She Opened The Mountain
“This is family land,” the woman told the man at her door. “That my mother owned and my mother’s mother owned before her.” The woman looked up to the mountain, letting a finger creep out from the blanket she held around her shoulders. “We’ve always been here.” The woman nodded and closed the door. She watched from a window as he walked back to the gate, back to his truck in the caravan of construction equipment. She exhaled. “Aquí,” she said. “Mi familia...” The woman continued looking beyond the gate, as the rest of the sentence waited at her limit of the language.
The woman spent her days cleaning, trying to figure out what to do with everything her mother and mother’s mother lived with and left behind. It wasn’t garbage, it wasn’t a hoard, but it was other people’s stuff that she didn’t have a use for. Alien mementos, the woman thought. Dried herbs, shiny stones, feathers, animal hides: items that had lost their context. Trash. The woman didn’t know what she was going to do with the house—but she was going to make it look nice, breaking it down to its purest form. The woman was going to make it feel new. She could live here, away from her home on the mainland, working remotely, leaving and returning but mostly leaving. This land—this island—is where her mother and mother’s mother were raised. She was the exception.
The woman had never been to the island before. She was only here to tend to her now-dead mother and all the effects left behind. It was odd she had never been to the island before. She thought this, cleaning the house, thinking about how her mother and mother’s mother and everyone else on this side of her family was born and raised here. Her mother immigrated to the mainland in her youth, sent to live in proper cities and in proper states to pursue a larger life than what the island could give. The plan was always to come back, to share the wealth and to take care of the family, though her mother’s own life got in the way. The opportunities of love and money and one’s own family were too irresistible to leave. The mainland offered a future—but the mainland wasn’t her mother’s home. It took the death of her mother’s spouse and the loneliness of the empty nest to hear the call of the mountain, to be drawn back to “the middle of the ocean,” as most people on the mainland called the island. The woman was raised to pursue more, to be more, to carry on further than anyone else in the lineage. Coming to the island, even if to carry on the legacy of caring for family and caring for land, was breaking a promise.
The woman was happy to be there though, to realize the potential in her surroundings, to apply mainland thinking to a part of herself she had left untended. The book she found in the back room, where the mother’s mother lived her final days, showed her this. It was on the sill of a large window that looked out to the mountain, hidden behind a curtain. It was handwritten, old, something that felt wrong to throw away. She used her laptop to translate what the book said, and she believed she had the general idea: make the mountain your home. Speak to the mountain. Tell the mountain your worries. Pray to the mountain. Invite the mountain into your life and the mountain will welcome you into its life. The mountain is us and we are the mountain. The mountain heals because the mountain knows. “La Mamí” was what the book called the mountain, which she knew because that’s what her mother always called it. The woman just called it “the mountain.”
The book was what gave her the idea to turn the place into a vacation property. Two bedrooms, one bathroom, a home with space for guests, as she learned by caring for her mother, who died in the room next door to where her mother’s mother had died. The woman only ever slept on the couch—and continued to sleep on the couch. It didn’t feel right to sleep in either her mother or mother’s mother’s room, as it made her feel like she would die in the house, continuing the tradition. She cleaned to distract herself from the loss, thinking about all the mainlanders who wanted to get away. Visiting couples looking for romance. Adult friends who wanted a party weekend. Professionals hoping for a nice venue to work away from home. Anyone of a certain taste and income level, she thought, priced just high enough to keep locals away and low enough to draw deal-seeking vacationers. All the place needed was a bit more character, a style that balanced the island’s culture with the mainland’s culture. Amenities, she thought.
The men came back. They gave their song and dance, as a tractor stood in the background, mumbling desire, wheels rocking, trying to sink into the ground. This land is worth a lot of money, they insisted. You could make a fortune, they said. The woman lied and told them she wasn’t interested. Her palms sweat at the prospect—but she had a plan to make money herself. If anyone was to turn this mountain into something, it was her. The woman would not let these men come in and take advantage. They would undo the mountain—and she wouldn’t let that happen. She was there to preserve. She was there to maintain, to honor, to celebrate. She was not there to steal. She held up her hands. “Enough,” she said. “I’m not interested.” The men nodded and shook their heads, giving her a card with a number to call if she changed her mind. They got back in their vehicles, driving down and away from the mountain.
