The Red Witch
Page 2
first, but she struggled with what to tell them. The realtor was taken aback, but smiled, “Oh, you’re Consuelo Ortega’s daughter.”
Consuelo worked as a maid for several families. Elena knew her well, as she was friends with her own aunt. Consuelo made a frilly green dress for Elena as a present for her quinceañera party.
“Yes, I’m Ana,” she smiled broadly.
The realtor had a concerned look on her face. “And how is she?”
Elena allowed herself to become Ana. “Unfortunately, she is still not feeling well. I’m helping out until she feels better. She expects to be back at work next week.” Elena righted the bin, looking over to the washer and dryer. “Only two more loads, and I’m done here. I’m sorry for the inconvenience, I know you don’t want people here when you show the house.”
The buyers seemed charmed, smiling, assessing Elena, probably imagining her as their own maid. She could almost hear their thoughts. Isn’t she sweet? So dedicated, she even takes over for her mother when she’s ill.
The realtor’s smile was less welcoming and more phony. She was certainly local, but had enough money to live away from the village. Probably in town where the tourists stayed. Elena bet that she was from the village at some point, and harbored a deep disdain for it. The more she observed her, the more she thought she could hear the thoughts. Don’t embarrass me, girl. Girls from the village always say stupid things. “Well, we’re leaving now. Please tell Señor and Señora Morales that our prospective buyers are impressed and will likely place a bid within the next couple of days. And I do hope your mother feels better soon.”
And then they left. She heard them as they made their way back to the car. “Lovely people in the village,” the realtor said. “Very devoted to the families they serve. But they’re a superstitious lot. But you know, they’re isolated…”
The couple laughed, and Elena heard the name of her nemesis. “Oh, the Red Witch!”
Elena didn’t believe the stories, even when her grandmother told them to her when she was very young. Elena rolled her eyes as her grandmother leaned forward in her patched and threadbare chair with a stern expression. “If children don’t go to bed when they’re supposed to, the Red Witch hunts them down. She’ll steal you away and cook you in her stewpot.”
Seven-year-old Elena looked at her directly, her expression not fearful, but challenging. “So you would let the witch take me away just because I’m not tired?”
“Of course I don’t want her to take you away. But witches use magic. She can kidnap you and I won’t be able to help,” Grandmother said, frustrated by Elena’s unwavering skepticism.
She continued to stare her grandmother down. “I’m smarter than that, abuelita. You can’t fool me. You just want me to go to bed because you say so.”
As the people got into the flashy red car, Elena bristled at the arrogant sentiment. So not only were all the people from the village primitive, but evidently, they all looked alike. As much as she was relieved not to be caught, it bothered her that she was cast in the role of Ana so easily.
All the more reason to explore their differences. She stacked the bins as they had been, and set out to see the rest of the home. She was stunned by the level of excess. The massive amounts of clothing and packaged food alone would keep her village for at least a year.
Elena toured the villa at a leisurely pace. She sat in every room and imagined what it would be like to have it as a home. A second home at that, just as a place to go when exasperated with city life. If this was a second home, then what did a full-time residence look like? Even the attic was overflowing with endless items: toys and books and clothing and so on—an abundance that would make her neighbors feel wealthy.
A series of figurines stood on the mantel above fireplace in the living room. Each one represented the notorious Red Witch of Santa Barbara del Sur. Every tourist shop sold them, and the grotesquely comical images adorned many of the signs in town. Even high-end art galleries sold depictions of the Red Witch. The figures on the mantel were comprised of a variety of styles: clay, wood, paper, and stone. All brightly painted, each wearing a red cloak. Some of them were tall and heavy plaster casts, others hastily created dolls small enough to fit in a pocket. Elena was annoyed that a few people in her own family made these dolls to sell to tourists. But the money was necessary. The dolls exploited the superstitions of the people in the village. Tourists found the image endearing. They thought of the villagers as a quaint anthropological study. Stories for cocktail parties. And you know, these poor benighted folk still believe in witches! Isn’t that something?
