The Witch Narratives: Reincarnation (9 page)

“What joke?”

“There is a family curse decreeing that there must always be an Esperanza in these parts. So long as my mother is more powerful than me, I can go no further than the Santo Domingo Reservation. I want to be a great opera singer, but the curse forbids me to live anywhere but Madrid.”

“I didn’t know you could sing.”

“I can’t. I’m tone deaf. And what do you want?”

“All I ever wanted is to have babies. It is not much.”

“It is too much. I never want to have babies. Don’t you know…”

Suddenly, two hands grabbed Salia, lifting her off her feet. Pacheco twisted her collar, so she could hardly breathe. He cursed her under his breath, and then turned to Marcelina, spitting at her. “How dare you befriend this witch and defile your sainted papa.” He drew back a hand, smacking Marcelina. He then dragged Salia to the door and flung her from the house.

Salia picked up a dirt clod and threw it.

Pacheco slammed the door, and the clod thumped against the wood.

I wish Salia would have hit him with that clod
, Marcelina thought, running to her room. She lay on the bed, her body jerking with sobs.

A short while later, Diego shook her. “Mama is to marry Señor Baca,” he said, sighing with resignation.

“No! No! It can’t be true,” she said, wishing she had stayed in the living room when he proposed on bent knee in front of everyone. She was the eldest. It was her responsibility to see Mama acted sanely.
I could have prevented Pacheco from talking Mama into marrying Señor Baca
, she thought, fooling herself because Pacheco held more sway with the Hispanos in Madrid than the priest did. The Penitentes saw to the needs of widows and orphans. The man of the house was dead. The childless and wifeless Señor Baca offered to support the family by joining the Baca household with the Rodríguez household.

“Your children will be my fortune. Marcelina and Diego will make up for your lack of money,” he assured Lupe, as they stood at Papa’s grave. He patted her arm while she cried into his sleeve. “I have always wanted a son and a daughter. Especially a daughter,” he said, with his eyes popping out at Marcelina.

She held Diego’s hand, trying her best to ignore the fat man. Brother and sister stared down at the pine coffin and the dirt covering their papa.

The funeral was over and everyone walking away from the grave. She threw the black rose on Papa’s coffin Salia had given her.

Her beloved papa was gone. Nothing would ever be the same again.

8

S
eñor Baca was a wife beater. When he got drunk, he punched Mama, sometimes bloodying her nose, and leaving welts on her cheek.

Marcelina went to the Penitentes mayor for help. Señor Baca would mind Pacheco.

She found him sitting on the steps of his run-down house with his nose in a worn Bible. He was all over the good book, trampling the pages with his fingers and muttering passages he was reading. “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife.”

She peeked at the tattered curtains of his living room window.

Agnes stared back at her with a pleading look in her empty sockets. The skeleton sat on the sofa, tied up in chains, her large teeth clamped together.

“You must stop Señor Baca, before he kills my mother.”

“If all she has is a bloody nose or a mark on her face, Señora Baca is not in any danger. You make up stories, Señorita Baca. Bearing false witness is a sin.”

“My name is Rodríguez, not Baca.”

“You do not show the respect your stepfather deserves. He has taken on great responsibility with you and your brother. He works at the coal mine so you may eat and yet, all you do is complain about him. Thee have made it clear today that the commanders and their men mean nothing to thee.”

Pacheco not only selected passages from the Bible, he made up his own.

He slammed his Bible shut. “Your mother is Señor Baca’s property. He may do what he wishes, as far as she’s concerned. It is the way of the world.”

She looked again to Agnes. No help there. Agnes now leaned back against the sofa with her skull thrown back, seemingly trying to relax so her bones might slide through her chains. She should have remembered how he treated his wife and never come here.

“Honor thy father and thy mother. It says so right here, Señorita Baca,” he said, whacking her head with the Bible. “I’m going to speak to your stepfather and see what can be done to make you show more respect. Take care,
Marcelina Baca,” he said threateningly. He walked into his house, banging the torn screen door behind him.

She held a hand to her bruised head. The Bible had given her the headache, and the shouting coming from the open window didn’t help. He was yelling at Agnes.

True to his word, Pacheco spoke to Señor Baca. As a result, her stepfather broke Mama’s arm. “I’ll deal with you later,” he told Marcelina.

The crowning achievement of her rebellion was her blossoming friendship with Salia. The girls kept their bond a secret. Since Papa died, Marcelina had no use for anyone, except Little Maria, whom she bribed with sweets in return for an alibi when she was with Salia. Mama thought she and Little Maria were best friends.

As for Salia, she claimed to be a lone wolf, a trait approved of by Felicita and La India. It was summer and like a wild thing, Salia roamed the hills and valleys. There were times when she was unable to meet Marcelina, during the periods she called her enlightenment.

“What does enlightenment mean?” Marcelina asked her.

The girls were deep in the Ortiz Mountains, picking berries.

“Enlightenment means I am being polished. See how shiny I am becoming. I glow like a full moon.” Salia smiled like a half-moon.

“You are almost as shiny as the black eye my mama has.”

“Your stepfather needs a lesson on what it’s like to be a weak woman.”

She widened her eyes. “Can you?”

“My enlightenment has taught me that men and women have both sexes mixed into their chemistry.”

“Dios Mio! Really?”

“Changing sexes is merely a matter of making the switch.”

A few days later, they met at the baseball park behind the grand stand. “I come bearing gifts,” Marcelina said and handed her a small statue. “It’s Saint Genesius, Patron Saint of Actors. I looked up opera and found out that the singers play roles.”

“Thanks,” Salia said, eyeing the statue with her mouth open. “I have a gift for you.” She placed a small package in her hand. “Tomorrow morning, pour this powder into his coffee and stir it.”

