Everything That Breathes

I’ve never seen the rooster next door that crows at dawn. And during thunderstorms. And during the ubiquitous fireworks—this is Oaxaca, after all. In the afternoon, when he’s tired of scratching at the same dirt hoping to find something different, but it’s just the same fucking dirt, he crows a little louder.

“I hear you,” I whisper over the fifteen-foot wall that separates us. “I feel you.”

*

Estoy afuera, Alberto, the taxista, texts me. When I arrive on the sidewalk, he gets out of the car, walks around and opens the back door. When I get in, I notice the engine isn’t on. My neighbor who recommended this taxista, told me he often arrives early, so I’m guessing that’s why. We chat; my name, how I got his contact info, why I’m in Oaxaca, what tourist spots I’ve visited. He still hasn’t turned the engine on. Wow, I think, he really vets his customers. It’s nearing 9:00 p.m., and I’m going to meet friends from the salsa academia to dance at a nightclub.

Dancing lets me stop scratching at the dirt.

Finally, I say, “Nos vamos?” 

Claro, he says, I thought someone else was coming.

Someone else? Should there be someone else?

“No, it’s just me,” I say. He apologizes and starts the taxi. As he drives, he tells me he’s lived in Oaxaca his whole life. He’s been driving a cab for thirty-seven years, maybe tweny-seven. My Spanish is getting better, but numbers still often sound the same. 

When we arrive, he offers to wait outside for ten dollars an hour, but I tell him I’m fine, I’ll find a way home.

Down the stairs and inside, I see mostly men have shown up from my dance class and they’re sitting at a long table by the door. Rodo, short for Rodolfo, motions to a seat next to him. We’d met as brief partners at the salsa academia. After greetings, Luis, a young man in his early thirties, stands and taps me on the shoulder, points to the dance floor, and I nod.

We weave our way past tables of families, and I see waiters crossing the dance floor with plates of quesadillas and memelitas. The kitchen sits on the side of where the band plays. Amazingly, a partner’s spin doesn’t upend the waiters’ trays. Luis leads me to an open space and we begin the two-beat side step as the band sings Nunca Es Suficiente, It’s Never Enough, a cumbia love song. Luis is taller than I am, a welcome rarity in Mexico, and it helps him lead well even if I’m still not great at following. To follow well, you need to trust without anticipating. I still occasionally knee jerk react at the end of a move and try to control the next one, but Luis is patient and strong, and his resistance helps me reel myself in.

Te perderás dentro de mis recuerdos, por haberme hecho llorar, You will be lost in my memories for having made me cry finishes the song. Luis escorts me back to my seat, but before I can sit, Rodo, closer to my age, stands and we return to the dance floor for another cumbia. He’s just learning, but I can understand his jokes so we spend most of the time laughing.

When we return to our seats, I begin chatting with Ramiro, a gentleman I haven’t met before, and we discover we both share a love of wine. Ordering a bottle means better choices, so we share a red and chat before dancing to a salsa song. He is dressed sharply and says he learned to dance a few months ago, but he is very, very good. He gets sensual, his thigh pushing between my legs during a dip, and I go with it.

I have always struggled to live within the lines. 

He gives me his handkerchief to mop up my sweat after the quick paced song leaves me drenched. I haven’t held a handkerchief since I had to iron my fathers’ when I was a kid. I use it and then don’t know what to do. Hand this sweat covered cloth back to him? 

“Keep it,” Ramiro smiles, beautiful strong white teeth lighting up his face.

I return to my seat next to Rodo and we talk the talk of people just getting to know each other. The obvious things first, then quickly, the less obvious.

“Are you married?” he asks.

“I was,” I answer, and contemplate leaving it there but add, “then we divorced, and then he died.”

“What of?”

“Addiction.” 

“It wasn’t your fault,” he says simply.

My eyes widen.

“It’s all over your face. There was nothing you could do.”

Rodo makes his living as a lawyer, but is also a trained therapist. I know telling me there was nothing I could do was meant to comfort, but it pushes my shoulder blades forward. I’m relieved when Beto, the only one here I’ve known for a while, asks me to dance to another cumbia. We met shortly after my first stay in Oaxaca more than a year ago. He speaks no English, and my Spanish was just beginning, but we were able to figure out that we were both retired teachers who had divorced our spouses after decades of marriage.

When we dance, there is only joy.

When 2:00 a.m. arrives, Ramiro gives me a ride home since we live a few blocks away from each other. He invites me to his terraza the next day to see his just completed family ofrenda, the altar of the dead, since Día de Muertos is coming. Families use marigolds and cock’s comb flowers to create an altar and then add pictures of the deceased as well as mezcal, chocolates, fruits, tobacco, and other favorite things to lure their loved ones back for an annual visit. To honor them.

