The Pulse between Dimensions and the Desert (3 page)

MORENA

I want to talk about my brown skin. I have to talk about it. My ability to travel through shades and spectrums is incomparable. I don’t get red like a frustrated pale walker in the middle of a Macy’s. The internet advertised a different price and things are never easy. I become deeper browns. I become enriched with the blanket of the poor. Those women who wear the coat of bronze as a status symbol of vacations could never sit with me.

CURLS

I obsess over the top of my head because it has never
been a place of peace. My curls are geometric half-moons with a hint of coconut. They sleepwalk toward the sky while I experience dreams of a small empty house that only exists inside my mind. Follicles jump off to mimic ghosts of ancient insects. Oils entwine into the knots and strays. I wake up in a static mess of lush genetics and fallen strands on my pillow. This is the DNA I leave behind as circumstantial evidence for resisting a tame head of hair.

ENOJADA

If somebody asks me where I’m from or corners me to guess my ethnicity, I remember their faces and think about punching their throats when I’m taking a bath to relax. They bleed from their noses as part of the hex and one clump of hair falls out of their head. One patch of hair because I am merciful. I wear dangling elegant earrings when I take baths. I read books by people of color in the bath. I listen to my pulse like Amy Hempel told me to every once in a while and smile about the times I reacted con fuerza in defense of my existence.

TAROT

Mom read tarot for the loud ladies next to both sides of our building. She hid it from the Jehovah’s Witnesses whenever we went to the halls on occasional Sundays and she explained to me that it was just a game. I walked into the kitchen and I saw the Death card face side up on the table. I cried before I went to sleep because this surely meant my mom picked the card of her demise. I prayed to god for no ghosts and good hair, but most of all, I prayed that it would let my mother live to see me learn her crafts.

COLORADO

The jugs filled with tempera paint weighed more than I was used to, but I was determined. I carried the blue paint in my backpack. The yellow in my left arm. The red in my right hand. I drew pictures of him. The ladies in the neighborhood swooned and became shy when they saw his short blonde curls and blue eyes. My crayon art depicted him as a headless man with blood bursting from the neck. I got a hold of giant permanent markers from the teen boy who always waved at my sister. I walked with a purpose and I kicked on the apartment door. I let myself in. He was sleeping on the mattress in the living room. I started by taking the markers and writing “NO” along the doors and the walls. I wrote a giant “NO” on his stomach and he woke up. I filled the room over and over with the word “NO.” He asked me what I was doing. I’m a kid, I said. I’m a kid. I screamed it. I showed him the photos I drew of his head. I unzipped my backpack and uncapped the jug of blue tempera paint. I poured it on the mattress and soaked the carpet and my hands. I tossed the empty container across the room. He tried to touch me and I screamed “NO.” I took the red tempera paint and I poured it on myself. I took the yellow and I stomped on the container. The yellow paint flowed out as my mom opened the door to the apartment.

In memories of Colorado, my mother is missing. I ride around the apartment complex on a yellow and orange tricycle. My sister Vero is cleaning the apartment and tells me to stay out until she’s done. She’s playing songs by a woman named Alanis. I know the lyrics because she’s played the album over and over. As I sing along, the anger I can gather from my own voice pushes me to pedal faster and faster until I can no longer feel gravity.

I kept to myself. I collected ladybugs in a cake pan. Mud was the first layer. Grass was the second. I marked lines across and vertically and placed each ladybug into a numbered quadrant. I placed a window screen over the pan and left the ladybugs out overnight. The next morning, some of them died, others were barely alive. I wanted to tell my sister. I wanted to demand a funeral. I dumped the farm behind the apartment complex and prayed for the struggling ladybugs to continue their lives without me.

Vero said I needed religion so, she asked the upstairs neighbors for help. They were Jehovah’s Witnesses. The youngest boy was partnered with me. He read from a mustard yellow book and asked me about the morals of every story. I told him I didn’t care. I only wanted to play
Killer Instinct
. His eyes widened and he told me he could beat the game without losing a life. I asked him to prove it and he did. We ate waffle shaped cereal and played video games instead of reading from the mustard book.

