Latin@ Rising

by Matthew Goodwin

This would explain all the coats of arms I had seen over the years, from four six-pointed stars on a field of blue surrounding the castle, to the cock and the quills on the outside of the tower. The Nyers — or Narros, or Nyerros — were shape-shifters, evaders, Crypto-Jews, according to family legend. Once we lost the keys to our houses in Barcelona during The Plague, or the Inquisition or whatever other excuse was given for taking our properties, all the world was our temporary habitation. We saw each place through the eyes of the stranger seeking that pocket of refuge where we could set up shop until the next disaster turned people against us.

  There were no relations left here, I realized, only ghosts. Like Serrallonga, my ancestors had vanished into the mists, only to appear a few years later in a different time and place. In 1348, the Jews were first ejected from Barcelona; ten years later, the castle at Nyer was completed. On September 27, 1791, Napoleon granted full citizenship to the Jewish inhabitants of France. Shortly after that, my ancestors showed up in Saltillo, Mexico, probably bearing papers that did not betray their open secret — that they had come to join an existing community of Jews and start yet again.

  Outside, all had fallen quiet. I opened the door and listened for a moment. Then I ventured gingerly down the stairs, no longer tripping over a long skirt. Too bad I hadn’t paid more attention to what the dress had looked like. I touched my throat, only to find it bare.

  In the vestibule, the woman in red smiled slyly, as if we now shared a secret. She handed me a calling card with a picture of the castle on it, but nothing more.

  Outside, the two small men struggled with their canes to climb into an equally diminutive, bright yellow car. I tried not to stare.

  The woman who had led me up the stairs came running after me. “Will you drive me to Olette?” she asked.

  That seemed like a reasonable request. Oddly I was starting to understand people. Olette was the next town, just on the other side of the highway. I looked hard at the bundle in her hands. It was definitely a purse.

  When I pointed to where our car was parked, she hesitated and looked back over her shoulder. Maybe she did not want to walk that far. I stood and waited. After a few minutes, the woman in red ran out and took the woman by the arm. “She always tries to leave,” she said, “but she belongs here.”

  “But I am not dead,” the woman wailed as they turned to go inside, “I am not dead!” The woman in red smiled apologetically.

  The whole town was quiet again. The other cars had vanished as mysteriously as they arrived, and no one was on the street, either by the castle, or on the road out of town. The man in the stained glass window wore a cap identical to the berets worn by the twins. He seemed to be winking now. The river ran on. Shadows began to gather as we drove out of the little valley, and the golden light reflected from the peaks of the Pyrenees began to fail.

  There was something hard in my shoe. When I reached in and pulled it out, a nugget of coal sat in the palm of my hand.

  How fitting, I thought. After all, what is the passing of time but a diamond turned to dust?

  CODE 51

  Pablo Brescia

  In the stories of Pablo Brescia, books matter, and the reading and writing of literature is a dangerous activity. In his short story “The Last Hero,” a ten-year-old boy is shot and killed in a duel with the fictional cowboy who appears in his comic books. In “Your Hour Has Arrived,” an inveterate reader survives the end of the world, only to break his glasses just as he is about to crack open Aristotle’s Ethics. The story presented here takes a new tack, drawing on science fiction film rather than literature, and set in a police station rather than a library. Though born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Brescia has lived in the United States since 1986 and is now a professor at the University of South Florida. He is the author of three short story collections: La apariencia de las cosas, Fuera de lugar, and the retrospective ESC, and under the pseudonym Harry Bimer he published a hybrid text, No hay tiempo para la poesía. Brescia was the recipient of the prestigious Jamie Bishop Memorial Award given by the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts.

  A light flashed across the horizon.

  Suddenly, the phone rang. The telephone always rings “suddenly,” he thought.

  He picked it up. The voice sounded anxious on the other end. He nodded, cleared his throat, seemed concerned.

  The police station was a clean, well-lighted place. Everything there served the truth.