The woman watched them from the gate before taking in the mountain standing tall behind the house. It was rocky, strange given how lush everything else was. The island was known for being a cascade of the green, the vegetative, the tropical. From her gate onward was a leafy canopy. Everything inside the gate though was different: small rocks leading to a big rock, a sheet of gray with notes of silver and brown and black. The mountain was different. The woman had no desire to climb to the top but she did walk the base, thinking thoughts, imagining the changes she wanted to make to the property. She had conversations with the mountain in the ways she could, achieving something between a yoga class and casual hiking. She carved paths from her repeated wanderings. This would help with making the house rentable, she thought. A destination for relaxation and exercise. “Climb your own private mountain for the best views on la isla,” she thought, writing the rental description in her head.
She started using the big stick on her walks. It was her mother’s mother’s walking stick. The woman didn’t want to throw it away because it was carved and aged and seemed important, just like the book. It even had “La Mamí” etched up the side. She made a zigzagging path in the rocks, using the big stick to clear new ways around the mountain. It was wild out there. Had anyone ever been up here? She thought about that. If they had, it must have been years. There were no flowers, no weeds, no frogs, no hummingbirds, no life—just rocks. How could she bring life up here? How could she keep life here? She had to keep the men out too. But how? The woman asked this of La Mamí, as if it were a spirit she were rebuilding the house with. The mountain never spoke back. It was a mountain.
The woman came upon a dark green rock. It was roughly the size of an ostrich egg and looked almost black. It was dirty and, after some wiping, she could tell it was something special, a giant version of one of those rocks you buy at a museum gift shop. It had a quiet presence, almost beaming out from the slate mountainside. The rock resonated that it was more than a rock: it was a fancy rock. The woman put the rock down and looked up, catching a great view of the island. She could see why the men wanted this land. It would make a great resort—or something like that. How much money could she make? She shook her head; this is a family place. This isn’t about money. But maybe she would ask? Maybe she would ask. The woman shivered, feeling as if the land were creeping up behind her, trying to grab her, to bury her with the mothers of her family before her. She took a deep breath and looked at the house, this brown dimple in the rocks leading to green, just above the bustling valley and the town. In the far distance were plush hills and more mountains. The seas laid beyond, turning into the sky.
The woman tapped the rock with the big stick. It really did seem to glow. Maybe these could be used for something? Maybe visitors could mine the mountain. That’d be a great feature, she thought. The woman tapped the rock again. These really are special. She wandered on the mountainside, pocketing radiant pebbles. She happened upon two slightly larger versions of the rock. She carried them back and made a small pile, a tumbled cairn of rocks. No, not rocks: stones, she thought. They were reforming in her mind. She had to find more. She had to get them all together. She had to do something with them, to show that this mountain was bigger than people realized. This place was a destination.
The stones occupied much of her time. For a week, the woman scaled the rocky mountainside in search of stones, collecting them in a sturdy basket. She piled them until they were large enough for her to lean on. She admired the stones as they captured the sun. They were both opaque and transparent, somewhere between the glass of a wine bottle and marble. Maybe they were crystals? But they were so smooth. How? Maybe this mountain was hiding precious minerals. Maybe the woman was discovering a source of income that her mother and mother’s mother—and all the mothers before them—had overlooked on the land. Perhaps it was her destiny to make this discovery. She should call a geologist. Maybe she should open a quarry! These stones were a key to unlocking the mountain. Of all the beauty in this place, these stones made it a spectacle.
The woman tried to learn what she could about the land, as there was so little information left to her. The people in town were kind enough and helped her put the pieces together. The mountain was more than pretty, they said. It was blessed. Some knew her mother’s mother. They said she lived a quiet life, minding her own business, never attracting too much attention. Her mother was the same. “So nice,” they repeated, simply, in their own non-mother tongues. She nodded, believing that she understood. When she asked about the stones, they turned sour, shaking their heads. What was she talking about? They thought she was crazy. One person told her the stones were all over the island. Another person said she was going to hurt herself. Most ignored her. No one seemed to like her in town, unless she was buying something. Her money made her likable, a tourist on an extended stay in the area. Another white person.