“Sí, nos vemos mañana,” I say. He waits for me to open my door before driving away. 

*

Los perros callejeros, street dogs, in El Centro, the downtown area, are famously fat. The local restaurants—Oaxaca is known for its cuisine—put out left over food as the dogs wander the cobblestoned streets, then sleep soundly in shaded spots. I see water bowls next to entrances. But no one lets them nuzzle into their thigh as they run their fingers around their ears and down their necks. No one scratches their bellies and rubs their backs. I know they miss it in their bones. I pass two labs sleeping in the gutter, nestled in the shade of a parked car. I feel you, I say. I see you.

*

I arrive the next day and see Ramiro on the sidewalk, in front of his building, putting ladies’ high heels into the trunk of a car.  A beautiful young woman, wearing a silky black dress, stands next to him. “Hola, Corinne, this is my daughter, Maria Fernanda.” His pride is palpable. Her smile is Ramiro’s—full lipped, with bright white teeth, and we exchange Mucho Gustos.  MariFer has come to her father’s to change before going to a wedding. He is escorting her around the block to the car of a friend whose parents are driving them. I watch him take care of his daughter and I’m momentarily flooded with sorrow at not having had a father who ever would have done that for me. Who did the opposite. Put his six daughters in perilous situations repeatedly. I will grow to love watching Ramiro spend time with his daughters.

Ramiro and I eat fresh cheese and tortillas and are finishing a bottle of tempranillo when his sister comes to say the family wants to walk to the zócolo. We head off down the calle together: his brother and his wife, his sister and her husband, two children, and his nephew’s wife. Families chat while their children toss balloons in the air and kick soccer balls around the plazas. Musicians play on nearly every corner. A mariachi band attracts a crowd that can’t help but dance. 

His family stops to buy bread, the sweet smells, especially of freshly ground chocolate, draw passersby into the bakery. “Would you like some?” they ask. I shake my head and say no thank you.

I had a family. A husband. Two sons. I was a wife and mother, though more a mother, than a wife. Now I live alone. Buying one of something still doesn’t feel—right.

I imagine Ramiro’s family sharing their bread and chocolate in the morning and am happy I got to be part of this family, if only briefly.

*

My neighbor’s dogs, a German Shepherd and a hound, begin their mournful cries turning to howling barks as soon as they hear me enter the gate.  “I want to free you,” I say, “I really, really want to free you.” They are being held hostage on their terraza. Their barking is not a home protection job well-done, but an impassioned plea for freedom. They are doomed to pace the open-air roof, warning ladrones to pick another home. The robbers can go where they please, but the dogs never get to leave.

Everything that breathes wants to go somewhere. 

“Están locos,” the owner smiles apologetically when we are trying to chat but can’t hear each other over their yowling. I smile at her, but in my head, I say to the dogs, “No están locos. Lo sé. Créeme, lo sé.” I know you’re not crazy. Believe me, I know. I walk inside my courtyard and they stop making noise, but I carry their lament up the stairs and into my apartment.

*

I walk to a sketchy part of town hoping to find a collectivo, a shared taxi, to take me to Teotitlan, a small pueblo forty minutes away. Tere, a dance academia friend has invited me to her home for tamales and chocolate, a traditional Día de Muertos meal. It is a major holiday, though, so there are no collectivos. A taxista sees me holding my phone, using Google maps, and quickly tells me to put it away. 

“Ladrones,” he says.

“Sí, entiendo,” I say, tucking it in my pocket. 

“Me llamo Alvino,” he says and offers to drive me for fifteen dollars. A collectivo would have been two dollars. 

“Caro,” I say, expensive, but agree to the price. He and I both know I’m stuck.

He asks if I want to sit up front.

“Claro,” I say, because I know it will be easier for me to practice Spanish if we’re sitting side by side and I can see his mouth and the wind won’t whip the sounds out the windows as quickly. 

After ten minutes of small talk, he shyly and respectfully suggests the possibility of becoming my boyfriend. I study him as he keeps his eyes on the pothole and speed bump filled highway. 

“Sabes cómo bailar?” I ask. Do you know how to dance?

“Sí, claro,” he says, nodding assertively.

“Salsa?” I dig for specifics.

He pauses. “No, no sé bailar salsa.” No, I don’t know how to dance salsa.

“Bueno, no va a funcionar.” Well, then, it won’t work.

He accepts my assessment of our potential future together with grace and dignity.

He waits with me in Teotitlan until Tere arrives to drive me to her home. Everyone who lives in this pueblo of five thousand is a weaver. Everyone. Every home has at least one loom. Tere’s home has twelve housed in a separate building. We will eat tamales and tour the grounds, and chat with her extended family. They tell me during the worst of Covid, the church bells would ring sometimes five times a day. Four rings announced the death of a man, six rings for a woman. We sip our hot chocolate and the chill still hovers in the air. 

