The Witch Narratives: Reincarnation

by Belinda Vasquez Garcia

  “But you, Mother, get to leave,” she said, a pain twisting her stomach, as if stabbed in the gut. “Why not I?”

  “The curse which binds us to this land is written in the Shroud of Veils. It is because of you that I have been given my freedom.”

  “Then, perhaps, you can stay while I go to Albuquerque with Grandma tonight.”

  She smacked her across the mouth. “Insolent girl! If I allow you your freedom, then your head will grow big from such dreams. Then what? You shall run away and leave me here? Stuck forever? So long as I remain more powerful than you, I control the curse. Sex with a man is necessary to begat a child. However, it is Tezcatlipoca who cushions the child in the womb, where it receives its fate, from him. Sometimes, I think the great one has played a joke on me, making you my daughter. You don’t look like me or Long-Hair, or anyone else for that matter. You are much too delicate in both nature and physique. Crying over your friend. Bah!”

  Salia held her hand to her bleeding lip. With her cat Lovey, she acquired the ability to see in the dark, but Mother didn’t let her wander at night with them. I hate Madrid. I can’t stand it. The villagers. Marcelina. I am so alone here. I am not made of stone, like you, she thought.

  Two cats sashayed into the parlor. The cats hissed at Salia, baring their claws.

  “See. Even Gato and Macho show you no respect. What makes you think you will ever earn applause?” Mother hugged and kissed the bigger cat. “Ah. My baby, my Macho.”

  The cat purred, rubbing its head against her. She licked the cat with her tongue.

  Salia stared back with jealousy.

  Mother gripped Macho’s face, dipping in her fingers, popping out his eyes. She folded her lids down, pushing his eyeballs into her empty sockets. The veins on her eyes bulged, pumping blood to the surface, reddening her eyelids.

  Salia pleaded with her, “Take my eyes, Mother. Perhaps then you will see what I see, and our viewpoints will merge.”

  She snapped her fingers, ordering her to fetch her and Grandma a plate.

  Salia set a pair of golden plates down.

  They pulled back their eyelids.

  Mother stared at Salia. The veins on her eyes bulged. Her eyelids were red. “The better to see you with, my Darling,” she hissed.

  The witches removed their eyes, and then popped the cat eyes into their eye sockets. They dropped their eyes in the bowls, containing an elixir to keep their eyes fresh.

  Salia took the bowls from them, Mother’s hazel eyes and Grandma’s brown eyes staring at her as she gently placed the bowls on a table, near the stone fireplace.

  Mother sucked on her cat’s mouth. She opened her mouth and her teeth were sharpened into points. The sides of her face were caved in a bit, since she now wore Macho’s smaller teeth. She spread both her hands, and sharp claws protruded from her fingers. She retracted the borrowed claws of the cat into her fingers and put on black gloves, pulling the satin above her elbows.

  I could kill that cat while she’s gone. Macho has fingernails where his claws should be, she thought.

  “Ah. I am now a protein eating creature of the night,” Mother said, popping a bizcochito into her mouth. She chewed the sweet noisily, with the borrowed teeth of her cat. An Elizabethan collar circled her neck, like a ruffled serving plate. A royal purple velvet cape cascaded from her shoulders and onto the dusty floor. A silver tiara, with turquoise beads, was shoved into her upswept hair, the always present black rose growing from her head.

  She and Grandma were off to Albuquerque to see the new opera, Queen Elizabeth. Mother looked like she was to play the title role.

  Grandma looked rather comical, sipping tea in a delicate cup, her claws wrapped around the porcelain. Her good Indian blanket covered her shoulders, with the strings hanging down the sides, like a red shawl. Her snake bracelet cuffed her wrist. While Mother looked majestic, she looked rustic.

  Grandma tried to daintily wipe the crumbs from her mouth but managed, instead, to scratch herself.

  The witches were a strange pair. What the sophisticated residents of Albuquerque must think of these two, when they marched down the boarded sidewalks, arms entwined, and up the steps of the fancy opera building, looking more like they were dressed up for Halloween than a grand opera.

