The Queen of the Cicadas Read online

  With his free hand, he pulled the sheet completely off the bed and felt around the top of the mattress until he found the outline of the hidden thing. One hand ran against the edge while the knife sawed around the object, which was in the shape of a book. He peeled off the flap of the mattress. He saw a small notebook with a pen tucked into the metal spiral spine. The nurse had complained she misplaced it a few months back. Benny stared at the notebook with fear and confusion. What the hell was happening? There was no way, no fucking way Concepcion put it in there. Why would the nurse turn the apartment upside down for something she deliberately hid? He could feel himself shaking. It seemed like the presence he always felt was standing right behind him. Benny whipped his head around to be sure. It was only the darkness of the open bathroom and the outline of the showerhead. He turned back to the bed and reached for the notebook. There was only one way to find out.

  He sat on the floor next to the torn mattress with the notebook in hand. The first few pages were nothing but lists of errands and groceries written by the nurse. Halfway through, he noticed a different penmanship on one page. Concepcion y Milagros was scrawled at the top.

  * * *

  Arturo watched Milagros. The way she carried herself with a quiet confidence intrigued him. He longed to pull the single braid that fell just above her waist. From the back of the church he had spied her on previous occasions on her knees next to another young woman, Mariposa. Milagros and Mariposa were school friends turned something else he didn’t care to mention. He knew Mariposa’s family because both of their fathers worked on the police force, except his was the chief. The two women exchanged touches so stealthily you had to really be looking to notice. It aroused him, thinking of them, but he only wanted Milagros, and he would have her. What else would a girl like her do with her life? She wasn’t special. Throughout school she was meek and simple. Not too smart, but not a dimwit either. Easy to mold, he thought. No one likes a difficult, loud, or loose female.

  “Find a sweet girl to make your wife, like your mother,” his father had told him. “She has all my uniforms ready and can cook all my favorite meals. You will be busy, my son, when you start your job with me.”

  * * *

  Milagros and her sister chose fruit and vegetables at the market stall. It was busy, but once they were beyond the thick of the crowd, Arturo caught up to them.

  “Milagros, you still haven’t responded to my invitation for an evening out.”

  Milagros and Concepcion continued to walk towards their home not far from the town center. “Go away, Arturo. She told you many times she is not interested.”

  “Shut up. You’re just jealous because no one will want you with that thing on your face.”

  Milagros swung her head in his direction. “Don’t talk to my sister like that. And she has plenty of men who want her, not that it matters, or is any of your business. I’m warning you, leave me alone.”

  Arturo stood close enough to her so that only she could hear what he whispered. The breath escaping his nose puffed against her earlobe. He held on to her by the elbow, his thumb rubbing the joint on the inside of her arm. His cologne and sweat was a sickly mixture she wanted to run from.

  “I’m warning you. You don’t think I’ve seen you with Mariposa? Those stolen touches. You will be mine, and if you won’t, I’ll let everyone know about your little crush. You know as well as I do it can never be. Besides, you’ll forget about her on our wedding night. The things you’ll have to let me do to you.”

  Milagros felt sick to her stomach. Her revulsion and sorrow were worse than a festering wound. He took the liberty of brushing the back of his hand against her breast then biting his lip. In that moment Milagros knew if she did not end him, this game of cat and mouse would never end either. If Milagros had a sheathed knife at her waist, it would be stuck into his balls until it reached the top of his throat. Like a butchered pig. But there was no knife. She yanked her arm away and grabbed her sister’s hand before storming off.

  “I will see you around, my love!” Arturo shouted behind them.

  * * *

  It was a relief to be in the safety and comfort of their modest two-bedroom home. Milagros paced in the living room. It was usually cool, but the heat of the day was suffocating her. “I need to be free of him. How dare he use my love against me!”

