The Witch Narratives: Reincarnation (19 page)

Mother’s other senses had sharpened because of her blindness but Salia still snuck up on her, pinching her arm.

Whimpering, she waved her arms.

She laughed at her antics.

Mother growled, trying to slap her face and missing because Salia sprung to the other side of the room.

Mother banged her knee against the table, cursing. “How am I to find my way when you present such obstacles?”

She placed her shoe on her rump, pushing gently until her nose touched the floor.

“You’re cruel.”

“And who taught me? Never in my life did a kind word for me pass your lips. You never stroked my cheek with tenderness. The Bible speaks the truth--you reap what you sow.”

“Don’t you dare bring that pompous book into my house!”

“I hid God’s book from you all these years.”

She stumbled on the leg of a rocking chair, feeling for the seat and plopping down. “I’ve taught you well but do not underestimate me. I can still crack you in half like an egg,” she said, snapping her hands apart as if she was smashing her. “Beware, my Darling, did I ever tell you of my own training, where I was forced to eat the brain of the wisest man? He was…”

“Really, Mother? You are so boring with your endless bragging,” she drawled. “If you are so wise, then why are you the one blind?”

The creaking of her rocking chair got on Salia’s nerves. It grew harder each day to watch her so beaten, like a caged, wounded animal. Her confused feelings about Mother disturbed her. Fighting against her soft nature was making her ill, tying her stomach in knots, making her head ache.

Mother hummed a funeral song with a serene smile on her face, frazzling her even more.

She tiptoed to the stairs, made a big noise with her boots just to scare her, and ran up the stairs, startling the eyeless Macho who raised his fur, hissing. She grabbed the cat by the neck, rubbing his fur on her to disguise her scent. She threw the screeching cat across the room, and tiptoed back to the living room, circling her with the stealth of a cat.

“Macho, come here, sweetling,” Mother said, snapping her fingers at nothing.

“It’s just your darling daughter. Look at me when I talk to you. Don’t be so rude. You are not so very ugly with Macho’s eyes. In fact, it is quite an improvement.”

She tilted her head at Salia. “I don’t know who you are, Girl.”

“Let me refresh your memory, Old Woman,” Salia spat.

She showed her teeth, raising her hand into a claw.

She stifled her laughter at the plate and her eyes, hard as rocks. Mother saved her eyes in hope that she might someday be able to restore her sight. Beside the plate were empty bottles, books of spells, hemp seeds, herbs, etc., but none of the potions or magic Grandma tried had worked. What sweet victory!

Salia threw a pencil to the right and Mother squinted in that direction, struggling to see, the crystals in her eyes forming the narrowest of black lines fading in and out, but to no avail, even with the curtains drawn. Her eyes may have once served her cat well, but the optical nerves of her human sockets were not compatible with cat eyes for long-term use. She sat arrow straight in the chair, humming to herself with a serene smile on her face that shattered Salia’s nerves.

She could stand it no more. Salia slammed the back door, smiling at her fearful shriek. Mother was now powerless to stop her. “At sunrise I shall leave. I have put off my freedom too long,” she mumbled. “Tomorrow, I shall begin my travels and put Madrid far behind me.”

Yes,
Tezcatlipoca whispered.
Abandon her. Leave the hag to fend for herself, like a good daughter.

“I’m doing nothing that has not been done since the dawn of time. I am seventeen. It is time to ditch the nest and venture out on my own.”

Even wild animals desert the parent, when it is time,
he hissed,
but, aren’t you forgetting something?

He was right. There was something she must take with her, besides Lovey. She coveted an object since childhood, a thing she would need to become the greatest opera singer who ever lived, an element longing to be with her.

She crouched like a cat, and then jumped straight up to the second floor. She silently pulled herself up on the ledge and crept on the roof over to the chimney in Grandma’s bedroom.

She shimmied down the chimney.

The sun was just beginning to rise when Salia dragged her bag from beneath her bed. She traveled light. She had her health and her beauty, which was all a young lady needed to succeed. The great theatres of Europe awaited her.

She crept down the stairs, searching for Lovey. Perhaps her cat was outside.

She quietly opened the door, shivering from the windy day.

The chair on the porch moved, Mother rocking. This was the first time she had been outside since going blind.

A gust of wind shoved Salia against the wall and Mother’s head fell forward.

Mother lay there, unmoving. Her swollen tongue was purple, hanging from her mouth with teeth bites visible beneath flecks of blood beginning to dry. The black rose on her head had shriveled and died. A bottle of poison rolled around the porch floor. On her lap lay Lovey, also, poisoned.

She fell to her knees, tearing at her hair, dragging her fingernails across her face. Feelings rushed at her, overwhelming her. She squeezed her arms to her sides, trying to stop the pain crushing her heart, the place where Salia thought she couldn’t hurt any more. Such violent pain. Even as a child she never felt such hurt. Even when Mother beat her, burned her, or cut her, she never felt as damaged as now.

She was a child again, yearning for Mother’s love and approval, worshiping the powerful woman she could never live up to, but trying so hard. So dependent on her, almost as if she was an extension of herself. She had loved Felicita, no matter how mean she had been.

“Mother,” she cried, reaching out her hands.

Her lifeless cat eyes bulged from her sockets, staring straight at Salia. She seemed to say, “See, my Darling, it is I who have won. It is you who are stuck in Madrid, entrapped by the Esperanza curse. And I have broken your heart by killing your beloved cat.”

She hugged herself tighter, rocking. What pained her most was that she killed herself to prevent Salia from being happy.

