Woman Hollering Creek Read Online Free PDF Page B

Uncle Lalo, and Uncle Lalo blamed this country, and Abuelita blamed the infamy of men. That is when she burned the cucumber pushcart and called me a
sinvergüenza
because I
am
without shame.
    Then I cried too—Boy Baby was lost from me—until my head was hot with headaches and I fell asleep. When I woke up, the cucumber pushcart was dust and Abuelita was sprinkling holy water on my head.
    Abuelita woke up early every day and went to the Esparza garage to see if news about that
demonio
had been found, had Chaq Uxmal Paloquín sent any letters, any, and when the other mechanics heard that name they laughed, and asked if we had made it up, that we could have some letters that had come for Boy Baby, no forwarding address, since he had gone in such a hurry.
    There were three. The first, addressed “Occupant,” demanded immediate payment for a four-month-old electric bill. The second was one I recognized right away—a brown envelope fat with cake-mix coupons and fabric-softener samples—because we’d gotten one just like it. The third was addressed in a spidery Spanish to a Señor C. Cruz, on paper so thin you could read it unopened by the light of the sky. The return address a convent in Tampico.
    This was to whom my Abuelita wrote in hopes of finding the man who could correct my ruined life, to ask if the good nuns might know the whereabouts of a certain Boy Baby—and if they were hiding him it would be of no use because God’s eyes see through all souls.
    We heard nothing for a long time. Abuelita took me out of school when my uniform got tight around the belly and said it was a shame I wouldn’t be able to graduate with the other eighth graders.
    Except for Lourdes and Rachel, my grandma and Uncle Lalo, nobody knew about my past. I would sleep in the big bed I share with Abuelita same as always. I could hear Abuelita and Uncle Lalo talking in low voices in the kitchen as if they were praying the rosary, how they were going to send me to Mexico, to San Dionisio de Tlaltepango, where I have cousins and where I was conceived and would’ve been born had my grandma not thought it wise to send my mother here to the United States so that neighbors in San Dionisio de Tlaltepango wouldn’t ask why her belly was suddenly big.
    I was happy. I liked staying home. Abuelita was teaching me to crochet the way she had learned in Mexico. And just when I had mastered the tricky rosette stitch, the letter came from the convent which gave the truth about Boy Baby—however much we didn’t want to hear.

    He was born on a street with no name in a town called Miseria. His father, Eusebio, is a knife sharpener. His mother, Refugia, stacks apricots into pyramids and sells them on a cloth in the market. There are brothers. Sisters too of which I know little. The youngest, a Carmelite, writes me all this and prays for my soul, which is why I know it’s all true.
    Boy Baby is thirty-seven years old. His name is Chato which means fat-face. There is no Mayan blood.

    I don’t think they understand how it is to be a girl. I don’t think they know how it is to have to wait your whole life. I count the months for the baby to be born, and it’s like a ring of water inside me reaching out and out until one day it will tear from me with its own teeth.
    Already I can feel the animal inside me stirring in his own uneven sleep. The witch woman says it’s the dreams of weasels that make my child sleep the way he sleeps. She makes me eat white bread blessed by the priest, but I know it’s the ghost of him inside me that circles and circles, and will not let me rest.

    Abuelita said they sent me here just in time, because a little later Boy Baby came back to our house looking for me, and she had to chase him away with the broom. The next thing we hear, he’s in the newspaper clippings his sister sends. A picture of him looking very much like stone, police hooked on either arm … on
the road to
Las Grutas de Xtacumbilxuna,
the Caves of the Hidden