Summer was over and school started again. I was pulled aside for tutoring. Spanish was my first language, but not the official language for the school system. The tutor held flashcards up for the words “heavy” and “light” and asked me to repeat after her. The word “light” confused me. I didn’t understand how the feather in the picture brought me light. All I could think about was whether or not the white feather was plucked from a bird or if someone happened to find it in the grass.

I had dreams of my mother. She took me to Zacatecas. On cobblestone roads, we rode the bus to a women’s prison. The prison was lit by candles. My mother held my hand and then gave me away to a woman in a cell. I had dreams of the blonde man being dragged into luminous rooms. When I tried to look inside, I only saw buildings collapsing into moths.

Winter covered Denver in fluffy snow. I waited at the bus stop in my psychedelic purple windbreaker. I swore I could see the individual patterns of the snowflakes before they melted into my palms. This was around the time I believed leprechauns could be captured in cups of glue and glitter. It was around the time a girl defended me by lying to the class. Someone came up and punched me in the chest. That was the lie. I was accused of being infatuated with a boy. I sobbed into my hands. The injustice I felt came from alienation. I was the new girl in class. They didn’t even know me.

Winter led me to build my first snowman. He was short and lumpy. I named him Arturo. I stayed with Tía Lola who collected my baby teeth and put me in karate class. She lived with her girlfriend Isabella, who cackled while dancing at birthday parties and at men who were afraid of her. They loved each other, but they fought a lot too. One night, while I was trying to get comfortable on the couch, Isabella threw an iron across the living room while screaming at my tía. She smashed a lamp into the ground. She slammed her palms against the kitchen table over and over. I’m still not sure who owed them money or if they owed someone money, but Isabella screamed “I am going to teach those motherfuckers a lesson!” She came out in baggy navy blue sweats, a beanie covering her head and a goatee drawn onto her face. She clutched onto a baseball bat and stormed out of the apartment. I hid under a blanket after she left. Days later, I stopped living with them and moved back to El Paso.

In El Paso, we moved into an apartment with Vero and her boyfriend. This is where my mother reappears into my memory. She had recently given birth to my youngest sister Magdalena who I was meeting for the first time. The blonde man with blue eyes showed up at the door. I froze and the only form of defense I could come up with was to growl. He ignored me and I was thankful. I held my breath as he walked past me and up the steps to see his daughter. I followed. He smiled at the small creature as she clasped his finger with her tiny hand. That was the last time I saw him. He walked out on my mother and my little sister. Even in my mother’s heartbreak, I whispered loudly to my sister. I promised her I would take full responsibility in never telling her what her father was.

THE PULSE BETWEEN DIMENSIONS

AND THE DESERT

Sylvia shuffled through her pockets and only felt a crisp dollar bill. Flaca and Morena had dropped her by the bus stop. They wanted to drink and dance to cumbias in Juárez. Sylvia had to go home. She just had a baby girl five months back. She named the infant after herself: Sylvia Estella. When people asked her: “¿Dondé está el papa de la bebé?” she would simply answer with “El culo se murió” to deter them. The wrath of her mamá was creeping into the forefront of Sylvia’s mind. Her ma, Lupe, worked at a Levi’s factory every day of the week and was calm while watching her telenovelas en la casa, but when Sylvia fucked up, Lupe was not one to be subtle about the repercussions of the fuck up. Lupe had a stack of chanclas in the small closet of the house, Sylvia swore. Her stomach gurgled as she looked into the window of the bakery.

“Hola, mija.”

El viejito smiled as his eyes followed her to the counter.
“Necesito cambio para el bus, por favor.”

She straightened out the dollar bill which she had folded into a small clumpy square on her short walk to the shop. The little man tugged at the dollar and gave her change from his blue apron pocket.

“¿Tienes hambre, mija?”

Sylvia’s belly announced itself in the empty shop.
“¿Tiene pan dulce?”

The depth of brown in his eyes looked into hers. The display was empty, except for a handful of donuts. He nodded and headed to the back of the shop. He handed her a sweet loaf of bread that reminded Sylvia of the turtles she would catch with her cousin when she and Lupe visited LA back in the day. Sylvia ate the sugar shell pattern off the top of the fluffy bread and stashed the bottom portion in her pocket to give to the gutsy pigeons outside.

It started with trauma. Nothing sci-fi about it. No heavenly attributions. Just straight up time travel powers caused by trauma.

