I heard the story of The Children of Llullaillaco, and the thousands that preceded and followed them. I wept for them, though it was hundreds of years ago, and I was angry for their bodies, kept from their families in life, in death, and hundreds of years after. But in between all that, I thought of their mothers.

The mother of El Niño, what she might have felt, when her baby was taken that day. She always knew he was beautiful, from the moment she held him in her arms, he was the most beautiful thing to her, and he would have been even if the elite declared him ugly. But they declared him beautiful. Was it because she looked at him like he was? If that was the reason, would she have taken it all back, treated him as a monster, if just to let him live?

They say that the families of the poor should have been honored, honored that their beautiful peasant children looked like they could be the children of kings, honored that their precious sons and daughters would be sacrificed, to save the true royal blood that graced the earth. How could you not be grateful, they said as they bound the children like slaves, that we get to kill your child?

The mother was not grateful. Another may have been able to lie to their children, to fake a smile until they were out of sight. He is just a child, just a baby, and she cries, she screams and fights even when they beat her into the ground. She knows she might not see tomorrow for her outburst, but she will not let her baby go, no, not without him knowing that this is wrong, that she didn’t want this, that he should have lived and been happy. She will take his place, she will carve out her own heart for the gods, place herself on the altar to appease the wealthy who crave the blood of her son.

El Niño cries, and in a moment, he is gone. His mother is not dead, not yet. But she wishes she was.

In five hundred years she will be called a barbarian by white men who steal from the grave of the child she lost. A woman who knows nothing will call herself El Niño’s protector and mother, and keep him from his true family.

The mother of Llullaillaco will find comfort will be knowing her son died knowing she loved him, and that knowledge made him fight, fight until his very last breath, even as the wealthy dug drugs between his lips and forced him to chew, even as they fed him meat so he felt like a king in those last moments, with the cold unforgiving mountain suffocating him, even with his mind swirling frantically, he knew he had to get back to his mother’s love, that she didn’t want this. He died knowing this was wrong.

There were other children, who died a little more peacefully, perhaps, and there were others who lived safe and sound. I imagine another mother of Llullaillaco, wrapping her arms tightly around her ugly, royal-born child, who would have been sacrificed if El Niño had been ugly too. She does not want to watch, but she does, as El Niño fights for his life, his ribs breaking against ropes that tie him down as he tries to get up.

She does not weep. She will not, until later, when her baby is asleep. She will cry and thank the gods for giving her this ugly child. And deep down, she will hate herself all the same. If ever there is a day her son grows, and is horrified by the altar and the blood on his mother’s hands and the drugs and the ropes, she will scream and beg his forgiveness, tell him she had no choice, that she was a monster, yes, she would be called a barbarian by the white men who dug up bones that didn’t belong to them, but she loved her son, loved him enough to kill another child if it meant keeping him safe.​

by Matias Travieso-Diaz and Eloy Gonzalez-Argüelles

[I want to speak, I want to speak, tell everyone Albertico Limonta is my grandson,
the child of my oldest daughter Maria Elena.]
Don Rafael del Junco’s silent litany in El Derecho de Nacer by Felix B. Caignet

In mid-2047, the Instituto Cubano de Radio y Televisión (Cuban Institute of Radio and Television, or CIRT), received a proposal for a revival of the 1948 radio soap opera El Derecho de Nacer (The Right to be Born) by the Cuban radio writer Félix Benjamín Caignet Salomón. At the time, El Derecho, as it was called, swept Cuba by storm, and then spread to all of Latin America in a run that lasted over fifty years. It was regarded as one of the most influential soap operas of all time, and had been the subject of numerous radio, television and movie adaptations. The revival (in the form of a TV series to be aired in Cubavision) was to start in April 2048 to coincide with the centenary of the original radio broadcast.
 
José (“Pepe”) Cubero, a brilliant movie and TV producer and director, was the proponent and strongest defender of the project. He acknowledged that the 1948 soap opera would have to be modified a bit to make it consistent with the culture and politics of twenty-first century Cuba, but felt the changes would be small and well within his creative abilities.
 
The proposal met opposition from some of the most orthodox members of the Communist Party. They claimed that the original story was rife with the type of bourgeois, capitalistic ideology that had been eradicated after almost ninety years of Socialist rule. Other opponents, more practical, pointed to the chronic economic crisis that bedeviled the island with words like these:
 
“Anything we broadcast must encourage the Cuban people to work harder, make sacrifices, concentrate on rebuilding the economy in the face of the heartless Yankee blockade. El Derecho is a frivolous, escapist diversion that would get us sidetracked from our mission. And it will run for many months, compounding the damage.”
 
The matter was kicked upward to land on the lap of Miguel Diaz-Canel, who had been President and First Secretary of Cuba’s Communist Party for almost thirty years. He was in his mid-eighties and getting ready to step down, so he was in no mood to mediate in ideological disputes. He ruled:
 
“Let Pepe Cubero come up with a proposed screenplay and give it to the President of the CIRT and the Minister of Culture. Let those guys decide what changes to the screenplay are required to render it acceptable, make those changes, and run with it. Don’t bother me with this shit again.”
 
The Minister of Culture, Haydée Alonso, who had studied in Paris, quoted Sartre, and prided herself on being open-minded and liberal (within the ideological bounds of the Party), was enchanted with the idea of a revival of El Derecho, so she was inclined to give Cubero a relatively free hand. This was good news to Cubero, although no one else liked Haydée. No one forgave her for her unpatriotic preference for smelly Gauloise cigarettes that stunk up the studio, and that she did so “in the land where the best tobacco in the world used to be grown.”
 
The CIRT President, Danylo López, was an old, dried-up bureaucrat concerned mainly with toeing the Party line and avoiding controversies, and was not amenable to letting Cubero get away with much. Torn between polar extremes, development of the new version of the soap opera proceeded in painful fits and starts.
 
The first bone of contention was the character of Don Rafael del Junco, the villain of the story. Everyone agreed that Don Rafael, a haughty unscrupulous landowner, was a proper embodiment of the pre-Revolutionary capitalistic class. However, at the end of the original 314 episodes, Don Rafael reconciled with his daughter and grandson, and ended up being presented in a somewhat favorable light. “We have to change the ending” argued Danylo. “There can be no redemption for the enemies of the people.” Cubero reluctantly agreed to modify the end of the series so that Don Rafael got his comeuppance. He was hoping against hope that by the time the last episodes were filmed Danylo would have changed his mind.
 
Then there was María Elena, the daughter of Don Rafael and mother of the hero of the series. Again, everyone agreed that she showed courage in refusing to have a late term abortion and insisting on giving birth to her illegitimate child. However, in the original series she sought shelter for her grief in a convent, where the nuns and other members of the community treated her with compassion and understanding. Danylo was loath to include any episodes that praised religious people. “Religion is the opium of the masses, and the State must not condone it in any manner.”
 
Cubero had to change the script to have María Elena become a sort of hermit, seeking solace from the apparent loss of her child on a deserted shore. That in itself was problematic, since Cuba had implemented an internal passport system that was rigidly enforced. In the new Cuba, there was nowhere to hide. At the end, this discrepancy was allowed as poetic license, hoping it would not be noticed by anyone who had the power to object.
 
In the original El Derecho María Elena leaves her newborn baby boy in the care of her once wet nurse, the black María Dolores, who saves the infant from being slain on orders from Don Rafael, manages to give Don Rafael the false impression that she and the baby are dead, and escapes with the infant to a remote village. There, she raises the boy as her own child, naming him Alberto (“Albertico”) Limonta.
 
One salient and recurring problem was the relationship between “son” and “mother,” due to the fact that María Dolores claimed he was her son, even after his infancy. Yet, the actor chosen by Cubero to play Albertico, Ontario (“Guapito”) Ledesma, was white. Very white. Blondish. On the other hand, the lady portraying María Dolores was black, as stipulated by Caignet in the original soap opera. Coal black. No one seemed to find the discrepancy odd except for Haydée, who said that the role of María Dolores seemed taken out of Gone with the Wind. Her remark was met with a deadpan silence, for nobody in Cuba remembered or cared about old Yankee movies.
 
The racial disparity problem did not fully surface at first, because the boy who played Albertico as a child had a darker complexion that made his relationship with María Dolores more credible. But later on in the show, when Ontario assumed the role of 25-year-old Albertico, María Dolores’ claim that he was her son began ringing hollow. Different suggestions were considered: darkening Ontario’s skin with blackface make-up like Laurence Olivier in Othello, other things of that nature. Haydée opposed them all, because, she said, it was not impossible that Albertico could still be María Dolores’ biological son. So, things were left unchanged. There was one scene, however, when the script called for older Albertico to run up to his mother and say, “Mamá, I love you so” as he hugged the black woman. The scene had to be redone many times because the crew in the studio—and later on, even Albertico and María Dolores—could not control their laughter. In the end, the scene was filmed as it was and prompted sarcastic comments among the viewers once aired.
 
Much was done in the original series to highlight the discrimination and ill treatment that both María Dolores and Albertico endured on account of her race. Danylo liked that and wanted to accentuate the criticism of the racist society that existed in the country before the Revolution, but was opposed by Haydée, who warned not to overdo that aspect of the plot. “Remember, Danylo,” she said, “there are still people left in this country who believe blacks are inferior, although they won’t openly admit to it. There is no point in rubbing their noses on our commitment to equality among the races.” At the end, Danylo carried the day. Albertico, who was white, would be repeatedly abused and discriminated against for having a black mother and being a mulatto.
 
In one scene intended to bring more “realism” to the story, a classmate of Albertico has a fight with him and calls him an “hijo de puta” (a bastard), not an uncommon insult in Spanish. Danylo objected to the use of such foul language, as it was not in keeping with Socialist morality. Haydée replied that this choice of words was used by ordinary people and prude sentiments to the contrary were a bourgeois atavism. A heated debate ensued and, at the end, Haydée seemed to say that the language in the series should not be controlled by a “partido de hijos de puta,” which many people took to refer to the Communist Party. Haydée, however, swore that she had not said “Partido” but “partida,” meaning “bunch” or “group,” without any political connotation. Since no one could produce a definitive argument, the matter was dropped, along with the entire scene.
 
Many episodes later, thanks to María Dolores’ innumerable sacrifices, Albertico manages to make it through the university and becomes a famous doctor. In the original version, Albertico gets to be rich and lives in comfort with his aging “mother.” Both Danylo and Haydée objected to this turn of events. Cubero was required to rewrite that part of the story to have Albertico live modestly, see indigent patients for free, and travel to Haiti to help treat the victims of a devastating earthquake. In the rewrite, Albertico returns to Cuba with a newfound social conscience, alert to the inequities of the capitalist society and committed to fighting them.
 
Later in the series, Albertico is doing night duty at a public hospital’s emergency room when several injured people are brought in after a traffic accident. One of them is an old man who is bleeding to death. The victim’s blood type is AB negative, the rarest type, which is unavailable at the ill-equipped public hospitals of pre-Revolutionary times. Albertico, AB negative himself, gives a transfusion that saves the man’s life. The victim, who is no other than Don Rafael del Junco, recovers and as he convalesces, he invites his savior to come to dinner and meet his family. There Albertico meets Isabel Cristina, daughter of María Elena’s sister Matilde, and a budding romance blooms between the couple, unaware that they are cousins. Danylo was not in favor of retaining potential incest as part of the plot, and Cubero had to add another twist at the end of the story where it is revealed that Isabel Cristina is not the natural daughter of Matilde, but only an adopted one, eliminating another potential offense to Socialist morality.
 
Don Rafael, now fully recovered, is one day taking a stroll near an outside market, when he spots an old black woman that he immediately recognizes as María Dolores, who he had written off as dead many years before. He follows the woman, overtakes her, and confronts her. María Dolores acknowledges that she and Albertico are alive and well, and rebukes Don Rafael for his cruelty. Cubero is asked to add language to the confrontation scene wherein María Dolores lists once again all the aristocrat’s misdeeds and concludes with a stirring pronouncement: “Beware, for your days are numbered. The people soon will hold you accountable for all the crimes you have committed against your family and against society.”
 
Staggered by these revelations, Don Rafael returns home, where he promptly suffers a stroke (“derrame cerebral”) (a common mishap in soap operas) and falls into a coma. In the original version, Don Rafael stays in a coma for many months, burning with desire to impart the crucial news of the existence of his missing grandson to his wife and daughter, but is paralyzed and unable to speak. Here, however, science rather than politics interferes with the progress of the story. By 2047, a process had existed for years by which an artificial intelligence (AI) could accurately decode words and sentences from brain activity. Using only a few seconds of brain activity data, the AI can guess what a person is trying to say and translates it into a voice recording. The AI was commonly used throughout the world, including Cuba, to help people unable to communicate their thoughts through speech, typing or gestures.
 
The existence of the AI technology rendered a crucial portion of the original version of El Derecho vulnerable to ridicule by the viewing public. There was no way Don Rafael could linger, speechless, for several months. Cubero and his creative team struggled with the problem for weeks and finally had to come up with a lame solution: Don Rafael suffers a “derrame cerebral,” but recovers almost immediately and, instead of bringing the existence of his grandson to the attention of everyone, has a change of heart and continues to cover up his earlier nefarious crimes by accusing María Dolores of theft and charging Albertico with complicity in the black woman’s schemes.
 
