Brujerias

They showed up one day not long after my father passed away. I was four years old and my mother was having another episode. Her disease was getting the best of her and all I remember is thinking that she was in a deep sleep every time it happened.

The last time it happened I was home alone with her because my brothers and sister were escaping their reality of becoming orphans. The only thing that prevented them from adopting this label was mom’s still live body whose presence only provided a false sense of security. All they wanted to do that day was go outside with their friends. Being 10, 11, and 12 years old gave them more opportunities than me to get away. I remember watching them through the living room window thinking how much fun it would be to go outside and play—to just be a kid for a day.

Since I was the youngest, I had to stay with mom and make sure to bring her water when she asked me to. I had to promise to be good and stay inside. “Don’t make too much noise,” my sister would warn. My brothers didn’t say very much those days. Bert would go with his friend Mike and Enrique with Paul down the street. They would ride their bikes around the block while my sister would practice roller skating circles with Adriana and Raquel across the street. They were practicing their routines before going to the roller skating rink on the weekend. A weekly outing that would give my sister the opportunity to enjoy her youth if only for that fragment of time.

When my mother had her episode the last time my brothers and sister went outside, I remember getting on a chair in the kitchen looking through the cupboards trying to find something to give her. I picked up the phone and desperately pressed buttons trying to find someone, anyone—a voice.

I am not sure how it happened. Looking back, I guess I must have hit the redial button, but I finally heard a voice. A familiar voice nonetheless. At the sound of my cousin’s voice, I just started crying because I was so afraid. I didn’t understand what was wrong with my mother. I didn’t understand that her sugar level had dropped so low that she went into a pseudo-hibernation coma. My mother was diabetic and had been since before I was born but I never fully understood how ill she truly was.

They called the paramedics who showed up before they did. All of a sudden, everyone was home. I felt so bad that they yelled at my sister for leaving me alone. Being the oldest, it was her responsibility to stay home with me. She was sort of like a surrogate mother to me at the time, which was truly ridiculous when you think about it. She was only twelve.

The ambulance took my mother and my aunt and cousin took me with them as they had done many times before. My brothers and sister had to stay home to take care of each other and the house. They already went to school.

My mother came home again a few days later and I got to come home too. This was the day that the group of ladies came to do a limpia on the house—a spiritual cleaning. They said that it was my father who was making my mother so sick. He wanted her with him. I didn’t know what they meant, but I knew that it could not be good since my father had died a few months ago.

The main lady, named Velia, was the leader of the group. She had hair the color of fire and a very scratchy voice. She was considered gifted en el arte de la brujería. She was our neighbors mother who had traveled all the way from Texas just to get here in time to fix my mother.

The group of ladies led by Velia consisted of my aunts Chayo, Concha, and Aurelia who was one of our neighbors. They too believed that it had to be my father that was making my mother so sick. How could this widow so young and full of life at the tender age of 38 be so plagued? Thinking back, I can understand that they truly wanted an answer to this question and Velia was the answer at the time. The ritual began at exactly 3 o’clock in the afternoon on a Friday. Friday was the best day for this spiritual cleaning Velia had said.

They proceeded to rape my home of every single image of my father. They sat, scissors in their hands, frantically cutting him out of every family picture including a portrait painted of them on their wedding day. They then went outside in the yard and dug a hole in the ground by the avocado tree that was furthest from the entrance of the house. They poured several ingredients—almost like a recipe, and his pictures in this hole. They took a match to them and watched them burn while chanting something I can’t remember. They poured holy water on them and buried them as if this would completely erase him from our minds. “He was my father not just a picture on our wall!” I wanted to scream. “I don’t care what you do I am not going to forget him!”

My mother was then taken to the kitchen and asked to stand in the middle of the room. A circle surrounded her. It would become a circle of flames. My sister told me that the flames were so high that the women could not put the fire out. The only residue of the ritual was the circle that left its mark on our kitchen floor. Every day we would be reminded of that frightful day. That, and all the pieces of pictures that they left behind. It’s kind of ridiculous if you think about it. They cut him out of every picture and yet left the rest of each of them behind? As if the remaining fragments of pictures would justify their act.

My sister was ordered to wear a tiny white horn around her neck every day to save her from the evil that had set over my mother. Apparently, there was no hope for her but her children could still be saved. My mother did manage to last six years after my father’s death, which was much more than any doctor or bruja could have predicted.

La bruja never came back to the house to cure us or clean the house of all its spirits. I sometimes feel that my mother actually put a spell on them. A spell that would prevent them from coming ever again. A spell that would protect us from all the evils that were fast approaching.

Even after all this time, I still can’t make myself completely forgive them. To forgive them would mean that I understand what they did and why. I truly don’t. I can’t comprehend why the erasing of our family’s memories would be a good thing. I don’t think they understood that those photographs were the only connection that I had with my father. I was only four when he died. Those images of him standing next to my mother were to be our family’s legacy. After all is said and done, this was what we were going to be able to take with us to show our children when we would recount the story of their grandparents. All that is left now in my mind are flashes of that day and all the tears that have come after.

In so many ways, I feel that there is this desire in me to rebuild the past in order to understand everything that we went through. The photos, as unimportant as they may be in the entire scheme of things, were the one thing that we could use as proof of our existence. To say, “see I had a Dad and this is what he looked like.” Or “here, this is when we took our last family trip. We were really happy back then. We had a nice home and this was our back yard. We had a secure family unit that could not be broken.” Until death do us part and so it was that we all were broken apart.

Written 2/2003