It’s only now when they murmur bruja, nagual, behind my back, just as they hurled those words at my mother, that I realize how alike my mother and I are. How words can hold their own magic. How a word can charm, and how a word can kill. This I’ve understood.
Mujeriego. I dislike the word. Why not hombreriega? Why not? The word loses its luster. Hombreriega. Is that what I am? My mother? But in the mouth of men, the word is flint-edged and heavy, makes a drum of the body, something to maim and bruise, and sometimes kill.
What is it I am to you? Sometime wife? Lover? Whore? Which? To be one is not so terrible as being all.
I’ve needed to hear it from you. To verify what I’ve always thought I knew. You’ll say I’ve grown crazy from living on dried grass and corn silk. But I swear I’ve never seen more clearly than these days.
Ay, Miliano, don’t you see? The wars begin here, in our hearts and in our beds. You have a daughter. How do you want her treated? Like you treated me?
All I’ve wanted was words, that magic to soothe me a little, what you could not give me.
The months I disappeared, I don’t think you understood my reasons. I assumed I made no difference to you. Only Nicolás mattered. And that’s when you took him from me.
When Nicolás lost his last milk tooth, you sent for him, left him in your sister’s care. He’s lived like deer in the mountains, sometimes following you, sometimes meeting you ahead of your campaigns, always within reach. I know. I let him go. I agreed, yes, because a boy should be with his father, I said. But the truth is I wanted a part of me always hovering near you. How hard it must be for you to keep letting Nicolás go. And yet, he is always yours. Always.
When the federales captured Nicolás and took him to Tepaltzingo, you arrived with him asleep in your arms after your brother and Chico Franco rescued him. If anything happens to this child, you said, if anything … and started to cry. I didn’t say anything, Miliano, but you can’t imagine how in that instant, I wanted to be small and fit inside your heart, I wanted to belong to you like the boy, and know you loved me.
If I am a witch, then so be it, I said. And I took to eating black things—huitlacoche the corn mushroom, coffee, dark chiles, the bruised part of fruit, the darkest, blackest things to make me hard and strong.
You rarely talk. Your voice, Miliano, thin and light as a woman’s, almost delicate. Your way of talking is sudden, quick, like water leaping. And yet I know what that voice of yours is capable of.
I remember after the massacre of Tlatizapán, 286 men and women and children slaughtered by the Carrancistas. Your thin figure, haggard and drawn, your face small and dark under your wide sombrero. I remember even your horse looked half-starved and wild that dusty, hot June day.
It was as if misery laughed at us. Even the sky was sad, the light leaden and dull, the air sticky and everything covered with flies. Women filled the streets searching among the corpses for their dead.
Everyone was tired, exhausted from running from the Carrancistas. The government had chased us almost as far as Jojutla. But you spoke in mexicano, you spoke to us in our language, with your heart in your hand, Miliano, which is why we listened to you. The people were tired, but they listened. Tired of surviving, of living, of enduring. Many were deserting and going back to their villages. If you don’t want to fight anymore, you said, we’ll all go to the devil. What do you mean you are tired? When you elected me, I said I would represent you if you backed me. But now you must back me, I’ve kept my word. You wanted a man who wore pants, and I’ve been that man. And now, if you don’t mean to fight, well then, there’s nothing I can do.
We were filthy, exhausted, hungry, but we followed you.
Under the little avocado tree behind my father’s house is where you first kissed me. A crooked kiss, all wrong, on the side of the mouth. You belong to me now, you said, and I did.
The way you rode in the morning of the San Lázaro fair on a pretty horse as dark as your eyes. The sky was sorrel-colored, remember? Everything swelled and smelled of rain. A cool shadow fell across the village. You were dressed all in black as is your custom. A graceful, elegant man, thin and tall.
You wore a short black linen charro jacket, black trousers of cashmere adorned with silver buttons, and a lavender shirt knotted at the collar with a blue silk neckerchief. Your sombrero had a horsehair braid and tassel and a border of carnations embroidered along the wide brim in gold and silver threads. You wore the sombrero set forward—not at the back of the head as others do—so it would shade those eyes of yours, those eyes that watched and waited. Even then I knew it was an animal to match mine.
