The Queen of the Cicadas Read online

  I felt disgusted as I looked at my own reflection. Makeup smeared, puffy eyes full of self-imposed grief and loathing. The bruises from my top-up of dermal fillers were just seeping through my thinning foundation. If I didn’t know better, I’d think I was the monster in the room: the failure monster, the selfish monster. My memory will never allow me to forget all the times I felt overwhelmed with my crying baby as I screamed at his shut door, “What do you want from me?” Now he was the one saying those exact same words. For a moment I hoped La Reina de Las Chicharras would climb out of the mirror like the girl in The Ring and take my life. That way my son would forever have fond memories of me. I took the bottle of wine back from Hector for another swig. Would she hear my call?

  “La Reina de Las Chicharras chicharrachicharrachicharra.”

  Hector had a look of terror on his face throughout my chant. He took a step back, but not before grabbing the wine. No sound, or anything unusual, disturbed the quiet in that bathroom.

  “I guess it’s time for me to go to bed. Is there a Mrs. Hector?”

  He placed a hand on my right shoulder. “There used to be a Mr. Hector, but that’s over now. Mr. Hector didn’t want a family and I did, more than anything. So much for thinking he would come around to the idea. All my surrogacy money went to this place instead. A different kind of baby.”

  I felt embarrassed and relieved at the same time. There would be no awkward walk of shame in the morning, or regret. As we left the bathroom, Hector locked it behind us. I found this very strange.

  “Why lock the door if you’ve never experienced anything here?”

  He looked at me with sad wide eyes. “Because after I gutted the entire property my grandmother told me to. Everything had to be removed. Cleansed. Then this room sealed.”

  I’ve never been one to have nightmares, but the night was racked with dreams that kept me on edge from four a.m. I imagined a woman guzzling down a bottle of insecticide, then falling to the floor foaming at the mouth, twitching like a swatted insect. But it wasn’t the nightmare that disrupted my sleep. Real or imagined, I could hear flapping and scraping against my window. Since I was already awake, I dragged myself to the en-suite toilet attached to my room to relieve my wine-filled bladder. On my way back to bed I stopped at the window, parting the blinds. There was nothing but the dark. In the distance, little lights, fireflies, glowed on and off in a concentrated circle. I snapped the blinds back, thinking of the death that occurred on this farm. I was wide awake now and my phone was the only readily available distraction next to me in bed. In my curiosity I did a search on this legend and the murdered woman. It was mostly pictures of the home while it was a dilapidated pile of wood and weeds, people walking around trying to experience the supernatural. There was no information about the woman, Milagros, the supposed source of the urban legend, only the words victim, Mexican, evil, woman, curse. I shut off my phone and tried to get some sleep. But I couldn’t sleep. My gaze fixed upon a framed antique print of La Virgen. Must be why my room key had a matching La Virgen charm. In the shadows cast from the little moonlight filtering into the room, she looked like a skull-faced Catrina. Cenotes for eyes, double pits where a nose should be and hollowed cheeks. My heart quickened. I stared at the edge of my bed, too afraid to move or close my eyes. Would something rise from below like the night of Veronica’s party? I willed myself to try to rest. There was nothing in the dark except my own annoying inner dialogue. A vortex of thoughts.

  I remembered the party.

  * * *

  I was twelve years old at Veronica’s birthday sleepover when I first heard the story of La Reina de Las Chicharras. ‘Spring Love’ by Stevie B and Salt-N-Pepa’s ‘Push It’ played on a loop from her boombox while we finished securing bright-pink sponge rollers around our bangs. The small room was filled with the mist of Aqua Net hairspray, which we applied as liberally as a roller of lip gloss – Lip Smacker in peach. I always liked going to Veronica’s house. Everything seemed new, without a loose button on their sofa or a square inch of untiled cement floor. And she had her own room. My space in the world was a mattress on the floor with a few low bookcases to divide it from the rest of the living room, like a puppy with a bit of newspaper. We became good friends because she lived only a few houses down from me, and her brothers hung out with my cousin and aunt who lived with us. Their favorite game was to scare us wearing skull-faced Metallica or Megadeth t-shirts and sticking out their tongues, fingers held up in the shape of horns. There were three types of boys in my neighborhood. Metalheads with sweatbands around their wrists and long hair. You also had the cholos in Dickies with hair slicked back or shaved to the scalp. Finally, the straight from Mexico in boots made from the skin of some poor animal, well-fitted jeans and belt buckle. It was a Chicano and Mexican melting pot of single-story homes that surrounded an Air Force base. As young girls, we didn’t know who we were back then; we just wanted to have fun, and there was nothing more fun than being petrified by something we knew didn’t exist.