Isabel Cristina, whose love for Albertico has not been diminished by Don Rafael’s accusations, alerts her boyfriend before the police can seize him, and Albertico escapes to a bitter exile in Tampa, where his mulatto identity subjects him to additional discrimination and mistreatment at the hands of the American imperialists. Meanwhile, María Dolores lingers in jail and ultimately dies of sorrow.
 
From that point on, the plot of the revival diverges entirely from the original radio show. Albertico becomes a revolutionary hero and travels back to Cuba to take up arms in the mountains against the corrupt government. He alerts Isabel Cristina of his whereabouts and she joins him to continue, together, their fight for justice. Through one of his comrades, who knew Isabel Cristina’s parents, it is revealed that Isabel Cristina and Albertico are unrelated, whereupon the couple is chastely married in a civil ceremony conducted by a rebel leader. They are enjoying a brief honeymoon when they learn that Don Rafael has been killed in a terrorist attack against the Presidential Palace, where he was attending a reception. Albertico and Isabel Cristina kiss and hug each other, relieved at the evildoer’s death, and the series ends.
 
As the first six episodes were filmed, José Cubero had increasing misgivings about the product he was going to set before the public. Technically, the series was as good as he was capable of putting together: photography, score (instrumental renderings of Cuban ballads going back to the 1800s), sound effects, customs, editing, were all first class. He had assembled a cast of experienced actors and actresses, with a famous Spanish TV personality in the role of Don Rafael. Much of the series was shot in locations selected for their beauty or historic interest.
 
Artistically, though, Cubero felt he was doing a disservice to—actually, betraying—Caignet’s original work and regretted all the compromises he had been forced to make to get the project approved. As a way to hide his guilt, he made sure of the destruction of all copies existing in Cuba of the audio, TV and movie versions of the series, be they from Cuba, Puerto Rico, Ecuador, Peru, Brazil, Venezuela or Mexico. Cuban censorship saw to it that no written materials describing the 1948 series were available to the public.
 
Since there was nobody alive who had listened to the original broadcast, Cubero felt confident that he would not be confronted by critics of the savaging he had been forced to perform on the original. Still, he went to bed the night of Tuesday, March 31, 2048 with a heavy heart, in anticipation of the premiere of the series the following evening. He tossed and turned in bed all night and, in the few minutes of actual sleep, was accosted by the image of a dapper slim man sporting a trim moustache and a mane of black pomaded hair, who appeared and disappeared before him making menacing gestures and repeating incessantly a single word: “Why!!?”
 
The first episode of the new rendering of El Derecho de Nacer was shown on Cubavision at 9 p.m. on April 1, 2048. The show ran, Monday through Saturday, for 310 episodes, the last one playing in the spring of 2049. While initially garnering much public attention, interest in the series wore off quickly, so that the last episodes were seen by almost nobody. Many concluded that much of what was shown and said in the series was predictable and no different, except for its excessive duration, from other political indoctrination efforts by the government.
 
José Cubero finished producing the last package of ten episodes and sought and was granted permission to take a short vacation abroad to recover from his massive effort. He was last spotted taking an Iberia plane bound for Madrid on April 15, 2049.
 
He was never seen again.

Matias Travieso-Diaz was born in Cuba and migrated to the United States as a young man. He became an engineer and lawyer and practiced for nearly fifty years. He retired and turned his attention to creative writing. Seventy of his stories have been published or accepted for publication in paying short story anthologies, magazines, blogs, audio books and podcasts. Some of his unpublished stories have also received “honorable mentions” from a number of publications. A collection of some of his short stories, The Satchel and Other Terrors, is scheduled for publication in February 2023.

Eloy González Argüelles was born in La Habana, Cuba, and came to the United States in 1961. His studies culminated in a PhD in Romance Languages at the Ohio State University. He taught at Wheaton College (Norton, Massachusetts) and the University of Massachusetts (Harbour Campus) before moving to Washington State University (WSU), where he taught Spanish literature and literary criticism for 38 years. For ten of his last twelve years before retirement he was Chair of the Department of Foreign Languages and Cultures at WSU. His output includes a novel, a book on the chivalric novel, and articles in scholarly journals and conference presentations. Upon retirement he became an Emeritus Professor at WSU.

La mulatta Guadalupe López came to her new employment at the honorable house of the Alvarado Rosedale e Ibarra Betancourt family, on a thirteenth of March in the year of the Lord, 1967. It was a sweet-and-sour day for the missus, Señora Rosabella, who was on her eighth month of pregnancy. Sweet for the impending, and unbearable pregnancy, was soon to end, thank God and all his Saints; but sour, because she was on her fourth servant in the short time of her marriage, a year, to the very distinguished, Don Monce Alvarado Rosedale e Ibarra, Esq.
 
The loss of so many maids, (her own mother had had Lucinda in her service for over forty years), was not due to Rosabella’s temperament. Of that she was sure, temperament, pure nonsense, a fabrication of evil-tongues, jealous tongues. She was not temperamental. Far from it; in fact, she was indeed a saint. Like her favorite, Santa Rosa de Lima, who destroyed her beauty with bitter lime and pepper to abate all her admires, (this pregnancy had distorted all her features, even her nose was wider). It was part of what she needs to suffer, for she, like Santa Rosa de Lima, had asked God to increase her suffering in turn to increase God’s favor for her. But this expansion of abdomen, feet, and nose was ridiculous. To top it all, she had to be in bedrest for a month. A month! And if that was not enough suffering, that insulting doctor said she had an incompetent cervix. Incompetent! She was so offended. Calling her cervix, whatever that was, incompetent right in front both her parents and her dear beloved Monce. She felt so ashamed, the stupid doctor was talking about her female parts with all of them as if she was not right there in the room. She wanted to throw her pillow at the ugly doctor with his ugly words.
 
If anyone was incompetent it was those good-for-nothing girls that came to be at her employment. How hard could it be to keep her house, not as grand as her parents, but only two people for now lived here. It was only a matter of washing the floors, doing the laundry, ironing, making dinner, and making sure she was comfortable in her bed. ¿Was that so much to ask? The problem with all this incompetence, was the fault of the industrialization of the island by that idiot of a Governor. It was his fault that the pharmaceutical companies had settled on the island. Opening their doors to all kind of riff raff to do labor work at minimum wage—a salary that was outrageous for the fine families, who had Christianized this jungle into civility—minimum wage. ¡What a ridiculous idea! Too much money for those people, if anyone cared to ask her. But no one did, not even her sweet Monce. Rosabella, times are changing. You should not worry your pretty head with those things. Leave politics to the politicians. You just take care of our baby.
 
That governor and his idiotic impositions to pay such an unjust and outrageous fee just to wash floors and clean windows, etc. Of course, they could afford to pay more than Eli Lilly, but that would set the wrong precedent, wouldn’t it? And then where will they be? On the road to communism, that is where this would lead. If this continued, the governor would have the servants riding the Mercedes and the people of class, la crème de la crème, would be riding donkeys.
 
The island would turn to another Cuba, God Forbid! Equality for all. Just thinking about it made her tachycardia worsen and her ‘incompetent cervix’ go into spasms. She crossed herself, and tightened the grip between her legs. This baby wanted to be born too soon, and a suitable maid needed to be found sooner. This situation was making her first year as bride quite bitter.
 
La Guadalupe came well recommended. The Soler family, a family of pedigree, if not of great wealth, times had been hard on them, sent a lively recommendation letter on behalf of Guadalupe. In it they extolled Guadalupe, who preferred to be called Guadalupe—this should have set off all kinds of bell alerts—which Rosabella hadn’t noticed, her mind was elsewhere, consumed by the expansion of her belly and the unsightly bellybutton pushing out like a doorbell. It was a hint she missed; she likes to be called by the full extent of her name. Instead of the usual Lupe, a perfectly suited name for a woman of her class. In the letter, the Solers extoled La Guadalupe’s virtues; She is very clean, hard-working and efficient. We have noticed that she is even quite intelligent. She would do very well indeed. She could even be of great help in taking care of your future little one. Love, blessings, etc., etc. That was enough for Rosabella, who hired la Guadalupe on the spot without even seeing her, without the required interview.
 
La Guadalupe announced her arrival the following Monday. She was punctual. At precisely 7 o’clock sharp, that was a good sign, but it was a few minutes before Monce, her devoted husband, departed to his work. But even the remarkable precision of her arrival did not reduce the tachycardia and migraine that Guadalupe’s physical attributes precipitated on the delicate Rosabella when she entered the private marital bedroom, on account that Rosabella could no longer get out of bed and walk the few feet it took to get to the office, a more suitable place for greeting her new maid.
 
The Soler family had failed to mention the mulatta’s physical attributes. Tall as a Fichus tree, with a figure that even another woman would admire, this very appealing woman’s visage ended on what they called these days an afro! Rosabella took immediate offence to the hair and to the letter of the Soler’s which, undoubtedly, had not mentioned this point on purpose; therefore they must have intended some malice. Rosabella could imagine all of the Solers having a great laugh on her behalf. But the house was full of dust motes, the laundry piling in the laundry house, food lately had been just cold cuts, and her feet were the size of breadfruits. She was truly in need of someone to put order to her home and take care of her. Maybe I am not meant to be a mother, maybe God indeed had answered with impunity for the increase of her suffering.
 
Rosabella had been turned down by her own mother. Mama please, let me have Jacinta. Her mother had sighed with deep and sincere pity, but unfortunately, this was the season when the social calendar was so full. Ay, querida, this too shall pass, you will see, you will see. Have to go now, the Sotomayors are calling. Bye, besos, muah. So Rosabella swallowed her significant discomfort and allowed the magnificent afro headed bronze statue in front of her to proceed and begin to work for the day.
 
At the end of that first day, Rosabella gingerly stood and walked, against the advice of her doctor, to inspect. She was sure La Guadalupe’s work would be slovenly and she could terminate her on the spot. At least, that was her hope. She would rather tell her she was not up to snuff, instead of having to talk about the offending hair. These days the help was so uppity. Refusing to wear uniforms or living in the homes of their employers.
 
But here were no dust motes hiding in corners. The beds were made with precision. Clothes ironed and placed in good order. Indeed, the rooms were impeccable. And then, La Guadalupe had served her dinner. She tasted the dinner, with trepidation. Gandinga. Normally she did not like liver, but the baby apparently had been craving it and she had asked La Guadalupe to make this dish. A dish not even Jacinta could do well. This was the best gandinga she ever tasted.
 
It was Monce’s favorite dish, and she worried this would totally bind this La Guadalupe to his liking. Rosabella’s shoulders sagged. She knew she would find it near impossible to fire this maid. La Guadalupe had played her card well, ¿is that what the Solers had meant, that she was intelligent? She was forced to play her own pawn, that damn afro.
 
“Yes, everything is satisfactory. Here is your payment for today. But please, let me tell you, if you are to proceed to stay with us…,” Rosabella swallowed hard, times were changing, thanks to the idiotic Governor, and now these days even the help was hoity-toity. “tomorrow, when you come, you need to do something with that maraña. That tangle cannot do in this very proper home.”
 
La Guadalupe did not even blink. From her height, which really was considerable, for La Guadalupe stood close to six feet tall, she smiled at Rosabella in a smile that seemed quite petulant.
 
“I am sorry, Señora, but the hair stays or I won’t be back tomorrow.”
 
The affront was so unexpected, that Rosabella did not have a chance to react. No servant of hers, or anyone she has ever met, had ever spoken to their employers with such…, well, for a lack of another word, frankness. These new times, and their changes, were going to be the end of her. It was all the fault of those hippies, and of course the Governor. These new ideas of equality and commonwealth were going to be the end of their peaceful and quite satisfactory small island. The idiotic governor and his moronic followers were unsettling what needed not be stirred.
 
The next day, La Guadalupe was in the house before Rosabella had even awakened, and in fact, was awakened by the delicious smell of brewing coffee, an aroma that always made her feel the island in her bones. La Guadalupe walked into the bedroom armed with a tray she placed by the nightstand table next to her. The statuesque Guadalupe filled her a cup in plain street clothes, no uniform. Tall, clean, and with a cloud of black hair shaped as a round lollipop on her magnificent head.
 
“Here is your coffee, Señora, ¿do you like milk and sugar?”
 
Rosabella nodded, but could not stop looking at the halo of black hair that surrounded La Guadalupe’s face. A delicate face, she noticed, quite pretty, for a woman of her class. She reminded her of one of those black singers she had seen in The Ed Sullivan Show, ¿what was her name?
 
“Here are your eggs and toast. If you want anything else, just let me know. I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”
 
“You can make yourself breakfast too, Guadalupe, your dishes are in the left cabinet, marked for the service.”
 
La Guadalupe looked at her patrona squarely in the eyes, producing a cup already filled from the same tray she had brought the dishes. One of the porcelain cups from Mama-abuela, and in defiance began to drink from it.
 
