Curva Peligrosa

by MacKenzie, Lily Iona;

  Curva’s feet also got caught up in the sounds. She bobbed and whirled among the bones and wove in and out of the Pachecos and their neighbors, the music whirring into a frenzy of movement that gradually came to a stop when Curva’s fingers tired and she quit playing. The Pachecos roamed the area until Ana Cristina beckoned them to follow her back home.

  But for Curva, the magical effect lasted beyond the dying musical notes. Tropical plants and trees fluttered under a passing breeze at the edge of a gigantic inland sea that once existed there. Strange creatures littered the landscape, silhouetted against the cloudless moonlit sky. She saw the first people sitting around campfires, huddled together for warmth. The smoke burned her nostrils, and she could smell charred flesh from animals they were roasting. So immersed in her vision of what this area had once been like, Curva didn’t notice everyone leaving.

  She shivered, suddenly aware of being cold. The skeleton parts had settled back into the earth, and seeing them again so inert made her feel even colder. And lonely. She needed contact with the living and climbed on her caballo, heading towards Henry’s place. Once there, she slipped into his bed, seeking the one bone that gave her so much pleasure.

  Weed

  The Weedites never blamed Curva for the tornado, at least not to her face. The truth is, she overwhelmed her neighbors, at times a tornado herself, whirling through their midst. But, periodically, she also had a peculiar effect on time that gave them pause. Some days, when Curva showed up, time seemed to stop. The minute hands on clocks froze. Even the sand in their hourglasses didn’t move. It made them wonder what other powers she possessed. They’d seen her perform at sharpshooters’ competitions, and her skill with guns seemed extraordinary. Curva could pluck a target out of the air faster than they could track it, once hitting five cans in five rapid-fire hits. Those who witnessed it just shook their heads in astonishment.

  When she first had arrived in the area, they’d also seen her breaking horses at the Calgary Stampede and later at smaller, local rodeos. She flew through the air on the back of a bucking bronco, its head lowered, spine arched, back legs thrown out behind. Gripping the rope, one hand held high, she leaned into its ear, crooning something. Before long, the horse settled down and stopped vaulting, allowing Curva to ride it around the ring. She smiled and waved, the crowd cheering.

  The townspeople respected her skills, but they did think it strange that during the tornado—except for the outhouse being transplanted—her other buildings, including the greenhouse, remained intact. Yet so much else in the area lay in ruins. Wherever they gathered, in Nathan Smart’s General Store or on the street, they muttered to each other in low tones, casting glances in the direction of her place.

  It seemed clear they’d experienced a sign the day the tornado ripped through Weed. Not only had they been punished for their transgressions, and were now free to commit more, but the resurrected community grew up around Curva’s throne—the outhouse. The structure later received an official gold plaque, commemorating the great tornado, the first of such intensity that had occurred in their generation.

  Until Curva appeared, the Weedites’ lives had been relatively uneventful, except when they were hit by a particularly severe winter, attacked by locusts, or forced to bury a family member or neighbor. But even before the tornado had struck, she had started shaking things up.

  Not long after arriving—and prior to the doctor vamoosing—Curva appeared at a Saturday night barn dance on his arm. They made a dashing couple, he in his store-bought grey suit, black string tie, burgundy shirt, and black Stetson, she in a patchwork skirt that swirled around her long legs and a white peasant blouse. Deeply scooped at the neck, it revealed the ‘V’ between her breasts, the cleavage attracting many eyes. The couple swooped into the room, bowing and nodding, patting shoulders and shaking hands. Curva said over and over, Buenas noches. No one understood the words, but it didn’t matter. They got the meaning.

  Taller than her partner by at least six inches, Curva held herself like a queen, smiling and flashing her gold tooth at everyone. She and the doctor joined in the square dances, do-sí-doing with the others, except they changed the rules of the game: instead of two dancers approaching each other, circling back to back, and then returning to their original positions, Curva and the doctor grabbed different partners and whirled them around, mixing up the whole square, whooping and clapping. The move caught on, until the whole room was a chaotic mass of bodies, zipping in and out, people landing in squares other than their own—and with new partners.

