by Castro, V.
I tried to steady my horror, looking directly into her inhuman, double-lidded eyes. The vertical black slits were surrounded by shades of green and yellow like a brackish pool of water.
“Fernanda. Please speak to me. Come back.”
The thing ran her tongue across her lips and cocked her chin, nostrils flaring like an animal sensing something approaching. Fernanda’s face went slack as her body convulsed violently. One of her hands had crushed a water bottle that was on the verge of splitting in two. I rushed at her, afraid she would collapse against the toilet. I needed help but knew the others wouldn’t understand. I was on my own. I took the bottle of water, hoping a drink might aid her recovery. As I opened the cap and brought it to her mouth, she shrieked, “No!” and knocked it onto the unconscious or dead guy slumped against the sharpie-graffitied wall.
Fernanda was back, her pleading eyes filled with tears. Her pupils fluctuated, trying to find their original shape.
“He drugs women. He is so bad. Check his pockets if you don’t believe me. It was so ugly what I saw him do. But we ate his sin.”
There were voices in the bathroom. Trying not to make a sound, I locked the door and then leaned down to assess his condition. His pulse was weak but he was alive as far as I could tell. If he was in fact trying to drug females, he could be in Satan’s bed for all I cared. More justice in this toilet than out in the world. I kneeled on the yellowed dirty floor to search his pockets and found keys, cash, credit cards, ID, and a bag of pills.
“Take it.” Fernanda spoke with an authority that she’d never asserted before, but this time in her own voice. She looked at the body with curiosity. The sadness of moments ago was now a cold hardness. Silent rage. I knew it. I carried it like a purse.
I looked up at Fernanda for any sign the inhabitant might return. “I don’t want those pills,” I said. “Call the police; there is money and pills. I’m sure he will get charged for something.”
“No. Keep the money. You need it. For school. Looks like a few hundred.”
“Thou shalt not steal.” I was a poor man’s Mrs. Garcia. As much as I wanted the money, I didn’t want to get into trouble.
“Eye for an eye,” she retorted.
“Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord.” I wasn’t afraid of the inhabitant. Time served in church had left me prepared for holy war.
Fernanda softened and kneeled next to me. “Lourdes, you will never get ahead if you don’t take every opportunity. Come on, you’re smarter than this. We will be blamed. Not him. We are underage, drinking, wearing makeup, looking for trouble. Look at that top you’re wearing with your chichis looking all perky.”
For once, I was good cop and she was bad. I couldn’t argue. Fuck it. I flushed the pills down the toilet and took the cash. The boys on Wall Street get bonuses, some stole millions. Hell, there were governments that siphoned off entire countries. Could the inhabitant swallow all their sin? Plus the money would come in handy because I had a feeling my mother might need to borrow it.
The voices had left by this time. I unlocked the door and peered out to be sure. Nothing. We cleaned Fernanda’s face with a rough paper towel, then walked out to everyone in the club. Ana, Perla, and Pauline were huddled at the bar looking like they were trying to hatch a plan for the worst possible outcome they could think of.
“What you pendejas clucking about?”
“¡Dios! Jesus! Fernanda, you scared us! What happened?” Ana threw her arms around us.
“She was talking to some dude. I got to talking to his friend. Let’s get out of this place. You go first. I need to pee.”
I nodded my head to Fernanda with a knowing look before walking to the least populated part of the bar to flag one of the male bartenders.
“Hey, there is a dude in the toilet that isn’t doing so well. You need to get him some help. Think it’s drugs.” Before he could stop me or ask questions, I feigned loud tipsiness to get out the door and into the freshness of the night.
The girls laughed outside while Ana lit a fresh joint. I watched Fernanda, terrified and curious. What was happening to my friend? I mentally beat myself up thinking back on that night of the séance. What if everyone was right and I am just a bad piece of flesh? What if I’m the problem that caused this to happen?
I thought I was accustomed to the feeling of running out of options, but this felt like being buried alive.
Fernanda lay in bed, buzzing from the experience at the club.