“I guess, you did not hear me Guadalupe, that cup you are using is for the family only, servants use plates and cups from the cabinet clearly labeled in the kitchen.”
 
La Guadalupe smiled, finished her cup in a manly gulp, and left the room closing the door with care. Rosabella stared at the ceiling of her bedroom. ¿How was she going to deal with this impossible woman? The baby in her belly gave her a strong kick.
***
In the weeks that followed, Rosabella and La Guadalupe fought an incessant tug-of-war about the dishes, which bathroom she was allowed to use, and the infernal hair. Rosabella gave La Guadalupe a hair net, which she found later in the wastebasket of the master bathroom! The porcelain dishes from Mama-abuela were continually used, she found them washed and rinsed on the drying rack, the bathroom door to the guest bathroom locked during intervals. She was living the life of Santa Rosa de Lima, this was her insufferable passion. These things were so aggravating, making the baby in her womb kick and her incompetent cervix contract continuously.
 
Her mother visited her weekly, but she was no help. On the contrary, always praising La Guadalupe, as if she was some kind of hero. Oh my! This rum cake is better than Lucinda’s. Your house is so perfectly tidy, Bella mi niña, you should be so happy with this girl. So they talked about things she could not talk about with Monce. At least her mother was also obsessing about the damn war; the disgusting hippies on television, the idiotic governor, the horrors of the American television programs. Like The Ed Sullivan Show! Always showing blacks in his program. Once, she saw Mr. Sullivan kiss a black woman entertainer. Monce thought nothing of it. He liked the show, so she had to sit and watch with him. The world was changing, and they were witnessing the crumbling of the aristocracy.
 
And it was not only the television. Just last week, her mother called her on the phone crying. Telling her that Carlos, her own cousin, was powerless to use his last name to stay out of that blasted war. He too had been drafted. ¿Can you imagine? Drafted just like a common man. Not even offered a ranking.
 
Rosabella felt that no one was listening to her in this time of need. Not even Monce, who was still working, going on for ten or more years, on the case of those horrific revolutionaries who had bombed Congress. And doing those infuriating pro-bono cases for the women who had been sterilized without their knowledge. He was so distant now, so preoccupied with his work. She hated pro-bono work. Monce, por favor, at least just work on the cases that pay. He had smiled at her but left her in the bedroom going to his home office instead.
 
She felt abandoned and alone with this sirvienta, who was the best cook, but also an insolent and confrontational monster that was making her suffer. Every day now she suffered from more tachycardia, migraines, and contractions than ever before, and these were real, not just to get a little attention. Maybe God was punishing her for using those conditions before as an excuse to keep Monce and her Mother by her side.  
 
The Solers were not answering her calls, they were probably in Spain. It was that time of year. It would have been her first trip to Spain with her Monce, but then the pregnancy happened and all that dream evaporated. Rosabella was also resenting Monce’s favor for La Guadalupe. He was loving La Guadalupe’s cooking so much, he reminded her every day, “That one is a jewel, make sure you keep her, we can’t let this one go.” Rosabella wanted to hold a frying pan over his lovely head when he said that, especially when he had that wink at the end of his sentence, and patted his stomach, that indeed looked like he had gained some weight from all the lovely cooking. That made her angrier even for all the charm he was putting in his words.
 
The sharp pang of pain was as sudden as the evaporation of the midday dream she was having in the many siestas that now seem to consume her days. The baby was coming. The doctor had said to still stay in bed, but the big danger was past. She reached for Monce; of course he was at work. No, not at work in his office. With dread she remembered he had flown to Washington the day before yesterday. Mother and Father were out of town too. They had joined the Soler’s trip to Spain. Don’t worry, dear, you will be just fine, we will be back in time for this little one’s birth.
 
¡Nooooo!
 
The pain was coming every ten minutes and as she stood to fetch her phone off her vanity table her water broke right on the brand new Moroccan carpet, a gift from the Solers for the wedding.
 
She sat with her legs pressed tightly and between contractions screamed.
 
“¡Guadalupe!”
 
The maid with the bouncing afro raced to her side, stepping right over the wet rug.
 
“¿How far apart are the contractions, Señora?”
 
“No sé, ¿maybe ten minutes apart? Call doctor Gustavo, he will come right by.”
 
La Guadalupe looked at her as if she had said monkeys live in the sea.
 
“Mire, Señora, I will take you to the hospital myself. No need to worry.”
 
“In what, ¿a taxi?” Rosabella felt a terror as another contraction crawled all the way up her spine.
 
“I’ll bring my car to the front of the house, don’t move.”
 
As Rosabella gripped the back sit of her vanity stool, she was astounded that a maid could own a car. Good God, in heaven, let it be something that won’t fall apart.
 
Guadalupe was back quite fast, she must park in our garage, and helped her off her settee. Gingerly, Guadalupe placed her left arm under Rosabella’s back helping her with each step, and had the presence of mind to grab the hospital bag she had helped her packed weeks before, you can never be too ready. Rosabella’s face was resting on a patch of fluffy afro as Guadalupe helped her into an orange Volkswagen that was still running, the passenger door open. ¿How can she afford this car?
 
After Moncito was born, Rosabella found she needed La Guadalupe more than ever. Those first nights, Monce moved to the guestroom so he could have a good night’s sleep, and she was left with the care of Moncito all by herself. This was too laborious a task for someone of her delicate constitution. Rosabella asked Monce for a night nurse and he solidly refused the request, “Bella, Guadalupe, can take care of Moncito while she is here during the day, and you can then rest all day if you want to.”
 
Rosabella fell into a deep sadness she could not shake. Moncito, darling Moncito, with his perfectly fine little nose and blond-red curls was a monster, wanting to be fed every few hours. Rosabella’s face was puffy with dark circles under her eyes, she felt so ugly. Her breast were finally without milk, and their shape was coming back, but all those bottles during the night would be the end of her. She needed that nurse at night, she would have to pay her from her own dowry, if she must. She decided that La Guadalupe needed to stay with her full time. Afterall, it made sense, Moncito already was familiar with La Guadalupe.
 
During lunch, she put Moncito on the beautiful Moises that Doña Claudia had made them, and asked La Guadalupe to sit on the balcony with her, not to share the meal, of course not, but to stand with her as she sat and ate the delicious crab pastelillo. La Guadalupe stood next to her, frozen as a statue.
 
Rosabella stated her request in a very civilized voice, modulating it so there was no hint of desperation. She celebrated Guadalupe’s virtues as a maid and did not mention the insufferable hair, not all the peccadillos of impertinence. She instead exalted the extremely capable maid. And after much discourse, without begging, of course, La Guadalupe answered a simple, “No.”
 
“¿Pero por qué no?” Rosabella was astounded.
 
“Lo siento mucho, Señora.” La Guadalupe answered in an unaffected voice, “but nights are my own and I am not giving them up.”
 
That night Rosabella did not sleep, and not only because Moncito demanded five feedings. There was this horrible certainty of why La Guadalupe did not want to work nights. Rosabella was certain that La Guadalupe was one of those women. ¡Good Father in heaven, that is how she could afford a car of her own! She had let a woman like that in her home! That Guadalupe had even eaten food, and had drunk, from the porcelain dishes of Mama-abuela. She needed to voice her concern with Monce. And the Solers would hear a good talking to when they came back from Spain. ¡What betrayal!
 
Early that morning, before Monce left for the Roosevelt Inn Restaurant, where he took his breakfast with all the members of the cabinet that were working on that horrendous case of the disgusting revolutionaries, she went to the guestroom to talk to him.
 
“Monce, mi amor. I think I have discovered something horrible about La Guadalupe.”
 
Monce was tying his tie and looked at this wife in the mirror, “Mi Bella, you are not trying to find a way to fire the best maid we ever had,” he said this smiling at her in that mirror, a wedding gift from the previous governor. Rosabella withheld the vision of the frying pan over Monce’s head. She took a deep cleansing breath, put her face in her hands, and began to cry.
 
“Yes! she might be wonderful to you!” her voice was not the modulated voice she liked to hear herself use, but her nerves were shattered. “but as much as you might think SHE is, there is something horrible, lurid behind that Guadalupe, and not just the hair.”
 
Monce sat on the bed and coaxed his wife to sit beside him.
 
“There, mi amor, tell me what is bothering you.”
 
Rosabella felt like she used to when she was little, and her father consoled her. Father had this wonderful, if a bit supercilious, way to soothe her. Monce did the same now, and she felt better but also annoyed with his patronizing voice. Still, it was nice to have someone that cared for her feelings.
 
“I think La Guadalupe is a woman of the night.” Her voice sounded small even to her own ears.
 
“¿Por qué you think that my love?”
 
“I asked her to work full days and nights with us and she refused! ¿And do you know she even owns her own car? I even offered giving her minimum wage like they do in the pharmaceuticals, and this very room for her to stay, so you could move in with me in our bedroom. But no! She said her nights were her own. What else do you think that could mean? It has to be something improper. Imagine the horror to find this out, she has cradled our Moncito in those hands!” Again, she covered her face with her hands and felt as the bed bounced slightly up as Monce stood. He let out sigh that made Rosabella feel so incompetent, just like her cervix.
 
“Amor, it is time for you to face that times have changed,” Monce was standing in front of her, and she did not like, or understand, the look in his eyes.
 
“Bella, Guadalupe, is studying. She goes to school in that new community college in Turabo. They have a night program for nurses.”
 
Rosabella’s head snapped. She looked at her husband and saw a stranger. How had she not noticed the changes in him. He no longer wore a fedora, true, but the hair at the back of his neck was touching his shirt. And those sideburns! Those hideous fuzzy caterpillars obscuring his features, ¿when did he let them grow? ¿Could he possibly have been listening to the idiotic governor’s ideas? ¡No! She refused to accept that; she could hear Moncito crying in his Moises in the living room. Then she heard Guadalupe’s voice soothing him with that sing-song voice of hers.
 
“Calabó y bambú. Bambú y calambó. El Gran Cocoroco dice: tu-cu-tú. La Gran Cocoroca dice: to-co-tó.”
 
Where had she heard those words before? It was in ‘El Show de las 12’, yes, that was it. That terrible television show from the island, not one from the States, that showcased the music, humor, talent of the common people of the island. Yes, those words were the horrible lyrics by that poet, ¿what was his name? Oh, sí, Palés Matos. That is how they get you, her Monce, the village, the island. ¡Clever! The idiotic governor and his mouthpiece, the television shows, putting the world’s axis on its ear. First, the pharmaceuticals, then the miniskirts, now the afros. Behind Monce, in the mirror, she saw La Guadalupe, no, Guadalupe, cross the hallway with Moncito in her arms, still repeating part of that poem, “cru-cru-cru.” Her afro a wide umbrella floating over the curls of her infant son, and she wondered if Moncito felt that cloud as a soft comfort on his face, just like she did that night. ¿Guadalupe, studying to be a nurse?
 
She looked at her Monce again, and he was quietly smiling at her, she could not read his thoughts, but she could see, she was standing on a plane different from his, there was a door and a threshold she needed to cross. The displacement took her by surprise. Like suddenly standing and feeling faint, but at the same time there was familiarity in it too. It was as if all along she had known this was coming. During her pregnancy, all the signs had been there. From the news on the TV, to her dear Monce’s refusal to stop doing pro-bono, and the streets with more cars than people of high breed. She had not been willing to see them. She was being left behind, like a maid with a higher education than herself.
 
Maybe, just maybe, she could get used to Monce’s new hairdo. His sideburns were not as bad as she had first been shocked to see there as he soothed his casual blazer on his shoulders, she stared at her husband and noticed that the sideburns looked good on him after all.

Born in Mexico and raised in Puerto Rico, Amelia Díaz Ettinger has written poems that reflect the struggle with identity often found in immigrants. She began writing poetry at age three, dictating poems out loud to the adults in her life who wrote them down for her. Amelia continued writing poems and short stories throughout her life, while working as a high school science teacher. In 2015, her first book of poetry, Speaking at a Time, was published by Redbat books. A second book of poetry, Learning to Love a Western Sky, published by Airlie Press 2020, and poetry chapbook, Fossils on a Red Flag, will be published by Finishing Line Press in 2021. Her poetry and short stories have appeared in literary journals and anthologies. Presently, she and her partner reside in Summerville, Oregon with two dogs, two cats, and too many chickens.

Mamá is ripping weeds from vegetable beds, her focus deep between the stalks of the tomato plants—her trance, as Pablo calls it. I monitor her from the side of my vision, knowing better than to look at her directly, but she knows I am watching, perhaps because my hands do not move as quickly as hers do, not as deftly. I work faster to compensate, and not just because her brown eyes flash for a moment over mine in silent command; it is summer and every hour the jungle encroaches on our clearing, sending its tendrils into the garden, the wood pile, between the very boards of the house if it could. Mamá has completed her side of the patch and turns her attention to the soil in front of her while she waits for me to finish.
 
The dirt rises in mounds between her palms, and I don’t need to watch to know what she is making. She continues as I yank at weeds, the small stingers of the melon vines sinking into my fingers as they accidentally collide with one another in my haste. Mamá pinches the soil between her fingers, attaching a smaller mound and four appendages to each of the twin mounds. She pats their surfaces, smooths them.
 