  Salia imagined the opera house was grand. The seats must be magnificently soft. Glass everywhere. Sparkling jewels. Gentlemen dressed like penguins. Ladies dressed like ladies. With taste. Not like Mother, who always overdid everything in her own grand way.

  And the singing.

  And acting. The opera was a play, wasn’t it? A play set to music?

  She wished she could go to the opera but instead, stood on the porch, hugging one of the beams which kept the roof from falling on her head.

  Mother and Grandma spread their arms, as if they had wings.

  They lifted their chins to the moon, mumbling an incantation, calling on the Lord of the Night to take them up to the sky.

  Their bodies began to change.

  Spines curved into stomachs.

  Heads touched shoes.

  Two circular figures, they rolled around the ground, playfully butting.

  Faster their bodies rubbed against the hardened earth, like flint.

  Bam! They ignited.

  Two fireballs rolled around the ground, setting small fires here and there, which Salia ran around, slapping with a blanket. I wish they were more careful. It’s been so dry.

  The fireballs rolled with breakneck speed until gaining momentum, and with the help of the Night Wind, the balls of fire were lifted slowly upward, and then flashed across the sky like shooting stars headed 42 miles south, to Albuquerque and the opera theatre.

  Salia stared up at the sky and watched the lights until they disappeared.

  With a heartfelt sigh, she went back into the house, slamming the door behind her.

  She rubbed her aching head and stared at Mother’s eyes mocking her from the plate.

  Tezcatlipoca whispered, she’s spying on you. How can you ever break the curse with her always watching you? This is why, every night, she leaves her eyes in the bowl, to keep an eye on you. The baby sitter, but you’re not a baby any longer, my sweet Salia.

  Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. He was right. Why hadn’t she realized this before?

  “Quit watching me, witch!” She flung a bottle of wine at the eyes, missing the plate, the bottle crashing on the carpet, staining it red.

  Mother’s eyes glared at her.

  She’s always hated you. Been jealous of the beauty I gave you. She knows I love you more than her.

  Right. She paced, becoming more agitated. Mother was a possessive bitch. Anything Salia ever loved, she took from her—first, her father and then Marcelina. At least, Salia thought she must have loved her father, but she had been too young when he died to remember him.

  She killed him.

  “I know, but, all daughters love their mothers, don’t they?”

  Even when she kills your father?

  Even when she makes your only friend hate you? The break between you and her is your entire Mother’s fault. She put a fat spell on Marcelina so she would envy your slenderness. She gave Juan a love potion to fall in love with you, instead of her. She unburied the effigy and hung it from the entry to her bedroom.

  Your mother got what she wanted. You’re fatherless, loveless, friendless, and stuck in Madrid, while she’s in Albuquerque at the opera. You should be a singer. You could be great, Tezcatlipoca hissed, if you could break the curse.

  She felt buried alive in a ton of coal-infested mountains. Mother had said she can never leave because, “We must keep the home fires burning.”

  “Well, burn this, Mother,” she yelled. She grabbed the plate, hurling her eyes at the fireplace. The bowl shattered, the eyes slinking down the brick wall like runny eggs. The blue veins spread out like tributaries on a map, trying to avoid the fiery heat.

  Splat!

  The eyes landed on the hot, stone floor
of the fireplace, hissing and crackling from the flames. Sparks flashed, the eyes popping like corn.

  She clenched and unclenched her fists, her face drained of color.

  “Her eyes, what have I done?”

  She dropped to the floor, reaching her hand towards the flames. The heat was unbearable. Sickened by the smell of cooking flesh, she flung her arm across her nose. She stumbled to the kitchen, grabbed a spoon, a bowl, and a towel to protect herself from the fire.

  With shaky hands, she spooned the eyes from the flames, dropping them in the bowl. Her eyes had roasted and scorched to two black coals. She lifted her trembling fingers to her lips, whimpering. The eyes were as hard as walnut shells.

  She rocked in the corner with a blanket thrown over her head, banging her head against the wall. “See, what you make me do, Mother? See?”

  Ironically, Mother would never spy on her again.

