Ashes for Abuelita

It is Mexican tradition that moral stories and fairy stories for children are more like horror stories. There’s an understanding in the Mexican culture that the child is not interested in the sugar-bubblegum-pop. Rather, it is in the grotesque that has been swept under locked doors that the child finds humanity. They pop the stories in their mouth like a dulce de tamarindo, a tamarind candy, and they savor the sour and spice.

It is no surprise, then, that the folklore of Mexico is riddled with loss and danger and the death of children. It is also no surprise that these stories, like all of the great stories, extend a hand toward la muerte, toward death. And just as a character may die, they may come again as a spirit to dance with the living, as if death were simply a step in a cumbia.

These stories migrated north with those who carried them. La Llorona swam to Central Texas and into Woman Hollering Creek. Chupacabras were smuggled into Southern California and earned a rap sheet from many a bewildered rancher. El Cucuy drove to Iowa’s onion country to spook migrant children to sleep.

My grandmother carried her stories like precious stones in a coin-purse when she snuck into the border of Southwest Texas. As an old woman, she’d make hot chocolate on her gas stove for us nietos, us grandkids. The chocolate was called, as she was, Abuelita. An Abuelita is a Mexican grandmother, though I suppose a grandmother needn’t be Mexican to be an Abuelita. She’d pour us the hot chocolate and sit us on her cool grass outside. Then, she’d tell us her stories, pulling one precious stone out at a time with a delicate hand, a delicate voice, till none remained.

At her funeral, I told the story which we nietos, we grandkids, agreed was our favorite. This was the story I told at the funeral.

There was a school-house built by the church mason of the Catholic Church out of planks and nails and nothing else. The school-house was used by the Catholics to host Catechism.

Catechism was where volunteers taught the principles of Catholic worship. In this school-house, one volunteer taught that the devil was a snake in the Garden. Another taught that the devil was, in fact, a dragon in the Garden. Consequently, the children learned that the principles of Catholic worship were very much subjective.

On top of that, there were many a boy and girl stuffed in the school-house on Wednesdays and the school-house was hot. As such, the boys and girls were always eager to escape.

It was one such eager Wednesday evening that Catechism let out, and a group of three girls burst through the school-house doors. The girls chased themselves out through the dreary desert the school-house was built in.

Every Wednesday, the girls would walk themselves home. The walk home was long and dusty and hadn’t a figure in the dirt plain but the cactus shaped like men, and the bundles of snakes, the type that kill for free. It was Winter, so the desert grew dark quick and grew cold quick. The girls’ breath formed a mist, like ghosts.

One of the girls was called La Alta because that was Spanish for the tall one, and she was tall because she was old, because she was retained a grade. One of the girls was called Lentes because that was Spanish for glasses, and she wore big ones. The final girl was called Pelirojo because that was Spanish for redhead, and her hair was the color of catsup.

La Alta teased the other two about La Lechuza, about the owl who was really a witch and could rip a hole in your soul. She always did so on their walks.

“Oh sheezus,” Lentes always said.

“I don’t believe it,” Pelirojo always said.

And La Alta would always tell them to believe it because they might encounter La Lechuza one day in the desert, if it was cold and dark and they heard a hoot-hoot in the distance.

Lentes always mentioned that her grandmother had seen one when she was a kid.

And La Alta would always reply that Lentes’ grandmother was old enough to have seen a dodo, so there was no way she remembered being a kid.

And Lentes would defend her grandmother’s honor and flip La Alta like lucha libre.

Pelirojo would always step in and say things like, “Come on, you can play girlfriends at home because look how low the sun’s got.”

And then Lentes and La Alta would always agree and make up and laugh and continue walking, like friends did.

By this point, the girls would always encounter the fence line of an old ranch stranded out in the desert. That fence-line meant a few more miles till home, and they always followed it. There was something new on this particular Wednesday night, however. It was then that they heard the double-sound, like a squawk layered on a woman’s cry of pain.

Out in the distance, the wire of the fence-line thrashed. The girls could see wings fluttering off the fence. A bird was stuck in it. The girls approached, and to their morbid surprise, they spotted La Lechuza, the owl who was really a witch and could rip a hole in your soul.

The girls were chilled.

As a natural leader, La Alta voted to sprint past and sprint fast, because Lechuzas were no joke, so let’s haul ass.

As a natural wuss, Lentes voted to follow her.

As a natural skeptic, Pelirojo voted to help the animal.

