The wind blew gently as Cesar Chavez Elementary was now barren of the sounds of children playing and chain link swings clinking in the playground. Robert and Jimmy decided to sit at the bleachers that sat in front of the track. They climbed up the small rack of benches and perched themselves on the highest level. Their dark skin soaked up the warm sunlight and the breeze weaved its way through their bulky limbs, tickling their light coat of arm hair.

“I love this time of day for some reason,” Jimmy said.

“I know what you mean. It seems like we’re looking down on creation, like that one song,” Robert said.

Jimmy laughed. He had no idea what Robert was talking about, but played along.

“It’s not the highest point in the valley, but it’ll do,” Jimmy said.

They looked out over the track to see soccer players putting up goal nets and fitness freaks walk along the edge holding water bottles and wearing odd colored sneakers.

“I thought you liked English?” Robert asked.

“I do.” Jimmy answered.

“Then why were you falling asleep at your desk today?”

“I’ve had a hard time sleeping lately,” Jimmy said, wiping his face and squinting towards the track.

“Is Milly getting the best of you?”

“Milly? This time I can’t pretend to know what you’re talking about,” Jimmy said with a smile. “So who is Milly? That lady with the salon on Main Street?”

“No.”

“The Asian lady that always thinks we’re stealing at the liquor store?”

“Oh my God! You never heard of Mattress Milly?” Robert exclaimed.

“You mean she’s a hooker?” Jimmy asked.

“No. It’s what they call someone who kills their mom.”

“Oh. You mean matricidal, don’t you?”

“Anyway. You never heard the story of Milly?” Robert asked.

“No. Are you gonna give?”

“Sure, I can tell you all about Matrix Milly.”

Jimmy shook his head and waited for Robert to babble on about some story that supposedly happened way back when, to someone his grandfather used to pick oranges with.

“Well, I’m waiting.” Jimmy said.

“Hold on, I’m looking for something.” He was really trying to remember the story before he began to tell it, so he scanned his eyes over the foothills.

“Have you found it?”

“Yea, I’m good to go.” Robert said. “You know where Tito lives, not far from where the Little Creak Apartments are now? Well, way back when all that used to be country. Not like country like Tim McGraw country, but country...”

“I know what kind of country you mean, chingado.”

The house was newly built with strong wood and nifty craftsmanship. It was half an acre around to the nearest property line. Cactus and wild grass and dirt paths led from the doorway to the road and to the outhouse back to the doorway.

Maria Consuelo Diaz and her husband of five years Joaquin, celebrated the day when Joaquin finally finished the house he promised his bride. They killed a large cow and invited the nearest neighbors and family to come and help cook it. The rifle echoed through the countryside as the cow thudded to the ground.

They laid it out on a large slice of leftover plywood and skinned it and gutted the smelly animal. The younger of the men washed and cleaned the hide to lay out in the sun for a few belts or a pair of boots that would be sold at the flea market for a nice price. Matilda Diaz, the young daughter of Joaquin and Maria Consuelo, looked on as her father cut chunks and chunks of meat and piled them on a separate slice of wood.

There was blood on the men’s faces, down their work shirts and splattered all over their legs as they stood ankle deep in thick red liquid. A few of the men started to dig not far from where the now unrecognizable cow was being torn apart into an pile of crimson rocks stacked one on top of the other.

Matilda was scooted aside as men started to come through each with a shovel in their hand. They spoke Spanish quickly and gestured with their rough work hands signaling for help and working together towards the feast. Matilda watched the men dig as she heard the women and young daughters of the neighbors talking in the kitchen.

Their voices were sharp and echoed through the window. Dishes chimed together along with the pots and pans, making a tune of slight chaos. The women spoke of past slaughters and how hard it was to wash the men’s blood-soaked clothes after such an event. One had to be patient when washing bloodstains out of the laundry.

Joaquin stood leaning on a two by four for support. There wasn’t a clean part of his shirt left for him to wipe the blood away from his face. He looked over and the men dug deep, creating a pile of dirt just outside the hole. The men remembered the joke about the man who dug himself to the other side of the world.

The women came out of the house carrying brown burlap potato sacks. Maria Consuelo brought Joaquin a rag and started to wipe his face. When his face was clear from blood and his sinuses had been hollowed out with a strong breath, he leaned forward and Maria Consuelo and Joaquin shared a kiss. Soft and slow he tasted her, and the blood that he had tasted all day made her lips taste like sugar-cane or a fresh tangerine, in comparison.

