It has just turned twelve, and I stand on my tiptoes on the edge of the roof to see better. Now the commotion will start up. No doubt about it. They have already turned a light on at the top floor. It’s the old lady. I can see her through a broken window. She moves through her room filled with junk and lights up a candle. She bends down next to what seems to be a trunk, tries to separate it from the wall, but can’t succeed in moving it. Then she leaves the candle holder on the floor and pushes with all her might until it detaches from the corner. She leans over it, as if she were going to take out something … at that precise moment someone bumps into me and I almost lose my balance. It’s my little brother.
“What are you doing here, idiot?” I reproach in a whisper. “You scared me half to death.”
“I came to play,” he responds without noting my anger, and strews some bones on the eaves.
“And since when do you play on the roof?”
“It’s hot in there.”
He takes two finger bones and starts to hit them against each other as if they were tiny swords. I look at the house out of the corner of my eye, but the old lady has already disappeared with the candle and everything. I’m left not knowing what she was trying to take out of that corner.
“And those?” I ask without much interest, because I just now make out two figures that are quickly crossing the entrance and are immediately led into the interior of the house by someone who’s opened the door for them. “Are they new?”
My brother looks at me a moment, uncomprehending.
“Oh! These?…They’re from the Rizo baby.”
“The one that they buried last week?”
“No. That was the grandson of Mrs. Cándida. This is a much older baby.”
Slow music rises and falls in pitch until it’s lost in a murmur: someone is operating the radio in the house next door. For some reason, I know that it is prohibited to listen to the voices and news that come from afar. I discern the eagerness of the listener to evade the interference which they use to jam any outside signal. We are isolated. Not only us, them as well …
“Come on, coward!” says my brother, projecting his voice, making the bones collide in swordfight. “Don’t run away, face my fury!”
“Get out of here.” I push him a little to get my place back. “If you don’t get down right now, I’ll tell papa to not raise you up again.”
He shrugs his shoulders.
“I don’t have to go to the charnel house to get toys now. Mami always …”
“If you don’t go now, I’ll drop you on your head. Don’t you see that I’m busy?”
The front door of the house opens slowly. A man sticks his head out to inspect the surroundings. He goes back inside. Then he comes out again. He’s carrying a knife in his hand. He stealthily approaches a corner of the garden and starts to dig a hole aided by that tool. He rapidly buries a medium sized packet that he has taken out of his clothes. In the silence of the morning, I hear him mumbling:
“I won’t be able to use it, but neither will they.”
He finishes his work and goes inside.
My brother shoves me to get more space.
“Stupid idiot!” I turn towards him, coiled and ready.
I jerk him by the neck and squeeze as hard as I can until he weakens from lack of air. He seems to have lost consciousness. Then my eyes go back to the house and on looking through the window on the top floor, I come across a rare spectacle: the diffuse light falls on a bed where a couple is getting undressed. I’m astonished. I let my brother go and three seconds later, I hear the dull thud from a body that has fallen on the pavement many meters below. I hardly pay attention to the flattened body, because I spy another silhouette that leaves the house and crosses the garden. At that moment, an enormous cloud covers the disc of the moon and I’m left without knowing if it’s a man or a woman who is going down the walkway with a bundle in arm.
A gong from far away brings me back to reality. It’s my mother calling us to dinner. I look for a second at the big house wrapped in darkness and reluctantly detach from the eaves.
When I come into the dining room, everyone is already seated at the table. Mama serves soup, red and thick like beet juice. I try a spoonful and almost burn my lips.
“It’s boiling!” I protest.
“Be careful with the tablecloth,” she warns me. “You know how much that stains.”
“I don’t like old blood!” one of my siblings complains.
“Well, you’ll have to get used to it. Things are getting more difficult each day and I can’t get it fresh like I could before.”
“Where did you get it from?” asks my father devouring a bit of ear.
“Gertrudis sold it to me overpriced. I’ve had it in the freezer from six months ago because little Luis …” She looks around — “Where is Junior?”
We all stop eating and fix upon my brother’s empty seat.
Then I remember.
“I think that …” A knot forms in my throat.
