Woman Hollering Creek (25 page)

Somebody must’ve felt sorry for it and tossed it a last meal, but the kind thing would’ve been to shoot it.

“So that’s how it is.”

“There is no other remedy.
La
yin
y el
yang, you know,” Flavio said and meant it.

“Well, yeah,” I said. And then because my Torres Special felt like it wanted to rise from my belly—“I think you better go now. I gotta get my clothes out of the dryer before they get wrinkled.”

“Es cool,” Flavio said, sliding out of the booth and my life. “
Ay te wacho
, I guess.”

I looked for my rose-quartz crystal and visualized healing energy surrounding me. I lit copal and burned sage to purify the house. I put on a tape of Amazon flutes, Tibetan gongs, and Aztec ocarinas, tried to center on my seven chakras, and thought only positive thoughts, expressions of love, compassion, forgiveness. But after forty minutes I still had an uncontrollable desire to drive over to Flavio Munguía’s house with my grandmother’s
molcajete
and bash in his skull.

What kills me is your silence. So certain, so solid. Not a note, nor postcard. Not a phone call, no number I could reach you at. No address I could write to. Neither yes nor no.

Just the void. The days raw and wide as this drought-blue sky. Just this nothingness. That’s what hurts.

Nothing wants to break from the eyes. When you’re a kid, it’s easy. You take one wooden step out in the hall dark and wait. The hallways of every house we ever lived in smelling of Pine-Sol and dirty-looking no matter how many Saturdays we scrubbed it. Chipped paint and ugly nicks and craters in the walls from a century
of bikes and kids’ shoes and downstairs tenants. The handrail old and never beautiful, not even the day it was new, I bet. Darkness soaked in the plaster and wood when the house was divided into apartments. Dust balls and hair in the corners where the broom didn’t reach. And now and then, a mouse squeaking.

How I let the sounds, dark and full of dust and hairs, out of my throat and eyes, that sound mixed with spit and coughing and hiccups and bubbles of snot. And the sea trickling out of my eyes as if I’d always carried it inside me, like a seashell waiting to be cupped to an ear.

These days we run from the sun. Cross the street quick, get under an awning. Carry an umbrella like tightrope walkers. Red-white-and-blue-flowered nylon. Beige with green and red stripes. Faded maroon with an amber handle. Bus ladies slouched and fanning themselves with a newspaper and a bandanna.

Bad news. The sky is blue again today and will be blue again tomorrow. Herd of clouds big as longhorns passing mighty and grazing low. Heat like a husband asleep beside you, like someone breathing in your ear who you just want to shove once, good and hard, and say, “Quit it.”

When I was doing collages, I bought a few “powders” from Casa Preciado Religious Articles, the Mexican voodoo shop on South Laredo. I remember I’d picked Te Tengo Amarrado y Claveteado and Regresa a Mí—just for the wrapper. But I found myself hunting around for them this morning, and when I couldn’t find them, making a special trip back to that store that smells of chamomile and black bananas.

The votive candles are arranged like so. Church-sanctioned powers on one aisle—San Martín de Porres, Santo Niño de Atocha, el
Sagrado corazón, La Divina Providencia, Nuestra Señora de San Juan de los Lagos. Folk powers on another—El Gran General Pancho Villa, Ajo Macho/Garlic Macho, La Santísima Muerte/Blessed Death, Bingo Luck, Law Stay Away, Court Case Double Strength. Back to back, so as not to offend maybe. I chose a Yo Puedo Más Que Tú from the pagan side and a Virgen de Guadalupe from the Christian.

Magic oils, magic perfume and soaps, votive candles,
milagritos
, holy cards, magnet car-statuettes, plaster saints with eyelashes made from human hair, San Martín Caballero good-luck horseshoes, incense and copal, aloe vera bunched, blessed, bound with red string, and pinned above a door. Herbs stocked from floor to ceiling in labeled drawers.

AGUACATE, ALBAHACA, ALTAMISA, ANACAHUITE, BARBAS DE ELOTE, CEDRÓN DE CASTILLO, COYOTE, CHARRASQUILLA, CHOCOLATE DE INDIO, EUCALIPTO, FLOR DE ACOCOTILLO, FLOR DE AZAHAR, FLOR DE MIMBRE, FLOR DE TILA, FLOR DE ZEMPOAL, HIERBABUENA, HORMIGA, HUISACHE, MANZANILLA, MARRUBIO, MIRTO, NOGAL, PALO AZUL, PASMO, PATA DE VACA, PIONÍA, PIRUL, RATÓN, TEPOZÁN, VÍBORA, ZAPOTE BLANCO, ZARZAMORA
.

Snake, rat, ant, coyote, cow hoof. Were there actually dead animals tucked in a drawer? A skin wrapped in tissue paper, a dried ear, a paper cone of shriveled black alphabets, a bone ground to crystals in a baby-food jar. Or were they just herbs that
looked
like the animal?

These candles and
yerbas
and stuff, do they really work? The sisters Preciado pointed to a sign above their altar to Our Lady of the Remedies.
VENDEMOS, NO HACEMOS RECETAS
.
WE SELL, WE DON
’
T PRESCRIBE
.

I can be brave in the day, but nights are my Gethsemane. That pinch of the dog’s teeth just as it nips. A mean South American
itch somewhere I can’t reach. The little hurricane of bathwater just before it slips inside the drain.

Seems like the world is spinning smooth without a bump or squeak except when love comes in. Then the whole machine just quits like a loud load of wash on imbalance—the buzzer singing to high heaven, the danger light flashing.

Not true. The world has always turned with its trail of tin cans rattling behind it. I have always been in love with a man.

Everything’s like it was. Except for this. When I look in the mirror, I’m ugly. How come I never noticed before?

I was having
sopa tarasca
at El Mirador and reading Dear Abby. A letter from “Too Late,” who wrote now that his father was dead, he was sorry he had never asked his forgiveness for having hurt him, he’d never told his father “I love you.”

I pushed my bowl of soup away and blew my nose with my paper napkin.
I’d
never asked Flavio forgiveness for having hurt him. And yes, I’d never said “I love you.” I’d never said it, though the words rattled in my head like
urracas
in the bamboo.