Suppose my father won’t let me?
We’ll run off, he can’t be angry for always.
Wait until the end of the harvest.
You pulled me toward you under the little avocado tree and kissed me. A kiss tasting of warm beer and whiskers. You belong to me now.
It was during the plum season we met. I saw you at the country fair at San Lázaro. I wore my braids up away from the neck with bright ribbons. My hair freshly washed and combed with oil prepared with the ground bone of the mamey. And the neckline of my huipil, a white one, I remember, showed off my neck and collarbones.
You were riding a fine horse, silver-saddled with a fringe of red and black silk tassels, and your hands, beautiful hands, long and sensitive, rested lightly on the reins. I was afraid of you at first, but I didn’t show it. How pretty you made your horse prance.
You circled when I tried to cross the zócalo, I remember. I pretended not to see you until you rode your horse in my path, and I tried to dodge one way, then the other, like a calf in a jaripeo. I could hear the laughter of your friends from under the shadows of the arcades. And when it was clear there was no avoiding you, I looked up at you and said, With your permission. You did not insist, you touched the brim of your hat, and let me go, and I heard your friend Francisco Franco, the one I would later know as Chico, say, Small, but bigger than you, Miliano.
So is it yes? I didn’t know what to say, I was still so little, just laughed, and you kissed me like that, on my teeth.
Yes? and pressed me against the avocado tree. No, is it? And I said yes, then I said no, and yes, your kisses arriving in between.
Love? We don’t say that word. For you it has to do with stroking with your eyes what catches your fancy, then lassoing and harnessing and corraling. Yanking home what is easy to take.
But not for me. Not from the start. You were handsome, yes, but I didn’t like handsome men, thinking they could have whomever they wanted. I wanted to be, then, the one you could not have. I didn’t lower my eyes like the other girls when I felt you looking at me.
I’ll set up a house for us. We can live together, and later we’ll see.
But suppose one day you leave me.
Never.
Wait at least until the end of the harvest.
I remember how your skin burned to the touch. How you smelled of lemongrass and smoke. I balanced that thin boy’s body of yours on mine.
Something undid itself—gently, like a braid of hair unraveling. And I said, Ay, mi chulito, mi chulito, mi chulito, over and over.
Mornings and nights I think your scent is still in the blankets, wake remembering you are tangled somewhere between the sleeping and the waking. The scent of your skin, the mole above the broom of your thick mustache, how you fit in my hands.
Would it be right to tell you, each night you sleep here, after your cognac and cigar, when I’m certain you are finally sleeping, I sniff your skin. Your fingers sweet with the scent of tobacco. The fluted collarbones, the purple knot of the nipple, the deep, plum color of your sex, the thin legs and long, thin feet.
I examine at my leisure your black trousers with the silver buttons, the lovely shirt, the embroidered sombrero, the fine braid stitching on the border of your charro jacket, admire the workmanship, the spurs, leggings, the handsome black boots.
And when you are gone, I re-create you fro
m memory. Rub warmth into your fingertips. Take that dimpled chin of yours between my teeth. All the parts are there except your belly. I want to rub my face in its color, say no, no, no. Ay. Feel its warmth from my left cheek to the right. Run my tongue from the hollow in your throat, between the smooth stones of your chest, across the trail of down below the navel, lose myself in the dark scent of your sex. To look at you as you sleep, the color of your skin. How in the half-light of moon you cast your own light, as if you are a man made of amber.
Are you my general? Or only my Milianito? I think, I don’t know what you say, you don’t belong to me nor to that woman from Villa de Ayala. You don’t belong to anyone, no? Except the land. La madre tierra que nos mantiene y cuida. Every one of us.
I rise high and higher, the house shutting itself like an eye. I fly farther than I’ve ever flown before, farther than the clouds, farther than our Lord Sun, husband of the moon. Till all at once I look beneath me and see our lives, clear and still, far away and near.
