Each of Us a Desert Read online

  “You finished?” he asked.

  I walked over to him, let him kiss me on the forehead. “Sí, Papá. All done.”

  I rubbed at my eyes and yawned. I didn’t have to fake the exhaustion. It hit me fiercely, a rolling sensation that merged with the guilt. Was that my guilt or Manolito’s?

  “Mi hija obediente,” he said. “We’re so proud of you.”

  They know.

  I smiled, or at least I tried to.

  What had I done? I had never heard of a cuentista keeping a story. We just didn’t do it. We wouldn’t dare betray the promise we made to You.

  Would we? I had known only one other cuentista: Tía Inez. And she had passed on mere hours after she gave me her gift. Her curse. I didn’t know what it was anymore.

  What had I done?

  And was Julio really a cuentista? How had he left his aldea without abandoning his people?

  I shuffled over to my sleeping roll. Mamá said something then, but I curled up, turned away from her.

  Raúl was at my side. “Do you want to eat first?” he said. “We were going to meet the others at the fire.”

  I shook my head. “No, hermano. I just need to sleep.”

  “Déjala sola,” Mamá ordered. “You know she needs her rest.”

  They know, they know, they know.

  I let the exhaustion take over my body. I did not dream. I woke up in spurts that evening and into the night: once while the others were still awake, again a few hours later when our home was dark and silent. They must have been at the fire, at the nightly celebration.

  Each time I awoke, Manolito’s story moved inside me, as if it were burrowing deeper, finding a better place to hide.

  I fell back asleep, and I didn’t awaken again until the warmth of the morning pulled me into consciousness. Raúl was snoring softly this time, and I let the sound of it—the normality of it all—convince me that everything was fine.

  It was not. But my anxiety was not as bad as it had been the night before. Instead, it was a gentle pulse near my heart. I lay there, staring up at the ceiling, and I breathed slowly, in and out, waiting.

  Nothing happened.

  No.

  Nothing had happened.

  I pushed myself up on my elbows and looked about our home. Raúl was still asleep, and I could hear Papá snoring in the other room. Was Mamá up? Would she know?

  I breathed slowly again.

  I had done it. I had kept a story for nearly half a day and … I was still alive. You had not punished me. You had not scorched the earth again. We were surviving, as we had always done.

  Nothing has happened.

  There was a muted sense of dread deep within me, but as I kept myself busy, I was able to ignore it. I emptied our pot of waste in a hole behind our home near the old jardín and covered it up. Then I lit la estufa while the others still slept. I brewed nettle-and-rosemary tea for mi mamá, and then I made a large desayuno for myself—huevos from the chickens that María kept, leftover frijoles and tortillas with fresh green pimientos fritos Papá had grown. Sometimes they were shriveled from the heat, but they still stung my tongue with their bite.

  Mamá was the first to rise, and as I gave her tea and el desayuno, she told me about los viajeros, where they had come from, and where they were headed to next. She said that they had given our nightly celebration a much-needed burst of joy. “I almost forgot Julio was even here,” she admitted, sipping at her tea. As I stood there, watching her braids swing back and forth as she spoke, the mention of Julio’s name brought all the panic right back.

  They know they know they know she knows she knows SHE KNOWS.

  I told mi mamá that I wanted to get a head start on some other chores before it got too hot out. As I finished dressing, I caught her staring at me. Her gaze lingered on me longer than I wanted.

  I left quickly and hunted water again, brought back another bucketful a couple of hours later. I focused on every dig with la pala, every squeeze of water into the bucket. It was a necessary distraction.

  The vials.

  The shipment.

  La cuentista among us.

  What was I going to do with this? What could I do? I couldn’t confront Julio by myself, not about his plans or his secrets. And I couldn’t tell my family. How would they react?

  Would they still love me if they found out I had defied Solís? That I might have doomed us all?