  19

  Salia slammed the door and Mother sniffed, recognizing her scent. “Where have you been, insolent girl,” she said, but her voice sounded scared. She stared blankly. No human had eyes such as hers—two whitish-grayish marbles protruding from her sockets like miniature crystal balls, swirling with the color yellow. She was completely, irrevocably blind, and her spirits had never been so low. She spent most of her daylight hours in bed and her evenings rocking in a chair like the pathetic old woman she had become. Most nights she sat with her shoulders slumped, pus running from her cat’s eyes. Since she couldn’t apply her makeup, her face looked like raw flesh. Blindness dealt her magic quite a blow, save what spells and incantations her memory held.

  It was disgusting watching her eat with her hands, using her blindness as an excuse to act childish, banging her silverware against the table. “More potatoes. More! Lazy, hurry up before I starve.” Whereas she wouldn’t eat before, she now stuffed herself like a pig, food her only solace.

  “You’ve had enough to eat,” Salia said, leading her to the living room. “Be careful, Mother, of the shit on the floor. Macho waited patiently for you to let him out so he could use the sand pile, but you are so lazy.”

  Splat. She stepped on cat feces.

  “You should take better care of your cat. Poor thing only has holes where his eyes should be. You, of all people, should have sympathy for the blind.”

  She covered her eyes, moaning, paying no attention to the crap on the bottom of her shoe, feeling with her hands for the rocking chair.

  Salia yanked the drapes closed, resenting her while feeling sorry for her. Adding to her tour of duty was taking care of her daytime needs: preparing her food, fetching her water, steering her elbow to the bathroom, walking her back to her chair.

  “You stink,” Salia said, making a face at her soiled dress that she wore backwards in order to button it. She only had the one loose dress since she was now too fat to wear her other dresses. “You used to be such a neat woman. Perhaps, you descended from the rats in Queen Isabella’s cellar.”

  She hissed at her. She refused to let anyone bathe her or wash her hair. She smelled like a cat rolling around in dirty litter. Even Macho and Gato avoided the living room, where they used to rub against the couch, sharpening their claws. “Don’t think you can be free of me because I cannot see,” Mother said, haughtily raising her nose in the air. The sneer on her face was all that was left of the witch who once claimed to be a direct descendant of Queen Isabella. The woman stumbling about the room looked more like a beggar, clothed in a soiled dress with crumbs in her hair ratted around a dull, Mother-of-Pearl Spanish comb, leaning lopsided on her head. The comb was cracked, where she stepped on it. Half of her French roll hung over one ear.

  Mother’s other senses had sharpened because of her blindness but Salia still snuck up on her, pinching her arm.

  Whimpering, she waved her arms.

  She laughed at her antics.

  Mother growled, trying to slap her face and missing because Salia sprung to the other side of the room.

  Mother banged her knee against the table, cursing. “How am I to find my way when you present such obstacles?”

  She placed her shoe on her rump, pushing gently until her nose touched the floor.

  “You’re cruel.”

  “And who taught me? Never in my life did a kind word for me pass your lips. You never stroked my cheek with tenderness. The Bible speaks the truth--you reap what you sow.”

  “Don’t you dare bring that pompous book into my house!”

  “I hid God’s book from you all these years.”

  She stumbled on the leg of a rocking chair, feeling for the seat and plopping down. “I’ve taught you well but do not underestimate me. I can still crack you in half like an egg,” she said, snapping her hands apart as if she was smashing her. “Beware, my Darling, did I ever tell you of my own training, where I was forced to eat the brain of the wisest man? He was…”

  “Really, Mother? You are so boring with your endless bragging,” she drawled. “If you are so wise, then why are you the one blind?”

  The creaking of her rocking chair got on Salia’s nerves. It grew harder each day to watch her so beaten, like a caged, wounded animal. Her confused feelings about Mother disturbed her. Fighting against her soft nature was making her ill, tying her stomach in knots, making her head ache.

  Mother hummed a funeral song with a serene smile on her face, frazzling her even more.

