes, and strolling magicians. The wedding cake alone weighed twenty kilos, and Blanca's dress, a rippling river of white brocade, lace and silk, was on its way by steamship from one of the most exclusive salons of Paris.

"In the final weeks before the wedding, Blanca stopped going to the Sanchez hacienda and locked herself in her rooms, refusing to come out. For three whole days a terrible sobbing shook the house. Finally, when her parents threatened to break the door down, she emerged and told them that she could not marry Eugenio because she loved someone else. 'If you force me to go trough with it,' she told them, 'I'll kill myself. I would rather be dead than married to that man.'

"Two weeks before Eugenio and Blanca were due to march to the altar, the wedding was called off. The fiasco cost the Morrell's hundreds of thousands of pesos and brought great shame to the family. Don Morrell became a laughingstock and his business suffered. Partly as an act of retribution and partly to shield her from the outpouring of scorn, Blanca was sent with her nanny to live in American. It is said that she had a child out of wedlock. A pocho bastard. A few months later, the Morrells liquidated their holdings, sold the house and left Guanajuato forever."

"The nanny," Tom interrupted, "Do you remember her name?"
Molina's brown furrowed in concentration. "I believe it was Estella," he said.
The slurred Spanish of two passing drunks intruded through the open door.
"Is something the matter?" Molina asked.
"No. I was just wondering, would you happen to remember the nanny's surname?"
Molina's brow creased in concentration.
Tom said, "Could it have been Cardona?"
Molina's head bobbed in confirmation.
"Yes, I believe that's it! What a strange coincidence! Are you sure you're allright, my friend?"
"I'm fine. Please go on."
"Perhaps it's the altitude."
"Yes, the altitude. Tell me the rest of the story."

"Well, several months passed. Then the most extraordinary thing happened. At first, no one could believe it was her, that she had the audacity to come back to the scene of her dishonor. It was like seeing a ghost. Not only that, but she had taken a cheap room at the edge of town, not far from where we sit, a blue house with two balconies on Calle Ramona. It was unheard of for a lady of her breeding to be living alone in such a place. As you might imagine, the gossips were in paradise. Some said that she had gone nuts and had been sent away to the United States to be put in an asylum, from which she had escaped. Others held that she had murdered her nanny and child. The more pious observers contended that the gringos had made her into a prostitute and that she had returned to ply her wares. In any case, polite society treated her like a leper, which seemed to suit Blanca just fine. The truth is, with her emerald eyes and long brown hair, she never looked more beautiful.

"Soon afterward Blanca was spotted riding with a handsome dark man. The following Sunday the couple was seen again, this time drifting in a rowboat on La Olla. Spies soon identified the man as Juan Fuerza, a mestizo laborer who worked in the silver mines. Then someone remembered that Fuerza's previous job was a stable boy at the Sanchez hacienda. Yes, he had worked there when Blanca used to go riding and even served as her guide on more than one occasion. Well, you didn't have to be a genius to figure out that Fuerza was the mystery love who had foiled Blanca's marriage to Eugenio Sanchez. Had Blanca and Fuerza tasted forbidden fruit in the trees of the Sanchez property, as some claimed? Or had they merely planted the seeds of a romance that would blossom much later. Who can say? Blanca took the answer to her grave. What is certain is that within a few weeks of Blanca's return, the outcast couple was living together in sin at the flat on Calle Ramona."

Molina paused and used a match to revive his cigar.
"Are you sure you are enjoying this story, señor? Would you like a glass of water?"
"Thank you, no. Please go on."
"Anyway, as you might have guessed, we are near the end. As soon as Eugenio Sanchez learned the identity of Blanca's new lover, he began to plot his revenge. Fuerza was a soulful boy with a firm jaw, straight black hair and eyes like coal. His body was lean and hard from working in the mines all day, but he also had an artistic temperament and liked to play his guitar and sing romantic ballads. On Saturday nights he would leave Blanca's house and join his friends for a song and a drink at the bar right here on the corner, which at the time was called El Espejo Oscuro. It was a warm, moonless night, and when Fuerza left the bar with two buddies he was in high spirits. At the intersection, Fuerza bade his friends goodnight and started alone down the sidestreet, the one over there with the light, on his way home to Blanca's house. The neighbors could hear him singing, as young drunks, and even old drunks, will do. Then the singing turned to shouts of terror. A band of assassins had been waiting for Fuerza, and when he turned the corner they attacked him with their machetes. It was over in a minute. Blanca ran out of her house and found her lover's butchered body in the street, his blood draining out into the gutter.

"It was at that point, I believe, that she did actually go insane. When Blanca saw that Fuerza was dead, she let out a horrible scream, a guttural wail that gathered force until every dog in town was barking and people were quaking in their beds. Mad with grief, Blanca went to the police station, but the police had been bribed by the Sanchez family and they told her to go home and forget about it. There would be no protest, no outcry, no official investigation of any kind. It was as if the killing had never happened, and who could prove otherwise? The body, or what was left of it, was disposed of in secret, probably at the bottom of a mine. Even Fuerza's birth certificate vanished."

