Each of Us a Desert Read online

  They were missing.

  Redness trailed behind him.

  “Mi amor,” he slurred, “please help me.”

  Another voice. It rang out from farther along, echoing to her.

  “¡Mi sabueso siempre te encontrará!” the voice declared. “You can’t escape.”

  She cut back a sob.

  “Mi amor,” Ricardo said, “just a hand, please.”

  He extended it.

  She was so afraid.

  She saw its eyes before anything else, glowing behind her papi.

  And her body pushed her, pushed her away from him, yelled at her to keep going, to save herself, and she obeyed it, Solís, and she heard Ricardo’s voice rise high in horror.

  Then it was cut short.

  Then: nothing.

  She ran. She escaped. She didn’t even try to stop them.

  Marisol begs for Your forgiveness, Solís. She is sorry. She is sorry that she buried this story within her, that she waited so long to tell the truth, but she ran. And ran. And ran. She left it all behind a generation ago, and she started a new life in Empalme.

  And she now believes it all came back to her.

  You came back to her.

  She told me she was sorry. Over and over again.

  Her ragged breath tumbled out of her, and she was covered in sweat. I was, too, and some dripped into my eye, stinging me as I tried to stay upright.

  “Lo siento,” she said, possibly for the hundredth time, and I knew she wasn’t saying it to me anymore. There was a piercing regret now living in my stomach, and it joined all the others in a wave that overwhelmed me. I tried to steady myself on Marisol, but she could barely stay still beneath me. “I have to leave.”

  And so did I. Yet as I stood there, Marisol huffing nearby, her words settling within me as nausea clung to my throat, the same thought penetrated the haze.

  I wanted to leave—because I couldn’t do this anymore.

  Marisol’s guilt tore at me, but I ignored it. How was this my life? How was I expected to consume such horrible traumas over and over again? Now that I had kept so many stories inside me, refusing to give them to the desert, Empalme no longer looked the same to me.

  Mi gente were suffering. Not just from men like Julio, but from You, Solís. From the terror of potential: at any moment, You could take everything away from us again.

  No matter how hard we tried, no matter how much we improved or survived, You could finally decide that You had had enough, and then, You could wipe us all out. All those attempts to keep Empalme safe, every story I took and gave back to You … was that ever enough? Was our nightly celebration pointless, a lie we had agreed to believe?

  How was that any way to live? How could we ever thrive if we were so gripped by terror?

  There was a longing inside me, one that had been building for years, slithering up like the rattlesnakes that hid in the barrel cactus and under the baking stones. Maybe it was selfish of me to want more, but I had to choose for me. Would Empalme be plagued with pesadillas if I left? Would they finally be punished for their misdeeds?

  I couldn’t make this my problem anymore.

  If I gave those stories back to You, I would forget everything. I would forget about Julio, la cuentista who had survived Your wrath. I would forget the true shape of Empalme, the vivid portrait of suffering that had now formed within me.

  They would not forget, though—what I had done or what they had tried to hide in me.

  I had spent the past week lying, but how much of my life was a lie?

  Marisol stood, and I knew then it was time to change.

  “Tell me how to get to Obregán,” I said, and my voice was no longer shaking, my heart was no longer uncertain, my spirit was no longer afraid. “Tell me now, or everyone will know.”

  She shrank away from me. “I could take you,” she said. “If Julio is still here, I can’t—”

  “He and his men left already,” I said, cutting her off. “They’re gone. You don’t need to leave. But I do.”

  Her eyes flashed open, and she brought herself upright, wiped at her eyes. She still seemed so much smaller than she used to be. “Follow me,” she said, and she led me into her home.

  I had never been to Solado, and I did not know if Marisol’s home was an exact imitation of that place, but I still gasped when I descended into the main room. Her home was so much bigger than I had expected. Since she had only tiny windows up near the ceiling, she used candles, set deep within recesses along the walls, to provide a haunting glow. There was an intricately woven cobija hung above her bed, full of bright colors that collided with one another. She crouched down and pulled out a wooden box from under the bed, then searched through it.

