A Tyranny of Petticoats (10 page)

Maria Elena’s face falls when I shake my head. If we wait any longer, the mother’s thread will begin to turn as well. If nothing else, lifetimes of experience have taught me this. “Go wake up Rosa,” I say. “They won’t last until tonight.”

Maria Elena sighs. I watch as she makes her way through the labyrinth of threads that fill the room and block the door. I have to admire her agility; she somehow manages not to catch that leg of hers on even one loose thread.

I open my hand and peer at the thread Maria Elena just gave me. It sits curled in my palm, quiet and complacent, like a docile garter snake. Most of Maria Elena’s threads are thick like ropes and just as sturdy. But this one is feeble at best. A weak little wisp of a thread that is growing more iridescent with every passing minute. It is so fragile, its color so faint that I fear if I drop it, I’ll never be able to find it again. And neither of my sisters has the capability to help me either. Maria Elena weaves the threads. That’s her role. It is my job to decipher which ones need to be cut.

It is Rosa who must cut them.

The uneven thumping sound of my younger sister’s steps draws my eyes to the door. Maria Elena’s face emerges from the web of threads, quickly followed by our elder sister, Rosa, though she certainly doesn’t look much like herself. I stifle a laugh and she glares at me, shaking her foot free from a tangle of threads and rubbing her hands sloppily over her tired eyes. Rosa is typically the epitome of refinement; that she resembles such a disaster in the morning is the only reason I can bear to love her.

Rosa stretches her arms over her head and yawns noisily. “Well, where is it, then?”

Maria Elena points at me before shuffling to her loom and sitting down heavily. She runs her hands up and down the length of her impaired leg, kneading the sore muscles there, and I feel a twinge of guilt at having asked her to wake Rosa.

My older sister peers at the frail thread I hold out to her. “It’s ready, then?” she asks me. I nod and then I hear it. We all do. It starts as a low thrumming sound, as if someone has reached over and plucked the string of a harp or a mandolin. The thread has begun its death song.

Rosa gives an irked nod, and a pair of large shears appears in her outstretched hand. She leans over and plucks the thread with the glinting edge of one of the shears’ sharp blades. I want her to examine it, as if she can check the thread’s
vitalidad
as well as I can, but that isn’t Rosa’s role. And it isn’t her way, either. With barely a sigh of hesitancy, Rosa instructs me to pull the tiny thread taut. She cuts it in half with a quick snip of those mighty shears. I let them go, and the two pieces flutter to the ground like wounded birds, the silver sheen fading to a dull, lifeless brown. The task now complete, Rosa turns on her heel and ducks through the labyrinth, swinging her shears in time with her steps.

There is something that I find particularly frightening about those shears. Perhaps it is simply the rigid way she wields them. They once called her She Who Cannot Be Turned, and it was a proper moniker if there ever was one. There is no compromising with Rosa. Things are black or white with her; it is life or death. There is no in-between. Folks around here are swayed by the silk slippers on her dainty feet, the tortoiseshell comb that rises from the back of her elegant head like a crown, but they shouldn’t be. Rosa is as empathetic as a wild animal. As benevolent as a disease. If she is a queen, she is one to be feared more than beloved. And the mortals used to know this. They used to fear her. They used to fear
us.
But, as I’ve learned, it is quite difficult to fear three young girls, especially ones that come in such beautiful and fragile forms as my sisters.

I glance over at Maria Elena. Now crouched on the ground, she is running her hands over the threads that carpet the floor, as if she can find the tiny thread by mere touch. “You read the stars last night, didn’t you?” she murmurs.

I hesitate, considering my answer before I speak it aloud. My younger sister is all heart. She makes up for the sympathy that Rosa lacks. Perhaps it comes with the territory. It is, after all, by her small hands that the threads of life are spun. She needn’t burden herself with the responsibility of determining the fate of another living soul. That is my job. And she certainly doesn’t need to know the real reason I was out there, that it had very little to do with the brief life whose thread we just cut. So instead, I merely nod and allow my sensitive sister to grieve the short life as she pleases.

