Each of Us a Desert Page 2

  “I shouldn’t do this,” he said. “Solís expects better of me. Of all of us.”

  I had it now. With one last tug, I devoured Rogelio’s honesty, and the story became mine. It swam within me: regret struggling to surface in a sea of self-hatred.

  “Gracias,” I told him, and when I opened my eyes, the ritual complete, he was standing above me. He wiped at his mouth, then walked away, leaving me with his regret and guilt.

  I had done my duty. What other need did he have for me?

  As Rogelio’s story filled my body, it jostled for space. It stretched between bones and organs, and I pushed the pain and discomfort down, down, farther away from my heart. I stood and wobbled, trying to separate my own sadness and loneliness from Rogelio’s. They were so similar, and it haunted me every time. You let me keep that part of the memory; the ritual left me confused, bewildered, uncertain where I ended and where the story began.

  I peeked in on Raúl one more time. Still asleep. Same with my parents. If any of them had heard us, they gave no indication.

  So I walked. I turned to the north, guided by the glowing estrella that hung over the distant montañas, and I let You take me where I needed to go. I opened myself to the earth. I climbed up the other side of a gully, and the earth spoke to me. I let it pull me to the ground, the dirt biting into my knees and my palms, brief reminders that I was a guest in this body, that at any moment, You could take me away.

  His story came out of me in great big heaves, and the refuse poured out of my mouth, sharp and thick on my tongue, and it spilled onto the waiting earth, filling the cracks and seeping deep within. I expunged it all, spat it out at the end, tasted its bitterness. I always remembered that flavor; it lingered beyond the ritual every time. On its way back home, back to You, the truth reached out and tried to take me with it, the shame needling my body, Rogelio’s terror my own. I had to fight it; the stories were so desperate to find something to cling to, someone to bond with.

  I gave You his story, and You took it back. When the last drop of it fell to the dust, I stood up and it dissipated. Washed away. There was a feeling that remained as the memory floated off. A sadness. Regret. It was fleeting, like something that had happened to me so long ago that I could not recall the fuzzy details.

  Then they were gone.

  It was the same each time. I wiped the bitterness from my lips, then turned back toward home, the starlight casting me in a glow of purpose. I made the sign to complete the ritual. See the truth; believe the truth. But I could not remember Rogelio’s story no matter how hard I tried. It was what I was supposed to do, and it provided safety to Your gente. They could trust me with their secrets because I could not share them. They were always returned to You, and I was left aimless, purposeless as my mind struggled to remember who I was.

  I collapsed alongside Raúl, much as Rogelio had behind our home, and I curled up on my sleeping roll. The ritual drained me of my energy and of my memory of the story. It would take hours for me to recover, and then …

  Well, I would do it all over again. Inevitably, it would be only a day or two until someone else needed me, and then I would consume their truth, expel the bitterness into the desert, and forget.

  I was Your cuentista, Solís.

  I did my best.

  I promise.

  This is the story that I was told, Solís. Long before Tía Inez gave me her power when I was eight years old, I learned what You had done and what You had asked of us.

  You punished us, Solís. Long ago, You became furious with what we had done to Your world. Greed. War. Terror. Jealousy. Strife. You punished us with fire—La Quema, as we came to call it—and You scorched it all. You burned every bit of it, determined to wipe us away. My ancestors buried themselves in the dirt, though, and when fire and devastation rained down on the land that would become Empalme, they felt the heat itching to rip the skin and meat from their bones.

  But they survived.

  They came aboveground, out from their homes beneath the ash and the destruction, to discover that the earth was blackened, that everything they’d known was gone.

  Never again, You told them, Your voice booming over the flattened landscapes, the arid remains. You must never disrespect my creation.

