“Señora Ruiz? Are you Petra Ruiz?” Xitlali asks, getting out of her car.
“Sí, sí. Gracias a Dios,” Petra cries, shaking Xitlali’s right hand with both her own.
“Señora Ruiz, por favor, let’s go back inside. It’s very dark out here.”
“No. No me meto con mis hijas. It’s not safe in there.”
The oldest daughter, around fourteen years old, has a sheathed machete in her lap, the handle resting in the grip of her bitty fingers. She looks restless, eyes peering far into the night and her torso rocking back and forth in her blue pajamas. Her aura is dim and purple. Her sisters are playing near the trailer’s little light, shrouded in moths, giggling as they serve invisible tea at a small pink table. Their auras are bright and yellow, oblivious to what’s happening.
Xitlali remembers her daughter at that age. She didn’t play with tea sets, but collected crystals and spent hours organizing them, naming them, enchanting them, getting to know each and every one. She used to beg Xitlali to bring her more during her supply runs. Then, at some point, she stopped. She turned fourteen and said she didn’t want a quinceañera. She would argue with Xitlali about it and give her that look — staring at nothing, especially not at her mother. Once she left a crystal on the windowsill, burning in the sun. That’s when Xitlali knew: her daughter didn’t want this work. She showed it through little things: not watering her herbs, her crystals gathering dust, her eyes rolling when Xitlali tried to teach her prayers. Until she left for college. And then, well... Xitlali forced herself to stop this train of thought, pulling out her notepad and pen. Anyways.
“Let’s begin. The sooner we finish, the sooner everyone can go back to sleep.”
“Bueno,” Señora Ruiz says. “Okay, pues, let’s not talk too close to mis hijas. Mijas, voy a hablar con la curandera. Aqui voy estar. No se mueven de aquí.”
“Sí, ’amá,” they say in unison.
Xitlali and Petra walk to the end of the trailer. Petra leans against it and takes out a pack of cigarettes. She offers one to Xitlali before putting one between her lips and lighting it with a match. Her aura is thick and pulsating with anxiety, mostly purple and bordered with red.
“Pues, mi marido left about... hace two weeks, ya.” Petra’s eyes fill with tears. She wipes them away and takes a puff of her cigarette. “Y, pues, this started a week after he left.”
“What happened?”
“On Monday, I came back into my house after seeing mis hijas off at the bus stop for school. I was getting ready for work, when I felt this presence watching me.” Petra takes another drag of her cigarette, her exhaled smoke resembling a ghost’s hand moving through the air. The smell of the smoke exacerbates Xitlali’s headache. “I couldn’t shake the feeling. Like someone invisible was standing in the corner, watching me. I thought I could even see it in the corners of my eyes, sabes?”
“Lo siento, but what do you do for a living?”
“I clean houses in the neighborhood nearby.”
“Okay. Go on,” Xitlali says, marking in her pad. Typical work around here, I hear. I’ve been there.
“Sí, pues, it got worse as the week went on. While we were sleeping, I’d wake up to hear breathing that didn’t belong to my daughters. When I looked into the darkness, the breathing stopped, as though to hide itself. Soon, things started falling off the walls, and I started having these headaches that make me imagine the craziest things, like my daughters dying. Or from back when my own mother was sick — I think about her dying and I can see her right in front of me, dying all over again, with her graying skin and cracking voice. I’m scared it’ll get worse. Mi hija, mi mundo, my oldest tonight started crying, and I asked her, Qué pasa, mi linda? She couldn’t tell me. What if she’s seeing the same things? Tonight, she woke up screaming, saying she had a horrible nightmare that she doesn’t want to tell me about. I brought the girls out here and called your agency. Ay, Señora Zaragoza, I can’t let it get any worse. There’s something muy, muy evil in this trailer.” Petra’s cigarette is now two inches of ash, ready to crumble. She struggles to get another from her pocket.
“And this all started happening after your husband left?”
“Sí, señora. Where is he? He would know what to do. I can’t afford to move out of here alone.”
“If you don’t mind me asking, why did your husband leave?”
“Pues, la verdad es que... there’s a lot of reasons. He had problems with drinking and he didn’t like this place because it’s so small, and we started to argue a lot. What made him leave was that I told him my boss, un güero, kissed me and asked me to have sex with him. I said no, of course, but he made me promise not to tell his wife. Yo no digo nada a ella. I don’t want any trouble, me entiendes?”
Ah, I see. She’s powerless at work.
“My husband told me to quit, but I said that we just moved here. The schools are good in this neighborhood and mis hijas deserve that. It reached a point where, when he got drunk, he would keep bringing it up. He said if I wasn’t going to quit or let him confront my boss, it would hurt him as a husband and man. I said no, qué no, and, well, se fue.”
Shit. It goes beyond the workplace. The source is her boss, but the chain continues at home. “I see. Bueno, whatever is making you see these visions could be something strong at work. I will investigate. Your husband may be involved. You don’t know if he’s come back? Like while you are at work?”
“I wouldn’t know. Mis hijas stay with a neighbor until I get home from work at six en la noche.”
He can come and go as he pleases. “Okay, I’m going inside.”
Xitlali enters the trailer. She turns on the light and it gives a yellow tint to everything in the room. The trailer is smalclass="underline" a kitchen area with a sink, table, and hot plates; living room area with a love seat, shag rug, and HD television; and the bedroom area where futons and blankets are spread across the floor, disheveled from sleep. Xitlali sees that all the pictures on the walls are warped and worn, and all the crosses look loose, ready to fall. The good thing about this case is there isn’t much to inspect. She’s tempted by the tortillas on the counter and the soft blankets on the floor. All the day’s fatigue spreads through her muscles and bones like a possession. She has the urge to sit down, just for five minutes. Get it together, floja! Porfa, ayúdame Dios.
In the bedroom area, Xitlali feels a presence — a strong energy pushing against her. The energy travels up her arm, into her head, as though someone put a wet cloth on her brain. Not good at all. I can see how they get visions. To someone not ready for this, it’ll cause some bad shit. I have to find the source. Xitlali looks under the futons and on the walls to see if there’s any point of connection for a spirit or a conduit of evil energy. Right there! On a wall next to the futons, there is a hanging black-velvet blanket with a snow tiger majestically standing at the top of a mountain. Xitlali notices a bulge near the bottom, where the blanket meets the floor. She lifts the blanket and sees an egg.
The egg is white and seems to be breathing, the shell straining and relaxing, almost seeming to emit a wheezing sound. Xitlali taps on it, and a muffled sound resonates. She grabs the egg and its shell seems to stiffen, as if it doesn’t like being touched. It feels less like a shell than a layer of warm skin. What the hell is this thing? Xitlali picks at the shell. The white peels off and the egg begins bleeding. The egg’s energy surges through her body. Fuck! She feels it release more energy. She can’t fight it...