I still find it strange to look at my sister and see the face of a twelve-year-old girl staring back. And yet, despite the freckles that splash across her turned-up nose and the perfect ringlets that spill down her back, I can still see every lifetime we shared circling her brown irises like the rings of an ancient tree. Maria Elena has the eyes of an old soul, eyes that are, at the moment, brimming with tears.

I pat my sister’s head, waiting for her sorrow to pass. I can tell by the patch of sunshine moving across the floor that the morning has faded into day and it is time for Maria Elena to pass the torch to me.

“Maybe I’ll go see if Mamá needs help preparing for the fiesta,” she says, wiping her eyes before winding her way out of the room. My heart, in all its wretched glory, stops at the mention of tonight’s celebration.

“Or you could see about the
ristras,
” I call. Maria Elena’s callused fingers make her particularly gifted at stringing the chili peppers we hang to dry in the sun. Mamá says they have healing powers, but I usually can only finish a few before my fingers burn from the peppers’ caustic bite.

I move through the room methodically, filling a willow basket with the threads that are fated to be cut tonight. They are easy to find, those flashes of silver amid a sea of color. My sister’s threads haven’t always been so brightly hued. I assume that it’s a consequence of our surroundings. Colors exist here that can’t be found anywhere else. Things aren’t just
yellow
in the desert; they are saffron flowers on the top of a prickly pear cactus, golden sands encircling a sole mesquite tree. And red isn’t just red; red is the carmine dye made from crushed cochineal insects and chili peppers warm from the sun. Blue is the heart-shaped blossoms on the indigo plant and black the pitch of the piñon tree and that frighteningly dark desert sky.

I don’t think about the lives that are attached to the threads I’m collecting. It is a method I perfected lifetimes ago, but it seemed easier then, when we damned the gods to fates befitting their sins. Tucked into the band of my skirt is the thread I’ve carried since yesterday, when its strands began to shimmer. Try as I might, I can’t ignore the life that is attached to this one. I wind one end of the thread around my finger and watch as another red strand fades to silver.

By midday, our pueblo ranch is a bustle of movement and noise. Maria Elena sits among a gaggle of old women basking in the sun in the
placita.
The women’s cheeks are as withered as the blistered skins of the chili peppers resting in their laps.

“Come, sister,” Maria Elena calls joyfully, setting her
ristras
to the side. “You’ve finished in time to help Rosa with her dress.” My head suddenly rushes with a vision of my older sister in her bridal gown, a Spanish lace mantilla cascading down her back. It aches, the weight of it all: knowing the stars gave me no such image. It came solely from my own head.

My sisters were more than happy to let Mamá turn them into her good little
mijas
.

I watched as Rosa’s face became beautiful under Mamá’s proud gaze, as Maria Elena became strong. Even the names she gave them were telling. Maria Elena’s name means “beloved shining light,” and Rosa was named for the pink flush of her cheeks. Their tongues easily adapted to the cadence of Mamá’s language; their hands lent themselves to menial tasks like cooking and cleaning. Every morning Maria Elena fetched water from the nearby river; every evening Rosa swept the earthen floors. Under Mamá’s gentle guidance, my sisters weren’t monsters anymore. But me? My hands were clumsy, my tortillas misshapen, my
torrejas
either doughy or burned. My monster, it seemed, would not be so easily tamed.

I follow Maria Elena’s tottering steps, listening to the sound of the vaqueros driving the cattle farther down along the riverbed. They say only the promise of dancing with a pretty girl can persuade one of those wild cowboys to dismount from his horse, which perhaps explains the menfolk’s unusually jovial tones. The whole ranch has been bewitched by the possibilities surrounding tonight’s celebration, and all the while, my thoughts are consumed with the thread I hold clenched in my fist.

We escape into the cool retreat of Mamá’s bedroom only to find it filled with many of the other women with whom we share a home — women who insist we call them
tía
and
abuela,
though they share no kinship with either Mamá or Papá. I catch a glimpse of Rosa in the center of the room, but she is too busy being doted on to pay much attention to me. The women greet Maria Elena warmly, pressing sweets into her hands. There isn’t a soul in the village who doesn’t love Maria Elena. And who could blame them? My softhearted sister with her tottering gait gives them life. And though death flows through Rosa’s fingers like river water, she also brings them peace. She eases their suffering and puts an end to their pain. Besides, Rosa is so beautiful it is easy to overlook the scent of death that lingers on her skin.