  This is the story I was told of how las cuentistas were born; You gave some of us the ability to devour the truth of others, and You warned us. We would all know if someone had harmed another, if they had kept their truth from You. The longer one of us went without a cuentista, the worse our pesadillas became. And so we were cast out into the world to ingest what others had done wrong, then return it to You, to the eternal desert. We were spread far and wide, forcing las aldeas to form, each of them around a cuentista. When that cuentista died, a new one would be granted the same power, just as I had been when Tía Inez died and chose me.

  We cuentistas were exempt, too. No one took our stories. We did not manifest pesadillas.

  We were alone.

  I never questioned any of it, Solís. And why should I have? I had never met another cuentista besides Tía Inez; I had never truly ventured beyond Empalme; I had no reason to question anything.

  I am telling You this, Solís, because maybe You’ll understand. Maybe You will have mercy on me. Because even before all of this happened, before I had to flee Empalme, I knew something was wrong. Why did I not have to tell You the truth? Why were my secrets my own, and why had they never become one of those terrible pesadillas? Why did You not punish Julio and his men, who stole our water from us every day?

  I would say that I am sorry, Solís, but I had to.

  I had to leave.

  I woke in a haze. I always did. The remnants of the story I had given up swam within me, so when my eyes opened, regret flooded my mind. What had I done? Why did I feel so terrible?

  It took some time for me to collect myself, and I rolled over to see Raúl and his bushy hair flowing over his face. He was still asleep, and there was a line of drool over his pillow. I smiled at that; it brought me home. It reminded me of where I was.

  I rose and set about my morning chores—change the waste pot if it was my day, get la estufa running for Mamá, feed las cabras—while I continued to separate myself from the residual story. Mamá woke up in the middle of this, then kissed me on the cheek as she set to making some tea for herself. She loved this specific mixture of nettles and rosemary, and the scent of it filled the whole house in minutes.

  But I enjoyed our quiet company. She watched me rush around to get things done. “You hunting agua today?” she asked, stirring the pot of water. “We’re getting pretty low.”

  “Later,” I said. “Have to stop by Lito’s first, see if there are any mensajes for us.”

  “You spend a lot of time there,” she said.

  “Lito is my friend,” I said, slipping on my leather huaraches near the door.

  “Don’t you have any friends your age, mija?”

  I stared at her, delivering my accusation silently before saying it aloud. “Like who?”

  “Well, what about Ana?”

  As soon as the name left her mouth, I watched the realization hit her. She wrinkled up her face. “Lo siento, Xochitl. I forgot.”

  “Do you need anything else, Mamá?” I asked, hoping to change the subject.

  “No. Hurry back, though. I think Raúl wanted to go with you to find agua.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “Did you have a good time at the gathering last night?” she said, and I resisted the urge to groan at her. This again, I thought.

  “Estuvo bien. Food was good.”

  “Do you remember what you ate?”

  It’s true that I was often disoriented after giving back a story, but everyone seemed to believe that I lost entire days’ worth of time, and they always spoke to me as if I were a forgetful child.

  “Estoy bien, Mamá,” I said. “Promise.”

  She turned back to the tea brewing on la estufa. “Well, you know how you get.”
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  I didn’t want to hate her. It was difficult in those moments to control the rage that surged in me. So I let out a deep breath before saying, “I’ll be right back!”

  I looked to her before I left, but she was occupied with her tea. Probably on purpose. How could she forget that my friends were all gone? That there wasn’t anyone but Lito left for me? How could she assume I was so forgetful when she couldn’t remember this one thing about me?

  I pushed the burlap cloth aside and stepped out as the frustration brimmed in me. It wasn’t that I thought my parents didn’t care about me. But I couldn’t bring myself to tell them how I really felt. Would they think I was ungrateful? Selfish?

  I just wanted more. Was that so bad?

  I shook off the exhaustion creeping around my eyes and head, knowing I should have slept off the ritual longer. My body ached, and if I didn’t get more sleep, it would be terribly sore the next morning. I raised my hands above my head and stretched, and a grunt echoed to my right.

