by Alisa Valdes
“I’m not big on polygamy,” I said.
“We all have only one true Kindred Primary, Maria, and I believe that’s you. Claudia was a Kindred Other. I can never harmonize with her the way I do with you. But I can still love her, and appreciate what I had with her.”
“You love her?”
“I always will. But it’s different. Baby, I’ll never be able to touch that girl again, you understand that, don’t you?”
“I thought you could appear to Kindred Others? And touch them.”
“I can.”
“And have sex with them.”
“No. I can’t have sex. Not unless it is my Primary. Those are the rules. Hard rules to follow, too, especially when you come back in the body of an 18-year-old male human, you know what I’m sayin’?” He smiled, but I didn’t find it humorous.
“Has she seen you, since - since you...?”
“Died?”
“Yeah. Right. I can’t say it.”
“I made contact with her.”
I felt my stomach lurch with bitterness. “I hate her,” I said.
“Maria. It ain’t about that, mami. She’s a good person.”
“Don’t see her anymore.”
His eyes danced with amusement. “She’s real religious and it spooked her. Plus, she has a Kindred Primary of her own to find. I’ve tried to find him for her, so she won’t be so sad. I know he’s on earth now, but he’s, like, in fourth grade or something. Ten year age difference. They’ll be cool when they’re both adults. Time comes, I’ll arrange a hookup.”
“You can do that?”
“Sometimes. It’s not part of my assignment, but I think it’d be a nice thing to help her find him.”
I turned a little more serious at this point. “Are there lots of you around? Revenants?”
He shrugged. “I know some. I see ‘em. La Llorona is the worst.”
I balked. I’d heard of La Llorona, a famous legend around New Mexico. “Isn’t that the lady who drowned her own kids, and wanders the ditches and rivers at night?” I asked him.
He laughed. “Okay.”
“Did she really kill her kids?”
“Yeah, man. But she ain’t crying ‘bout that no more. She had post-partum depression, mamita, you know what that is?”
“When women get crazy after they have a baby, from hormones.”
“Yep. She had that, and an abusive husband, and she was stupid. The Maker and mayordomos decided to let her linger, but she’s been lazy. That’s why she’s crying.” He laughed and shook his head in disbelief. “She’s been lingering for hundreds of years, but is too lazy to do any good deeds. She wants to, but she can’t find the energy, so she cries.”
“Sounds like she needs medication.”
He laughed loudly at this. “Yeah, maybe she does. She’s a depressed soul. Yeah. That’s about right. She’s selfish, too, and don’t want to move on.”
“She’s not helping anyone,” I said. “Why is she allowed to linger?”
“Ah, but she is helping. Think about it, Maria. Parents tell their kids she’s gonna get them if they go near the rivers or if they go out at night alone. Then the kids see her, or hear her crying, and they believe in her, and they stay away from danger. Funny thing is, she killed her own kids, but she’s saved a bunch of others.”
“Why doesn’t she get good deed credit for that?”
“Because it’s a passive good she’s doing, not an active good. She’s incredibly passive, La Llorona, but we’ve had some good talks. She’s a’ight.”
“You’ve met her?”
“Word. You want to meet her? She ain’t hard to find. She’s freakin’ loud.”
I shrugged, because even though I did not want to meet La Llorona, I didn’t want to offend Demetrio by letting him know ghosts - other than him, of course - scared me.
“Are people surrounded by ghosts?”
“Maybe.”
“The frozen cows, do they count as a good deed for you, even though they’re not in your jurisdiction, so to speak?”
“Yes. Which reminds me,” he said, he held up a finger in a “eureka” motion. He pulled the little gold notebook and strange quill pen from his pocket, and jotted something down in it. He didn’t let me see what he was writing.
“What are you doing?”
“Recording the deed, for posterity,” he said with mock pomp and what sounded like a fake British accent.
“Who keeps track?”
“The Maker. The mayordomos. Some other beings. Everything is accounted for.” He looked up at me apologetically. “This little book here, it’s nifty cuz it uploads directly to the universe, like the fastest computer connection ever.”
“It looks like a dusty old notebook.”
“That’s the best part. Okay. Hey. It’s getting late, sweet. You better get home.”
“But I need you,” I whined, clinging to him. He smiled at me, and held me gently.
“I need you too,” he said. “But here’s the good news, mami. I have you, and you have me. Time and distance don’t matter now. We got each other now. Forever.”
“How many deeds do you have left,” I asked, suddenly realizing that once he’d completed them, he’d be gone from here.
“About 600,” he said.
“You’re about halfway done.”
“Yeah. Just about.”
“And what happens when you finish them?” I braced for an answer I was pretty sure I didn’t want to hear.
“I move on.”
“Without me,” I said, devastated.
“I’ll see you again.”
I began to cry. “This sucks,” I said.
“No it don’t, Maria. You think so now, but there’s so much you don’t know yet.”
“Teach me.”
“I will, but not right now. Right now, your mom is turning to wine to fill a void you’re helping create in her. Humans can do good in the world, every bit as much as lingering souls like me. But you gotta pay attention to what’s going on around you. Be willing to give more often than take.”