  Milagros looked to Concepcion, knowing she understood the thorn of forbidden love. She regularly shared the bed of a married man, a vaquero, when he visited the town. Concepcion told her that the passion between them felt good when he was around because long weeks of travel left him sex-starved and hungry. He gave her everything she needed from a man, without burdening her with the duties of a wife. They talked for hours in bed about life, what they wanted in their later years.

  His satchel was always filled with herbs and plants from various parts of Mexico that Concepcion used for her rituals. Sometimes he brought plundered treasure from their ancestors. Blades, stone idols, things that were important for her to preserve for a reason she did not know. All of these sat in a small dresser in her room. On top of the dresser was where she and Milagros left offerings to their ancestors who had passed, fresh flowers from their garden, a smooth disk of obsidian, along with prayer cards printed with Catholic saints. A small, rare image of Santa Muerte.

  “What do you want to do, Milagros?”

  Milagros looked at her with weary eyes. “We should put the oranges on the altar. I want to pray, really pray.”

  They sat at the edge of Concepcion’s bed looking at their reflection in the mirror in the center of the altar. Milagros breathed in and out slowly. Focus. She saw her intention in her mind’s eye. In the mirror she could see her long braid rise up by itself and slowly coil around her neck. A specter of Arturo’s face appeared behind her. Then his fingers gripped the noose of hair. Milagros knew what she had to do. But when?

  * * *

  “That was the worst film I have ever seen!” laughed Concepcion. The sisters walked together to the bus stop after an afternoon of helping their father at the secondhand shop and taking in a movie with the money he gave them as wages. “You should save your money!” their mother would scold, but there was time for that. They wanted to have fun, enjoy life.

  In a matter of seconds, the mood turned dark like a solar eclipse. “Move behind everyone. It’s Arturo,” Milagros whispered. It was too late. He spotted them. She wondered how he was always around.

  “So, have you made a decision? In front of all these people who also know my father. Say yes to be my wife.” He seemed drunk, with bloodshot eyes, his feet trying to catch themselves. Milagros weaved through the crowd around a bus stop.

  “Stop moving away from me. Who do you think you are? I’m trying to give you a better life. You need to appreciate what a man can offer you. My mother says I shouldn’t waste my time on you in case our baby comes out looking like your sister.”

  Both women stopped. Concepcion took a step towards Arturo, but Milagros put an arm in front of her waist. “In front of all these people and whatever else is listening in the heavens, I will never be yours and my body is my own. Don’t touch me. Say what you want. But I warned you, Arturo.” The crowd watched the scene in silence. No one stopped Arturo’s harassment.

  “Then give me a kiss.” He pulled her hard by the waist with one hand while yanking her braid with the other.

  “I feed you to the dogs!” Milagros screamed with all the oxygen in her lungs and will in her heart. One woman crossed herself, seeing the rage on Milagros’s face. It was the mask of the Devil in the body of a young girl who shook and growled. Concepcion and Milagros fled into the bus that waited and scurried to the back window. They didn’t even know the destination of the vehicle. Through the black exhaust they could see Arturo. With hands clasped, small crescents of blood appeared as their nails dug so tightly into each other’s flesh.

  “Are you
ready to do this, Concepcion?”

  “Yes. Let him answer for his evil and may his body go to the beasts. I was going to just scare him off. Now he will be gone forever.”

  Never in their lives could they explain how they made things happen when they were together. Their will tunneled to a singularity where they saw what they wanted. It played in their mind and they said it without sound with their lips.

  A small stray dog with protruding ribs and mangy hair approached Arturo. It licked his hand. “Get out of here, you mutt!” He kicked the dog, which yelped with this sudden violence. The dog proceeded to cross the road with Arturo behind. But Arturo didn’t see the speeding truck swerve around the dog until it was too late to jump out of its way.

  Arturo lay in a heap of torn guts and flesh, his skull a crushed mass of brain tissue and blood. A slight breeze blew his hair like the fur of roadkill getting continually run over.

