Dead on Delivery (20 page)

For the next hour, she talked softly to the woman. I strained, but it was hard to hear their voices. I know that at several points, the buried woman cried. Crying Woman wiped away her tears, brushed her hair from her forehead and gave her sips of water. All the while, they talked. At one point, the buried woman’s voice rose into a wail. “Why? Why, Papa, why? Why are you doing that to me?” Her voice sounded different now. Younger, more vulnerable. She sounded like a child crying and I felt something in my chest clench up.

Crying Woman soothed her, murmuring softly.

I’m not sure when I’ve felt more uncomfortable and I’m not talking about the tree limb sticking into my back. I was witnessing something private, something painful, yet I couldn’t move.

After the hour, Crying Woman stood and unburied the other woman. When she was free of dirt, the two women stood back to back in the center of the circle, raised their arms and chanted, “Oh, my Lady of Guadalupe. Behold your daughter. Let her give her pain back to the earth. Let the earth give her solace. May the sins committed against her be nothing more than dirt beneath her feet. Plant within her seeds of joy. I beseech you, Queen of Heaven.”

Crying Woman handed Buried Woman a broom and had her sweep away the perimeter of the circle. Then she wrapped her in a blanket and sent her into the house. Once the door had clicked shut behind the formerly buried woman, Crying Woman came to the edge of her property. She scanned the area where I sat. I stayed as still as I could. While I could see her, I was pretty sure she couldn’t see me. Not many people can see in the dark as well as I can. Still, I had the bad sensation that I had been noticed.

What happened next confirmed that. “Whoever you are,” Crying Woman called out into the darkness, “you should be ashamed. That woman’s pain is not for your entertainment. Tonight she gave her heartache and worries back to the earth despite your interference. Go home now. Be gone and stay gone.”

Then she turned and walked back into her house.

 

 

AS MUCH AS I WANTED TO DO EXACTLY WHAT CRYING WOMAN asked, I couldn’t. At least, not right away. I waited until I heard a car start and drive away, figuring that would be the buried woman leaving. I waited a little while longer and watched the lights in Crying Woman’s house go out one by one. Finally, I crept down from my tree.

I was over Crying Woman’s back fence in a matter of seconds. Italian cypress might block the view, but they weren’t much of a deterrent. Of course, hopping a ten-foot fence was less of an effort for me than it would be for most people. The casual breaker and enterer would move on to a different house. I was definitely not casual.

I crept to the pit in the center of the yard. It still pulsed with magic. Unlike the voodoo dolls, though, this felt different. The malevolence was gone. In its place was an energy that pulsed, almost like a heartbeat. Slow and steady and strong. The magic here was warm and alive. I didn’t know what pain the buried woman had left in the soil and I didn’t want to know. I felt guilty enough for having witnessed the ritual at all and deeply sad. Someone had done something to that woman a long time ago and had never made amends for it. I hoped that whatever had happened here tonight had brought her some small measure of peace.

I ran my fingers through the edge of the circle, sifting through the dirt to see what Crying Woman had sprinkled to make her circle. I sniffed at it. Cornmeal.

I made my way carefully and quietly through the rest of the backyard. The garden had contained herbs. The rosemary was still blooming, and I could smell the faintest echoes of sage, mint and henbane. I wasn’t sure what else I could learn here. I vaulted back over the fence and made my way back to the Buick. I stayed to the shadows. There was no one else around and that alone made me conspicuous. I didn’t want to draw any more attention to myself in Elmville than I already had.

I sighed as I slipped into the seat of my car. An hour on the branch of a scrub oak is not kind to a girl’s behind. I pulled up to Crying Woman’s house and popped the trunk. I took the legs out of the lead box and slipped up to the front door. I shook the little legs out of the baggie and onto the front porch. I could feel the sensation of their homecoming course through me. I ran to the Buick and drove away.

 

 

I STUMBLED INTO THE HOUSE AT ABOUT FOUR A.M. AND DIRECTLY into bed. I wasn’t sure what was exhausting me the most, the driving, the splitting of my time and attention or the emotional raggedness of what I’d been witnessing. Rawley’s mother’s anger. Bossard’s mother’s grief. The buried woman’s pain. I like to keep emotion at an arm’s length. It’s safest that way. I don’t get hurt. No one else does either.

