Let Their Spirits Dance Page 4

  “Ay mijito, my son…you’re my world. Ay mijito, you have to come back to me! The war doesn’t matter. It’s you I want back in my arms! It’s your voice I want to hear again!”

  “You will, Mom, I promise you, you will.”

  Now Dad is holding Jesse, patting both shoulders gruffly. “Grow eyes in the back of your head, mijo. Don’t depend on anyone to look out for you. Run like hell if you have to. I don’t want no war hero, I want my son.”

  “Yeah, Dad…OK, take care of everybody, especially Mom.” He looks into Dad’s eyes, and Dad knows Jesse wants him to stay away from Consuelo.

  “Yes, mijo. Seguro, sure. I’ll be there for your mom.” They both smile at the same time. It’s the first time I’ve seen them look at each other eye to eye and separate as friends.

  We start walking again, Mom and Dad on either side of Jesse, me next to Mom. Two women walk by dressed in identical flowered pantsuits. They’re saying good-bye to a Navy man. We pass them by. Jesse, Mom, Dad, Nana, Priscilla, Paul, the Guadalupanas, Father Ramon, all of us walking together until we have to let Jesse go. Father Ramon steps ahead of us and raises his hand over Jesse’s forehead to give him the official church blessing. He draws a big cross in the air. Father Ramon looks like Padre Kino blessing a convert. I look around to see if anybody’s staring at us. Everyone is busy with their own good-byes. Girlfriends and wives are hanging on to their men. Jesse wanted Mary Ann to come to the airport, but she didn’t want to. He tried so hard to have a girlfriend, but never did.

  Outside the huge windows, I see the plane waiting: US AIRBORNE. It is a commercial airplane, and will make two stops before heading for Vietnam. The Black Canyon Freeway stretches out in the distance, bordered by the purple ridge of the South Mountains. Chris walks up to me and gives me a big hug. He is tall and I have to reach up to put my arms around his neck. His face is fair, his features chiseled to perfection.

  “Teresa, you’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen!” he whispers. “Write to me—yes?”

  “I will.” I answer without thinking. Chris flashes me a smile that gives me goosebumps. Priscilla gives me the look that says “I knew you liked him!”

  “Sorry about last night,” I say.

  “Sorry for what?” We both laugh and he kisses me good-bye, a simple kiss, the kind you can give in front of your parents.

  Father Ramon stands next to Mom as Jesse and Chris walk away. Chris turns back, waves to me, blows a kiss. Everybody waves back at the same time. I blow a kiss. It’s so natural. Everybody’s doing it. Jesse waves to all of us, smiling, walking backward like he’s balancing on a tightrope. Then they both disappear into a group of civilians and a scattering of green uniforms, mute figures, prey for the god of war. I can’t tell which one is Jesse anymore.

  Everybody rushes over to the windows to see the men board the plane. We can pick out Jesse from the others now, because they’re walking in a line, and he’s shorter than most of the other guys. I see dark clouds moving in from the east and worry that the plane will get caught in a thunderstorm. The plane’s flattened wings lie dormant. It looks unreal, a grounded paper airplane with black slots for windows. The plane’s red lights are blinking. Jesse climbs up the steps and turns one last time to wave toward the windows. He can’t see us but he knows we’re there.

  “Ay mijito, my son, my son…oh God, my son!” Mom is chanting her own lament.

  She stops abruptly and starts digging into her purse, She grabs my arm, “Run, Teresa!” she yells. “I forgot to give Jesse el cochito.” Jesse’s favorite cookie is wrapped in a paper napkin, gingerbread in the shape of a little pig.

  “The plane’s leaving, Mom. They won’t let me give it to him.” I can’t imagine trying to explain el cochito to the pilot.

  “Try, mija, try!” My mother is crying, pleading. There’s nothing left to do but hold tight to el cochito and do a zigzag run up to the man standing at the gate. By the time I get there, everybody’s staring at me.

  I’m catching my breath in gulps. “I have to give something to my brother! He’s on the plane to Vietnam!”

  “I’m sorry, but they’ve already boarded the plane.” The man gives me a big smile.

  “You have to give this to my brother. My mom’s going crazy!” I hold the cookie up to him.

  “What is it?”

  “A little pig.”

  “A what?”