  I was still gaping at the inside of this structure when she spoke. “Less exposed to the sun,” she said without looking up. “So it doesn’t heat up so much during the day.”

  I had nothing for her; her story flashed within me, and then I was inside: inside that room in Solado, deep within the earth, as if the memory were my own.

  “It reminds me of home,” she said, and then she looked up, her eyes raw and shining. She rose, and she stuck her hands out, a small leather purse cupped inside them. “Take it,” she said, lifting one of my own hands and dropping it there. “It’s the least I can do.”

  I balked at her. The purse was heavy with coins. “I don’t need—”

  She raised a hand to stop me. “Take the road out of the north side of Empalme. Follow the trail across the hills and gullies, and as long as you’re heading toward las montañas in that direction, you’ll be fine. The path up and over is between two saguaros. They are mirror images of each other. Los Gemelos. It’s the only way across that won’t kill you.”

  “Kill me? What do you mean?”

  “You don’t want to know,” she said, and then she was pushing me toward her door. “Please, I need to be alone.”

  “Wait!” I spun around to face her. “Julio … how did he do it?”

  “Do what? ¿El sabueso?”

  I shook my head. “No, not that part.”

  “You’ll find out soon enough.”

  I balked at her once more, unsure what that meant. “But how did he leave his aldea? How can someone like that abandon their purpose as a cuentista?”

  She tilted her head to the side, examined me. “You are not who I thought you were, Xochitl,” she said. “You remind me of who I used to be.”

  I didn’t know if that was a compliment or an insult. “You have to know,” I said.

  “If you want to find more cuentistas, go to El Mercado de Obregán. Head to the northwest corner. You’ll know when you see them. They might have the answers you need.”

  She grabbed my arm as I turned to leave, and this time, she had the advantage. “I don’t know what you’ve done,” she said. “But are you prepared to pursue this path that’s laid out before you?”

  I smiled and said nothing. I walked out of her home.

  I floated home. Empalme was unfamiliar to me, as if I had never spent any time walking its dusty streets. A darkness sat over la aldea like a shroud, and the shadows grew. I trusted nothing in that terrible silence. Were the others afraid of what would happen next? How long would it be until we reclaimed our rituals and routines? Until we would begin to pour out of our homes once You left the sky? Until Rogelio would serenade us with his mournful voice? Until la señora Sánchez resumed roasting maíz over a fire, handing them to the children and warning them of how hot they were, only to watch them ignore her every time?

  Would all return to normal once I left?

  Yes, I told myself. That had to be the solution. If I left, if I took this plague, this curse, away from them all, they would be fine.

  At least I hoped that was the case. Empalme was silence now. No fires, no meals together, no joy, and no fiestas.

  No Manolito.

  The only sound was my breath. The beating of my heart.

  Cada latida de mi corazón.
>
  This was for me.

  My home had never felt so empty. They were all asleep except for Papá, who sat up against the far wall, reading something. He looked up briefly, nodded at me. Raúl’s sleeping roll was next to him, and he had one hand gently running through Raúl’s hair.

  I smiled at him, drank some water, and then dropped down onto my sleeping roll on the floor. By the time I hit the ground, the decision was made. I would leave in the morning, before the sun was out, and I would tell no one.

  I closed my eyes.

  “Xochitl.”

  His voice was barely a whisper. Through the darkness, I looked back to mi papá.

  “¿Estás bien?” he asked.

  It was his question for me. He never meant it as small talk. It was so common that I could imagine his face, even though my eyes were shut. He did this thing where his eyes opened up, became affectionate, and I crumbled right there, convinced that all my plans had disintegrated in an instant.

  I swallowed. “Estoy cansada,” I said.

  He believed me. He didn’t move from his spot, and as I drifted off to sleep, I heard him say, “Te quiero mucho, Xochitl. I don’t always understand you, but we’ll get through this.”

