The Witches of Madrid Book Series
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© 2006 Belinda Vasquez Garcia |
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(book excerpt)
November 16, 1905
The coal mining village of Madrid, New Mexico
Good and evil have always been intertwined like thorns which grow with the flower of the rosebush. Felicita Esperanza sniffed a rose. Softness and beauty and the purity of white petals. She pricked her finger on the razor sharp thorn of the flower, then she shoved the rose into her hair and drew blood. As soon as the thorn penetrated the roots of her hair, the white petals turned black. The mark of the Sisterhood of the Black Rose proved she was a true female descendant of a dynasty of witches who plagued the Santa Fe area for centuries.
Felicita counted a wad of bills, cursing because the counting of her money was clumsy with silk gloves on, but her skin was raw from scrubbing her hands with lye soap. So what if the money smelled of the stink of a coal miner and the nervous sweat of a thieving wife, the deposit had been made. She had work to do.
It was always the same with her, this excitement that pounded her heart as she lit the candles in the attic of her Victorian house which lazily reclined, like an affront to nature, at the bottom of Diablo Hill. The other houses of the Hispanos were made of adobe, with mud, from the earth itself but Felicita had imported lumber from the south, all the way from Albuquerque , a distance of forty-five miles.
Felicita blew out the kerosene lamp and swept open the red curtains around an altar of Tezcatlipoca, the god of sorcery, brujeria and magic. Her coven of the Sisterhood of the Black Rose was of the snake. There were three vials of paint on the altar, red paint for bewitching, white for healing, and black for death. She dipped a brush into the vial of black paint and lifted a mirror to her face and arched her brows. Blue veins protruded from her eyelids as she painted a black snake across her hawkish face.
It was the time of day when the dead rise from their slumber and walk the earth once more. “ I beg you, Tezcatlipoca, Lord of the Night and Patron of the Witches, he who resurrects death, and all your disciples who never die but breathe the foulness below the earth, until once again summoned to heap destruction upon the world. I implore you, reincarnate the great bruja (witch), La Llorona, so she might walk the earth once more.”
Felicita purred as fog rose from her mirror and her face faded from view until she could no longer see herself in the mirror but the Rio Grande , some twenty-five miles away from Madrid . The mud of the river bubbled with pockets of air. A gnarled hand reached out from beneath the mud of the shallow river. A head burst through the mud of the river.
The creature was in the shape of a woman, who staggered to the embankment and clawed at the branches of a low hanging tree. Like a sick dog, La Llorona crawled on the bank of the river and vomited mud from her belly. She lifted her face and she panted but fresh air was no place for lungs that breathed beneath the foul earth for so long. This was not the first time La Llorona left her muddy grave to search for her drowned children.
The babe (What was its gender?) had been a tiny thing. The boy (What was his name?) had been weak like his father. And her other child, La Llorona had always called Girl with the disappointed snarl of a mother.
Felicita once asked La Llorona what her real name was, the name given at her birth. La Llorona could not remember. After all, she had been born in the winter of 1653, some 250 years ago, and it seemed forever she was cursed with her nickname, which meant the Weeper. She was infamous, La Llorona claimed, for accidentally drowning her children for the love of a rich man who promised to wed her and who then abandoned her at the altar. She was the siren of the damned who sobbed into the night crying for her children, who searched through the centuries along the ditches, rivers, and lakes of the Southwest.
Felicita had a daughter, Salia, but was devoid of motherly feelings and so she watched the mirror with a perplexed look as La Llorona stood on the bank of the Rio Grande . La Llorona held her arms, one resting atop the other, and she rocked gently back and forth. She hummed a lullaby and she closed her eyes. Did she imagine small greedy hands tugging on her gown? Little dirty fingers wrapping themselves in the coarse homespun material? Did she believe her unwanted children had returned to her?
When La Llorona looked down at her empty arms, it was but the night wind that stirred her gown and blew her temper across the plains of New Mexico . Though it had been over two hundred years since she was stood up at the altar she still wore a spidery wedding veil. La Llorona at times cursed, untangling her veil from thorns of tumbleweeds that fenced in the river like barbed wire.
Felicita chuckled at the mirror. Ah, she's getting her bearings now.
La Llorona walked, screaming and waving her arms about.
She hid behind her wedding veil, hiding from prying eyes, hiding from gossiping lips, hiding from her wedding guests. But then the wind blew her wedding veil back and La Llorona once more shrank back in horror from eyes that stared back at her, horrid eyes, wicked eyes, smirking eyes. I warned you eyes.
