The Jaguar's Children Read online

  Sat Apr 7—20:52

  Here, but not here. There are night sounds all around me now—scratching and scuffling. The sound of soft feet. And birds—I think they’re birds. Owls, maybe, calling. But no one answers. Once in a while something will crash against the tank, so loud and surprising it feels like a hammer on my mind. There is an echo when this happens, but it is too loud to be real. Maybe these are birds too—souls coming and going. There has been a lot of that lately.

  Sat Apr 7—21:09

  I should have shared my pipe—I know this, but I did not. I knew how precious it was, how if the others felt this cool air they would want it for themselves and I am not strong enough to defend it from so many. So I kept the pipe a secret and I saved this sweet air for myself. Before, when people were still moving in here, I sat against it, protecting it, feeling its breath on my back making my hairs stand up. And then when all was quiet I would put my face down to breathe and breathe and breathe.

  There is no need to protect it anymore.

  Sat Apr 7—21:13

  I am killing time and time is killing me.

  Sat Apr 7—21:22

  It is when so many prayers go without an answer that the sacrifice becomes necessary. In Oaxaca we are always ready for this possibility, always practicing. With my own eyes at Día de los Muertos I have seen a man dressed like the pope standing in front of that church on Calle de la Noche Triste cutting women’s breasts made of Jell-O into pieces on a plate and feeding them to the congregation while the devil in his horns and blood-red skin dances with a bottle of mezcal, pouring it down our throats like an injection. And across the street, hanging in the tree of the virgins, is a body made from old clothes and the bones of animals, a cow’s pelvis for a face and blood or something like it everywhere around.

  This is what we do in the good times.

  And why is that? Before our troubles, many tourists liked to visit Oaxaca for Muertos. One time in the cemetery of San Miguel I was with a friend and his children at the grave of his young wife and their young mother where they had been working all day to build a scene around her stone, with mountains and trees and the ocean because she loved all these things in her life. Luego, into this scene about one in the morning comes a German tourist with his big cannon camera and two-meter girlfriend and he asks my compadre, “So, what is it with you Mexicans and death anyway?”

  It is a funny question for a German to be asking, but my friend is a gracious man and he says to this giant cabrón, very calm and right in his eye, “Death is close by, amigo. Always.” Then he taps this German on the back with his finger. “It is always just here, waiting. We know this, we recognize it and welcome it. It is not something to be afraid of because it is coming for all of us and who knows when.”

  Every year in the cemetery is a party—everyone you ever knew coming together again with candles burning on the graves, a band and food and many families, children playing in the dark with their dead brothers and sisters, and over there, under the laurel tree, an old man in a jaguar suit dancing with a lover only he can see.

  Next year, I will be there also—one way or another, with this body or without it.

  Sat Apr 7—21:34

  Hello, am I talking to anyone?

  I think someone is alive in here with me, but it’s hard to know the difference now between us.

  Sat Apr 7—21:38

  Me llamo Héctor María de la Soledad Lázaro González y yo todavía estoy vivo.

  Sat Apr 7—21:41

  The wind blows sometimes and it makes a music in the pipe. I can hear the plantain man out there pushing his three-wheel Mercurio with the fire inside, blowing his steam whistle. That fire in the barrel is what I see at sunset when I look into my pipe. Next to the fire is a tank of water and it is the steam from this that cooks the plantains and makes the whistle blow. You can hear it all over the neighborhood—sad and hopeful at the same time. So many sounds, so many codes to understand. Many times I wake up to roosters and rockets and the man shouting ¡AAGUAAAA! ¡AAGUAAAA! coming to take your empty bottles and give you full ones.

  But where is that pendejo when you really need him?

  And that little flute which is the man coming to sharpen your knives, and every morning the mailman on his bicycle with the whistle that makes the dogs go crazy, and him with the metal can ringing his little triangle, but who knows what he has inside there. Remember that girl with the empanadas who looks like she’s eight but can shout as loud as a man? And Señor Claxon with the ice cream, and that crazy banging in the morning telling you to get your trash down to the corner pronto, and the gas man with his ringing rings playing the Beatles so loud it will throw you out of bed? And all day the knacking of the looms, and all night the neighbor with the dog who won’t shut up, and sometimes a calenda with its horns and monos who look over your wall and in your window and scare you half to death like they did last night.

  This time I was sleeping maybe, dreaming. There was the moan and whistle in the pipe and then a scraping on the tank and then a banging and a scraping as if we are now some kind of instrument. You would not believe the tones, so many all together and in them I hear so many things—the mechanic coming back, the sexton’s bell from the pueblo, mi madre asking ¿Quién es?, la llorona crying for her lost children, other voices I almost recognize, some creature trying to get in, others trying to get out. Señora Ellen singing in the hotel, and so much humming, the whole tank vibrating with it, moving through me like I am not even there.