  I was asleep before I could reply. I was thankful for that, because if I had started talking to him, I would have told him that I was leaving.

  * * *

  I woke only a few hours later, and I almost gave up all the stories again. As consciousness stirred in me, so did all those competing emotions—anger, sadness, regret, fright—and they fought for space in my body. If I thought about Manolito’s lie, about his act of destruction, guilt and terror jolted out to all my appendages. I sat up and saw that Papá had fallen asleep in the exact spot he’d been earlier.

  I knew that I was leaving—leaving him. And Raúl. And Mamá.

  What price was I going to have to pay? And would You exact that price from them instead of me?

  Should I leave? I asked You. I raised my hand, put fingers over my eyes, over my heart. Is this what I am supposed to do?

  When it first began to fall, I did not know what the sound was. It was like thousands of grains of sand had been dropped from on high, and they bounced off the roof of our home. Shadows filled most of the room, so I watched the still forms of mi hermano y mi papá, and I thought of waking them, to ask them to experience this alongside me.

  Instead, I pressed my palms into the ground, levered myself upright, and slowly walked to our doorway. The smell hit me first: something sharp. Bitter. Dust kicked up from below, and tiny pockets appeared in the dirt. I stuck a hand out and—

  Rain!

  I lurched forward and felt the droplets, hot and thick, pelt my body, and I laughed. When had it last rained? When had You last blessed us with something so beautiful, so necessary?

  I lifted my head to the sky, and I opened my mouth. The bitterness hit my tongue, and I choked, spitting it up and returning it to the earth, and I raised my hands up to my face.

  Darkness. The rain was dark.

  I ran my hands down the blouse that I’d fallen asleep in, and they left a stain across the front of it. A brand. A sign. It was red, a deep, terrible scarlet, an impossible color.

  Blood.

  Somehow, I knew it was Manolito’s blood. Blood on my hands, on my body, covering every inch of me.

  I stumbled back indoors and peeled off my clothing in a panic. After I wiped at my skin, I left everything in a soggy pile by the door and stood, naked and afraid, wishing I could bathe and scrape this filth off my skin.

  The others slept. I dressed again in clothes that were clean, free of those horrible stains, and I curled up on my sleeping roll, far away from my family.

  Had it begun? Was this a curse? Cuentistas were not supposed to suffer from pesadillas, but … what was that rain? How was it possible that Lito’s blood had fallen from the sky, had soaked through my clothing?

  I did not sleep for the rest of that night. I kept waiting for the end to come.

  As dawn approached, los pájaros became chatty, chirping and singing to one another. It meant it was time for me to go. They shrieked and sang as I rolled up my sleeping roll and walked as quietly as I could toward the food stored on the other side of the room. There was a leather pack on the wall, and I took that; Mamá used it sometimes when she journeyed to Obregán, but she hadn’t used it in a while. She probably would not miss it.

  Would she miss me?

  No, I told myself. Don’t think that.

  Because if I did, I wouldn’t leave. And I had to leave.

  I glanced at Papá, and then … my gaze fell to the pile of clothing I’d left by the door.

  Unstained. Damp, crumpled, but still clean.

  I could still taste the blood in my mouth, could still sense it running over my skin.

  I refused to leave them with my curse.

  I packed some dried meats and fruits, wrapped some leftover tortillas in paper and took those, and then grabbed one of Papá’s goatskin bags, the ones he’d purchased from a viajero years ago. They were sturdy and kept water cooler than anything else, and I didn’t know how long this journey would take.

  How long would I be gone? What if I didn’t find what I wanted in Obregán? What would I do after that?

  Doubt needled at me, and every time, I had to swat it down, stuff it further inside me with the stories.

  They were awake, and they reminded me of all the horrible possibilities that awaited me.

  I sneaked back to my side of the room and stuffed some clean camisas and undergarments into the bag, just in case this took longer than I expected. I had no real time to consider anything else, so after my sleeping roll went in last, I closed the bag, and looked back on my family.

