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Dog Days
women is like sirens of the psyche, the disembodied voice comes from
every direction, close and far, above and below, and somewhere in
there is the thin snore of the gringa. I cannot even draw assurances
from my adopted family, even though they are somewhere close. Rey-
na, still a child, grabs my arm, and alarm runs up into my neck from
the electrified grip. All the liquids in my body want to fulfill their grav-
itational imperatives. My lips can’t find each other.
Night Place
Don Lucas, always one to dive into the breech, asks the female at-
tendants if the Mundos (world) would fetch his mother, before he in-
quires about me. The request is made, the voice goes down a hallway,
opens an auditory door, brings forth the sounds of an aged woman
who complains about being bothered during her siesta, but who lets
herself be brought back to the table. It is just past noon down there.
Don Lucas asks how she has fared in Shbilbaj. I could picture clearly
her wrinkled face, recalled her giving me her last good corte (skirt),
one of the old green style of fine icat of half a century ago, saying they
would just toss it in her box, what a waste, when she died, which
she planned to do the following Friday, on 13 Dog, a lucky day to
go out. I remember her titter. Now not a month later, and she sound-
ed the same. Complained about the belt Hurricane Owl had insisted
she wear, a canti, a nasty viper, always biting, biting, because she did
not teach the kids to weave. That is why it is good about the classes,
where they learn to weave. Reyna is translating for the parts I don’t
catch, gasping. You thank Don Tun Ka an for me (that same titter)
about the weaving (she and the kids always made a joke about my
name, because in Kíicheí it sounded like “angry ass,” a condition that
often befalls the bowels of outsiders). The dead woman was refer-
ring to the weaving project I got started with money from the Mars-
den Foundation to teach women in the community who had stopped
weaving when cheap commercial fabric came in, now that that same
fabric had become dear. But how did the Mundo man know all this?
Could I have fallen asleep somewhere along this path? No, I can see
in my dreams!