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,” she begins, and my mouth forms around the next verses while I work. We recite it together, our voices barely above a hush.
 
“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them,” she says, then rests her knees in the dirt. She doesn’t need to finish the story; we both know how it finishes. And we both know how she will finish it.
 
“God gave us a second chance,” she concludes, looking down at her creations. “He gave us a second chance.”
 
She smiles out at the line where the bare dirt succumbs to a wall of green, of fronds and vines and leaves alive with the hum of insects, of birds calling to one another through the gloom.
 
“And why you and Papá called me Edén,” I add for her.
 
“That’s right,” she chuckles, nodding. “That’s right.”
 
I have been expecting this ritual since just before dawn, when Mamá’s groans woke Pablo and me and stirred the younger children, and Papá had to shake her awake, rocking her in his arms.
 
“You’re safe, woman, you’re safe,” he whispers, and I can hear her sharp breaths ease into sobs. “We made it.”
 
“We made it,” she repeats.
 
“We crossed the wilderness,” he says.
 
“We crossed the wilderness,” she says.
 
“We crossed the sea,” he says.
 
“We crossed the sea,” she says.
 
“And we arrived in the promised land. We are in the promised land.”
 
Her voice is calm again. “We are in the promised land.”
 
Pablo and I see the whites of Papá’s eyes through the twilight as he returns our stares, and without a word we push the blankets off us, dress ourselves, and go outside to ready the firepit. He lights the lamps and the fire, and I fumble in the darkness to hang the pot over the burgeoning flames. Pablo’s eyes roll toward mine, and mine to his. And I think of Mamá’s cracked hands and dirtied nails, fashioning the soil after her own image.
 
These fits come like freak storms, but I learned early that they almost always come when I ask questions, when I invite the past to come creeping in from its hiding place just beyond the tree line. Suddenly, my vision fills with white light and I am small again, not much older than the twins, the top of my head just barely reaching Mamá’s hip. She has given up on coaxing me to help her shell the peas and instead smiles, allowing me to embrace and kiss her swollen womb. Juana. Pablo plays with something on the floor, barely able to walk.
 
“Mamá, do you got a mamá?”
 
“I told you: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth…”
 
“But that was Adán and Eva. And they had to leave the Garden. And they had Caín and Abel, but Caín killed Abel, and then he and his family wandered the earth.”
 
She says nothing, her smile unwinding at the edges.
 
“How’d we get back?”
 
“Why you ask so many questions?” She’s trying to be playful, but there is a command behind her question.
 
“Are we the only ones here?”
 
“Go play with the doll Papá made for you,” she says as she gestures to the wooden doll on the floor with her knife.
 
That was the first time I remember her screaming in the night, Papá cradling her, chin atop her head.
 
The next morning, Mamá perches me in a chair beside her at the table and makes me watch while she makes bread with the flour she bought from the trader. She pulls at the dough, rolls and unrolls and rolls it again into a perfect orb. Finally, tearing off a handful, and then another, she makes two human forms on the table in front of us.
 
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,” she begins.
 
I don’t understand, and wait for her to continue.
 
“Say it with me. ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth…’”
 
“‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth…’”
 
We recite it all the way to when God sent Adán and Eva from the Garden, and cursed Eva with the pains of childbirth, my eyes roving over Mamá’s distended belly.
 
“We got back. And that’s all that matters. You understand?”
 
“Yes, Mamá.”
 
“Everything that happened before—it doesn’t matter.”
 
“Yes, Mamá.”
 
But still I find ways to ask my questions in the years that follow, sprinkle them in among the scratch while I help her feed the chickens, drop them into the holes she makes in the soil with her fingers when we plant for the new season.
 
“Mamá, why you and Papá got brown eyes, but I got green ones?”
 
“Mamá, why is Papá’s skin darker than ours?”
 
“Mamá, where does the trader get all our flour and seeds and…”
 
Mamá grunts and holds her back. She leans back onto her haunches. At this point Juana is about five, and her successor, Diego, four, and Mamá has begun to show again, her belly like a squash growing on the vine. I count out on my fingers like Mamá taught me: There are one-two-three-four of us, and this one will make five. Mamá blows air through her lips, but then leans forward again and returns to gardening.
 
“Is the baby coming?”
 
“No, it’s too soon. My back must just be cramping.”
 
But she wakes early in the night, in the grips of one of her bad dreams, and Papá carries out their ritual. But this time, it is not enough; her breaths continue fast and sharp in the back of her throat. Papá rises and dresses, then plops me into the bed next to her.
 
“I gotta go get help for your mother,” he informs me, “take care of her while I’m gone.”
 
Mamá pulls me into her, takes my hand into hers, but it is hot, sweaty. Pablo watches from our bed, his eyes shiny in the candlelight, and she opens her other arm in invitation to him too. We sit on either side of her, but soon she breaks free from us, screaming. Papá returns with the woman who delivered us. She strokes my cheek in recognition before handing me to my father, who returns Pablo and me to our own bed. But we do not sleep, cannot sleep over Mamá’s agony. By sunup, Papá orders us to feed the animals, and we do it in a rush so that we can return to our vigil. But he tells us to stay outside, shuffles Juana and Diego out with us. We sit on a cluster of stumps not far away, swinging and hitting their bark with our heels, stomachs empty and livid. Finally, the commotion in the shack subsides, and the silence is filled with the sound of insects. No one opens the door for a long time.
 
When Papá lets us back in, Mamá is sleeping while the woman still tends to her. Papá summons us around the table. A wadded rag is the only thing on top of it, wetted with what looks like dried water and blood. He removes a corner so that we can see the face, its unformed features.
 
“This was your sister,” he tells us. “We’re gonna give her a name before we put her to rest.”
 
“What about Mamá?” I ask. “She gonna make it?”
 
Papá looks at the woman, who glances back at him and nods. He relays her nod to us.
 
We named her Petra. Papá digs the hole extra deep so the animals cannot get to her and carefully places her inside. We place stones over the scar in the earth as we pray. I feel a hot tear wind down my cheek.
 
Mamá’s womb remained empty for years after that, but when it was ready to accept life again it was blessed twofold. Aurelia and Pía. It is slaughter season, and Pablo and I shadow Papá as he kills, drains, and cleans the pigs. Juana and Diego, still too young to help, play in the clearing. Papá disappears around the back of the shack to find something.
 
“Edén,” Diego calls out to me.
 
“What?” I reply.
 
“Why does Papá walk like that?”
 
“Walk like what?” I know what he means, but hope he will catch my disinterest.
 
“Like he’s hurt.”
 
Pablo’s eyes roll toward the shack, where Mamá is working, seemingly every part of her swollen with the new lives she is about to bring forth, then meet mine. I stomp toward the two of them and cover his mouth with my hand.
 
“Don’t ask questions like that.”
 
“Let me go!”
 
“You’ll upset Mamá.”
 
“Stop!”
 
He bites my hand, and I send him backward into the dust. He cries, holding his bottom, and tears off toward the shack.

                                            **** 
 
I think Mamá’s latest nightmare has something to do with the visit from the trader the day before.
 
He and Papá are standing outside the shack, arms folded across their chests and their voices low, as I bring in the water. Both regard me for a moment and stop talking as I make my way toward the front steps; for a moment, I note their curious differences. They share the same dark hair and dark skin, and yet Papá’s features are softer, his hair a net of curls while the trader’s sticks out in straight, jagged tufts from under his hat. I noticed the same differences between Mamá and the woman who delivered us, who is the trader’s sister or cousin or some other relation, her sheets of hair always wrapped round and round into a knot at the back of her head. I hasten up the steps.
 
The murmurs begin again as the door closes behind me. Mamá has propped open the flap of wood that serves as our only window, and stray words leak in. “War.” “English.” “San Agustín.” “Cuba.” I recognize only the first, think about Jericho and Josué and his trumpets. A sound disrupts my sprawling thoughts. It is a sigh, almost a whimper, and I turn to find its source. Mamá has been sitting at the table, taking a break from her work, and she stares at the wall—in her trance—as if she is looking through it, to the trees just beyond it.
 
Tonight, I think I have seen a spirit. It was only for a moment, before it turned away and slipped between the trees, but it was a man, his skin pale and translucent. But he looks like no man I have ever seen, that is, he looks nothing like Papá or the trader or the other men Papá says are the trader’s kin, who I see hunting from time to time in the forest. Papá and Mamá have taught me that spirits are as much a part of the landscape as the creatures who dwell in the forest and in the swamp that rings our patch of land, though this is my first time seeing one. They are from the time before we returned to Edén, they explain, people who never accepted God or who were condemned to purgatory for their sins. My heart thumping, I scurry up toward the path to the shack before the sun goes down for good.
 
The fire is still going, though dinner was more than an hour ago. Mamá sits off to the side, the flames illuminating her face. Papá is silhouetted, his back to Mamá and the fire, and he glowers out on the trees. He does not look at me as I approach.
 
“Go find your siblings and get them ready for bed,” he commands.
 
“I saw a spirit,” I mention, my excitement somewhat diminished by the shortness in his tone. His eyes drop to the ground, but he says nothing, does not move. He and Mamá remain outside some time; their whispers awaken me as they grope through the darkness toward their own bed, some hours after the girls and I fell asleep in a tangle on our mattress, Pablo and Diego on theirs. I smell the smoke on their clothes as they pass.
 
I lay awake afterward, too hot and my mind too restless. Papá has left the flap open to allow in the fresh air, but it is just as stifling and heavy as that inside the shack. It is furious with the sounds of frogs and insects. Twigs snap as something moves through the trees at the edge of the clearing. Perhaps it is a deer or some sort of scavenger, or maybe even a puma attracted to the smell of the animals tucked safely away in their huts. The ruckus continues, and I roll to my side, trying to bury one ear into the pillow, press my fingers over the other. I hear Mamá or Papá turn over in their own bed as well.
 
My body lurches upward, and I realize I had drifted off, for how long I do not know. Papá and Pablo are sitting up too, and Mamá grasps onto Papá’s elbow, asking him what is wrong.
 
“I heard a voice,” I whisper to them.
 
“Me too,” Pablo says back.
 
“Stay where you are,” Papá orders as he tosses off the thin blanket covering him. Mamá remains paralyzed in her spot on the bed.
 
Papá prepares a lamp and edges toward the flap. He lets the orange ring of light spill onto the ground just outside the shack, moves it from left to right, opens the flap as far as it will go to gaze further into the darkness. Suddenly, he startles and drops the lamp, breaking it. The flap slaps shut.
 
“What is it?” Mamá hisses. “What did you see?”
 
“Boy, grab a knife,” he barks at Pablo, who complies. He selects one of the machetes hanging near the door, next to where Papá keeps the knives he uses to kill the pigs.
 
“What is it?” Mamá repeats.
 
“It’s them,” Papá utters, and there is panic in his voice. “They found us.”
 
My mouth is agape, wondering who he means, but Mamá must know for she hurries to the knives and selects her own. The younger children are awake now and squeak like baby birds over having been woken, asking their own questions about what is happening, but Mamá shushes them and herds them into her and Papá’s bed. I at last rise to my feet and grab my own knife, one of the ones I’ve seen Papá use to cut through bone, and shuffle back toward the other children, feeling stupid and helpless as I hover next to the bed, not quite sure how to wield my new weapon.
 
We hear it again, a voice, but this time there is another, and another, and still yet another—a whole chorus. Suddenly, all four walls of the shack begin to clatter with the sounds of fists and rocks and sticks against the boards. It stops just as abruptly. Laughter. I can hear them talking to one another, but I cannot understand them.
 
A high-pitched whoop pierces the thick air. One of them calls out in a strange chant, one that sounds like when Papá summons the pigs to their slop. The banging and cackling begin again, until I think the shack will come down. Mamá is praying under her breath, the knife clutched between her palms. Papá and Pablo have barricaded the door with the table and chairs, and hold them in place as the boards rattle around us. Papá glances back at Mamá, who opens her eyes and stares back at him. It is like they are communicating.
 
“Come on, now,” Mamá says, and she starts pulling boards from their place in the floor, as if by some god-like strength. Papá nods at Pablo and he joins her. Finally, when they have removed about half a dozen boards or so, she gathers all of us around her.
 
“Pablo, Edén—take your brother and sisters and follow the swamp south. Just stick to the water, and you’ll find Cesar’s village,” she tells us, referring to the trader.
 
She pushes Pablo through the hole and under the house first, then me. Papá has built the shack up so high on its stilts in case of a flood that I can almost stand my full height under there. Mamá begins to toss the smaller children to us, who lay down in the dirt on their stomachs and wait for directions. I can feel spider webs on my skin and I am certain that their occupants have crawled into my hair and clothes. My skin begins to itch. All six of us in the hole now, we look through the panels; torchlight seeps from the front of the shack, and all of the commotion now seems gathered around the door. I crawl over and peer between the panels: there are one-two-three-four-five-six figures hovering just behind the torches. Their skin is illuminated, pale—spirits. I gasp.
 
