Flesh to Bone

Monette

hunger/hambre/mayantli

luis

Sometimes Luis dreamt of such a terrible, terrible hunger that it filled his mind, his eyes, his touch, even his hearing. The night breeze through the mesquite trees became a lilting scream that pierced his skin with tiny hooks. His hunger was a clawed thing, gnawing its way through his flesh. It made his bones creak. Reduced his heart to a frenzied, hammering thing.

In his dreams, he was always outside his house. Unable to find a door. He hammered on the windows, but no one answered. His mother and his sister walked from lit room to lit room but never saw him. Never heard his cries of rage, his hungered pleas. He kicked the walls until his feet ached. Screamed his throat raw. The hunger drove his body to the ground. Enraged, he gnashed his teeth and hurled himself against his mother’s plants. With both arms, he uprooted the tulipanes and bougainvilleas. With his teeth, he shredded the leaves and splintered the delicate branches. His hands plunged through the earth, bringing up soft wriggling things that made no sound when he smashed them. Hunger wrapped him in its razored arms and skinned him.

Away from his bed, Luis never remembered his dreams. Awake, he hardly thought of food. Every morning before school, his mother rose to make tortillas, chorizo or bacon scrambled with eggs, and fried papitas or beans. After a few bites, he always pushed it away. At school, he’ d forget to eat lunch. Dinner he could never escape, though. His mother wouldn’t let him leave the table without eating at least half of what was on his plate.

Tonight was no different.

Luis watched his mother bring their dinner to the table. The flickering light of seven candles sent golden streaks across her face, her dress, the table, the serving bowls. The golden flickering battled with the kitchen’ s harsh fluorescent lighting. His sister Luisa’ s long hair kept slipping out of its loose braid, her hands fluttering as she set the table. She muttered words under her breath. Strings of words that spooled themselves around the chairs, the table, the cupboards, the stove. Sometimes she’ d pause and repeat a word as if tasting it. Luis had stopped listening a long time ago. His mother took her seat, her eyes intent on his plate.

luisa

sollozo sollozar llorar olvidar recordar recuerdo iluminar luminiscencia luminosidad reflección espejo cara retrato pintura luz. She embroidered her day with words, words like rays of light, words like flowers and butterflies and bird wings. She didn’t need music, just words. Words pulled from the sky, the light, the walls, the people she saw in the street or at school. Words lived under and on and in everything. She caught them, hiding them in her mouth. She tasted them, testing their shape with her tongue, her teeth, the roof of her mouth. Sometimes she held them in her hands. She liked to hollow them out, pressing with her thumbs, scratching with her nails. The faintest scratch and entire sounds would fall away. She liked the unknown shapes in words. Liked to open them to the eye. Liked words that sparked with one meaning when they were held up to the light and another meaning when she took them to the shadows. A tree that was a cloud that was a silver fin that was a drop of water that was the aching curve of the moon.

She only wanted to be left alone, swimming through the words that caught her eye, the words that she could touch and taste and listen to. She needed only those words. Not the streams of unimportant words spoken by her mother, her brother, her teachers, her classmates. Because she had to, she’ d learned to keep the words dancing in her head, behind her eyelids, when she was at school. The day was a long wait to return home where she was free to release all the words pent up inside her. Words that spun and twirled, words that writhed and burned and tickled.

So many people talking at her all day. She met them with silence though she knew they expected responses. They wanted her to string words together, not understanding that her tongue could not tame the words, could not order them nicely in simple lines. Words poured out of her in cold blue streams, winding and crashing against rocks. At every moment, words thundered inside her skull. She was adrift in an ocean of words, treading water, resisting undertows, swimming towards some strange shore, arm over arm, breathing when she could. She was searching for the word that would unlock all the other words. The word that would keep the world from spinning away. The word that would name the earth she stood on and the body she breathed in.

adrian

He wandered the cemeteries, watching the families feed their dead on this day. They set up tables or small mats by the tombstones and laid out bright yellow flowers, paper marigolds, small glasses or entire bottles of tequila or rum, cigars, pictures, statues of saints, wax candles. And more food than even the dead could consume. They led their children to the tombstones, hands tracing the names and dates engraved on the cold stone.

Adrian tightened the belt around his waist, moved away from the living, and squatted down on the ground to wait.