I’m terrified of the punishment.
All eyes turn to me in silence, waiting for an explanation. I decide to tell everything: my determined vigilance over the mansion, the suspicious behavior of the old lady, the secret burial of treasure, my brother’s sudden interruption and our struggle on the roof, the couple in the room, the sound of a body falling on the cement, the mysterious person leaving the house…. I prepare for the worst.
“And you couldn’t see what the guy was carrying?” mother asks.
“I don’t even know if it was a man: it was really dark.”
“Too bad!”
They eat in silence.
“So, what do we do about Junior?” says my father, leaving bloodstains on his napkin.
“Let’s make the best of it — mama decides. How does brain stew sound for tomorrow?”
We scream enthusiastically.
Mama stands up and goes in search of dessert, but I can’t wait. I go up to the balcony and climb once again onto the roof. The wind makes the loose floor boards of the attic creak. From there I hear the muffled uproar of my siblings who flood the dawn with howls, ignoring the oft-repeated prohibition.
In front of me, in the other house, a window opens. I attentively observe the faces that emerge: the old lady with the trunk and an unknown youth. They look with fear and concern towards our house.
“Be gone!”* — I hear the old lady say, who then crosses herself three times in a row. “The agitated spirits again.”
“I’m calling the police.”
“Yeah? And what are you going to tell them?” scolds the old lady who now takes on the voice of the youth: “Listen, in the house next door there was a massacre many many years ago and now the dead walk about howling at all hours. — That’s what you’re going to say? Well, I suggest that you leave them to their unrest. Anyway, that’s the only thing the dead can do when they’ve been finished off.”
Both women cross themselves again. They half-close the blinds after them, and I’m left open-mouthed, completely confused by what I just heard. What are they talking about? None of us have died … except Junior, who I let fall by accident, the fault of an unfortunate mistake. And if one can die, it’s because one is not dead. Or can the dead die again?
I try to see what’s going on behind the curtains, but I can’t stay. The light of the sun announces itself in a hazy clarity over the roofs of the city.
I should return to my refuge. I’ll sleep all day until night falls, and when the stars begin to come out, I’ll unfold my membranous wings and fly up to my usual position.
____
* Solavaya!
COCONAUTS IN SPACE
ADÁL
Roy Brown in his iconic song “Boricua en la Luna” (Puerto Rican on the Moon) proclaims that Puerto Rican culture will survive no matter where its people are dispersed — even somewhere as strange as the moon (or the United States). Coconauts in Space, created by Puerto Rican artist ADÁL, brings this image of Puerto Ric
an culture on the moon to life. In this photo narrative, ADÁL alters images from the 1969 NASA moon landing and integrates them into an alternate history which includes a 1963 moon landing by Puerto Rican astronauts. The work uses this fictional history to critique the fictional and incomplete history that has been told about Puerto Rico by the U.S. Though terrestrially born in Utuado, Puerto Rico in 1948, ADÁL spent much of his artistic career in New York, working in photography, theatre, installation art, and performance. After retiring from the New York Department of Transportation in 2010, he returned to Puerto Rico where he continues his artistic journeys into space. Coconauts in Space was first presented in 2004 at the Taller Puertorriqueño in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
COWBOY MEDIUM
Ana Castillo
Ana Castillo is a relentless activist for women and was a key figure in the development of xicanisma (Chicana feminism). She has been at the forefront of Latino letters since the 1980s and was the principle translator of the classic This Bridge Called My Back (1981). She is a multi-talented writer who continues to work in a variety of genres, the short list includes fiction, poetry, and translation. Her first novel The Mixquiahuala Letters (1986) is an experimental novel in tribute to Julio Cortázar’s novel Hopscotch which traces the lives of two Chicanas, Teresa and Alicia. Her spectacular novel So Far From God (1993) tells of four sisters and their mother living in New Mexico who must face the large forces that confront them: patriarchy, government, corporations, and religion. Castillo received her a BA in art from Northwestern Illinois University, an MA in Latin American Studies from the University of Chicago, and her doctorate in American Studies from the University of Bremen, Germany. “Cowboy Medium,” which features roommates Hawk and Gordo, is the opening chapter from her uncoming novel The Last Goddess Standing.