Pablo carefully removes a panel on the furthest most corner from the noise and ushers us through it, and we run into the darkness. We stumble through the forest toward the swamp, tripping on roots and fallen branches and bushes, until we can hear the voices no more.
 
We drift so far into the forest that not even the slightest of light can pierce through the canopy, and we must wait until dawn before we can continue. The younger children sleep in the branches of a drooping old oak. Eventually, we follow the blue haze of twilight toward the water. My head floats with hunger. The sun has reached its highest point when we find a gathering of shelters near the marsh, and filled with a newfound panic, we shout and run toward them. Their inhabitants meet us as we approach, bewildered. We collapse at their feet, panting and sobbing and still shouting.
 
“Cesar,” I say again and again, hoping that we have found the right place.
 
It is some time before I see him rushing toward us, some of the other villagers having gone to fetch him. Some of the women have managed to calm us and now sit with the twins in their laps, holding food for them as they eat. The rest of us sit in the dirt, still shaking, partaking in our own meals. We tell him what happened, and he wipes a hand over his face.
 
Cesar invites us into his family’s home, and it is days before I am able to rise. Later, Cesar’s wife will tell me that I slept for some three days. Diego and the twins soon develop fevers, and they remain that way nearly a month, as the first illness begets another.
 
Some of the men, led by Cesar, go to look for Papá and Mamá. But the shack has been burned, the animals run off, our parents vanished.
 
A couple weeks after we fled, Cesar summons Pablo and me to his boat, but offers no explanation as he pushes off from the shore. Some half-hour into our journey, more shacks rise from the marshes, and surprise and dismay and even a sense of betrayal wash over me. The inhabitants look like us, and a few wave to Cesar as we pass. We disembark and he takes us to a home near the center of the settlement, where a man stands outside waiting for us, arms crossed. Cesar introduces him as Señor Padilla.
 
“Come on,” Padilla says, “We got a lot to talk about.”
 
Padilla invites us to sit on a couple of logs he has converted into seats around his family’s firepit, then takes his own. His wife pushes a couple of clay bowls into our hands, fills it with some sort of rice dish.
 
“I knew your father,” he tells us. “We served together, over in San Agustín.” He reviews the blank expressions on our faces. “But I gather he never told you about any of that.
 
“He still came here, once in a while. I told him he should move here with the rest of us, that it would be safer, that we could protect one another, but he refused. He and your mother thought they knew a better way to protect you.”
 
“From what?” Pablo asks.
 
“The truth,” Padilla snorts, “the past. Their past. I thought they were crazy.” For a moment, I remember Mamá and her dolls made from dough.
 
His eyes pass from my face to Pablo’s. They are sharp, impatient, yet read of pity.
 
“Look, I don’t know what all your parents told you, but we—all of us,” he gestures to the other shacks, “We were born into bondage. Up in South Carolina. That’s a colony up north, belongs to the King of England.”
 
I think about Hagar and Moses and the exodus and the destruction of Jerusalem and the re-enslavement of the Israelites…
 
“But the King of Spain, he said that if we ran away here to Florida, we’d be free, so long as we became Catholic and served in his military. That’s how I met your father—doing my military service, over in San Agustín. It was our job to defend the city against the English. He got hurt, during one skirmish. I’m sure you saw how he walked. But we did our job, and then we were free. And most of us, we came and settled out here, but your parents, they went out even further. They didn’t want anything to remind them of what they left, didn’t want you to know about a time we were anything but free. Not til you were older, anyway.”
 
He trails off, taken over by his thoughts. We continue to eat. Finally, he takes a deep breath, as though he’s been holding it this whole time, and shifts in his seat.
 
“The English. That’s probably who attacked you all. They made an agreement with the king: they get San Agustín, he gets Cuba. I’ve seen a few of them the last couple of weeks, sneaking around the marshes. Probably fixing to take us back up to South Carolina or Georgia. We don’t intend to stay to find out. We’re going down to Cuba. All of us. I think you all should come with us.”
 
Pablo finishes his meal and sets the bowl down beside him, and leaning forward, he looks into Padilla’s eyes as if it hurts him, as if he is starting into the sun. “Our people—we got any people here?”
 
Padilla pauses. “Not that I know of. Your father, he made the journey by himself. I don’t know much about your mother, except that she came here from South Carolina, too. They met at church, there in San Agustín.” He stretches his legs out in front of him, inspects his boots. “But we’d look after you. Make sure you all have what you need.”
 
I am hollow as Cesar takes us back to his village. I mull Padilla’s revelations. Renacido—that is our family name, we learned, one Papá gave himself after he crossed into Florida. And I think about Padilla’s proposal, about Cuba. Maybe Mamá and Papá escaped and are already headed there.
 
Or maybe they are out wandering in the forest, like Adán and Eva, exiled from their beloved garden. Maybe they have been taken back to South Carolina, like Padilla said would happen to us. Or maybe they are dead. And maybe the way to honor them is to return to their land, land they owned, and rebuild the shack and pens and gardens, or if not there, then in the jungle that surrounded it, feral. Or maybe it really is to go to Cuba, to tend our parents’ legacy like an ember until its flames are full. To not merely survive. I close my eyes, and I see Mamá’s hands forming figures in the soil. “God gave us a second chance.”

C.L. Martín is a descendant of farm laborers who first arrived in the United States from Mexico in the 1920s. During the Great Depression, her Arizona-born grandparents were forced to settle in Mexico as part of the so-called “repatriation” of more than one million people of Mexican descent, sixty-percent of whom are believed to have been American citizens. They permanently resettled in California in 1961, where Martín was born and raised. She went on to receive a bachelor’s degree in English and History, with a focus in creative writing, from Mills College. She currently lives in Washington, D.C., where she works as an attorney and continues to write short fiction. This is her first time getting published. 

​by ​Gloria Delgado

Saturday, 22 April 1747, dawn is breaking 

It’s early Saturday morning on this market day in the Villa of Aguascalientes in central Mexico. The town’s main plaza quickly fills with campesinos, white cotton-clad farmers and craftsmen leading strings of donkeys or driving high-sided wooden carts filled with baskets of produce or pottery. All head towards the tianguis, the traditional marketplace where, from time immemorial, generations have sold and traded their wares. Other vendors, working together in companionable silence, quickly set up tiendas, awnings made out of the same white cotton manta as their clothing. The canvas tiendas, supported by bamboo poles, will shade and protect their goods and customers from the anticipated afternoon heat. Aside from creaks and groans from wooden wheels and the braying of a recalcitrant donkey or two, the plaza is relatively quiet. After all, the Rev. Dr. don Manuel Colón de Larreátegui sleeps in the rectory nearby, and it would not do to disturb the esteemed pastor’s slumber.
 
Off to the opposite side of the plaza, gleaming pink-gold in the first rays of sunlight, stands the grand church of Nuestra Señora de la Asunción, Our Lady of the Assumption. Even after some twenty-five years of construction, the cathedral still lacks its two bell towers, but that project will have to wait until more funds become available. Regardless, the recently dedicated cathedral is the pride of Aguascalientes. At the moment detritus from several unfinished projects lies in tidy heaps inside the vestibule; outside, some immense elaborately carved wooden doors stand leaning against the walls, waiting to be installed. But everything will be cleared and completed before the celebrations in honor of Our Lady’s feast day in mid-August. The reverend pastor, a very capable administrator, will see to it.
 
Felix, one of the church caretakers, an elderly indio with a crippled leg, sings softly to himself while he sweeps and gathers windblown leaves and debris from the front of the church into a large costal that he keeps propped open with a second equally worn spiky twig broom.
 
Two campesinos, young farmers each leading a string of donkeys burdened with goods for market, pass nearby. In one smooth graceful gesture the men remove battered straw hats, bow respectfully towards the cathedral, cross themselves, replace their straw sombreros, adjust the brims back to the particular jaunty angle each prefers. Only then do they turn to greet the white-haired caretaker in their traditional, formal nahua way. “The light is good, the light is upon us. Buenos días, don Felix. At it already?”
 
Felix lifts his own equally battered sombrero to the two before responding in kind: The light is good, the light is upon us, a beautiful morning, amigos. Yes, I’m always up and about before dawn, just like my tata and his tátarabuelo before him, like all our grandfathers, humble madrugadores, early risers hard at work even as the sun still lies yawning in bed. Well, señores, we are not lazy gentlemen like the sun, just humble indios campesinos, manta-clad men working for our keep every day, any way we can, scrambling to fill our morral, this empty shoulder bag we all carry, with provisions for our families and animals.
 
Yes, you’ll always find me close by, sweeping and cleaning; but these never-ending tasks keep me going, give me a reason to live. I must have worn out dozens of brooms since the good Padre Vicente Preciado de Maldonado first gave me a job here at the cathedral. No one else would hire me after my old patron, that damned gachupín don Visente Diaz-De Leon, had me sacked from his hacienda when I broke my leg and could no longer help care for his precious horses. “If Felix can’t work or earn his keep, he can’t stay here. I’m not about to support the whole world!”​

¡Imagínate! And he the wealthy owner of Peñuelas, the finest hacienda in Aguascalientes! After all the generations my ancestors served his family, worked his fields, cared for his livestock, to be treated like that! It was because I dared talk back to him, I’m sure. But gracias a Dios I was born a free man, and not one of his or Peñuelas’ wretched slaves.
 
I’m grateful there’s so much to do around here at the cathedral. Every day I’m kept busy repairing fences, chasing chickens out of the vegetable garden and young rascals out of the bushes, watering flowers, sweeping the steps and atrium of the church, even burying the dead. When it’s my time, the good padre vows to bury me with this ancient broomstick by my side, and with one of the broomstick’s predecessors as marker. Fine with me, Padre Vicente, I say, as long as you plant me in that far corner under the green-leafed jacaranda that shades the graves of my dear Lupita and our little ones who died from plague or hunger or from only tata Dios knows what. Que en paz descansen.
 
Oh, there’s Padre Vicente waving at me, I must go.  ¡Imagínate! Three funerals already scheduled for today, so there’s much to be done before evening. Later, perhaps, on your way home we can chat, and you’ll give me news of our village? Me voy. ¡Con permiso, hermanos!
  
The same day, near dusk 

¡Muchachos! I’m so glad you stopped to see me before heading home. What’s that? Pos sí, boys, a good guess. It was indeed don Augustín Diaz-De Leon, the son of my old patron, whom we buried today. Don Augustín was the first or second oldest son, I can’t remember right now. Anyway, yes, Padre Vicente saw to don Augustín’s final rites yesterday, with none other than the town’s chief administrator, el alcalde mayor don Fernando Monrroy y Carrillo as witness and executor of the dying man’s last will and testament.
 
My nephew Bitoriano and I prepared the gravesite beforehand, early yesterday evening, so as to avoid the full heat of the day. Even with all the jugs of water we poured over the ground to soften the soil, our shovels had a hard time of it.

“Ay, Tío!” Bitoriano gasped, resting his head on the shovel handle for a moment trying to catch his breath, “Not even the cemetery wants him. You can wrap a corpse in cloth of gold, or in don Augustín’s case, the brown cloak of Saint Anthony of Padua himself, corded sash, wooden cross and all, but that doesn’t transform him into a saint, worthy of being buried in consecrated ground.”

¡Cállate! Somebody might hear you! I scolded my nephew as I passed him the water gourd. But I couldn’t help laughing to myself. Exactly what Bitoriano had against don Augustín I never knew, he never said; but life on the Diaz-De Leon hacienda was not easy for their workers, be they slaves or indios laborios like us. That I do know!

How was the funeral, you ask? Very well attended, very well preached. Padre Vicente did a good job. All the town council was there, even the alcalde mayor don Fernando. After Mass the funeral procession made its grand way to the gravesite for final prayers, with candles, incense, genuflections, singing, weeping mourners and all. Bitoriano and I and two more assistants stood by waiting in the shade of another jacaranda, shovels and sturdy ropes close at hand for lowering the coffin, as Padre Vicente began:

“Brothers and sisters, we are gathered here today to honor and lay to rest the body of our dear son and brother, Augustín. We commend his soul to the tender mercies of God - and to the loving care of San Antonio de Padua. As some of you may know, don Augustín asked to be buried in the plain brown cloak symbolic of his favorite saint, that most humble Franciscan friar, Saint Anthony…. ”

Out of the corner of his eye Bitoriano slid me one of his ‘See, I told you so’ looks, which I did my best to ignore. But my nephew didn’t let it go with that. He leaned over to mutter in my ear: “¿Qué te dije, Tío? ¡Ay, pobrecito de San Antonio! He’s probably rolling around in his grave far away right now, about to die, again! from the shame of being mentioned in the same breath as that wretch, that desgraciado!”

I must have choked or something. Glancing our way, Padre Vicente lifted one disapproving eyebrow at us before returning to his sermon. I pretended to stifle a cough, held my tongue and from then on kept a safe straight face. Bitoriano did the same.

