Looking for Lucia in Mexico City, Mexico

Charming architects and evil cats on the eighth stop of my Lucia Berlin research trip

Hello, friends —

Welcome to everyone who has subscribed since my letter from the San Francisco Bay Area! If you’d like to read more about my forthcoming biography of Lucia Berlin for FSG, Looking for Lucia, or about my literary road trip, all my previous posts are available here.

The eighth stop on my journey in Lucia’s footsteps was Mexico City. Lucia lived there in the early 1990s, while she was caring for her sister Molly, who was very ill with cancer — and she wrote a lot during this period. Her nephew Patricio Chirinos Brown remembers her as ‘extremely disciplined’: she’d wake up at four o’clock every morning to work on her short stories, he told me, before sending him off to school.

I can’t match those levels of dedication, but I did write in some wonderful settings during my time there, including the Palacio de Bellas Artes.

First Impression

Lucia’s short story ‘Fool to Cry’ is set in Mexico City, and it begins like this:

Solitude is an Anglo-Saxon concept. In Mexico City, if you’re the only person on a bus and someone gets on they’ll not only come next to you, they will lean against you… In Mexico, my sister’s daughters will come up three flights of stairs and through three doors just because I am there. To lean against me or say Qué honda?

This rings true: space felt different to me in Mexico City. I visited the Sonora Market on my first day, which Lucia mentions in one of my favourite stories, ‘So Long’, and was immediately struck by how crowded it was. But unlike Lucia’s narrator, who feels as though she has ‘vanished’ in the rush of people, I felt more aware of my body than usual, more solid, more visible, more sensitive to my edges and boundaries, to where I ended and each other person began.

Here’s what the Sonora Market sounds like.

Best Discovery

It was so cool to get to visit the apartment Lucia lived in with Molly — where she set stories like ‘So Long’, ‘Fool to Cry’ and ‘Panteón de Dolores’ (big thanks to Patricio and Paola for arranging it)! It’s much bigger and lighter than I’d imagined from her fiction, and I really enjoyed meeting the current tenants, Alexis and Sonnja, both of whom are very kind and charming architects. What a treat to be shown around a building by architects… They knew the exact heights of all the ceilings, and pointed out decorative features I’d never have noticed on my own.

Here’s the view from the dining room, through to the living room.

Worst Discovery

I had a bit of a false start in Mexico City: I arrived at my Airbnb only to find that they had three unlisted cats (I’m extremely allergic). It was eight o’clock in the morning, I’d just flown overnight, and I desperately needed a shower and a nap before my interview two hours later. At first, I thought I could tough out the cats with antihistamines, but then I started wheezing and choking, and realised that I needed to find somewhere else to stay.

I re-packed my bags and left my keys in my room — only to end up getting stuck in a sort of courtyard purgatory between the front door and the gate to the street, which it turned out didn’t open without a key… And the door to the house had locked behind me. I knocked, I called through the letterbox, I wailed, beat my breast, tore my hair, etc., until another Airbnb guest got home and let me out.

But even that saga turned out well: I booked a last-minute hotel at a super reduced rate, and ended up having an unexpectedly luxurious time.

Last Impression

Unfortunately, during my last day in the city, Hurricane Otis struck — another hurricane! — and its impact was much more severe than that of Hurricane Lidia, the one I experienced in Puerto Vallarta. Otis didn’t affect me: it made landfall in Acapulco and then weakened rapidly. But at least 48 people were killed on the coast, and the damage to the city is heartbreaking.

I know there’s a lot going wrong in the world right now, but please don’t forget Mexico, and consider donating to Global Giving (or another charity) to help with recovery and repairs.

Final Thought

I also visited the big Mexico City cemetery, the Panteón de Dolores, in honour of Lucia’s story of the same title: ‘not “Heavenly Rest” or “Serene Valley”,’ she writes. ‘Pantheon of Pain is the name of the cemetery at Chapultepec Park. You can’t get away from it in Mexico. Death. Blood. Pain’ — and yet ‘there is a graciousness. There are flashes of such beauty, of kindness and of color you catch your breath.’

Here it is.

What stayed with me was how alive the cemetery felt: all the flowers and ‘ofrendas’, the children playing between the graves, the women chatting under a tree, the gardeners eating tacos on paper plates. I’m lucky to have happened to visit in the lead-up to the Dia de los Muertos, and now that I know what an ofrenda is, I think I’ll make one for Lucia.

I’m now back in the States for the last two stops of my research trip — stay tuned for my final letters about those! And thank you so much, as ever, for coming with me on my literary journey.

Nina

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