Such food. Tamalitos de res y puerco, machacado con huevos, arroz con pollo, pollo en mole, pollo en salsa verde, flautas de pollo, caldo de pollo, caldo de res, fideo con carne, barbacoa de cabeza, fajitas y chilaquiles y enchiladas de res, de pollo, y de quesito blanco, menudo y tortillitas de maíz, frijolitos refritos, frijolitos recien hechos y frijoles a la charra, cabrito asado y carne guisada y calabaza con pollo y nopalitos.

Adrian could only sigh at the aromas floating and circling above the cemetery. As dusk arrived, the families lit candles and gathered around to offer prayers and memories. A hundred golden lights flickered in his eyes. He’ d stopped waiting to hear his name a long time ago. No one here remembered him. No one here had ever heard his name. Sometimes even he struggled to remember that his name had been Adrian.

By midnight, everyone was gone. Adrian rocked himself to standing, taking the first few steps stiffly. The dead wouldn’t share their food, but sometimes, when they were fed fat, they would sink back into the ground or fall asleep against their stones. He walked quickly, swooping down like a taloned bird, seizing a tamal, a taquito, ocasionally an empanada de camote. He stumbled over a child’s toy, cursing when he dropped the empanada. As he ducked back into the stretch of mesquites along the road that was the cemetery’s southern border, he heard the taunts of the dead: sin gente…olvidado.

He could make no response. He had no one. He was forgotten. There was no tombstone, no cross or wooden stick, nothing to mark his resting place. What was left of him lay under a slightly sunken square in the ground. The grass there was yellow and dry, conquered by the sandy ground.

bertha

Bertha was sitting at the table, telephone in the crook between her shoulder and her ear. She talked while her hands and eyes darted through the pile of dry pinto beans, sorting them into two piles, one for the trashcan, one for the boiling pot. Luis’ godmother, her comadre Minerva, was on the phone.

"Mini, I don’t know what to do with my children—

"Yes, Luisa’ s still doing that. Not a word of English. And nothing she says makes any sense. Her teachers don’t know what to do. She’ s already started high school. What kind of future is she going to have if she refuses to speak English? Last week, one of her teachers came out here, thinking it was my fault—

"Yes, Mini, but what am I supposed to do? They tried putting her in bilingual classes. They checked her IQ and her hearing and her vision—

"What does she say? She doesn’t say anything—

"Oh, Luis? He’ s also worrying me. He still won’t eat anything. He’ s so skinny, Mini. All his clothes hang on him. You’ d think I was starving him, or that we didn’t have anything to eat—

"What’s wrong with my children, Mini? They seem to be in another world, both of them always dreaming. They barely speak. I don’t know what to do—

"Yes, I know it’s better than having them getting into fights or taking drugs or running around in some gang, but they’re such strange children. It wasn’t so hard when they were little, before Jose left—

"It has been hard, raising them on my own. It feels like a huge rock fell on this house and flattened it. Like we’re living in a black crater, far away from everyone else. It’s always so dark, comadre. It’s always so dark—

"Thank you, Mini, I hope so, too—

"That’s okay, go ahead, but call me this weekend—

Yes, thank you. Bye-bye.

luis

He went to school every day but retained no memory of it. His classes, like his dreams, left only faint impressions. Shadows. Trails. Vanishing points. His body moved mechanically, the joints programmed to bend, the limbs to walk. His body sat, his arms moved, but only his eyes were alive, swallowing outlines and light, the shifting of cloth against bodies, the shifting of flesh against bone. Alone, he’ d stare at trees, his eyes tracing the grooves and gnarls in the bark, pacing the trickling fall of light through the leaves, watching the wind. The world was a great silent place. He was deaf more often than he knew, but sound didn’t matter to him—only shadow, shape, motion.

His favorite part of the day was the bus ride home. Whether he had the seat to himself or not, he was alone when he stared out the window. His eyes drank everything in: clouds in the sky, palm trees and oak trees and cottonwoods, houses like little painted boxes, orange groves and cornfields and sugar cane fields that bordered neighborhoods and trailer parks and solitary businesses, little kids playing in front yards and side streets waiting for their siblings, women stripping the clotheslines, men working in the fields, men in dark suits driving large pickup trucks, women in small cars adding more lipstick and staring intently at their reflection, the sun glinting off of everything. He could touch all of it with his eyes, remember it with his eyes. Lines. Colors. Shadows. Curves.

Always, it took him a second or two to recognize his own house when the bus stopped in front of it. A blue house with white trim that needed a new coat of paint. Small and square, with a roof that sagged over the living room. Through the rusted screen door he could see the living room sofa and the kitchen’ s golden glow. It was the last house in a row of six houses on a caliche road. The fallow fields behind them were a rippling brown ocean.