  Rogelio’s home was only twenty or thirty paces from ours, and I watched him as another snore ripped through the silent morning. His head had dropped down; his chin touched his chest. An empty bottle of tesgüino was tipped over at his side.

  I may not have remembered exactly what his story was, but everyone knew he was un borracho. He was probably still drunk, even after I’d taken his story. He absolved himself through me, then went right back to it. What was I supposed to do? I only guided secrets out of people; I did not guide them to be a better person. Still, someone should get him indoors before the sun baked him.

  I kept walking, the guilt needling into me. I silently resolved to help Rogelio if he was still outside when I came back. I couldn’t ignore a clear duty when it presented itself to me. It was an unstoppable instinct in me, to do right by others, even if I didn’t want to. And I definitely didn’t want his smelly breath or his sweaty hands on me again.

  María’s vacas snorted at me as I passed them. They sat behind a shaky wooden fence whose posts teetered at various angles, as if they were as drunk as Rogelio. I expected to see María tending to them, as the sun had been up for over an hour at that point, gradually baking the world around us. But she was nowhere in sight, so I pushed on toward Manolito’s.

  My huaraches slapped against the dirt, kicking up dust as I walked, my heart a drum, beat after beat. Not from the activity, but from the anticipation. I came upon the well in the center of Empalme. It was a stone structure, small but dependable.

  I gazed at the men gathered there, trading chisme, their long knives resting on their shoulders or against the well. No Julio. They glanced at me but otherwise did not acknowledge that I existed.

  I was relieved. This was the best part of my day, and I didn’t want them to ruin it. What would Manolito have for me today? What story would he give me?

  I passed la señora Sánchez, who was on her way for her daily allotment of water, and I greeted her, too, but we kept the interaction muted and brief. I picked up the pace after that, distracting myself with thoughts about los mensajeros that Manolito employed, who took packages and letters across the punishing desert up to Obregán, sometimes south to las aldeas that rested against las montañas down there. And what was beyond that? I didn’t know. But those mensajeros brought with them stories. Not the kind that I took from willing bodies, but those of their travels. Of what Obregán looked like. Of Solado, days and days to the north, so far away that few people ever had stories of that place. We were an isolated aldea, our ancestors few, and Empalme lay between two brutal ranges of montañas. I hoped that Manolito had some chisme he could pass along to me, anything that would make my world seem bigger. He was my only source. Los mensajeros did not live in Empalme; they only visited. So few of us had roots here in this aldea. We had a saying: If you left Empalme, you did not come back. As I sped toward Lito’s, I wondered if anyone else craved escape as much as I did.

  Manolito’s mercadito rose above the group of homes built of clay and stone that stood around it, and it was still one of the biggest structures in our aldea. Most of Empalme was constructed of hardened mud, mixed by hand and then left to dry in the baking heat. But Manolito had connections. He knew people, people from cities like Obregán or Hermosillo, real places with mercados that were ten times the size of his own, that overflowed with food and wares from all over. His door was lined with some shiny stone he’d been given, but the rest was made mostly of wood from un árbol that grew only in the desert north of Obregán: whitethorn.

  I stepped up to el mercadito and raised a hand to knock on it, but Manolito must have anticipated me. The door swung open away from me, and I stood there, awkward, my hand raised in the air. He laughed at me, the sound rushing out of him, his dark mustache drooping at the corners. “Xochitl, buenos días. What are you doing?”

  I frowned at him, then shook my head. “You’re up early,” I said, pushing past him into the darkness of el mercadito.

  As my eyes adjusted, he gave my shoulder a squeeze, then shut the door behind us. “Los mensajeros,” he said. “They just left.”

  I raised my eyebrows at him. I was shameless, Solís. “Dame el chisme, Lito. I want to know it all.”

  He chuckled at that, and I shuffled farther in. Ramona sold most of the food in Empalme; everything else fell on Manolito, who stocked anything a person might need. There was a stack of candles, in various colors and shapes, that sat alongside leather water bags. There were books, used and new, that Lito lent out to me if they’d not sold in a while, and I hoped he had something I had not read this time. Clothing, tools for hunting water, tools for hunting for food, building supplies, various pots and pans, rope—there was no real method to the way these things were organized. Despite that, Manolito knew where everything was.