  She tiptoed to the stairs, made a big noise with her boots just to scare her, and ran up the stairs, startling the eyeless Macho who raised his fur, hissing. She grabbed the cat by the neck, rubbing his fur on her to disguise her scent. She threw the screeching cat across the room, and tiptoed back to the living room, circling her with the stealth of a cat.

  “Macho, come here, sweetling,” Mother said, snapping her fingers at nothing.

  “It’s just your darling daughter. Look at me when I talk to you. Don’t be so rude. You are not so very ugly with Macho’s eyes. In fact, it is quite an improvement.”

  She tilted her head at Salia. “I don’t know who you are, Girl.”

  “Let me refresh your memory, Old Woman,” Salia spat.

  She showed her teeth, raising her hand into a claw.

  She stifled her laughter at the plate and her eyes, hard as rocks. Mother saved her eyes in hope that she might someday be able to restore her sight. Beside the plate were empty bottles, books of spells, hemp seeds, herbs, etc., but none of the potions or magic Grandma tried had worked. What sweet victory!

  Salia threw a pencil to the right and Mother squinted in that direction, struggling to see, the crystals in her eyes forming the narrowest of black lines fading in and out, but to no avail, even with the curtains drawn. Her eyes may have once served her cat well, but the optical nerves of her human sockets were not compatible with cat eyes for long-term use. She sat arrow straight in the chair, humming to herself with a serene smile on her face that shattered Salia’s nerves.

  She could stand it no more. Salia slammed the back door, smiling at her fearful shriek. Mother was now powerless to stop her. “At sunrise I shall leave. I have put off my freedom too long,” she mumbled. “Tomorrow, I shall begin my travels and put Madrid far behind me.”

  Yes, Tezcatlipoca whispered. Abandon her. Leave the hag to fend for herself, like a good daughter.

  “I’m doing nothing that has not been done since the dawn of time. I am seventeen. It is time to ditch the nest and venture out on my own.”

  Even wild animals desert the parent, when it is time, he hissed, but, aren’t you forgetting something?

  He was right. There was something she must take with her, besides Lovey. She coveted an object since childhood, a thing she would need to become the greatest opera singer who ever lived, an element longing to be with her.

  She crouched like a cat, and then jumped straight up to the second floor. She silently pulled herself up on the ledge and crept on the roof over to the chimney in Grandma’s bedroom.

  She shimmied down the chimney.r />
  The sun was just beginning to rise when Salia dragged her bag from beneath her bed. She traveled light. She had her health and her beauty, which was all a young lady needed to succeed. The great theatres of Europe awaited her.

  She crept down the stairs, searching for Lovey. Perhaps her cat was outside.

  She quietly opened the door, shivering from the windy day.

  The chair on the porch moved, Mother rocking. This was the first time she had been outside since going blind.

  A gust of wind shoved Salia against the wall and Mother’s head fell forward.

  Mother lay there, unmoving. Her swollen tongue was purple, hanging from her mouth with teeth bites visible beneath flecks of blood beginning to dry. The black rose on her head had shriveled and died. A bottle of poison rolled around the porch floor. On her lap lay Lovey, also, poisoned.

  She fell to her knees, tearing at her hair, dragging her fingernails across her face. Feelings rushed at her, overwhelming her. She squeezed her arms to her sides, trying to stop the pain crushing her heart, the place where Salia thought she couldn’t hurt any more. Such violent pain. Even as a child she never felt such hurt. Even when Mother beat her, burned her, or cut her, she never felt as damaged as now.

  She was a child again, yearning for Mother’s love and approval, worshiping the powerful woman she could never live up to, but trying so hard. So dependent on her, almost as if she was an extension of herself. She had loved Felicita, no matter how mean she had been.

  “Mother,” she cried, reaching out her hands.

  Her lifeless cat eyes bulged from her sockets, staring straight at Salia. She seemed to say, “See, my Darling, it is I who have won. It is you who are stuck in Madrid, entrapped by the Esperanza curse. And I have broken your heart by killing your beloved cat.”

  She hugged herself tighter, rocking. What pained her most was that she killed herself to prevent Salia from being happy.

  She rose to her feet on shaky legs and picked up Lovey, holding the little corpse in her arms and sobbing.