by Nino Cipri
“I meant even farther away,” I say. “Days and days away from here.”
“Tonalxochitl. Cuachachalate. Tlachichinole,” Bienvenida recites. It sounds like her first poem, the one she had to translate for me.
“Those are only some of the plants that root my family where we are,” she says. “We would never abandon them.”
“Things of the earth,” I scoff. “They’re created for us, not us for them.”
The look she returns is full of disdain. She takes some steps down the hall, out of my sight line, then I hear her stop.
“The rest of you are like mosquitoes swarming over our mother’s earthen skin. But we are her blood, Anica. Without us, she dies. Without her, we die.”
The steps resume, then fade away.
I wish Bienvenida back, wish it as if it were a prayer. I have told her a bit about our customs—mostly to better control the sort of food she brings me—but what I want her to understand now goes beyond custom. I want her to know that we are not like the others either. We, too, cannot be parted from what we love best. We carry it with us in law and ritual and cantilation. Without us, it dies; without it, we die.
Hours later, as the sun ducks beneath my barred window, I hear Bienvenida at our gap. “Put your hand under the hole,” she says after I kneel to the spot.
She rolls three black berries into my palm. “Don’t eat those,” she says. “Smash one between pebbles that have fallen from the walls. Use this to write with.” She pushes a single bristle of her broom through to me.
“I have nothing to write on,” I say. “And what am I supposed to write?”
“Your mother will not take food from me,” she says. “If you tell her that you trust me, she might be easier about it. Write on this.” She drops a pale bean through the hole.
Small, curved surface; flexing stylus; clumpy ink—has there been a greater test of will? I manage to trace one Hebrew letter.
As soon as I pass the bean through to Bienvenida, she disappears with it. When she comes back, she instructs me to put my palm up to the gap and a seed tumbles onto it. I turn it over on my palm. It carries the word “strength” in tiny, perfect solitreo.
“Your mother only took half a morsel,” Bienvenida says. She shakes a loosely clenched hand in front of the gap, and I hear the sound of crunchy things rattling against each other. Grasshoppers. My stomach grumbles and she pokes several of them through the opening to me.
“Next time she’ll eat more,” I say after I’ve finished chewing. “What about Mariana?”
She shakes her head. “The unseen harries her. She circles her cell, and the spirits compel her to scratch at her face and draw blood. She did not even hear me whistle for her attention.”
“Do something,” I say. I haven’t cried since Bienvenida started visiting me, but now I feel my eyes fill.
“I’ll ask my mother,” she says, then she gets up. I hear the bristles of her broom scrape at the door.
“What are you doing? You already swept.”
“It is Friday,” she says. “I am doing this now in your name. Our gods accept such substitutions. Perhaps yours will as well.”
I don’t know whether to be moved by her action or infuriated. She continues to speak openly of her terrible, false gods, and perhaps that should be the worst part but it isn’t. I have told her enough about our rituals that she knows the Sabbath’s prayers are special. It is the meter and cadence of poetry she is hoping for. Doing this for. Loyal to.
Not friendship. Not me.
Something rises in me, sharp and jagged, and I do not recite anything before she finishes and leaves.
The next Friday she does the same, and the Friday after that. I lose count of how many times it happens before I get over my anger. What does it matter if she’s here for me or my words, as long as she’s here?
Still, the prayer I recite for her is not truly to be said at sunset, only a childhood favorite recited every night after my mother laid down the comb but before she extinguished the light in my bedroom:
I have closed my doors
with the keys of Abraham;
the pious will come in,
the evil ones will leave;
the angels of the Lord
are here with me.
“Magic,” she says a moment after I finish reciting. “Do you hear?”
Before I can answer, a loud bellow sounds clear through my door. Bienvenida moves away from our gap and I hear her running.
After that, the stifling silence of my imprisonment falls again.
But no. There it is. Like hope where there was none before. The sound of wings.
We Are Loaned to One Another
When I arrive home—after a long detour to check my turtle traps in the waters off the causeway nearest the Tree of the Sad Night—Fray Bernardino is with my mother, waiting for me. It is unusual for him to venture out of the city except for his herb lessons, and those are done long before darkness falls.
The Brothers at the convent have told him about catching me with Anica. Unlike most of the Dominicans, the tall, red-faced Franciscan speaks to us in Nahuatl, and as if he believes us of more than usual intelligence. He has told my mother that if she were a Spanish man she would have made an excellent physick, and might even own a book like the little leather tome in which he records the appearances and properties of the plants she identifies for him.
She smiles whenever he says it and doesn’t tell him about the amatl bark books she hides under her mat. Women have always had to hide their wisdom from men, and the Brothers are men, if strange ones.
“I vouched for you,” Fray Bernardino says to me. “The Brothers have agreed to let you continue cleaning the convent, so your family will not lose that prestige. The lower cells, however, are off-limits. I have sworn that you will not be caught there again.”
“Who will clean that hallway?”