I was digging around the couch, looking for coins. We watched as the adults played “Quarters” with tequila and tiny glasses. I snuck into the kitchen, found the apple juice and grabbed the mini glass cups. One had Benjamin Franklin on it because my oldest sister’s boyfriend bought it and said “Ay pues, electricity is my shit” and the other one had “Selena Forever” on it, in lovely purple cursive. As the volume of the adults elevated into more and more laughter, I poured the apple juice into the glasses and told my little sister Ruby the rules. We had to make the coins bounce into the glasses before we could drink and begin our battle as Orchid and Spinal in
Killer Instinct
. We missed two or three times before the coins finally plunged their histories into the apple juice and we sipped and dripped with stickiness on the sides of our mouths.

I woke up before any of the adults, surrounded by lavender walls. The air was thick with musk and fluctuations of alcoholic puffs of breath. The screen door squeaked open and shut. Clicks echoed as it rested back into its frame. I walked out of the bathroom and saw you. I saw you, so I tried to run to Ruby. I wanted to lie next to her and smell the baby shampoo in our hair strands. I wanted to wake her up and tell her about the dream I had: It was raining. We went digging for gems. She wore my turquoise sweater with the black squiggles on it and I wasn’t even mad. You caught me, gripped my hair and those harsh hands turned my face toward yours. The power struggle that made me stop praying. You were an authority figure I often thought about suffocating. My back hit the bathroom tile. I thought about all the people who find you charming. I closed my eyes. A loud POP went off and I posed as though I was in the womb again. I felt a layer of warmth on me. As I opened my eyes, your body collapsed. Red fluid molecules flooded the air. I screamed and I screamed and then there was just darkness.

Sylvia stepped into the cooling evening. Her pockets jingled with her step by step by step. Graffiti embraced the payphone booth. Sylvia aligned her back against the phone booth’s panel. The tone stopped and Lupe told her that Estelita was asleep. She better get home soon or she would raise Estelita to be a nun. “Ay, Mamá, espero al bus.”

Sylvia trembled and hung up on Lupe. The barrel of a shotgun rested on her cheek. A gringo with eyes como el cielo and hair el mismo color like the heroes in telenovelas was holding the weapon.

“Do you understand English?”

He spoke slowly.

Sylvia thought of the white puta she beat the shit out of for telling her that she sounded ugly when she spoke Spanish.

“Yes, a little.”

Tobacco particles escaped from his spit. He told her not to scream and pushed her toward a white mustang. Sylvia thought of sharks. Mustangs were sharks of the freeway. Gringos were loan sharks. Gringos were the reiteration of the times she’d been called a wetback. Gringos grinned as though they owned the fucking universe.

She settled into the leather seat.

Lupe was going to be pissed.

Estelita would never forgive her.

She should have kept track of Alfonso.

Child support would have helped Estelita.

“Ey, how old are you?”

His fingers invaded her crunchy curls. Sylvia could barely think and whispered a number.

“Ey, that’s cool. You’re my sixteen year old girlfriend now, okay?”

Sylvia refused to cry. Era dura because she had to be. It had come to Sylvia’s attention that women in Juárez meant nada, so what, if another Chicana went missing?

Blue and red lights radiated through the windows. The shark car stopped. A police officer tapped at the window. This was one of the only times Sylvia felt relief in seeing a cop.

The blood is gone. My body heat contains itself underneath a blanket decorated with the sun, la luna and the stars. My lungs expand with the crisp air flowing into me as I emerge from beneath the blanket. Candlelight illuminates the small woman who comes into the room to feel my forehead and caress my hair with warm wet cloth. The smell of spices from the kitchen and the scent of her rose oil bring me comfort.

“No se que pasó mija, pero con el favor de Dios, tiene su salud.”

I call her my new mother. Her name is Rosalina. We settle into a desolate town. Clusters of lonely clouds stick themselves on top of the sky. Stars swim and drown in between the nothingness en la noche. The residents are righteous and outrageous in their insights. Floral patterns settle over their chests, over their hearts and the softness of their human bodies. In Palomar, we tell each other stories to pass the time. The stories always evolve into rumors about the people in the town.

