The Witches of El Paso

Chapter 5

5

The next morning, as Marta’s making the bed, the glass door to the backyard slides open, and a tall older man, handsome, his hair shot through with silver, walks in like he owns the place. Which he does. It’s Alejandro, his face skinny, stripped of the last bits of youth. It’s weird that she didn’t recognize him for a second. Weird and kind of hot.

“You missed a great run!” Alejandro says. He pulls his shirt off over his head, wiping his sweaty face with it as he goes into the bathroom, turning on the tap.

A hot stranger is in her shower.

Marta takes off her sweats and T-shirt. She opens the door to the shower and walks in, pushing Alejandro down on the tiled bench, kissing him on the mouth. He kisses back, pulling her to him. The tiles are slick with steam, the bench hard under Marta’s butt. Alejandro puts his mouth on her. She braces herself with her foot so she doesn’t slip. Marta looks down at Alejandro, and he’s still a stranger if she squints her eyes. The stranger kisses her and licks her like she wants him to. Wordlessly, she moves him into the positions she needs him to be in.

“What’s the plan for her?” Alejandro asks, after they’ve dressed and are in the kitchen making breakfast. He’s asking about Nena. This is not sexy, and Marta doesn’t want to talk about it right now. It’s been maybe a couple of months since they had sex, and the last time wasn’t anything like what they just did. She’s not sure what’s gotten into her. She’s going to have a bruise on her knee.

Marta walks over to Alejandro, pinning him against the counter, tugging at his dress shirt, running her hand up his chest.

“Hey, hey,” he says, but he kisses her back. He pulls away. “Seriously, what’s the plan?”

She pulls away, resigned to the conversation at hand. “Los Pi?ones, I suppose.”

“Do you have any idea how much those places cost? Who’s going to pay for that?”

Marta gives him a look. Who does he think?

“We can put her house on the market,” Marta says.

“Great, that’ll cover a year. Maybe.”

“Do you have a better idea?”

“All I know is, you’ve got enough going on without having to take care of her crap, too,” Alejandro says, though she’s pretty sure it’s not her well-being he’s worried about. He’s thinking that he doesn’t like being inconvenienced. Not that anything will change for him. He’ll still leave for the hospital early and come home late. The glow from the shower is fading fast, and Marta wonders how she can make it come back.

It doesn’t help to watch Alejandro assemble the makings of his morning smoothie. He lines up a banana, a bottle of cod liver oil, sliced poached chicken, raw broccoli, cooked sweet potato, and a glass jar of ground flaxseed. He drops the ingredients in the pitcher, splashes in oat milk, then claps on the lid. It’s impossible to speak over the noise of the Vitamix, and Marta watches as the ingredients puree into a greenish-gray mush. Alejandro pours the mush into a glass.

Nena walks into the kitchen, dressed in her uniform of jeans and running shoes, freshly showered. She makes a beeline for the counter, and Marta watches as she uses her hip to nudge Alejandro aside, taking the blender container off the base. Nena gives it a whiff, her mouth forming into a horrified O.

“I guess you’re not someone who likes to chew,” Nena says, carrying the container over to the sink and filling it with water. “My motto is use it or lose it. If your knee hurts and you stop moving around, you can forget about ever walking again. If you don’t use your teeth, they fall out,” Nena says.

“This is the most efficient breakfast I can eat. I consume the right combination of protein, carbohydrates, and micronutrients,” Alejandro says, in the cold voice that means he’s as angry as he gets. Marta’s embarrassed for him, hearing him as someone from the outside. This is not the sexy stranger, this is her logical husband. But what they did in the shower was out of character for both of them in a way that makes Marta hopeful that they can both change. She’s buzzing with energy, even though she hasn’t had any coffee. She’s excited to go to work, to win the case, to put her plan to become the executive director of the firm in motion.

“I’ll make you chilaquiles for breakfast tomorrow,” Nena says to Alejandro.