“Perhaps they’ll purchase one of the slaves newly brought to city,” he says dismissively. Then he stoops so he can look me in the face. “What do you speak about with that girl, Bienvenida?” He chose my Christian name for me, and I am thankful it is a nice one that means welcome. Some of the Nahua girls got names that mean loneliness or pain.
“I recite the flower songs to her,” I answer. I know better than to tell him about Anica’s recitations. His face creases anyway.
Fray Bernardino shakes his head as he gets up, then looks at my mother. “There is talk. About witchcraft in word and deed. And about the demonic nature of the pipiltzintzintli plant. You understand?”
My mother nods. “A peyotero, a midwife, and a sobadora have been taken from the people already.”
“But they have not been subjected to an auto da fé,” he says. There is something out of place in his voice, and I am struck by the thought that he craves my mother’s forgiveness.
My mother hears it too, but is not one for words dipped in honey. “Your people have completed the quemadero,” she says. “My people may not be the first to burn, but we will burn.”
After a moment, Fray Bernardino turns his face from hers and walks out. She follows him with her eyes.
“Tell,” she says without looking at me.
“The ones that need your help are women. One is sick with fright and haunted by unseens,” I say. “And one … my friend … she must fly away or her spirit will die.”
My mother doesn’t say anything.
“They need you,” I say.
She turns to look at me. “One day you will be me.”
She is short and wide, like a tepozán tree. Her hands are too big for her arms, and her feet are broad and horned with calluses. Nested deep in the wrinkles are eyes the color of silt, eyes that see everything. She is beautiful to me, as I will be beautiful to my daughter, and she to hers.
“Come, then,” my mother says as she sweeps by me. “While we can.”
Put on me a necklace of varied flowers.
The next morning, I leave our house with a garland on the outside of my tunic an
d one on the inside. The visible one is made of many-petaled white flowers woven in a perfect round; the invisible one has pieces of root, insect, bud, and bone strung unevenly on sinew. I arrive earlier than usual at the convent and search among the Dominicans for Fray Antonio.
He scratches the flaky skin around his tonsure when he sees me. “Are you here to be shriven?”
I take the garland from my neck and hold it out to him. “We made this. For the chapel.”
There is a moment when I think he might foil our plan by giving the flowers to the novice who cleans the sacred space. But after some consideration he takes them. They aren’t spectacular blossoms, but they have a pleasant fragrance that stays long on the skin. My mother has people rub them between their hands because the warmer the oil, the faster the sleep.
Fray Antonio motions for me to follow him, and as he walks over to the chapel he strokes the petals, then sniffs his fingers and wipes them on his habit. As soon as his fingers leave the fabric they’re back at the petals, and the whole process starts again, without the Brother noticing he’s doing it. He unlocks the church, then moves to the side where a small statue stands alone.
“Are you devoted to Our Lady?” he asks me.
This statue is not the Tonantzin the Brothers named Guadalupe. This one has a pale, delicate face surrounded by reddish-gold ringlets and a demure look that makes me doubtful she would ever understand our Nahua needs and delights. Still, the Dominicans bring her offerings like the ones we take to our own mother at Tepeyac.
Fray Antonio returns the garland to me. “Are you tall enough to crown her with it?”
“I think so,” I say.
“Good. I’ll go pray while you do,” he says.
All the gods favor beauty, so I take my time with the crowning. When I’m done, the priest is dozing in the pew. I drop an extra blossom in his hand on my way out.
When I arrive at the cells, Anica is crying.
“Last night I saw my mother,” she tells me, wiping her nose with the back of her hand as she walks over to our gap. She doesn’t need to say more. The only time the prisoners go anywhere it is to the room where they are stretched until the right words pop out of their mouths.
I pull the necklace from under my tunic and release three pieces of root. “These kill pain,” I say. I push one of the pieces through the gap. “Write on it that she must chew it to paste, then smear that over the worst of her hurts. Also, that she must swallow the juice that comes from the chewing. It is bitter but it will take away the pain.”
“She is used to bitter,” Anica says, then does what she’s told. When she passes the root back through to me, I move to the gap in her mother’s cell wall.
“Doña Francisca,” I call. The old woman lifts her head from the bedding, then fights to get up. It takes her a long time to cross to me.
“Anica sends these,” I say. I push through the first piece of root, the one with the writing. She squints to read it, then catches the other two pieces I pass through.
“I’ve lost most of my teeth,” she says. “I doubt I’ll be able to chew them.”
“Hold them in your mouth. Let them soften in the water that collects and swallow that. It will help.”
She nods, then, “I cannot write a seed message for Anica today. Tell her: She is the darling of her mother.” She starts her slow shuffle back to the bedding, the roots clenched tightly in her hand.
Anica’s jaw sets in hard lines when I tell her, and there is a silence so long I have to break it for fear it will outlast Fray Antonio’s nap.
“We must find a way to draw your sister to the gap in her wall, so I can give her this,” I show Anica the bud strung on my necklace. “Its spirit is so strong it will overcome the unseens that assail her.”
She settles on the pet name they had for Mariana, something to remind her of happier days and the bond between sisters. Still, when I say it, there is no break in the older girl’s pacing. I try explaining what I have, what it does, how she will find relief. When there is no response, I return to Anica.
