Sonora

by Pastor, Juan

  Sin (Almon) keeps gesturing as if there is something important she is not saying. Skyler ignores him. But he continues the gesturing. Finally she steps away from the mic, and he bends over and talks softly in her ear. And this goes on for some time, and Skyler can hear the murmurs in the crowd.

  “My husband insists he wants to say something.” Skyler says. “But don’t encourage him, or he may not stop.” Skyler takes a moment to enjoy the laughter. She seems happy.

  Almon steps up to the mic, and adjusts its height. His voice is soft and low and gravelly, yet very Almon‐like. Sin has been doing his homework. “If you are happy that Presidente Sepulvida and I are alive, you should thank the dedicated people of this clinic. You should thank especially the woman everyone calls Pequeña Maria. This is her clinic, the Clinica Rosaria, named after a dear friend of hers whose dream it was to be a doctor before that dream was cut short at the wall.”

  Skyler sees he is struggling with not only his weak voice, but with his feelings. She steps near him.

  “Are you sure you want to go on?” She whispers.

  He nods.

  “Xavier and I intend to introduce bills in each of our legislative houses respectively for the 50/50 subsidy of this clinic.” Almon says. “We also intend to draft plans for the construction of eleven other clinic/welcome centers along the U.S.‐Mexico border.”

  I note the surprise on the face of Skyler, but she quickly turns that look into one of angelic appreciation of her (new) husband’s dream. I note Tejana’s smile. I note Braulio’s eyes grow wide. Apparently, none of this was discussed with anyone, but Sin is realizing he now has wings, and he’s decided to fly. The clinic is so full of applause and cheers, it makes me wonder what must be going on in front of TV monitors throughout the U.S and Mexico, thoroughout the Americas and the world.

  Sin continues to ride the wave. “Within a month of my return to Washington, I will deploy various divisions, now undeployed, to begin the demolition of the wall. Anyone who has a sledgehammer, and wants to get a head start, go ahead. You have the blessing of both country’s Presidents. As long as you recycle the materials. We may need some of them for the new clinics”

  The room erupts into such celebration, it seems as if it may last forever. But Sin, now becoming more and more a new Almon, waves his hand, and everyone listens. His voice is starting to falter a little.

  “The wall is a serpent,” He says. “and it is time to crush the serpent.”

  Braulio is in shock. There is no way he can say “no” to any of this. If he does, he is done politically.

  Tejana has her head bowed, as if in prayer. A few curly ringlets of hair are loose on her forehead. She takes her hand, and fixes the ringlets behind her ear. She looks up, over at me, and I smile. She looks toward Skyler, standing near her husband, and Skyler nods imperceptibly. Skyler has this look of determination on her face I don’t remember ever seeing before.

  The “Ain’t Taking Your Shit No More Revolution” is on.

  La Primera Conferencia De La Vagina Internacional

  Welcome to la Primera conferencia de la

  Vagina Internacional.” The Virgen Maria says. “I’ve called this Conferencia because one thing has become painfully obvious to me.”

  “And that is…?” Skyler asks.

  “Since the beginning of recorded time, and even

  before recorded time, men have made most of the decisions.” The Virgen Maria says.

  “But that is only because men are so much more logical

  than women.” Rosie says. She says it with such seriousness and conviction, every woman there looks at her like she’s lost her mind. Rosie looks my way. Her eyes sparkle with amusement.

  “As I say,” The Virgen Maria continues, “one thing has become very clear to me.”

  “And what is that?” Skyler asks again.

  “Men don’t have a clue what they’re doing.” The Virgen Maria says.

  “Why were they allowed all this foolishness, then, for so long?” Tejana asks. “If they didn’t know what they were doing.”

  “Because we enabled them.” The Virgen Maria says. “We let them do everything they Goddammed pleased.”

  “But we’re going to change that now?” I ask, mostly to keep the conversation going.

  “Well Dear.” Tejana says. “You at least have already begun to change that. We want to learn from you. We should learn from you. We want to know how you did what you did. We want to know what more should be done. We want to know how to do it.”

  “I’m not sure you really want to know.” I said. “Do you really want to know, Virgen Maria? Do the rest of you really want to know? Or are we just going to have another Wiccan lesbian mother earth orgy where we admire each other’s boobs and pussies and say to each other how wonderful we all are because we all have boobs and pussies and how men are really all just jealous of us because we have boobs and pussies. For God’s sake, there isn’t a man on earth that would want to trade places with any of us.”

  “I already know.” The Virgen Maria says. “You forget, I am immortal. I ascended into heaven. I sitteth at the right hand of the Father. I intercede for mortal man. Blah blah blah blah.”

  “You don’t know shit.” I say, and after I say it I can’t believe such words have left my mouth. But I continue. “Tell her, Rosaria. Tell her she doesn’t know the hundredth of what she thinks she knows.”