“My mom is drinking again?” I said in disbelief.
“She’s scared,” he said. “And alone. She’s been doing it more lately. She thinks the worst about you, it messes her up inside. Now, go to her and prove her fears wrong.”
“When will I see you again?”
“Stop worrying, Maria. This is a day to celebrate finding each other. I’m yours. I’ll find you soon. I have to trust you not to come looking for me now that you know what’s at stake.”
“I get it.”
“Cool. Now go.”
“Why can’t I ever find you?” I asked.
“’Cuz I’m the dead guy, ‘member?” he replied with a grin.
“Don’t remind me.”
“Go, mami.” He kissed me one last time, and gave my butt a little smack. “Get out of here already. Go do your thing this week, with finals. I won’t bug you.”
“But I want you to bug me.”
“You should probably focus on school.”
“Yeah, probably.”
“I’ll see you soon. Get out of here.” He kissed me one last time, and then, hard as it was to go, I did what he commanded. I got out of there. I went home.
♦
Valiantly though Yazzie tried, she was unable to keep me from ending up in the headmaster’s office after all. Friday came around, and with it my last final exam and a meeting in said person’s luxurious and well-appointed office, with its leather chairs and Persian rugs. My mother was there, as were Logan and his parents. My mother hardly noticed me, so busy was he kissing Logan’s father’s posterior. She’d read about him in the paper, she’d seen him at a board meeting, she thought he was 100 percent right about the President in his op-ed in the Sunday Journal, etc, etc.
Headmaster Green, a man of nearly seventy who had seen and dealt with a lot of problems in his educational career and seemed all that much more mellow and forgiving for it, was thankfully a m
ore even-keeled person, practiced in the arts of diplomacy and patience. He explained that he was concerned for my safety, given the reckless disregard Logan had displayed for my privacy by posting personal information on a Web site whose contents were “well known on campus and at this point much-discussed and perhaps even a polarizing issue among their fellow students.”
“Well, that’s easy to solve, isn’t it?” my mother asked. “Maria, if you just stop cavorting with that shady gang member, putting yourself and everyone at Coronado Prep in danger, and come back to your senses, this could all go away.”
Headmaster Green looked at me with sympathy, but knew better than to openly challenge my mother.
“I like Demetrio,” I said. “And he’s not a gang member. Plus, I’m almost 18 years old. I don’t think it’s anyone’s business in this room who I date.”
“Privacy is very important to us all,” said Headmaster Green. “I think we can all agree to that.”
“You are mistaken. A minor child has no rights to privacy if criminal elements are involved,” hissed my mother.
“He’s not a criminal. He’s a good person. You are unbelievably shallow, mom.”
“Logan? Your site should be down by this evening, correct?” said Headmaster Green.
“It’s for her own good,” said Logan. “But if you want it down, I’ll take it down.”
“I’m not getting back together with you,” I told him. “You can’t force me to, and you can’t bully me into it.”
Headmaster Green sighed and laced his fingers together on top of his desk. “Let the record show that I’ve asked both students here to remove all offending materials from the Internet immediately, or face possible expulsion from school,” he said.
My mother gasped and put he hand to her throat.
“Expulsion?” she asked, expressing the shock that eluded even Logan’s parents, who seemed to have a more stoic - and sneaky - attitude about this whole thing. “If that were to happen, if would have to stay hush-hush, of course. I couldn’t - I mean, we couldn’t - possibly have my daughter’s expulsion from Coronado Prep be made public, no. Impossible. I think there is some fundraising money that might not be available otherwise, for the new playing fields.”
“I understand what you’re saying, Ms. Romero,” said Headmaster Green, scarcely able to conceal his contempt for her. “But fundraising issues are of no concern to me in the disciplining of students.”
“Well, they should be.”
“So I’ve heard, more than once, and yet, Ms. Romero, they are not.”
“You’ll regret that,” said my mother.
Headmaster Green ignored her, turning his attention to me now. “And Maria, I’ll ask that you remove the site you’ve put up in reaction to Logan’s site.”
I didn’t bother to deny Kelsey’s was mine. She was a great friend who had protected me, and I would take the fall for her.
“Consider it done,” I said.
“I want all posts to social networking sites about this matter by either one of you deleted immediately as well. No photos, no blog posts, no comments, nothing. We have zero tolerance for cyber bullying at this school, and as I’m sure you can imagine, this sort of behavior by our students sullies the name of this venerated institution.”
“We understand,” I said.
“You’ve made your points, Green,” said Logan’s father, standing up pompously to leave, leading with his substantial potbelly. “Anything else?”
“Yes.” Headmaster Green looked at me and Logan sternly. “You are both suspended for one week upon resumption of classes in January.”
Logan’s parents shook hands with my mom, and my mother absurdly apologized to them - apologized. As my mother and I walked toward the parking lot, she informed me that I was to be grounded for three weeks.
♦
I drove home alone, spilling my guts to Kelsey, who was preparing for an early morning flight to New York to spend the holiday with her family in Manhattan. I called Demetrio, but got voicemail. It made me laugh out loud to think ghosts had voicemail.