  It wouldn’t take much time to tell them goodbye, and I wanted to. But I couldn’t linger any longer, couldn’t be pulled back to who I once was.

  One of the buckets for hunting water sat by the door. I grabbed la pala that Papá had made me and put it under the sleeping roll in my pack.

  As I pulled aside the burlap covering on the door and quietly rushed outside, someone grabbed my arm.

  Mamá.

  “Xochitl!” she said, her voice a harsh whisper. “Where are you going?”

  What was I supposed to tell her, Solís? I had lied so many times, and I could have added another, but when she looked at me, her eyes were inviting. She had both her braids laid over her chest and down to her waist, and they shone in what little light there was that morning.

  “I have to leave,” I blurted out. “I need to go, Mamá. To find something.”

  I left the rest unsaid: I need to escape. I need to flee from my own pesadillas. I must find myself.

  She sighed, and I expected her to order me back into our home, to explain everything to her, but she merely reached out, ran her hand over my face from cheek to chin. “You know, we’ve been waiting for this day,” she said.

  “Who?”

  “Tu papá y yo. Estás inquieta, Xochitl. You can’t ever seem to stay in one spot. You’re always moving, even here in Empalme. You have a drive in you that we might not understand, pero lo vemos.”

  My eyes blurred. “Mamá…”

  “Just tell me one thing, Xochitl.” She wiped at the tears on my face.

  “Anything.”

  She sucked in a breath deeply. “Will you come back? Please tell me you are coming back.”

  “Por supuesto,” I said without hesitation.

  But did I mean that? Did I really intend to return?

  She didn’t ask me about being a cuentista. She didn’t ask me about the stories. She stared at me, her eyes glassy, her mouth curled in a bittersweet smile.

  Would Empalme let me return?

  Mamá kissed me on the forehead, held me in her arms briefly. Then she gently pushed me off her. “Go, Xochitl. Find what you’ve been looking for.”

  “Gracias, Mamá,” I said. “I’ll be back.”

  I walked off, trying to
ignore the stone in my throat, the one threatening to make me sob. She knew. Not all my secrets, but she knew more of my struggle, my lies, than I had let on. The guilt was back. Had I judged them all too harshly? Would they have accepted me, asked for my story, if I told them the truth about my sorrow?

  No. It was time to go. I had to.

  I became a solitary procession of endings, of goodbyes, of finales. How long would it be until I saw all of this again? Was this the last time I’d see Rogelio’s porch, his battered guitar resting against the wall near the front door? Was this the last time I’d see Lani’s cabras, who munched on refuse and dried grass? Would I ever see la señora Sánchez again? María?

  Or would it all be unrecognizable? Would I be a stranger to these people?

  I couldn’t stop, though, and there was an uncanny momentum within me. Each step took me farther from home, and each step felt right.

  I passed the town square, and it was empty. No one from Empalme, no trace of Julio or his men. It seemed that they really did leave. We had some rebuilding and healing to do—someone would have to fish out Manolito’s arm from that well—but at least I got a brief burst of relief at knowing that I was not leaving Empalme while it was under Julio’s control.

  I picked up speed, comforted by this thought. Beyond Marisol’s, there was a thick, chaotic patch of crushed wood, still smoking, blackened, demolished. I gasped and tears leapt to my eyes. The remains of Manolito’s mercadito crackled every few seconds, but most of the embers had died out.

  Julio must have destroyed it before he left la aldea, a final act of violence and spite. Whom would he visit his terror upon next?

  Why didn’t You stop him?

  A crackle. A scrape against the dirt.

  My eyes locked on the smoldering ruins. I listened, went still, reached into my training as a hunter, made myself as motionless as possible.

  Nothing.

  I turned slowly, kept my feet rooted to the ground, and to the south, there stood Emilia, tucked up against the side of one of the homes, the light falling onto her face, and she was staring directly at me.