A fire was started in the pit dug a rectangular shape, about six feet deep. The women began washing the chunks of meat and tossed them into the burlap sacks. Left over entrails were tossed to the dogs that roamed the countryside and had befriended the families that lived nearby. The late afternoon sun shone down on the families as they continued to prepare the feast of the new house.

The men brought pruned trunks of grapevines and lemon trees to feed the fire. It was custom to wait until the fire had died down, after building it up so fiercely, before placing the meat to cook inside. The land around it would get hard as rock, making it reusable for the future. The bags of meat were slow cooked inside the pit all night until morning. A rotation of families went to wash up at their own house while others stayed and kept watchful eyes on the pit.

Dusk finally settled on the countryside and its inhabitants and now the only illumination came from the pit of glowing embers. Because the land had been soaked in water to make it easier for digging, it took hours for the land containing the bonfire to harden to rock. At this stage of the fire, the edges were unsure and weak.

Joaquin and Maria Consuelo sat together around the pit with their friends and family speaking of the old days when California was Mexico and how difficult it would be in the future to come and go across the international line that sat on the Rio Grande. Children from several different families came and enjoyed the festive atmosphere. They chased dragonflies and lizards and scared each other in the dark while playing hide and go seek.

Little Luis Castillo had been of school age but didn’t know it. The best days of his childhood could be traced to the fields where his dad had worked as a field hand pruning and picking the fruit trees of many of the major farmers in the California Valley.

He had tracked a lizard from every corner of Joaquin’s property, around the house and behind the outhouse where adults drank and smoked and joked loudly about many things.

The lizard scurried quickly to a small pile of dirt just outside the fiery grave. Little Luis moved slowly and gently behind the lizard where he could not be seen, even by the rotational viewpoint of the reptile. The lizard stood still as it relaxed on the warm mound of earth. Little Luis moved slower and more gently, very low to the ground and just like lion cubs practicing the dreaded pounce of safaris in the African jungle, he leaped with a wail of Cuauhtémoc, himself. Little Luis slid down head first into the blazing yellow pit, in the wailings of murder and death, while his prey escaped with his life hurriedly running on four legs into a darkened wood pile.

Weeks went by as the weight of Little Luis’ death weighed heavily on Joaquin and Maria Consuelo. Their marriage teetered on a fulcrum with Luis’ death on one side and their family on the other. Maria Consuelo refused to cook and refused to eat, not being able to live with the public shame of the boy’s death on their land. She blamed Joaquin for it all. It was his decision to build this house apart from the main town nearby, his idea to invite the neighbors for a feast, and his problem that Little Luis fell in the bar-b-que pit.

Hearing Maria Consuelo’s wailings of regret of having Joaquin as a husband became too much for Matilda to endure. She joined Maria Consuelo’s mania by sitting in the corner of the living room and brushing the hair of her little doll while staring into space. This worried her father, Joaquin, and so he decided the rantings of a mad housewife would fall on deaf ears until he relieved his ailing daughter.

Joaquin bent down and caressed the cheek of his daughter one morning as the sun beamed it harshness through the window she was staring through. Her blank stare forced these gentle words from her father’s lips.

“Mi hija, ya se va a leviar De Dios yo dice,” he said.

He left the house and mounted a borrowed horse to undo the pain of the recent past. He rode in great anticipation, but he swore in his heart that he would return with a solution, even if it was on his deathbed.

He approached a cottage that was colored in mystery. Horseshoes decorated the top of the entrance to the small country shelter. Joaquin tied his horse to the worn down fence and walked slowly to the front. A wind chime made of dried bones hovered over the porch and dried palms twisted into the shape of crosses stood in the dry shrubs leading up to the door.

He knocked on the door and removed his cowboy hat and clutched it on his chest. The door creaked open to reveal a dirt floor and a woman around the age of forty, dressed in a homemade shall.

“Puedo ayudar, señor Diaz?” She answered.

He stood there shakily and answered her, “It does not surprise me that you knew I was coming, señora. Your good medicine has made your reputation great in this area.” His voice was like a jack rabbit moving quickly from one side of the field to the other with little notice until it found its burrow that it has lived in for many years.

“Come in, Señor Diaz and leave your strife at my door,” she said gently.

She opened the door for him and he walked in honored that she would have him as a guest. He kept his eyes to the floor not to pursue his curiosities of his hostess, and walked into the next room where she led him by the arm. The table they sat at was big enough for two to comfortably have a meal. Her curtains were thin, which allowed the sunlight to cast long shadows within the small cottage.