  The stray ran to the mess. It sniffed a few times, then took hungry mouthfuls of his body. The fur around its mouth dripped with blood as it relished this unexpected meal.

  A crowd at the bus stop and other bystanders watched on in horror. Three women looked at Milagros and Concepcion in the back of the bus, their cold stare filled with intent. One of the women crossed herself before elbowing a stranger.

  “Look at them. Isn’t that the girl he was bothering? Did you hear what she said? This was no accident.”

  The incident changed everything. A small town loves and hates its secrets. Concepcion and Milagros walked with whispers in their wake. Gossip and suspicious eyes trailed like a mud-sodden cloak behind them. Their mother worked at the local clinic, but people didn’t want her near their children. The secondhand store her father ran was dead.

  * * *

  “I’ll leave. It’s the only way. Business will get better, and if you want to still relocate, fine. Let me do this. Papa says his friend is heading to Texas for work with the Bracero program. He can sneak me in.”

  Concepcion threw her bra on a chair as she changed for bed. “I hate this. Why are we being punished? If only they knew. But no one would believe us. Arturo had all the power and he knew that. I had to take that power from him.”

  Milagros stood from her bed and pulled out a letter from the top drawer.

  “Just do one thing for me. Please give a letter to Mariposa.”

  Concepcion shook her head. “I’ll try but we’re being shunned. Maybe I can sneak around the church. God knows I can’t get close to her.”

  “Whatever you can do. Thank you, sister.”

  Milagros left at sunset with as much home cooking she could carry without it spoiling.

  “You don’t have to do this,” her parents pleaded, but Milagros had made up her mind. They cried into each other’s shoulders before their family friend, Gustavo, told them it was time to hit the road. The clouds stretched across the sky, forming what looked like the head of a serpent. Stray white wisps that could have been feathers jutted out in all directions. The sun bled hues of red and pink from the center of the mouth.. She wondered if the Texas sky would be as expansive and beautiful. Soon she would have a new life in a new country she had never intended on visiting. What would await her in that strange land? The entire drive she refused to speak. Her soul felt like a lost letter, tumbling in the wind without a sender or anyone to receive it.

  * * *

  After Milagros left, Concepcion didn’t feel the same. Even the times she shared with her lover felt less warm. Then one night as she lay in bed, her throat seized, and her heart collapsed in on itself before each small cell floated away like fruit flies. Her vision tunneled to the bottom of a cenote, where a small door waited for her. Oxygen bubbles rose past her face. The rest of the water was too dark to see. She reached out to push the door open. More darkness, until an arm without skin reached out and pulled her through. Concepcion lay in bed with her eyes unmoving, but knowing Milagros was gone.

  “Open your eyes, Concepcion, and breathe.”

  On her hands and knees, Concepcion clutched her throat, thinking she was still underwater. The floor was wet and slippery. The light was dim and warped shadows snaked across her hand. She slowly looked up to the voice. The sight nearly made Concepcion tumble back. A petite nude figure of muscle, viscera and veins stood before her. The headdress of vibrant quetzal feathers strapped around her forehead nearly reached the ceiling. Around her neck hung ropes of jade and turquoise. Her jugular beat in time with her heart. A long indigo cotton cloak with a gold clasp lay on her shoulders. It was a vision out of a nightmare, but Concepcion felt no fear. The black oily eyes felt kind. Iridescent swirls danced and smiled.

  “Who are you?”

  The woman’s expression turned wounded. “Exactly. I am the forgotten woman in the shadows with no skin to show. My name is Mictecacíhuatl.”

  “The goddess?” Concepcion’s eyes went large. She took Mictecacíhuatl’s hand and rose to her feet. “Why am I here? Where am I?”

  The goddess paced the damp floor with her cloak dragging behind. Water dripped from the ceiling of jagged stalactites. Droplets floated in the opposite direction. Flaming torches poked from the walls. Concepcion thought she might be in a dream.

