A Film Story - #70
The following story was originally published in the November 2022 issue of "Transitions" at The Sapienza University of Rome (Italy). Read the full journal here. Learn more at the journal's website here. Thank you for reading!
The seven hundred steps drenched my favorite blouse. My shoes were stuffed with sweat as I summited the small sierra, relieved, and found him swaying in his hammock. “Eliana... Zorenzo?” he said.
I caught my breath on the dry air. “Yes.” Huffing. “Manny?”
He had charcoal-colored hair and leather skin. The only man who could pull off a floral jinbei with board shorts. “Welcome to my sanctuary.” He shook my hand.
The sanctuary was part-dojo, part-shack. Dead grass and gravel. Siding dry as toast. At least it had views of the Cortez.
We reached the veranda and sat on cushions. I began.
“My mother and I are doing this, like, movie in Los Angeles--”
“About?” he interrupted.
“It's a feel-good comedy about a mom and daughter connecting in the South Baja wine country. And we're almost done with shooting--”
“Wait, wait,” he interrupted, again. “Zorenzo? Is your mom Paloma Zorenzo?”
I nodded. “Yeah...”
“Oh my God! I love her! Queen!” He digressed into my mother's filmography, eventually praising her 2002 "masterpiece" Me Encanta Mi Amor. “Do you remember that one?”
“I remember being three-years-old and Alejandro Iñárritu giving me a cookie, if that's what you mean.”
“Wow,” he said. “That is so crazy!”, then sipped some yerba mate.
“Yeah. Anyways, there's this scene where my mom and I are trapped in this, like, fancy wine cellar. And we're supposed to pour out our feelings and get crying drunk off top shelf stuff and she gets all sympathetic and says, 'I am so sorry for treating you horrible all those years'–”
“Beautiful.”
“And my lines are all like, ‘Don’t worry! I forgive you for everything!’”
“Drama.”
“But I couldn’t. I kept choking up on it–”
“Aww, why–”
“Because my mom is a narcissistic bitch.”
Manny paused. Processing it. “Interesting.”
I explained to him how my mother scorns my existence. How she blamed my birth for all her bad luck. “She threw her Oscar at me during my quinceañera! When I made her late for rehearsals, she left me at tennis practice. At thirteen! I was forced to go to acting classes as a kid because I would be, quote, ‘a waste of oxygen otherwise’. And now think how crazy, psycho maniacal it is that she recommended me for this role. To play her daughter.”
“Then leave.”
“No,” I said. “I can’t. This film could be my break. I could be that actress who wins a Spirit Award at 23. I don’t know. I just couldn’t separate this fake loving mom from my real mom. So Amy, our director, told everyone that I needed a, uhh, ‘creative break’. A vacation from panic attacks, really. Sorry. I don’t want to act like a victim, but it’s hard not to be.”
Manny passed his silk handkerchief. “There, there, little rich girl.”
I chuckled.
~
It was Day One. Handstands, triangle pose, twisted panda crucifix. My strings were stretched, my mantra was agony. “Quit complaining,” he amused. “It’s the praying mantis, not the rhombus roll.” Motivational phrases preceded every position. “Release your kundalini. Revel in the spotlight.” At a certain point, he corrected my posture with, “Carlito can do way better.”
Noon hit. He gave me a list. “What’s this?” I asked.
“Your sacred duties for the afternoon.”
“What happened to yoga?”
“We did yoga.”
He pointed at things as we strolled. “That’s my agave. The chickens. Scrub those bird baths.” A Pomeranian rolled in the grass. “Please walk Momo today.”
“I didn’t sign up for this,” I said.
“Oh? You didn’t?”
“I mean, I did. I searched ‘yoga retreats’, yeah. But I believe in God so I put ‘catholic yoga retreats’ and slid the radius to a thousand miles and honestly, only found you. Here in South Baja.”
“Ah. The universe is so cool, isn’t it?” Momo found us and was now covered in dirt. “Also brush her,” he added. “Carlito didn’t.”
It was evening when I finished polishing his wind chimes. Dinner was vegan, I went to bed hungry. The poster above my pillow put it plainly: Achieve Nirvana with Jesus! “It’s an old poster,” Manny told me. “But it’s in the Bible! Paul said it’s possible. Even Ezekiel!”
~
Day Two of getting closer to my Creator while a guru goes, “Say sayonara to your hips, girl.” I complimented Manny’s fluent English. “All Carlito,” he replied. “And RuPaul.” The name crept into our conversations, like how, “Carlito over brewed the morning tea,” or, “Carlito didn’t clean dishes,” but nonetheless, Manny invoked his name like a judgment call. “Well, Carlito would have pruned mister bonsai better than that.”
“Who’s Carlito?”
His boyfriend. “Duh. Now go pick peaches. Carlito loves peaches.” When I brought a handful, he examined them like a doctor. “I see you picked the ugly ones.”
“Hey. I’m trying. I don’t even know how picking fruit fixes what I have with my mother?”
“I’m sorry. Are you questioning my methods?”
