The Witches of El Paso

Chapter 10

10

Nena had just taken the first sip of her afternoon chocolate when Sister Benedicta bustled into the dining room.

“Why aren’t you at confession with the other ni?as?” Sister Benedicta asked.

“Confession?” Nena asked.

“All ni?as must confess on Fridays. You ought to learn the schedule if you wish to keep yourself out of trouble.” Sister Benedicta chided her, and Nena pictured sooty grease being rubbed on her face.

“I’m sorry, Vicaria,” Nena murmured, head down as she hurried toward the chapel. She slid onto the bench with the other ni?as waiting their turns to admit to the silliest crimes imaginable, since there wasn’t anything truly bad you could do in the convent except overeat or have hateful thoughts about the other girls. Nena now knew the ni?as by name and sight—Leonor, Catalina, Margarita, and Luz—but that was pretty much all Nena had gathered about these girls. She wasn’t interested in making friends with anyone who couldn’t help her get home, like Carmela. Eugenia, however, seemed determined to sit next to her in chapel and in the dining room, talking when she wasn’t supposed to. Nena didn’t see Eugenia in the line on the pew, which meant that she must be in the confessional.

Now that she knew she had to wait anyway, Nena wished she’d taken at least a sip of the chocolate before departing the dining room. The convent’s chocolate was made with sweet cow’s milk and cones of piloncillo, crumbled into the warm liquid and whisked with a molinillo. That the women of the convent drank hot chocolate every afternoon had been a pleasant surprise, chocolate being a luxury that Nena was hardly ever able to enjoy in her El Paso. Carmela had shared with her that for the Feast of the Three Kings, the nuns made the chocolate with ewe’s milk, which had a flavor that was subtle and rich at the same time. Nena was curious about this version of the chocolate, but she planned to be long gone by the time Epiphany arrived.

The door to the confessional opened, and Eugenia emerged, her face flushed. She seemed not to notice Nena as she hurried down the side aisle and out the door. The rest of the ni?as went into the confessional, one by one, until Nena was the only one left in the chapel. Nena let herself in, then latched the door behind her.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” Nena said, making the sign of the cross.

“You’re new in the convent, aren’t you?” Father Iturbe asked.

“Yes, Padre. I arrived this week.”

“What is the nature of your sin?”

Nena’s mind raced through the options. She had to come up with something safe to confess.

She couldn’t tell the priest of her dislike of Sister Benedicta, or that she’d abandoned her family, or that she was practicing witchcraft. She couldn’t confess that at the meeting of an aquelarre in the convent, the tooth of a coyote had shown up in her mouth, and that tomorrow she was going to participate in a ceremony that was supposed to purge the rest of the coyote from her.

“Chocolate,” Nena said.

“Pardon?”

“I confess to the sin of gluttony. I wish I could have extra cups of chocolate when we have our afternoon breaks.”

Father Iturbe laughed. “And why shouldn’t you? You’re young and you need to keep the color in your cheeks. You have my permission to ask for another taza of chocolate from Sister Benedicta. I’m sure she’d be happy to give you one. But gluttony is a grave sin. Very grave. Say ten Hail Marys, then ask the Virgin to purify your thoughts.”

In her haste Nena banged the door closed as she left the confessional. She passed through the chapel, dark in the corners and empty, echoing with the sound of the slammed door. Nena picked up the bottom of her habit, so that it wouldn’t drag, and scurried to her job. As she walked into the kitchen, Eugenia grabbed her by the upper arm, pulling her close. Eugenia was pale, her lips chapped, worry lines around her eyes.

“Carmela told me to wash beans, but I don’t know what that means,” Eugenia whispered.

“You pick through them to look for rocks and other things,” Nena said, dumping the big pot of dry beans onto a towel. She ran her fingers through the pile, pulling out sticks and tiny pebbles.

“Well, why didn’t she just say that?” Eugenia said, poking at one bean with the tip of her index finger.

“Do you know what the priest said to me during confession?” Nena asked, feeling pity for Eugenia, and wanting to make her smile.

“What?”

“He told me to ask Sister Benedicta if I could have more chocolate.”

“You’d better not do that,” Eugenia said, pinching up a tiny rock and dropping it on the floor.

“I know! Can you imagine what Sister Benedicta would do if I asked for a second cup?”