If the mocking eyes of her wedding guests were in front of her, La Llorona knew what was behind her, the laughing eyes of Padre Duran who stood at the Chapel of San Miguel waiting for her groom to show up. La Llorona once told Felicita, “If I had not burned down the Church of San Miguel in Santa Fe that day, I could have been a saint. The pope does not look kindly upon destruction of church property.”
La Llorona now shrieked, and cursed, and climbed to the top of a hill where she spread her arms as if she had wings. She lifted her chin to the moon and she mumbled an incantation, calling on Tezcatlipoca to take her up to the sky.
Her spine curved into her stomach. Her head touched her bare toes. When she resembled a ball, she rolled around on the ground faster and faster. Her body rubbed against the hardened earth, like flint. Bam! She ignited. A fireball now rolled around the ground, gaining momentum and with the help of the Night Wind (another name for Tezcatlipoca), the ball of fire was lifted slowly upward, then flashed across the New Mexico sky like a shooting star headed south towards the Ortiz Mountains of Madrid, no great distance for a Sister of the Black Rose who could travel with the speed of a fireball.
In Felicita's mirror, a spark of light hung suspended in mid-air, then slowly fell to the ground, growing larger as it approached the earth where it landed then flashed into a roar. The fire took the shape of a body in flames walking across the ground. The fire slowly burnt out and the ashes swirled around, forming the shape of the woman who still walked, ashes flying here and there, losing a bit of skin, a lot of heart. The ashes became moist until the woman was now clay, setting one foot upon the earth, then another. Feet pounding upon the Turquoise Trail, gathering dust to form life. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. So was woman made until clay became flesh and formed the body of a woman in her early thirties. The flesh became recognizable as La Llorona, her skin no longer a patch of runny clay, but dry cracked earth. Her eyelashes were scorched. The tips of her hair lit like the ends of cigarettes.
At the house at the bottom of Diablo Hill, Felicita puffed on a hand-rolled cigarette and blew smoke on the mirror. The smoke penetrated the glass of the mirror, and La Llorona followed Felicita's smoke across the Turquoise Trail, towards the houses of the village of Madrid . The smoke twirled around towards one house in particular. The smoke danced with the sounds of music, merriment, and dancing that came from the house.
***
With a proud lift of her chin, Delia Rodriguez watched her husband Isidro play the violin. Isidro was so talented and such a hard worker and good provider. Isidro had a head on his shoulders and was a foreman at the Albuquerque and Cerillos Coal Mine in Madrid . Unlike his lazy, stupid brother. Biatrice deserves to marry to such a fool as Reuben. Life has been too easy for my sister. Delia frowned at Biatrice who danced with Isidro's brother, Reuben Rodriguez . Delia knew Reuben had asked Biatrice to marry him but Biatrice never kept secrets from her beloved big sister and confided in her that she was only considering his proposal. So Delia's world had rocked when Biatrice made a dramatic announcement minutes earlier and accepted Reuben in front of a third of the village of Madrid. Even Reuben acted shocked but he and Biatrice wore matching outfits tonight so Delia suspected he only pretended.
Biatrice was flamboyant and always demanded attention. At her husband's funeral six months ago, Biatrice danced flamenco on his grave to display her sadness in the Gypsy fashion. She pounded her heavy feet on the dirt, and the coffin shook, and everyone cringed. Though Biatrice wasn't Gypsy, she wore the same big earrings and big hair like a Gypsy as she swung her wide hips around Reuben with a white rose dangling from her mouth, her saliva dripping on the petals, her sweat staining the underarms of her pink dress.
Biatrice looks ridiculous. Once again that fat pig, my sister, has ruined my party.
Delia had not given this fiesta in honor of Biatrice whose hips had spread, not from childbirth, but from the money her rich husband left her. Delia did not spend so much money on a party for a sister who was a wealthy widow and a brother-in-law who showed off to the point that she wanted to scratch Reuben 's eyes out. It was Marcelina's twelfth birthday and Biatrice stole her niece's limelight. Her sister was too cheap to throw her own party so she stole Delia 's.
Delia frowned at her daughter who sat stiff in a corner chair due to the starch of her new ruffled dress. Delia purposefully sewed the tight dress a size too small to entice Marcelina to lose weight. With her puffy cheeks and double chin, Marcelina resembled her Tia Biatrice more than her. Delia scowled at Marcelina who was dark and oily in complexion like her sister. Marcelina pinched a pimple on her chin and sulked. She played with her braids, while neighbors and other family stomped their feet and clapped their hands to the dancing of the newly engaged couple. Even Delia 's fourteen year-old son, Diego, clapped his hands. Traitor. Biatrice and I are only ten months apart, practically twins, except I am the light one and Biatrice the dark one.
