The Witch Narratives: Reincarnation Read online

  He was always watching.

  Seeing.

  Glowering.

  Devouring.

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

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

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

  Did he know she knew her name?

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

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

  So, it was rumored.

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

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

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

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

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

  “His dead wife?” Tía Bíatriz whispered back.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  So, it was rumored.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  There was nothing normal about these men. She grimaced at their bare backs criss-crossed with raw-looking scars, most self-inflicted. Their fellow brothers of the Order had lashed a few of the scars. The Penitentes, their name derived from the word penance, was a religious order of flagellation.

  “Make the coffin no bigger than this,” Pacheco said, holding his hands out to a length of about four feet. “Claudio Rodríguez can be folded like an accordion. He has been gutted and deboned by a bruja. Save the lumber for the next one.”

  Save the lumber for the next one.

  “Marcelina. Marcelina, come to me,” the witch had sung.

  She made a stiff face, her lips contorted into a square. She cuffed her hands to her ears to drown out the nails being driven into her uncle’s coffin, which was the size of a child’s, just her size. She was ashamed that last week she had been feeling sorry for herself because Papa was angry at her for hiding and not helping Mama peel the papas for dinner. Mama had balled her out for dirtying her dress. She had thought then, won’t they be sorry if I am dead? She had imagined them crying at her funeral, sounding a lot like the women with the Penitentes. As the men worked, the women sung the alabado, a religious ballad sung at wakes. The women howled, beating their breasts with their fists.

  The wailing of all eight of the women together did not sound as horrible as the wailing of La Llorona.

  La Llorona, who had gutted and deboned her tío.

  Odd, when she closed her eyes, it was not the witch she imagined gutting her own stomach, but Pacheco.

  Pacheco, who had the dead eyes of a fish.

  She touched her chest, feeling as if his cold blade was poking between her ribs.

  He was not poking, crying, nor singing. He stood in the shade watching the men work.

  Papa stopped his painting of the front door of their house and walked over to Pacheco. He bowed his head before him, speaking more to the dirt than to Pacheco.

  She couldn’t hear what he told Papa, but it seemed to upset Papa. He wrung his hands, pointing to the front door, partially painted blue.

  Pacheco crossed his arms in front of his ches
t and looked back at his workers, dismissing Papa with a snort.

  She ran outside and threw her arms around Papa’s waist. She peeked around his shirt, spying on her tío, still laid spread out on the table, as if he was to be butchered for dinner. Though it was late morning, she had not eaten. She wondered if she would ever feel hunger again to sit with her family around the table where ministrations of death were being carried out. Mama’s rear end was draped in black the size of a bedspread. It looked windy in the kitchen because her dress swayed. Tía Bíatriz held onto Claudio’s head while Mama tried to uproot the black rose from his mouth. The procedure was delicate because the thorns burrowed inside his cheeks, the rose stem buried beneath his skin. It looked like the flower was planted in his cheek and grew from his mouth.

  The bottom half of Bíatriz’s red face was wrapped with a black scarf, so was Mama’s, but they still turned their heads away from Claudio.

  Marcelina pinched her nose at the stink drifting out the window. The stench was the same as a dead cat she once came upon in a field.

  Mama and Tía jostled Claudio back and forth, releasing his rotting smells even more, yet the black rose in his mouth remained fresh, as though it hung from the vine. The more he dried up like a prune, the more the rose sparkled with moisture, as if growing in a dewy field.

  Mama quit working, her shoulders slumped in defeat. “We’ll have to rip his face open, if we are to pluck the rose from his head.”

  Bíatriz sobbed. She and Claudio were two roses sprouted from one stem—twins.

  Mama picked up a knife.

  Bíatriz grabbed onto her wrist to stop her.

  There was to be a war of the rose in the kitchen.

  Marcelina buried her head in Papa’s belly. She did not want to see her tío’s head roll from the kitchen table.

  Familiarity with death came young in the New Mexico plains and mountains. Life could be measured by a yard stick in 1923. She already witnessed the death of a baby sister last Christmas Eve. The babe had been so tiny, she was laid out on a kitchen chair instead of the table, resembling a doll to be wrapped for Christmas and placed beneath the tree. Instead, she was buried, never to see the luminarias, the paper bags of sand with a candle in each bag lit on Christmas Eve. Luminarias surrounded the house and yard to light the way for the Christ child. Last Christmas Eve, luminarias served a double purpose, to light the way for her baby sister so she might find her way to heaven in a coffin the size of a shoe box.

  She remembered the baby doll she was given last Christmas that appeared lifelike, resembling her dead baby sister. Mama and Papa never understood why she screamed when she unwrapped the doll. She looked over at her tío’s coffin, just her size, and clung tightly to Papa’s shirt. Even the death of her baby sister did not scare her like Claudio, lying naked on the table with his manly thing, tiny and limp, frozen between his legs. Even his eighteen children deserted him. Her cousins, tío’s children, feared showing their respect to their dead papa and angering La Llorona, who cursed Claudio for having so many kids. Yet, none of her cousins could possibly feel the terror Marcelina did. “Mi hija,” La Llorona had cackled. “My daughter.”

  Remembrances of the witch made her regress to a four year old. She pouted and whined, demanding her own way. “Papa, why paint the doors and frames of our house blue?” she screamed, stomping her shoe on his foot. There were more important things for him to do today, such as cry for his brother.

  Papa did not answer. He merely winced at his injured toe.

  She tugged at his belt, in danger of blue paint drops coloring her head.

  Finally, he looked down. “What now, mi hija?”

  She cringed at the endearment. The words would never mean the same to her, after the witch spoke them last night. She scowled. “Why are you using blue paint, Papa? I thought you wanted our casa to be different from the neighbors.”