  But the story from Manolito haunted me. I tried so hard not to think of it, but it was too easy for all his emotions to come rushing back to the surface.

  So when Papá asked me to accompany him to Manolito’s once I got home, I nearly broke. It was hard enough keeping this secret from those I knew and loved, even from random aldeanos. But from Lito himself?

  I sputtered a response. Papá tilted his head to the side, and his eyebrows furrowed in concentration.

  If I didn’t go with him, he’d become suspicious. He already was, wasn’t he?

  I had to keep the lie going. Just a little bit longer, I told myself.

  Until what, though?

  You burned me. The sun felt so specifically targeted on my skin that I started to convince myself that You were about to destroy me. When we got to el mercadito, I asked Papá if I could stay outside while he negotiated for some new tools.

  “Isn’t he your friend?” he asked. “Don’t you want to see him?”

  The lie came to me, and it was too close to the truth. “I do, but … I took his story last night. I think maybe he needs a little space from me.”

  Papá nodded while smiling. “You’re so considerate, mija.”

  He kissed me on the top of my head.

  His love had never hurt me so badly.

  How was I going to keep this up? How long could I last when his words were like knives in my heart?

  I was initially thankful when Ofelia came rushing up to el mercadito just after Papá went inside. It gave me a chance to think about something else. “Is he busy?” she asked, and she pushed her long hair out of her face.

  “Papá is in there. They might take a while.”

  She examined me. “We haven’t spoken in nearly a year,” she stated, her eyes crinkled up. “Do you have time?”

  The relief was gone. “For a story?” I said, my voice hesitant.

  “Por supuesto. I have no other need to talk to you.”

  Well, at least she was honest. I couldn’t say that for myself, though, and another bout of panic ripped through me. What would happen if I took another story? I couldn’t give hers back; wouldn’t Lito’s follow it? The immensity of what I’d done was undeniable. I had no idea what the ramifications of this choice would be.

  “Right now?” I said hesitantly.

  “Do you have anything better to do?”

  She had a point, and it made me dislike Ofelia even more. I didn’t want to do anything for her or make my situation more complicated.

  But what choice did I have? I could deny her request, and it would be only a matter of time before people became suspicious. If I accepted and then returned her story, I would lose Lito’s in the process. Was I really supposed to give up what I had learned?

  Perhaps. But I couldn’t do that. I just couldn’t.

  I took her story, Solís. She told me the truth about her interaction with Lito the day prior. Her older sibling had cut off contact with her, believing that Ofelia had objected to their imminent marriage. Ofelia believed that she had to attend the wedding. She had not apologized for calling her sibling’s partner ugly and unworthy of their love, but Ofelia was just being honest. Why couldn’t they see that? So every day she went to Lito’s, and every day, there was not an invitation waiting for her. “I hate them,” she told me. “I hope their wedding day is ruined.”

  She left me to drown in her ire. As I gasped for air, I looked up, saw Ofelia roll her eyes at me. “Do you have to be so dramatic about this? You’ll give the story back, and we’ll all be fine.”

  As she walked away, I though
t her shadow was a little bit longer than it had been, a little bit more alive. She disappeared behind a home to the east.

  Solís, how often did mi gente do this to me? How often did they tell me their stories, only to be completely oblivious to what they had done wrong? Had people lied to me in their stories before? How could I even know? I always forgot them when I returned them to You.

  I stood up from the ground and dusted my breeches off, and Ofelia’s anger brushed up against my own. What if this wasn’t the first time someone had treated me like a solution to their problems? How would I ever have known that when You took my memories from me each time?

  Papá came out to find me panting and sweating profusely. Ofelia was gone, but he knew what had happened; he’d seen me in this state before. “Already?” he said. “I was gone only a quarter hour.”

  “She was quick,” I said, but added nothing more. My parents knew better than to ask me about the stories, and so Papá guided me home, his hand on my back, full of love for me. But would he still love me if he knew the truth? If he knew how I really felt? If he knew what I had done?