  “You are in part of my home. A private place not even my husband is allowed to venture. And you are here because your sister has caught my attention. I am weary. I am angry. I am through with the shadows and stories. A change is due. A new cycle.”

  Concepcion looked down at her bare feet, which stood in a pool of warm water. “She’s dead. I feel it.”

  “Yes. But I want her to live again. I will need your help.”

  Concepcion looked at the queen. “Anything. Tell me what I must do. Am I dead?”

  “You are not dead but will not live as you would a normal life. All your life force will be used for the necessary energy to give Milagros a chance to be reborn when the time is right. A sacrifice is always required.”

  Concepcion knew this well. Life was a series of sacrifices, big and small. “Is this because we’re different?”

  “Yes. Your ancestors, your blood. I would like you to meet Ix Chel. She is one of my handmaidens even though she did not die in childbirth.”

  A woman who looked to be in her sixties emerged from the shadows. Her dark skin was the same shade as Concepcion’s. She wore a brightly colored huipil that reminded Concepcion of the serape Milagros took with her when she left. This was matched with a plain white cotton skirt scraping her ankles.

  “Hello and pleased to meet you.” Concepcion gave her a smile and nodded.

  Ix Chel reached beneath her huipil and extended an obsidian knife with a leather handle to Concepcion.

  The queen took the knife and pressed the edge against a fingertip until a bead of blood gathered. She opened her palm and offered the knife to Concepcion. “Do you accept the offer to be the sacrifice? Carry this blade with you. You see, the power you and your sister had on earth came from Ix Chel, and now you will hold the blade and shall channel to Milagros.”

  Concepcion’s mouth widened. Realization, wonder, and memory sped past her mind. She closed her eyes and smiled, feeling at home.

  “I accept.” She could feel the queen’s bloody fingertip on her forehead and traveling down her nose, past her lips. Concepcion opened her eyes. The queen had stepped aside and Ix Chel stood in her place with clothing matching her own in her hands. Concepcion embraced her ancestor Ix Chel.

  “Come sister, let us walk in the gardens and allow the queen to rest. She has many preparations. You can change into these new clothes.”

  Concepcion followed Ix Chel out of the cave through a tunnel and into blinding sunlight that felt wonderful on her skin. Her nose was filled with rose and lavender.

  I am just the sacrifice.

  * * *

  Benny laid the notebook down. It was half memoir and half fairy tale. Wha
t the hell was any of it? Part of him wished he had never found it. The woman without the skin. His vision as a child. Could it be real? There was no way Concepcion could know of his experience. He shook his head then cradled it with his hands. You are a doctor, dammit. Fucking straight A’s in math and science. How?

  He was suddenly overcome with the desire to see Hector, feel Hector’s arm around his shoulder and his head in the crook of his neck. Hector’s kisses were the magic that was missing in his world. He was some brujo casting a spell of desire over him with those dark eyes. Not just desire, companionship. A meeting of two minds and hearts to share the weight of the world. Two accomplished brown gay men navigating the world. The only thing Benny ever wanted in life was to be a successful doctor. Now he wanted Hector to be part of that plan, if there was any plan to life.

  Chapter Nine

  “Belinda, you did a good thing here. It’s beautiful. We have to put this up right away, take photos for Benny.”

  Hector held up the plaque to honor Milagros that arrived while we were in Mexico. I didn’t spare any expense when I ordered it before we left. Milagros’s name and birthdate were engraved at the top with the outline of a cicada below. Hector took out his tools to attach the bronze plaque to the ceiba tree.

  “Put it here.” I pointed to the spot with the worst of the scarred graffiti. Milagros would not be forgotten, now or ever. Instead of some terrible phantom, she would be known as the woman she was in life. Someone would have to regularly polish the bronze so that it would be legible forever. Hector drilled it into place, then joined me to see how it looked at a distance. It gave the tree and the spot a sense of significance. I wished I could scrub the tree or paint it a different color to hide the rest of the scars.