“If you start drinking gallons of chocolate, you’ll end up as fat as Carmela.”

This was uncalled for, and now Nena regretted trying to cheer Eugenia up. “Carmela is beautiful, and she’s my friend,” Nena said.

“You only say that because she doesn’t make you do any of the hard work.”

“I do plenty,” Nena said.

“I think there’s something funny going on in this place, if you want to know the truth.”

“You’re just mad because Sister Benedicta punished you,” Nena shot back.

“You’d be better off not being too friendly with these nuns.” Nena wasn’t sure what Eugenia was suggesting. “All I can say is, I can’t wait to leave here and get married.”

“Remind me again about your engagement,” Nena said, still mad on behalf of Carmela, her only real friend in this place. “Who is it exactly you’re marrying?”

“You know very well who my novio is, Emiliano de Galvez.”

“Oh, right, Sister Benedicta’s brother. I imagine she’s very happy about that. It couldn’t be why she smeared the grease on your face.”

“She’s an evil old witch. Emiliano is only her half brother, and he obviously got the good half.”

“I’d be careful if I were you. You wouldn’t want any reports to get back to the de Galvez family,” Nena said, satisfied when she saw worry creep into Eugenia’s face.

“What are you saying?”

“Would you be surprised if she stopped the marriage?” Nena asked.

“What? Why would you say that to me? You’re being mean.”

“There must be a reason she treats you the way she does. It’s not just that you’re lazy.”

“Has she said anything to you about Emiliano?”

“No,” Nena said, but she drew out the word, trying to make it sound like she knew something. Eugenia went even paler than before.

“You’re right. She treats me worse than everyone else. I think she does hate me. What if she tries to keep me from marrying him?”

Nena took pity on her. Eugenia deserved punishment for being mean about Carmela, but Nena didn’t want to be cruel. “Sister Benedicta is strict with everyone.”

“Not you.”

“You didn’t see how mad she was at me when I wasn’t at confession today.”

“Did she rub dirty grease on your face? No. Why would she punish you, perfect Elena, who always does what she’s told, Elena who is best friends with Carmela, a bossy, fat old cow who does secret things at night.”

“What are you talking about?” Nena asked.

“What would you do if I told you a big secret? Would you tell Sister Benedicta?”

“No,” Nena said quickly.

Eugenia waved Nena closer, whispering, “Carmela leaves her cell at night.”

“Where does she go?” Nena asked.

“I don’t know, but Sister Manuela, the portera on her hallway, told me that she’s seen her sneak out of her room and not come back for hours and hours.”

“If she witnessed something, she should have reported it to Sister Benedicta. This makes Sister Manuela just as much at fault as the person breaking the rules,” Nena said.

“Sister Manuela can’t say anything because Carmela put the mal de ojo on her. Last Saturday, Sister Manuela spotted Carmela leaving her room, and Sister Manuela tried to reprimand her, but she couldn’t move her mouth to talk. And then the next day when she went to Sister Benedicta to tell her what had happened, her tongue turned into a piece of silver.”

“Absurd. What kind of fairy tales are you telling me?”

“She showed it to me.”

“Her tongue?”

“Before it turned back to flesh, she was able to peel a piece of the silver off with her fingernail. She showed me the shaving.”

“And you’re saying Carmela did this to Sister Manuela?”

“Remember, you promised you wouldn’t say anything to anyone,” Eugenia said. The color had come back into her cheeks.

“What would I say? That a portera made up a story to cover up the fact that she fell asleep when she was supposed to be on duty?”

“Well, I believe Sister Manuela. And so does—” Eugenia made her lips into a line, like she was stopping herself from saying anything else, but like she also wanted Nena to try to guess what she was insinuating. Nena said nothing, sweeping the cleaned beans into the pot and carrying it over to the giant fireplace with its grates for grilling and spits that suspended bubbling kettles over the fire.

Nena was unsure what to do with this information. Part of her wanted to run and tell Madre Inocenta right away that some of the women were gossiping about the nuns of the aquelarre. But Nena didn’t want to be the sort of person whose word couldn’t be trusted. Nor did she want Eugenia or Sister Manuela to be punished for telling what was probably the truth. Besides, Nena had more important things to worry about, like what was going to happen at the next aquelarre, and how she was going to get herself home.