He takes a sip of his smoothie, grimacing. He and Marta lock eyes, and she shakes her head at him.

“Chilaquiles would be very nice,” Alejandro says in a false tone, but at least he’s making an effort. He takes the glass with him to their bedroom.

Nena beckons Marta to her. She turns her palm up, revealing a ladybug.

“See? Here’s another one,” Nena says.

Marta watches the insect crawl up Nena’s finger and dance on her fingertip.

“I keep seeing them everywhere. On my pillowcase. On the bus. A few weeks ago, I saw one walking out of Ruth Uranga’s purse and it flew into my hair. Then, yesterday, right before the fire, I found one on the kitchen counter. The pobrecita was lying on its back. I thought it was dead, but then when I went to pick it up, its legs moved, and it flew out the window. That’s when Sister Benedicta showed up, wearing her ugly black dress, holding Rosa’s hand. They were so close I could smell them.” Nena says this quietly, telling a secret, Marta leaning in to hear.

“Who are you talking about?” Marta asks, deciding to humor her.

“When you were little, I wanted you to help me with my readings because I didn’t want you to be scared by what you saw, or to think that there was something shameful in La Vista.”

“But, Nena, really, it was only once that I did that with you, and we didn’t see anything that day,” Marta says.

“After the reading, Se?ora Hurtado called Olga, furious. Olga made me promise that I wouldn’t involve you again. Olga wanted to protect you from what was wrong with me, like it was catching. But she had it wrong, she never understood about La Vista. You either see the other world, or you don’t. And you do. Yesterday you saw it.”

“Did I?” Marta asks cautiously. She’s not sure what happened with the wall. And she doesn’t think Nena’s explanations are going to clear anything up. But in spite of herself, she’s curious what Nena will say. “What did I see?”

“The crossing to the other side has opened up again, and Sister Benedicta and Rosa were trying to come through.”

“These are people you know from Juárez?” Marta asks, though she knows that this isn’t what Nena is claiming.

Nena chuckles softly. “You’ve been trained as a lawyer. You like facts, and you put these facts into an order, you tell a story you want the judge and jury to believe.”

“I’m not telling any sort of story. You’re the one telling it,” Marta says.

“When I came back from El Paso del Norte, I told Luna and Olga about my time in the past, about Rosa. They thought I was a loca. They made me go to a hospital. The El Paso Home for the Insane.”

“I never knew that,” Marta breathes, disturbed at this information, shocked that Olga and Luna would have done something like that. This could explain a lot, like Nena’s ideas about magic, like Nena’s distaste for institutions, even for a place as benign as Los Pi?ones. “That must have been awful for you.”

“I’m trusting you to not think I’m crazy,” Nena says. “I’m telling you these things because I need your help.”

“What do you want me to do?” Marta hears herself say.

“Rosa couldn’t make it across, but I think she’ll try again.”

“Who’s Rosa?”

“My daughter.”

Marta has never heard that Nena had a kid, and this alarms her. This Rosa could very easily be a confabulation, a sign of dementia, even if Nena seems sharp.

“You had a child?” she ventures.

“I did. I do,” Nena says.

“You said she wants to cross over. Where is she coming from?” Marta asks, examining Nena’s face for signs of confusion.

“Rosa was coming from the other side.”

“As in she’s dead?”

“No. I left her.”

“Left her where?”

Nena doesn’t answer, but she’s trembling, pale, like it’s cost her a lot to say these things to Marta. But what is it she’s claiming? The “other side” has a metaphysical sound to it, a stand-in for the unknown, but Marta’s not one of Nena’s clients. Marta doesn’t think that there’s a way to pass to this world from wherever the dead go.

It’s possible Nena lost a child. Marta can even see the baby, like she’s right in front of her: dark hair, wide eyes, reaching to be picked up. What if when Nena was in the mental institution, the child was taken away from her? It would be hard to bear a truth like this, so difficult that Nena might have to make up an alternative story.

