In the San Miguel de Allende courtyard
in the late seventies, like salamanders,
they slink among the agaves
and red and blue bougainvillea
staring into mirror faces,
arms entwined like vines,
speaking sing songy
in a language of their own invention.

Their mother places three peas
on each of their plates with tofu
before she slips into the dress
she bought at the boutique
with her child support check
and runs off to the dinner party
to sip Chardonnay and dine
on oysters Rockefeller,
prime rib, roasted Brussel sprouts
and flaming cherry jubilee.

The twins crawl out the window
and sprawl on the roof
and sleep under a full moon, 
their faces inches apart,
until they hear footsteps 
on the cobblestone and climb back
through the window and slip under
cool cotton sheets and listen 
to their mother moaning 
in her bed with her professor.

She sits in the sun in her bikini
and when her boys throw arms
around her neck, she removes
them as if they are cobras
choking her, but when the tall
Swede from her sculpture
class walks towards her, she
lassos him with her rope arms.

One night a portly man shows
up at her door begging her
for another chance and she shoves
two suitcases and the twins at him
and the man disappears through the gate
with the twins tripping behind him
locked onto each other, not looking back.

I’m a terrible mother, she sobs. I will
never see my boys again. I sent them
to Florida with their father. But within
a week, the twins are back hip to hip,
face to face, dancing, singing, sleeping
on the roof while she hugs, kisses
and runs off to the Chinese Dragon
with the painter from Philadelphia.
                        

Gray hair in a bun, age spots
and wrinkles on her square face,
she drags her sagging body 
to the chair where she skims
through the Harlequin romances
to make sure they don’t have
any dirty stuff, she says. 

Each time she pays, she tells me
this will be the last time I will see her
because her daughter is coming
from California to take her to live
with her. Summer turns to fall
and fall to winter and then to spring
and she tells me the same story.

After five years, she stops mentioning
her daughter and so I ask about her.
Which one? she says. I have fifteen
children. I gasp. Where do they live?
I ask. I don’t know, she says. 

She sits on a bench in the park
reading a Harlequin and eating an apple
as I run on the trail on a Sunday.
When I approach her she tosses
the book and apple in her cart and flees.

The next time she enters the bookstore
she is shivering in the cold temperatures
in her thin jacket and stockings and sandals
and coughing and sneezing all over the books.

I ask again about her children and she rattles
off first names and describes them as toddlers
or pre-school age and I wonder if these children
were taken from her or if they exist only in her mind.
.
Her body is found under the bridge.
She died in her sleep and no one
claimed the body, the newspaper said.