The Witch Narratives: Reincarnation (2 page)

But what was that other crying she heard? The high-pitched sobs of the young? She turned her head, grinning at a shiny clean child with braided hair and crystal tears, clothed in a new ruffled dress, the birthday girl.
Ah, the child’s stupid mother will choke her, squeezing her so tightly that hiccups blow from her lips
. She opened her arms to the skinny, black-haired girl. “Mi hija,” the witch cackled. “My daughter.”

“Don’t look at her, Marcelina,” Claudio yelled.

“Marcelina,” she cooed, “My sweet child.”

The girl turned her head into her mother’s shoulder, and the woman tightened her hold around the child’s neck. “She knows your name,” the mother sobbed into her braids. “She knows your name.”

“Don’t look at her,” Claudio yelled again.

The witch pierced Claudio with her eyes and he stepped back, clutching his chest because a visit from La Llorona meant death would visit the household. It was he who opened the door to invite death in.

But death did not come in. She merely stood at the doorway crying, with her arms reaching out to Marcelina. Pain rose from her throat, shaking the adobe walls, chilling the blood of all the family and friends.

Just as suddenly, she quit crying and her body swayed in a trance. She sang with a siren’s voice:

“Marcelina. Marcelina, come to me.

My Darling child, sit on my knee

Precious sweetheart, I hold the key.

Charming pretty girl, you will see.

Delicious child, I shall set you free.

Marcelina. Marcelina, Come to me.”

She was so seductive that Marcelina pounded her fists against Mama’s chest, struggling to be free. She ran her fingernails down Mama’s cheek, scratching her, but both Mama and Papa held onto her tightly.

If Marcelina would not come to the witch, then she would have to get her. She lifted a muddy foot but try as she might, she could not step across the salea, a sheepskin pelt placed at the entrance to keep the cold air out. She jumped up and down, trying to skip across, but an invisible force held her back from entering the home.

She squeezed her arms to the sides of her body and spat on the salea. She ripped a black rose from her hair, flinging it.

The black rose landed in the middle of the floor with its petals still intact.

Everyone in the house took a step back.

The widow, the childless mother, the jilted bride, the orphaned daughter turned and walked away with the thorn of that other black rose still stuck to her hand. She sobbed, dragging the train of her wedding veil behind her.
Her veil had dragged the river yet still, La Llorona looked for her children beneath the murky waters of the Rio Grande. She looked for any sign her children survived, any bubble of air to give her hope and rescue her soul from the fires of hell.

The house was silent, all eyes on the black velvety rose on the floor, untouched by the chilly fall season. The thorns of the rose protruded from its long green stem, like razors. Sprinkles of brown water muddied the petals of the rose, polluting its dark beauty.

Finally, Lupe Rodríguez, the mother who held the birthday girl so tightly in her arms, handed her child to Ramon, her husband. She swept up the black rose, tossing it into the black night.

Lupe then very carefully lifted up the salea, exposing two sewing needles crossed in the shape of a crucifix. She knelt, making the sign of the cross to this symbol which had kept the witch out.

Behind Lupe, all dropped to their knees.

The silence of the house was replaced by clicking of rosary beads.

“Ava. Ava, Maria,” they all sang, muttering the rosary beneath their breath.

When their novenas were prayed, the guests trailed from the house, swinging their lanterns in one hand and their rosary beads with the other hand.

Lupe once more covered the cross of sewing needles with the salea, protecting the entrance to the home.

Throughout the long night, Lupe and Ramon kept watch over Marcelina. La Llorona had been known to steal children from their beds.

The next morning the sun rose East over the mountains. Marcelina skipped from her bedroom to eat her breakfast, her braids bouncing against her back and her butt cheek wobbling through a hole in her nightgown. She wrinkled her nose with disgust.
It smells as if we are having fish for breakfast
, she thought.
Spoiled fish
.

