When The Shadows Began To Dance

by Yamaya Cruz

  She was so right. It was God’s work. You kids today are so fucking spoiled. You don’t know how you got here, and you don’t have enough sense to care. There is a history, a legacy about your linage that you don’t know. Nelly, we are a family of healers. You great abuela and her mother before that worked to heal people. Your ancestors worked to heal slaves, poor whites and Indians. It’s not like you think, back in those times people didn’t run to the doctor when they felt a little bit of pain. No. People worked until they were exhausted, and when it got to a point where they believed that they couldn’t go on, they called healers.

  The healers didn’t only nurse them back to health physically, but spiritually. It was the trust in the land and the guidance of the ancestors that enabled them to survive. They showed them which herbs to look for, which plants to eat, how to grow and harvest crops. Mostly, they helped them to not lose themselves. It takes one generation to break a tradition. And over the years, a lot of knowledge has been lost because fools like you make no effort to learn about yourself. But it’s my fault too; I let a lot of knowledge slip away.

  These nasty putas that you watch on TV don’t know shit about being a real woman. Your great abuela knew. She didn’t accept things the way they were. Hell no, she believed that she was in charge of her own life, her own fate. She proved herself too, with your great abuelo Pedro Juan. He was a handsome man, and one of the most wanted bachelors on the island. Chicas ailing with the broken hearts came to your great abuela looking for help. Little did these women know that she was collecting information, for herself.

  I can tell you a whole bunch of stories about your great abuela. Let’s just say that she was married to Pedro Juan in less than a year. She was a woman of power and knew how to get what she wanted. All those little putas in town who wanted your great abuelo squealed from jealousy when they saw them together. They just couldn’t understand how a man like Pedro Juan would settle for a negrita like your great abuela. People talk so much today about what they can do. Most of them are full of shit! Remember this Nelly; the proof is always in the results. I lived and came across a lot of people who were socalled healers, but none of them could come close to you great abuela.

  People with real magic can feel their way through anything. They just have a sixth sense that so keen and developed, that they don’t need to lie, pretend, and seek power. They already have it. I couldn’t understand that when I was younger. I wanted your great abuela to smash skulls, to show people all the things that she could do. But she never did. She was always humble. It wasn’t until later, after being married to that asshole Nico, that I realized that the potentially corruptible healer craved power, the potentially good healer had no need for it. Good, has its own intrinsic power; evil needs some outside force to support it.

  Your great abuela would always tell me that being a healer wasn’t for everybody. No. It was a lot of hard work because you had to work even harder to dig out the shadows that were buried inside of you. She seemed so strong, like her bones were laced with steel. She was regal, with a taut spine and long neck. People admired her, but they were scared of her too. She had no mercy on people who tried to exploit others.

  Nelly, I have to tell you that I ain’t proud of the person I turned out to be. Sometimes, life just gets in the way. It’s like they say, it’s not what you’re called to do, but what you answer to. I feel like I got to tell you what happened. You got to know the full story because I can’t let any more information get lost.

  I can never forget the day when I saw Nico for the very first time. I was young, around twelve, and he was a good ten years older than me. I used to work with your great abuela. I went with her to people’s houses, helping her out in any way that I could. Mostly, I wrote everything down that she said and did.

  “No matter what, Maria, don’t ever show anybody this book,” she would always say. I just shook my head. I was way too stupid to realize the importance of what she was giving me.

  There was one day, when the weather was unseasonably cool. Your great abuela visualized that a nasty storm was on its way. However, we had to make a run to a woman who was said to be dying from some mysterious disease. Now, people in those days were very poor and when we got to the house, I wanted to turn right back around and go home. It was nothing more than a shack that rested on four skinny stilts. Several pieces of wood were sloppily nailed together to hold up an oversized tin roof with rusted shutters. Chickens clucked loudly as they strolled aimlessly around the yard, while famished hounds eyed them from a distance. I was scared as shit.

  “Maria, we have the power to do God’s work,” your great abuela said, squeezing my hand.

  We walked into the house. The inside of the house was worse than the outside. The cabin was sparsely furnished and the paint was cracked and chipping off the walls. A few wild hens rested causally in the corner of the room and long strips of sticky flypaper hung from the ceiling. A young man, with black skin and blood-shot eyes came toward us.

  “We are here to see the mistress,” your abuela said, shifting her libretto from her right arm to the left.

  She didn’t seem bothered by the nasty living conditions.

  “Benti agi.” The young man said again motioning for us to move further into the room.

  I took one step further and then it hit me. My stomach began to churn. A cold dark storm was moving in and huge bolts of thunder rattled the rickety old shack. My knees became weak. There was another huge bolt of thunder. It was earth shattering and it brought me down to my knees. I tried to shake off my dizziness, but instead I found myself slipping deeper into a black abyss. Then there was a flash of light.