The woman started digging into the mountain. She used the big stick to excavate, poking around, trying to reveal deposits. It did not matter if these stones were actually precious or not: they were good looking. Their attractiveness was unique, a signal of how great the land was. They seemed to pulse something within her, as if her heartbeat was scattered, spread across stones. Maybe it was the thinner air, the higher altitude. What if she was becoming one with the island? Maybe this was her finally feeling at home. “No wonder mom came back,” she said, holding up a stone to the sun. “Too bad I can’t stay here forever.”
After weeks of collecting stones and digging around, the pile had grown to the size of a small car and caught the sun in a way that cast rainbows on the ground. The woman admired the collection from points of her mountainside property—from the gate, from the front porch, from her mother’s mother’s room, from the highest point on the mountain she could climb to—as she tried to figure out what she wanted to do with them. Should she sell them to tourists? Should she keep them piled as they are? There had to be a job for these rocks. Maybe she could build another house out of them. Use them to make countertops. Grind them into tile. Craft them into jewelry! The options were endless. Why hadn’t her mother or mother’s mother thought to make something of this land?
As the men returned—they always returned—she could tell the stones were catching their eyes. They could see the power her mountain had thanks to the twinkling pile. The woman had been foolish to leave her secrets out in the open. “Don’t get any ideas,” she told them, banging a pot and a pan above her head, running the men back to the gate. “This is my land—and yo soy la mamá de la montaña. ¡Nunca podrán tener mi montaña!” She repeated the phrase to herself—Nunca podrán tener mi montaña—to make sure she was repeating the laptop’s translation correctly. “¡La montaña es mía!” she yelled. She knew what that meant. The mountain is mine. “Out, white men!” she yelled, clapping the pot and pan together in her own white fists. The men returned to their trucks and tractors, retreating as they always did. She walked back to the door, salt from ocean wind catching her eyes. It stung.
After this last encounter with the men, the woman knew she had to put the stones inside. Take them from the mountain, reclaim them, house them herself. She couldn’t show the world what the mountain held. That was for her and her visitors. If you paid to visit, you could see the rocks, you could see the mountain, you could see the value.
The woman carried down a few rocks a day, finding the task to be easy as clouds seemed to fill the sky with more frequency. When she wasn’t working or caring for the house, she was carrying rocks up and down and up and down. The woman had grown thin but muscular. Her skin and body were hard, her hair frizzy and brittle. She was less pale than she usually was, becoming more creamy from the sun. She was starting to look like her mother’s mother, she thought, whose skin at its palest was brown. No one would ever guess the two were related. The woman loved showing people back home photos of her mother’s mother. It made for great conversation at cocktail parties.
As the woman scooped up and relocated rocks, she cleaned them and set them around the house. At first the rocks felt like a cute decorative element, a way to tie the inside to the outside. This tie was almost literal as the disseminated pile no longer glowed but created what felt like shining spiderwebs that pulled at the mountain. She loved it. Whether these glowing lines were real or not, she thought they made her bond to the land stronger, as if she was able to contain her surroundings. The house and the mountain were now one. She was starting to feel more and more at home.
As the pile started to fade, she began to realize that too many rocks were inside—but she couldn’t take them back outside, as storms started to roll in, bringing with them an aggressive mist and low roll of thunder. Her mother’s room and her mother’s mother’s room now belonged to the rocks, with bed frames seemingly made of stone and hard hedges stacked to the windowsills. Where walls met floor were lines of the stones, like the house was wearing an endless anklet. The woman put the rocks into cupboards, under the couch, on top of the refrigerator, in piles at the front of the house, lining the driveway to the gate. She placed the final stones in her car, in the trunk, through a downpour of rain, thinking that townsfolk or tourists would buy them from her.
The spiderweb lines that the rocks were making became less imagined and more real once they were all removed from the mountain. Like light reflecting off a mirror, there was the sense that she was being blinded by the rocks. They were so bright—and they glowed more inside than when they were outside, which was surprising because storm clouds had cast the land in darkness. Her mother’s room and her mother’s mother’s room were the brightest, likely because they contained the most rocks. Even when she closed the curtains in the room, they were still aglow, like amphibian eggs, smooth and shiny and resonating entire worlds that would eventually spring out. They would pulse with the thunder, imitating the elements outside. The woman’s skin started to change from creamy to a pale red, as if she had a constant sunburn. The woman used lotions and oils to tame her skin. She peeled off aloe leaves to slather herself in the plant’s cooling gel. The woman might have been tinted a different color but she didn’t feel bad. She was just uncomfortable.