Reuben was always a nimble dancer. Reuben circled Biatrice around the floor to the front door. It was much too hot and lovely a night to have the doors and windows closed. As Reuben moved in tune to the ranchero music, he flung open the door to let the breeze in, all without missing a beat.
It takes but one turn to completely ruin a party.
Isidro dropped his violin and the wooded instrument split.
La Llorona. Delia stumbled on her feet in her haste to get to her daughter.
The weeper wobbled on the front porch. Her body was bent like the branch of a tree. She was dressed in a black wedding gown. Stuck between her fingers was a black rose from her wedding bouquet. The light from the house was not kind to her. Her complexion had turned to dried, cracked mud by the wind, yet her hair rioted her scalp like soggy weeds pulled from the embankment of the Rio Grande . She was truly a freak of nature, a mixture of the elements, of wind and earth and water. A shawl of spidery lace, the color of dusty cobwebs, started at the tip of her head, wrapped around her face and crept down to bare feet that spent at least one century in the bath.
Everyone stepped back and covered their noses because La Llorona reeked of a decomposing corpse dragged from the river. Her stink vaporized like fog, swept through the doorway and rolled across the wooden floor. The fog crept up the walls and soaked into the adobe, dampening the dried mud walls with the smell of death.
Of course everyone knew of her search. All Hispanos grew up with tales of La Llorona and now feared for their own children. In fact, Delia and the other mothers in the house were openly sobbing.
La Llorona held out a comforting claw but was rejected. She looked dejected, standing there uninvited to Delia 's party, clothed more for a funeral and blanketed by the dusty cobwebs of her wedding veil. Combined with her black wedding gown, she looked like a black widow trapped in her own web.
Delia thought, perhaps La Llorona still hopes to have it all, her children and a husband, and she stole a glance at her childless sister Biatrice who held on tightly to Reuben's arm. That she could hotly think of Biatrice and Reuben now, with La Llorona at her doorstep, made her resent her sister even more.
Delia jumped when La Llorona screamed and a lamp shattered. Glass flew about the partygoers. One piece stabbed Isidro on his cheek.
Delia moved as if to go to her husband but she remembered her daughter and she placed her arms around Marcelina.
La Llorona looked at Isidro like she was sorry. She reached out an earthen claw and implored him, “Please. Please. Help.” Suddenly, she jerked around to the scratchy sound of Marcelina's new petticoats . “Mi hija,” she cackled. “My daughter.” La Llorona cooed, “My sweet child.”
Marcelina turned her head into Delia 's shoulder. “She knows your name, ” Delia sobbed into her braids.
“Don't look at her,” Isidro yelled at their daughter. He clutched his chest and he stepped back.
A visit from La Llorona always meant death would visit the household, but it was Reuben who opened the door to invite death in. Delia turned her head to her brother-in-law and her face paled.
But death did not come in. La Llorona merely stood at the doorway and cried, with her arms reaching out to Marcelina. The pain that rose from her throat shook the adobe walls and chilled the blood of Delia and all the family and friends gathered in the house.
La Llorona lifted a muddy foot and tried to take a step into the house but try as she might, she could go no further. Her leg would not move across the salea, a sheepskin pelt at the entrance to the house used to keep cold wind from blowing beneath the door. She tried to skip across but some invisible force kept her from entering.
La Llorona squeezed her arms to the sides of her body and she spat on the salea. She removed a black rose from her hair and she flung the rose across the open door.
The black rose landed in the middle of the floor with its petals still intact. Everyone in the house took a step back. All were silent, all eyes on the black velvety rose on the floor.
The childless mother, the jilted bride, walked away with the thorn of that other black rose still stuck to the palm of her hand. She sobbed, pulling the train of her wedding veil behind her. If Delia did not fear so much for her own daughter, she might have felt sorry for La Llorona. Her wedding veil had dragged the river, yet still she looked for her children beneath the murky waters of the Rio Grande . She looked for any sign her children survived, any bubble of air to give her hope and rescue her soul from the fires of hell.
When La Llorona was no longer in sight, Delia swept up the rose and she tossed the black flower into the dark night. Delia carefully lifted up the salea and exposed two sewing needles crossed in the shape of a crucifix. She knelt and she made the sign of the cross to this symbol that had kept La Llorona out.