  “A little pig…like a gingerbread man…except it’s a pig. It’s my brother’s favorite cookie. He’s on his way to Vietnam.” I’m talking so fast I can hardly say the words.

  The man looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. “I’ll try,” he says. I hear him on the two-way radio. “I’ve got something for one of the men headed for Nam. Ah, can you send someone out to get it?…Over.”

  He opens the paper napkin and stares at el cochito.

  “Roger. What is it? Over.”

  “A pig. Over.”

  “A what? Over.”

  “I mean it’s in the shape of a little pig. It’s a cookie, Ralph, for crying out loud! Ever hear the story of the Gingerbread Man?” I see him smile again. “Anyway, his mom wants him to have it real bad. Over.”

  “Who’s the guy? Over.”

  “Sergeant Jesse Ramirez,” I say.

  “A Sergeant Ramirez. Over,” repeats the man.

  “Roger, sure for a sarge, I’ll do it. Over and out.”

  We wait a few minutes. My mother is frozen in position, my dad at her side. I can almost hear a drumroll sounding as we wait for an airline stewardess to appear. People are staring at us. The man hands the little pig to the stewardess.

  “A little pig,” she says, “How cute!”

  I smile back. “Thank you.”

  The stewardess turns and walks away. A hush falls over the crowd gathered at the windows. We wait until the stewardess boards the airplane and the plane taxis down the runway, lifting itself up into the darkening sky. I hear sobs starting again and people talking. We’re actors on stage, and nobody knows what to do next. Slowly, people start moving away from the windows. I look over at Mom. Her knees bend suddenly, as if she just sat down in a place where there should have been a chair. For the first time in my life, I see my dad pick my mom up in his arms like she’s a little girl.

  • LATER THAT DAY we laughed because Jesse stalled the plane to Vietnam. If we had known any better, we would have kidnapped the pilot and turned him into a real pig. Instead, we went home and turned on the evening news that told us the war was escalating with no end in sight. I bit off my fingernails. I was trapped between a raging war and Jesse’s words. I put his words away and told myself it wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true. He was just saying that just in case. I couldn’t see the end of Jesse. I had watched him from my cradle, tracing his features in my mind before I learned to talk.

  “Turn it off!” Dad yelled, “Turn the damn thing off!” Priscilla and I stayed in our room the rest of the night listening to “Solitary Man,” Jesse’s favorite song.

  Tlachisqui ·

  The night Jesse’s plane soared into Vietnam, Don Florencío, El Cielito’s old seer, said he saw a flock of bats fly out of La Cueva del Diablo. They were in a frenzy, screeching, darting across the sky, and circling the face of the moon four times. The bats were seeking the four directions, Don Florencío said, north, south, east, west, black, blue, red, and white, searching for blood.

  “I shouted at them, mija, with all my might! Go, you bloodsuckers, chupones de sangre! Go, go, fly to Vietnam…ALL! ESTA MI RAZA! And they flew, mija, and there was nothing I could do but chase them screaming like a madman with my arms flapping in the air. And I cried, big tears, an old man’s tears to make God look at me. If he looks at me, it will break His heart, I reasoned, and He will stop the war.”

  • DON FLORENCÍO WAS the only visionary Jesse and I ever knew. He lived along the banks of El Río Salado, and nobody ever visited him unless they were sick, and needed relief from one of his ancient remedies, or had bumped into h
is shack in the dark in a drunken stupor. The old man was dark-skinned, small-boned, his body hardened by miles of walking, climbing, living by his wits. His long black hair smelled like ashy mesquite wood. His legs were bowed a little and he always wore boots. He said his legs were living proof of all the burdens his people had been forced to carry for the Spanish patrones. Don Florencío could speak Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, which used to be called mejicano, the same language Malinche taught Cortés when he landed in the new world. Don Florencío claimed to be a direct descendant of the Aztec people, declaring himself a tlachisqui of the Mexicas, la gente de razon, the people of reason, as they were known. He told Jesse and me stories of magic, visions, men who could turn themselves into animals, and the power of invisible forces both good and evil.

  The old man’s shack faced east on the rocky banks of El Río Salado. La Cueva del Diablo, a huge, hollowed-out hole at the base of a rocky hill, faced north. La Cueva del Diablo was boarded up many years later, condemned and dynamited out of existence, but when we were kids, it was a black, yawning gap spewing out the stench of bat droppings.