  Then Curva hollered vayamos! and led them in a torrid tango. She and the doctor demonstrated the moves, their pelvises pressed together, the two of them shifting and slithering across the floor. The women giggled nervously, trying to imitate Curva’s movements. She also showed them the rumba, snapping her fingers in the air and clapping her hands together to accentuate the rhythms, her hips rotating suggestively as she slowly revolved. Everyone formed a line behind her, trying to imitate her hip motion, though the movements eluded them. Her joints seemed elastic, her body swaying, her feet tapping out the bouncy beats.

  Homemade beer and Curva’s dandelion wine fueled them. If a few ended up in the hayloft, no one paid much notice. By Sunday, most forgot whose man or woman they had wandered off with. There had been a lot of hot breathing and plenty of wet kisses passed around behind the barn and elsewhere.

  Luckily, their memories were as short as the winters are long. The dandelion wine they imbibed turned everything into a nice blur and induced a pleasant forgetfulness of their sexual escapades. When the next Saturday rolled around, they once again tried to follow Curva’s lead, incorporating these new moves, the square dances taking on a Latin beat.

  The weekly gathering resembled a kind of Carnivale without Lent at the end. Everything was up for grabs. Sex was doing what comes naturally. The long, bitter winters compelled them to find some entertainment, and it wasn’t ducking for apples.

  Curva on the Old North Trail

  Hola, mi estimado Xavier,

  I haven’t written you for a long while because I’ve been too busy. I know, I know, it shouldn’t be an excuse. But it’s hard work traveling through all kinds of weather. Setting up camp each night and packing up in the morning. At the end of the day, I’m too tired to do anything but feed the animals and myself—and sleep.

  Can you believe it’s been a couple of years since I started out? I can’t. I ended up in Tlaxiaco after I left Honduras and found some charreadas nearby to compete in.

  You’re thinking only men can be charros. It’s true. So I pretend I’m you. Even use your name. Wear your chaps and boots (you used to laugh because my feet were as big as yours). I also use padding to hide my breasts and protect myself when I get bucked off. Then I tie back my long hair the way you did, and I don’t wash for a few days. That makes my skin rougher looking. Of course, my sombrero partly hides my face. Also, I’m taller than some of the men. The height makes a difference. And while I’m a charro, I feel closer to you. I can fool myself that you still live on in me. Then I don’t feel so guilty.

  I learned a lot from you when we were younger about becoming a charro. That was your dream. Remember? I imitated the rope tricks you did as well as the bull riding and bronco busting and steer roping. We practiced for hours on any stray animals we found in the fields. The rancheros were always chasing us away.

  You never admitted this but I was as good as you were—better even. We fought about it all the time. You stuck your stinking sock in my mouth once to stop me from saying I was best. It didn’t work. I spit it out and bit your hand until it bled. Then I made a bandera grande and wrote my name on it in cartas grandes—CURVA PELIGROSA ES EL MEJOR CHARRO—and hung it over our front door so everyone could see it.

  You were so mad you didn’t talk to me for weeks.

  I hated the way other girls spent all their time worrying about their hair and their cl
othes and their dolls. I didn’t want to grow up and be one of those dainty women in frilly dresses that only think about such things. I guess I shouldn’t have worried. My big body would never let me be a delicate señora.

  I didn’t feel like el major charro the first day I competed in a real charreada. I was so afraid they’d find out I was a woman and beat me up that I didn’t sleep for a week. I also was afraid I couldn’t stay on the broncos or bulls.

  But I needed dinero and it was the only way for me to make some fast. It isn’t easy because I’m trying to hide that I’m a woman and win some money. I act like a deaf mute so I don’t have to talk to anyone. It works.

