Dia de los Muertos
La Catrina closes eyes in ecstacy surrounded by candles during Dia de los Muertos. Photograph by Bruno Cervera.
*This story was first published on my blog, Diary of a Celiac, back on October 28th, 2014*
Here is another installation of fiction. The assignment for the week was to fashion our homework after the Rick Moody short story, "Demonology". Our attempt was to write a piece on death and grief in the First Person as Third, Past Tense:
After the snow flurries of fall on the northern border of America, it was hard to believe it was almost November there in Mexico. The weather was a balmy 80 something degrees, and the bath water of the Pacific sparkled under the meringue puff clouds like a polished piece of turquoise, or aquamarine, or some other glistening gemstone. It was the best time of year to be in this fishing town, and dad had just emerged from the waves like Poseidon, God of the Sea, with his limit of yellow fin and jack fish nearly as big as he.
He wasn’t planning the dive, he didn’t even have his swim trunks, but the lapping of the waves, the glistening jewels, the Siren’s song called him forth, stripping down to his tiny cut off jean shorts like it was still the 70s though we were a couple decades advanced, and dove head long into the break before I had realized he wasn’t walking beside me, much less listening to the rambling of this land-locked Siren. When he resurfaced, he said this bounty was for me, but you can’t bullshit a bullshitter. That dive was all for him. All of his dives were always all for him. It was enough just that he said it. As a woman who loved him, and there were many, I could forgive him this tryst knowing how much his affair with the Other, Oceana, meant to him. He really believed that those gifts she gave him were for me. After all, that is what we were here for, wasn’t it? To eat the Fruits de la Mer and honor the dead? To have the experience of another culture in the protective custody of my uber-manly father?
That man made friends with everyone—he also pissed everyone off. But who wouldn’t love him? With his charisma, looks of Adonis, eyes as blue as that Mexico sky, and a liver fortified enough to drink the local cantina out of tequila, you couldn’t fight the amigos off! The anger came from getting hooked. One would by the bull to the sinker, then come up spluttering from a realization that reality was slightly different from the goods they had been sold. But for the night, all that glittered was gold. Tell us that one about how you punched the shark in the face, and ripped out its teeth with your bare hands, Muchacho!
We drank as the sun sank, and the Senioras prepared, all paint and pageantry. We gorged on ceviche, and even my cup flowed with Aztec gold, though I was still under age back in the States. Two of the day’s catch were sacrificed to Chalchiuhtlicue to honor his love for her, and to appease her thirst for fresh flesh. This was Dia de los Muertos, and honoring the customs of this land was the real reason we were here, despite evidence otherwise. He explained that the veils between the worlds were particularly thin on days like this, and that his mistress was a jealous one, with not much compassion for the living, dead, or otherwise. He respected her power, and she kept his soul fed. They had an understanding, and she was the only woman to whom he would ever fully keep his word.
That night, when the dancing in the square was done, he slipped off to have one last waltz. Who was I to judge? For all I knew, this was another part of the pilgrimage, the cycle of life, living and dying, burying and conceiving. Was I jealous? Of course. But also, I was used to it. And after we were back at home, he would pick up his progression of seasonal beds to harvest and plow. But this time was ours. So, who was I, the seed of his free-floating spirit, to tether him to my side, when I should have been as dead under covers as those ghosts we tributed this night, just hours ago?
As He and Her harmonized with the alley cats, howling like Banshees ‘til the moon had grown tired of their efforts, I walked out to see that ocean break. I wanted her to suffer like I did when he chose she over me—and, yet, she was always suffering. Her tears swam in the surf, her cries wafted on the waves, the flotsam and jetsam flowed to shore with each passing moon, on the relentless current of time.
Yemoja lay softly illuminated by her Seven Sisters, and I prayed. I prayed to be graced by her beauty, that he would love only me. I prayed for her captivity, that he would love only me. I prayed for her apathy, that he would love only me. I prayed for her power and her freedom from attachment, that he would love only me. I prayed, and I waited for her response, but she had none. Not for me.