Ever since I let Ted into my life, however, emotions had been seeping in all over. It was as if I’d thought I was only opening the door a crack and had instead thrown it wide. I wished I could figure out how to shut it again. I’d learned how to keep my senses under control. My emotions had never been a problem. They’d been easy to keep neatly tucked away. Not anymore. It was as if letting myself feel a little bit had opened up a whole world of feeling that I wasn’t sure I wanted.

I woke Friday morning with a pit of dread in my stomach. Every other Friday night from six to eight we have a sparring class at River City. Learning forms and perfecting kicks is great. Learning to actually use them when push comes to shove can only come from putting oneself in a combat situation. You may have the most graceful kick on the planet, but if you freeze up when an assailant is coming toward you or have to count to ten before you can get in position, it won’t do you a darned bit of good in protecting yourself.

Fighting isn’t the only reason to get involved in the martial arts. There’s a lot to be learned about self-discipline and control and respect. People have all kinds of reasons to come to the dojo and I try to respect that. While I do require some sparring for upper-belt candidates, I try not to shove it down everyone’s throat. Some people, however, do martial arts as a way to release hostility.

Sparring class generally attracts the most macho of my students. Women, for the most part, don’t like the confrontation of sparring. Oh, a few still show up from time to time, but they’re not my regulars.

T.J. is a regular. So is his buddy, Jackson Hughes. When you walk into the dojo on a Friday sparring-class night, you can practically see the testosterone dripping from the walls. It’s a heady mix of excitement, aggression and anticipation. It takes a lot of effort on my part to stay separate and maintain the calm. It would be too easy to get swept up into the emotions swirling around me and let things spiral out of control. The end result of that? Somebody could end up getting hurt, really hurt.

It’s a fine line to walk. I have to encourage the participants to really fight each other but not hurt each other. I have to stay in control of myself and the room. It’s an effort. I come out of sparring class exhausted most nights.

I so wished that this night was a sparring-class Friday. It wasn’t though.

On the Friday nights that I’m not overseeing the sparring class at River City, I’m expected to show up at my mother’s house for dinner. Shabbat dinner at my mother’s was torture enough before I started dating Ted. It had now devolved into a special kind of hell.

I say we’re going to my mother’s house. It’s not like she lives alone. My dad lives there, too, and I am pretty sure he pays the majority of the mortgage. It is, however, definitely my mother’s house. I don’t know if it’s a tribal thing or if we’re just matriarchal by nature, but it’s her house in much the same way that Grandma Rosie’s house was hers even when Grandpa Ed was still playing two hours of doubles tennis every Saturday morning, which he did until he was seventy-four, thank you very much.

I lay back on the pillow and tried to think happy thoughts. I had to get through the evening and since I could spend most of it shoving my mother’s admittedly good cooking into my mouth, it wouldn’t be that bad. It couldn’t be that bad. Right?

Ah, the beauty of wishful thinking.

I vaguely heard Norah getting up and getting ready for work, but I didn’t have the energy to go out and talk to her. I hadn’t spoken with Alex yet. I had to work tonight, so maybe that would be my opportunity.

I dragged myself out of bed at noon and called Meredith. “I found our doll maker.”

“How interesting! What can you tell me?”

I described the Crying Woman and the rite I’d seen her perform.

“You’ve got yourself a bona fide
bruja
, Melina,” she said when I was finished.

“I know
bruja
is Spanish for ‘witch.’ ”

“Well, yes, but there’s more to it than that.
Brujeria
is its own brand of witchcraft. It’s actually fascinating. Is there any chance I can meet this woman?”

I sighed. “Sure, Meredith, why don’t I invite her for tea?”

“I don’t think sarcasm is called for,” she said, with a hint of coolness to her voice.

“Why do people keep saying that to me?” I wondered out loud.

“Think about it. You’re a smart girl. I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”

I gritted my teeth. “Fine. Can you explain to me about
brujeria
at least a little bit so I know what I’m dealing with?”

