Eartheater

by Dolores Reyes

  “No, that’s not how it works,” I said, trying not to look at her, trying not to revisit that barren time and those waifish years that chafed like sandpaper on skin and had made it so I could never again hear the word “daughter” from the mouth of another woman. “I’ve come to eat your daughter’s earth,” I said, and got up to go outside, alone, in search of a life.

  I stroked the earth, which lent me fresh eyes and visions only I could see. I knew how much the crying of stolen bodies ached.

  I stroked the earth, closed my fist, and with my hand lifted the key to the door through which María and so many other girls had passed, beloved daughters carved from the flesh of other women. I lifted the earth and swallowed it, then swallowed more, swallowed plenty, giving birth to fresh eyes that allowed me to see.

  It was her. María’s bruised eye was fire and fury in my heart, a mark that had not existed yesterday on her face of pure sadness. Drunk on earth, I kept eating. I needed to see. There she was, María. She grew agitated, as if sensing me. I tried to calm her. She jerked her two useless arms. María, tied to a bed that was pure filth to a body born goodness knew how many years ago—a handful, maybe seventeen. The bed rattled against the walls and María tugged and tugged at her bindings, scrappy rags that she couldn’t break loose from.

  Again, black letters on the wall of the cesspit imprisoning her. They shifted about, refused to be read. I crouched, but there was no earth to hold on to. I tried to curl my body into a ball, but my head, upraised, stared at María and at the wall behind her, black letters in darkness. She no longer struggled against her bindings. CARRY YOUR CROSS, I read, as though it was a photo.

  The door by the bed swung open, the sound sheer terror to our ears. María’s huge eyes were the only part of her not tied down, and they spoke to mine of fear, of being beaten, of the need to flee. I could barely make out the man entering the room. The light shot through the door like fire to our eyes. But I had to see him. I fought the light and, though it stung, glimpsed him: an old man, forehead outlined with sparse white hair, withered arms still strong. An elderly man, like one of those grandpas that hang around public squares, shaking María and saying: “Quiet, woman!”

  I couldn’t stand to see her cry. I had the urge to bite him. But I couldn’t. I clasped my knees with my arms and the letters shifted then fluttered off the wall, black moths swooping down on me. The old man made toward me, too. Had he seen me? No. It was just the icy touch of fear, that same shock and pain in my belly.

  I had to go.

  Though I didn’t want to, I left. Black as night, head thick with a black moth’s borrowed flapping: CARRY YOUR CROSS.

  The money in my pocket couldn’t make me happy. I had tried with all my might and still failed. María might die that very night. Her mother had said only “come back” and, pulling my body to hers, placed a wad of money into hands dirty with her earth.

  We drove in silence. Ezequiel looked sad too. Neither of us opened our mouths. I glanced at my hands. I hadn’t washed them in the rush to leave. The strain not to cry had driven me out of the house. I took out the roll of notes fastened with a rubber band, studied it, and thought of how mad my old lady used to get whenever we handled money before a meal. “Wash that smut off your hands,” she’d say, “it’s full of germs.”

  My hands were filthier now than all the money in the world. I spread them so wide the pesos almost slipped between my legs. Ezequiel looked at me and said:

  “Buy yourself something.”

  I didn’t answer.

  “You’ve earned it,” he insisted. “Buy yourself something you’ve always wanted. Something just for you.”

  I replied by turning my head to stare out the window, as though doing so might sweep me away from that car and from that day, away from my dirty hands, my body, and the earth’s spell.

  Something for me, I thought. I thought of Walter’s girl’s jacket. The stuff we had at home was just there; we used it, period. I’d never had anything all my own.

  A little later, we passed a street corner with a shop that sold towels and sheets.

  “Stop here,” I drawled when I saw it, but Ezequiel went on driving. “Stop here,” I said, louder.

  I got out of the car and strode to the store. It was nearly noon. The sun was clouded over and a chill was setting in. Though pretty, the jacket was flimsy and not the least bit warm. It was just for show. I reached the store, pushed open the door, and walked in.