  But when finally I understand what is making these new sounds, I feel stupid—tricked again, and I remember where I am, in a universe where the governor is not God or Odiseo but Coyote. Because it is not only the wind doing this. It is the trees. This is why no one sees us. Jesus would forgive them, but I will not because to forgive is the gift of the weak, what you give when you have nothing else, when those chingaderas done to you cannot be undone or paid back. It is wrong to feel this way, I know—one more blasfemia. My poor mother.

  Trying to think how a coyote thinks. We are not on any road. They took us up an arroyo and we are in some kind of forest, maybe a little canyon. In the desert this is the only place you find more than one tree together. Trees are like people that way, gathering by the river. There is a place in Oaxaca where the riverbank is made from cedar roots, solid wood like a canal. And the waterfalls. My god, it is a paradise. Who could leave such a place? But they do. For el Norte. Because they don’t understand that water is the most precious thing of all. If I get out of here, I will tell them. I will be a hallelujah for the water.

  Tell me, AnniMac, is it good fortune to be hiding in the shade? Or a cruel trick? The battery is getting low now, and the life of the phone is not the only one it measures.

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  Sat Apr 7—21:57

  It is the first night I have been warm since I left Oaxaca and for this I must thank the others. There are so many clothes and bags in here and I have made a bed for César and covered him. At first I was afraid of them, so many and so quiet. I can feel them close around me now like a family of ghosts.

  Sat Apr 7—22:31

  It is hard to say this, AnniMac, because it means I must stop speaking to you, but the water is gone—all of it. Besides César breathing, the only sounds I hear are coming from outside the tank. I am cold now with the turkey skin, even with the extra jacket. It hurts down in my back, my kidneys, and I know it is from thirst, but I have only urine in the bottle now. That will be difficult, but there’s no hurry about it because in here we have time, no? Una eternidad.

  Sat Apr 7—23:18

  I woke up dreaming of water and meat. I was lying with César. I had the phone on his shoulder, talking into it, and I went to sleep. When I woke up I was licking his face and I did not stop—could not. All the blood and sweat on him—his forehead, his eyes, his ear where it collected. I cleaned him like a cat.

  It is another world in here, where your mind watches from far away, and need and pain are the only gods you r
ecognize.

  Sun Apr 8—00:07

  It’s César. It isn’t César. AnniMac, there’s no more breathing and his hand is cold. There has been a mistake. Why am I still here? It is his touch, you know—his breath—that keeps me sane.

  El silencio es terrible.

  Sun Apr 8—01:11

  Dreaming of watermelons—many all together cut in half-moons. I am eating them one after another without stopping and somehow in these watermelons, in the eating of them, is something important, some kind of forgiveness.

  But I am awake now and in my hands there are not watermelons but César’s phone and my abuelo’s jaguar head—the only things left that are not empty or dead, the only things in here that can make me brave. Who is brave? Not many, not me, but César is one. Even now. And my abuelo who keeps coming to me because he lived through so many things, I ask him, “Abuelo, why are you always sharpening and sharpening your machete?”

  “Why?” he asks, like I should know the answer. “Because you never know what you might need it for.”

  His voice sounds so close by, but I don’t see him until the accident with the taxi. It is a big surprise for everyone—the three of us walking home from the mountain with a load of wood, and the taxi comes around the turn sounding its claxon, only the claxon is a police siren. Isabel is tired and half asleep and it is not a sound she knows so she jumps the wrong way and up and over she goes—with the firewood and everything through the windshield.

  The taxi stops in the ditch on the other side of the road and Abuelo is running like a young man. Isabel is in the front seat with glass and firewood everywhere. There are two ladies from San Jerónimo in the back and they are screaming and wiping Isabel’s urine and shit from their faces and aprons. Isabel’s head is in the taxista’s lap. His nose is broken from Isabel or some wood and he is wearing a beard of blood. His hair is sparkling with the glass and all over his forehead are little wounds like Jesus has. Over and over he touches his eyes, saying, “Where are my Ray-Bans? Who took my Ray-Bans?”

  But Abuelo is too angry to care about him, he just wants to save Isabel, and he opens the passenger door to untie her packsaddle. Isabel’s eyes are open and he’s talking to her in Zapotec, patting her face to let her know he’s close by. It looks like she is maybe OK so Abuelo takes her by the back legs and tries to pull her out the door. I am just standing there, forgetting I even have a body, until I hear him shouting, “Héctor! Take it! Take it!”

  So I take her tail in both hands and together we pull her out of the taxi. It is only then we see that one of her front legs is gone by the knee and Abuelo is clicking his tongue and saying, “Where’s your leg, girl? That’s no good. What has he done to your leg?” Isabel doesn’t know her leg is gone and she’s trying to stand up and walk, but she keeps falling down so Abuelo takes her by the halter with his face close to hers saying things I can’t hear, and like this he leads her away from the car, stroking her nose and helping her to walk. Then, before I can see what’s happening he twists her head so suddenly and—Ya!—she’s lying on the ground with him on top of her holding her head down and covering her eyes to calm her, all the time talking in her ear until she stops kicking and trying to get up. She is breathing hard and her nostrils are big and round, their wind blowing up little clouds of dust on the roadside, moving small pebbles. I can feel this on my face and I can hear Abuelo breathing together in the same time as her and me.