Joaquin sat across from her silently admiring a colorful candle that was placed between them. She put her smooth hand on top of his and broke the silence in the troubled father.

“That poor boy. I can’t begin to imagine how his father feels at this moment,” he began.

“Luis is part of something greater now, Señor Diaz. He really is not the reason you have come all this way,” she said.

“My wife has been severely beaten down by this event spiritually. She won’t cook, or eat. She is not the same woman.”

“She is the same woman. She makes it harder on herself. It is not the owner’s fault if lightning should strike a tree that lands on a workman’s horse. Are you ready to tell me why you have come all this way?”

“Matilda.”

“She has hid in a cave in her own heart that your wife has dug.” The woman looked upon him deeply with soothing eyes. This made Joaquin even more nervous as he picked and hunted for his words, careful not to upset the medicine woman.

“Can you make it better for her?” he asked.

“Do you mean for Matilda or your wife, Joaquin? What does your heart say?”

Joaquin searched his heart as his eyes moved from side to side as if he could visualize his feelings. He grasped the purpose that had brought him out to see the woman with much good sense and much better medicine. His heart gave him the courage to look upon the healer, beyond her own eyes and say, “My daughter.”

The woman pulled a stone that stood on three tiny legs from her shelf that sat just behind her. The top was caved in like a bowl, and a mixture of herbs lay prepared inside of it. She got up and walked into her kitchen and poured in a small mason jar some orange juice. She placed the mason jar on the table and sprinkled much of the herbal mixture that sat in the stone bowl into the orange juice. She sealed the top with a rag and wrapped a string around the edge so the rag would not become displaced.

“Give this to your daughter and the void in her spirit will be filled,” she said to Joaquin. “Make sure she drinks it all. The burden that has found a home in your daughter will try to discourage its expulsion. Be weary of loose stones on the road or ravines that appear to move. Buena Suerte, Senor Diaz.” She said as she handed the mason jar into his shaky hands.

He squeezed the jar by the rag that draped over the opening. He placed his cowboy hat back on his head as beads of sweat ran down his temples into the dirty bandana that he had tied around his neck. She closed the door behind him as a solid breeze leaned the trees around the cottage in the opposite direction of his path. A high pitched whistle sounded in his ears from the country winds as he untied his horse from the tattered fence.

His horse huffed and snorted and backed away from Joaquin as he tried to grip the reins to mount the beast. The trees leaned back into their natural pose and kept their shade in front of them. Joaquin was strong and an experienced horseman, and this enabled him to settle the animal down long enough to mount it. He rode slowly and did not press the animal as he did during his journey to the woman’s cottage. He kept his eyes open for every detail but admired little of the wild country that he traveled through.

He wiped his eyebrows with his bandana, careful not to let his salty sweat seep in under his eyelids. Joaquin scanned the path before him twice over before he would allow the horse to cross into his field of vision. Suddenly the path back to his own land became a landmine of natural looking snares like rabbit burrows and snakes that can sometimes scare large beasts like horses. He felt the spirits of the trail he traveled through, but could not discern their alliance to his purpose or something more sinister.

The afternoon went by despite the restless state of Joaquin’s heart. He thought of the woman’s words as the sun leaned in the sky low enough for its harsh light to reach in under the brim of his hat. Burden. Expulsion. Ravines. Move.

He finally saw the path that would take him where his daughter wearily trembled at her mother’s insane ramblings. Joaquin led the horse up to his front door and paused. He looked down at the mason jar and realized the rag the medicine woman had placed on it was barely moist from the tonic that shifted inside. He dismounted the horse and let it wander about in front of the house.

He opened the door and had to stand still in the walkway to let his eyes adjust to the darkness inside. Images became clearer as silhouettes became faces. He saw Matilda now, right where she had been when he left. Her hair was uncombed and her lips were dry from the dust and valley heat. He broke the string on the orange juice with his two fingers and put the mason jar to his daughter’s lips.

“Toma, hija,” he said as she gazed at him with dirty wide eyes.

Her mouth was reluctant until the sweet nectar soothed onto her tongue. Joaquin pulled the jar from her mouth and held it in front of her. Then very naturally her hands dropped from the doll she had been holding onto and began choking the glass jar that she herself brought to her lips.