  I lied. Again. I told Papá that I needed to return Ofelia’s story sooner rather than later. I wanted to visit the mesquite patch, to drown myself in those beautiful poemas, so I set out to the east.

  I couldn’t make it. My heart was beating too fast; sweat poured down my temples. I normally thrived in the early morning heat, but right then, I was convinced it was punishing me. I stopped and caught my breath under the shade of a paloverde, then headed home.

  They bought the lie I told them, Solís. They didn’t question what I had done at all.

  I tried to fill myself up on carne frita and cebollitas that afternoon. But the two stories inside me had destroyed my appetite. I pushed my food around my plate, ate what I could, and then told my family that I needed to sleep more. They all understood. None of them questioned me. This was how it was after the ritual, wasn’t it?

  When I woke up the next morning, the guilt was gone. I lay on my roll, the sounds of the others sleeping all around me, and the warmth of the morning sun inching into the doorway.

  I was still alive. Unpunished. The world had not fallen apart, had not been razed by fire.

  Maybe I hadn’t made a terrible mistake.

  The day oozed by, slow like the sap of the aloe vera, and nothing happened.

  No fire from up above.

  No damnation from You.

  Nothing happened.

  But as Your heat swept over the earth, the threat loomed.

  Something is coming.

  I couldn’t talk to Manolito about it. If I went to el mercadito, he would know the truth about his story. He had trusted me.

  But would he have told me a terrible secret if I weren’t our cuentista? Even if it had lessened his own burden?

  Did anyone actually trust me, or did they trust the role that You gave me? It was more clear than it had ever been: Empalme sought me out because of what I offered them. Were any of these people friendly to me? Eager for my company when a pesadilla was not following them around?

  I just started walking. My body seemed to drag me toward el mercadito, as if Lito were calling it home. Sweat left a sticky film over my skin. I had made a mistake. I had to give up these stories, or You would destroy us all.

  But what if Julio is going to do the same?

  I stumbled into the main square where the well was, adrift. Lost. Pulled by guilt and fright and the terrible dread that, somehow, I was the one who had set this monstrous event into motion. I was the catalyst, the spark of fire that would consume us all.

  What have I done?

  But she was there.

  Emilia.

  Next to the stone well, heaving up a bucket of water, and she turned her head to me, locked eyes.

  My heart jumped.

  Her long hair flowed behind her, and her cold gaze was much like that of her father.

  Julio …

  The idea was tantalizing, como un sueño, como una flor. It unfolded before me.

  There was one person in Empalme who did not know that I was a cuentista, but who knew that Julio was.

  I approached Emilia, and she stilled. Her face—that angular nose, her high cheekbones, her dark brown skin—twisted in anticipation. What was she expecting of me? I thought of the other night, of how we treated her. Maybe she thought I would serve up more of the same.

  I walked up to the well. Made to say something.

  “The guard will be back in a second.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “What?”

  “The guard will be back,” she repeated, and her voice was plain, uninterested. “I can’t let you take any water.”

  I shook my head, both at her and at the assumption she had made. Irritation flared; who was she to say something like that?

  “I’m not here for water,” I said, low and angry.

  “Then what are you here for?”

  The fear bloomed again, and I felt Lito’s story, pressing up against my heart.

  “Where did you come from?”

  She tilted her head, as she had done the last time I saw her. “From far away. To the north.”

  “But where? Obregán?”

  She set the bucket on the ground, and an urge flashed in my mind: Take the bucket and run.

  I ignored it. Emilia was still staring at me, her brows furrowed, her nostrils flaring. Was she angry with me? For what?

  “No,” she said. “Farther.”

  How far? I wondered. What else was beyond Obregán?

  “What do you want?” She spat it at me.

  “Your father,” I said, and I said it like a curse. “What is—?”

  “I don’t want to talk about him,” she shot back. “Is that all you people discuss?”

  I gasped.