  I was planted in a sugarcane field. It was part of an old reserve that was intended for slaves to raise crops. Instead, it served as a meeting ground for them to perform rituals and plan revolts. Whoosh. I heard the familiar sound of splintered sugarcane. I pulled back a few overgrown leaves and stole a peek at a young man who was tall and thin. I stared at him and found myself admiring his mahogany skin, his kinky hair and his full dark lips. He was shirtless, and I watched his muscles flex as they moved in perfect sync with his body. Whoosh, the machete came crashing down again, only this time, it had managed to cut a long sugarcane stick in half. My heart began to flutter. Why, I did not know. My ears were burning and when I went wipe my brow, I found that my face was drenched with sweet. Something told me that I was in danger. Mosquitoes buzzed around me. The air got cooler as the first sheet of darkness moved in. I sat quietly on my hands and knees and I began to feel my body sinking into the dark soil. I moved around restlessly.

  “Hey Cabron,” I heard a voice say from a distance.

  The young boy looked up and went walking in the direction of the voice. In a matter of minutes he came back from out of the bushes to his machete with a hoard of people following him.

  “Is everything ready yet?” A young man asked in sloppy Spanish.

  He was very tall and thin with crooked teeth that were too big for his mouth. He carried a large brown bag that was sluggishly thrown over his shoulder.

  “No,” the boy holding the machete snapped.

  “We still have a lot more work to do, and if you did not call me, I will still be out here chopping fucking sugarcane.”

  The crooked tooth boy shrugged his shoulders and carelessly threw down the oversized bag.

  “Be careful with that,” the other boy snarled. “Sorry,” he replied defensively and walked away.

  The young boy warily discarded his machete and then began to rummage through the bag. He eyes widened with pleasure as his hands examined its contents. What’s inside I thought to myself? I began to shiver, so I tucked my legs into my chest and wrapped my arms around my body for warmth. I watched the sun get overtaken by darkness. A sneaky full-faced moon arose to take its place; it shone smugly, as adorning stars sprinkled themselves around it. Below, a bewitching fire danced to the sound of hypnotic drums; a total of sixteen boys banged on instruments while chanting
the ancient ritual.

  The crooked tooth boy had the brown bag in his hand and began to pluck out is contents. Another unidentified boy pulled out a white cock from a brown bag. The cock squirmed in his embrace as he held it up high in his attempts to brandish this wonderful gift to the Gods. In one sudden movement, the boy slit the cock’s throat and began to pour its fresh blood over the contents. The boys began to chant in unison, performing a harmonies dance where they moved their arms in legs in complete accord. Suddenly, the boy who was cutting the sugarcane emerged. His head was freshly shaven and colorfully decorated. Even from the distance that I was sitting in, I could see the tribal marks that were proudly displayed on his face. He walked into the ritual with his head held high. Three measly beads dangled loosely from his bare chest and a small cloth covered his groin.

  His lips began to move and his voice vibrated throughout the fields. He began to dance. At first, his movements were jerky, but in unison to the rhythms of the ceremony. But as the drums became louder and the chants became stronger, his movements became more erratic. He began to violently move around and stomp his feet with intense vigor. His mouth moved quickly, almost too quickly for the words to come out.

  They became so jumbled that he began to cry out in frustration, and his body began to go shake as he fought to control his sudden hysteria. The other boys soon followed suit and began to dance around the flames, fervently beating their drums and banging their instruments; their voices were all in disarray as they struggled to keep up with the chants.

  Then, Nelly, that is when it happened, the shadows came. At first, they appeared as lifeless figures. They were simply shapeless balls of energy. But on that night, I watched in horror as they began to take their form. They appeared, one by one. They took their places by each man and their forms began to take shape in the night. They wore the ancient garb of the Congo. They conversed in an unidentified language and then began to walk about, examining the rituals, almost as if they were deciding on which one of the boys they wanted to mount first. I watched in disbelief as the shadows began to take over the souls of the worshippers.

  They rushed into their bodies without notice, and in a flash of an eye they merged with their flesh and overtook their souls. The worshipers seemed to have transformed. They began to joyfully dance around, grabbing each other’s hands and waving them high in the air.

  There was a loud crash as large ripples of thunder pierced through the air. Fat raindrops began to fall from the sky. There was a huge surge of wind, and with that came a stampede of African and Taino slaves. I got up and ran as fast as I could. I was way too scared to look back. I ran through the darkness. When I was about forty feet away, I stumbled over a fallen tree. I fell down hard into a barren garden with black soil. I struggled to move my feet to get back up again, when I felt something slither across my hand. A snake, I gasped in horror and began to claw my way through the fields. I could hear screams and gunshots blaring off in the distance.

  The visions in my head began to sizzle and pop like sticks of dynamite. There was a huge flash of light and then a horrific sight of a plantation owner being dragged from his bed and beaten with a flat edge hammer. There was another flash. It was a woman, and she had woken up in the middle of the night to see someone standing over her. It was her slave girl, with her eyes rolling and her soul possessed. She stood over her in a dress stained in blood, and she raised her sharpened knife. She began to plunge the knife into her chest over and over again. My heart was pounding; my body jerked from the impact of the stabs. The pain pierced through my body like sharp daggers.

  My arms and legs felt like they weighed a ton each. I struggled to move them as I continued my spider crawl through the field. I could feel the dirt under my fingernails. My knees and elbows were badly bruised. And my face was wet and moldy from the mixture of dirt and sweat. After only a few short paces, I collapsed, exhausted from my retreat. Right before I shut my eyes. I saw another flash followed by a vision of lifeless bodies hanging like extra branches on a tree. Was that my fate? Was that how thing were going to end for me?

