Janferie Stonewhen the woman was in the midst of transformation, with her flesh
coming off and the bones appearing:
She opened the door and was transforming herself when her hus-
band saw her. She was transforming herself but she was there with
four legs, she was talking, talking, talking. But what was she say-
ing? Now she was there half changed and the part below was what
was left. Now she had the upper body of a ram. But yes, she spoke.
Then she was saying, “Peel off flesh, peel off flesh.” When the man
looked again, she was an animal, a ram, a male goat.
[Later] a longhaired ram entered. Then it leapt twice and said,
“Come up flesh, come on up.” First it was peel off, peel off. As it
leapt it took the form of a skeleton. It wanted to become a person
again. “Come up flesh, come on up,” it said. Little by little the
flesh rose up, and it became a woman. (Warren 1998, 103–104)
Warren focuses on this moment of transition, being half woman,
half (male) animal, as that which is most abhorrent to the Trixanos.
The story frames the nexus of betrayal by linking such transforma-
tions to certain persons, known as rajaw a q a, “masters of the night,”
humans with the ability to become spiritual animals, with malicious
intent. The bones dress in flesh in order to deceive. But focus on this
moment, when the human strips to her bones and descends to animal
posture or its reversal upon return also evokes the ambiguous states
before birth and after death. Bones, detached from their coverings of
flesh and cloth, reveal gender only with study.
The skeletal figure has deep roots in Maya culture; it is found on
ceramics and in glyphs from the earliest periods of Maya civilization.
The power of the skeletal being is animated in contemporary times
through stories of calaveras. Such beings may appear as fleshly women
to unwary drinkers out on the road at night, luring them into the for-
est for sexual escapades, only to reveal their skeletal selves in order to
devour the hapless men. The tie between sex and death is emphasized
by one tale that Vera told recently: a calavera (male) knocked on the
door of a newlywed couple’s house to engage the husband in a deadly
battle; the calavera (leaping and turning in the air each time) trans-
formed from one animal into another and then another and another,