“No, no,” I tried to take back, “I’m not, I’m just saying–”
“Do you know why your mom brought you onto the film?”
The question seized me. I stood there blank.
“Do you?” he insisted.
I shook my head. “No.”
“That’s what I thought.” He bit into the peach and dug his fingers into its core, extracting the pit and promptly placing it into my palms. “Please keep this,” he kindly said. “For when you do.”
~
The snap back bothered me throughout Day Three. Did I have a response for Manny? I meditated on the answers. What would I have said? What could I have said? I wasn’t sure. The thought stung like alcohol on blood.
Before dinner, I noticed the few others at the retreat were watching me rake palm fronds. A Peruvian. A French lady. A hipster from New York. An old Yucatán man approached me and said something.
“Sorry, I don’t speak Spanish,” I responded.
“You… good job!” Thumbs up. “You work here?”
“Thank you. I don’t work here.” He didn’t understand. “Me. No.”
“Huh.” Surprised, the man grabbed another rake and helped me with the rest. Then he waved goodbye and left, leaving me alone in the twilight.
~
Day Four. Manny concluded our 8 AM stretch with a prayer. “Please God, give Eliana strength. Preferably upper body.”
“Amen,” I said. And gave him my room key. “Manny – this has been a very rewarding experience. I would’ve never imagined getting the chance to clean gutters and fight garden armadillos in the South Baja of Mexico. And do some yoga. But I have to say that your skills as a teacher need work. Umm…”
“Keep going.”
“You suck. Like, I’m sorry, but, facts. I’m tired of house cleaning and you talking down to me and saying how Carlito is better and how he would’ve done it. And honestly, I need guidance on what to do back in Los Angeles and you’re not doing that.”
He smirked.
“And I snuck out during lunch for bacon-wrapped hot dogs. I got sick of your beans and quinoa. Sorry.”
“How did that feel?”
“That felt. Amazing. Yeah.”
“Never done that, huh?”
“No, I haven’t.” I gulped saliva. “I have never done that.”
He began clapping and motioned others to join. The only ones that did were the New York hipster and the old man. “Por qué estamos aplaudiendo?”
Manny showed me a picture of him and his actual boyfriend, Julian, on a beach drinking coconuts. Very cute. “Yup,” he said, “I made up Carlito. Julian though, he’s nice! You should meet him!” And he dropped into his hammock, swaying once again, this time with Momo in hand. The dog panted.
My mouth was agape. “You liar. That was totally not cool.”
“Hmm. Did I feel like your mother?”
“A little. Maybe.”
“Then that’s not lying. More like – acting!” A lull. “Eliana, may God bless you on your trip back home. Elevator is over there.”
I looked to the exit. And back to him. “There was an elevator?”
~
Frigid from the cellar floor, we drank the last drops of ganache to keep us warm. Together, composed, speaking sotto, my mother rolled the bottle beyond our reach and wiped her tears away. “Sweetie,” she said, “I’m so sorry. I really am. I pushed you so hard on the track field and you’re now about to graduate high school and go to college and not know what you’re going to do in life, I mean… I mean. Line?”
“It’s all my fault,” a voice said.
“I mean, it’s all my fault! I bet you see me as somebody you can’t forgive, and that’s fair. I’ll let it be.”
“My goodness, mom,” I said, “Why do you worry like that? I forgive you for everything. We all have to forgive at some point. What’s the point of bottling it all up? Haha! You’re human and I see that. And if we get out of here, I can’t wait till the next trip to Mexico. Because you’re the only mom I have, and I don’t want to lose that.”
“Oh, my princess. You’re so sweet. Thank you. I love you.”
“I love you too, mom.” And we hugged until the shirtless firemen burst through the cellar’s barricade.
“And cut,” Amy said. “We got it, people. A one take wonder.” Overhead fluorescents flicked on and the whole film crew scrambled for the next setup. Amy thanked us. My mom was given an iced coffee.
I was walking back to my trailer when wrinkly fingers grabbed my arm. Stunned cold, I turned, finding mother’s eyes squared with mine. Morning breathe too rank to bear. “I gave you this role,” she whispered. “I got you here. Always trying to make it all about yourself. What the hell, you think you can just ditch like that for a week?” I let out a whimper, I wanted to cry. Then I felt a lump in my pocket. I reached in and retrieved what it was. The pit.
I stared at the stone lying in my palm and soon returned to my senses that I left moments ago. My shoes were untied. The AC turned on. I heard the crisp crackles of walkie talkies. The smooth clinks of ice that swam in her latte. And although her comments turned to lashes, her barbs didn’t seem to break me. I looked from the pit to her soul, and eeked out, “Mom.”
She stopped.
“I forgive you. For everything. But our last words will be what’s on these pages. Then that’s it. Okay? I’d like it to be like that.”
We held each other’s gaze for the longest minute. Then she let me go.
I watched her disappear into the studio. Leaving no atonement behind.
"El Picacho" - photo credit to Darknight0320 (2009), Wikipedia
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