A Place Where the Sea Remembers

Chapter 2 tells the story of Candelario Marroquin and his wife Chayo, who live in the seaside town of Santiago, Mexico. Chayo sells paper flowers to tourists, and Candelario has just been promoted from waiter to salad-maker at the upscale restaurant where he works. To celebrate his promotion, Candelario is painting his house door robin’s egg blue. The color is “an obsession for him” (3), whether he is gazing at the sea or at the stars surrounding the head of Our Lady. As he paints, Candelario muses on his past and present: He once tended the bulls in a small town near Mexico City. After marrying Chayo, they moved to Santiago, where they “worked hard and earned little” (4). Candelario’s promotion, however, will bring more money and prestige.

Chayo returns from the beach with her 16-year-old sister Marta, who is pregnant. Candelario and Chayo are childless, a fact known by most everyone in the small town of Santiago. Candelario dreams of having many sons, and when Marta announces she is waiting for the visiting doctor from Guadalajara to terminate her pregnancy, Candelario offers to take the child, an offer he makes without first consulting Chayo.

At the restaurant, Candelario’s patrón, don Gustavo del Norte, entertains the visiting doctor and his wife, whom he considers very important guests. He serves them champagne, and Candelario is called upon to prepare the restaurant’s special Caesar salad. Don Gustavo and the doctor debate the morality and legality of abortion while Candelario tosses the salad tableside. The stakes are high for Candelario, and although he makes the dressing exactly as he was trained to (using don Gustavo’s own recipe), the guests find it lacking. Embarrassed, don Gustavo responds by firing Candelario. He picks up his final pay and walks out “into a starless night” (19).

Chapter 3 describes Remedios’s home, a simple hut furnished with only the bare essentials. An altar adorned with four candles corresponding to the four directions dominates the main space. Other totems—shells, river and lake stones, crystals, bird feathers, a deer hoof, a crucifix—also sit upon the altar. Remedios lights the candles and performs a ritual, invoking “the Mother, the Father, the Great Spirit” (22).

Chapter 4 focuses on Fulgencio Llanos, a portrait photographer from Santiago who travels the countryside cajoling local residents to have their portraits taken. The economy is slow, and Fulgencio has resorted to ever more false flattery to keep his business afloat. His dream of future wealth and fame rest on surreptitious photographs he has taken of famed Mexican wrestler El Santo. In a moment of great fortune, he spotted the wrestler on the beach, unmasked. Such a photograph would bring a great price as well as great fame.

After failing to persuade a potential customer and missing the last bus back to Santiago, Fulgencio stops in a bar before trying to hitch a ride home. At the bar he meets a stranger, a gringo named Jaime who expresses an interest in Fulgencio’s photography equipment. He then offers Fulgencio a ride home. The gringo’s car is full of eclectic merchandise: hats, shirts, radios, frog mariachi figurines, and machetes. Fulgencio proposes a deal—to photograph the mariachi figures with clever backdrops for a percentage of the sales—but Jaime refuses.

On the road to Santiago, Jaime takes a side road to the beach. Fulgencio is eager to get home to see his lover, Lupe Bustos, but is beholden to Jaime’s whim. Fulgencio also begins to fear the stranger’s motives. The road and the beach are deserted; he fears the stranger will rob him, so he bargains with God to spare him. While Jaime explores an abandoned building along the beach, Fulgencio reaches into the back of the car for a machete to defend himself with. At that very moment, Jaime returns and assumes his passenger is stealing from him. He pushes Fulgencio out of the car and drives away, leaving him stranded on the beach. As he walks back to the main highway, Fulgencio comes across his equipment left by the roadside. His photographs of El Santo are intact, and he vows to celebrate with Lupe the following Sunday.

Chapter 5 is the story of Marta, sister of Chayo Marroquin from Chapter 2. Marta is five months pregnant, her pregnancy the result of being raped on the beach, although no one, not even her family, believes her story. Marta cleans rooms in a hotel in Santiago, and she has been saving her wages to cross the border into El Paso, Texas. She dreams of working as a housekeeper for a wealthy American, of having her own room, and of being independent and free. Her friend and coworker Luz is a single mother of two who has consulted Remedios numerous times; Luz hopes Remedios’s magic will bring back Tito, the father of her children. Marta, however, is skeptical of Remedios and her “potions.”

After her shift ends, Marta visits her sister. Chayo and her husband Candelario have promised to take Marta’s child and raise it as their own, but when Marta visits, Chayo tells her that Candelario has changed his mind. They cannot take her baby, Chayo says, because she herself is pregnant. This is something of a miracle, since she had always thought she couldn’t bear children.

Devastated, Marta returns to her apartment, where Luz, who lives in the same complex, tries to console her by telling her the joys of motherhood. Marta is unconvinced. Soon after, a commotion breaks out on the patio outside Luz’s apartment. It is Tito. He has returned. Remedios’s potions have seemingly worked their magic. Desperate for a solution, Marta consults with Remedios herself, but the healer refuses to help, advising Marta not to cross the border. El Norte, she says, is a place that “hardens and ruins girls like you” (57). Marta then returns to Chayo’s to ask once more if she and Candelario will take her child as they had promised. Candelario tells her that he always planned to honor his promise, but Chayo didn’t want to take the baby. Furious that her sister lied to her, Marta storms out of the house.

Still determined to cross north, Marta seeks the help of el brujo, another local practitioner of magic, although of a darker nature. He agrees to help Marta for a price by causing the child “to longer be a burden” (60). It is not Marta’s child he is talking about, however, but Chayo’s. Without much hesitation, Marta agrees.