When I got home, I shared a Chinese takeout dinner with my mother in relative silence, trying not to read too much into the way her fork scraped across the plate, or how violently she stabbed her orange chicken pieces. I felt as though I were seeing her - really seeing her - for the first time, and I didn’t like what I saw. My whole life, she’d been my hero. The woman I admired most in the world. But upon the topic of Demetrio - and by default, me making my own choices for myself - we simply could not agree.
Buddy sat faithfully at my feet, giving me strength through his quivering excitement - either that, or waiting for a scrap of food to fall on the floor. I was never quite sure which with him.
“Well, we should hit the hay,” said my mother wearily as she cleared the table. “We need to get an early start tomorrow to get up to the resort in Santa Fe before hitting the slopes.”
“I thought I was grounded.”
“You are, for things you do alone. But I already paid for this trip and its very expensive, and completely nonrefundable, thank you very much. I took time off from work and rearranged a lot of meetings for you. So you’re going.”
“Fine.”
“I trust you’ll pack your things before bed and be ready to leave by seven tomorrow.”
“What about Buddy?”
“I have a dog-sitting service arranged. Now, give me your cell phone. I’ve already had your computer removed from your room.”
“What? Why?”
“Give me your phone. It’s part of your grounding. No phone, no Internet.”
“Can I at least tell Kelsey and my other friends I’m not going to have it, so they don’t think I’m blowing them off if I don’t answer them this week?”
“Frankly, I’m surprised you still have any friends with the way you’ve been acting,” she told me. “But no, sorry. Give me the phone.”
“I can’t even call them? At least a text?”
“You want to reach out to that hoodlum, is that it?” she asked.
“He has a name. Demetrio. And he’s very nice, mom, if you’d bother getting to know him.”
“Phone,” she seethed. “Now.”
I did as she asked, though it occurred to me that in one year’s time I’d be a legal adult and no longer required to do anything she told me to do. I couldn’t wait.
“Thank you,” she said, pressing it off and stuffing it in her pants pocket.
“Don’t read my texts,” I said.
“Not your decision to make, I’m afraid.”
“Mom! What is wrong with you? Why are you treating me like this?”
“Do not use that tone with me, young lady.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Good night, Maria. Seven a-m. Be up and ready to go.”
I went to bed furious, and woke in no better a mood. My mother was in her beige ski clothes, including pants that swished together irritatingly when she walked. She had made breakfast burritos for us to eat “on the road” in the Lexus SUV. I went through the motions of loading my suitcase into the car and my skis onto the roof rack, but I was miserable. I had no way to communicate with my friends - or with Demetrio. My mother was evil.
She drove through the cold, clear morning tight-lipped, without talking much, and we filled the space with her Celine Dion CDs, which only made things worse, in my opinion. I watched the desert slide past out the window, and tried to feel something close to hope. How could I get through winter break - two long weeks of it - without my phone?
Mom, unsurprisingly, took Interstate 25.
Things began to get surprising, however, when, instead of taking the turnoff to the ski area in Santa Fe, as she’d said we would, she turned onto Highway 84, driving past the Santa Fe Opera and out of the city limits, into the artist colony of Tesuque, and then onto Highway 502, toward Los Alamos, through the village of Pojoaque. Clouds covered the sky now, and a light snow began to fall.
“Whe
re are you going?” I asked her.
“Don’t worry. We’re not lost.” That’s all she said.
After a few turns onto increasingly narrower, less-paved and bumpier roads, we arrived at a heavily guarded gate for what appeared to be a ranch, given the words Rancho la Curación emblazoned across the thick adobe walls in large gold lettering on either side of the metal egress. My mother stopped the car, and rolled down her window, all business and control, as a guard stepped forward with his thick moustache and dark glasses leading the way.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
“Maria Ochoa,” she told the guard condescendingly, “we have a nine o’clock appointment with Doctor Bergant. She’s expecting us.
“What’s going on?” I asked as the guard buzzed us through and my mother rolled her window back up.
“I’m helping you,” she said snootily as she drove through the opening and onto the compound.
“I have a doctor’s appointment?” I asked. “Are we skiing after that?”
My mother did not answer me. Instead, she wove the car down a few curving paths, among several beautiful upscale adobe houses separated by snowy expanses that I imagined were lawns and gardens in the warmer months. This is when I noticed there were people sitting outside on rocking chairs, and that every porch on every house had exactly the same kind of rocking chairs, and the same kind of blank-faced people smoking or muttering to themselves there.
“This is a mental institution,” I said in a whisper, my breath shallow as the full weight of the realization hit me. “Oh my God.”
“Make yourself useful and help me find building 19,” my mother mused, squinting at the houses as we passed each one. I was too busy looking at the sorrowful faces of the people on the porches, and peering out at us from the windows of the houses, to help her.
“Is it?” I asked, a sick feeling washing over me. “Is this a loony farm? You’re putting me away in an asylum?”
“Oh, you’ll see.” She smiled at me without a hint of kindness. “It’s not nice to use that terminology, Maria. Very politically incorrect. We prefer to think of this is a healing retreat for you. That’s exactly what it is. A nice, peaceful place with lots of helpful people to fix you right up.”
