The Witch Narratives: Reincarnation (11 page)

“Come,” Salia said, holding out her hands to her.

It was then that the fate of Señor Baca was sealed on a sunny day with birds singing in the trees.

10

W
hen they got to Marcelina’s house, Salia shoved her. “Do as I instructed you. Don’t be afraid. If he is there and bothers you, scream and I will run to help you. Meanwhile, I will hide here in the shed.”

Marcelina cringed at the squeaking hinges of the front door. She tiptoed into the house and breathed a sigh of relief that Mama was singing in the kitchen. She made her way to the bathroom and with a yucky face, removed a wad of greasy hairs from her stepfather’s hairbrush. His hair grew in abundance on the bristles because he was going bald in the center of his head and had a halo-shaped dome. “I am an angel,” he often told her.

A dark angel
, she thought.

Then what is Salia
, a voice whispered in her ear.

My good friend
.

You mean fiend
.

If she is fiendish, it is because she means to protect me. Now shut up and let me get on with my work before he comes home. I am risking much
.

Much is at stake
.

The voice was male and recently began speaking to her, mostly in her head. They often argued back and forth.

She shoved her stepfather’s hairs in her skirt pocket, then walked into the big bedroom and rifled through his closet.
Ah, his good jacket, the black he wore to Papa’s funeral. Well, he can wear it to his own funeral
, she thought, and ripped material from the hem, so her theft would go unnoticed. She imagined him questioning her about his ragged jacket. She glared at the side of the bed he slept on. “Moths, Señor Baca. I will buy some moth balls to roll around your closet. You should try eating moth balls. I hear they are poisonous.”

She jerked open the sewing basket and removed a needle and thread. She scooped up some toenails from the table on his side of the bed. She lifted her leg over the window sill and ran from the house, leaving the bedroom curtains swinging in the wind. She left the window open on purpose to scare her stepfather, who was paranoid since his return to manhood, even more petrified of witches than he was raised to be.

The open window will earn Mama a fat lip. She deserves a smack across her face. I would slap her myself, if I wouldn’t be beaten silly for my insolence. After all, it’s because she married Señor Baca that I’m in this mess and have to resort to murder. Yes, it’s both their faults
, she thought.

But by the time she reached the barn, her misgivings had returned.
Thou shalt not kill
was a major Commandment. “My stepfather is so scared of brujas, why don’t we just frighten him into leaving me and my mama alone,” she said, handing Salia a stale cookie.

“I know how men are because of my mother. Many a foolish man has slept with her, even knowing how dangerous she is. What if he rapes you next time because no amount of fear will overcome his lust?”

“I will kill myself then,” she said, shivering.

“And if he murders your mama?”

She blinked back her tears, her shoulders shaking.

“Did you bring the items?”

With a determined thrust to her chin, she reached into her pocket with a trembling hand. “Ta-da,” she said flatly and one-by-one, brought out the fruits of her thievery.

“Good, your stepfather’s toenails, even better.”

“Here is mud imprinted with his footprints,” she said, stuffing Marcelina’s pocket with black mud.

“Ay, but his feet are heavy.”

Her other pocket, Salia stuffed with straw.

They grabbed hands and with their hair flying behind them, ran to the ballpark.

Salia sat on her knees, spreading the piece of funeral suit across the ground. “Dirt from his shoes to depict his toil,” she said, letting his footprints flow between her fingers, onto the material. She poured water over the mound of dirt. “From his well, to mirror the weak blood flowing through his veins.” She laid out the straw in strips on the mud paste. “To symbolize his bones.” She sprinkled his toenails on top of the concoction. “To personify the physical.” She blended the ingredients into the mud paste, adding specks of his leavings, which she scraped from the outhouse. “Because he is so full of crap.”

She shoved a pebble into the paste. “A stone from beneath his shoe to act as his heart, and a coin from his purse representing his wealth. With all
these ingredients we make a Flavio Baca doll,” she said, smoothing the paste, the guts of the doll, across the piece of his suit.

“Sew,” she said to Marcelina.

She spit on a tip of white thread, running it through the eye of a needle and sewing the cloth in zigzag fashion, sealing the materials inside.

They repeated the ritual for the arms and the legs until twenty sticks of straw poked out of the material, ten fingers and ten toes.

“We create the head last of such a stupid man,” she said, spooning what was left of the ingredients onto the last piece of cloth and sprinkling bits of straw. She pressed an itsy-bitsy clod of feces inside the mixture, “To represent his brain.”

With home-made glue Marcelina attached some hair to the pseudo head, and created a mustache and bushy eyebrows. She ripped a tiny piece of her white blouse, sewing it where a nose went. “The white cloth is his nose, bandaged to his face, because I butted him last night when he molested me.”

“Ay caramba! You have a big head,” she said, laughing at the cloth covering half the face of the doll.

“It‘s him who has a big nose,” she said, giggling.

They examined their handiwork, a miniature scarecrow with beer belly, short legs, human hair, crooked mustache, and eyes. The doll was dressed in a black suit but appeared to have been in a fight due to the bandage on the nose.