The storms got more and more aggressive over time, winds and rain turning the mountain dark. There was no mud, no threat of collapse for the house, which she was thankful for as a few respective vacationers had expressed interest in the property. The mountain seemed to be absent, hidden in cloudy shadow, stolen somewhere in the sky. The thunder grew more aggressive, shaking the house, feeling as if it came from the earth instead of the sky. The woman spent her days amongst the glowing rocks, scratching at scabs that started to form on her skin. The scabs weren’t red or brown or yellow, more typical of the body healing, but dark, maybe even green. Were they green? The woman laughed, thinking about her greenness, joking that she was turning to stone. She was becoming a part of the mountain. “I’m La Mamí,” she giggled, uploading more photos of the place to the rental site. The windows whistled, rattling, offering a space for the spiderwebs of light to escape. Everything outside was gray. The mist had turned to rain and didn’t fall from the sky but came in sideways, as if from the mountain. The world looked upside down from inside the house. The woman knew what was out the front door—the driveway, the gate, the rest of the island—but everything looked unformed, lost at sea in the storm. The back of the house, from her mother’s mother’s room, offered a similarly disorienting view: there were clouds outside, like the sky had settled in the backyard. Someone had stolen the mountain.
There was a knock on the door. Was it thunder? No: the men. They came back because they always came back. The woman didn’t hear them because the storm made the house constantly knock, rumbling discontent with the weather, like she and the place were resisting getting sucked up into the sky. And, when the house wasn’t knocking, rocks were falling, tumbling from their piles, clinging to the walls, spraying strands of light as they attempted their escape. The rocks were heavier now. Some were sticky. The woman felt like she was always touching a rock, even if she knew, intellectually, that she wasn’t touching anything. Her senses were playing tricks on her. Allergies, she thought.
When the woman opened the door, she found no one. No man. No trucks nor tractors. Just light rain, a soft, mumbling drizzle, much lighter than the house had led her to believe. It was actually quite nice outside. The storm wasn’t a storm at all unless you were inside. Maybe the house wasn’t a great vacation property, she thought. Maybe she should rent the land instead of the house. She should talk to those men, she thought. Something to consider, as no reservations had been set just yet. She walked around, realizing the sun was shining through rain clouds. A beautiful sun shower, she thought. This place was so beautiful. The woman looked at her skin under the rain and sun, realizing that she may have seen the world differently while inside the house—but that she hadn’t seen herself incorrectly. Her skin was bright red and peeling. Blistering. The scabs were there, dark green just like the rocks. She wasn’t wrong about what she had seen. Her body, her scabs, didn’t hurt. They were a part of her, just like the stones were a part of the mountain.
She stared at the house and the mountain behind it. It’s so nice here, the woman thought, at this place of hers. She watched the sky clear, spotting a rainbow at the top of the mountain, just like the rainbows that the stones had made. It looked like a stronger version of the spiderweb lines she had noticed from them. Connections, she thought. This is paradise.
There was a booming, a cracking. The ground began to shake but the ground remained intact. She looked up, seeing a blinding light, as if the sun was breaking around the mountain. Was it dawn? Was the sun just now rising? What time was it? She watched, trying to find her balance, as the mountain seemed to peel, rocks tumbling down and settling at the base. It was a violent force but the movements around her were so soft, so coordinated, like a blanket being pulled off a bed. She watched the mountain open, curious to see what would happen next.
She noticed a giant dark arm in the air. What color was it? Was it green, like the rocks? She looked down at her arm, finding the same color. Was that her arm? She looked back up, wondering if she had become the mountain somehow. She had no answer for herself. She stared at the sky, wondering if she had turned to stone, as the hand moved so fast and so slowly above her, like time had escaped, losing its meaning in this moment. What use were watches when time stood still? She laughed. The hand in the sky grew, approaching her, offering a strong breeze on her face. It felt good. She grinned and shook her head, wondering how she would explain this to renters. She had a great idea of what to add to the listing. La Mamí is magical, she thought. Invite the mountain into your life and the mountain will welcome you. The mountain is us. She smiled, staring at the palm, as a breeze cooled her cheeks. She closed her eyes, waiting, looking within to find what the mountain would provide for her next.