In Madre Inocenta’s office that Saturday night, a copper pot hung on a stand over the mesquite fire, burned down to sweet-sour-smelling embers. The nuns of the aquelarre stood around the long table, singing the song of the coven. Even when the song was over, Nena heard the notes hanging in the air.

Madre Inocenta picked up a clay taza from the table in the center of the room. She dipped the cup in the pot and handed it to Nena.

“What is it?” Nena asked. This was same kind of cup the nuns used for chocolate, and Nena briefly worried that Father Iturbe had shared with Madre Inocenta her stupid confession. But no, whatever was in the cup wasn’t chocolate. The liquid was clear and smelled strongly of plants.

Nena must have been making a face, because Madre Inocenta explained, “I ground up the tooth and boiled it with herbs.”

“And you want me to drink it?” Nena asked, horrified.

“You’ll do what she asks of you,” Sister Benedicta ordered.

“No, she’s right, Sister. She deserves an explanation,” Madre Inocenta said. “The truth is we’ve experienced manifestations of La Vista with you that we’ve never seen with anyone else. You appear to have abilities that none of the rest of us do.”

“I don’t think so,” Nena said, trying to be careful with her words. Sister Benedicta was noticeably angry at what Madre Inocenta was saying.

“I’m telling you it’s true. You may have special powers, but you have no understanding of what you’re doing or what you’re capable of. Looking with La Vista, I’m able to determine that the tooth is but a part of the encanto. There’s more of it deep inside you. If it doesn’t come out, it may harm you. By drinking this tincture, you’ll coax out the rest of the spell. You don’t have to be afraid, child. We’ll take care of you, no matter what happens. It’s safe to use the encantos during the time of the aquelarre.”

“What else is in the mixture?” Nena asked, stalling.

“Plants that open up the mind,” Madre Inocenta said. For the first time, Nena detected a note of impatience in her voice, and Nena understood that Madre Inocenta was eager to see what was going to happen. Nena was curious, too, but she didn’t appreciate being the guinea pig in this experiment. Unfortunately, Nena couldn’t think of a way to refuse to drink the liquid, and Sister Benedicta was giving her a glare that said she was looking for an excuse to pinch Nena’s nose and tip the brew down her throat.

Nena scanned the faces of the nuns. Sister Paloma and Sister Francisca seemed more afraid than curious. And when Nena looked at Carmela for help, Carmela raised her left eyebrow so high that it disappeared underneath her veil. Whether the gesture communicated that Nena should obey or keep resisting, she couldn’t decide. Nena didn’t want to be punished, and she surely didn’t want Carmela to see it happen to her. That would be worse than the punishment, since everything became more real when experienced with a friend.

Nena tipped the taza into her mouth. It was hot, too hot, and it tasted like chalk but also sweet from the herbs that coated the back of Nena’s throat. She tried to swallow the taste down with the liquid, but that only made it worse, like a hundred tiny teeth had lodged in the back of her throat, digging in. Nena coughed. The teeth moved down her gullet. She coughed again. The teeth marched down, and now she couldn’t stop coughing, each hack jogging the teeth further down her throat.

Carmela patted her back, but that didn’t help. The teeth continued down, chewing through the flesh of her throat, ending their march in her lungs. These teeth, this encanto, took control of her lungs. She drew in a painful, gnawed-up breath. She breathed out, ragged notes emerging from her mouth. She was singing. No. The encanto was singing her. The song was loud, and Nena’s breath grew hot, burning her as it left her body. The smoldering mesquite under the copper pot flared up, the flames rising high.

Nena watched the song begin to rearrange the particles of the very air, drawing them into a path, a thread that shimmered under the light of the candles, leading into the pot. A mouse ran past Nena, and then five more. Nena recoiled as they leaped into the pot, squeaking out their deaths.

Something touched Nena’s boot. She jumped back, pushing herself up against Carmela, who screamed. A cockroach. No, not one, a column of cockroaches. When they reached the pot, they climbed over the side, clacking their bodies against each other. Salamanders scrambled past, far too many of them, an oil slick on the ground.

Worms oozed up between the tiles, writhing on the floor, and then birds broke through the window, flocks, followed by impossible animals—where were they coming from and how had they climbed the wall?—a raccoon, a tiny deer, rabbits, a trio of javelinas, packrats by the dozen. Nena crouched down, the animals crawling over her, claws and toes and hooves trampling her to get to the pot, the room filling with the tangy odor of fresh meat, the musty stink of boiled fur. As awful as the procession was, there was nothing Nena could do to stop it. The encanto had her in its grip, even as she cowered on the ground, holding her hands up around her head.