  La Cueva del Diablo produced nothing but dark, flinty rocks and peals of laughter from scoffers who mocked the men who had gone through the trouble of taking pick and shovel and laboring for days in the hot sun, searching for gold. Pan for gold by the banks of El Río Salado, why don’t you, the scoffers said, and some people did. Don Florencío said they were all fools like Cortés’s men. There were no Seven Cities of Cibola, cities of gold as the Indians had related. The dead were the last to laugh after all. The land was the gold, but the Spaniards couldn’t see it.

  Everyone said La Cueva del Diablo was occupied by a ghost who slept by un entierro, a stash of gold someone buried and forgot about, or was murdered before he could return to claim it. Why a ghost needed money was a mystery to me. Yet, for years the ghost had taken possession of the land and the cave and el entierro. People were afraid of the ghost and stayed away from La Cueva del Diablo and Don Florencío’s adobe shack. The old man only laughed and said we were descendants of people who had once made their homes in seven caves, living in harmony with all living things, in Aztlán, the land of whiteness, the land of the Aztecs, la gente de razon. Aztlán was north of what we now know as Mexico, and no one has ever been able to determine how far north its boundaries extended.

  Tata O’Brien, my Irish grandfather on Mom’s side of the family, befriended Don Florencío. Tata O’Brien’s cohort of old-timers included Indians, Mexicans, full-breeds and half-breeds who stuck together for the single purpose of defying modern times. Aliens to the code of progress, the old men crouched in circles in our backyard, passing around Don Florencío’s ironwood pipe with the sculpted faces on the stem, filled with tobacco, sweet-smelling stuff, fragrant sagebrush. In the winter, they hid in the folds of thick blankets woven by their Indian wives and warmed themselves before fires blazing with mesquite logs. Sometimes their women came with them and sat in the alley next to our house with their children, passive Indian faces unmoving. Some of the old men had warred with Geronimo, or Pancho Villa, or Zapata. By then the lines of rebellion were blurred and having served in any war was better than not having served at all. They were descendants of warriors, after all, legendary warriors who fought to the death for the privilege of riding on the crest of the rising sun.

  Concrete, iron, and steel didn’t impress the old men. They had lived between mud bricks in adobe houses that kept them warm in the winter and cool in the summer. They traded with Tata O’Brien mesquite wood, blankets, and ceramic pots for vegetables and chili from Tata’s famous Victory Garden, named for the miraculous harvest it produced during the years of the Great Depression. Tata was fascinated with growing chiles. He grew jalapeños, chiles japones, chili de arbol, serranos, chili pe-quin, and chili tepin. The last two always sounded the same to me. He fussed over the plants, and worried they wouldn’t be hot enough, or the crop would suffer damage through cold and frost. He wanted me to grow up and be the U.S. ambassador to Chile. He figured a country with a name like “Chile” would grow only the very best chiles. “Bring back the pods, Teresa, that’s where the seeds are. I’ll do the rest.”

  When Tata O’Brien lay dying, Don Florencío came over and built a small fire in the backyard. He hunched over it, throwing sacred meal into it every once in a while and smoking his ironwood pipe with the little sculpted faces on the stem. The sweet, pungent smell of tobacco blended in with the mesquite wood of his fire. Don Florencío made an offering of smoke to the four directions for Tata, north, south, east, and west, and to the sun and moon. He said in the old days his people stopped at every river before crossing it and the huehues, leaders of his tribe, blessed the river, toasting it with aguardiente, asking its permission to cross over. “It’s always wise to salute nature,” he said, “especially when the spirit of a friend is about to join it.” Dad said Don Florencío was smoking peyote and that he smoked the pipe to dream about the other world the way the Chinese used opium. I never believed him, because everything Don Florencío said to me and Jesse made perfect sense.

  Jesse and I were the only kids from El Cielito who visited Don Florencío at his adobe shack. Mom didn’t like it, but Tata never wavered. What kind of disrespect was that? he said to her, the old man was one of his friends. Jesse and I couldn’t stay away, the old man was our lure, his crackling voice answering the burning mesquite wood. Our own medicine man, Jesse said. Sometimes Don Florencío threw sacred meal into the campfire, making purple-orange sparks appear that sputtered and danced before our eyes. And we danced too, Jesse and I, although we didn’t know actual Indian dances. Still, we jumped around the campfire while Don Florencío played his wooden flute. We were powerful, we were the visions people have in the night of ghosts and nahuals who throw their spirits into animals and walk in the woods at midnight.