“Maybe there’s something I could do to help you find her,” she says, her work brain starting in on the problem. There are ways to find lost children. Private investigators who can track people down. Old birth records exist, even adoption records, if you know where to look.

“If you want to help me, we need to catch an encanto,” Nena says.

Marta has to think about what the word means. “A spell?”

“I’ve never been able to do that kind of magic in this El Paso. It seems that power has been draining out of our world for many years. I need your help to bring it back to me.”

“I don’t know any magic spells,” Marta says.

“You’re sure about that? How do you feel today?”

“Fine,” Marta says. “Great, actually.”

“La Vista can make you hungry.”

“I had some yogurt.”

“Not like that. Like for making love,” Nena says.

Marta wonders, embarrassed, if Nena heard her and Alejandro having sex. Surely, she can’t be asking about that.

The boys run into the kitchen, Rafa yanking open the pantry to pull out cereal boxes, Pablo retrieving milk from the refrigerator. They scrape stools across the floor, fling dishes and cutlery on the counter, and eat like they’ve never seen food, rattling their spoons in their bowls.

“Did you have sweet dreams?” Marta asks.

“We don’t dream. We tell you every morning, and you never remember,” Rafa says. “Can we get a dog?”

“Your father’s allergic,” Marta says automatically, which isn’t strictly true; he just doesn’t like dogs, their mess, or when they lick him.

Pablo puts his mouth against Rafa’s ear, making pss pss pss noises. The boys giggle in a way that usually indicates a bathroom joke, but Marta has a creeping suspicion that they’re laughing at her. She closes the tops of two cereal boxes, wipes up a puddle of milk on the counter, disposes of a banana peel draped on the back of a chair.

Nena loads the dishwasher, and Marta’s surprised she’s not chatting with the boys. She seems like she might be upset, her mouth a line.

Marta starts to make lunch for Rafa and Pablo, pulling out a loaf of bread, the jar of mayonnaise, a bottle of yellow mustard, salami and cheddar cheese, lettuce. The smell of the salami hits her, salty and foul. She holds her breath as she makes the sandwiches, cutting one diagonally for Pablo, the other straight across for Rafa. She puts an apple in each paper bag, hoping against hope that the fruit won’t be thrown away. Cookies in Ziplocs, paper napkins, initials on each bag. Marta smooths the front of her skirt. She spies at the end of her sleeve a bright yellow squirt of mustard.

“Dammit,” she says out loud.

“Dammit. Dammit!” the boys echo, laughing, and now she’s sure they’re laughing at her. This is only going to get worse, the ridicule, the older they get. Pablo is six, small, with long limbs for his short frame. Rafa, eight, has an oversized head and a big beak of a nose. Marta remembers how when she was their age, her parents had seemed like creatures of another species, with bad memories and no sense of what was important, like television, candy, and swimming. Well, Marta is an adult now, and she knows what it takes to keep the machines of work and life humming. How she spends her time probably does look ridiculous to the boys. It often seems ridiculous to her, the tasks never-ending and mostly pointless.

“Where does this go?” Nena asks, holding up a whisk.

Does it matter? Anywhere. Nowhere. Marta doesn’t want to have nothing conversations about kitchen tools with Nena. They don’t have enough time left together to waste any of it.

What happened to Nena’s daughter must have some logical explanation, a traumatic sequence of events that have made Nena’s memory of her daughter confused. There’s a mystery here, and one that Marta wants to uncover as much for her own sake as for Nena’s. Marta’s curious about the baby girl with the dark hair that she can picture so clearly.

Marta thought she knew all the family stories, though whatever happened with Rosa must be more of a family secret. Family stories teach us how to live. Family secrets teach us to kill parts of ourselves. Marta wants to know what this secret has passed down to her, what she was taught to kill.

“Nena, I’ll do whatever I can to help you find Rosa,” Marta promises.

She’s surprised and annoyed when Nena shakes her head sharply no.