But me? I’m not beautiful and I’m not broken, and as a result, my wickedness isn’t quite as easily forgiven. After all, if Maria Elena is birth, and Rosa death, then I must be everything in between. I am turmoil and loss. I am drought and starvation. I am lost love and lost chances and lost hope. It is my hands that tie knots into their lives. And for this sin, the women choose to celebrate my sister’s
boda
around me, avoiding my eyes as if I am the monster their children fear at night.

Rosa’s bridal gown lies across the wooden bed where Mamá and Papá sleep. It is one of the only real pieces of furniture we own, and that alone makes it opulent and grand.

“Is the dress not beautiful?” Mamá says in that soft voice of hers. I nod, running my hands over the heavy silk brocade; even my crooked stitches marring the hem can’t diminish its beauty. There is something about Mamá’s voice that makes me ache for my younger sister’s pleasant disposition or my older sister’s striking beauty. It is a voice I know I will yearn for throughout the many lifetimes that follow this one. Mamá strokes my hair until her hand gets caught in the tangles along the back of my head. It hurts when she pulls her hand free, taking some of my unruly hair with it, but I don’t say anything. Mamá named me Valeria, which means brave. Because what else could I be?

Later, when the church has been draped in flowers fashioned out of corn husks, and the feast is ready for tonight’s celebration, I am finally allowed a reprieve from the revelry. I am given strict instructions to change into the dress Mamá made for the occasion, but instead I escape through the front gate, my steps startling the chickens clucking nervously in the yard.

When I see James, his hat is tipped low on his head, and all I can see is the back of his sun-kissed neck. In his hands he holds a baby rattlesnake, its tiny head clasped gently between his thumb and forefinger.

“Spooked the
vacas
a bit,” James says cordially when he finally notices me. The snake is beautiful, its long muscled back patterned in dark octagonal splotches in a multitude of browns. “I should probably kill it, but that seems a bit cruel, don’t you think?” He holds it out to me, cradling it in his hands in a way that is far too reminiscent of the way Maria Elena held out that thread to me this morning. I run my finger down its head, and the snake darts out its tongue.

I glance at James’s boots. They are covered in dust and mud from last week’s rare desert rains. “You don’t quite look the part of the groom, do you?” My attempt at gentle teasing falls short. My voice sounds flat and lifeless, as if it derives from a place of sorrow and bitterness. I take a breath, nostalgic for a time when the cold burned my lungs, and even the simple act of breathing was painful.

“Your sister’s beauty will have to make up for us all.” He smiles and then sets the snake down on the ground. A clangor of church bells fills the air as we watch the snake slink off into the desert.
“Adiós, monstruo,”
James calls, and for a moment, I am unsure as to whether he is talking to the snake or to me.

I met him first. Few folks remember it this way, or if they do, they’ve realized it’s a truth that’s hardly worth mentioning. Perhaps that’s irony for you; the only love story I’ve ever played any part in, and my role has been reduced to nothing but an afterthought. Back then we were newly young, newly formed, my sisters and I still uncomfortable in our skin. I’ve never understood the claim that folks make around here, that young people act as if they’re impervious to death; I’ve never felt more mortal than when I woke up to that dark sky and the looks of wonderment across my sisters’ now youthful faces.

I remember the
cocina
was bathed in a gentle quietness, the kind that only comes in the early afternoon when everyone else is taking their daily siestas. The kitchen fire popped and crackled in the hearth, and I could smell the heady, pungent odor of the dried garlic that hung on the walls. A handful of peppers, large and bright green and still warm from the sun, lay splayed on the wooden table in front of me.

And then there he was. This tall lanky boy barely seventeen years of age, strolling into the kitchen like he had as much a right to be there as I did. But then again, his
papá
might have been as
Americano
as they come, but his
mamá
shared the same bloodlines as our
mamá
. So, by all fairness, he did belong there. Far more than I did. Because what blood could have possibly run through my veins? Maybe folks around here were right. Maybe we were made of stardust. And it was with this thought rolling through my head that I took hold of the knife in front of me and sliced a thin line in the tender skin of my palm.