When My Brother Was an Aztec
Read When My Brother Was an Aztec Online
Authors: Natalie Diaz
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With immeasurable gratitude to Cecilia,
Diane, Eloise, Janet, and Ted
No hay mal que dure cien años,
ni cuerpo que lo resista.
âSpanish proverb
- Abecedarian Requiring Further Examination of Anglikan Seraphym Subjugation of a Wild Indian Rezervation
- Hand-Me-Down Halloween
- Why I Hate Raisins
- The Red Blues
- The Gospel of Guy No-Horse
- A Woman with No Legs
- Tortilla Smoke: A Genesis
- Reservation Mary
- Cloud Watching
- Mercy Songs to Melancholy
- If Eve Side-Stealer & Mary Busted-Chest Ruled the World
- The Last Mojave Indian Barbie
- Reservation Grass
- Other Small Thundering
- Jimmy Eagle 's Hot Cowboy Boots Blues
- The Facts of Art
- Prayers or Oubliettes
- The Clouds Are Buffalo Limping toward Jesus
- My Brother at 3 a.m.
- Zoology
- How to Go to Dinner with a Brother on Drugs
- Downhill Triolets
- As a Consequence of My Brother Stealing All the Lightbulbs
- Formication
- Mariposa Nocturna
- Black Magic Brother
- A Brother Named Gethsemane
- Soirée Fantastique
- No More Cake Here
- I Watch Her Eat the Apple
- Toward the Amaranth Gates of War or Love
- Self-Portrait as a Chimera
- Dome Riddle
- I Lean Out the Window and She Nods Off in Bed, the Needle Gently Rocking on the Bedside Table
- Monday Aubade
- When the Beloved Asks, “What Would You Do if You Woke Up and I Was a Shark?”
- Lorca's Red Dresses
- Of Course She Looked Back
- Apotheosis of Kiss
- Orange Alert
- The Elephants
- Why I Don't Mention Flowers When Conversations with My Brother Reach Uncomfortable Silences
- The Beauty of a Busted Fruit
- Love Potion 2012
- A Wild Life Zoo
he lived in our basement and sacrificed my parents
every morning. It was awful. Unforgivable. But they kept coming
back for more. They loved him, was all they could say.
It started with him stumbling along
la Avenida de los Muertos,
my parents walking behind like effigies in a procession
he might burn to the ground at any moment. They didn't know
what else to do except be there to pick him up when he died.
They forgot who was dying, who was already dead. My brother
quit wearing shirts when a carnival of dirty-breasted women
made him their leader, following him up and down the stairsâ
They were acrobats, moving, twitching like snakesâ They fed him
crushed diamonds and fire. He gobbled the gifts. My parents
begged him to pluck their eyes out. He thought he was
Huitzilopochtli,
a god, half-man half-hummingbird. My parents
at his feet, wrecked honeysuckles, he lowered his swordlike mouth,
gorged on them, draining color until their eyebrows whitened.
My brother shattered and quartered them before his basement festivalsâ
waved their shaking hearts in his fists,
while flea-ridden dogs ran up and down the steps, licking their asses,
turning tricks. Neighbors were amazed my parents' hearts kept
growing backâIt said a lot about my parents, or parents' hearts.
My brother flung them into
cenotes,
dropped them from cliffs,
punched holes into their skulls like useless jars or vases,
broke them to pieces and fed them to gods ruling
the ratty crotches of street fair whores with pocked faces
spreading their thighs in flophouses with no electricity. He slept
in filthy clothes smelling of rotten peaches and matches, fell in love
with sparkling spoonfuls the carnival dog-women fed him. My parents
lost their appetites for food, for sons. Like all bad kings, my brother
wore a crown, a green baseball cap turned backwards
with a Mexican flag embroidered on it. When he wore it
in the front yard, which he treated like his personal
zócalo,
all his realm knew he had the power that day, had all the jewels
a king could eat or smoke or shoot. The slave girls came
to the fence and ate out of his hands. He fed them
maÃz
through the chain links. My parents watched from the window,
crying over their house turned zoo, their son who was
now a rusted cage. The Aztec held court in a salt cedar grove
across the street where peacocks lived. My parents crossed fingers
so he'd never come back, lit
novena
candles
so he would. He always came home with turquoise and jade
feathers and stinking of peacock shit. My parents gathered
what he'd left of their bodies, trying to stand without legs,
trying to defend his blows with missing arms, searching for their fingers
to pray, to climb out of whatever dark belly my brother, the Aztec,
their son, had fed them to.