Behind Delia , all dropped to their knees. The silence of the house was replaced by the clicking of rosary beads. “Ava. Ava, Maria,” they all sang, muttering the rosary beneath their breath.
When their novenas were prayed, the guests all assured Delia , “You are the most righteous woman in the village. No harm will come. There is no better Catholic than you. You are the best of wives and mothers.”
Delia clasped her hands together in prayer and looked up at the ceiling. They all sighed at her piety and wasn't Isidro lucky to have married her.
They all trailed out of the house, swinging lanterns in one hand and rosary beads with the other hand, assuring her it was no surprise La Llorona paid a visit. The weeper might have picked any house in Madrid.
The people of the villages of New Mexico and even the bigger cities of Albuquerque and Santa Fe , know el diablo swims in the muddy Rio Grande . Delia crossed herself and locked the door behind the last guest. She once more covered the cross of sewing needles with the salea, protecting the front entrance to the home. She ordered Diego to bed and instructed him to place a cross at his bedroom window and at his door.
“I will pray, Mama,” he assured her.
“I know you will, little priest,” and she fondly watched her son pick up his prayer book. Diego was visiting at home from the seminary and would be ordained in a few years and make her proud.
“You must get some rest, my darling,” Isidro urged her. “You are tired from cooking all day for the party. I will keep watch over Marcelina through the night.”
His words lifted a burden from Delia 's shoulders. La Llorona had been known to steal children from their beds and drown them in the Rio Grande , pushing their heads into the mud like it was quick sand, hoping el diablo would take this child in place of her own.
Delia reached into her pocket and placed a silver medal into her daughter's hand. She bent down and whispered in her ear, “Don't be afraid of them, mi hija. San Benito will protect you. He is the strongest saint, who will protect you from brujeria. Remember, Benito means blessed.” Delia kissed the forehead of her daughter and placed cold lips against her husband's cheek. She walked into her bedroom and stood flat against the wall with her ear to the hallway. When the door to Marcelina's bedroom closed, Delia climbed out her bedroom window.
Delia swung her lantern and walked towards the northeast end of Madrid to the outskirts. She circled Diablo Hill from the back side where no one in Madrid could see her because the dome-shaped hill was isolated from the village. She approached the Victorian house that looked out of place in a land where most houses were made of the sun-kissed earth of adobe. Felicita's three-story house may have looked grand when it was newly built, but Madrid was a coal mining town, and coal dust cloaked the once-white walls with a black-laced shawl finely spun like a black spider's web.
She knocked on the back door of the house. She heard footsteps on a wood floor. The door cracked open and an eye, the color of an approaching storm, peeked out.
“I have business with your mother,” Delia hissed.
“Felicita's gone,” a raspy voice spit out. The girl sounded like either she had been crying or was hoarse from screaming.
“I'll wait,” Delia said and she forced her way in, which wasn't much of a struggle since Salia Esperanza was slow in the head.
Delia 's eyes were drawn to a large painting above the brick fireplace of Salia with her mother and grandmother. Felicita and La India , both had a black rose growing from the top of their scalps. Felicita Esperanza was elaborately dressed in the latest fashion, her toiletry painstakingly seen to. Her face was packed with rice powder, her lips a bloody red, her black eyebrows penciled in above striking lime-green eyes.
Beside Felicita stood her mother-in-law La India , who was pure Indian from the Santo Domingo Pueblo. La India (the Indian), the villagers called her, for no one really knew her name. La India looked like a young woman of eighteen. Her bronze skin was unlined, her body unbent by her age which was rumored to be over a century.
La India looks younger than me. Delia was twenty-nine years old and the New Mexico sun aged a woman. What sort of witchcraft does La India use to stay so young? Has she found the fountain of youth? Delia sighed with longing. To be young again and able to attract…well tonight she mustn't think of the love of her foolish youth.
Delia turned her attention to the painting of Salia, the girl who stood in the middle of the two women and was perhaps her own daughter's age or a little older but smaller in stature and shaped like a delicate flower. Delia peeked at Salia who rocked in a chair, staring mindlessly at the wall. Just like in the picture, Salia was unwashed and dressed in rags. She was barefoot. Salia was a few years younger in the picture and she looked like a wild animal, who was trapped between her mother and grandmother. Each woman clenched a hand on the girl's shoulder so Salia looked like she was shrugging her shoulders. Salia appeared more to flinch than to smile. She looked out of the painting with haunted eyes.