“If you die,” Lentes and La Alta said, “that’s on you.” Lentes and La Alta zipped off, lifting a cloud of dust at their heels. They wailed as they beelined away, deep into the desert and off their beaten path home.

Pelirojo gulped and approached the creature. With each step, the double-sound of La Lechuza grew hypnotic. Pelirojo felt dizzy and detached, like the time the girls snuck into her Tio’s shed, her uncle’s shed, and drank his hooch.

It was night now. La luna, the moon, was like a blind white eye watching over the night.

Pelirojo heard a voiceless voice, a language that bypassed the use of sounds and words and communicated a message directly to the mind. Her instincts told her it was La Lechuza speaking to her.

The words slithered through her brain and through her blood. The words said, “I’ve seen you in the church and in the hall.”

Pelirojo locked eyes with La Lechuza. Familiar eyes, Pelirojo thought.

“I’ve read the doubts in your mind. The itch to contradict the teacher-man and the preacher-man.”

The owl’s screech had reduced to a whimper. Whimpers of pain. The wire wrapped around the owl’s foot, spilling the foot’s blood.

“I’ve seen your deeds, too. Those past and those to come. I’ve seen you free me of this bondage.”

Pelirojo was engulfed in the living language. She felt some part of her mind adapt to the language, access it. “But what,” Pelirojo responded, “will I receive in return?”

La Lechuza’s beak stretched at the corners into a smile.

“I will be your Virgil in this desert. I will guide your way home. I can see into the many possibilities of your future. In many, you die, because the desert is danger in the dark.”

Pelirojo winced at the pain in her palm. She grabbed her wrist. Her palm bled. Without realizing it, Pelirojo had unfurled La Lechuza from its bondage as they spoke. She cut her palm on the wire. Perhaps on the talon of the owl itself.

La Lechuza hung in the air above her, barely straining a wing to do so. La Lechuza cocked her head as if to say, “Gracias, Mija, thank you.”

La Lechuza called a graceful whoop into the night. With an unerring precision, she led Pelirojo through the dark and dangerous desert to Pelirojo’s front porch. The Lechuza perched on the railing of the porch. As the girl entered her home, she turned to bid La Lechuza a good night. But La Lechuza was gone.

Meanwhile, off in the desert, the other two girls wandered aimlessly. La Lechuza soared its impressive wingspan above their heads. She croaked out a menacing hoo-hooooo, which set the girls off running and crying.

La Lechuza looked into their futures, into all their miserable possibilities of the night. There were possibilities in which the girls made it out alive. But those possibilities required the guidance of a grateful owl.

La Lechuza chose not to interfere with fate. Her silhouette crossed the moon, then she disappeared.

Pelirojo had her catsup-colored hair brushed and braided by her Abuela. She’d been given, much like we always were, a mug of hot chocolate and a change of clothes. Pelirojo told her Abuela of her adventures in the desert. She didn’t understand why La Lechuza would help her.

“Abuela,” she said, “I thought witches were wicked.”

Her Abuela simply listened and nodded and explained the wisdom of the night.

“Witches may be wicked. But the wicked are capable of the righteous, as are the righteous capable of the wicked.”

*****

At the close of this story, our Abuelita would collect our crusty mugs, and she’d say gallantly that this story really happened somewhere in the deep of Mexico. She’d look us in the eye and say she was in this story somewhere, that she was one of the characters. She never told us, however, which character her spirit belonged to.

I always wondered if she was the brave girl with hair the color of catsup, the skeptic with a kind heart. If she was the wise grandmother, who knew the answer to life’s mysteries. If she was La Lechuza, who could rip a hole in your soul and see the possibilities between death and life.

After the funeral, we the nietos, we the grandkids, migrated to Abuelita’s house with our families. We made our kids hot chocolate. Abuelita chocolate on the gas stove. And we sat them outside and we told them our stories, pulling one precious stone out at a time, with a delicate hand, with a delicate voice.

Afterward, we started a cumbia circle in the yard, and then we capped the night with a round of hot menudo.

I left the house during the menudo to smoke a cigarette outside, under Abuelita’s giant pecan tree. Smoky Stars, Abuelita’s favorite.

I followed the trail of smoke curling off my cigarette up into the sky, up into Abuelita’s tree. Up in a high branch, I saw La Lechuza. Her beak stretched into a smile. I was unafraid. She took a breath of the smoke, closing her eyes.

La Lechuza called a graceful whoop into the night, and with an unerring precision, it flapped into the sky. Her silhouette crossed the moon and then dissipated like the trail of my cigarette.