“You know how the Spanish weren’t exactly the most super-tolerant people on the planet when it came to religion?” she asked.

“Meredith, I was raised Jewish. It’s a little hard not to know exactly how intolerant the Spanish were. Remember that part where they threw all the Jews out of Spain? They covered that in Sunday school.” I poured myself a cup of coffee from the pot that Norah must have made this morning and stuck the cup in the microwave. It would taste like crap, but I could put enough sugar and milk in it to counteract that.

“So you wouldn’t be surprised to learn that they weren’t really nice about native religions when they came to the New World, then.”

“Not surprised at all.” I’d made it too hot. I cursed a little under my breath and put more milk in it.

“A lot of native religions went underground. One of the easiest ways to do that was to pretend to worship the gods the Spanish wanted them to worship while secretly worshipping their own. Over time, the two religions sort of conflated themselves. What we think of as a personification of the Virgin Mary in Our Lady of Guadalupe is actually a form of the Aztec goddess Tonantzin.”

“You mean like the way the whole maypole thing is actually a pagan fertility rite?” I remember sharing that little tidbit with Aunt Kitty. It delighted her. It hadn’t been what I was going for at the time, but in retrospect, I liked it.

“Exactly. The Aztecs took all those Catholic saints and used them as sort of a curtain over their original gods. They were incredibly flexible and adaptive. It was quite clever, really,” Meredith said with admiration.

“So you’re saying this woman is really an Aztec practitioner?” Would there be blood sacrifices? I hated those. Just the laundry issues afterward were enough to make me cringe.

There was a pause. “No. And yes.”

“Way to be decisive, Meredith.”

“If you think a black and white answer like that exists, you’re not listening. They sort of combined into a whole new religion, often practiced both in secret and in the wide open. When people began to immigrate to the United States and meet up with even more religions, especially some of the voodoo cults, they continued to adapt and take those practices and make them their own. It’s really quite remarkable.” Meredith paused in her explanation. “You’re sure it’s the same woman, though? The woman you saw last night is the one who made those dolls?”

“Reasonably certain. Why?” Those doll legs definitely belonged to her in some way. I would be super-surprised if it turned out she wasn’t the one who made them and imbued them with power.

“It doesn’t make sense. The rite you described is a healing rite, a very positive thing. The dolls have lots of purposes, but all of them are malevolent. They’re used to hex people and curse them. Most of the
brujas
I’ve met deal in either healing or hexing, one or the other, not both.”

Wow. Witches who specialized. Nice. “Why can’t they do both?”

“We all have our skills, right? I’m sure there’s some kind of martial arts that you’re better at than others?”

That was certainly true. I excelled at anything that required speed and agility. Things that required brute strength tended not to be my forte. “Sure.”

“Witches are the same. I’m pretty good at summoning and protection. Scrying on the other hand? I can do it, but it’s not always pretty. You know what I mean?”

I couldn’t quite imagine Meredith doing anything in any way that wasn’t at least damned attractive, but I didn’t think that was what she meant. “Got it.”

“
Brujas
are much the same. They tend to specialize. Healers are especially gifted. It’s truly a calling. Not everyone can do it. So when someone is adept at healing, that’s what she tends to focus on. To be honest, the hexing stuff is a little easier. Gather a little cemetery dirt. Throw in a knife and some chicken bones. Light some black candles. Voila. You’ve got yourself a hex.”

“So you’re saying that we have an unusually versatile
bruja
?” Lord knows I appreciated someone who could multitask, but perhaps not in this particular instance.

“That and I’m guessing we still don’t really know what’s going on. It would take something big to make a
bruja
work that far outside of her comfort zone.”

I thought about Jorge Aguilar. That was big, but I bit my tongue and didn’t offer Meredith the Understatement of the Week Award. I didn’t want to be accused of being sarcastic again.

After I got off the phone with Meredith, I powered up my laptop. After a cursory check of my e-mail, I plugged Crying Woman’s address into a reverse address lookup. In about two seconds, I had a name. Emilia Aguilar. Age twenty-eight. Possible relatives: Rosita Lopez and Jorge Aguilar.