That evening when Gordo came home, on his way to take a shower he found Hawk playing with the Ouiji Board. His housemate frequently consulted the board game with life’s difficult questions. For the old cowboy who had neither cow nor a horse, they were all difficult questions. Hawk believed in the spirits. It was just who he was. A spirit had given him the name Hawk, in fact, a long time ago. It was in a tee-pee meeting with Pueblo Indians up in Taos. Years later, after he’d gone on the wagon and attended a similar Native American ceremony Hawk started getting ‘contacted.’
Gordo turned on the shower. He tried not to judge people. Being a lawyer for so long, however, made assessing people’s character second nature. While the water warmed up the attorney carefully removed the new suit and hung it up on a hanger he’d left for that purpose on a hook behind the door. The rest of his clothes were shoved into the hamper. He was the only one who used it. On laundry day Gordo had to catch his housemate snoozing on the Laz-y-Boy recliner just to pull off stiff socks to get them in the wash.
Leaning over the sink Gordo examined his cherubic face in the mirror. He’d started shaving in eighth grade and had a full beard in high school. To shave again or not to shave. Why were genetics so unfair that a balding man had more hair on his face and every inch of his body (save the soles of his feet and the palms of his hands, like an orangutan) than he had on his head? Now, that really was a question for ancients and scientists alike.
Gordo snapped his fingers and ran out. Hawk looked up, clearly bored with the seànce. The spirits were slow in coming around that evening. “What’ve I said about you running around like that?” Hawk asked, reaching over for a cigarette. Blowing out a deep sigh, he added, “Don’t you think I’m shell-shocked enough as it is?”
“I forgot my underwear in the dryer,” Gordo replied half-apologetically. The other half was of the mind that if he hadn’t traumatized a good part of the female population of the town of La Trinidad, males should surely fear no harm at the sight of his manliness.
On his way back from the dryer, which, with the washer was just outside the backdoor beneath the portal, and with fresh as a daisy tightie-whities in hand, it was Hawk who stopped him. “By the way, man, how’d the case with old man Soldaño go?”
“Not good,” Gordo said, dashing off for an ashtray to put under Hawk’s cigarette. “Eileen said they had nothing in writing, plus, being related, the old man could have once given the ranchería to his son, as the young Soldaño claimed — before his supposed father’s dementia. Then there was the expired statute of limitations. He didn’t have much of a case against his shiftless son. And so, one more family land grant wastes away. The son is selling. Judge Eileen and I both knew the old man was telling the truth but the law is the law.”
Both Hawk and Gordo shook their heads. The case had been only one of many where traditional landholders were selling out to developers. The longtime residents couldn’t afford the new housing and left town. In came new people and thus, La Trinidad was becoming a thing of the past. Some people liked change. Others didn’t. You couldn’t stop change, though.
“Eileen now, is it?” Hawk said, letting out a perfect ring of smoke. In the dim light of the lamp on the end table, kicking back and hat tipped forward on his noggin, Gordo thought his friend bore a faint resemblance to Clint Eastwood, specifically in High Plains Drifter. (It was in the squint.) He’d never say that to Hawk. It wasn’t because his friend would be flattered or oddly insulted. The material world meant very little to Hawk.
“We’ve been on first name basis since the first happy hour we shared in her Honor’s chambers,” Gordo said. He lowered his eyes momentarily and then said, “Sorry, Hawk. I don’t mean to talk about drinking….”
Hawk waved the hand with the cigarette as if to say, don’t worry. “On the other hand, I do mind …” he said, motioning with eyes and cigarette hand at the other man’s bare everything. As Gordo slipped into his shorts, he said. “You know, I was remembering a case back in Chicago today …”
“One you lost?”
“Yes, one of the first,” Gordo said, “It was pro-bono — my uncle had worked in the Civil Rights Movement and all that — and I represented a young black — African-American youth. That morning when the judge found him guilty and after I apologized to him he said, ‘What do you know about injustice, man? When your people have been slaves, that’s something you never forget. It stays in your bones. You pass it on to your children.’”