As quickly as the encanto had emerged, it left Nena, flying from her throat. She stood up on shaky legs. The animals were gone. The only things left were droppings and the gamey smell of wildness. Madre Inocenta stared at Nena, and Nena feared that she had done something terribly wrong, once again bringing into the world a magic that hurt rather than helped.

The noise of breaking glass and the growls and cries and yips of the animals must have woken up the whole convent. How would they explain the dislodged tiles, pried up by the things of the earth crawling to the pot? How would they explain the paw prints and the smears from oily fur, the claw marks on the walls? What if the townspeople of El Paso del Norte caught wind of this? How could they allow what Nena had done with these witches to go unpunished? Eugenia would go straight to her father with the story, and Nena and all the rest of the aquelarre would be burned, no matter what Carmela had naively said about the church’s enlightened new ways of thinking about witchcraft.

Sister Benedicta moved over to Madre Inocenta and placed her arm around her shoulders, though Madre Inocenta seemed not to notice. Sister Francisca and Sister Paloma walked over to the pot hanging over the fire, which had died down to a smolder. Carmela nodded her pale face at Nena in what Nena hoped was forgiveness for the destruction she’d caused, or if not forgiveness, then at least an acknowledgment that Nena had had no idea that the encanto would behave like this.

“I’m sorry,” Nena said to Madre Inocenta. “How are we going to clean this up? And how will we explain it?”

“Our sisters have been lulled to a deep sleep by the encanto of the aquelarre. We don’t need to worry about them. And as for the mess, well, the encanto isn’t yet done. Don’t you hear it singing in the pot?”

Nena stopped to listen. The cries of the animals were gone, and what remained was a low hum.

“We must now eat the brebaje you have made,” Madre Inocenta said.

“Eat it? That?” Nena asked, sick at the thought of eating that stew of fluttering slithery jumping furry death.

“I understand if you’d rather not be the first to try it,” Madre Inocenta said.

“The girl is right for once,” Sister Benedicta said. “We should not eat that brebaje. We don’t know what will happen. This is not what our aquelarre was meant to do. This is out of anyone’s control. Look at the mess she has made.”

“God has brought this young lady and this encanto to us,” Madre Inocenta said briskly. She reached into the pot and plucked a piece of meat out with her fingers, then dropped it in her mouth, chewing fast. A faraway look came into her eyes.

“What is it? What’s happening to you?” Sister Benedicta asked, holding Madre Inocenta by the shoulders.

Madre Inocenta nodded at the pot. “The rest of you may now have your portions.” She was giving an order.

Nena watched as Sister Benedicta, Sister Paloma, and Sister Manuela picked out chunks of the awful meat. Once they swallowed, their eyes glazed over, same as Madre Inocenta. Carmela ate her share last, shrugging at Nena before she put it in her mouth, and then she was gone to wherever the others had traveled in their minds, or, more likely, into La Vista.

Nena had to admit that she was curious where they had gone, and at this point, what would it hurt to eat the stew? Nena was already damned, living in a kind of hell that she’d sent herself to. She inched closer to the pot. She was surprised at the aroma of the brebaje. The boiled fur smell was gone, replaced by the rich scent of cinnamon, cumin, oregano, bay leaf, garlic, and onions. In spite of herself, Nena’s mouth watered. She stuck her fingers in the pot and pulled out a chunk of unidentifiable meat. Before she could ponder it too much, she closed her eyes and popped it in her mouth. The meat was buttery, the sauce as rich as any she’d ever tasted, better even than Mamá’s chile colorado.

Nena let the flavors rest on her tongue. A buzzing started in her ears, an echoing hum that made her feel like she was inside a giant tin can. Nena knew all too well what was about to happen. Remembering what Carmela had taught her in the portería, Nena breathed, letting La Vista fill her. She kept one foot in the river, one foot on the riverbank. She felt herself get hot in her face. Her upper lip sweated, like when she ate very picante chiles. The spicy heat spread all through her body. La Vista had arrived, and she braced herself for the darkness to cover her like a black hood, to wake up dazed and sweaty on the ground, but she stayed standing, even as the buzzing took over, the vibrations making her burn hot, then hotter, until she was so hot she was the sun.