The bus raised a cloud of dust as he swung open the gate.

Luis walked in through the front door, the heavy scent of burning wax greeting him. There was flickering candlelight everywhere. Candles on the coffee table, the windowsills, the table, and the kitchen counters. Their light was insignificant with the sun’ s late afternoon light streaming in through the windows. But Luis knew that as the light faded and the darkness grew, each candle would grow in radiance, flickering madly with the night breeze.

When he was little, his mother had kept only one candle lit, on the altar in the hallway. He’ d wait until he was alone in the hallway. No father, no mother, no sister. Then he’ d reach up, careful to lift the candle by its cool base. One more glance each way to be sure no one would see him. He’ d kneel on the ground, tilting the candle until wax pooled on the floor’s smooth surface. Then quickly back up to replace the candle, and back down to watch the translucent wax regain its color and opacity. He’ d dip his fingertips into it then stand up carefully, running to touch everything he could think of, fascinated by his slightly deadened sense of touch.

luisa

Today it was trees, branches, color, and the sky. árbol encinos ramas ojas verde azul dorado cielo. Somedays it was animals. animales, jirafas, vacas, perros, elefantes, pájaros, leones, tigres, osos, águila. Tomorrow would be dichos. el sol es la cobija de los pobres. quien con la esperanza vive, alegre muere.

The words were honey in her throat, her body trembled almost as if the words falling into her were rain and she a leaf. They spilled out of her while she slept, painting broad streaks of color on the floor, on the bed, thick and gorged around her mouth, heavy on her throat. She’ d wake up an hour early to scrape and peel and wash it away before her mother came to wake her. On the first night, two years ago, Luisa had spoken in scarlet and woken covered in crimson splatters and gashes. Her mother had tiptoed into the room, hesitant as she always was in the dark. Luisa opened her eyes when she heard a match struck, knowing her mother was about to wake her. She’ d felt an unfamiliar warmth in her mouth, on her neck. She touched her fingertips to it and saw that they were red at the same moment her mother began to scream.

Her mother fled the room. When Luisa entered the kitchen thirty minutes later, clean and dressed for school, it was ablaze with light. Her mother would not meet her eyes. Had not met her eyes since. Luisa understood. The silence between them had been growing since her birth. Her mother watched Luis’ stretching and unfolding with delight and tenderness in her eyes. But watching Luisa’ s body lengthen and curve caused her mother only discomfort and wariness. Without words, Luisa understood there was something dangerous about her body that her mother needed to ignore. Her mother demanded little of Luisa—only that she sit, that she eat, that she go to school, that she help with the housework, that she make no demands. Ask no questions.

And so she didn’t. Luisa lived in her words. They were all she needed. The days she spent in silence or in torrents of words. At night, she dreamed words and tasted their colors. There were nights of pure blues, arcs of yellows, violets and magentas. Nights of harvest words and colors, all earth and leaves and sky. Most nights it was a chaotic blend, clotted and smeared across her face by her movements against the pillow. She slept always with the same muddied sheet, thick with paint and words.

adrian

He was hungry again, but the Day of the Dead was long past. The food was gone. The paper flowers lay tattered against the fence. There were no live flowers.

Time passed strangely. Sometimes it seemed whole seasons had passed in one day’s or one night’s rest. He woke sometimes with sunlight, sometimes with the darkness. It wasn’t physical exhaustion that drove him to rest, there just came a moment when he couldn’t will himself to stay aware, couldn’t will himself to move. And then the shadows covered his eyes and he was gone. Until he woke up again.

He was unable to make himself known to anyone, unable to interact with the living, unable to go beyond the boundaries he’ d discovered long ago. He could wander all over the cemetery as long as he stepped on no graves. He couldn’t pass over the northern or eastern cemetery walls. To the west were twenty acres of orange trees he’ d seen bloom and burst with fruit five times. To the south was a caliche road running parallel to an irrigation canal. That road he could follow until the train tracks. There were dead there who would not let him pass. The cemetery dead mostly stayed underground, rising up only when they had visitors—and then it was the same words, the same stories, the same rising up only to sink back beneath their tombstones. The restless dead were different. They never rested, not even for a day. Their empty eyes warned him away.

The drifting shadows hadn’t come for him in a long time. He’ d been awake since the Day