  “OK. We’ll be by shortly,” said sheriff Torres.

  He hung up and grimaced.

  Sergeant Wilson couldn’t help himself:

  “Boss, don’t you think this would be a good scene from one of those detective movies from the 1940s? Picture it: It’s midnight, somebody calls, we got a mystery! We’re smoking of course, and you say: ‘We’ll be by shortly.’ Don’t you think?”

  “Sh-ut-up Wilson,” said Torres, fighting his asthma.

  The call had come from inside Chupadero (pop. 351), to report an ominous light flying in the sky. I can’t believe these people use the word ‘ominous,’ Torres said to himself in disbelief. Something had made a noise in the immediate vicinity of Susan Navajo’s house. That was the story.

  Torres did not usually pay much attention to the kind of people who called to report an unidentified flying object in the area. The police station of Chupadero, New Mexico, received around a hundred calls a year about flying saucers or extraterrestrials. More than thirty percent of the population living in Chupadero not only believed in extraterrestrial life but was absolutely certain that beings from another planet had naturally chosen their tiny town to make first contact with Earth.

  So, it could have been just another call. But it wasn’t.

  Miss Navajo, divorced, mother of a six-year-old boy and a teenage girl, came from an eminent family in the Navajo community. Its members had occupied key political positions for years. And when sheriff Torres needed support to get re-elected for another four years, the Navajo were at his side at every political speech and town hall meeting. And so, when the story came in about the ominous light, Torres knew he could not ignore the call. Besides, there was another reason. It was a well-known fact that the sheriff’s heart pounded faster when he would run into Susan at the town’s market. Sooner or later everybody here bumps into everybody, thought Torres, who very much believed the old saying of his grandma: “Pueblo chico, infierno grande”.

  “Wilson, get your feet off the table. Haven’t I told you a thousand times not to put your feet on the table? Let’s go. We’ve got a Code 51,” Torres announced.

  The sergeant’s eyes lit up.

  “Code 51? This is it, boss, don’t you think? We’re always coming up empty handed…. Maybe this time we’ll see a spaceship like in Close Encounters of the Third Kind! Don’t you think? () Daa-daa-daaduuh-daaaaaaaaaa! ()”

  “Sh-ut-up Wilson!”

  The broken yellow lines that divided the highway absorbed the sheriff’s attention while the sergeant moved his head softly back and forth humming Spielberg’s movie score. The siren howled blue and red and many things passed through Torres’ mind. He thought about the future that he had ruined by a single mistake in his youth. He thought about his shitty job in this dirty, God-forsaken corner of the world. He thought about poor Wilson and his autistic obsession with movies. He thought about the asthma that made him feel like he belonged to another species. He thought about how he was such a coward for not having talked to Susan yet. Five years have gone by, what am I waiting for?, he asked himself.

  Almost without realizing it, they arrived.

  The Navajos lived on the outskirts of Chupadero in an old mansion that had known better times and now looked like an abandoned gothic castle. Torres wished he were as far from this place as possible. Preferably in his bedroom reading books about ancient civilizations, his only hobby.

  Strangely enough, the road was muddy even though it had not rained for weeks. Just getting up to the door was an ordeal.

  The sheriff
knocked, with Wilson behind him.

  “Steve … Is it you?” Susan said, as she opened the door for them.

  Torres was happy to see her. He was always happy to see her.

  “Miss Navajo, we are responding to a call from your house about an unidentified flying object in the area,” said the sergeant.

  Shut up Wilson, thought Torres.

  Susan looked surprised but let them in anyway. They were now in the living room, bathed in dim light, their silhouettes performing a theatre of shadows.

  Sheriff Torres matter-of-factly informed her about the situation and took pains to emphasize that the Chupadero police always took Code 51 calls seriously. Susan explained that she had not telephoned the police and that she didn’t know anything about a light in the sky.

  Wilson was quiet.

  There was a moment in which each of them understood something different from what was actually happening, or, rather, what was going to happen.