  The girl standing behind the counter didn’t seem keen to help me.

  “See something in the window you like?”

  I hadn’t seen the window.

  “I want a big towel, just for me.”

  She eyed me like I was an alien, then snuck into the back. She came out carrying a whole stack.

  “Towels,” she said.

  She set on the counter a pink one I didn’t touch, then an earthy one—nuh-uh. The last towel was the dark purple color of a bottle of wine. I ran my hand along it, fingering it. Now that was a quality towel. I picked it up; it felt heavy. I tried it out, wrapped it around my body. I loved it.

  I don’t know what left the clerk colder, my hands grimy with dirt or the wad of money I pulled out of my pant pocket. Skeeved, she said, “It comes with this hand towel.” I didn’t give a damn about the hand towel but I said “all right” and the girl named a price that sounded fair. I unrolled the wad of money and started counting. Though she could see my soiled hands, I wasn’t ashamed. I was focused on paying and leaving. Done, I handed the money to the girl. She hauled everything inside again. When she came back out, she was carrying a huge bag with a pink bow. I hated the bag at first, but then I thought to myself, it’s a gift, first gift I’ve bought myself with my own money, and I liked that. I had a sudden urge to be home, to take a scalding hot shower and wash the muck and sadness off my body, then bundle it in that towel, a towel all my own.

  Ezequiel was waiting outside. He glanced at the bag and smiled. Thankfully, he said nothing. We started toward the car. Though my eyes were down, something caught my attention.

  I looked up very slightly and read the word “blacksmith” followed by the name, “Francisco,” and a telephone number, all spelled out in twisted iron letters that formed a gate propped against a gray wall. The house was small and gray, the color of unfinished concrete, but the iron set it apart. For a second I pictured a man with a welding gun and one of those helmets that covers your whole head to keep fire from getting in your eyes. Above the gate, hanging on the wall, another message, drafted in the cruelty of iron: CARRY YOUR CROSS.

  My heart fist-bumped inside my chest. I felt as though the invisible hand of a muscular man were squeezing my neck, strangling me.

  I skidded to a stop on the sidewalk so that I could take in everything in front of that house. I read:

  CARRY YOUR CROSS

  AND I’LL CARRY MINE.

  I couldn’t get a word out.

  A door creaked open where the weight of the metal met the walls. The wood was so old it snagged. A hand pushed it just enough to slip through. An old man emerged hefting some metal toward what looked like a garage entrance. It was him. After leaving the structure, the man stopped to catch his breath. He looked up and saw us. Though an iron gate separated us, he looked straight at me and then at Ezequiel. He smiled at him, stiffly, and immediately turned around and slipped through the door, shutting it behind him. His hand slammed the wood with a deep shudder. Something hung off the structure, a price tag maybe, but I couldn’t read it. My eyes were fixed on the door. I thought he might come out again, that he’d gone back for something. The thought of seeing him again filled me with panic.

  Everything felt impossible, like in a dream. I shifted my eyes from the wood doors, visible through the iron grate, to Ezequiel. I raised my arm and pointed at the door. Only then was I able to speak.

  “María is in there.”

  I hadn’t thought he was armed, but the last thing I saw was Ezequiel on his cell phone with a g
un in his hand. For days, I’d been driving around with a guy and his piece, oblivious to it. I clasped the bag of towels so hard the ribbon dropped to the ground. I trampled it, the muck from my shoes turning the pink bow the color of mud. I took a few steps back and glanced at Ezequiel. He wasn’t looking at me, as though I had stopped existing the moment I gave him what he wanted. And right in front of the house of the old man who had stolen the girl.

  I took a couple more steps back, enough to get off the sidewalk. I wanted to go home. Ezequiel raised his voice on the phone. The hand that held his cell moved with the same ease as the one holding his piece.

  I rarely left my barrio, so I didn’t know my way home from there. I’d let myself be swept along to help a man who was armed and a woman I didn’t know. I turned around and started walking. I walked faster and faster. Hearing Ezequiel call me, I bolted. I covered the ten blocks from the corner of the street to María’s house as though I was running on air. I wasn’t thinking about Ezequiel or the other yokes, or of what was about to happen. Just about my house and wanting to go home.