  “Never forget, mi hija, bright blue is the color of our Virgin Mary, who protects the Hispanos from the witches, who fly in the night as fireballs. I have gone against the traditions which have been around since the Spanish Inquisition came to New Mexico over two centuries ago. Pacheco tells me I am being punished for wanting to be modern. When the gringos sometimes water themselves in Madrid on their way to Santa Fe, they laugh behind our backs at our blue doors and windows. I was too proud so, I left the doors and frames the natural color of the wood. Your tío has died because of my pride.”

  She hated Pacheco for making Papa feel bad, and despised this Spanish Inquisition Pacheco wanted Madrid to return to.

  She loathed their gawking neighbors who felt they had the right to judge them, since Pacheco, with his eyes, sentenced the Rodríguez family, finding them wanting in propriety, piety, and tradition. Those same neighbors Papa had wanted to be different from mingled around the casa, watching him paint the frames and doors of the house blue. “It’s too late to save your brother,” they yelled out. “The virgin would have spared the visit from the witch had you painted the color of her robes earlier. It is an omen Claudio was murdered on All Saints’ Day. The family must be cursed.”

  Yet, they watched him slaughter a lamb, and their stomachs churned in anticipation of the funeral feast to follow the burial of Claudio Rodríguez.

  Papa stabbed a hook into the front door frame just painted blue. He hung the carcass from the hook and skinned the lamb, blood dripping onto the porch. The lamb swung, splattering drops of blood on the fresh blue paint of the door.

  Papa gripped Marcelina’s shoulders so tightly, he pinched her. “The blood of the Passover lamb on the blue door will protect you, mi hija, from La Llorona or any other witches.”

  The faithful believe the color blue splashed around the entry to a home will force a witch to bypass the house, just like the Jewish Passover, when death and pestilence invaded the houses of the Egyptians but not the homes of the Jews, who marked their doors with lamb’s blood. It was God who passed over the Jews’ homes, killing the Egyptians’ first born children. Claudio had been the first born son, and their neighbors were right.

  At the age of eleven she understood little of this. She only knew painting the frames and doors of the house blue was fitting, because Claudio had been a favorite, a man who made people laugh.

  But…there was one woman of the village who did not seem sad. She stood apart from the rest, with a mocking look in her hazel-colored eyes, daring Pacheco to order her to leave.

  He stood with his back to her, pretending the woman did not exist.

  Pacheco may have been the most powerful man in the village, but this tall, thin woman was the most feared. Her features looked remarkably like a white hawk. Her black brows were arched too sharply on her face so pale, blue veins criss-crossed her cheeks. She was elaborately dressed in a flapper dress, her toiletry painstakingly seen to. Like a Spanish aristocrat, a Spanish comb swept up her black hair. Flowing from the top of her comb was a red lace mantilla trimmed with gold, framing her narrow face, and cascading down her back.

  From the center of her comb grew a black rose.

  Marcelina shrank back from the black rose. She twirled her head to the kitchen window, her dead tío, and the black rose growing from his mouth. Thank goodness, Mama had not ripped his face open to uproot the rose. She simply decided to leave the rose in his mouth, since what harm could the rose do now but stretch his face in a horror mask? New Mexico was jerky dry, yet drops of dew did not evaporate from the black rose stuffed in his mouth.

  The woman wearing the black rose had the nerve to smile, with blood-red lips, at her dead tío.

  The woman turned her head from Claudio, and Marcelina lowered her eyes to the ground. Mama and Papa had ordered her to never look those ladies in the eye. By those ladies, they meant not only this witch but her mother-in-law standing beside her with bowed head and eyes closed, as if she was sleeping. The mother-in-law was pure Southwest Indian from the nearby Santo Domingo Pueblo. La India, the villagers called her, for no one really knew her name. Even the nick
name, La India, was always spoken in a hushed voice for it was said that the witches could hear with the ears of a pig, what was spoken a mile away. She wore a skirt with wide horizontal stripes, the colors of the rainbow. Indifferent to white-people fashion, her ensemble included a green and yellow spotted blouse and brown moccasins. Black braids brushed her ample, firm breasts. A homespun blanket of coarse fabric wrapped her shoulders. She clasped her smooth hands together, a bracelet hugging her wrist. On each end of the bracelet was the head of a snake with fangs exposed, ready to strike. Though rumored to be at least 110 years of age, La India looked like a girl of 17. Her bronze skin was unlined, her body unbent by age.

  Mama and Tía Bíatriz must have been at least 80 years younger than La India, yet looked so much older. Even La India’s daughter-in-law appeared more aged, which must have displeased the hawkish woman with the black rose, who looked down her nose at all she saw around her.

  Marcelina wondered how La India stayed so young looking. Perhaps she found the Fountain of Youth Mama always talks about with longing.

  She doesn’t fool me. She’s not sleeping. She can see through her eyelids.

  La India’s eyes rolled beneath her lids, keeping tabs on the villagers. She occasionally rolled her eyelids down to the girl sandwiched between herself and her hawkish daughter-in-law. La India smiled with fondness, when her lids rested on her granddaughter.

  The girl was about Marcelina’s age but smaller in stature. Her eyes bounced nervously from villager to villager. She was unwashed and dressed in rags. Strands of copper-red hair stuck up around her head. She was barefoot, resembling a wild animal trapped between her mother and grandmother. The girl’s name was Salia.

  Marcelina had been warned about Salia’s mother and grandmother, just as the other children were alerted to their danger. La Llorona had clutched a black rose in her hand, just like the black rose growing from the top of the hawkish woman’s head. It was as if the beauty and darkness of the rose intertwined with her hair, the oils of her black hair nourishing the rose. No villager ever dared speak her name aloud, but Marcelina knew who Salia’s mother was. One time, when she walked by, she caught her name floating in the very air.