Pat Mora

When my aunt died, my uncle raised his hands like a prophet in the Bible. “I've lost my girl,” he said, “I've lost my girl,” over and over, shaking his head. I didn't know what to say, where to look, my quiet uncle raising his voice to silence. My aunt was eighty-seven. “Listen,” my uncle said, sighing like a tree alone at night, “women know. Every midnight on New Year's Eve, when others sang and laughed and hugged, your aunt looked at me, tears in her eyes. Sixty years. She knew. One day, we'd kiss good-bye.”

I remember the first day, how I looked down, hoping you wouldn't see me, and when I glanced up, I saw your smile shining like a soft light from deep inside you. “I'm listening,” you encourage us. “Come on! Join our conversation, let us hear your neon certainties, thorny doubts, tangled angers,” but for weeks I hid inside. I read and reread your notes praising my writing, and you whispered, “We need you and your stories and questions that like a fresh path will take us to new vistas.” Slowly, your faith grew into my courage and for you— instead of handing you a note or apple or flowers— I raised my hand. I carry your smile and faith inside like I carry my dog's face, my sister's laugh, creamy melodies, the softness of sunrise, steady blessings of stars, autumn smell of gingerbread, the security of a sweater on a chilly day.

Mouths full of laughter, the turistas come to the tall hotel with suitcases full of dollars. Every morning my brother makes the cool beach new for them. With a wooden board he smooths away all footprints. I peek through the cactus fence and watch the women rub oil sweeter than honey into their arms and legs while their children jump waves or sip drinks from long straws, coconut white, mango yellow. Once my little sister ran barefoot across the hot sand for a taste. My mother roared like the ocean, “No. No. It’s their beach. It’s their beach.”

They think she lives alone on the edge of town in a two-room house where she moved when her husband died at thirty-five of a gunshot wound in the bed of another woman. The curandera and house have aged together to the rhythm of the desert. She wakes early, lights candles before her sacred statues, brews tea of yerbabuena. She moves down her porch steps, rubs cool morning sand into her hands, into her arms. Like a large black bird, she feeds on the desert, gathering herbs for her basket. Her days are slow, days of grinding dried snake into powder, of crushing wild bees to mix with white wine. And the townspeople come, hoping to be touched by her ointments, her hands, her prayers, her eyes. She listens to their stories, and she listens to the desert, always, to the desert. By sunset she is tired. The wind strokes the strands of long gray hair, the smell of drying plants drifts into her blood, the sun seeps into her bones. She dozes on her back porch. Rocking, rocking.