“That was amazing . . . what we did to that asshole. I can’t wait to do it again. I wish I could be like that all the time.”
My dear, power is as delicate as the skin of a grape, intoxicating when it ferments and grows and like an unattended vine if not pruned. Where I am from, our power increases over centuries and millennia. Knowing oneself takes time. Harnessing that power even longer.
Fernanda licked her lips, left dry by the matte lipstick. “I’m sorry—I know it’s bad for me to take joy from knocking his ass out. I often feel excited and then ashamed. If I think about my accomplishments too much I’m a show-off. If I think about sex I’m a slut.”
Labels by others are a way to control you. Hear it enough and you will believe it, like a spell.
Fernanda thought of Adam and Eve, the forbidden fruit of the apple. How knowledge made Eve into something to be renounced.
“I don’t want to be afraid of my body anymore. I want to know more about it, what it craves.”
Remember what I said about power. Delicate touch.
Fernanda unbuttoned her jeans and slipped her hand over her panties.
Fernanda, you do not need that thin barrier. Feel and see your body.
Fernanda took a breath and pulled off her jeans and panties.
A heaviness settled into the front of Fernanda’s brain, the voice in her head a soft melody. Relax. Relax your mind and open yourself wide enough to let something enter or exit, even if it’s just yourself.
Fernanda thought of the first time she kissed Ruben, after the barbeque. For a year before that she’d burned in secret for him; they’d exchanged long glances even when he had a girlfriend. The opportunity arose when Pauline slept at Ana’s one night, passed out from mixing weed and beer. It was just the two of them when he drove her home. So close, but still hesitant. When he parked his truck, neither said goodbye.
“Maybe I can call you sometime?” Ruben’s clear skin and long eyelashes made Fernanda want to be closer. A light wetness on his lips felt like an invitation.
“I would like that.” She didn’t know what she was waiting for until he leaned over to turn down the radio. With a thundering pulse, she turned her head towards his, allowing gravity to bring them together. His soft tongue slipped between her lips. It felt like magic between her legs, sparks of energy. In her shyness and fear of what could happen next, she had pulled away and said goodbye.
Fernanda didn’t want to hesitate any longer. Splayed out on her bed with a mirror propped between her legs as instructed by the goddess, she thought of how his body looked beneath his cadet uniform. Those full lips that were pillowed and tender. Perla’s sexual adventures always stirred something inside of her. Now Fernanda felt the goddess ease the guilt ingrained since before her first communion, the white veil hanging on her wall a constant reminder.
If our bodies are something to be ashamed of, why are they created so? If pleasure was not to be ours, why are we built to feel it?
The folds between her legs looked like purple and pink petals shimmering with morning dew the more aroused she became. Her index finger stroked her flesh sending a feeling of calm through her, a warmth that extended to her thighs and nipples, like the only time she took a drag of weed from a small glass pipe, but without the hacking cough after. What if it wasn’t her finger but Ruben’s, or even better those lips of his, pressing gently and then harder. Fernanda leaned back in her bed, forgetting the mirror. Why did she deny herself this for so long?
Fernanda continued her exploration. The lo
nger she became acquainted with herself, the less shame she felt. It dissolved like a host on the tongue.
Fernanda, I still have work to do through you. Tomorrow I will concentrate my power to break through our physical and mental barriers. I will move into the light which means you will be suspended in darkness with no recollection or control.
“Absolutely. You can have all of me.”
Power surged within Fernanda. First busting that pig at the club and now saying what she felt. Even if the voice wasn’t a goddess but a devil, it was worth it. This freedom.
After the club things went from normal-strange to desperate-scary. I showed up at Fernanda’s house in a good mood the next day, expecting the Fernanda from the previous night. Her father opened the door in his postal uniform. He appeared groggy, his eyelids thicker and heavier than before.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be here,” he said.
“Why? What happened?” He opened the door just wide enough for me to see Fernanda sitting on the sofa and muttering to herself like a zombie.
“My wife said not to let anyone in today. I’m sorry.” He shut the door.