  Suddenly, Sergeant Wilson took Susan by the waist with a move that looked choreographed. He pointed his gun at Torres.

  “Let’s end this charade,” he said.

  Torres was frozen in place.

  “You are an idiot, sheriff, you really are. Haven’t you seen Alien? The enemy is inside. You always thought you were better than small town Chupadero, you insulted us, you thought we were beneath you. We couldn’t stop the stupid old lady from defending you, who knows why, but we finally convinced her to call the station. Susan and I faked everything, the light, the Code 51 story. We knew you’d come, you always come, to do your duty … like when you got that little girl killed, remember? At the end of the day, you’re a fuckin’ Mexican living on our land. You don’t belong here, understand? As far as I’m concerned, Chupadero can be sucked into the desert! You’re about to die and we’re leaving. Susan, say goodbye to your boyfriend,” shouted Wilson, twisting her even closer.

  Susan didn’t move.

  “Let’s go!” Wilson demanded. “What’s wrong Susan?”

  The lights flickered and a shot rang out. Sargent Wilson fell straight to the floor.

  At the door, Grandma Navajo clutched an 1892 Winchester rifle. Susan’s children stood next to her, still and quiet as stone.

  “We have waited many cycles. The time for unification has arrived. Susan Navajo and Steve Torres, you who came from another time and place, are twin halves. You are our salvation. This land is diseased and must be purified. They, our own, have returned. The children of the gods have come back to take what is rightfully theirs,” said the old woman, seemingly reciting a script.

  Torres felt he was inside an absurd nightmare from which he did not want to wake. The woman was obviously crazy, but her madness might also mean his liberation. He thought he was going to die and that it didn’t matter because he had been dead for many years.

  “It is time,” said Grandma Navajo.

  Then, with a resolute gesture, she ordered Susan and the sheriff to approach the door.

  As they stepped out they were momentarily blinded. Close to the stable, at the edge of the lot, the ominous light, in ovoid form, was emitting white noise. Torres turned around and saw that a dark luminosity shot through the eyes of Susan’s children. They looked like lanterns.

  The light is the ship. The ship is the light. Who would believe this crazy stuff?, thought Torres, and then he shrugged.

  The sound intensified, and without warning, jets of water started to shoot from the ship. Potent, unstoppable, they flooded the farm quickly. The liquid, a water not of this earth, began to rise. Everything was so unbelievable that it made sense.

  At that moment, the sheriff realized that sergeant Wilson would have known exactly which movie this scene belonged to. And Torres came to the conclusion (because after all his was a call of duty) that he should have taken all those Code 51s more seriously.

  A halo of glowing water seized Susan and propelled her towards the spaceship. She extended her arms towards the fountain of light. She let go and began to scream in an unfamiliar language.

  Torres felt something in his gut. Now under water, he breathed better. He was no longer afraid.

  Susan, his dear Susan, swam back to him. When their bodies touched, he noticed the gills. And in the face of sheriff Steve Torres horror set in.

  Illuminated by the flashing light, shining like a priestess from a time and place immemorial, Grandma Navajo watched it all and smiled with satisfaction. The truth, finally, was beginning to make way.

  UNINFORMED

  Pedro Zagitt

  Born in Mexico City, Pedro Zagitt has a degree in Ciencias de la Comunicación (Media) from the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Occidente (ITESO) in Guadalajara, México. His two pieces included here “Uninformed” and “Circular Photography” were originally published in the fiction collection Historias de Las Historias edited by Mexican author Alberto Chimal. “Uninformed” introduces us to a feisty, and probably familiar to many readers, grandmother who is fortunately insistent with her home remedies. In “Circular Photography,” Zagitt, who is also a well-established photographer, develops in Borgesian proportions his sense of the unexpected consequcnes of art.

  October 30, 1938. The house of Doña Carmen. Queens, New York, USA. The subway lines are not running, the entire island is in chaos because of a radio broadcast. Doña Carmen can’t go to the second of her three jobs and returns home walking, as well as she can, avoiding the crowd gripped with panic.