​Padre Vicente continued: “Yes, my brothers and sisters, we call upon Saint Anthony to find that which is lost, or for help with desperate causes. But I think our saint is best remembered for his special devotion to the Infant Jesus. San Antonio loved God and in his humility, found the idea of God most accessible, most evident, most alive, in God’s youngest creatures, nuestros parvulitos, our own little children. That’s why San Antonio is always depicted as carrying el niño Jesús, Jesus as a young, innocent child, along with a white lily, symbol of that purity and love.”

Notes for this story:

This story is a work of fiction based on historically documented events. All individuals with surnames, including their children, were real people; those without surnames are fictional.

In Mexico tens of thousands of residents, Indians, mestizos and españoles alike, died from intermittent plagues, smallpox, chickenpox, mumps and measles. At times there were so many deaths that the priests were too overwhelmed to comply with church regulations as to the proper listing of entries in the death records, able to note only the date of death and the names, if known, of victims who were interred on that date.

Don Augustín Diaz-De Leon’s child, Pantaleón, died in December 1747, eight months after the death of his father. Pantaleón was three years old. The youngest child, Augustín Miguel Estanislao, was born two weeks after his father’s death, on 11 May 1747. He survived into adulthood, eventually settling in Sierra de Pinos, Zacatecas, where he and Thadea Josepha Gertrudis Muñoz Tiscareño married.
​
Don Augustín’s widow, doña Maria Antonia Fernandez de Palos Ruiz de Escamilla and el alcalde mayor don Fernando Manuel Monrroy y Carrillo, (witness to the death of don Augustín as well as the executor of his estate) in September 1749 were granted a dispensation to marry. Don Fernando was a widower; his first wife was doña Juana Salvadora Jimenez.

Don Augustín’s father, el alférez (subaltern) don Visente Xabier Diaz-De Leon, was at this time the owner of the Hacienda de Peñuelas. Following the death of his first wife, doña Catharina Acosta, he married and raised another family with his second wife doña María Dolores Medina. Upon his death in April 1754 he left money (including 15 gold Castilian ducats) for his intentions, including 100 masses to be offered for the repose of his soul and for his servants, living or dead.
​
The ex-Hacienda de Peñuelas, still in existence, is one of the oldest haciendas in the Mexican state of Aguascalientes. Established sometime before 1575, Peñuelas predates the foundation of the Villa of Aguascalientes itself. This hacienda consisted of several self-supporting plantation-like communities staffed and farmed by resident Indians and slaves.

The Cathedral Nuestra Señora de la Asunción, originally known as San Ysidro Labrador, was initiated in 1704 and completed in 1738 by don Manuel Colón de Larreátegui, head of the Mitra de Guadalajara. Its northern bell tower was completed in 1764, the southern bell tower not until 1946.
 
Sources
 
All birth and death documents cited are from the following:
 
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints:
FamilySearch.com and other films on line.
 
The entry cited re the infant, the parbulito of this story, is from:
Mexico Aguascalientes, Aguascalientes, Catholic Church Records
Parroquia del Sagrario, Asunción de Maria
Defunciones 1708-1735, 1736-1748
El Parbulito: Image 530 [Libro quatro de Entierros]
 
Montejano Hilton, Maria de la Luz:
Sagrada Mitra de Guadalajara, Antiguo Obispado de la Nueva Galicia, 1999
 
Rojas, Beatriz, et al:
Breve historia de Aguascalientes, 1994
 
Topete del Valle, Alexandro:
Aguascalientes: Guia para visitar la Ciudad y el Estado, 1973
 
Vázquez y Rodríguez de Frias, José Luis:
Genealogía de Nochistlán Antiguo Reino de la Nueva Galicia en el Siglo XVII según sus Archivos Parroquiales, 2001
 ​

When Sir Robert departed for the Holy Land in defiance of his lord, the Doge of Venice, he was accompanied by an archer known as Eusebius de Asturias because the archer hailed from northern Spain.  The archer had fought against the Moors since his youth, and now in the waning years of his prime he saw his one last chance to gain spoils in the rich lands of the orient. Soon after he swore fealty to the knight, Eusebius and his new lord secretly departed at night and secured passage to a small port near the Turkish border. There, they were to meet with a small band of crusaders and travel overland through the Muslim lands by night and resume their journey by daylight once they reached the safety of Christian lands.

When they arrived at the port, the other crusaders were not there. But Sir Robert and Eusebius dared not wait. Their brothers may have been arrested or shipwrecked or perhaps have had a change of heart. One way or the other, by now their plan was surely known to the Doge and the Frankish Barons, and there was no other recourse except to continue to Syria alone.
​
Sir Robert and Eusebius hid during the day in abandoned stone huts in the countryside or in caves. In the dead of the night, they stole food from the villages and farms. Soon every night seemed like the night before and only the changing moon told them that time was indeed passing, and they were still living men and not wandering spirits.
One night, they discovered an offering of food at the entrance of a Muslim village. Or so they thought. The remains of a slaughtered sheep hung on a post. Not the entire carcass, just the heart, liver, lungs, and kidneys. Blue glass amulets were hung next to the entrails. Pieces of paper with Arabic writing were littered on the ground as well.
Eusebius was wary of the food offerings, but not Sir Robert whose mind was filled with fantastical musings about how the villagers must think they were spirits or wayward angels. When they found similar meat offerings at the entrance of every village, the knight was more convinced than ever that this was a sign from God.
​
When the third full moon had arrived, they came upon a stone marker with three crosses. They were now in Christian lands. Giving thanks to God, they slept for the remainder of that night and greeted the sunrise once again.

​The first Christian village they encountered was empty. The livestock was all gone, and the barns, grain stores, and other foodstuffs had been burned. Inside the homes, disorder abounded as if the people had but a few moments to gather what belongings they could before fleeing.

“The infidel armies must have marched through here on their way to the Holy Land. Perhaps there are Christian souls hiding nearby,” said the knight.

“Aye, my lord” responded the archer. “The wells may have been poisoned. We should drink and water our horses only at the springs from now on.”

Days later, when they found another village, it, too, was abandoned and all of the food was burned. They wondered why they had not yet seen a single refugee. What they did encountered helter-skelter on the road between the abandoned settlements were large mounds of dirt. Sir Robert, frustrated by the sight, finally decided to poke at the dirt, and a human hand was revealed. He galloped to another nearby mound and found another corpse interred standing up.

“What foulness,” said the knight.
“Aye, my lord,” said the archer. “It must be a pagan custom.”

They rode on for several more days, barely speaking. But each silently waited for the world that they knew to re-emerge, for human souls to reappear. Even the sight of the enemy would have been preferable to this solitude. Then an unexpected sight appeared. The sun hung low in the sky, and a grove of trees appeared in the horizon, almost as if it could only be seen in the light of the dying sun. The knight raised his arm, and the archer halted at his side. Sir Robert took out his map, a gift from his uncle who had fought in the previous crusade.

“The grove is not marked on the map, Asturias. But the trees look mature. A strange omission, indeed.”

The archer said nothing.

“Could we have taken the wrong path somehow?” said Sir Robert. Then speaking more to himself: “Perhaps my uncle thought it unimportant to mark the grove being that the Monastery of Saint – is but a league from here.”

“Or perhaps…” the archer finally spoke up.
“What?” the knight said irritably.
“My lord, it could be an enchantment of the Devil or some pagan demon. We should ride on.”

The knight ignored the warning and defiantly spurred his horse towards the grove. He was a soldier of Christ, and if he had to battle the Devil himself, he would do so for God and glory.

From the perimeter of the grove, the crusaders could see thin rays of light break through the canopy of the thick ancient trees. A mud brick structure was partially hidden in the shadows.

“Asturias,” said the knight. “Look beyond. There appears to be a house in the grove. There may be someone there.”

Before Eusebius could respond, Sir Robert brusquely spurred his horse forward, but the animal resisted, reared and threw him to the ground. The archer swiftly dismounted and tended to the knight who was stunned by the fall.
​
“Do not move, my lord. Rest here for a while. I shall investigate.” Eusebius drew his archer’s sword and walked towards the house. The archer found several fresh burial mounds marked by crude crosses of branches tied with rope. The dead appeared to be hastily buried and the odor of decomposition—and something else that was like the perfume of decaying flowers–seeped from the soil. The archer thought, “Perhaps the infidels had recently rampaged through these lands. Or perhaps there had been a plague. Perhaps that is why the villages were abandoned.”

The mud brick house in the grove was partially collapsed and exposed. Eusebius could see barrels and tools strewn about. As he approached, he saw a door which proved to be unlocked and opened with slight push to a second room which had a small cot, a table and stool, and a fireplace for cooking. A kettle hung in the fireplace. An iron pan was hung next to the fireplace, and on a shelf nailed to the wall he found flour, dried meat, and oil, as though someone had recently been living there. He wondered if the owner were nearby.

Eusebius returned and reported his findings–and his suspicions–to the knight.
“I do not trust this place, my lord. It is almost as if it has been set up to lure us in. We should move on, sir.”
​
The knight, however, aching from the fall, ignored the archer’s words.
“We stay here tonight. The monastery is a day’s ride from here.”

​The knight had been in good spirits that evening, but the archer was filled with foreboding. The knight prayed and mediated while the archer boiled some water for Sir Robert’s bath and baked some bread and roasted the dried meat over the fireplace. At dinner, the knight ate lustily but not Eusebius. Unlike the knight, his sense of smell seemed to have been fouled by the odor permeating from the graves because he could have sworn the food smelled like the perfume of decayed flowers. The knight, however, claimed there was no such odor. Eusebius tried to eat but he would retch the moment the food was near his mouth. The knight laughed and devoured the remaining food. That evening after his prayers, Sir Robert retired on the cot.

The archer slept on the floor next to the fire not so much to warm himself because it was not cold. It was as if he needed the proximity of that primal weapon, fire. Though he suppressed the thought, he sensed an unseen enemy nearby, and placed a lit torch at the entrance of the room for extra protection. The horses sensed danger, too, because they rustled about nervously. Eusebius took the torch and went outside to calm them. He was suddenly overtaken by a magnetic urge, a perverse curiosity, to return to the nearby burials. His instincts told him there was something there. He went and got a shovel and began to dig up one of the graves. The body appeared to lay in an uneasy repose, as though, she–it was a woman—had been carelessly and unceremoniously dropped. He got on his knees to get a better look, and as he passed the torch over her body, he saw that her torso was exposed, ripped open and desecrated by some unspeakable violence.

“God be merciful,” he said, crossing himself, and filled the dirt back into the grave. As he walked back to the house, he thought he saw the outline of a man standing in the night shadows, but when he called out, no one answered. He gave it no further thought and went back inside to sleep.

Many hours later, Eusebius shuddered, awakened by the horses’ cries of terror. He ran outside and saw their penumbras disappear into the shadows. The archer ran after them, unarmed and without alerting his companion and without the torch. He followed the sounds of their pounding hooves and occasional neighs. Thick clouds moved back and forth, obscuring the moonlight and then suddenly moving again, brightly illuminating the landscape before him. He spotted the horses in a meadow, huddled, whimpering, and rubbing their heads and necks against one another.

When he reached the horses, the clouds shifted once more and the moon shone on what appeared to be a mound. It was not a dirt mound like those they had seen before but a stone beehive mound. In the moonlight, Eusebius saw a narrow opening. “What a strange and ungodly land this is,” he thought, crossing himself. The clouds once again shrouded the moon just as a man emerged from the aperture.

“Greetings!” said the archer. “Are you a Christian, good sir?”
​
The man said nothing. Eusebius could not make out the other’s face. Then the clouds drifted again and the moonlight shone on the stranger’s face, albeit ever so briefly.  The archer squinted his eyes in disbelief, for the fleeting image seemed an abomination. The man’s face appeared to be that of two men squeezed together. The man made a muffled sound, filling the archer with terror. Eusebius ran towards the horses, who had not moved and merely watched him all along as though they were held there by a spell. He mounted his horse bareback and galloped away with the knight’s horse running along his side. Thoughts raced through Eusebius’s mind. Had the animals been lured there by that obscene and ungodly monster? “I must tell my master!”

​When the archer returned to the house, the sun had begun to rise. The knight commanded him to help him with his chainmail. Eusebius reported the events of the night before.

Sir Robert was disinterested. “We must hurry to the monastery. Our greater mission awaits us.”

When they arrived at the monastery, the gates were wide open. The streets were empty.  Nary a human soul was to be seen. Rats scurried about trash and partially burned food. Even the dogs and cats had apparently fled with the people.

“Ho, there!” cried the archer, his voice dissolving into the wind that swept through the main thoroughfare.
“Fear not!” shouted the knight. “We are soldiers of Christ!”
“My lord,” said the archer. “Perhaps the monks are barricaded in the church.”

But the church, too, was empty, undisturbed, as if all had fled in an instance.
​
“Asturias, there is a foul evil in this land,” said the knight, crossing himself.
“I feel it, too, my lord,” said the archer.
“Let us rest here tonight, and tomorrow we will continue our journey to Syria.”