The child drank until the jar was empty. Joaquin lifted Matilda up into his arms and brought her into the front room where he prepared her a place to rest. He made a nest of clean blankets and pillows for her to lie on. He lastly placed her doll between her arms and the child closed her eyes and fell asleep soundly.

Joaquin decided to spend the evening outside on his property maybe to kill a rabbit or two for a fresh breakfast with his daughter in the morning. The night came and went eventless as if time had stopped. He had camped between the trees admiring all the beauties of the night that many people do not get to see because they are asleep. He saw stars burn and fall and watched the moon direct the night winds from the east to the west.

The quicker the rabbit, the tougher the texture of the meat, but Joaquin was aware that there would be many days left to enjoy perfect meals in the future, now that his daughter would be well by the time he returns to the house.

Maria Consuelo had shut herself in her room the entire night, praying to the gods above for the release of her soul from the marriage she agreed to in haste. She tried to bargain with the powers that stood in heaven that if they just erased her commitment with Joaquin, she would send Matilda as an angel. She promised to see her next marriage through to the end with a man of their choosing. She clenched her eyes tight and clasped her fingers together making her knuckles sore by morning.

The sun was now well in the morning sky and Joaquin decided to head to the house figuring to see his daughter well enough so he could show her how to clean and gut the prey he had caught when the moon reigned in the sky. He dropped the corpses by the door and called for his precious Matilda from the back door.

“Donde esta mi angel, Matilda?” He called, excited to see his daughter’s smile.

There was no answer, the house lay quiet and still, not even a stirring of Maria Consuelo from the bedroom. Joaquin entered the house curiously and slowly, walking into the front room where he had last seen his sleeping daughter. There was Matilda in the same position as her father had left her with her doll nestled between her arms.

Joaquin quickly approached her and shook her gently at first.

“Matilda, wake up,” he said.

He shook her more roughly a second time and grabbed her shoulders and her thighs, but she did not open her eyes. His heart sank in grief as he rubbed his rough hands over the small girl’s face, begging her to rise. Joaquin’s eyes were wide as he called for his daughter’s living breath.

“Que hice! Que hice!” He called out to the sky as he broke through the back door of the house he had made by his own skill.

Joaquin fell to his knees and covered his dark featured face with his hands. He brought his face to the earth and pulled at his hair on the top of his head. His guts wrenched inside of him as if someone was tugging at them through a hole in his back. His tears fell directly onto the dirt because his face was buried on the top soil of his land. Joaquin breathed in dirt through his mouth and felt it become mud on his tongue and between his cheeks. He thought he should deserve to die here in the heat of the morning with nothing to drink but his own dirt.

His gasping stopped and he became silent. He raised his forehead and wiped his mouth on the long sleeves of his shirt. He stood just behind his house but could not bare to look upon the beauty of the sky where the sun was allowed to perch itself. He entered his house once more for the last time.

He opened a bottom cabinet where a wooden box lay hidden amongst other debris. Joaquin grabbed the dusty wooden box by one hand and brought it with him to the kitchen table. He flipped open the lockless latch and inside was a .38 six shooter. There was a giggle from the madness of his heart as he reached for the weapon and pointed it at his temple. He was not worthy of being the father of Matilda and knew the fates had now come calling to avenge her blood.

He did not shut his eyes but kept them wide open, for he could not spare himself the vision of his own death. Joaquin looked upon the wash basin that was filled with dirty dishes and the small swarm of flies that circled it making a halo. He pulled the trigger fiercely. The exit wound on the left side of his head left a small cavern in his skull. Joaquin’s eyes rolled up quickly in his head, exposing the bloodshot whites of his eyeballs.

The power of the .38 was not enough to knock Joaquin off his chair. His corpse sat there with his head slouched over and the gun still locked in his palm, depressed and heartbroken from a wife he could not satisfy and a daughter he could not save.

The blast from Joaquin’s gun had stirred the stillness of the house. The floorboards began to moan and creek from both the front of the house and the back bedroom where Maria Consuelo had been praying. Her door opened and the manic housewife ran down the hall into the main room and saw Matilda stirring from her sleep. She peered into the kitchen and saw her husband dead from his fatal kiss with a bullet.

Maria Consuelo stood with her body and clothes stale from consecutive days locked away from the world. She stood in shock and remembered her words to the gods and wondered what she had done. Now the grief she felt in her soul was her punishment for her hasty and harsh prayers to the heavens. She yelled in agony and moved forward to hold Joaquin’s head to her breast. Tears squeezed from her eyelids as her mournful wailing fell on the floorboards of the house that her husband had labored to make for her.