  María’s mother opened the door and, seeing me like that, clammy and breathless, rushed toward me. She frightened me. I opened my mouth. I tried to speak and say something, to explain the impossible to her, but in the end there was no need. Sirens from a fleet of patrol cars zoomed past her house and drowned out my voice, which never sounded. Seconds later, María’s mother was no longer in front of me, shaking me to get me to say something. She was sprinting down the sidewalk after the patrol cars.

  The neighbors’ doors creaked open as they each came outside to see what was going on. I went in through the door left wide open by María’s mamá.

  It was night by the time Ezequiel got back. His faced was bruised. He had bled and his blood was now dry. I saw him come in and said nothing. He came alone, without María’s mamá. I’d been waiting for hours. Restless from nerves. Head aching and stomach on fire. He came to me quietly, and his closeness surprised me. He hugged me. I felt the jolt of his body against mine.

  “Thank you,” Ezequiel said. “María’s alive.”

  He held me a long time. I couldn’t move without saying something. And I didn’t want to. Everything was perfect. His embrace healed my body. My stomach and my head stopped aching. I no longer felt fear. I felt nothing. I don’t know how long this lasted. Ezequiel said thank you again and, before letting me go, I thought I felt him breathe in the smell of my hair. I don’t know why but my only thought was that he wasn’t much older than my brother. They were probably the same age.

  “Let’s get you home. I’ll drive you,” he said, and I went to the kitchen for the bag of towels.

  Señorita Ana came to me on nights I slept without waking.

  In my dreams, below the sign she was found under and over earth made electric by the acrid light that exuded off bones turning to dust, Señorita Ana rotted like flesh off a dead dog on the road. Her bones weren’t meek like domesticated animals. They stalked me and their fury contained the devastating force of those who seek justice.

  I don’t know why she seemed this way to me that night, like a dead woman with glimmering remains. After all, the police had found her body and taken it away when I was a little girl.

  I rubbed my eyes.

  There she was, again.

  “Have you forgotten me? When will you be back to eat earth for me, mi chiquita?”

  I could never bring myself to eat the earth below Señorita Ana’s flesh, even though I knew exactly where she’d been left. I wanted to remember her perfect and clean like a smock hung to dry outside my house on mornings of sunshine lost to me forever.

  Ana opened her mouth. Time had marked her face. The anger she felt toward her killers hurt me and hurled me into the middle of my night, forcing me to stay asleep.

  “I’m here, Eartheater, down here. When will you come eat earth for me?”

  It was about ten days before María’s mom visited. My brother wasn’t home and neither was Ezequiel, who sometimes came by to tell me about his cousin: she was on the mend, she wasn’t too sad, she was talking about going back to nursing school; and about the old man, who was in jail, and the neighbors, who’d tried to set his house on fire. The only other person there was Walter’s girl, who, when she wasn’t studying, did nothing, like me. Sometimes I got the urge to ask if she wanted to play on the PlayStation with me. But I was always too embarrassed. So, I’d put some music on and she’d inch closer to listen. Other times, she muttered stuff or read from a black binder scrawled all over in Liquid Paper. Power 2 Youth it said on the cover in big letters, which I assumed meant she must have friends.

  One time I asked her what she was studying, and she said she was reading History for the remedial test. She read to me a while. She read a bunch of stuff and I listened ’cause I liked the sound of her voice. She wore a black jacket as flimsy as her other one. I bet she was freezing her ass off, though it looked pretty on her. Her long, loose-waved hair perfectly matched her dark clothes and red lips, which spoke to me of towns of people who only left the land they lived and worked on to go to war, to kill or be killed.

  Her hair was knotted in the back. I’d noticed the knots the week before, and now there was a massive one. We were out of shampoo and all that other stuff, and for days we’d been washing our hair with laundry detergent.

