The Last Karankawas(20)
She loved him. It was simple. So along with her maiden name, Ofelia put aside her salves and remedios, the jars, the matas. Her molcajete she cleansed and packed away; she bought a new one in Matamoros for grinding chiles and spices for cooking. If neighbors came to Ofelia’s door in the night—whispering of their wife’s susto or their infant son’s caída de mollera—she shook her head, I can’t help you, but passed a slip of paper with the proper measurements of la ruda or a diagram of where to place their hands for the ritual.
Eventually the whispers in the night stopped. Friends who had known her as a teenager grew old, moved out of the Valley, or died. Until all that was left of Ofelia in Brownsville was wife of Roland, woman of the saints.
She hated it, Ofelia realizes now, feeling a pang in her stomach, a short, deep stab. She loved Roland, but she had mourned no longer being Ofelia Vaca. She had lost herself.
“This way, this way! Xander and everyone are waiting.” Beeb gives a little skip.
Ofelia allows herself to be led along the cracking sidewalk with black-eyed Susans peeking through the rifts. Roland picked them when he was courting her. He knew she loved black eyed-Susans—he’d gather them along Boca Chica and the resaca near her house. He’d show up at her door with them bunched in his fist, a sheepish smile on his face, sweat stains at the collar and armpits of his shirt. He still brought them once they were married, usually after a fight but sometimes for no reason other than to make her smile. He was holding some the day he came home with a fever.
Ofelia asked what happened, and he said he didn’t know. He had been at court for a trial and felt fine until the last few hours. His forehead scorched the palm of her hand when she pressed it there; he had sweat through his entire shirt and suit jacket. By the time she lowered him to the bed, he was near convulsing.
Roland, tell me what you did today.
I was in a trial. He was a prosecutor, and often put away violent criminals—a lot of immigrants but mostly just malos, Ofelia thought, trash no matter which side of the Rio Grande they came from. He was convicted. I—I felt sick.
She could see it, the defendant staring at the prosecutor with such envy and hate they bubbled into brujería. The strongest emotions become power; enough desire, fury, grief make mystics of us all. Roland wouldn’t admit it, but Ofelia Vaca could see. Mal puesto.
Te dio el mal de ojo, she said. The evil eye. He stared and shook his head until he fell asleep. She fetched an egg and a bowl of water, her vial of agua bendita. She washed her hands and said a quick prayer for La Virgen’s blessing and guiding of her actions.
He slept and tossed. She rubbed the egg over his head, his face, Yo creo en Dios, across the bones of his shoulders and down his chest, Padre todopoderoso, in circles across his belly and groin, along the lengths of his legs, creador del Cielo y de la Tierra, vigorously against the soles of his feet. Once again, all over, and once more: three times total for the Trinity. When Ofelia Vaca broke the egg into the bowl of water, the whites sizzled and crisped as if by a flame beneath; that was the fever. She peered at the intact yolk, saw clearly the outline of the eye. She sprinkled the cracked egg with holy water. She spat in it for good measure. His sweat would abate now.
Roland woke later and smiled. But as she told him what had happened, fear crept into his eyes and turned them feverish again. Ofelia, he said, don’t ever do that again. We don’t believe that brujería anymore. You understand, don’t you? His hand tightened on hers. We’re not the mojados with common ways and common beliefs that they think we are. This is the twentieth century. You don’t give them cause to think like that. He lifted her hand, Ofelia de los Santos’s hand, to his lips.
“Ofelia, you’re shivering.” Beeb pats her on the arm, concerned. “Are you cold? Put your jacket on, ma’am!”
“I’m not cold,” Ofelia de los Santos replies. She heard her Hector—No, Abuelita, I’m not cold—yesterday as he lay on the living room floor with her hands on his abdomen. She had been sitting on the couch with Magdalena, sipping té de manzanilla when he had walked in from evening practice wincing, hissing. He clutched his side; all day he had been in pain from the stitch in his stomach. Like I can’t breathe.
Ofelia hesitated. It had been years. She was no sobadora. And Oscar was his father’s son—their medicine cabinet full of antibiotics and Pepto Bismol. But he wasn’t there, Roland wasn’t there, only Hector and Magdalena, only she. Magdalena was watching her with those eyes, sharp and dark, nodding as if she could read Ofelia’s thoughts.
Like a snap, a flicker of the candle flame she would soon light, Ofelia could see it as she once did: quick slips of images, shimmers like the rainbow on a puddle of oil. Hector lying on his back on the floor, his shirt off. Ofelia holding a jar, a lighter, a tea candle for the ventosa. The flame of the candle atop Hector’s stomach quivered, a yellow flame with a blue heart dancing. When she placed the jar over the candle, its mouth against Hector’s skin, trapping the candle within the jar, the candle flame shook. It drew into that blue heart the offending air from beneath layers of Hector’s skin and fat and muscle. The skin within the jar puckered, lifted as if pulled, and the flame went out. Hector expelled the long breath of the cured.
Magdalena crossed herself, grabbed the salt shaker, and tossed salt over her left shoulder, muttering words in a language Ofelia didn’t know. Healer woman, she said. Such fuerza you’ve hidden from us. Hector flexed his stomach and laughed. Awesome! How did you do that? So different from his father, his grandfather, that Ofelia Vaca began to cry. Hector patted her shoulder while the tears came down, and Magdalena shushed her like one does a baby. ’ Ta bueno, comadre. Estás bien.