"What about Blanca?"

"A terrible end for such a beautiful girl," Molina lamented. "My father, who was a boy at the time, never stopped having nightmares about it. All through the night, Blanca walked through the town like a zombie, her hands and dress soaked with Fuerza's blood, screaming for a doctor, for the police, for anyone who would help her. But people had only locked their doors and drew their curtains. By now she had become an almost supernatural figure. To touch her would be to touch the devil, to look into her eyes would be to glimpse into a living hell. It is not an opportunity that the God-fearing strive for, I assure you. In any case, she wandered through the city for hours, scaring the daylights out of people as she pounded on their doors and beseeched them to let her in, like a succubus, then moving on to the next street, the next house. She came at last to her childhood home, which was now owned by the Velasquez family. Doña Sara, who had hated Blanca ever since she stole Eugenio Sanchez away from her, opened one of the windows on the second floor and threw cold water on her, causing Fuerza's blood to stain the cement in front of their door. The next morning, they found Blanca's body floating in La Olla. The authorities reported it as an open and shut case of accidental drowning. For months, no one would go boating there, and for a time people tried to avoid drinking water, fearing that Blanca's deranged spirit would somehow enter their body. There were those who also believed that the blood on the Velasquez steps was a curse of some sort."

"A curse?"

"Well, my professional efforts notwithstanding, we Mexicans are not very good at burying our dead. They live with us, behind doors, under creaking beds, in the cobwebs that cling to the walls, watching, judging . . . Ah, but of course you don't believe me. It is fashionable in this day of computers and moon landings to pretend that what I just told you is merely a myth, that none of it ever happened. And, who knows, maybe it never did. But this much is certain: the stain on the Velasquez steps is still there, and parents still invoke the ghost of La Blanca to keep their children from playing near La Olla at night."

"Where was she buried?"

Molina seemed annoyed by the question. "In the municipal cemetery," he said "No one claimed the body and she was interred in a pine box that my grandfather donated. There is no marker on her grave. There is nothing to see. Trust me, going there would be a waste of time."

The municipal cemetery was on the outskirts of town, at the end of a dusty road that coiled up into a dry gully. Several of the tombs were built above ground in the shape of small buildings with tiny windows and doors. Others were marked with a simple wooden or iron crucifix. All the graves, from the richest to the poorest, were adorned with bouquets of plastic flowers--yellow, blue, red, and pink. Wildflowers had grown up around the ersatz blooms so that the two appeared to be growing from the same roots. In the hammering sunlight the colors were almost unbearably bright, and they stabbed at Tom's eyes as he wandered through the rows of strangely festive graves, his ears ringing with the drone of flying insects. Most of the plots were unidentified and Tom quickly realized that he would never find what he was looking for without some help. A few yards away a shirtless young man was raking dead leaves and rocks into a neat pile. Tom approached him and smiled.
"Buenos dias"
"Buenos dias," the man uttered without looking up. Tom strained his memory for the Spanish word for grave.
"Por favor, donde esta la tumba de la Señora Blanca Morrell?"
"El entierro?"
"Si," Tom said, "el entierro de Blanca Morrell."

The man looked at Tom as if he were mad. "Aqui no esta," he said. Then the man put down his rake and fled.

"What did you ask him?" The question was posed by an elderly bearded man in a plain black suit. His starched collar was tattered but clean and he held a bunch of fresh carnations in his hands.
"I asked him to show me the grave of Blanca Morrell."
"Oh my," the man remarked. "No wonder he ran away. The Indians are very superstitious, especially when strangers ask to see the graves of ghosts."
"She's not a ghost," Tom replied acidly. "She was a woman who lived here and died here and was buried somewhere in this cemetery." "Yes, I've heard that story too. It could very well be true. But I've been coming here every Sunday to leave flowers for my wife , and I've never seen a tombstone for Blanca Morrell."
"I don't think there ever was a marker."
"So the family never claimed the body?"
"I don't think so."
"When did she die?"
"I'm not sure. A long time ago."

The man removed his hat and wiped the sweat from his brown. "You know, it's just possible . . ." The man left the sentence unfinished.
"What's possible?"
"Well, you've heard about the museum of the mummies, haven't you??
"It was mentioned in my guidebook," Tom replied. "Something about bodies that were preserved by the minerals in the soil."
"That's what I'm saying. You see, the city's policy has always been that unclaimed bodies would be buried for five years. After that, if the family failed to claim them, they could be exhumed and cremated. But some of the bodies never decomposed. They are on display in the museum. I'll tell you, it's really something to see."

The midday sun pressed down with a vengeance, sapping the blood from Tom's arms and legs. "You're telling me that my grandmother's body might be on display as a tourist attraction?"
The man blanched. "Your grandmother? Good God. Forgive me, I had no idea."
"Neither did I."