The hair rose on the back of her neck as she thanked her.

The next morning was Saturday. “Here, Mama, I will serve breakfast. You must rest your arm,” Marcelina said.

“Thank you, my daughter,” she said, trying to hide her black eye with her scraggly hair. Her arm was in a sling.

“An accident from the other night,” her stepfather said, laughing. “Your mama is a clumsy woman.”

“I fell in the dark,” she said, corroborating his story.

Marcelina looked to Diego, gauging his reaction to the lie. Her brother whirled a fork around his beans. The first time their stepfather hit their mother, Diego jumped on his back, and received a fat lip for his effort. He since stayed out of their stepfather’s business. As a future priest, Diego was nonviolent. He pretended everything was fine and coped by never looking at their mother. Diego now looked to the Virgin Mary for his motherly needs.

Marcelina sighed. There used to be laughter in this house. She missed Papa’s infectious smile. She missed Tía Bíatriz, who was not allowed to visit her brother’s widow. She missed her Rodríguez cousins. She especially missed Mama, who was a shadow of her former self.

She slid her hand over Mama’s head, which felt like raw bacon. “After breakfast I’ll wash and comb your hair.”

She sat lethargic, with her hands hanging to her knees. She used to be such a neat woman, so concerned about her looks.

“You must eat more, Mama. You have lost weight.”

She lifted the spoon to her mouth, as if it was an effort. Her eyes used to be brown. Now they were lifeless holes in her head with grey circles around her engorged pupils. Her memory was fine though. “Don’t forget your papa’s coffee,” she said, coughing into her hand.

She gritted her teeth. Señor Baca was not her papa, but he exploded if she referred to him as stepfather. “I put the tortillas on the table,” he daily reminded them.

“Put a raw egg in my coffee, mi hija, for my hangover,” he now ordered.

She cringed at his endearment of
my daughter
. Her sour face turned to smiles because the egg would disguise the magic powder in his coffee.

She brought him his cup, being careful not to spill a drop.

He sipped. “This is good, Marcelina. See, Lupe. You should make coffee this good,” he said, not noticing that his hair was growing in strands to the middle of his back.

He drained the coffee cup and scratched at his chest. “My nipples are sore,” he whined in a voice risen three octaves. Breasts popped out of his shirt.

He rose from the table, and Marcelina choked on her beans because his coarse overalls had turned into petticoats.

“I must have eaten too much,” he said, rubbing his stomach. “My clothes fit tight.”

Laughter came back to the Rodríguez house. Marcelina held a hand to her mouth and her shoulders shook, as she watched the strings from his corset bounce against his rear as he walked. Beside her, Diego roared out loud. Mama didn’t laugh. Her head was bowed. In her hands she held a rosary, either praying for his recovery, or thanking God her husband had become a woman.

A scream came from the bathroom. Señor Baca ran into the kitchen with his hands held to his head. “What has happened? Am I still drunk? Is this a nightmare?” He balanced on the balls of his feet, spreading his legs wide. He lifted his petticoat and bent his head, burying his eyes beneath the ruffles.

Thud.

The floor shook with the weight of an elephant. Señor Baca fainted.

Mama brought him to with smelling salts.

He sat up, saw he was still wearing the petticoat, and jumped.

They followed him outside.

“Pray for me. Pray for me,” he yelled, shoving Marcelina to her knees.

He was very strong for a woman.

He flattened his body on the ground with his arms spread-eagle. “Dios Mio! I will do anything. Just change me back into a man, sweet Jesus.”

Marcelina held her arms to her sides. She hurt so from laughing.

For six days, he hid in the house from the neighbors and sent Mama to the mine to say he was sick.

On the seventh day, Mama made discreet inquiries and heard of a man who could help. They would go, cloaked in darkness, to the Santo Domingo Indian reservation to see an arbularia, a healer specializing in removing witch spells and fixing the results of witchcraft.

“Holding the leather reins will roughen my hands,” her stepfather said, allowing Diego to drive for once.

“You don’t need a parasol,” Marcelina shouted from the back of the wagon. “The sun is not out.”

“I like to twirl the ruffled umbrella in my hands. The handle feels so dainty.”

She dug her fingernails into the side of the wagon, excited to be on the reservation for the very first time.

The Santo Domingo Pueblo rose like a sand castle in the desert beneath a full moon. The pueblo was a complex of apartment buildings molded from adobe bricks, baked and hardened by the sun. Four rectangular buildings were attached in the form of a hollow square. The buildings were terraced from the court toward the outer wall. Each apartment was attached by the roof and the walls to other apartments, rising upward and sideways towards the mountains to seven levels.

She believed the pueblo was an ancient architectural miracle. Individual rooms hung haphazardly about the complex, added for extra living space. Ladders leaned against the walls to allow the Indians to climb from apartment to apartment, from floor to floor. The ladders were pulled from story to story.

The wagon ground to a halt. A fierce looking Indian barred their way.

Mama cleared her throat. “We are looking for the medicine man, the shaman they call Storm-Chaser.”

The man pointed to the corner building and the first floor.

They were too far from the building to have been heard, yet Storm-Chaser walked out of his apartment as though summoned. He looked hideous with one eyeball missing from his socket. He covered the hole with a leather patch, but he was still frightening. He appeared to be made from dried, cracked mud. Other than La Llorona, Marcelina had never seen anyone so old. Iron grey braids, streaked with white, hung to his waist. A bright red bandana was tied around his forehead.

He laughed when he saw the man-woman with sausage curls blowing in the wind, climb from the wagon.

The shaman offered him a smoke from his pipe, but Señor Baca declined. “Do you have any tea and cookies?” he asked.

“Not any that will restore your manhood,” he said, his good eye twinkling. He winked at Marcelina.