  “Who wants a movie? We have Nightmare on Elm Street or Halloween.” There was a communal sucking of teeth. We had all seen those, multiple times in fact.

  “Can we go to Blockbuster and pick something else? Something new?” Luz didn’t look up from working on Mona’s bangs as she said this. We needed to decide fast, before bickering turned to arguing, and that would only spoil the evening.

  “My mom won’t take us to Blockbuster. She says it takes up too much time and she’s busy getting ready for tomorrow.”

  The sucking of teeth turned to bobbing of heads. It was true, going to the video store was an outing all by itself. We would rush straight to the horror section to look at the new covers, flip them over to read what gory tales of the weird and fantastic we could perhaps convince an adult to allow us to watch. There was nothing more exciting than creepy VHS covers. The uglier the better.

  “Mijitas! Pizza time!” Pamela, Veronica’s mother, saved the day. We filed to the kitchen and dining area where, instead of pop music, the fast tongue of Spanish spoken in Mexico filled the room. A feast of cheese pizza and Big Red lay on the table for us to dig into. Abuelita Carmen looked at the greasy white and red disc with suspicion as she sat at the dining table, spreading masa on tamale husks while absently watching Sabado Gigante on a TV at the corner of the kitchen island. “¡Oye! You girls want to hear a scary story?”

  We looked at each other, relishing the idea of being too frightened to sleep that night. The table had just enough chairs for all us girls to sit, eat and listen.

  “Bueno. But it’s really scary.”

  Veronica rolled her eyes. “Abuelita, we’re big now. We know there’s no La Llorona or La Lechuza.”

  The old woman shook her head of white-cropped hair as she continued to tend to her tedious work making parcels filled with shredded chili-spiced pork for the real party tomorrow. “Pamela! ¡Cervesa, por favor!”

  Pamela dutifully stopped her work chopping onions to crack open a can of Budweiser. We all turned to admire the height of Pamela’s teased bangs and eyeliner that was perfectly drawn on the bottom lids of her eyes. The drawing of eyeliner is as delicate and difficult a task as calligraphy or creating glyphs. She looked like a brown Farrah Fawcett the way the sides of her hair feathered out. “Last one, Mamá. This is your second.”

  Abuelita Carmen smiled at her daughter then took a long gulp from the cold, sweaty can. Her crooked arthritic fingers the color of wet soil shook slightly as she held the can to her lips. “Mmmm. That’s better.” She put down the Bud and turned her attention back to the tamales. “What is the thing you all fear the most? You say La Llorona or La Lechuza isn’t scary. Tell me what is?”

  Veronica, always the confident one, spoke first. “I would say rats because they’re dirty and spread disease. We learned that recently in school.”

  Luz crinkled her nose. “No! Sharks. We saw Jaws and I don’t want to go back
to Galveston before school starts. My dad says it’s not real, but still…sharks exist! They have to eat something!”

  In between bites of elastic mozzarella, Mona said one word: “Hunger.”

  My answer was simple: to be alone, watching life happen to everyone but me. Making hard choices like my mother, damned either way because women seemed destined to be damned where I came from.

  Abuelita Carmen turned to me. “Belinda, you went quiet. What about you?”

  I looked into her eyes. “Death.”

  Her smile faded as if she could read the previous thoughts in my mind, see the course my life would take.

  “Yes, death is very scary, but only because we do not know what happens next and sometimes death occurs in terrible ways to people who don’t deserve it. I tell you now, death is not just something that happens. It is also a being. And girls, sometimes the dead come back to take what was stolen from them. Blood justice.”