The rest of the girls and I drove slowly past her house every day. Fernanda returned to the dying flower beds to bleed and mutter in Nahuatl in the relentless heat. The hot sunless haze felt like some spell. Under no circumstances could water be used for outdoor purposes. Pick any street and the grass in front of every house looked like a yellowed bruise. Waterparks and car washes were suspended. The reservoir was at a critical level, leaving the land bone dry.
Despite the heat, a charity scheduled a vigil on the UTSA campus for the girls who had gone missing in the area and for those who had lost their lives or were detained at the border. The vigil began at 10 p.m. so that the temperature would be bearable. The moon shone brighter than ever in a cloudless sky. I decided to go with Ana, Perla, and Pauline. Fernanda was not herself enough to attend but I would take photos and videos to show her. I hoped messages from her friends would lure her out.
A swell of people showed up including camera crews from local TV stations. It was uplifting to see that even though it was an unsociable hour, people did care. Ana bought the candles from a charity collecting money for undocumented immigrants. Standing in front of the library, we each held a thin wax stick inside a paper cup with a hole at the bottom and a green ribbon tied in a bow around the top.
“What’s new with Fernanda?” asked Ana before the speeches began on the steps of the library. “My mom says people at church are talking because almost every priest has been called to that house.”
“Nothing. It is all the same and I’m out of ideas. Say a prayer for her. Okay?”
Pauline gave me side-eye. “You don’t believe, and you’re telling us to pray? We need to do something!”
I didn’t want a fight, not now, but she was right. Thankfully, the vigil was starting, giving everyone an excuse not to talk about what weighed heavily upon us. We sang songs in Spanish (except me, I only know the chorus to Selena songs) and hymns in English. Families spoke in turn about their experiences and thanked everyone for their support. I took a video of the crowd to capture this moment of unity and care for those usually relegated to soundbites.
A sense of melancholy descended upon the crowd as the vigil concluded, our hopes floating to the sky with the smoke of the burnt-out candles. As I scanned the ofrenda with my phone, a couple kneeling among the cluster of items caught my eye. The woman slipped her hand into the bed of flowers and plucked one out. She then tried to stealthily reach for a photo of a child no older than ten. The man said something and pointed at an object. The woman reached for a small panda Beanie Baby.
“Hey! Stop that! You!” She looked straight at me, startled. The man grabbed her arm and forcefully pulled her away.
“Girls come with me!” The couple weaved between people, moving too fast for me to catch up. The woman kept looking back at me until they disappeared into the crowd. I stopped abruptly.
Pauline caught up to me.
“What was that all about? What is going on with you now?” She wasn’t angry so much as confused.
“Someone was trying to steal a photo and a toy from the flowers. They looked kinda familiar, but I don’t know. Who would steal from a vigil? Fucking loonies.”
Perla shook her head. “This shit is getting so strange it’s making my head spin.”
“I promise we will get through this and get Fernanda to school in the fall,” I said.
“What did we do that night, Lourdes?” Pauline bowed her head trying to hold back her tears.
Perla put her arms around her. “We didn’t do anything.”
Pauline looked at the last of the candles burning next to the flowers and photos. “Like this? This is all one master plan of pain and hate. None of these people deserve to be just photographs. How are we supposed to keep going if there is no road, or signs, fucking nada!”
She was right. What was any of this?
I spent the night at Ana’s house because I needed a bed, not the bench on the side of my house. For the first time in a long time, I was frightened by the dark. I didn’t want to be alone. Seeing that woman stirred something in me, the way she looked at the photo in morbid fascination, the familiar feeling I got from her face.
Ana and I didn’t speak much because we both had work early in the morning. The breakfast shift at Sonic began at 7 a.m. There also wasn’t much to say because life was consumed by the possession of our friend. We kept flopping around trying to get comfortable, even though her bed was big enough for three.
“I can’t sleep,” Ana said.
“Me, neither. I don’t know what to do. And I’ve been having weird dreams.”