*

The street cats who patrol my property wander by, climbing up and down the tree branches and through the tunnels of razor wire lining the compound walls. The first time I saw a cat blithely step into the razored hoops, my breath caught and I had to look away.

Now I watch.

One tabby often stops in front of my apartment and stares through the glass. Silently, I wish it a lovely day, even though my animal lover son in New York had commented, “Let it in!” when I posted its picture. But I can’t, I say. I’m trying to change. When I move, the cat scampers away. The next morning, the cat is limping. I will think about its limp and feel badly for the cat, and badly about myself, because I don’t try to help. This feels worse. When I see it again, the limp is the same. I still do nothing.

Does this mean I’m getting better?                                                                            

*

Rodo invites me to dinner. He speaks a little English, but wants to learn more, so I had sent him a video of a reading I did about a haunting experience I had had with my deceased ex-husband. My husband spoke to me, through a man I had never met before or seen since, who told me he had a sixth sense, while I was bartending at an event. The video was in English, of course, so I ask Rodo, waiting for our meals to arrive, if he understood it.  

“Los básicos,” he says. 

“You think I’m crazy?” I ask.

“Do you want me to tell you what I think as your friend or as a therapist?”

“Therapist,” I say. I have many friends. I don’t have a therapist. 

“Ok,” he says. “You talk and write about your ex-husband too much. You need to stop.”

I really want to be offended, but I can’t get myself there. 

He finishes the conversation with, “You know, the dead need to rest, too. You keep calling your husband back. Let him rest.”

My shoulders push forward once again, until we finish our dinner and get to the salsa academia and the movement and the music and the connecting with different partners pushes them back down. Where they’re supposed to be.

*

I walk down a familiar calle, but “my puppy” isn’t here anymore. He was small and black and had the wide eyes of being new to street life. I want to think he’s been rescued and is being cared for kindly somewhere. I watched on my many trips as he refused to go with the four older dogs who’d formed one of the many perro callejero street dog posses. He’d back himself into a wall to protect his rear flank when they came to say, “Let’s go kid. You’re never going to make it out here on your own.”

He didn’t answer.

The quartet wagged their tails, as the leader approached more closely a final time. My puppy pushed back further into the wall. I knew the posse didn’t know he had a love locked behind the garage door in the building next to the vacant lot. I’d watched her push her snout through the crack at the bottom, food dangling from her teeth, to feed him from her own stock. Both prone on their bellies, their mouths met, his tail wagged, maybe hers, too? Hers permanently locked behind the metal wall with only a reliable source of food and water sustaining her. He on the street with only his freedom. Together, they had a little of the other. He was not going to leave her. He would stay right where he was. 

This is how I understand what I see.

*

When I get home, I remember I need to deal with the tarantula in my bathroom. I had taken a picture of it earlier in the sink. It knew I was taking its picture, too. It moved a little, and viscerally I said, Don’t worry, I just want to find out what you are, I got closer and it stayed still long enough for the yellow square on my phone camera to focus.

I was pretty sure it was the same spider I saw catch, then eat a fly, a few days back. I could have lived without seeing that. On a harbor tour in Puerto, we passed two copulating sea turtles just in time to see the male have an orgasm. I could have lived without seeing that, too. The stiff jerking and thrashing reminded me of a previous partner which humiliated me for some reason. I guess I don’t want to have something intimate in common with a sea turtle. Apparently, I do.

I sent the spider’s picture to a friend. It’s a tarantula, he responded. But a baby one. It’s the black widow spiders you need to worry about. Do you want me to come over and kill it?

Umm…no, that’s ok, I texted. I’ll do it.

But that seemed extreme. Or, a little extreme.

When I return to the bathroom, the tarantula is not in the sink. Not near my toothpaste or the bottle of eye makeup remover with the cap covered in dust. Or the ceramic dispenser of hand soap. It has moved on. Had it decided it too had stayed too long? Exactly what I had hoped it would do, except the part I hadn’t thought through was—where did it go?

I had to trust that part would be okay.

-Corinne O'Shaughnessy

Corinne O'Shaughnessy is a retired New York City public school literacy teacher. Her essays have been published in Oldster.substack.com, TwoHawksQuarterly.com, TheManifestStation.com, dorothyparkersashes.com, and this journal, among others. Her short fiction has been published in survivorlit.org and TheBookofMatchesLit.com, where she was nominated for a Best of the Net Award. She has also been a resident of The Millay Colony. She divides her time between The Bronx and Mexico.