The highs and lows of Lucia Berlin’s life in Mexico: “My memories of Acapulco come in snapshots, like the childlike drawings in ‘Babar the Elephant.’ ”
Lucia Berlin with her sons Jeff and Mark, Mirador Hotel, Acapulco, Mexico, November, 1961.Lucia Berlin was a writer whose work went under-read for much of her life. For many readers, “A Manual for Cleaning Women,” a collection of selected stories published in 2015, eleven years after her death, at the age of sixty-eight, was the first introduction to stories that, as, long an admirer of Berlin’s, observed, “are electric, they buzz and crackle as the live wires touch.
We met people, on the beach, in the plaza, at cafés. People liked us, invited us over to their table, home for tea. Flamenco dancers gave us tickets to concerts; a trapeze artist asked us to the circus. Manuel, one of the divers at the Quebrada, joined us for a drink, then had us over every Sunday for steamed clams with his wife and children. We spent most evenings with Don and Maria, who became close friends for many years.
He got well finally, and then weeks went by, busy and lazy, such warmhearted weeks. The heroin became but a quick scary moment. After several months, we were ready to go home to New Mexico. I would divorce Race and we would be married. An hour out of Albuquerque, Buddy started to shake. His nose was running and he had cramps in his legs. As soon as the plane landed, he took off to make a phone call.A sprawling old adobe with fireplaces in most of the rooms. Bedrooms, baths, pantries, and studies had been added on over the years, at different levels, in every direction, but every new room had the same three-foot-wide walls, high windows facing the pool and garden.
We climbed and explored Acoma and Bandelier, Mesa Verde, went to Indian dances and ceremonials and powwows. Camped out at Canyon de Chelly and Chaco. Awoke late at night under the stars, wondering what the people living there had been like. When he was on drugs, our house turned into a bunker, the doors always closed and locked. “Buddy’s sick,” I’d say, just like Mamie. Only Junie or Frankie, Nacho, Pete, Noodles would come. The predators who followed him to work, to the bank, who knocked at night on our door. Whispers. Raspy laughter in the dark.Photograph by Buddy Berlin / Literary Estate of Lucia Berlin
Most of the other flowers had no perfume and were safe from ants. Bougainvillea and hibiscus, canna lilies, four o’clocks, impatiens, zinnias. The stocks and gardenias and roses were heady with perfume, alive with butterflies of every color. The river changed all year long. Sometimes deep, swift, and green, sometimes just a stream. Sometimes, depending on the tides, the beach would close up and the river would turn into a lagoon. This was the best time, with ducks, blue heron, and egrets. The boys would spend hours playing in their dugouts, tossing nets for fish, ferrying passengers across from the beach. Even David could handle a canoe, and he was only three.
And then, as if addiction had sent out loud heartbeat messages, the drug dealers began to show up. Tino or Victor, Alejandro. All young, handsome ex-beach boys, smart and mean. Whispers in our garden, laughter in the dark by the datura tree.Photograph by Lucia Berlin/Literary Estate of Lucia BerlinOur VW van had a Porsche engine, other modifications that made it good for tough Mexican roads. Buddy and I had fixed up the back for travel.
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