She rose to her feet on shaky legs and picked up Lovey, holding the little corpse in her arms and sobbing.

20

O
f all places, the baseball park was across the Turquoise Trail from the house at the bottom of Witch Hill. The hill stood tall, facing down the grandstand, all manner of humanity enjoying a ball game on a hot summer’s day, trying to ignore the uneasy feeling the hill gave them.

“Did you see it?” villagers whispered from their seats. “The rocking chair, where Felicita was found poisoned. There. On the porch.”

With all this gossiping going on, no one noticed when another voice hissed into villagers’ ears, the tone raspy, the breath rank, whispering obscenities and filth. Soon, neighbor was arguing with neighbor. Men were passing bottles of whiskey around, getting drunk. Three prostitutes sold their wares, and the men lined up as the voice passed the word around, whispering into husbands’ ears what pleasures awaited them beneath the grandstand, then hissed into their wives’ ears that the husbands’ best friends and brothers desired them, and hadn’t they made a mistake marrying a no-good-for-nothing son of a bitch. Best try for the brother or friend before they lose their looks.

Or to whisper into the ears of old friends.
Look at her, Marcelina, across the way. Enchantingly beautiful. Juan still wants her. Why would he desire you, fat and ugly as you are? I can still give you what you want. Even more. I can give you your Juan. Come to me, Marcelina. Just a few steps across the Turquoise trail, and you and I will slice her beauty from her face and bury her. I shall then give you Salia’s beauty. Your Juan will never think of her again.

A very pregnant Marcelina sat in the grandstand, staring at Salia.

She stood at the living room window, with her hand holding the drapery.

Neither acknowledged the other.

Salia scoffed when Marcelina clutched her fist to her chest, shifting her gaze to Juan, who walked up to the plate to bat.

“I don’t want your ugly Juan, you idiot!”

Juan Martinez played shortstop for the Madrid Miners. Because of his skill at baseball, he was given the prestigious job at the mine of distributing supplies railroaded in from Santa Fe and Albuquerque, instead of a job
mining coal like most of the Hispanos. He was one of the lucky few who did not have to work with his back bent in the black hole snaking through the mountain. And it was all due to the man in his late twenties, sitting in the front box of the grandstand. He was an avid baseball fan, and Madrid could boast the first electronic scoreboard west of the Mississippi. The ball players had much to be grateful to Samuel Stuwart, the owner of the mine and all of Madrid. They got to live in better houses on the main street of town, which was well lit with wooden sidewalks. The street was smooth, and they had indoor plumbing and the best heating so their houses were warm and cozy in the winter. This front row of houses was known as Silk Stocking Row.

Technically, Witch Hill wasn’t in Madrid and so wasn’t owned by Samuel Stuwart.

He was a man unapproachable by the common villagers. The look on his face, when he examined the locals, made it clear he did not want to mix with any of them, even Oscar Hughes, his mine manager, or Tom Dyer, his mine foreman, both of whom he waved away, probably not wanting to speak business at a Sunday afternoon game.

Pacheco Sandoval trailed behind Tom Dyer. Pacheco wasn’t with Tom Dyer. He just followed behind. Pacheco must have, also, wanted to speak with Patrón Stuwart, but after seeing Tom Dyer get rebuffed, he spun on his heel. Pacheco now leaned against the grand stand, seemingly watching the ball game, but keeping his eye on Stuwart.

Now what business does Pacheco have with him?
Salia thought.
Why does the Penitentes leader wish to speak with an outsider?

Though owner of Madrid, the patrón would never fit in. He sat in his box, surrounded by a party of rich friends, who accompanied him to Madrid by train to watch the baseball game. With their fancy dress and manner they were an eyesore. The villagers did not feel so poor until surrounded by so much wealth. Unlike the last time Salia caught a glimpse of him, five years ago, the patrón now looked in good health.

Only his mind was unhinged. He had insisted on building the park here, the best spot, a field shaded with trees. He had scoffed at the villagers’ belief that the hill across the way was haunted and damned. Well, it was damned. His ballplayers did damned well when they played in this field.

When Salia was a child, she would have welcomed this disturbance across from her house of people having fun, eating hot dogs and popcorn,
young men with their sweethearts, the sound of a bat hitting a ball, and men running around the field to the excitement and sighs of the crowd. Now, she wanted her privacy and felt anger at this Samuel Stuwart, this rich man, who did not care how he disrupted the life of a witch who, deep inside, still longed to be a normal young lady. By nature, she needed the companionship of others. She wasn’t good at being alone, with just an old hag to keep her company.

“You remind me of the bones of my cat, Grandma. Where is your piedra imán?”

Grandma rocked in her chair, planning her revenge against Jefe. “Never have grandsons,” she said, coughing into her hand, a dry hacking cough. She was turning into dust from the inside out. “Jefe stole my piedra imán. He took his grandmother’s youth and didn’t care what would become of me. I should have smothered that boy in his cradle. Many times I was tempted, when he howled in the middle of the night, but it was my damned Indian pride. I was taught a woman must have many sons.” She spit, mud dribbling down her chin.

She just rocked every day, unblinking, hugging a black book in her arms, the
Shroud of Veils,
the secrets of the Esperanza clan. When Mother died, all of her power was sucked into the
Veils,
like the rest of the Esperanzas, who passed their power through this book.

As for Grandma’s power, mourning weakened her and the theft of her piedra imán. Her once youthful body was a shriveled shell of its former self. Her grey face looked like an unbandaged Egyptian mummy, more corpse than alive.