Ana turned her head towards me and propped herself up with her arm. “What of?”
“Well, one is of a woman. She looks like a caiman, stunning and powerful. The other is a little stranger, and I cannot figure it out. In my dream, I struggle to breathe. My head throbs at the temples. I’m writing notes in a battered journal overlooking the remnants of a glacier. The sun is scorching my eyes—I am either closer to it or it is closer to earth. Despite being so near to the heat, my skin aches from the cold. I feel a sense of urgency to record my thoughts.”
She stared at me in the dark, and then lay on her back again.
“Let me think about it.”
I took a deep breath, feeling more relaxed. If anyone could figure it out, it would be Ana.
Words flowed from Fernanda like a chant, her inflection and speed changing too quickly for me to discern the exact words. I tried recording it to translate with Google, kneeling next to her in the dirt. It was impossible. Having just that one good night of us all together angered me. What was it all for? Why hadn’t the inhabitant ventured out again since then? I decided to stop recording and switched my phone to the video of the vigil.
“Fernanda, I have a little surprise for you. The girls say hello.” I placed the phone in front of her.
“Hey, baby girl. I miss you and wish you were here. We will keep you in our prayers tonight.” Ana air-kissed the screen and then moved to make way for Perla.
“I’m lighting a candle for you, so you are here in spirit. Love you,” she said.
Pauline was the last to speak. “We want you back, Fernanda. Whatever you need to do to come back to us.” She was on the verge of tears.
Fernanda watched with a glazed look, black, full lips hanging open as she breathed through her mouth. Not a hint of emotion at seeing our little gang.
The rest of the video was of the vigil, until it came to the part with the couple at the ofrenda at the UTSA library entrance. Fernanda’s legs trembled. Her head shook and eyes transformed, dilating into different shapes. Droplets of green and yellow ink leaked from her tear ducts. It was the inhabitant. She took the phone from my hand, inspecting the image until it went black. A dirt-caked fingernail tapped on the screen. She recognized them.
“What is it?” I a
sked. “Who are they? Do I need to find them? Tell me?!”
My raised voice must have alarmed Mrs. Garcia because she came outside. Fernanda dropped her head, shrouding her face with her hair.
“Everything okay? Do you need more water? This heat is suffocating.” She looked around the yard, fanning herself with a Reader’s Digest. The patio was covered with a wooden trellis that her roses had once climbed. Now, there were only woody vines without a single rosebud left.
“Aye, my poor roses. They say that this might be a sign of things to come. I can’t watch the news anymore.”
“We are fine. Just showing Fernanda messages from the girls.”
She glanced at me and Fernanda with sad eyes before going back inside. When she left, Fernanda placed her lips to my ear. A raspy hiss, “No.”
“Please speak to me, Fernanda!” I said in the loudest possible whisper.
Fernanda rapidly blinked and shook her head. “What happened?”
“Well, for starters, she spoke to me after I showed you a video of the vigil for the missing girls. You know I will never leave your side, but this makes no sense. To me or the girls. The club scared me, but I thought . . . I don’t know. Things would be just like before . . . I don’t know what I’m saying. I’m an idiot.”
Fernanda’s eyes widened. “What did she say? Could you understand her?”
“She didn’t say anything. Made me feel like this is just craziness I don’t understand.”
We sat there in silence, listening to the sound of soaps coming from the TV and someone mowing their lawn nearby, until she perked up.
“Hey. You know what it’s like. You know how you never let Ana make you any mixed drinks?”
I chuckled thinking of all the dumb shit we experimented with. Ana came up with some nasty concoctions. All way too strong. “Yeah, because she doesn’t have the patience to measure.”
“Well, the inhabitant wants to communicate with you, but the stories she wants to tell must come from her own language, her own voice and words. Not diluted. She wants it to be strong. Straight from the bottle. And when neither of us can get through, it’s like your little sisters when they were younger. Remember how mad they would get before they could talk? Their frustration knowing but not knowing how to speak. Then you would be just as fed up trying to figure out that they wanted?”