She stopped abruptly at the entrance to the kitchen. In place of her usual wooden bowl of sweetened cornmeal, there on the kitchen table, lay her Tío Claudio, spread-eagle. Her uncle’s fingers were clenched in the air, as though clawing at something. His fingernails were ragged and worn. His
bare feet were muddied, his ankles bloodied. His big toe was shriveled like the bark of a tree, ashen grey in color.

She reached out a finger to waken him and his leg bounced. It was as if, like a fish, he had been deboned and there was no skeleton holding his muscle in place.

She climbed on a chair, moving her nose closer to his face so that his moustache tickled her nose. She sniffed at the black rose stuffed in his mouth.

This was how her parents found her. Marcelina lay limp, her face buried in the black rose.

She had fainted.

2

P
ine trees and coal. Black death and cold religion. These were the riches of the village of Madrid. It did not take long for the stench of death to blow out the broken windows of the Rodríguez house, the stink fanning across the Turquoise Trail. The smell of death spun like a web of spiders, crept up the stucco walls of neighbors’ houses, swept down their chimneys, and covered their breakfast tables with a tablecloth of fine, black lace. Within the hour the hungry Marcelina was found slumped over her uncle, death was digested for breakfast everywhere in Madrid.

By the next hour, a wagon wobbled towards the Rodríguez house, the bed filled with lumber cut from trees growing in abundance in the Ortiz Mountains. Atop the lumber lay a skeleton, its bones rattling with each movement of the wagon along the dirt road.

Two harsh looking men, their faces blackened by coal dust, walked beside the wagon. The men were members of the Penitentes, a religious fraternal society which always arranged for the burial of the dead, their main focus being the death of Jesus Christ. Every Easter the Penitentes re-enacted the crucifixion, even going so far as to nail one of their own members to the cross.

Behind the wagon followed a procession of wailing women, dressed in black capes, billowing in the wind, making them look like crows, come to feast on the dead. The leader of the women waved a bell in front of her.

Pacheco Sandoval, the driver, jumped down and tied the horse to a post. He stood bow-legged on short legs, with his fists on his hips, surveying the Rodríguez property with a sneer of revulsion on his face. He may have been small in stature, but he was a giant when it came to self-righteousness because he was the Brother Mayor of the Penitentes, selected for life, the most powerful Hispano in Madrid.

Marcelina peeked out from the living room at death’s arrival at her door. She was not so well hid. Pacheco raised his black sombrero to her and bowed mockingly, as if she was a grand lady and not just an eleven year-old girl with breasts promising early womanhood.

To Pacheco, big breasts in such a young girl were the mark of the devil. Women were given breasts but for one reason—to tempt men. He narrowed his eyes at the curtains and the sweaty fingers of the girl pinching at the material.

He was always watching.

Seeing.

Glowering.

Devouring.

He devoured sin and was consumed by it. He was the self-appointed moral conscience of the village, its jury, judge, and executioner.

She wondered what sin she committed for him to acknowledge her so openly.

Did he know the bruja, La Llorona, had come looking for her last night?

Did he know she knew her name?

Did he blame her, Marcelina, for her uncle’s death?

Would he order Marcelina buried alive for her sins, as he had others in Madrid?

So, it was rumored.

She had difficulty catching her breath, unable to tell by looking at Pacheco what the Mayor of the Penitentes was thinking. His face was unlined because he never smiled, and rarely spoke. His complexion was tinted a swarthy hue, his face pores appearing like open sores of mud puddles. The most distressing feature he possessed was his eyes the color of a dead fish. His eyes bugged out from bones on the sides of his head, almost as prominent as the skeleton waiting for him on the wagon.

Overwhelming pity washed over her for the skeleton, rumored to be Agnes. There had only ever been one Agnes in Madrid, a nice lady who two years ago dried Marcelina’s tears when she ran skidding across the Turquoise Trail, falling and skinning her knees. Agnes had been pregnant then, and Marcelina rubbed her belly where the babe nestled safely within. “I want a little girl,” she had said, patting Marcelina’s hand. “See. She’s kicking because the baby likes you.”