The viejita who lives on the corner en la casa azul can tell the future. She has an old parrot who gives her formulas for the future. No one has ever stepped into her house, but I looked through the window once and I saw números in white paint all over her purple walls. I heard the pajarito demand galletas on the way to Delia’s. Delia sells churros and eggs to most of us in town. I heard the little bird shout

“Uno!”

“Dos!”

“Cuatro!!”

The pajarito said these three numbers slowly and then went into accelerated number shouting. I thought maybe he just never learned how to properly count.

I fell asleep in Palomar and I woke up in El Paso en el futuro. Newspapers indicated 2010. In Palomar, it was 1952. I didn’t have any papers so I cleaned houses for ladies with big hair and overpowering fragrances. I worked with five other women. Cassandra was my favorite. She was blunt and adequately harsh on the white women we worked for. Behind their backs, we laughed about how they looked orange because even though they had money, they could never be melanin rich.

Cassandra was my first kiss and my first fuck. We lived together through passing seasons. We raised succulents and laughed at each other as often as we could in between the reality of economic circumstances and our introspections. One night, after falling asleep in her arms, I woke up alone in 1974.

With the windows rolled down, Sylvia looked up at the policía and out to the pavement, where she calculated her first grave would be.

“Young lady, what’s your boyfriend’s name?”
The gringo had his grip on her wrist and squeezed harder.

“I don’t know.”

Sylvia saw psychedelic spots and her head began to burden her shoulders.

“Get out of the car.”

The police officer pulled her out. The last time policía interacted with her, he followed behind her and her hermano before he finally searched the both of them on the basis that they were “acting suspicious”.

Sylvia stumbled and breathed in the smog and the heaviness of her mortality.

“We were patrolling the area and someone called and reported what happened.”

Sylvia sifted through her thoughts and the viejito popped into it.

The nearest bar is a miniature structure packed with men portraying masculinity behind mustaches. I drench my fragility in tequila until I can’t feel the hot tears possessing my face. Someone addresses me by “mija” so, I stare into him. He simply offers me pan dulce. I chuckle at him. He has a brown paper bag with sweet bread in it and here he is, at this macho bar in his vaquero gear.

“I know I am in the past. I can tell by the fucking cars and the way you dress and I know she hasn’t even existed yet.”

I tell him about Cassandra’s messy hair and her perfect eyebrows that had to be on point before she went out. He sighs and hands me a concha.

“Come esto. You need to hydrate mija.”

I chug water as he explains the science behind creating perfect pan dulce. We step into the parking lot where the sun shower from the morning dissipated back into the sky. The rhythm of my step stops. Someone has a grip on the back of my shirt’s collar.

He shows me a small knife.

He whispers something about being able to fix me.

He says something about me being dirty, una cochina.

Pasty vaquero puffs up.

An alcohol induced altercation has me on the gravel. All I hear after that is “Run!”

I know that Mister Pan Dulce is hurt, but I have to run.

I run myself sober and the next morning, I wake up hungover in 1993.

Sylvia didn’t look behind her. She could feel the egos disappear to the station. She spit the lump in her throat onto the ground. She clenched her fists, breathed deep and thought of Estelita. Walking to the bakery, she felt her pocket and the sweet bread wasn’t there anymore. She ran to look inside the shop and the viejito wasn’t there. She slapped the glass with the force of her body until her arms and hands stung.

Inside the bakery, el viejito only had a second to recognize his limbs erasing themselves from time. Soon after, the donuts popped out of space and back into stardust. The pink spinning seats turned into nothingness. The infrastructure of pipes and little cucarachas blipped and blinked out of vision. Sylvia collapsed onto her knees in between yellow lines that were deleting themselves as though a backspace bar was clicking them off of the asphalt.

On the bus ride home, Sylvia fell asleep and had a dream she was tripping over the border of Juárez and into El Paso. She looked behind her and saw the women who could never go home to their hijos or hijas.

The first time I killed a man, I felt satisfaction. I knocked on the apartment window to my old room after putting a hole in his head and seeing the miniature version of myself disappear. Screams came from the bathroom, but I got Ruby’s attention. Ruby opened the window and told me she liked my curls. I asked her to give me the Super Nintendo control and I showed her the combos to press so she could be invincible as Orchid.