  And the words spilled out.

  “Well, it’s not as if you give us much else to talk about.”

  She scowled again. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Do you do this all the time? Play innocent and pretend you don’t know what Julio is doing?”

  Now it was her turn to look wounded. “I didn’t say—”

  “I came to talk to you.” Rage simmered under my skin. “I thought you might have something interesting to say. Guess I thought wrong.”

  And then I began to walk home.

  I did not look back.

  But I was no closer to discovering what horror Julio was about to bring down upon us.

  As I walked, I felt certain that she was somehow still staring at me, that those piercing eyes of hers watched me disappear into Empalme.

  Papá was home when I returned, my skin warm from Your heat. He was fiddling with something near la mesa, where we gathered and ate our meals during the day, when it was too hot to stay outdoors.

  “¿Estás bien, Xochitl?”

  I had my hand up against the wall. I lifted my head and smiled. “Just having one of those days, Papá,” I said.

  He crossed the room, his long hair flowing. “Mija,” he said, and I nearly broke. The softness in his voice rounded off the jagged edges of my pain. He put his hand to my chin, gently raising it to look at me. “Is there anything I can do to help you?”

  He knows he knows he knows.

  I almost told him, Solís.

  I almost let it all spill forth.

  I almost gave him my story.

  He looked upon me with love, with an attempt at understanding, with a desire to know what ailed me. Mi Papá, so certain, so dependable. I could tell him, couldn’t I? Wouldn’t he understand me?

  I didn’t try.

  Instead, I gave him the lie: I was tired. I had more stories to take. I needed to rest.

  I lay on my bedroll as he went back to whatever he was doing. My fingers traced the edge of the stone in the floor, beneath which sat las poemas.

  Soy libre.

  I wasn’t. Not even close. I was trapped here, trapped in Empalme, trapped in the decision I had made.<
br />
  I wasn’t ever going to get out.

  This was how my days passed.

  I hunted water.

  Drop. Soak. Squeeze.

  Raúl came with me a couple of times, but he suspected nothing. He was his usual boisterous self. It was easier and easier for me to hide the truth. The stories were nothing more than a dull pain, a distant reminder of what I had done. I kept to myself, too. The fewer people I was around, the less possible it was that I would be discovered.

  In the evenings, they still came for me. The first time, I was convinced that You knew somehow. That You had sent me more stories to test me, to see how full I could become before I burst.

  But for days afterwards … nothing happened.

  The stories crowded up inside me, each of them still alive, still yearning to be free. Manolito’s cuento burrowed behind one of my ribs, in a place so deep that I couldn’t reach it without tearing myself open. I tried to muster up the courage to go see him, to talk to him. Maybe he would understand if I told him the truth. But it was too terrifying, and I couldn’t lose the only friend I had left.

  He wouldn’t be for much longer, had he known. I convinced myself of that. And as I did so often with Papá, I accepted the lie rather than face the truth.

  Empalme changed so quickly in those days. I doubted what I had done every time someone looked at me, their gaze resting on my face for too long. They stared at me differently. Was I imagining that? I couldn’t be sure, but the paranoia—mine or Manolito’s, maybe both—won out every time.

  Ofelia came again. She told me the same story as before, and I knew then that she had done this to me, over and over, that she had used me not to pass on the truth to Solís, but to exonerate herself. I listened; I took her story; it was a crumb compared to Lito’s, but I could still feel it.

  Omar was next; he had managed to hold off la pesadilla for a few more days, and in a strange way, I appreciated that he tried.

  But then he told me he had cheated on his husband, and while he said it, his eyes went red and glassy. He said he was sorry, that he wouldn’t do it again, that he would try harder this time. I held him, and a thought popped into my mind: He had done this before, too. He would do it again. Was he really sad? Was he performing for me? For his own heart? Did I ever question this before when I took his story? I couldn’t be sure, and the thought enraged me. What was I to these people?