  And the shot of tequila the bosses gave everyone before we competed helped a lot. It gave me a big heart and mucho valor. You would have been proud of me. I didn’t win the big prizes, but I did get a little dinero and tried out some tricks I’ve been thinking about. Los hombres jump on the animals and ride the hell out of them. They holler and bounce around and think they’re in control.

  I do something different. I pretend the animals are part of me, and I feel that more when I’m on the trail. I even practice this at night in my mind before I go to sleep and sometimes dream about it. I can feel our hearts pounding together and the blood surging through our veins. I smell their fear too. They’re more frightened than I am. They just want us off their backs as fast as possible. I don’t blame them. But it’s a thrill to ride something so wild.

  And it’s a thrill to be in an arena with people screaming and hoping you’ll get thrown or that an animal will gore you. But I get excited because I don’t do the expected and break a leg or arm. I don’t give the crowd what it wants: blood. Everyone cheers anyway. It’s loca.

  My secret? I don’t try and overpower the horses or bulls. I think they feel the difference even before I land on them in the chute. And it’s because of what I’ve learned on the trail from watching all the critters. I swear, Xavier, those animals I ride listen to me and do what I want. I sing to them some of the songs we sang together as kids. They love the cockroach one and seem willing to let me ride them forever. It’s the truth! I rarely get bucked off anymore, and now I walk away with some big prize money. Everyone thinks it’s because I’m a deaf mute and the animals take pity on me.

  Nobody gives me a second look except for the señoritas. Don’t laugh! They whistle and sometimes throw flowers at me in the ring. Muy extraño to have women after me because they think I’m un hombre. It doesn’t surprise me. Most people want to believe what they see. Don Quixote has taught me that.

  I’ve had some time to read about him again. He does so many loca things that make me laugh. I told you he thought windmills were an army of giants. Maybe he just sees what he wants to but is determined to make life fun. Who knows? Or he could be right and the windmills are giants and a sorcerer changed them into windmills to mix him up.

  His book makes me look closely at what’s around me, Xavier. I think that’s what the voice I mentioned in an earlier letter was trying to show me. Everything can be seen in so many ways. It’s changed my feelings about being on the trail. At first I thought I would be bored, but there is so much to see and do every day that I get restless when I’m in a town for long. Life seems too predictable there.

  Here, I never tire of watching the wild things around me as we travel north. There are so many that I can’t even name all of them. I get glimpses from time to time of osprey, eagles, hawks, snakes, coyotes, rodents, butterflies, frogs, lizards, chipmunks, skunks. For some reason most trust me. Maybe it’s because I become like them on the trail. I pee and shit in the open. I swim naked in the streams. I sniff the air for scents that alert me to visitors approaching.

  It’s extraordinario to watch all these bestia mate and give birth and hunt for food. It’s like the beginning of creation to be here where everything is wild and just trying to survive. Like me. I don’t feel so separate from them. We are all after the same thing. Compatriotas.

  I try to see things the way they might. When I look at the full moon, it’s both the moon and a bowl of cream or a map. It changes nightly, always wearing a new garment. It’s hard sometimes to say what is real and what isn’t. As Don Quixote knows, our eyes play tricks, and so do our other senses. They can’t always be trusted.

  Sometimes I want Don Quixote’s sidekick Sancho to vayase because he’s dull and tries to make his master dull. He wants the ordinario just to be ordinario. No magic. No enchantment. I don’t want Don Quixote to stop having his dreams and following them. I don’t want to stop having dreams either. One is of seeing you again. The other is to have my own place someday where I can grow things like our madre did and continue to explore what happens to us after we die. Or maybe help us not to die.

  You must laugh when you read that last sentence. Me trying to find ways to prevent us from dying after what happened to you. But it isn’t just the dying that interests me. It’s all the changes animals and plants go through. Humans and frogs and so many other creatures start life as eggs. Maggots feed on dead flesh and later become flies. Girls become women. Boys turn into men. So many transformations happening all the time in nature!

  Tonight I made a fire in a pit near a creek. Indians must have built it long ago. It waits for travelers like me to give it life again. Many big rocks planted in a circle and burned black on the inside. I scratched my name onto a couple of them and yours too. I want new travelers to know I was here with my brother.