The tonic that Matilda had drank was to cleanse her soul and make it whole again. This required that the child be brought to an unconscious limbo to spare her the agony of healing. The healing powers of the medicine woman revived the young girl without harm. All that welcomed Matilda now was the lifeless body of her father and the wailing of her grieving mother.

The return from limbo had left Matilda exceptionally aware of all that surrounded her. She felt lighter in her body as if her journey had somehow affected her physical fitness. As she saw her parents, a perverse painting of love, her chest began to huff and puff, and anger crawled in and took control of the child’s new found strength.

Matilda bolted out of the back door, leaving the widow a grieving shell of tears and blood. She found a rope that had hung on a steel rod outside the house. The rope was strong and weaved by skilled hands. Its length was about twice that of Matilda. Her eyes blared with fury as she tied an adjustable noose from her dad’s rope. Her steps were heavy and little puffs of dirt rose from her feet with every step.

She entered the house with authority and nothing would challenge her rights. She stepped behind her mother who was still in disbelief and heartache, and roped the heart of the noose around her head. Matilda yanked back the hand that held the other end of the rope. Maria Consuelo pulled at her neck as she fell to the kitchen floor. Matilda stepped firmly at the base of her mother’s neck and raised her hand to the sky as if in victory, making the noose even tighter on her mother’s windpipe.

Matilda ran through the back door to the back of the property as quickly as she could, holding tightly to the rope that was attached to Maria Consuelo’s neck. Her mother was dragged a long way to the nearest tree. Maria Consuelo saw from the corner of her eye how Matilda scaled the large tree quickly and hopped over a strong branch that pulled her mother right up into the sky.

Matilda stood there holding the rope while her mother grasped at her neck and tried to pull on the rope she hung from, attempting to give herself some slack. The strength of Matilda was much too powerful for her mother to overcome. Maria Consuelo could not keep her fingers inside the rope that was around her neck. In seconds she lost the battle with gravity and faded away.

Matilda tied the remaining length of the rope around the tree and knotted the end of it in a workman’s knot. Maria Consuelo began to stop writhing slowly in the air until finally the only movement her body made was the slow swaying that was caused by her weight at the end of a tightrope. The daughter of the slain woman stood there in the dirt under the sun. She bent down and lifted a rock semi-embedded in the hardened ground the size of a baseball. She pitched it back and threw the rock at her mother’s now lifeless body.

Matilda walked a little lighter on the ground, but steadily made her way back to the house. She walked over to her father and touched the side of his head with the exit wound. Though Matilda had committed a heinous crime against the heavens and knew her spirit was no longer innocent and never would be again, she wanted to pretend that one more time she could sit in her father’s lap and be his world.

She climbed in his lap and pulled his stiff arm over her shoulder and leaned in his chest as she breathed in deeply.
 

“That didn’t really happen,” Jimmy said.

“It did. Swear,” Robert responded.

“So what, she haunts people because her mom’s a total psycho?” Jimmy asked.

“Well, the legend goes is that now she carries children to limbo while they sleep and...” Robert paused, afraid to say the rest.

“and?” Jimmy said.

“She doesn’t bring them back, Jimmy,” Robert said somberly.

“They call it crib death, Robert.”

“Gringos need to call it something.”

“I’m way too old to have crib death happen to me anyway,” Jimmy said proudly.

The boys started to walk home in the late afternoon and passed houses with BEWARE OF DOG signs and wind chimes that hung in kitchen windows. The story stirred in both boys, and they both tried to push off the impending nightfall. Robert and Jimmy shook hands at their departure and agreed to see each other the next morning if Milly didn’t decide to sweep one of them, or both of them off to limbo.

Jimmy had eaten a late supper and now changed into his house clothes for bed. He left his window open just to prove to himself that he wasn’t going to let Robert’s story affect him. He lay in bed on his side facing the wall. He thought about the homework he didn’t do and the chores he forgot to do.

He teetered between the dream world and the waking world as he started to feel the pull of a presence behind him. He was paralyzed as he heard the sound of breathing and felt the movement of an arm closing in on his shoulders. He opened his eyes wide, then turned to face the window quickly to catch the intruder. A breeze swooshed the curtains outward as Jimmy turned around, but he couldn’t see any signs of entry. He uncovered himself and walked over to the window. He scanned the yard from left to right quickly with his eyes and closed it shut. He jumped back into bed and covered his head with the heavy comforter.