  “Pequeña is correct.” Rosaria says.

  “Do you really want to know, Skyler?” I ask.

  “Yes I do.” Skyler says. “More than ever.”

  “What about you? I ask Tejana. “Do you want to know?”

  “I think I already know.” Tejana says. “But then, I have never been shot, and spent the whole night near death, bleeding into the sand near a Saguaro cactus.”

  “And you have never been rescued by a white Sonoran wolf bitch.” Rosaria says.

  “I’ve never even met a white wolf bitch.” Says Tejana. “Except maybe for Skyler here.”

  Skyler doesn’t look up, but I can see the corners of her mouth twitch… into a smile, and then disappear in a follow‐up twitch. Can it be Skyler is becoming cool?

  “Enough about me.” Skyler says, still not looking up. “What does our Pequeña have in mind?”

  “All of you stand up.” I say.

  They all stand up.

  “All of you take off all of your clothes.” I say.

  “My kind of party.” Tejana says. “A Latina lesbian party, and, oh yeah, one white wolf bitch.”

  “Not exactly.” Rosaria says.

  “Everything off?” Skyler checks.

  “Everything off.” I say.

  I walk to a door, grab a bundle vacuum wrapped in plastic, and throw it to Tejana. She catches it effortlessly. I throw one to Skyler. It goes through her hands, hits her ample mammary apparati, and then lands on the floor. She bends over to pick it up, and I notice Tejana noticing. Then a bundle to the Virgen Maria. A bundle to Rosaria. I keep the last bundle.

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  The dresses I hand out are made of linen from

  Guatemala. I think it appropriate – somehow. The linen is handcrafted, and it is fair trade fabric. It is spun by native women from flax grown in Guatemala.

  The dresses have been sown by the woman who had helped me clean up the stalled cattle truck. She is from Guatemala also. It has taken forever for her to tell me her name, as if she thinks somehow it should remain a secret. If anyone knew her real name, she might get sent back, she had told me, and she had come too far, seen too much, been hurt too much, to go back home now.

  “My name is Celia.” She eventually says, as she works at the sewing machine. There is no electricity, she works a large footpedal with one foot til it gets tired, and then she uses the other foot.

  “When we go to the desert,” I tell her “I want the women wearing no more than these. I want the garments kept simple, little more than linen
bags, with holes cut for neck and arms.”

  But Celia has resorted to some old time‐honored pattern. The pattern comes not from a book or purchased pattern kit, but from her head. She makes each dress without having taken measurements of each woman. She has measured with her eyes and her intuition. The neck and arm openings, and the hems, are finished with white satin, and there is white lace in the “V” slit of each dress’s neck. Each dress is cinched slightly at the waist, but ample enough at bust and hips to allow for each woman’s figure. Each dress is intended to reach just above each woman’s knees. Celia had relied on a mental picture of each woman’s height and build.

  The “white woman”, Celia’s name for Skyler, is the tallest and slimmest. Tejana is the most “sex‐ee”, as Celia puts it, “built like a real woman should be”.

  “I looked like that when I was young.” Celia says. “God, how I drove the boys wild.”

  Celia gets out her shoebox. She has braided for each woman a linen rope with knotted tassel ends, and she hands each woman the one intended for her, depending on body shape.

  “To tie about your waists.” She says.

  As each woman unwraps and puts on her dress, more of Celia’s work is evident. Going by what Celia knows of each woman’s name, there is over her left breast her embroidered initials.

  “There is one more dress.” Celia says. “It is to the back of the shelf.”

  “Who for…?” I start to say, and then I realize. “You are coming with us, aren’t you?”

  I get her dress, hand it to her, she unwraps it ceremoniously, and she puts it on. It has none of the satin, or lace, or fine work of the other dresses. I start to ask why, but she puts her finger to my lips.

  “My glory days are gone.” She says softly. “You are all the beautiful ones now.”

  How wrong you are, I think to myself.

  Gone Fishin’

  Cutthroats they are called. It is a good trout

  fishing day in the Rio Colorado. Surprise? There are trout in the Colorado River in Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and California. Why shouldn’t there be trout in it where it flowed through Mexico? At least in Mexico the trout don’t have to put up with the obstacle course of dams, like they do in the U. S.

  Bo’s favorite trout is the cutthroat throat, in all its variations. It is called a cutthroat because it has red gills, and sometimes red markings on its lower jaw, making it look as if the jaw is cut and bleeding. Bo has fished for Green Back Cutthroat in Colorado’s front range, Rio Grande Cutthroat in the Great River, Snake River Cutthroat in the Grand Tetons, and Yellowstone Cutthroat Trout. He has also fished for Browns and Brookies, and Rainbows. He once caught a Palomino Rainbow Trout, and thought about keeping it and having it mounted. Then he considered how the Palomino Rainbow is a very rare albino trout. He released it after taking a quick snap pic.