  Yours isn’t the only spirit I feel nearby. I can see babies crying. Women at the creek washing clothes. That’s what I did earlier today and hung them to dry on the bushes and tree branches. Men passing around a big pipe. I’ll bet they sometimes smoked the same thing I do. I’ve seen it growing wild next to the trail in places. They probably used it to make clothes too.

  I don’t do that.

  I’m going to stay where I am now for a couple of days. Smoke a little and read Don Quixote and dream.

  You’ll laugh and say you’re imagining things, Curva, but I found a leather glove flattened on the road. The index finger pointed towards me. The thumb was turned inward. It seemed to be a sign I was on the right track and I would find other signs when I needed them. And I have.

  I’m becoming una mujer dura. I realize I can live in many worlds. I’m just afraid you might not like the new Curva. She’s becoming very different from the girl you once knew.

  Curva and Xavier

  In the months since the tornado had struck Weed, the town had bustled with activity—trucks carrying lumber roared through the streets, and workers poured new concrete foundations. All day long, tapping hammers and rasping saws had created a symphony of construction sounds as residents slowly rebuilt the damaged structures.

  Though tornadoes occurred rarely on the prairies, windstorms visited frequently.

  Curva woke one morning in her place outside of town after another dust storm had blown through, chewing grit. Sweeping or cleaning didn’t do much good. Another gust followed, and two minutes later a new layer of dirt covered everything. She sat down at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and tried to outline a map in the fine powder of where she’d started in Mexico and how far she’d come. But the lines kept shifting with each incoming draft. The windows were open, and a breeze wiped out whole areas at once.

  Howling coyotes roamed the edge of her property, offering a choral accompaniment and encouragement. The sound reminded Curva of nighttime on the trail. Nothing came between her and all that darkness. She had worn it like a blanket, wrapping it around herself and staring at the stars and constellations while playing Xavier’s guitar and singing.

  She had gone through all of the songs she could remember her mother crooning. Then she played and sang melodies she’d heard on the radio as a child, making up words she couldn’t remember. The sound reverberated in the trees, silencing the wolves and other creatures, drawing the wildlife into the circle of
her voice. With the night and the stars as her audience, she had belted out each number, the tunes resonating in her head and chest.

  Music had been her salvation, her connection to the living and the dead, especially Xavier. He had seemed most alive to her then, and she had hoped it soothed his spirit and made him less upset with her. Music also helped her to feel again after the numbness that had set in following his funeral, the melodies gradually opening up places in her body that had shut down. Witnessing Xavier’s remains being placed in the ground had frozen her in time. She’d been raised to believe the dead weren’t really dead but hovered nearby, their souls returning each year for the celebration of Día de Muertos. Yet she had seen nothing to celebrate. The person closest to her on this earth was gone, his bones decaying underground.

  On the night Curva and Xavier were born, they had fought to stay in their mother’s womb, not ready to face life in Tiquicheo, Mexico. It wasn’t the town they resisted. It was leaving the womb’s close quarters and the warm fluid that embraced them. They also liked being near their mother’s heart. Its rhythmic beat echoed throughout their cozy home. But space became more precious in their mother’s belly, and they eventually fought each other for every millimeter. They also fought their madre when she began having labor pains. They fought the midwife who tried to deliver them. In the end, Curva and Xavier couldn’t stop their own birth and burst forth in the middle of the night, holding hands, each refusing to be first or last. While growing up, they did everything together, including bathing, not sure where one of them ended and the other began.

  When Curva and Xavier turned fourteen, their parents died. Curva didn’t mind her padre Manuel leaving this life. A winemaker but not a swimmer, one day Manuel fell into a vat of his favorite vino and drowned. Curva went through the motions of mourning him. She wore ruffled black dresses that reached her slender ankles and lit candles for his departed soul, but, secretly, she felt overjoyed. It was such a relief to be free of him.