Angels don't come to the reservation.
Bats, maybe, or owls, boxy mottled things.
Coyotes, too. They all mean the same thingâ
death. And death
eats angels, I guess, because I haven't seen an angel
fly through this valley ever.
Gabriel? Never heard of him. Know a guy named Gabe thoughâ
he came through here one powwow and stayed, typical
Indian. Sure he had wings,
jailbird that he was. He flies around in stolen cars. Wherever he stops,
kids grow like gourds from women's bellies.
Like I said, no Indian I've ever heard of has ever been or seen an angel.
Maybe in a Christmas pageant or somethingâ
Nazarene church holds one every December,
organized by Pastor John's wife. It's no wonder
Pastor John's son is the angelâeveryone knows angels are white.
Quit bothering with angels, I say. They're no good for Indians.
Remember what happened last time
some white god came floating across the ocean?
Truth is, there may be angels, but if there are angels
up there, living on clouds or sitting on thrones across the sea wearing
velvet robes and golden rings, drinking whiskey from silver cups,
we're better off if they stay rich and fat and ugly and
'xactly where they areâin their own distant heavens.
You better hope you never see angels on the rez. If you do, they'll be marching you off to
Zion or Oklahoma, or some other hell they've mapped out for us.
The year we moved off / the reservation /
a / white / boy up the street gave me a green trash bag
fat with corduroys, bright collared shirts
& a two-piece / Tonto / costume
turquoise thunderbird on the chest
shirt & pants
the color of my grandmother's skin / reddish brown /
my mother's skin / brown-redskin /
My mother's boyfriend laughed
said now I was a / fake / Indian
look-it her now yer
/
In-din
/
girl is a
/
fake
/
In-din
My first Halloween off / the reservation /
/ white / Jeremiah told all his / white / friends
that I was wearing his old costume
/ A hand-me-down? /
I looked at my hands
All them / whites / laughed at me
/ called me half-breed /
threw Tootsie Rolls at / the half-breed / me
Later / darker / in the night
at / white / Jeremiah's front door /
tricker treat
/
I made a / good / little Injun his father said
now don't you make a
/
good
/
little Injun
He gave me a Tootsie Roll
More night came / darker / darker /
Mothers gathered their / white / kids from the dark
My / dark / mother gathered / empty / cans
while I waited to gather my / white / kid
I waited to gather / white / Jeremiah
He was / the skeleton / walking past my house
a glowing skull and ribs
I ran & tackled his / white / bones / in the street
His candy spilled out / like a million pinto beans /
Asphalt tore my / brown-red-skin / knees
I hit him harder and harder / whiter / and harder
He cried for his momma
I put my fist-me-downs / again and again and down /
He cried / for that white / She came running
She swung me off him
dug nails into my wrist
pulled me to my front door
yelled at her / white / kid to go wait at home
go wait at home Jeremiah, Momma will take care of this
She was ready / to take care of this /
to pound on my door / but no
tricker treat
/
My door was already open
and before that white could speak or knock
/ or put her hands down on my door /
my mother told her to take her hands off of me
taker
/
fuck-king
/
hands off my girl
My mother stepped / or fell / toward that white /
I don't remember what happened next
I don't remember that / white / momma leaving
/ but I know she did /
My mother's boyfriend said
well / Kemosabe / you ruined your costume
wull
/
Ke-mo-sa-be
/
you fuckt up yer costume
My first Halloween
off / the reservation /
my mother said / maybe / next year
you can be a little Tinker Bell / or something /
now go git that
/
white
/
boy's can-dee
âiss-in the road