​That very night, Sir Robert fell ill with a fever. They quartered themselves in the parlor and decided to wait for the fever to pass. But the fever only worsened. The knight slept most of the time, restless, and the suffocating perfume of decaying flowers drenched his clothes and the bedding. Eusebius tried feeding the knight small game and wild figs, but Sir Robert ate little if at all. The archer went into the apothecary’s lab to find something to give to the knight. But as he could not read, he went about opening jars and smelling the contents, hoping to find a familiar smell of an herb the midwives had used back home. Some of the herbs and powders had familiar scents. Eusebius boiled these medicines in the hope that he could miraculously cure the knight but to no avail. The knight merely lay in bed, his eyes open and staring at the ceiling. He had stopped eating and managed only to rise from bed to relieve himself.

Desperate, the archer went back to the apothecary’s lab and frantically leafed through books, hoping beyond hope that the pictures would tell him something. The pictures resembled those he had briefly seen before in other books: Soldiers, monks, scenes of battles. In some scenes the holy men confronted God’s spiritual enemies: Satan, demons, heretics, and witches. He ran his fingers over the words, silent as rocks, their secrets locked from him. He was certain that the words in the books, like the powders and herbs in the jars, held the cure to his companion’s ailment.

Exhausted he went to bed, and, as he slept and dreamt, his mind’s eye again saw the images in the books and discerned a pattern that had escaped him before. He got out of bed and returned to the apothecary’s lab. In the flickering candlelight, he studied the pictures and found images half-hidden on the peripheries of the illustrations, faces camouflaged among the shrubs and trees.

In a different illustration, men-like creatures—part bird, part serpent–were embedded in the face of a cliff. They appeared to struggle to free themselves. He turned the page and studied the next illustration. In the foreground, the soldiers of Christ and monks marched in a procession, their feet floating above the ground like ghosts, while barely visible in the background, a mound with protruding hands and feet. Some of the soldiers were kneeling and praying, their eyes heavenward, mouths agape.

Eusebius took another one of the books he had previously inspected: One depicting battles, a castle, and an army of crusaders attacking the castle. One particular scene depicted a pitched battle. The occupants of the castle hurled rocks, arrows, and poured cauldrons of boiling oil at the crusaders. When he saw this illustration the day before, Eusebius assumed that the enemy were the Turks. But something caused him to pause before he turned the page. A curved glass lay on the desk. He had seen the monks use them before to magnify words and objects. He took the glass and held it over the men atop the castle and he fell back with a muted shriek. They were not Turks! They were not even men but the same bird-serpent men-like creatures of the previous picture. “Not even the pawns of the Devil!” he thought. “Something more sacrilegious, things beyond God’s creation.”
​
Then the sunlight shone on the pages. He had spent the entire night studying the books. He hurried to his companion’s side. The knight was gone.

The day was overcast, and Eusebius rode at a brisk pace, deep in thought, mulling the enigma of Sir Robert’s disappearance. The knight must have vanished on foot because his horse was still in the stable. Yet his chainmail, shield, and sword were gone. When Eusebius had last seen Sir Robert the night before, he was still bedridden, barely speaking. Eusebius wondered what miracle had occurred that allowed his companion not only to rise from bed but walk away. But soon, on horseback, Eusebius was sure he would overtake the knight. He crossed himself, and, as if God had heard his thoughts, the sun broke through and the archer beheld a castle perched on the mountain before him.

With Sir Robert’s horse tethered to his, he pressed forward. The road before him wound and ascended towards the mountain. The clouds parted every so often and the sunlight seemed to reveal a different world, strong and godly, as if to press him onward. Then the clouds once again darkened the skies. He caught something out of the corner of his eye, an image from a recurring dream which had haunted him since childhood: An enormous, half-decaying tree twisted with age, protruding from a pile of enormous rocks. He remembered it now. In his dream, there was a hollowed-out space in the trunk of the tree. A crystal would rise from the crevice and float in the air.
He searched many years in his youth for the meaning to the dream, questioning the Spanish monks in the monasteries they had liberated from the Muslims. No one had an answer but a monk who had made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land decades before. The monk said that the Egyptian wizards from the time of Moses had made such a crystal to preserve the bodies of the dead. But Eusebius now wondered: What if the monk was wrong and the crystal could turn lead into gold as the alchemists said? What if his dream had been an omen? For that brief moment, Eusebius’s being was filled with joy. He dismounted and searched the tree for any hollowed-out spaces but there were none. He looked at the pile of rocks. Some of the rocks were not strewn about willy-nilly but arranged in a pattern.

Eusebius sensed that the crystal was hidden there and began to toss aside the rocks. A rune stone became visible. He paid no attention to the rune stone’s images let alone try to decipher their message—their warning. He lifted a slab and discovered a corpse with a gauze-like veil on his face and his body covered with a half-rotted, blood stained shroud. The stench of decaying flowers permeated from the grave. Perhaps the gem was hidden therein. He looked around and found a branch and slightly lifted the shroud and saw that that the corpse’s chest had been crudely slit open. Then the corpse shuddered. Eusebius jumped back and crossed himself. “Did I imagine it, dear God?” he said out loud. But when looked again, he saw the fingers on the exposed hand moving slightly. He threw the slab on top of the corpse and piled the rocks atop the grave and fled at full gallop.

Eusebius felt himself falling and shuddered. He had fallen asleep on the road while riding. He looked behind him, and Sir Robert’s steed walked calmly with that serenity that comes from the lack of dreams, that cursed portal into the unseen worlds. Eusebius wondered if he had indeed seen the animated corpse or if he had dreamt it. Before he could give that further thought, he saw the castle was about half a league away. From there, he could discern the castle’s bluish hue, as if the stones were illuminated by some unseen moon. It would be nightfall soon, so he backtracked to a nearby creek to make camp. The horses grazed for a while, but they returned to the camp when the sun had almost sunk beneath the horizon. They hovered near Eusebius as he cooked a rabbit he had hunted earlier in the day. They lay near him like dogs, as though they took comfort in the fire and his presence. He could have sworn they sighed.

“You are good beasts,” he said rubbing their heads, and he did not bother to tether them for the night.

Later that evening, the waning moon floated over the castle. He saw the dense penumbras of men moving about the ramparts of the castle. He was now certain that they must have kidnapped Sir Robert for ransom as was the custom. He kneeled and prayed out loud to God to steel himself for the uncertainty that lay before him.
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When the sky turned to the gray hues of early morning, he saddled the horses, and rubbed their necks. “Wait for me here, my friends, my angels. I shall return shortly with our master.” He fashioned a torch, strapped on his sword, and slung the bow and arrows over his shoulder, and walked towards the castle.

The gate of the castle was swung wide open, as if they—whoever they were–had left it open just for him. From a distance, he could see the courtyard was empty and the only sound was that of the wind. Eusebius knew this could be a trap, but he had to try and find Sir Robert. He walked about the perimeter of the castle to search for a way in and found a collapsed portion of the outer wall. Once inside the wall he made his way inside the castle. In the interior of the castle, he saw objects embedded in the stones. Bright and illuminating, some resembled the contraptions of alchemists and astronomers. Others appeared like toys, not the toys he’d seen, but what a people from another world would conceive of as toys. Others were shards of metal.

When he entered a different hall, the rafters were collapsed as if a projectile had landed there during a battle. The debris of the roof was strewn about, and the sun shone on the walls revealing carved reliefs depicting a story of some kind. Bird and serpent men-like creatures were eating the hearts and entrails of humans and horses. He dropped on his knees and prayed to God for protection for whatever place this was it was not that of the Muslims who at the very least worshiped a God similar to his, if not the very same one. He took the flint stone that hung from his neck and lit the torch. Whatever abominations inhabited this cursed castle could not be immune from fire, that sacred secret stolen by a strange god as a gift to mankind long before his God had existed.

He walked through the spacious corridors, noting distinguishing markers so he could find his way out quickly if need be. Finally, he came to an entrance that opened up to a great hall. A blue-tinged light streamed from the stained-glass windows high above, giving the sensation of being submerged under water. Eusebius saw men–Christian men—standing in the room. He knew that because of the red crosses emblazoned on their white capes. He wanted to call out, but an instinct that had persevered since the time humans were but ape-men abominations themselves silenced him.

Eusebius approached the center of the great hall. The crusaders stood like stone statues around a body that lay in an open sarcophagus. As he approached them, the smoke from the torch could no longer mask the perfume of decaying flowers. The men were mummified. A cobweb-like gauze covered their well-preserved faces, their eyes shut, as if in a strange burial custom. “Like the mounds!” he heard himself say out loud. Eusebius covered his nose with his hand and approached the sarcophagus. He let out a scream. It was Sir Robert! Before he could ponder how or why his master was killed and placed there, he felt the air move.

Eusebius turned around and saw that one of the mummies was moving ever so slightly, like a half-dead insect in a cocoon. Then another opened his eyes and began to move his fingers, just like the corpse he had found by the twisted tree, then another shuddering as if he had awoken. Terrified, Eusebius fell backwards, dropping the torch, and heard a scream. It was not his voice, but Sir Robert’s. “He’s alive!” he thought. Eusebius ran to the sarcophagus to save his companion.  The knight struggled to let out one word: “Burn!”

Then he heard thumping of weighted footsteps approaching the great hall. Eusebius knew they were not Christians nor Muslims but them–the ones he had seen atop the castle the night before. They had found him. “Forgive me, my lord!” he said and crossed himself and set Sir Robert on fire. Then he lit the capes of the other crusaders. The great hall was filled with screams as the fire engulfed them. They were still alive, all of them. Eusebius then heard a dull muffled sound approaching one of the entrances of the great hall. The sound was like the attempted shouts of mouthless men. Eusebius ran in the opposite direction, hastily setting fire on what he could. When he reached the courtyard, he spilled an oil barrel in front of the gate and lit it on fire and fled. He looked back and saw the creatures, scurrying about trying to put out the fire before it spread. He could not see them well enough to discern their faces but feathers sprouted from their necks and shoulders, and they moved clumsily as if they were made of stone. He ran down the road and heard explosions as the fire must have surely spread to the nearby oil barrels.

The sun was now beginning to set. From the foot of the mountain, Eusebius could see the castle roof ablaze. The windows were bright orange and reds. Soon, the remaining rafters would collapse and burn everyone inside.
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The horses were not far from where he had left them, calmly grazing in a nearby meadow. When they saw the archer, they trotted towards him and huddled close to him as if to comfort him from the grief and despair. Remounting, he rode away and a darkness set upon him, his body slackened, and his thoughts vanished.

​He awoke in an abbey.
“We found you on the bank of the river two days ago,” said the attendant monk. “The horses were wandering in our courtyard. The angels must have sent them to tell us of your whereabouts. You are very fortunate that we have found you. Another day in the cold may have killed you, or you would have caught the plague.”
“Not plague,” Eusebius struggled to say. “Creatures. Vile, ungodly…”

Another monk came into view, the abbot. “No, my son. The plague. It was carried here by two lone crusaders.”

​Another monk came into view. “I am Father Augustine, the Abbot. Brother James is correct. There is a plague.  It was carried here by two lone crusaders. The people began to flee when they heard they were nearby.”

“No! Men-like creatures…they poisoned the food. Trapped people in cocoons…ate their hearts and entrails.”

The two monks looked at each, and finally the abbot asked, “Was it a demon?
“Not a demon! Men! I saw them.  But I have burned them!”
“He must be delirious, Father,” said Brother James as the archer slipped back into unconsciousness.
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“Let him rest,” said the abbot.  “We will interrogate him when he recovers.”

After having questioned Eusebius for several days, the monks determined there was some validity to the archer’s claims as they had previously gotten scattered reports of strange mounds which emitted a foul perfume. The fleeing villagers had been too fearful to uncover the mounds and set them on fire. Father Augustine ordered a messenger to Rome informed them of his decision to investigate the incident and possibly capture one of the creatures. He assembled a group of monks to accompany Eusebius back to the castle.  The evening before the expedition, the silence of the refractory was broken when two shepherds burst in with the body of their dead companion.  He had been attacked by three men-like creatures who had ripped open his chest and eaten his heart and other entrails.

“It’s them!” shouted Eusebius.  “They live!  I must kill them!”

He burst out of the refractory, into the stable, and rode out bareback on the knight’s steed armed with only his sword. The monks were unable to stop him but quickly assembled their entourage and followed suit.  The very next night they came within sight of the Monastery of St. ______, where Sir Robert and Eusebius had rested.  The buildings were in flames.  Just outside of the gates they found the body of Eusebius and what appeared to be another man. Eusebius and his antagonist had apparently killed each other in hand to hand combat. When Brother James turned over the body of the other man, he let out a shriek because it was not a man but a human-like abomination like the one the archer had described.
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The monks took the body of the creature and sent it to Rome where it was hidden in the secret vaults of the Vatican.

The next morning, Good Friday, found me in bed with a high fever. The chill that permeated my body had increased during the night, but anxious to join the Hermanos at the morada, I struggled to rise, only to fall back weakly against my pillow. My grandmother, who was drinking coffee with my mother in the kitchen, came to the doorway. Silhouetted in the rays of the sun in the window behind her, she seemed enveloped in a cloak of white. My fears of the night were dispelled, there was no bandage, no limp to her walk; and in the light of day I chided myself for my foolishness, convinced that my fever had caused such disturbing thoughts.