Salia continued to rock in her chair as if Delia wasn't in the room. Strands of reddish brown hair stuck up from around her head. She hugged a scrawny orange kitten in her arms. There was a bruise on Salia's right cheek. Why does the girl always look so sad? Why doesn't she run away if she's so unhappy? She could go to her father's people, to the Santo Domingo Pueblo where she has a half-brother and a niece.
Salia was what Hispanos called a coyote, meaning half-dog and half-wolf, a half-breed. The girl looked more like a gypsy with reddish-brown curls tumbling about her shoulders and a face covered with dirt so, it was hard to tell if her complexion was dark like her grandmother's or fair like her mother's. Salia didn't go to school. Salia, Felicita, and La India moved from nearby Santo Domingo Pueblo three years ago to Madrid , and the children of the village were warned to stay away from Salia.
Delia and Salia sat in silence for about thirty minutes. Their only distraction was when two cats walked into the room. Unlike the cat Salia hugged in her arms, neither of these cats had eyes, only two empty eye sockets on their faces. Yet, the cats managed to walk about, using their whiskers, Delia supposed, to navigate. She shuddered at the blind cats who rubbed their fur against her ankles.
Finally from the parlor window Delia saw two bright lights in the sky. Witch lights the villagers called them.
The cat in Salia's arms jumped from the chair and ran from the room with its back arched and its fur standing on end. “They're here,” Salia said. “Come. I will take you to my mother.” And she smiled to the side of her mouth.
Delia followed Salia to the back of the house hidden from view from the village. She stood beside the girl and watched two balls of fire drop from the sky.
The balls of fire rolled around the ground slower and slower until the fire began to go out, leaving two piles of ashes. And from the ashes rose two women, their flesh forming like clay, the tips of their eyelashes singed. Both women had a black rose which seemed to grow from the middle of their heads. The roses were untouched by fire and shimmered with the dewey drops of a warm summer evening. It was as if the beauty and darkness of the rose intertwined with Felicita's reddish hair that was swept up in the latest style. The oils of her red hair seemed to nourish the rose. Felicita puffed on a cigarette, the smoke swirling around her narrow face. Delia sucked in her breath. Something was wrong with Felicita's eyes. Her eyes weren't human. Instead of her lime-green eyes, Felicita had the yellowish eyes of a cat which shone like glass when she turned her head sideways.
La India stood beside Felicita. Her chin touched her chest and her hands were clasped on her stomach. A bracelet hugged her wrist. On each end of the bracelet was the head of a snake, with fangs exposed, ready to strike. Her eyes were closed, as if she was asleep. Her eyes rolled beneath her lids.
She doesn't fool me. She's not sleeping. She can see through her eyelids . The bruja keeps tabs on the villagers and all that goes on around her. Every once in a while, her eyes would roll down to Salia and La India would smile, with fondness, when her lids rested upon her granddaughter.
Salia's eyes darted nervously about, bouncing from her mother to her grandmother.
“My condolences, Mrs. Rodriguez ,” Felicita said and her eyes sparkled with mischief. “I hear you are soon to become a widow.”
“And what of my Marcelina?” she hissed. “How dare you send La Llorona to my home. Swear that the weeper will not harm my daughter.”
Felicita lifted one eyebrow above an eye as hard as steel.
Delia took a step back.
Felicita growled low in her throat and said, “La Llorona is merely a reminder to you for payment of the rest of the money owed me.”
“The other half must be paid in installments. You agreed to this.”
“I always keep my word,” Felicita said in a regal manner. She swept her cape around her shoulders and marched into her grand house.
Salia followed behind her mother with her head hanging down like an obedient dog.
One of these days that girl will snap, Delia thought.
La India followed behind Salia with her eyes still closed yet she managed to climb the back stairs leading up to the door. Delia shivered because she could have sworn La India spied on her the whole time from the back of her head.
Felicita claimed to be a direct descent of Queen Isabella of Spain and like a Spanish aristocrat, a mantilla made from the finest lace, spun with gold, flowed down her back from a mother-of-pearl Spanish comb. Like a queen, she waved a gloved hand at Delia, dismissing her. Then she slammed the door to her house.
Bah, Delia thought, she is the whore from Chimayo. She wrapped her shawl more tightly around her shoulders and turned in the direction of home. It was much too cool a night to bargain with the devil. Delia laughed coldly when she pictured what Felicita was doing right now. The bruja was probably scrubbing her hands raw with lye soap simply because Delia had stood a few feet from her.
Felicita's only fear was the germs of others.
