There’s an old song from the thirties I’ve always loved, maybe because I love origin stories. It begins, “I was born under a silvery moon, with a pirate’s heart.” Written by Agustin Lara, a troubadour who played piano in nightclubs when he was only twelve years old, it’s an ode to Veracruz, a city on the Gulf of Mexico where Hernan Cortés’ Spanish flotilla first collided with Huastec, Otomí, Totonac and Olmec civilization. Five hundred years later, Veracruzanos are dark-skinned, fair-skinned, freckled, tall, short. They may have black almond eyes or large green eyes, hooked noses or aquiline profiles… 

“Jarochos”, as people from the port city are affectionately called, are fond of nicknaming their friends and neighbours by their most obvious physical trait. Chubby? You’re “gordo”. Skinny? They’ll call you “flaco”. No tan? Güero. It’s the end of July, and I’m sitting by the water in my hometown, calling my “other” home, Veracruz, to wish Martha –my Mexican mama– a “Happy Birthday”, humming the old familiar tune until she picks up.

“Hola Güerita,” she answers, in her sing song accent.

“I found tickets to come see you in December!” I tell her excitedly, never imagining a few days later the cost of our reunion will break my heart.

“Excellente, mi hija,” she replies. Now tell me how you’ve been…

She asks how the kids are and I tell her about our summer adventures. Tucked into a gentle ravine not far from where I live, my aunt and uncle have a lovely property where they welcome two generations of ragamuffins to move in for a week of chaos which some call “cousin bonding” and others call “the shit-show”. There’s a pool beside the river and from their deck on the embankment you can lift a wooden latch and slip down a bona fide, winding waterslide into the aquamarine water below. The only condition is you must wait for the all clear and you must not be a pain-in-the-butt and hold up the line by trying to defy the forces of gravity with your skinny little sunburned arms. 

From cousins’ camp we travelled out west to visit dear friends who happened to have a dozen baby bunnies in the back yard (kids thought they’d died and gone to heaven – I thought the bunnies were going to expire from all the manhandling, but no – they’re more resilient to 24-hour cuddles than you might think.) I watched the kids grow taller as they fed on the love and affection of friends and family. They devoured Rick Riordon, James Patterson and Gordon Korman, re-reading the same novels over and over in different places as the summer wore on, the routine of school fading into their memories.

Martha asks about my writing, “when do I get to read your book?” I tell her I finally sent my latest manuscript to my cherished beta readers and was ready to switch from the keyboard to a DIY renovation project that would take the remainder of the summer. There are still smudges of white on my skin from the thousand times I’ve brushed against still wet paint. Many days we wondered if we’d taken on more than we could chew. (Never installed a shower? That’s what YouTube is for, right?) I told Martha how our fingers throbbed at night from cutting, mudding, painting and ripping out old walls and chucking them into the dumpster. My hair looked like I was channeling Janis Joplin but my mind was uncluttered and clear, as the world of Wi-Fi and Netflix faded away. I fell asleep at night with the contented feeling of having accomplished something, my weary bones the evidence that progress was being made. Martha murmurs her motherly approval of our ambition. “Good for you, good for the kids.” She’s trying to keep to keep her chin up. Widowed three years ago this fall, she’s run her cattle ranch on her own, and when it sells, she’ll come to Canada, she promises. We return to this theme often, and for now, we go to her, which, when it’s minus twenty here, is no sacrifice.

Nowadays we chat on WhatsApp, and our phone conversations are always punctuated with a hundred P. S’s, in the form of video links, heart emojis and real time footage of what we are eating or doing or seeing. We ring off as usual, both of us returning to our lives. We go for months without a real phone call, which is why I knew something terrible had happened when her son Mario, my Mexican brother, gets in touch only three days later. 

Did I remember his younger cousin, Luis Enrique?

Of course I did. Kike. Little Kike – the squirmy child with the big brown eyes who laughed when I tried to hug him, who later led the annual Carnival parade. The youngest child of Ines, the best home chef south of Xalapa, and Pastor, a former politician.

He died yesterday, Mario explained. De manera muy fea.

In an ugly way, a terrible way.

My heart sank. Oh God. Kike.

Mario rushed to explain, as though telling me bluntly would make it easier, like ripping off a band-aid. 

He was murdered in a highway robbery, he said, near the city limits, along with his friend, on their way to purchase cattle at auction. 

I read the news online and immediately regretted it. In a land where corruption reigns, journalists post all the gory details so the public can see what’s happening in the (likely?) event these crimes are never solved, and perpetrators never brought to justice. The next day, there were new bodies on the road, new tragedies to occupy the front pages of the newspapers. 

I’ve wanted to write something about the summer, post funny pictures of my kids splashing in the pool or suffocating bunnies, reflect about watching the quiet despair of them queuing up this morning with their classmates after two months of only lining up for waterslides and hotdogs, but I’ve been at a loss for words, a loss for feelings. Veracruz, and much of Mexico, is reeling from seemingly never-ending cartel violence. Some say the state is one huge unmarked graveyard. This place where a young boy once waved from the head of the carnival parade, where tourists and locals could leisurely stroll along the palm-lined boulevard, where dancing in the street to the ting ting of marimba was common… all of this feels like paradise lost, or maybe even just a dream, the stuff of poets, but not real life.

There were moments this summer when I watched the sun set thousands of miles north of the Gulf of Mexico and thought, “this is Heaven.” But is it a trick of nature that the sun can set so beautifully in one place, and a mother’s heart can be broken into pieces somewhere else?  The assassins shot both young men, aged 25, in cold blood with machine guns, only to make off with the equivalent of what it costs a family of four (like mine) to enjoy a Mexican beach once every few years. I would sacrifice a lifetime of holidays to bring Kike back, but I can’t. I can’t order this chaos and I’m overwhelmed by how helpless I feel to offer comfort. The cost of privilege is the guilt of watching my own kids move through the world innocent/ignorant to the horrors at the periphery of their existence, a reality that stands in such stark contrast especially in the summertime. Ines’ son had blood on his face; mine had blue bubble-gum ice-cream. The unfairness makes my heart hurt. 

Classes begin today, and everyone will turn their minds back to numbers and letters. But the real lesson, at least the one I’m trying to figure out and pass along, is how to learn to sing when suffering washes onto shore. How to fight for justice when we can hardly articulate what that would be, in a world where you can’t bring the dead back to life.

Veracruz

Rest in peace, Kike. You won’t be forgotten.