And I see our future and our past, Miliano, one single thread already lived and nothing to be done about it. And I see the face of the man who will betray you. The place and the hour. The gift of a horse the color of gold dust. A breakfast of warm beer swirling in your belly. The hacienda gates opening. The pretty bugles doing the honors. TirriLEE tirREE. Bullets like a sudden shower of stones. And in that instant, a feeling of relief almost. And loneliness, just like that other loneliness of being born.
And I see my clean huipil and my silk Sunday shawl. My rosary placed between my hands and a palm cross that has been blessed. Eight days people arriving to pray. And on the ninth day, the cross of lime and sand raised, and my name called out—Inés Alfaro. The twisted neck of a rooster. Pork tamales wrapped in corn leaves. The masqueraders dancing, the men dressed as women, the women as men. Violins, guitars, one loud drum.
And I see other faces and other lives. My mother in a field of cempoaxúchitl flowers with a man who is not my father. Her rebozo de bolita spread beneath them. The smell of crushed grass and garlic. How, at a signal from her lover, the others descend. The clouds scurrying away. A machete-sharp cane stake greased with lard and driven into the earth. How the men gather my mother like a bundle of corn. Her sharp cry against the infinity of sky when the cane stake pierces her. How each waiting his turn grunts words like hail that splits open the skin, just as before they’d whispered words of love.
The star of her sex open to the sky. Clouds moving soundlessly, and the sky changing colors. Hours. Eyes still fixed on the clouds the morning they find her—braids undone, a man’s sombrero tipped on her head, a cigar in her mouth, as if to say, this is what we do to women who try to act like men.
The small black bundle that is my mother delivered to my father’s door. My father without a “who” or “how.” He knows as well as everyone.
How the sky let go a storm of stones. The corn harvest ruined. And how we move from Tetelcingo to my Tía Chucha’s in Cuautla.
And I see our children. Malenita with her twins, who will never marry, two brave solteronas living out their lives selling herbs in La Merced in Mexico City.
And our Nicolás, a grown man, the grief and shame Nicolás will bring to the Zapata name when he kicks up a fuss about the parcel of land the government gives him, how it isn’t enough, how it’s never enough, how the son of a great man should not live like a peasant. The older Anenecuilcans shaking their heads when he sells the Zapata name to the PRI campaign.
And I see the ancient land titles the smoky morning they are drawn up in Náhuatl and recorded on tree-bark paper—conceded to our pueblo the 25th of September of 1607 by the Viceroy of New Spain—the land grants that prove the land has always been our land.
And I see that dappled afternoon in Anenecuilco when the government has begun to look for you. And I see you unearth the strong box buried under the main altar of the village church, and hand it to Chico Franco—If you lose this, I’ll have you dangling from the tallest tree, compadre. Not before they fill me with bullets, Chico said and laughed.
And the evening, already as an old man, in the Canyon of the Wolves, Chico Franco running and running, old wolf, old cunning, the government men Nicolás sent shouting behind him, his sons Vírulo and Julián, young, crumpled on the cool courtyard tiles like bougainvillea blossoms, and how useless it all is, because the deeds are buried under the floorboards of a pulquería named La Providencia, and no one knowing where they are after the bullets pierce Chico’s body. Nothing better or worse than before, and nothing the same or different.
And I see rivers of stars and the wide sea with its sad voice, and emerald fish fluttering on the sea bottom, glad to be themselves. And bell towers and blue forests, and a store window filled with hats. A burnt foot like the inside of a plum. A lice comb with two nits. The lace hem of a woman’s dress. The violet smoke from a cigarette. A boy urinating into a tin. The milky eyes of a blind man. The chipped finger of a San Isidro statue. The tawny bellies of dark women giving life.
And more lives and more blood, those being born as well as those dying, the ones who ask questions and the ones who keep quiet, the days of grief and all the flower colors of joy.
Ay papacito, cielito de mi corazón, now the burros are complaining. The rooster beginning his cries. Morning already? Wait, I want to remember everything before you leave me.