“I don’t doubt that’s true,” Hawk said although he had never contemplated the emphatic claim before.
“Listen,” Gordo continued, “the boy goes …”
“Boy?”
“He was scarcely eighteen … I stand by my choice of words.” Gordo smoothed back the ten hairs on each side of his head. To Hawk, the other man did not resemble any movie star, even in the growing dimness of the living room. Instead, he looked a little like a bad spirit. Or maybe a garden gnome. Hawk pushed the Ouiji Board away and concentrated on his cigarette instead, deep inhales, loud exhales. Gordo rolled his eyes but went on with his story, “The youth says something like, ‘What’re you, man? Celli? Is that Italian? Your people were Romans. They were the slave keepers of their time. They killed Jesus.’” Being from Chicago, Gordo had said yute not youth. It had taken Hawk a time to get used to the accent, which his housemate insisted he did not have.
“‘Whoa, whoa, whoa! Stop right there,’ I says,” Gordo went on, now all-wound up. “‘Yeah. My grandpa, one of the best people you’d ever want to meet, did not have no part in enslaving you,’ I says. And you know what the kids says? He goes, ‘Humph.’”
“Humph?”
“Humph,” Gordo affirmed. His nose suddenly went up and he began to sniff. The faintest odor of the morning’s chorizo and eggs was still in the house. “I think I’m hungry,” he muttered.
“And you are telling me this, standing naked in my living room tonight — ¿Por qué?” Hawk asked, putting out his cigarette. “And pray tell, why is it that you move your hands all over the place when you speak?” Hawk asked, “It’s distracting as all hell.”
“It’s how we Italians express ourselves, O’ Sir Hawky-Stick,” Gordo laughe
d, with bunched fingers of both hands that motioned toward his own face like two birds wanting to peck out his eyes. He continued, “That claim, you know, that people who were descendents of the oppressed never forget … and who weren’t at some point in history, I might add …? Well, it got me to thinking, especially since I moved down here to the Wild West of New Mexico. With all due respect to my family, the Celli (distantly related to the Medicis) in my blood must run some Indian blood, American Indian. I just feel it. Maybe Cherokee.”
“Right. Like every other red-blooded American,” Hawk muttered, unimpressed.
“Whoa, Hawkman,” Gordo said, trying to look put off. “I was a foundling too, Hawk. Just like you,” Gordo said bringing up the most painful part of his existence and that of his friend. Gordo was not a Celli. He didn’t have a clue who his biological family had been. “Who knows?” He wondered, “I may even have some Apache blood, just like you. Just like you, my dear silent warrior.” He went off to get ready for his date. Like the good or at least hard-edged attorney he was, he’d gotten in the last word.
Hawk shook his head. Now his orphaned housemate wanted to be an Indian. Just like those artsy-farties moving into La Trinidad, New Agers, whatever they called themselves, they claimed they were reincarnated from Indians—usually a chief or a chiefteness. Everybody wanted to be Sitting Bull. Well, good luck with that, Hawk concluded. For the time being, sober as the day he was born and whether Apache or not himself, Hawk was left to his brooding and the Ouiji board game that nevertheless was no game.
Somehow, he’d become the town medium. It was a whole lot better than being the town’s scourge, like he’d felt he was all his days as a drunkard. Now, whenever someone had a need to communicate with a dearly departed one, Hawk was ready to serve as a conduit. Although he never would have asked for much needed compensation, satisfied customers always wanted to give him something. They’d offer a few dollars, homemade tamales or a maybe a pot of posole. A live goat. A roasted goat. One woman wanted to give him her defunct husband’s sheepskin jacket. Hardly worn. She was sure the dead man would have wanted him to have it. When Hawk refused the gift, she said, “Bueno, then, let’s ask him.” That would have required another session. Being a conduit was draining. Hawk took the jacket. It hung in the back of the armoire. Draining and life changing, that’s what these disembodied missives from the outside world were. Paralyzing, even, he thought, watching the Ouija start to spell something, Hawk’s fingertips weren’t even on the gadget.
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