  I thought of Walter shut in his room with her, of them rolling around and making a mess of her hair as it rubbed against the mattress. I’d never had hair like hers, stunning. I said I was going out for food and left. Walter’s girl stayed on the sofa, the open binder balanced on her crossed legs and her head down, eyes buried in her studies.

  When I came back with a packet of patties, some buns, and a bottle of conditioner for Walter’s girl, María’s mother was waiting for me at the gate. Alone. Her daughter wasn’t with her. I was grateful, for my own sake. I nodded hello and the woman greeted me with a wink. I undid the padlock, pushed the gate open, and we walked to the house. Walter’s girl had fallen asleep curled up on the sofa. The closed binder beside her body.

  “Here,” I said in a loud voice.

  She woke up and I handed her the conditioner, a huge bottle that cost me two hundred pesos. I left the bag with the patties and buns on the living room table. She grabbed the bottle, smiled, and said nothing. She took a pack of cigarettes from her jacket pocket and started smoking on the sofa. I was happy she was there with me. If María’s mother had said I was some drug lord or the head of a human trafficking ring, Walter’s girl would’ve stayed right where she was, puffing on her cigarette and watching the smoke draw pictures in the air, like she didn’t give a damn.

  But the woman just stood at the door and said “thank you.” So calm she looked like a completely different person. Something in her eyes told me she was sleeping again. She pulled a wad of cash from her wallet, this one smaller than the last, and offered it to me. I thought of the hours I spent at her house waiting for María to be saved. Everything was clean and tidy except for the dining room table strewn with hundreds of photos of her daughter. This time, I said no. The woman didn’t insist, slipping the bills back into her wallet. She thanked me again, as though she didn’t know what else to do. I gave her my hand and thought she might cry when she took it. I felt sad. I didn’t know if for her or for what had been done to María, or for my mamá, for Florensia, for Walter’s girlfriend, or for me. I felt sad for all of them at once. Enormously sad.

  I went with her to the gate and gave her a stiff kiss. She left along the sidewalk by my house, like so many others, never to return.

  To me Señorita Ana was the prettiest. I had never seen a woman naked. Only dead.

  Since I kept growing and Señorita Ana didn’t, little by little we drew closer in age.

  Sometimes we sat and chatted.

  I never asked her: “Who took you away?” Though Ana was alive in my dreams, I was scared she might die if I mentioned that there.

  But, once, as she sat beside me
and talked, I bent down to collect some earth from underneath her and tasted it. Horrified, she stared at me. She said I was never to do that again, that it wasn’t allowed. It was the sort of thing she always used to say. “Climbing the tree isn’t allowed. You might fall.” “Running isn’t allowed. You might smash into something.”

  I laughed. But after I ate dream earth and saw what little I did, I knew Ana was right, I’d better not. There was probably a reason it wasn’t allowed.

  An odd bottle with a card and a phone number. Even though it was day and the sun was bright, when I picked it up and read it, I thought of a long, dark night. The bottle had appeared at the gate a few days ago. It was the color of water and of the earth inside it.

  I didn’t want to leave it in the garden, among the plants and the other bottles. I took it to my room and set it next to the bed. I liked giving it a shake and watching everything mix together, the earth settling at the bottom and the water on top. Like a game where things are tossed up but then fall in line on their own. Something simple. The sort of thing that’s never happened to me.

  But on the card was a girl’s name, and I knew there was a story behind that name, a story I wouldn’t like. If I didn’t leave the bottle in the garden, I’d have to deal with it eventually: uncap it, taste it, dial that phone number as though by force, like I was somebody’s mule. Then I could throw it away or put it back outside. But a girl’s name. A name someone had chosen for her. That name, I couldn’t forget.

  The bottle sat in my room for a week. Till I decided to put an end to things once and for all, to taste it and see what happened. It might be nothing. There wasn’t much earth after all. A little bit at the very bottom, the rest water. Who’d told them that drinking water also helped me see? That was the last thing I needed.

  I shook it a little, uncapped it, gagged as I shut my eyes, then drank, hoping that the name would lead me to a blurred face.