How you looked at me in the San Lázaro plaza. How you kissed me under my father’s avocado tree. Nights you loved me with a pleasure close to sobbing, how I stilled the trembling in your chest and held you, held you. Miliano, Milianito.
My sky, my life, my eyes. Let me look at you. Before you open those eyes of yours. The days to come, the days gone by. Before we go back to what we’ll always be.
Anguiano Religious Articles
Rosaries Statues Medals
Incense Candles Talismans
Perfumes Oils Herbs
You know that religious store on Soledad across from Sanitary Tortillas? Next to El Divorcio Lounge. Don’t go in there. The man who owns it is a crab ass. I’m not the only one who says it. He’s famous for being a crab ass.
I know all about him, but I stopped in anyway. Because I needed a Virgen de Guadalupe and the Preciado sisters on South Laredo didn’t have nothing that didn’t look as if someone made it with their feet.
A statue is what I was thinking, or maybe those pretty 3-D pictures, the ones made from strips of cardboard that you look at sideways and you see the Santo Niño de Atocha, and you look at it straight and it’s La Virgen, and you look at it from the other side and it’s Saint Lucy with her eyes on a plate or maybe San Martín Caballero cutting his Roman cape in half with a sword and giving it to a beggar, only I want to know how come he didn’t give that beggar all of his cape if he’s so saintly, right?
Well, that’s what I was looking for. One of those framed pictures with a silver strip of aluminum foil on the bottom and top, the wooden frame painted a happy pink or turquoise. You can buy them cheaper on the other side, but I didn’t have time to go to Nuevo Laredo ’cause I only found out about Tencha Tuesday. They put her right in Santa Rosa Hospital. I had to take a half-day off work and the bus, well, what was I going to do? It’s either Anguiano Religious Articles or Sisters Preciado Botánica.
Then after I walk all the way from Santa Rosa in the heat, guess what? Anguiano’s is closed even though I could see him sitting in there in the dark. I’m knocking and knocking, knocking and knocking on the glass with a quarter. Know what he does before unlocking? Looks me up and down like if I’m one of those ladies from the Cactus Hotel or the Court House Pawnshop or the Western Wear come to rob him.
I was thinking about those framed holy pictures with glitter in the window. But then I saw some Virgen de Guadalupe statues with real hair eyelashes. Well, not real hair, but some stiff black stuff like brushes, only I didn’t like how La Virgen looked with furry eyelashes—bien mean, like los amores de la calle. That’s not right.
I looked
at all the Virgen de Guadalupes he had. The statues, the framed pictures, the holy cards, and candles. Because I only got $10. And by then, there was other people had come in. But you know what he says to me—you won’t believe it—he says, I can see you’re not going to buy anything. Loud and in Spanish. I can see you’re not going to buy anything.
Oh, but I am, I says, I just need a little more time to think.
Well, if it’s thinking you want, you just go across the street to the church to think—you’re just wasting my time and yours thinking here.
Honest to God. Real ugly is how he talked to me. Well, go across the street to San Fernando if you want to think—you’re just wasting my time and yours thinking here.
I should’ve told him, You go to hell. But what for? He’s already headed there.
Little Miracles,
Kept Promises
Exvoto Donated as Promised
On the 20th of December of 1988 we suffered a terrible disaster on the road to Corpus Christi. The bus we were riding skidded and overturned near Robstown and a lady and her little girl were killed. Thanks to La Virgen de Guadalupe we are alive, all of us miraculously unharmed, and with no visible scars, except we are afraid to ride buses. We dedicate this retablo to La Virgencita with our affection and gratitude and our everlasting faith.
Familia Arteaga
Alice, Texas
G.R. (Gracias Recibido/Thanks Given)
Blessed Santo Niño de Atocha,
Thank you for helping us when Chapa’s truck got stolen. We didn’t know how we was going to make it. He needs it to get to work, and this job, well, he’s been on probation since we got him to quit drinking. Raquel and the kids are hardly ever afraid of him anymore, and we are proud parents. We don’t know how we can repay you for everything you have done for our family. We will light a candle to you every Sunday and never forget you.
Woman Hollering Creek: And Other Stories Page 10