  There was a silence. A bloated, gaseous silence that overtook the noise from the TV. The door leading from the back room to the kitchen slammed open.

  “You’re all going to die! Aargh!”

  Veronica’s brother Felipe and my cousin Juan lunged towards the table. We screamed, with our rollers and limbs quaking. Abuelita Carmen grabbed her chest with one hand and shooed them with the other as if they were strays. “¡Vamos! This isn’t your party. Go!” The boys ran off, though not before they stole three slices of our pizza, laughing, with beers tucked in their black denim pockets. They were allowed alcohol if they drank at home. Usually they went to a neighboring house to visit Pimé. He was a boy their age with muscular dystrophy who could do whatever he wanted because it was no secret his life expectancy was shorter than the rest of us. Since the age of ten he had been bound to a wheelchair, but he was at every party and the neighborhood kids treated him like one of their homies. In the end he lived to be twenty-five.

  Veronica put her slice of pizza down. “Abuelita, I thought Jesus said to turn the other cheek. Revenge is wrong – it’s not the same as justice.”

  The old woman took another drink of beer and sniffed. “Caca lies. It all depends on who owns the hand that repeatedly slaps you. Bueno, chiquitas, I will tell you what I know of death. The year was 1952. Things were a little different then. Just a little.”

  Chapter Two

  Alice, Texas, 1952

  “The fields are no place for a pretty lady, but I do like how you look when you sweat. Smell real good too.”

  That lazy drawl belonged to one person. Milagros looked up from her crouched position between rows of cotton to see Billy standing above her. His eyes were a perfect match for the cloudless sky and his teeth a shade of shit from the chew in his mouth. Milagros couldn’t refuse to acknowledge his presence; that might mean she would instantly be let go, or something worse that she didn’t want to think about. Some people felt entitled to anything they laid their eyes on. She managed to mumble, “Thank you for the job, Señor.” It was one of the first phrases she learned when entering the country.

  He stepped close enough that the fertilizer between her fingers couldn’t mask his body odor. Milagros shuffled away from him while continuing to pull out tufts of cotton, knowing he was trying to get a peek at her breasts beneath the thin blouse she wore with faded men’s dungarees. Most of the other women wore dresses that clung to their forms from sweat, but Milagros stopped wearing them when she noticed Billy staring at her just a little too long. Dungarees were more comfortable anyway. They could be tucked into her men’s boots, which were the wrong size and gave her blisters periodically. Small price to pay to leave the least amount of flesh on show or exposed to the chemicals that left a painful rash. There were days her skin felt like shaved ice melting beneath the Texas summer sun.

  “Well, if you ever want to come work in my house, it’s nice and cool. Always got beer. If you’re nice to me, I can be real nice to you.”

  A series of honks in the distance broke his gaze, which felt like a slippery tongue with tiny hands for taste buds. Both Milagros and Billy looked towards the red Ford F-Series truck. It was his wife, Tanya. The glare in her eyes was more powerful than a solar flare slapping Milagros across the face. Tanya always wore a haughty, pinched expression that seemed permanently disgusted by everyone’s existence. It must have been because her ponytail was always pulled back too tightly.

  Milagros looked away, trying to stifle her laughter. Did Tanya really think she wanted her pinché husband? The thought made Milagros want to vomit. She would fuck the Devil before giving Billy the pleasure. The young Baptist preacher was handsome, but she had spied him sneaking off with one of the married white ladies. Not that she would want to fuck a preacher. A holy man in the traditional sense might think he was in bed with a demon once he got to know her better. Up to now, there had been only one.

  Milagros’s thoughts stopped when Billy’s fingers brushed against her shoulder. “We can have this conversation somewhere private later.” His dirty fingernails made her want to bathe in pesticide. He left her with a wink and his shit smile at just the right angle so that Tanya wouldn’t see. Another extended honk made Billy pull his hand and attention away. His cracked lips scrunched to a knot. “Yeah, I’m coming, bitch,” he said under his breath as he turned to make his way to the truck.