  “This is getting worse, let’s see if they don’t run me over …”

  “…”

  “Dios Mío! Poor thing, what are you doing up there? And look how green you are …”

  “…”

  “Ah yeah no, with so many cars, sometimes I can’t even breath.”

  “…”

  “You must be malnourished, but I’ll just give you some leftover lentils from yesterday. Hurry up and come over here.”

  “…”

  “You’ll forgive me if I can’t give you some tortillas, but the market was closed. I don’t understand what’s happening with everyone today …”

  “…”

  “Are you making faces at my lentils? I know the food here is not the same as in Puebla but it’s not so bad that you can’t eat it, so go on.”

  “…”

  “Could it be that you get all green like that from the dollars. No way … I’ll just stay here one more year and then it’s back to my farm. Eat up.”

  “…”

  “It seems to me that you’ve got a hex on you, first thing tomorrow I’ll take you to St. Patrick’s to get the devil out of you.”

  “…”

  “No, actually your tummy looks kind of bloated*. Let’s see if I can fix that up.”

  “…”

  “Wait a second child, I’m not done. Come here.”

  And without realizing it, Doña Carmen saved humanity from an intergalatic invasion.

  _____

  * Empachado

  CIRCULAR PHOTOGRAPHY

  Pedro Zagitt

  Even though it was not entirely my idea, at the end of the project, they all saw me as the one responsible for the result. The idea, as well as all the work on the logistics and the production, was appropriated by the collective so that it is difficult to determine the principle author. But eventually they all decided that I was the one.

  The project was nothing more than a photograph of a person taking a photograph of a person who in turn was taking a photograph and so on successively until we made an unbroken person-camera-person chain around the most important (and oldest) estate in the small town. With luck, the desired result would be an uninterrupted circle of simultaneous images in succession.

  Technically, it was perfect, all fingers pressing the device with perfect synchronicity. But the glare of the flashes in unison castigated us, the arrogant photographers who played with the physical and the metaphysical, with total (and now I know permanent) blindness. We woke the snake that devours itsel
f and us with it.

  When they learned that they were blind, they began to curse me, swearing that the idea had been mine and that I should pay for it with my life. Feeling their way, they began to search for me, to make me suffer for their blindness. To save myself, I had to pretend to be my colleague opposite from me and I started beating him so that the enraged sightless masses would think that he was me.

  In their outburst of anger, stirred by a hopeful and desperate attempt at redemption, the newly blind decided to set fire to the cameras, so that circular photography ended in a ring of fire. Only the photo I took survives, a memory of the day from which I must now dictate instead of write.

  SIN EMBARGO

  Sabrina Vourvoulias

  Told through multiple narrators, Vourvouias’ novel Ink (2012) takes on the contemporary immigration system, extrapolating out from its injustices, and showing how the system we have is a small step away from the future dystopias commonly depicted in fiction and film. In the short story presented here, “Sin Embargo,” she turns to the continued impact of the Guatemalan dirty wars from the 1980s on Guatemalans now living in the United States. As becomes apparent in “Sin Embargo,” every story has more than one interpretation and words can sometimes cross between languages in fascinating and complex ways. Vourvoulias studied writing and filmmaking at Sarah Lawrence College and now works as a journalist for the Spanish newspaper Al Dia in Philadelphia.

  1.

  Nevertheless.

  That is the word that starts nearly every statement I make to my clients as I’m detailing what they can expect during treatment, or during a forensic evaluation should they ever be permitted to witness in court.

  I say it in Spanish because though many of them have been here for decades and no longer speak first in Spanish, most of them still think first in it. Their children, when and if they accompany them to the First State Survivors Center, roll their eyes at me.

  Nevertheless. Sin embargo.

  Now say it with an English accent and an American reading of the interlingual homographs — sin embargo — and it becomes policy. Banned and barricaded, it says, because of transgression. Your transgression, your community’s, your state’s.