  I ran a finger over one of the shelves, and it came away coated in dust. “You need someone,” I said to Manolito. “Someone to get you to clean this place more than anything else.”

  He grunted and walked slowly past me, toward the back of el mercadito, his shoulders hunched forward, his gait lazy. “There you go again, amiga,” he said, and he headed for the counter stacked high with mensajes. “Always thinking I need a woman.”

  “This dust says it all,” I shot back. “You’re certainly not cleaning it.”

  He looked back at me. “And if I fell in love with someone, they’d get me to tidy up the place? Or they would do it for me? Is that your reasoning?”

  I flashed him a teasing smile. “Are you saying you wouldn’t like some company?”

  He grunted and pulled the pile of mensajes—folded papers, stiff envelopes—into his arms and began to sort through it, quietly reading the names off the front. He handed me one for Mamá from her friend Xiomara, then asked me to drop off one for la señora Sánchez on my way home. When he put them down and gazed back at me, he groaned.

  “I see that look on your face, Xo,” he said, wagging a finger in my direction. “I know what you want.”

  “Tell me a story, Lito. Something new. Something I’ve not heard before.”

  He smiled then, a tender expression. He grabbed a wooden stool from beside the counter and patted the top of it, urging me to sit down. I obliged, and I looked up at him with hope. We did the same song and dance every time, and maybe the details were different, but this was our thing. Ours.

  Did Manolito ever know what he meant to me? What he gave me?

  “I did hear something interesting this morning,” he began, and he would always stroke his mustache, pulling at the ends. “One of my mensajeros—Paolo, you remember him?”

  “Tall, super skinny, looks like he could be a cactus?” I stood upright and still, my arms branched upward on either side of my head.

  Manolito cackled. “I hate when you do that,” he said, “but you’re not wrong. Sí, him.” He took a long swill from a canteen on his counter, then wiped at his mustache. “I don’t know how true his stories are, but he says that miles from Obregán, deep in the desert, he di
scovered a land that makes your thoughts real.”

  “Real? You mean like how Solís does?”

  He shook his head, and a flash of worry flitted across his face. What is that about? I thought, but Lito continued. “No, not like that. He said there is an expanse, a flat land that shines bright as the sun, where everything in your heart spills forth into the sand.”

  I chuckled. “Did he say it that dramatically?”

  “Maybe I embellished a bit,” he replied, smirking. “But I’ve heard stories for years about all the strange things out there. Like las bestias that rule the desert at night. Maybe there’s some truth to it all.”

  “You ever want to leave?”

  He gazed at me, Solís, and the panic slipped back onto his face, a brief glimpse of something more, and he recovered again. “Maybe,” he said. “I like it here in Empalme. Could do without Julio and his gang, but I prefer standing out in a place like this than being drowned in Obregán. Too many people.”

  He observed me, his warm, dark eyes tracing the lines of my expression, and he grimaced. “I know you want to go, Xo. It’s clear as Solís is true. And one day, you’ll get out of here, and you’ll change the world.”

  “But why not now?” I said. “Why am I always too young to see more? To experience more?”

  “You’re the eldest, Xo. Maybe your parents don’t want to let you go yet.”

  I sighed and grabbed los mensajes for la señora Sánchez and Mamá. “Gracias, Lito. For listening.”

  I made to leave and he cleared his throat. I watched him shift his weight to his other leg, his eyes downcast. I knew immediately what he wanted; I’d seen too many people treat me the same way. So I didn’t force him to say it.

  “Today?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  “Is there any chance it can wait until tomorrow? I just listened to Rogelio yesterday, and I’m exhausted.”

  “It hurts, Xo,” he said. “I can feel it. It’s close to breaking free, and … I’m worried.”