LITMIR.BIZ

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my mouth, my face stinging, and knew I would never say anything like that to Mama again.

      Ángel said, “Órale, let’s go to Rave. Brenda and Gladis were supposed to be there today, shopping.” I wondered if my ex was going to be there at Rave with them. I wasn’t in any kind of mood to see Llorona La Ex-girlfriend. I didn’t want to play the usual ghost games where we tried to pretend we didn’t exist to each other.

      Karina Galán, who everyone called Llorona, the daughter of the Witch Woman Señora Galán had been out of my life for three months now and I was happy about it. La Ex was gacha, the things she had done to me. With all the things she had done, how she had almost killed herself in junior high, how she had taken the name of a ghost, some people would say she was bien psycha and should have stayed in Charter Palms where they put the addicts, nervous breakdowns, and attempted suicides. I had thrown down on so many fools for talking like that about her, but what hurt the most was when Ángel or Smiley or anyone in our circle started talking like this about her, even now that we weren’t together and despite how we had broken up.

      The thing was, they didn’t know her like I used to, how we would talk, how she would show me her book of poems and get all nervous and look away while I read one, how she would ask me what I thought about her one day getting one of her poems with the art on the sides of the page published in Lowrider Arte magazine. She was the only one I ever talked to about reading and books and poems, the books I checked out at the library when Ángel and Smiley weren’t around.

      All the others knew was the Llorona identity she had adopted. We had all heard the stories of La Llorona, each of our parents telling us the story to scare us into being obedient, to never sneak out of the house at night. The version of La Llorona I grew up hearing from my mother was about a woman living along the Río Grande who had fallen in love with a soldier. The soldier told her he loved her as well, but could never marry her because of her two children. Out of desperation and her desire to marry the soldier, the woman drowned her children in the river. When she told the soldier what she had done, how she was now free to marry, he was disgusted with her, called her a monster and then left the town. She went mad for what she had done. She had nothing, no children or a lover. In her madness, wearing the white wedding dress she had bought in anticipation of her marriage, she threw herself into the river, searching for her murdered children, drowning herself. Because of her sin, God didn’t let her into heaven and cursed her to forever walk along the river, weeping for what she has done, calling out, “Mis hijos, my children, where are you?” Each night she does this, never finding her own children, and satisfies her guilt by taking the children of others, making them her own. They are never seen again.

      This is who Karina had become, a ghost named Llorona who dragged others down with her, the girl she had once been long forgotten. Would I see Llorona’s apparition today? I thought as I walked towards Rave. Would she drag me down with her?

      Rave sold the spaghetti strap blouses, the mini skirts, the short shorts, the bright stomach shirts and the platform shoes all the bien buenas liked to wear, the ones where they could show off their pretty feet with the fancy nail polish.

      The three of us walked up to Rave with its bright neon lights and clothes and some of the girls working there smiled at us as they hung up blouses and folded.

      “Smiley’s here,” Brenda said as she came out of the dressing room, over the thumping techno Rave always had playing. Smiley got all red because he had been mad in love with Brenda since he was a seventh grader and she was an eighth grade woman. Smiley had always liked the bigger girls, but in Smiley’s eyes, Brenda was the queen of them.

      Ángel said, “¿Qué onda, Brenda?” Like every dude we had ever seen around Brenda, none of us could take our eyes off of her. Brenda shows a lot of skin, and she had it all in the right places. Brenda’s big all over, but good big, the best kind of big.

      She ran up to Smiley, wearing these green short shorts and this top without straps. Brenda went up and put her arm around him, and it always made me laugh how much bigger she was than him.

      Smiley got even redder, and because he was so dark, you knew he was all embarrassed.

      Brenda pulled him in closer and said, “How’s my Cositas doing?” She kissed him on the cheek, and because she was wearing these shoes with big heels, she leaned over him to do it. Her name for Smiley was Cositas, which literally meant Little Things. Whenever we wanted to mess with Smiley and how he was mad in love, we called him Cositas. We always joked about how if they ever hooked up together, he would tag on the restroom walls at school: Cositas and La Brenda, Together Forever.

      Smiley looked down at his shoes and said, “Good, y tú?”

      “You know me, Cositas. This girl’s always fine.”

      “You got that right, girl,” Smiley said and made this face like a little kid who’s thinking about candy.

      Brenda said, “Ay Cositas, you’re so cute. When we going to hook up?”

      “Just say the word, Brenda, and I’m yours.”

      “Ay Cositas, you’re so chulo and sweet, I wouldn’t want to ruin you for other women. You’d be with me and any woman after me would just be a cheap replacement.”

      Smiley looked at her up and down, and said, “Ay ruin me, por favor, ruin me.”

      Brenda touched the tip of his nose, all flirty like she always did.

      All of a sudden, these two older vatos came up behind us from nowhere now that Brenda was acting all in love with Smiley. They didn’t smile or throw up their chin in greeting.

      Ángel and I turned and looked at them, into their eyes. By not looking away, we gave them a challenge they had to respond to. This kind of situation, it can go two ways, and the way we wanted it to go didn’t happen as we were about to find out. I wanted them to lift their chins and keep them there, or spread out their arms, telling us Qué onda, without saying anything. Then, all of us would have gone outside to throw blows or bullets.

      Brenda knew what was about to go down because she got between us and said, “Hey you all, this is my cousin Rey and his friend Eddie. They’re from Pharr. This is Ángel.” She put a hand on my arm and said, “And this is Cirilo, but we call him Güero.” Something changed in Rey’s eyes when Brenda introduced me, and he gave half a smile like he was saying, I know you. I know about you. What was up with that? The vato named Eddie gave Smiley an asco look, like he was disgusted about Smiley talking to Brenda. Smiley didn’t even notice the mad-dogging because his eyes were all over Brenda. But Smiley was that way anyway, always putting himself in places where he could get messed up and not even think about it, like crossing train tracks without looking both ways.

      Rey and Eddie were both shorter than me or Ángel but were almost as big as Ángel in the shoulders. They were probably eighteen or nineteen, maybe even twenty. Now that we knew Rey was cousins with Brenda, we gave our qué ondas, the kind of looks where you just raise your chin a little, don’t smile at all, and wait for the other to look away first. If I had kept just looking down at him, it still could have started us going a couple of rounds. Brenda put her arms through mine and Ángel’s, pulled us away from Rey and asked, “So, how do you all like my new clothes?” Eddie didn’t seem to like that too much, the way she turned around in circles for us. Get over the feeling, I thought.

      The question that kept going off in my head like a firecracker was this: where’s Llorona? And as if she knew what I was asking, the dressing room door opened and out she walked. Llorona wore a white shirt that showed her tight brown stomach with the HCP tattoo, her belly button ring and these white pants. She had the blue make up tears on the inner corners of her black eyes, the only tears she cried now. Llorona’s hair was pulled back, but with two dagger thin horns of hair, cuernitos pointing to her demonia smile, her small lips shaded a brown so dark it was almost black. Her naked throat was so long and pretty, her collarbone so thin and delicate like a bird’s. I remembered holding onto Llorona’s neck when I used to walk her to all her classes, which always made me tardy. At first she didn’t like me to do this because she said it looked like I owned her. What I had said was that I was proud of her,

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