Blog » The Curse
All entries |
Filter by category: | ![]() |
The Curse
Forward: This has been the most challening of all of the blogs for various personal reasons. I struggled with it for a few months. While away in Bryan, Texas, I found myself re-writing the entire piece. Upon returning home, I reviewed it and said "yes." This is exactly what it should be. This how I received it, short of a piece as it is.
The Curse
Summoned to Korea by draft, the middle son was taken away by a downtown bus with eleven others on a warm South Texas, December afternoon.
The Indian woman had already lost other children to illness or still birth; the pain she felt echoed through every fiber of her steadfast spirit. An ivory lace handkerchief embroidered with delicate floral was clutched to her bosom, her black eyes flashed lightning bolts of pain as she watched the spirals of cold dust cloud the tail end of the bus as it disappeared on the horizon.
The eldest daughter of Bishop, Texas, clung to her mother’s arm. The year before last, her brother had bought her a new dress and she danced with him in her stocking feet when the shoes she’d been wearing started to blister her toes. His date failed, but in actuality, he couldn’t find anyone who’d say yes to the occasion. He was too busy working and spending time reading books to socialize and get to know some of the girls from town better. It was a good time that she’d never forget—the sister from Bishop who loved to dance.
La hermana si el baile.
Her middle brother was sweet as honey and she called him ‘meloso.’
Mother and daughter huddled together at the vacant bus depot, husband and father stayed behind to tend his fields without apology.
When word had come that the middle son had been shipped out to Xiamen City, the station in China closest to Korea, the sting came most acute in the night when darkness saturated the countryside. The family gathered around a hand-crafted, square wood table in prayer. The table was strong ‘though weathered from the elements and bleached on one side from the sun which caught it through a screen-covered window. It was through this window the sweet night air entered gently bringing the rich smells of the clean country with it.
The Indian woman cried in the depths of her throat with a ferocious sound issuing forth as the likeliness of a growl.
Each family of the Aztec, Inca, Peruvian, has its own familiar spirit, its guardian. The guardian of the Aztec Gods long before them arrived in subtle, undetectable approach.
The prayers became chants. The chants became a spell. The spell became The Curse.
In the name of Cihuateteo and Mictlantecuhtli, and all that command that which is above and below, I call upon the guardian spirit, the sum of all, the great darkness which was ever-present before the light, the most ancient of ancients, deliver my son from the military and bring him home to Texas, safe again!
Eighteen months passed and the prayers, The Curse seemed to have fallen into the blackness of that night, had been eaten by the darkness and void, but it had not.
Honorable discharge, medical discharge, had brought meloso, the sweet one, home to Texas, broken, disabled and ill.
Disease.