“Why didn’t you just leave it?” she asks. “If she goes to find it later, there will be nothing there.”
“If anyone finds it, they will know it is my doing,” I say. “I am not allowed here anymore, not even to clean.”
“You’re here now,” Anica says. When I keep silent, I see realization dawning on her face, followed by a pinched, lonely look.
We are loaned to one another.
“Sister,” I say. As if she were an elder sibling. As a sign of respect even beyond friendship. “This is my mother’s deepest, most secret magic. One day, when I am old enough to have mastered it myself, I will use it to come find you.”
I take the hollow bone from my necklace, and the beetles shimmer blue to orange as I untie them. I pass them through one by one and tell her what she must do with them, and how it must be done.
I see her mouth twist as the beetles’ barbed legs move a bit on her palm. They are still very sluggish from their pipiltzintzintli meal.
“Must they be alive?” she says.
“Recently killed when you do it.”
“Tell me again why I should.”
“Because it will set you free.”
I have nothing left to give her, but I put my fingers to the gap anyway. Her slender, strong index finger hooks itself on mine. We sit for a few minutes like that, linked and silent.
Then I get up and leave.
Go, Find Another Love
The beetles crawl under my bedding. I shove the bone in after them.
I lay down. Hours pass.
The jailer brings bread and cheese, cold water. He takes away the slop bucket.
There are no words but mine to break the silence. Night falls.
Day comes again. The same silent priest appears and brings the same dry, hard meal.
Then another day.
I know the strength of whatever Bienvenida’s mother fed the beetles must be waning. Like food steeped in brine or alcohol loses its flavor after a while. Or does the long wait make it sharper, more concentrated? I no longer remember. Either way, I do nothing.
One day after many, the priest who brings my meal is a different one, with a brown cassock instead of the usual white. “Tomorrow, before midday, you will be taken out to the quemadero,” he whispers as he grabs the slop bucket. His face flushes a deep red. “God have mercy.”
I have thought often about dying. With fear, and sometimes with longing. Especially in these lonely days without Bienvenida. Yet now that I know the hour of my death, I do not want it.
As soon as the priest leaves, I tear my bedding apart. I find the bone and one of the beetles. There is no trace of the other, and I think maybe the living one ate it.
My hands shake as I get the chips of stone on which I crushed the ink berries. The beetle crunches and I keep grinding until its wet innards are so thoroughly mixed with bits of stone and carapace that the mixture turns dry and grainy.
When beetle grit is as fine as it’s going to get, I fit the smaller end of the bone into one nostril as Bienvenida instructed, hold the wider end over the dirty-looking little pile and snort it up.
Pain shoots into my head; my nostril stings and my eyes start watering. I move the bone to the other nostril and inhale what remains.
If it were not for Thee, what would become of me?
And who, except Thee, would free me from myself?
I sit back on my heels and put my head in my hands. The spiky grit keeps cutting as my breath pulls it deeper. The pain intensifies, then spreads across my shoulders. They can no longer bear the weight of my arms and my hands fall, leaden, to the floor. Spine, hips, legs. Wherever the pain hits, the muscle recoils and tries to tear itself from the bone and tissue next to it.
I have not been tortured as my brother and sister and mother have, but I wonder if this is how it feels to be put on the rack. I wonder if they screamed as I am screaming, full-throated and from the center of my being.
But I rise.
The girl beneath me crawls to her bedding, stretches out on it, eyes open. Blood seeps from the spot where her head connected with stone.
The wings that bear me aloft catch a draft through the window. I coast up to the deep sill, then scrabble onto it with tiny, sharp claws. I tuck my wings to my body, and with the waddling gait of a creature that finds grace only in the air, squeeze through the bars.
The Convent of San Diego is set on high ground, and the back end, where my window gives, looks not onto the splendid, sprawling city but to the far reaches of the lake over which the urban hub was built. The water pools dark turquoise in some spots, murky emerald in others, under the multiple causeways that span it. And on every surface that isn’t road or water, I see small trees covered with blue and yellow butterflies—opening and closing their wings in time to my memory.
I don’t know how far I range on the wings I’ve long dreamed of possessing—far enough for the bright air to warm me like I haven’t been warm in years. But I am more than just wings and the freedom they grant. If training brings the falcon back to the hand of the one who hunts with him, how much stronger are the jesses that tether the dove to her people?
I return and light on the window of my mother’s cell. She is stretched prone on the floor, where the afternoon sun falls brightest, holding a seed in one hand and a broom bristle in the other. She dips it in berry pulp, then touches it to the surface of the seed.
She looks up as I swoop down. There are dozens of seeds with words of perdurance and inspiration scattered around her.
“Hello, beauty,” she says as I land beside her.
I open my mouth. The words I intend come out as trills and coos. She reaches. I hop closer and rub my head along her hand.
I stay until the sun starts its downward arc, then I peck at the seeds and carry one out in my beak. The next window I fly into is my brother’s. I drop the seed into his hand and fly away to retrieve another from my mother’s cell. She watches me come and go.