  Today Bo is after Cut‐Bows, which he has taken a particular liking to. “Half‐breeds”, he calls them, as they are a hybrid between a Cutthroat and Rainbow. If you let Bo buy you a beer and thank him by letting him tell you all about flyfishing and trout, Bo will tell you more than you ever wanted to know.

  He is fishing on a section of the river between the villages of Sonora and El Indiviso, about 10 desert kilometers from Rt. 3. I did not know Bo was fishing, because, at the time, I was dealing with problems of my own. But I knew Bo went there often, because this place is sacred to him. The Rio Colorado, after flowing through all the States in the U. S., makes its way into Mexico, and flows then into the Gulf of California. Bo’s people, the Seri, had, and still have, deep ties to both bodies of water, and the Pacific Ocean and Pacific Rim.

  But Bo likes fishing here because he catches fish that are free, Cutts and Steelies, that have been spawned in the Rio Colorado, spent years exploring the Pacific and its various shores, and returned home to their native river to spawn themselves. And unlike Salmon, which spawn only once, and then die, Cutts and Steelies come in from their wanderings to complete two or three spawn cycles. Bo often wondered why the Steelhead could spawn several times, and Salmon only once, even though Steelhead were not a true trout, but Salmon. Even more interesting to him are the Cutthroat‐ Rainbow hybrids. Rainbows really are Steelhead that have not yet gone migratory, so even they are Salmon, so the CuttBows were a really true and unique hybrid of salmon and trout. Bo had even caught a few Char in this river over the years. Char are really Brook Trout that have gone migrant, and the very large Arctic Char is an example. And Bo would be the first to tell you that Char are neither trout or salmon, but another species unique to itself.

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  It is about this time Bo is fishing in this stretch of the Rio Colorado that the members of my Conferencia Vagina think it will be much more comfortable if they remove all of their clothing. They are not wearing much to begin with, but they want total freedom and comfort. It made a lot of sense when we did it, as it was very very hot, midday was coming on, we were probably only a kilometer away from our car, my car. We had left our drinks in the car. The reason escapes me now. And then we had walked just far enough to lose sight of the car. It may even have been in full sight, but the mirages were playing tricks with our eyes. We were all seeing beautiful lakes that we all knew we could jump in to cool off, once we got there, but we never got there. Someone asks where the compass is.

  “It’s in my pocket.” I say.

  “What pocket?” I hear a voice ask. I honestly don’t know who’s.

  “The pocket of my dress.” I answer sharply.

  “And where’s your dress?”

  I feel myself, and feel only skin.

  “I don’t know.” I say. I begin to feel panic. I remember thinking, as I slide totally into the stupidity of my stupor, that the Virgen Maria and Rosaria aren’t even real anyway, but apparitions. How are they seduced by the desert? What is going on here?

  The Sonoran sun beats down on us, and bakes our brains even further, and the dry air sucks the moisture away from us as quickly as our pores manufacture it. Many things begin to seem odd.

  How is it that Rosaria and the Virgen Maria are succumbing to the very same symptoms as the rest of us? Why are all of us getting so tired? Why is Skyler the only one who keeps urging us on? Why are all of us beginning to look a little sunburned and rosey, except for Skyler, who isn’t a Latina? Not only is Skyler not Latina, she is the whitest white woman I have ever seen, and she continues to remain pure white.

  “Sunblock.” I say, not even realizing I have not asked a question.

  “What?” Skyler asks.

  “Did you use sunblock?” I finally get the whole sentence out. I feel drunk. It’s hard to form words. It’s getting hard to form thoughts.

  “No.” Skyler says.

  “Should have…” I say.

  “Never use it.” She says. “My skin won’t tan, but it never gets sunburned either.”

  “Are you some kind of freak?” Tejana asks, with a touch of anger in her voice.

  “We’ll see who’re the freaks.” Skyler says, giving back what she gets. “You’re all so damn smart. But I was once on vacation with the blackest of black Nigerians, and after a few hours in the Brazilian sun, he was suffering from terrible sunburn. His bare scalp began to peel the next day. You will all look like chocolate lobsters soon if we don’t find the car.”

  “Can’t we just sit down and rest a bit first?” Celia asks.

  “No. We can’t.” Skyler says.

  “Can’t we lay down for a bit?” Tejana asks.

  “You know better.” I say to Tejana. But if she only knew how tired I feel.

  “You were going to show us how you survived near death.” Skyler says to me. “Is this… some… joke?”

  I can hear her voice going in and out in my head. I know I am going to pass out soon. “Cactus.” I say.

  “What?”

  “We’ve got to find cactus.”

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  Bo is landing his dozenth Cutt of the day when the wolf