Elena was dismayed to find one of the dolls on the mantel was made by her Aunt Frida. Her aunt’s Red Witch dolls were less like caricatures of a hideous witch and more like an icon of a saint with a beatific face. In a defensive gesture, she pocketed the doll, but couldn’t let go of it. As she explored the villa, her fist hid in the grimy pocket of her yellow sweater, clutching the doll. Punishing it. Trying to squeeze it out of existence.
She left the house, disgusted by the excess and exploitation. She climbed a tree in the woods to sit and sulk, too frustrated to cry and unable to speak. It was after dark when she got home.
After dinner, Aunt Frida was making the dolls to pass the evening hours. Elena narrowed her eyes at the pieces laid out on the table. Frida busied herself with a whirl of scissors, cutting half-circles out of a red piece of cloth.
Elena scowled at her. “Why do you do this?”
“It means much more then you think,” she said, but in a way that made it clear she didn’t feel the need to explain herself. “I don’t do this to please the tourists. They want a sensational story—they want to make fun of us because they think we believe there is a Red Witch in the woods, waiting to devour children and who paints demonic symbols on trees and rocks in their blood. I’m redeeming her, because she was a real person who deserves to be honored.”
Elena knew something of the folktales and that in the time of the conquering of Central America by the Spanish, there was a real woman who became known as the Red Witch. But she always dismissed it. It wasn’t something taught in school, after all. In Elena’s experience, it was a story told by grandmothers to get children to go to bed. And it served as an excuse to patronize the people in the village, where the Red Witch came from. The tourists, the rich people who owned the villas—all used the image of the witch for profit and as a way to exploit the villagers. They told their spoiled children that the cleaning women and the nannies believed the Red Witch lived on as an evil spirit. The children in turn teased them. Elena just wanted the story to go away.
“You still feed their jokes,” she protested. “You make money off it.”
Uncle Carlos huffed in the background. It was not quite a cough, but tendrils of pipe smoke coiled out of his mouth and rose through his drooping moustache. He always read by the fire after dinner, punctuating the surrounding conversations with sardonic observations. “This money will send you to school and give you all the things you ask for. Think of that the next time you ask for money to buy the new album from that silly band you love…what’s the name? Lady Bird-Brain?”
She gasped, insulted at the mangling of the name of her favorite music, but she was momentarily shamed. At the muffled sound of her indignation, Uncle Carlos chuckled, rubbing his arthritic hands. After being a carpenter for more than thirty-five tears, he complained more of aches and pains. He used to come home and repair things around the house, but now, he wanted to retire, but they’d never get by without his income. This was never an open discussion. He would never stop working. He was more than making up for what she had lost, and so was Frida. Elena was orphaned at the age of six—her parents having died in a house fire. They relied on the fireplace for heat, and a log rolled out of place one night, knocking the screen out and falling onto the floor. The house was destroyed, and Elena had little to remember them by. She was then raised by Frida and Carlos and her grandmother, surrounded by cousins. The
y all worked hard. She understood, but she detested that it came at the expense of a comical superstition.
Aunt Frida’s smirk was almost kindly. “Elena, my dear, this doll honors Saint Barbara, too.”
“Yes, I know. The name of the town,” Elena sighed.
“The story of Saint Barbara is much like the Red Witch, you know,” Frida said, looking like the elementary school teacher she was. Her graying hair was pulled back in a bun, her strength reinforced by patience. A loose turquoise tunic and matching linen skirt was her usual outfit, the same kind of thing worn by many of the other women in the village. “Saint Barbara lived in the third century, in a city called Heliopolis. She was imprisoned by her father for converting to Christianity. She refused to renounce her new-found faith and go back to paganism, so he brought her to town, handed her over to the authorities, and she was flogged and tortured. By miracle, her wounds healed overnight. Her father dragged her up a mountain, bound her to a tree, and after torturing her again, beheaded her. It was at that moment thunder clapped above them and as she died, her father was reduced to a pile of ash. But she is one of the most revered saints, invoked against lightning and fire.”
Elena’s eyes pierced the floorboards,