Horns, drums, tuba—and something else, too, some lilting melody like a strain from a distant dream. Ahead, huge puppets and laughing children. Another dream? But no, she was awake, she was here. Here in Oaxaca! After twenty-six years, she, Lena Mendel, had returned to the city that for one extraordinary high school year she called home. She wanted to dance, to join this procession of horns and drums and puppets, and yet, and yet—as much as she longed to follow, she wanted to linger on this cobblestone street, press her palms onto walls of peach and jade, feel the contours of the sage-green stone, as if these colors, this city, its trees brilliant with blossoms of yellow and lavender, could enter her body, run through her veins, and she’d again be the girl breathing in every ounce of Oaxaca.
. . . Twenty-seven years since she arrived in Oaxaca; twenty-six since she left. Twenty-seven was the age she’d been when Gabe annulled her claim to absolute independence. Still, Oaxaca’s lichen-toned walls, its knots of overhead wire, its protests, were as familiar to her as her hand. And there, beneath clouds nearly purple in their weight, stood her very own mountain, whose crest, valley, and ascent to a second peak had been her touchstone as a girl, echoing the very curve of her chest, the nestling of heart between lungs. This mountain was her own Zapotec god, the one she’d called Brooding with Storm Clouds.