  My eyes popped open, and my body jolted out of the old basin that had been filled with ice-cold water. I looked up and saw your great abuela kneeling over me. And then I saw the man with the bloodshot eyes on the either side of her. Your great abuela looked so worried, her dark skin had turned ashen grey, and I could see that her eyes were irritated. She had been crying. I looked around the room, and I saw loose particles of herbs, incense, candles and other botanicals. Your great abuela buried her head in hands and let out a huge sigh. Was she relieved? Then the strange man spoke.

  “Elvisa is there anything else that I can do.”

  Your Abuela did not look up, “No Nico, I think that I can take over from here.”

  Strange things started to happen to me. I started to have these dreams at night. My cravings for lust began to grow and each night I would massage my private parts until I was almost exploding with pleasure. I didn’t know what was happening to me, and I was way too afraid to mention it to your great abuela. There were some nights when I woke up in strange places, in someone else’s bed. I would open my eyes and feel someone on top of me, caressing me, inside of me. I thought that I was losing my mind. Until, my stomach started to grow. I tried to hide it from your Great Abuelo because I knew that he would kill me. But I wanted to hide my pregnancy because I didn’t know who the father was.

  One day I heard your great abuelo and abuela arguing.

  “She sneaks out at night. When you go to bed, she’s climbs out the window and has sex with strange men,” your great abuelo yelled.

  “No, Maria wouldn’t do that. She knows nothing about sex. My God, the girl is only thirteen.”

  It came to a point that your great abuelo couldn’t even look at me anymore. Your great abuela couldn’t deny that I was having sex after I had my first baby at fourteen. Strange enough, she never asked me who the father was. She never asked me how I got pregnant. It was like she knew. She helped me take care of your momma. She never complained, but there was something that was changing inside of her. It was almost like she was losing a little bit of her power, of her spark.

  Nelly, we fell on hard times. It seems that no matter what we did, we just couldn’t make enough money. We began to sell everything in our home. Our house, once joyful and alive with people, was as dead as a cemetery. It seemed like your great abuela’s joyous spirit had dried up like a shriveled sponge. She stayed in bed most days, and just stared out the window, fondling her necklace with the black and white charm. Your great abuelo began to stay away for long stretches of time, until one day he didn’t come home at all. We combed the island, looking for him, until we found out by a few relatives that he was living with another woman.

  On her good days, your great abuela would attend mass on Sundays and then come home and pray for hours. She would walk around our garden looking for new herbs or botanicals to use in one of her ebbos. She could do wonders to cure other people, but for some reason, she did not have the ability to cure herself. It broke my heart, to see her walking around our home. She coughed from the phlegm that was always stuck in throat. She couldn’t move without the support of a cane, or an idle piece of furniture. Sometimes, your momma and me would run over and catch her before she damn near fell over.

  I didn’t know what to do. One night when I was lying in bed, I heard a voice; it was Nico. I needed to go to him. He would be able to make everything better. There was this mysterious force pulling me through the night. There was a thick cast of fog. The mist was so damp that it caused my white night gown to cling to me. My bare feet were on autopilot. When I got there, I stood on the porch. Not really sure what to do. I walked into the home and I saw that several candles were lit. And Nico was standing in a corner.

  “My momma is sick and I need you to make her better,” I said.

  He just stood there, in the dark looking at me.

  “Please, I’ll do anything.” I pleaded.

>   Without thinking, I took off my dress. Nico came forward and placed his bare hands on my waist and drew me close to him. He then he began to fondle my breasts; I purred like a kitten as I felt his clumsy hands wander down to my buttocks and then the area between my thighs. I looked down and saw that he had grown an erection. I felt a rush of energy as he kissed my small perky breasts, and I reached up to capture his lips in a passionate kiss.

  He picked me up and took me to another room, where he laid me down on the bed. Our lovemaking began. He entered me slowly and then he began to plunge into me over and over again. I wrapped my legs around his lower back and raised my hips up and down to give it to him. Our breathing got heavy. It all ended with Nico letting out a loud moan as all of his weight collapsed on top of me. We both laid in the bed, lifeless, but in love. In just a few minutes after this, I got up, put on my white night gown and left his home. I crept back into your great abuela’s house and snuggled back into my bed. Your momma was still fast asleep. I woke up the next morning and began to go about my daily chores as usual. I looked over and I saw that your great abuela was watching me. She had an odd expression on her face, did she know? Of course she did; she knew everything.

  People stopped going to your great abuela for healing work. They went to Nico instead. Nico walked around his little shack like a tyrant, sucking up people’s personal power like a vampire who needed blood. He knew exactly what to do. He was cunning and knew how to destroy people’s defenses. He would wear them down, making them believe that all their problems could be solved by some magical spell. If things didn’t go right, he would tell them that they weren’t pure enough and that they needed to pay him more money so that he could do the ritual again. He knew that half the shit he did didn’t work, but he knew how to imprison the mind.