  Don Florencío believed in Aztlán. He told us the history of Aztlán while he tended his small campfire in the evenings and smoked his ironwood pipe. We sat on burlap mats. Don Florencío’s legs were sturdy stumps under him. He sat stiffly on an old wooden chair with a seat made of straw, held together with twine. He lit his ironwood pipe and began.

  “It was like this, mijos, oh, so many years ago, I can’t even think that far, but God knows. Our people were living peacefully in seven caves in Aztlán, somewhere north of Mexico. The Aztec they were called, the Heron people. Later, they became the Sun People. There was war among them, mijos, one god against another, but more than that, it was evil men trying to gain control of the tribe, frightening the people into slavery. Quetzalcoatl was cast out by the god of war, Huitzilopochtli. The priests of Huitzilopochtli were madmen who spoke for the god. They wrapped his body like a mummy and told the people they were now the voice of the god. What stupidity! The people might have questioned why they had to leave their beautiful homeland, but the priests by then had gained power over them. Go south, they told the people, south, until you see the sign, an eagle perched on a cactus, with a serpent in its beak, there build your city. Can you imagine how far they must have traveled? Pobre la gente de razon, with little food, huddling like sheep, listening to their god. When they saw an eagle sitting on a cactus with a serpent in its beak, they knew it was the place to build their city. This happened in the year 2-House. In our time, it was 1325. They named the city Tenochtitlán, and today we call it la capital de Mejico. Later the Mexicas tried finding Aztlán again and to this day they are still in search of it.

  “It was at that time that Quetzalcoatl, the Aztec god of peace, Sky Serpent also called Ce Acatl Topiltzin, Our Lord I-Reed, was tricked by evil deities into committing incest, a terrible thing, and finally fled the shores of Mexico vowing to come back. In 1519, when Cortés arrived on the shores of Yucatán, the Aztec emperor Moctezuma believed him to be Quetzalcoatl, the fair-skinned god who would return to take over his empire. Do you realize what that meant, mijos? Moctezuma thought Cortés was a god! If they had only seen clearly, ay, mi gente, they
would have seen that he was a demon instead!

  “It was time for the empire to be destroyed anyway, mijos. Huitzilopochtli was bloodthirsty. He consumed human hearts. Many of my ancestors had already fled the capital and settled in the mountains, joining other Indian tribes. Later, centuries later, I left to cross the border myself and search for Aztlán.”

  “Did you find it?” I asked him.

  “Find what?” he asked, as if he had just forgotten what he had said.

  “Aztlán!”

  “No, mija, I’m still searching for it. Maybe you and Jesse will be the ones to find it, you’re Mexicas, too. And look,” he said, pointing to Jesse, “Your brother has an Ixpetz, a polished eye, that can see through the nature of things and find their true meaning. In the old world, he would be celebrated for his bravery and fearlessness.”

  Jesse pounded his chest, “Aii! Aii! Does that sound like a warrior? What do you think?”

  “Good try,” I said.

  Don Florencío said he knew this about Jesse, because he had seen the spirit of a warrior rise in the fire when he fed it alum the day Jesse was born.

  “The flames rose so high I became frightened, and in the center, I saw a warrior with a plumed headdress. Just then, your tata arrived at my house to tell me Jesse had been born!”

  • THE DAY AFTER Jesse was killed, I walked to Don Florencío’s shack, forcing myself to put one foot in front of the other. Don Florencío was sitting outside his adobe shack on his old wooden chair. The sun was setting, Don Florencío was facing east. He had a fire going, burning copal. I knew it was copal because it was aromatic, sweet. The smoke was cleansing the air around him of evil spirits.

  He saw me trudge up to his shack and never said a word. He was smoking his ironwood pipe with the sculpted faces on the stem. My voice was gone. A whine began from deep within my breastbone. I had never heard it before. I moved toward the old man and knelt by his side. I clung to his neck, holding on to him for dear life. Over and over again, I let out the tone of a melody that never varied. The pitch was the same, and it came in great gulps. Again and again it came, and the birds answered me, chirping in the distant cottonwood trees.