The Way of Water/ El Camino del Agua
Only three more days left at this camp before my cousin, Nina, and I return to our homes in Uvalde. This whole business of the two of us joining a non-denominational, Christian camp for girls in the hill country of Texas near Austin never appealed to us this summer. We are the right age to attend at twelve years old; but we are Hispanic girls from modest-income families, free spirited and knowledgeable in the ways of the natural world, unlike these wealthy, gringo girls. I blame that pendejo evangelical pastor that Mama and Tia follow. I blame our gringo fathers for forcing Nina and I to live among these girls who have nothing in common with us, except for age. No other girls in this God-forsaken place value what my cousin and I enjoyed.
Nina runs like the wind and swims like a fish. Already bored winning all the running and swimming contests, Nina leads our soccer team to victory, proving she and I are team-players. But her comment about the origins of the game, our Aztec warrior women, who decapitated the losers and use the heads of the vanquished as the next soccer ball does not impress the other girls or the counselors. Clearly we exhibit very little in Christ-like behavior. But even the counselors admit my cousin and I are kind, always helpful. I’m a plant and animal lover and lead several groups in the ways of the plants and trees that surrounded the camp. I identify the various spirits of the earth who control the water, flora and fauna at the camp. Try as we might, Nina and I are pagan to the bone; and with that novel appeal, we draw several girls to our nature sessions. Everyone admits we add to the camp a different esprit de corp.
I sit by the bank of the river contemplating all this when Nina joins me as evening creeps into the day.
“Gabriel, cheer up. Only a few more days left,” she says as she nudges me for more room on our shared rock.
“I know, mija. But hush,” I say. “I’m listening for our abuela. I know you’ve listened to her before tonight. She cries at the bank of this river every night and I can’t figure out why she’s visiting us.”
“I think she weeps for our discomfort in this place. We’re clearly the other people at camp. This place is not for us; she senses that.”
“I think she’s upset about the number of Montezuma Bald Cypress trees along the riverbank. This variety is not indigenous to Central Texas. The riparian tree belongs with us along the border and in Mexico…not here. Much river water is siphoned off by this species. Their root balls are just below the ground where they greedily consume river water. It’s not healthy.”
“So, you’re familiar with their root balls, Gabriel?” Nina said wiggling her eyebrows suggestively.
I turned a shade of red, “Really, Nina. It’s nothing personal that I feel for these cypress trees. They offer shade during the day and stretch their branching arms out to any who need shelter from the river’s edge for the night.”
“Seems very personal to me.”
“Seriously, you, of all people should understand grandmother’s decision to appear every evening at this Christian/gringo camp.” Nina was born only a week after our grandmother took her own life. Distressed by the rising water of the Reservoir at Amistad that submerged her own village, she stepped into those very waters and never came back. The only thing still visible of that old town was the cross on the church steeple.
“Well, just because I have her name doesn’t mean I need to be like her. I’m not going to marry and have fifteen kids; I can tell you that.”
“Why does she weep and call to us?”
“I don’t know, Gabriel.”
We sit in silence until the stars pop out and then we walk back to our individual cabins. “I hate sleeping in the same room as twenty other strangers,” Nina says grudgingly as she shuffles away. I shiver in agreement and walk away from our spot along the river.
That night, before the thunder roars and the lightning flashes in arches against the night sky, before the deluge begins to fill every dry surface of earth along the river, I awake to my grandmother’s voice couched in silent lightening. “Gabriel, come to the river’s edge. Nina meets you there. It’s time to leave this place before it’s too late.”
“Too late for what, Abuela?” I whisper half asleep.
She says, “Get dressed and put your shoes on.”
Like a zombie, I do as commanded and find Nina by our spot along the river.
“You’re here,” I say.
“When your grandmother wakes you up and tells you to get to the river quickly, you do just that.”
“Shouldn’t we wake up our counselors and tell them what’s happening?”
“Gabriel, do you think that they would believe you? ‘My dead grandmother’s ghost is warning of a coming weather catastrophe.’”
“She says for us to climb the cypress tree.”
I’m afraid for the first time in the dark, wet weather. But I take comfort that my brave Nina is with me and that together with abuela, we will be okay. Climbing upward in sheets of rain, we rest on a sturdy tree limb at the river’s edge. I can hear the water rising without seeing it from the tree. After an hour, we hear the camp girls screaming for help as they realized that their cabin is flooding. Through sheets of rain we see SUVs floating by with their headlights on and witness passengers struggling to exit into deep, swift water. Where they hope to go in the roaring river carrying them against their will is unimportant compared with their entrapment inside their vehicle. Noise of trees less sturdy than ours, rootless and racing with the river water and crashing into unseen obstacles fill the night. All the while, my panic rises with the water. I clutch my silver necklace engraved with a capital ‘N’ and ‘G’ entwined. Nina fingers her identical necklace; we both feel our name-sake jewelry as a talisman against the evils of the storm.
“Gabriel, it’s story time,” Nina whispers trying to distract from our perilous situation. She wraps her strong arms around me and launches her tale. Doubly entwined with the cypress and with Nina, I listen to her tales of our adventures earlier in the year along the Frio River in Garner State Park near our home. Navigating the Frio in our individual inner tubes, Nina and I raced for sixteen miles in swift water until the river slows and we portage out of the water into a SUV where our dads patiently await our arrival. Nina begins to name the trees that we passed on our journey. Occasionally, she misnames a species, and I murmur a correction as I doze off to sleep.
Eventually, the lack of motion and morning sun cause me to shake off sleep. I know immediately that this is not the same place where I began this adventure. I sit up from the protective branches of the cypress tree and see I’m stuck in a mass clump of dislodged trees, root balls on display for the world to see and the reason why this nest of vegetation shields me from drowning in the swollen river.
“Nina, that’s the last time I’m trash-talking an invasive species’ root ball,” I say. “We owe our lives to these trees.” I look around for my cousin and do not see her. Panic begins to bubble from my mouth as I call her name over and over again. Finally, from a highway bridge over the river, I notice strangers shouting for rescue zodiacs and frantically pointing in my direction. “Abuela, I can’t find Nina,” I whisper.
“Gabriel don’t worry about your cousin. She’s safe with me. In time, you will see her again. For now you endure the way of water. Rivers whisper stories about your adventures and bravery. You are known along our waterways. I’m with you always, Gabriel. Answer your rescuers’ questions and find your Mama and Tia.”
“I’m Gabriel of Uvalde,” I tell the men from the zodiac, “I’m looking for my cousin, Nina. Have you seen her?”
Gabriel Zamora is a Mexican American fairy doomed to wander the borderlands between Texas and Mexico. Like his short story’s narrator, Sandro Good Lizard, he was born with a forked tongue and a severe case of cultural schizophrenia common to those who grow up in the borderlands between nations, languages, and cultures.