That my abuela was here was no accident, no inexplicable coincidence to agitate my imaginings. For she knew that I had become a novicio the night before, and as médica, she had come to see how I fared. She moved to my side with a jar of her remedio, turned me to my side to rub the romerillo, or silver sage, on my back, and then tucked the quilts around me once again without a word.

My mother placed a mug of warm broth in my hands, brushing a gentle hand over my cheek and pulling a chair by my bed for my gramma before she left for the church with my aunt. A few of the women would give the capilla a light cleaning before covering the saints with cloaks of black this morning to symbolize the dark day of Christ’s death. They would remain concealed until Easter morning, the day of His resurrection.

Settling herself comfortably, gramma took from her apron pocket a small kerchief with a trailing thread and proceeded to continue her embroidery on its edge, the needle whipping in and out of the intricate design with a delicate, almost birdlike fluttering of her hands. I sipped the warm soup watching her, waiting for her to speak. I knew I had inherited my physical appearance from her, the small, thin stature, the nose, and her humor. Had I also inherited a mental power I didn’t understand, or want, from my beloved grandmother?

Before I could ponder the question further, before I could think of a way to phrase my question without hurting the feelings of the tiny woman seated beside me, she spoke.

“You have a gift.”

Her words revived my concerns that the warm broth had begun to dispel.

She looked up from her embroidery. Although this was one time I wished I could turn away, I forced myself to look into her eyes. Bright with tears, hers held a mixture of sadness and regret. When she blinked the drops away and smiled softly at me, there was also pleasure and expectation in their depths.

“The gift of sight,” she began, “is strong in our family though inherited by some, not all, through the generations. And,” she added, “while some seemed only to possess a strong sense of intuition, there were others who had the power to know other’s thoughts, especially of people with whom they were close.

“I will tell you a story, hijo, a cuento of a young girl you know well.” Putting her embroidery aside, she settled back into the pillow at her back and continued.

“When this girl was very young, she began to have disturbing dreams, dreams which frightened her because in the days that followed, they would almost always come true. More and more often as she grew, the dreams plagued her. And her abuelito, the only one who believed her, died before he could explain the gift she had inherited from him. She learned to keep the dreams secret because whenever she told anyone, they looked at her as if she were loca. And people, ignorant and afraid, had started to think she was either crazy or a witch.

Years passed, until one night she saw her father in her dream and knew what real fear was. In her vision her father was being dragged by horses in the field he was plowing, his leg entangled in the reins behind the arado.”

She paused, taking her sack of punche from her pocket to roll a cigarette.

I squirmed restlessly on the bed. From past experience, I knew that it was an effort in futility to urge her on, for if prodded to finish a cuento before she decided she wanted to, she was known to teach me a longer lesson in patience, sometimes making me wait for days, or until I had even forgotten the beginnings of a story and her teasing reminder would set me off, begging for the end.

I had to hand it to my abuelita; she knew how to build up the suspense in her stories like no one else. I was forced to wait as she took a laboriously long time rolling her smoke, her eyes twinkling with mirth at my discomfort.

“Where was I?” she asked, striking a wooden match on the sole of her shoe.

“Oh, yes, the dream.” Puffing a small stream of smoke, she continued, “The next morning, much to her dismay, the girl’s father had already begun to plow the fields when she awoke. Without breakfast, the girl ran out of the house, straight to the field.”

When she paused to puff her cigarette again, I could have screamed from the suspense; it was killing me. “Now, the neighbors had honey bees,” she reminisced, “and the hives were just across the river. For some reason, I never knew why, they swarmed—and the girl’s father with his horses were right in their path. It was a good thing the girl got there when she did, for her father, strong though he was, was already struggling to keep the horses from running away with the plow. When she looked down, the girl saw that the end of one of the reins had tangled around her father’s leg, just like in her dream. And just as the panicked horses took off, shaking the bees from their heads, she jumped forward, unwrapping the rein just in the nick of time to save her father from a very bad injury—perhaps even death.”

Gramma puffed at her cigarette a moment before she added, “That was the day the girl finally realized that her dreams were not the curse she had thought they were all along, for years having been afraid that perhaps she was a witch and that she had dark powers from the devil. They were forewarnings, a gift from God, and she had learned to read their meaning to help others.”

Putting her cigarette out, she looked at me closely, searching my eyes for understanding. “Sí,” she said quietly, “I have been called bruja many times, hijo, but only by the ignorant or the envious, God help them. They do not know that what I have is a gift from God and that I have learned to use my gift to avisar or to give consejo to those I see in my dreams.”

I breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that no matter what happened in the future, I would never suspect my abuelita of being a witch again. And I understood that my father possessed a different gift, a power to read my thoughts and to respond in the voice of my conscience to guide me in the journey of life. But at the same time, I was troubled. Hadn’t I also inherited such a gift, a power to see or hear things others didn’t?

I knew she picked up the apprehension in my eyes, for my gramma said softly, “No te preocupes. Do not be worried, hijo mío. Instead, thank the Lord that you have something not many people do and learn to use your gift to help yourself and to help others if you’re able. And if your friends question your intuition, you do what your conciencia tells you. If they are real amigos, they will look to you for consejo. Advise them well. If they are not, then you will have to live with their suspicions and their accusations just as I have. And though it will be hard, you will have to learn to leave them to their own consciences.”

I nodded, and we sat in companionable silence for a while. My gramma took up her embroidery again as my mind digested the importance of her story, her counsel. I knew that I would have to find within myself the strength to overcome my disquiet, to listen and watch for any avisos in the future, to use my gift of intuition wisely.

Suddenly remembering what I had seen the night before, I asked, “Do you believe there really are witches?”

“¿Por qué?” she asked, looking at me quizzically.

I described our encounter with the ball of fire and what Berto had done as it had fled.

She nodded, “There are many, including myself, who have seen them. And since there is no explanation for the balls of fire, there are many who believe that they are witches. No one knows for sure. But it has been a long time that any have been seen around here.”

“What do you believe?” I asked, a little uneasy about her answer.

“I believe that there is a power of good, which is God. But the Bible tells us that there is also a power of evil. Just as Dios gives His children gifts which help them to live as good Cristianos, then so could el Diablo guide those he chooses with the powers of darkness.”

She crossed herself before she looked at me for a moment. “That you saw one during la Cuaresma disturbs me. This is one of the most sacred seasons of the year. If it was a bruja or some other work of el Diablo, then they seem to have no fear that this is Lent, and today is Viernes Santo, the day our Savior died.”

“What could it mean?” I whispered.

The heavy silence of our thoughts spoke volumes, for we both knew that this afternoon La Procesión de Sangre de Cristo, the procession of the Blood of Christ, in which a chosen Hermano would carry the crucifix from the morada on his back, would be enacted. And even though the Penitente would not be crucified, the re-enactment of the most sorrowful day in the life of our Savior would take its toll on the Brother who played the crucial role. I wondered if it would be the Hermano who had portrayed Christ the night before in la Procesión de la Santa Cruz.
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Carmen Baca taught a variety of English and history courses, mostly at the high school and college levels in northern New Mexico where she lives, over the course of 36 years before retiring in 2014. She published her first novel in May 2017, El Hermano, a historical fiction based on her  father’s induction into the Penitente society and rise to El Hermano Mayor. The book is available from online booksellers. She has also published eight short pieces in online literary magazines and women’s blogs.
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Review by Scott Duncan-Fernandez
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El Hermano, a first novel by Carmen Baca, brings to life through the story of a young boy in late 1920s New Mexico, the wonder of Los Penitentes, who have been painted by rumor and misconstrued in fiction as backwards and brutal, as cult rather than a humble brotherhood of Catholic men. El Hermano could have been the story of my own great-grandfather, a Penitente brother who died a few years before I was born and thus I know as little of him as the brotherhood to which he belonged. Both the shed on the family ranch and the chapel he built down the road where perhaps he carried out some brotherhood rites still stand and have been objects for reflection on his life and Los Penitentes for me for many years.

The valleys and mountains where northern nuevomexicanos or hispanos live can be out of the way, sparsely populated areas. Due to this remoteness the Penitente Brotherhood arose out of necessity. When Mexico gained independence in 1821, the priests were recalled to Spain, and communities like this farthest colony of New Mexico were faced with a long journey to seek absolution of sin. There were already traditions of lay brotherhoods dedicated to saints (and it is said some of them in the New Mexican colony were covers for Crypto-Judaism).  

Men of the community took it upon themselves to absolve their own sins, so that they could address the sins of the community as well. Their activities included praying, procession, scourging and, at one time, electing a member to be crucified.

Los Penitentes have been a secretive and humble brotherhood. The secretiveness and perhaps lurid nature of the scourging and crucifixion had gained interest in the U.S. in the turn of the 20th century. Penitente practices were portrayed in Brave New World, and I recall as a teenager my Anglo classmates mocking the rituals. I chose not to mention to my classmates that my great-grandfather belonged to the brotherhood. Books on American cults, placed next to Ripley’s Believe It Not!, misconstrued the practices of the brotherhood and showed turn of the century anthropological photos of the crucifixion ritual that was no longer practiced.

One such book even had a “Fernandez Brother” chapter that depicted the “ghastly” activities of some of my relatives that took place more than a hundred years ago. While I have spoken to a Penitente brother and a santero, an artist who carves or paints traditional religious figures, who repaired their moradas, the small churches where the brotherhood worships, their responses rather than “secretive” seemed topics “too personal to discuss.” The brotherhood remains a practice that I have known little about.

There has been a need for humanizing countering the negativeportrayals of the brotherhood, which is a living tradition. And the novel El Hermano doesn’t indulge in the lurid portrayal of flagellation or crucifixion by the Penitentes and does an excellent job in portraying members of brotherhood as a religious people concerned for their community and their spiritual needs.

In the 1920s, the young boy, Jose, and his friends in between going to school and doing chores, wonder what the brotherhood is up to behind the walls of the moradas. They grow anxious as the time nears to join the brotherhood if they prove themselves worthy.  Their spying gains the attention of Santa Sebastiana, the New Mexican version of La Muerte (or Santa Muerte), who warns them not to spy upon the brothers.

The boys in their nightly attempts to spy, see other apparitions, and a ball of flame that could be a witch. Their elders counsel them and tell them stories to help them dispel their fear of Santa Sebastiana (fear life and its chance to commit sin, they say) and their approaching adulthood and the spiritual responsibilities of being a part of Los Hermanos begin to take shape.

Earlier on, Jose also worries about the looks of his indigenous nose. He wonders if it is ugly though eventually he accepts it as many people in his family also possess the nose. Not only is it common for teenagers from everywhere to worry about their looks, mestizos worrying about their indigenous features often comes up in U.S. literature and in the journey to accept themselves.

My sister and I, very young and not realizing what we were doing, would accuse each other of having a nose more like mom’s and run to the mirror and push our hawkish flared native noses down to no avail. The nose moment is a good example that El Hermano is a serious book about serious issues—how to be good, whether to defy elders, how to live in the face of death, and faith—it may serve as a Young Adult book but isn’t limited to that genre.

El Hermano is also a historical book—set in the late 20s just before the Great Depression. (Jose says he and his family were already too poor to notice). Eventually, the story follows Jose into the war effort of World War II and to the 1970s. As one of the last hermanos in the valley, he must watch and endure as the order ends.

The rural New Mexican setting and the coming of age of a young boy might bring to mind Rudolfo Anaya’s Bless Me Ultima, but El Hermano is set farther north and is at least 10 years before the confusing times of young soldiers returning home from war and allows focus on the Penitentes. The boys are also different: unlike Antonio, Jose doesn’t question his Catholic faith and is overeager for his acceptance into the brotherhood.

Though characters in El Hermano do not challenge traditions overmuch or get involved in deadly conflicts, they have the conflict of concern for their souls and leading a good life. Though El Hermano searches for answers (and may have a witch), it concentrates more on day to day rural life rather than the many questions of survival and witches at odds with curanderas, as in Bless Me Ultima. The focus is on Los Hermanos and Jose’s eagerness to join them, which makes for a different though not less enjoyable story.

The writing of El Hermano is excellent, not overly ornate, but smooth and easy to read. The story is compelling, the tension of what the boys may find, what the vision of La Muerte means, keeps one reading. The acceleration of the story to tell the whole tale of the main character’s life outside the focus of events is done well, and Jose’s testimonial at the end as an older man wraps the story up nicely.

In the afterward, the author lifts the veil. After her father’s passing, as he was the last brother, she inherited her father’s trunk that contained everything used by the brotherhood for their rituals. It was a revelation for her and seemingly an impetus to share this story.
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Though the father’s local sect died out, the author has enabled us to see the brotherhood in a new, more honest light rather than as sideshow cultists and moreover honors and sets as examples her hispano forebears. One need not be hispano, Chicano, or Latino to appreciate this book, but for me as a nuevomexicano on the periphery of the Penitente Brotherhood, author Carmen Baca has revealed insights to traditions and a living link to those men who created a way of life for spiritual survival and provided a better understanding of a great-grandfather I have never met.