Nena flew out of the sun and into the sky. She saw the whole of the Chihuahuan Desert from above. She had wings and she was hungry, ravenous. She had the eyesight of an eagle. Better. She could spot the thorn on a mesquite branch, miles and miles away on the side of the mountain. Nena spied a mouse far below on the hard desert floor. She dove down, grabbing it with her talons, shoving the mouse down her throat, feeling the thing wiggle. She then became the mouse, overcome by the terror of struggle, and she had nowhere to go, but still she fought, not giving in to her fate. Then she was a flea sucking the blood of the mouse, and she was a creature even smaller that the flea, a flea’s flea, and then she was smaller, a germ, no thoughts, just a feeling of life, of living, and then she was Nena sitting up in a chair in Madre Inocenta’s office, alive, Nena, but more awake, with a new way to see and hear and smell.

On the edges of her vision, she saw magnetic fields, the paths to the poles. The encanto whispered to her that this was the way that foxes see the world. All the animals she’d eaten told her their secrets, and so did the earth itself, relaying the stories of rocks and rivers. Nena heard the lava in the center of the earth swirling in currents and eddies.

Looking around the room, she understood that light wasn’t the opposite of darkness, it was energy in the form of waves—the waves of light like the waves in the ocean, making noise and letting off spray as they crashed into each other.

Nena had sat herself down on the floor. Sister Francisca sat with her back against the wall. She had one finger jammed in her ear, and a line of drool stretched from the corner of her mouth to the tiles. A laughing Carmela rolled back and forth on her back, hugging herself. Sister Paloma lay flat on the tiles, her arms stiff at her side, a crooked smile on her face, and Sister Benedicta was standing, barely, leaning against a table, her eyes white.

This stuff, whatever it was, made you look drunk.

Nena hated when Luna came home after a night of drinking, slamming into the house too loud, too happy. Nena, herself, hadn’t tasted alcohol apart from the Communion wine, and that was supposed to be the blood of Christ. Nena hadn’t ever been tempted to drink enough of that to make her feel funny, and what she was experiencing now scared her, even as she felt the power of La Vista surging in the smallest parts of her.

Time passed.

Maybe days.

Or years.

Minutes.

Maybe no time at all.

When Nena was finally able to move, she rose to her feet. A soft coolness entered her mouth, an encanto that soothed her throat as she sang, healing the scratches from the coyote’s tooth. Nena made her way to Madre Inocenta’s desk, floating across the room.

She gazed down to confirm what she already knew, and yes, her feet were indeed an inch off the floor, supported by the waves of light and sound underneath them, the song a kind of raft resting on the waves.

Nena was powerful, like Madre Inocenta had said. The tooth had shown up in her mouth; she’d sung the animals into the pot, and when she ate them, she hadn’t fainted. She now knew things that she hadn’t known could be known. Like how to fly.

Nena wondered if she could make the nuns fly. She started to sing the soft encanto again, weaving together the waves of sound and light to form another raft, sliding it underneath the brujas. She picked them up, making them hover above the tiles.

Madre Inocenta laughed, her face full of color.

Once she started, Nena couldn’t stop singing, or rather the encanto couldn’t stop singing through her, but this time the flow was much more pleasant, and Nena floated as she watched the tiles rattling across the floor, fixing themselves back into place. The broken glass from the windows rejoined in the air, melting into panes to refill the casements. The plaster of the walls churned, a thick slurry, swallowing the marks the animals had made with their paws and beaks.

This encanto was a true miracle, healing the destruction the first encanto had caused. Why? And how? Maybe it didn’t matter. Nena was bursting with love for these nuns who had rescued her. Maybe God had brought Nena to this place after all.

“Put me down,” Sister Benedicta said. “Put me down right now.”

Nena lowered the nuns gently, one by one, setting Sister Benedicta down last, savoring the look of fury on her face. Nena would pay for this very temporary pleasure, but the feeling of the soft song was delicious, real power.

“Good girl,” Madre Inocenta said when all the nuns were on their feet and together at the big table.

Sister Benedicta then scooped the stew out of the pot and into a clay jar, which she sealed with a layer of fat. Nena couldn’t help but notice that Madre Inocenta’s eyes glowed with something like greed as she gazed at the jar.