  Abuelo’s machete is still over his shoulder in the fajilla and now he pulls it out with his free hand. He takes it short by the blade and puts it to Isabel’s neck, feeling with his fingers for the heartbeat. When he finds it I can feel it too—like it is my own heart beating. Abuelo makes a strong hold with his other arm and slides the blade in so easy like he is only wiping it, all the time talking softly in her ear. I can hear every word he says and I know everything is going to be OK. Isabel barely moves. There is only her breathing and the bright blood coming, making small rivers in the dust and over my abuelo’s hand, which is my hand also. Slower now comes Isabel’s breath and more easy, her nostrils not so round, and it is the same with me and Abuelo until everything is quiet with only the sound of the wind on the road.

  Sometimes life gives you such things to do, but not everyone can do them.

  If I get out, I promise to them and to you I will make a pilgrimage over the mountains to the church of Juquila. I will light candles there for all of them and I will deliver the little gown César bought for her, the same one I tied to his head. I will tell the priest of César’s sacrifice, and that Juquila must wear it now—just like it is.

  Because it’s coming, closer all the time.

  Sun Apr 8—02:36

  I heard someone crawling in the tank. I heard him breathing—a deep growling sound like an animal. I didn’t know who it was and I had nowhere to go. I was sleeping, but I sit up then with my back against the wall and listen. I can hear his knees on the bottom of the tank, his hands on people’s clothes, but no one makes a sound, only him. When he’s on top of the Maya I turn on the phone and point the screen at him. I cannot recognize the face, the skin is pulled so close over his bones and his tongue is out of his mouth like Death himself. He roars at the light and then comes faster. I keep the light on him and when he’s on top of César I kick at his face, beating him back with my heels. He tries to grab my feet, but it’s hard for him because his hands are wet with something and my shoes come off. I am so strong with fear and every kick is for my life until I hear something break and his head drops down, but I’m afraid he will get up so I keep kicking. He’s lying across César and with my feet I push him off until his head is on the floor of the tank, then with my heel I hit him again and again, but the growling will not stop, it only gets louder, horrible sounds no animal can make, and only when I bite my sleeve to calm myself is it quiet again.

  Sun Apr 8—03:02

  God is giving me one more day.

  How do I know this?

  When I am disappearing over and over again.

  Everything is gone but the waiting. So I wait for my courage to come back because, in here, life and courage are the same. César—all of them—as close to me now as Odiseo in the café where all the laws are broken and no one seems to care, talking all at once but only about water. And you are water also—a cool and beautiful pool. I am swimming in the idea of you and it is keeping me alive. You and César and Abuelo are telling me to think the impossible thoughts, that all these bodies are only that. The throat is an empty hole, you say. The heart is a dry well. Alone in such a darkness I think you can lose your mind.

  Sun Apr 8—03:51

  Yes, it is me again. Because I am doing a difficult thing—searching for water. There is a lot of liquid in here and all of it is bad. I am only looking for the bottles. Looking—no, I cannot bear to look at them, I’m feeling around like a blind thing. My fingers are worms among the dead. The tongues are the worst—so big and hard it makes me gag. Most of the bottles are empty. Some have urine in them and I keep these because this is what a desperado must do. But God is smiling on me today. Or maybe it is you, because there is water. Sí, es un milagro. In a plastic bag tied under a lady’s huipil—some people carry it this way. I can tell by the heavy sewing that she is the Maya from Chiapas. I remember her face because the last time I saw it she looked so frightened and it is hard to frighten those people.

  It is wrong, I know, to put my hands where I put them to find that water. I remember from before, her chichis were big, but when I touch them now they are small, no bigger than the bag of water. This is what the thirst will do and I grow smaller also. Whispering to myself, to her, “Lo siento, hermana, pobrecita. Discúlpame, por favor.” There is only a little bit, but now it is my life, not hers, floating in that bag and I will make it last. Because something is choosing me to live and I have made this bargain. By keeping my pipe a secret I have done this. By taking César’s water.

  Sun Apr 8—04:10

  The tank is filled with light�
�bright as a sun and everything burning. I see their blackened shapes with orange rings around them, mouths open wide and it’s impossible to breathe. I am afraid to look at anyone because what if they look back. What if they know?

  Sun Apr 8—04:32

  I did not pour the Maya’s water into a bottle but sucked it slowly from the bag, each time only enough to make my mouth wet. It lasted longer this way, and with that bag in my mouth and soft against my hands I did not feel so alone as before.

  I live another day, or maybe just another hour. And I try to reach you one more time because this—these words are my machete, and these keys are my rosary, and as long as I am telling them I know I am not dead.