She wondered what happened to the baby. She wanted to yell, “Run Agnes,” when Pacheco walked around to the back of the wagon. He lifted the skeleton, whose limbs were lovingly pinned together. He then carried the
skeleton from the back of the wagon to the vacant seat. Sitting the skeleton upright, he carefully crossed the legs, folding the hands on the boney lap.

The skeleton’s head tilted, looking down at Pacheco.

“Who is the skeleton who always travels with Pacheco?” Mama once whispered to Bíatriz, Papa’s sister. Mama had looked around her, in case Pacheco’s ears were as big as his head.

“His dead wife?” Tía Bíatriz whispered back.

“Agnes vanished. No one knows for sure if she is dead.”

“But Agnes fornicated with Pacheco’s brother, Alfonso.”

“I hear he put the child in her womb that Pacheco was unable to give her.”

“Ah, no. Then the unborn babe was an innocent victim of the Penitentes.”

Mama and Tía Bíatriz quickly crossed their chests in the Catholic way.

Marcelina now crossed her chest, reciting a clumsy prayer for the skeleton, Agnes. Marcelina was not yet a good Catholic, even though her indoctrination began at birth. She so wanted to believe in the Church. Catholicism was not just religion for her people, but was integrated into their culture. This was her biggest secret—she doubted the Church. Every Sunday, while walking with her family to the Church of San Cirilio, she hoped this would be the day true faith would come to her.

This would be the Sunday she would not let her mind wander.

Today, she would gladly suffer on her knees, instead of wanting to scream at the padre to be quick about it, because she saw no difference between this and any other Sunday, other than his costume was orange instead of green.

But every Sunday, the church walls suffocated her, as if her lungs were in a vise, being crushed by the heavy statues of the saints.

If Pacheco should ever find out, he would devour her so she might pass through his soul and come out cleansed.

He did not devour his wife for her sins—he murdered her.

So, it was rumored.

He lifted a boot, resting it on the wagon. He simply stared for some minutes into the vacant sockets of his wife’s skull. He spoke a few words to Agnes, who grinned back at him with a lipless face, making her teeth appear huge.

When the one-sided conversation was over, he ran his hand down her skeletal face. He patted her folded hands, as if to say,
don’t worry, I’ll be back soon
.

The skeleton seemed to grin broader, as if to say,
with any luck, I’ll be gone when you come back
. Which was a possibility, since Marcelina still spied from behind the curtain, plotting how she might help Agnes escape.

Unaware of the conspiracy going on inside the house, Pacheco distributed lumber and nails to the other men, who paid no notice of his odd behavior. The Penitentes, with their rigid beliefs, were brothers in the faith, a tie stronger than any bloodshed. If Pacheco seemed odd, well, many of the saints had been oddballs, loners speaking to visions seen only by them, hearing voices heard only by them, and communicating with animals. Let Pacheco have his idiosyncrasy, even if it was living with a skeleton. At least his wife did not nag him. And most important, she was now a dutiful wife, following his every move with empty eye sockets. Grinning. Always grinning. Agnes was the perfect wife. Happy. She didn’t talk a man’s ear off. Cheap. She didn’t eat a man out of house and home.

This was Pacheco’s perspective. The girl spying from the window had other ideas as she rubbed the scar on her knee from her fall on the Turquoise Trail where Agnes helped her. She wished she was braver but feared coming between Pacheco and his wife.

Agnes moved! Her boney hands were no longer folded in the lap but hung at her sides; her delicate shoulders slumped in defeat. The bones of her face shone with a glossy sheen. Agnes was sweating, almost as much as she was.

It was late morning and the day already warm from the New Mexico sun teetering atop the mountains. The Penitentes, excepting Pacheco, removed their shirts, exposing identical tattooed chests embedded with the ink drawing of a cross. The tattoo was designed to look like the trunks of two trees tied together. Gauzy looking material draped around the crosses in gray ink, where the figure of Christ would have normally hung.