  Billy swaggered around because, in his own mind, he was a big deal running things in the fields as the nephew of the owner of the farm, Ray Perkins. Ray’s wife, Betty, was also small-town aristocracy going back to the days when Texas was declared a republic. It dawned on Milagros that small towns in Mexico and here in Texas had more in common than they knew.

  She glanced up to make sure he was well on his way. Tanya continued to watch her, eyes not relenting in their hateful gaze, which was no longer a slap but a bullet. It was no secret Tanya wanted nothing to do with the workers. To not arouse any suspicions in Tanya, Milagros quickly returned her attention back to work. What time was it?

  Milagros could breathe again now that Billy and Tanya were driving away through a cloud of dust and out of sight. This was worker domain, cultivated by the workers’ bodily fluids. Tears of frustration cut through the layer of sweat and dirt that coated her face as she ripped cotton with a ferocity she hoped might tear the plant from its roots so that it would die. She cried because her hands tingled in numbness from picking since sunrise to fulfill the terms of employment. There were endless nights of muffled sobs because she missed home, especially her twin sister, Concepcion, but every dollar meant so much to her family, who were desperate to move towns. There was no returning to her town, not after the incident. From the last letter she received, it sounded like the gossip was subsiding now that she was gone. Business for her parents never picked up again. But that no good Arturo got what he deserved. He should have left her alone. If he had listened to her, she would still be in Mexico with her family.

  If only her twin was here. Together they could do something about Billy. Together they were stronger. She cried because she didn’t know what she might have to do to get Billy off her back without getting on her back. Milagros yearned for the power to curse him and his family, who ignored the needs of the workers they relied on to make a profit on the farm. And how they loved to flaunt their profit with their nice cars and Sunday picnics with more food than they could possibly eat. It was mind-boggling how a single family could claim so much land for themselves. Milagros wondered who they’d taken it from. Her family had horror stories of their own displacement.

  It wasn’t just the farm that brought in the money. The family registered men through the Bracero program but charged these workers extra if they wanted to illegally bring women or their families with them. Sometimes the Perkins family would pay male workers to bring in women if there was a need. This is how she entered the country and found this farm. A friend of the family convinced her of this great new life she would have. Easy money and no taxes for her.
Even her father, Julio, knew men who travelled to the US for the program. He sat with her over coffee to discuss her options.

  “It started legitimate, Milagros. All those American men having to fight in the Second World War left a lot of work free. Even the women called to the factories. No one to feed the nation. I remember friends talking about how desperate the Americans were for help in agriculture. Our country and people seemed to be the solution to their problem. That was almost ten years ago. If I needed to go, perhaps I would have signed up. We were doing all right then.

  Milagros trusted her father. At first the offer appeared to be the answer to her prayers; however, gratitude turned to anger when the reality wasn’t anything like she imagined. It only told her she didn’t really matter in this world. How are you supposed to feel about a sign that says, ‘No Dogs. No Negros’? No Mexicans. She felt powerless and alone in the fields even though she was far from alone with the sweating brown workforce doing the exact same thing as she. The machine that facilitated this work stripped not only the land but all of them of their identities. They had faces, names, corridos and places they called home. Adan from Aguas Calientes, who was missing a thumb from the slice of farm equipment. Ana Maria from Veracruz, with glasses that always slid down her nose until she secured them with a tight piece of leather. Pablo from Monterrey, who played the guitar, accordion and fiddle. Elena from Guadalajara with the beautiful voice, who now dated Pablo.

  Because people came and went, leaving only their name and some memory, Milagros had made only one good friend here: Guadalupe from Oaxaca. Lucky for Guadalupe, she had her brother and father to lean on at the end of the day.

  The plan was, once enough money was saved, Milagros could help her family move to another town or even travel to the United States so they could be together. Milagros wanted to manifest all her hopes and dreams of becoming something more than she was in Mexico and more than a worker on a farm she had no loyalty to. She would be happy with a space that was uniquely her own, even if it was only big enough for a butterfly. Anything with wings.