It took him a few minutes to muster the courage, but once he decided to go, it wasn't hard to find. Halfway back into town a small sign announced Momias with a hand-painted arrow pointing to the right. Tom had to back up to make the hair-pin turn, then he was climbing a one lane road carved into the side of a hill. As he neared the entrance, a gaggle of children ran alongside the car shouting, "Las momias! Las momias!" The museum was situated in a dirt plaza ringed by souvenir shops selling mummy T-shirts and plastic goblins. As Tom climbed out of the car, another gang of youngsters surrounded him. "Momias de dulce," they yelled, hawking ghoulish candy skeletons mounted on a stick and packaged in clear plastic wrappers that looked like body bags. Tom waved the children away and tipped the parking lot guard to watch the car.

After standing in line to pay for his admission ticket for the English tour, Tom was ushered into a windowless waiting room with about thirty other visitors. An American boy wearing a Yankees baseball cap asked his mother if there was really a restaurant where you could look at the mummies while you at. "I hope not," his mother said with revulsion. Tom wasn't feeling so well himself. His head throbbed and the huevos rancheros he'd had for breakfast were churning in his gut, undigested. He told himself it was the stuffy room or nerves or the altitude--anything but the real reason. The night before, he had hardly slept. He had driven back to the hotel in a daze, refusing to believe that his father was the bastard offspring of La Blanca Morrell, the raving witch of Guanajuato. On the road, he'd narrowly missed hitting a goat. It sprang into the headlights out of nowhere, its eyes lit with panic.

A stern-looking woman entered the waiting room and introduced herself as their guide. She addressed the group in Spanish first, then English, both spoken with supercilious precision. "For some reason," she explained, "perhaps because of the high mineral content of the soil or the dryness of the air, the bodies left in the crypt of the Pantheon, or municipal cemetery, did not decompose. Instead they mummified."

"Excellent," the boy with the cap exclaimed.

"Until recently, any corpses that remained unclaimed in the municipal cemetery were taken to an underground crypt, where they became preserved in a most unusual state. The museum exhibit includes nearly one hundred bodies, some of which date back to the turn of the century. No flash is allowed. Now please stay together and follow me."

Tom followed last, lingering at the edge of the group.

The museum seemed to be made up of a series of interconnecting rooms, each one of which contained a dozen or so cadavers displayed in glass cases. Tom steeled himself and crossed the threshold into the first chamber. Most of the corpses were naked their withered and dusty private parts plainly visible. Others sported the moth-eaten remains of their burial suits and dresses. One woman still had her stockings on, her emaciated legs disappearing into a pair of once-fashionable boots. Only a thin sheet of glass separated Tom from the countenance of death. The eye less sockets stared into space, the lipless mouths yawned open. The poor lighting and horizontal arrangement of the display cases only added to Tom's claustrophobia.

The group seemed to be moving in slow motion. As he waited for the crowd to file through the narrow doorway, a young woman asked him to take a picture of her and a friend in front of one of the bodies. The pair mugged as if the carcass were some sort of decomposing celebrity. Tom clicked the shutter and felt another wave of nausea.

As the tour group meandered through the adjoining chambers, Tom tried to imagine what Blanca might look like after time and death had sucked the sweetness from her features. Could she be that one over there with the sunken cheekbones and startled expression, as if mortality had come as an unpleasant surprise? Or maybe that one in the corner, with the faded ribbon still knotted to the wiry strands bristling from her cranium?
It was hopeless. Blanca could never be any of the ghastly fossils around him; she had gone to a place where no one could see her.

The guide beckoned the group into the next room. "This is a particularly interesting mummy," she noted, "for as you can see she was buried alive. By mistake, of course."
There were gasps from the group and Tom felt something nudging him toward his esophagus.

"We believe that the woman probably suffered a stroke or heart attack and went into a coma," the guide explained in a slightly jaded monotone. "She was mistaken for dead and buried. But, of course, she was still alive. If you look closely at the hands you can see that the nails were damaged when she tried to scratch open the lid."

Tom felt his blood congeal. The curdled face, it's black lizard lips stretched into a silent scream, was the very first same that had pressed against his car window at the airport parking lot. The beseeching black sockets, more accusing than eyes, bore into him, drew him closer. Her expression tore at his intestines, gnawed at his bones, until something lurched in Tom's belly.

Across the room, the guide was eyeing him suspiciously.
"Por favor señor. Please don't touch the glass."
"Where is the exit?" Tom gasped.
"We are almost to the end of the tour, sir. If you could just wait one moment."

Instead of answering, he pushed his way through the crowd and staggered out the exit into the garden, where he doubled over and heaved his breakfast into a bed of blooming marigolds. His vomit was volcanic, an eruption of rich food and denial that had taken decades to reach the surface. Blinded by the Aztec sun, Tom bowed like a believer as the violent spasms emptied him, cleansing him of pride and worldly pretense. He gagged and heaved until there was nothing left, nothing but an aching void and the fragrant embrace of the sweet, forgiving earth.

written by Guy Garcia

from "Pieces of the Heart"
--New Chicano Fiction
edited by Gary Soto
© 1993