After closing all her tabs and sneaking out of the restaurant an hour early, Xitlali jumps into her 2004 Ford Taurus with over 138,000 miles on the engine and leaves for the complex, fifteen minutes away. The air is thick with blaring lights like cheap knockoff suns. Every stoplight turns red, as though trying to slow her reaching Jose Benavidez. Xitlali uses these short pauses to turn and sort through her messy backseat, littered with clothes, various documents, and crumbs from the many dried herbs she uses day to day. I gotta make time to sort through all this shit. Always something. Juan Gabriel sings sadly through the radio.
As Xitlali pulls up to the apartment complex’s box to enter the code, she can feel music and taste food grilling. She’s so hungry she can’t think of the code. Notepad out, she looks for the page, flipping through scribbles on other cases she’s solved.
Mayra Montevideo — Heights
Curse from a lover
Space purified with Sage, Oracion
Salvador Trujillo — Midtown
Rashes from bad energy
Recommended oils and scents
Referred to Curandera Gabriela Herrera who specializes in herberia, Oracion
Muriel Falfurrias — East End
Fevers
Blessed her belongings & space, Oracion
Xitlali gains some confidence, remembering she helped solve these cases and many more in her other notepads. This will be no different... but I have a bad feeling.
As she parks, she sees where the sounds and smells are coming from. In the apartment complex clubhouse a quinceañera is underway. Xitlali can tell from the strobe lights, cumbia pounding out from speakers, the drunk uncle standing before a grill loaded with carne asada, and a young woman in a light-blue dress with rhinestones lined vertically on the bustier, sequins and pearls in a swirl design on her belly, the gown raining down the rest of her body like thin tissue. Her silver crown peeks out of her hair, styled in a bouffant. She’s gorgeous.
A grand sadness yearns out of her heart. Xitlali hasn’t spoken to her own daughter in twelve years. She tries not to think about it. There used to be a picture of her daughter on her dashboard, but Xitlali took it down awhile ago, so as not to be reminded. Bad energy for the job. She looks at the spot where it was, a patch of plastic darker than the rest of the dashboard. Twelve years. Not a word. I can’t do anything about it right now. Twelve years, carajo. Her tire bumps into the curb, waking her from her trance.
Xitlali gears up: three vials on a chain around her neck (one full of sage, one of holy water, and one with a tiny doll made of wire and various colors of string), ajo in her pocket, and a case of tools and containers with crystals, holy water, and herbs.
What makes Xitlali special is that she goes deeper than most curanderas. Rather than just addressing the symptoms of a haunting or bad energy, she investigates what caused the problem. Her clients love this about her.
She finds apartment 13 and knocks. She can feel a headache coming on from hunger, and her ankles are swollen from standing around all day.
“Yes?” a man yells from behind the door.
“Xitlali Zaragoza, curandera.”
Locks clink sharply behind the door.
“Come in, please,” the man says. He’s light brown — skinned, in his early thirties.
“Jose?”
“No, he’s my partner. I’m Rolando. I’ll let him know you’re here.”
There are unframed photographs all over the walls, ranging from portraits to landscapes to abstractions, some color, some black-and-white. One in particular stands out to Xitlali: a shoulders-up portrait of a young man. He peers at the camera — beyond it, at you — and his eyes portray a deep lethargy or an accepted sadness. If there’s a difference. Xitlali stares into the picture, entranced by his eyes, which are unblinking, watching ceaselessly. You cannot return the gaze. His gaze has power over you. That is its beauty.
“Ms. Zaragoza, you like my self-portrait?”
Xitlali looks at the young man in the picture and the young man now standing before her. They are the same person, except that the one before her has eyes and an aura that aren’t as strong.
“Oh, yes. I love this piece,” Xitlali says.
“I took it after I had a nightmare,” Jose says, rubbing his neck with his right hand.
Xitlali pulls out her notepad and pen. “What is this dream?”
“Can we sit down?”
“Yes, of course. But the dream. Digame.”
“Why? It’s nothing really.”
“If you want me to help you, you must answer my questions. Everything I ask, say, and do is to help. Entiendes?”
“Yes, of course. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. Go on.”
“It starts with me in a room, surrounded by mirrors. I’m wearing jeans, a white shirt, and these really tall high heels. I’m staring at myself. I can’t leave or move, and I work myself up into a panic. Then my father appears and looks right into me. I can’t talk. I can’t do anything. Then I wake up. It’s funny — in that self-portrait, I’m trying to make the face he made in the dream.”
“Why do you think you have this nightmare?”
“Well, because it really happened. My dad walked in on me wearing heels and gave me this angry look. In the dream it’s more melancholic, but in reality it was rage. Every time I have that dream, it reminds me of how disappointed he was in me.”
“Was?”
“We stopped talking when I came out, and he died a few years ago. We never really reconciled.” Jose’s eyes well up. His partner rubs his back with one hand, but Xitlali can sense anger and helplessness from within Rolando.
Xitlali feels the same sadness from earlier creep up within her. He must feel awful for never reconciling. It causes bad energy. I know the feeling. Shit, not right now, Xitlali. She concentrates on the job. There’s a lingering feeling of regret haunting Jose. If I can find a connection, we can finish this quick.
Rolando speaks: “This all just seems like a lot of nonsense.”
“Whether you believe it or not, this is causing tangible pain and dislocation. You dismissing it only feeds the evil power. Your bad energy is wasting our time,” Xitlali says. Rolando is startled.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Zaragoza,” says Jose. “Rolando doesn’t believe in any of this.”
“Ya. It’s okay. Look, take me to see where this happens. Then I can make an accurate assessment.”
As they head to her car, Xitlali sees the party still going. She sees the birthday girl hiding behind a sedan, drinking a beer. She and the girl meet eyes for a second. Xitlali looks away. You only get one quinceañera.
She drives Jose to the movie theater where he works, a few blocks away. Its bright lights fight with the night sky, long enough to attract families, couples, and loners to sit in silence together and watch. Jose has explained that he works as a ticket attendant, sometimes as late as one thirty a.m. He walks home alone after, in the odd time before the bars set the drunks loose, but after the certainty of the buses still running, sometimes yes and sometimes never showing up, the homeless sleeping under the bus stop kiosks. Xitlali parks in the back of the theater lot, close to the street.
They walk down Westheimer, a long, long street that always smells of burnt rubber and carbon monoxide, occasionally interrupted by the aromas of foods from all over the world: Mexican, Japanese, Indian, Brazilian, Vietnamese, Chinese, Guatemalan, etc. Passing cars honk and muffled strip club music whispers through the streets. The streetlights produce a yellow glow. As Xitlali walks, she feels the looming sensation that a truck could swerve into them at any minute, or a car could pull up and drunken voices from within call them spics, dirty Mexicans, job stealers, illegals, then step out of the car and ruin you. A lot of dark energy here. White bicycles and crosses dot the sidewalks, memorials where Houstonians were run over. Conduits by which the dead speak to the living.