Vibration

“Teacher, did you feel the earthquake,” one of them asks as they enter the room.

Yes, I think, that would be your first question. Yes, I felt my house and my bed trembling at 4:59 this morning as I was making love to my wife and something terrible happened. I felt it as I was having my cutomary breakfast of chicken broth, lemonade and a banana. No, I slept through it. I have a hangover and I thought it was happening inside my head. Five or six different scenarios race through my mind, but they all sound like excuses. This particular tremor is one that will stay with me forever.

“No, I didn’t feel it,” I say, “When was it?”

David, the one who had asked, says, “Huh?” He’s told me that sometimes I speak too rapidly in English. Three or four in the back who have heard my response start speaking.

“This morning at about five o’clock.”

“It was a strong one. Probably about four point five.”

“It was in Oaxaca, but we could feel it here in Chiapas.”

“I was sleeping,” I say, “I didn’t feel this one.” This was the third tremor I’ve experienced since I began my stay here in Tuxtla Gutiérrez. The first was on an afternoon while I was drinking with some friends in Chiapa de Corso. It was momentary and mild. We laughed about it and blamed it on the beer and bad botanas. The second occurred while I was at home alone sitting in front of my laptop and preparing exams for the second parcial. Aura was at the Secondaria teaching her history class. She called me on my cellphone while I was standing outside the house and smoking a cigarette. She said she tried calling me on the regular phone but I didn’t hear it ringing. I remembered she had told me the first thing to do when you feel the vibrations is to get out of the building and wait until it passes. But this morning’s tremor was the strongest.

“Oh, teacher,” David says, “You must have felt it in a dream.”

In my dream I was being entertained by my Three Fates. Tania, Ileana and Nathalie. They were not seventeen year old prepa students in this English class. They were women and they knew how to accommodate the ugly American so he didn’t feel like an interloper. The three of them always did everything together and so their actions fed off each other, but Nathalie was the one with the eyes, deep, penetrating soulful brown eyes.

The students are looking at me as if I am lost. They seem eager to help me find my way back to reality.

They notice I have the laptop with me. “Are we going to see a movie today, teacher?”

“No, not today,” I say, “We have to finish Unit Twelve.”

“Oh, teacher, no.” Groans.

It’s the end of the semester. Nobody wants to work.

Nathalie is filing her nails and she looks at me without moving her head so that those eyes are looking upward in a way that says she knows. She knows.

What am I going to do?

“Open your books to page one oh two.”

“Is that one or two?” somebody asks.

“One hundred and two,” I say.

“Teacher, you didn’t take the asistence.”

“I’m here,” David says, as he always does. “Presente.”

I’m losing them again.

Tania whispers something to Ileana. Nathalie still filing nails, nods agreement. She knows.

“Come on,” I say, “We’ve got a lot of things to do today. There’s more material to cover before the final exam.”

“We can study the last unit at home,” someone says and two of the students start mock-fighting.

“Hey, come on,” I say, but it’s hopeless. They’re on their own time now.

“Teacher,” Ileana asks, “Do they have earthquakes in New York? Did you ever feel the ground shaking?”

“There may have been,” I say, “But I never felt one.”

I think of still mornings in bed back home. Before coming to all this. Before Mexico. Before teaching. Before Aura. I lived alone but I was bored. It was noisy in the streets but tranquil inside my overpriced, underfurnished apartment. At times too tranquil. I longed for change. And now my situation is about as different as it could be.

I think about this morning when I woke, stiff from my dream, feeling guilty with Aura lying beside me. I kissed her and she responded. I entered her and she was ready. She almost pushed the Three Fates out of my mind as I made love to her, trying to see it as only to her and no other. I felt giddy with accomplishment and on the edge of satisfaction when the room and everything in it started to tremble just a little. Aura was about to cry out something and I put my hand over her mouth. I came into her and couldn’t stop. Couldn’t stop. I was trembling, eyes closed, in a torpid dream state for several moments after everything else had stopped moving. Including Aura. When I came to and rolled off her she lay motionless with a look of panic frozen on her face.

I didn’t know what to do.

I sat at our breakfast table for a half hour and smoked three cigarettes. Words like extranjero and interloper and coward and unfaithful were flashing unconnected through my mind.

Without realizing, I dressed and came to school this morning.

I am thinking about finding Aura's lifeless body still lying there when I leave the school this afternoon.