Salia held up their creation with a proud lift of her chin. “The art of effigy making is not like the dolls you’ve made, strewn across your bed.” She mouthed a spell to the earth and an incantation to the moon. She lifted her arms. “Oh, Tezcatlipoca, Lord of the Night, fill this creature with the spirit of whom we made it. They shall be one and the same, so what the doll feels, so will the living man.”

The wind blew around the doll, the little suit jacket fluttering, making a flapping noise.

There was a sound like an ax chopping and the park trees swayed.

The chopping stopped and the trees stilled.

The park was silent except for a snoring sound coming from the doll. The tiny chest moved up and down, the eyebrows wiggling.

“It’s a miracle,” Marcelina said.

“It’s magic.”

“Teach me this power.”

“My mother and grandma will kill me, if I tell anyone who does not belong to the Sisterhood of the Black Rose.”

“I see no black rose growing on your head.”

“And I hope you never will,” she said in a vulnerable voice.

Salia threw her creation at her, and they played catch with the whimpering doll.

At the mine, Señor Baca jerked with spasms, feeling dizzy.

For a time, the girls played catch in the ballpark.

At the mine, Señor Baca rocked, crashing against the walls. He was sent home for drinking on the job. He protested his innocence.

“It must be on your conscience,” Salia said, handing her a piece of string.

She wrapped the string around the neck of the doll, tightening.

At home, her stepfather gasped for breath, tearing at the buttons of his shirt.

The girls parted at the park.

Salia hid the Flavio Baca idol in her dresser drawer, with the rest of her treasures. When she slammed the drawer shut, the light turned off for him.

“My eyes! I have gone blind. There is no air in the room. I am in a tunnel,” he screamed, tearing at the top buttons of his shirt.

The doctor was called for, and then another doctor, and a different one. None could understand why he was having such difficulty breathing.

Over the next few weeks, his eyes would improve occasionally. It was at these times he would gasp for breath and clutch at his collar as though choking. While this was happening, Marcelina sat with the wiggling, wheezing doll. Every day she squeezed the string around the neck tighter, knotted it, and then gave it back to Salia, who threw the doll in her drawer.

Señor Baca would claw his hands in the air, demanding someone turn up the lamp. He complained of invisible bruises on his body and knots on his head as he wheezed on the sofa. His fingers and toes bent like an arthritic cripple. One finger fell off.

More doctors were baffled.

As the days passed, he walked slower and slower, a tad grey in color. A tread up the stairs became an ordeal. He no longer had enough oxygen to lift a reed to whip Diego. When he slapped Lupe, he grew winded.

He certainly had no strength to chase Marcelina around her bed.

Then came the day when he could not leave his bed. Word spread about his illness and Pacheco showed up with a food basket.

Marcelina was especially careful around Pacheco. Whenever she heard his wagon, with the bones rattling in the bed, she ran out the back door.

She elbowed her way to the front of the line to take her first Holy Communion, kicking the shins and shoving the eight-year-old girls who tried to best her. The little kids were no match for her superior hundred or so pounds more weight. “Take that you sissified, spoiled, skinny brats,” she muttered. She had just turned fifteen and was rather old to be making her first Holy Communion but in years’ past, illness always made her miss the ceremony.

She dropped to her knees with her head bowed before Padre Sanchez. She was dressed in white, to signify her purity. A wedding veil of white lace snaked down her back to symbolize that she was like a bride of Christ. First Holy Communion was as close as she would ever get to being a nun. She secretly wanted to be a hairdresser, which ruled out a convent because no one would ever see her masterpieces. At her first confession she did not mention making her stepfather ill, but said an extra dozen Hail Mary’s, and only then was she able to feel the excitement of becoming like a bride of Christ.

She opened her mouth and the priest pushed the host on her tongue. His thumb tasted of soap, and the saliva of the girl next to her, who must have eaten garlic. The host represented the body of Christ, and to savor God, she rolled the tasteless tidbit of blessed bread around her cheek. It was imperative she avoid her teeth because it was impolite to chew on God, so she swallowed the piece whole.

The priest offered her a taste of wine from a golden goblet, so she could better digest God, who was rather dry. In any case, she greedily drank from the goblet of wine until Padre Sanchez wrenched the cup away from her.

The wine dribbled down her chin, staining her white communion dress.

With the expression of the newly sainted, she looked up at the life-sized crucifix and thanked the Lord, because she somehow sensed her prayers were answered this, the holiest day of her life.

She marched down the aisle of the church of San Cirilio with her hands folded and her head bowed, a prayer book sandwiched between her hands. A white rosary hung between her fingers, her scapular bouncing against her neck.

The doors of the church were thrown open and someone hissed at her. She spotted Salia hiding by the church, beckoning her with a finger.

She managed to sneak away, behind the church.

Salia held up the Flavio Baca doll which was no longer kicking. The cloth face was ashen-grey in color, the head rolling around the shoulders, as though its neck broke.

Marcelina flicked a finger against the doll. The eyebrows seemed to move, but it must have been a breeze because the head bounced against the chest, fell back against the neck, then rolled around the body. The head stilled and the eyes stared, unblinking.

They locked palms, wrapping their thumbs. “You have given me the best birthday present. I swear that I, Marcelina Rodríguez, will always be a friend to Salia Esperanza.”

“And I, Salia, will always be a friend to Marcelina. You must bury your stepfather, so no one ever suspects.”