Read Online Let Their Spirits Dance by Stella Pope Duarte - Free Book Online

mother’s words to come true, that God wasn’t blind. Years later, my father got cancer on the same hip the U.S. Air Force had operated on after World War II. My dad said they didn’t know what they were doing, pushing pins into his hip like he was a slab of meat hanging in a freezer. It got so painful for him as the years went by that in his old age he couldn’t get himself to Consuelo’s house unless he crawled there. Consuelo went to see him in the hospital when we weren’t there.
    â€œLet her,” my mother said. “She’s dying, too. What can they do except hold hands and pray that God will forgive them?”
    I want to fold up into a fetal position in my old bed and shut all the memories out of my head but can’t, because my face hurts if I lie on my side. I want to hear my mother sing again, now! It’s been so long since she sang solos at St. Anthony’s. It was a hot, humid day in June when wewere told Jesse was gone. The electric fan in the choir loft barely moved the air around us. Then everything turned icy cold, death rose before us, bigger than the cross of Christ, jeering at our stubborn faith. My mother’s voice froze in her throat, and she never sang again.
    The morning is cold today, brutal. Invisible fingers point my way, accusing me of losing at the game of life. I vow to put a restraining order on Ray so he won’t show up at Mom’s. In the next instant, I vow to go to Sandra’s house and tell her what a whore she is. Then my thoughts cross paths, and I vow to leave Sandra and Ray alone so they’ll die like Dad and Consuelo did. I make a pledge to call Priscilla and tell her she’s a hell of a daughter, coming over once a week to look in on Mom. I vow to yell at Paul and tell him the next time he breaks his probation he’ll get nothing from me. I vow to stop thinking about sleeping with Ray. Hail Mary, Holy Mary, Virgen de Guadalupe, pray for me that I won’t freeze in this house so Ray won’t have the pleasure of burying a blue corpse with Sandra standing by my coffin laughing. The bitch would have the laugh of her life! God forgive me for thinking this way. I really want to be good. I never wanted to get my Holy Communion dress dirty. Where did that memory come from? Never! It wasn’t my fault I dropped a cup of punch on it and stained the silk material under the layer of lace. What a pity, my mother said, now Priscilla won’t be able to wear it. Maybe that’s why I did it. Forgive me God, I really want to be good!
    I feel the top of my head with my hand. My hair is cold from the draft seeping in under the drapes. My chest is aching. I’ve learned how to hold pain in my breastbone like Mom does. Mom’s good at letting the invisible creep in and crawl into her lap. I watch the invisible from afar, marking its movements with caution, afraid to let it move in too close. Thoughts spin circles in my head, long tails lashing, collecting fragments of other thoughts, unfinished sentences that refuse to become whole. The impossible is frightening to me. I don’t want to struggle with things I don’t understand. Yet I can’t deny there was an energy in the house last night, something tangible in the air, not powerful like a bolt of lightning but steady and absorbing space like raindrops that never fell to earth. I didn’t hear voices as Mom did, but I wanted to. For a few seconds, I was able to suspend logic in me and quiet the part of me that doubted my sanity. I scanned the air with my left ear, the one washed clean in my dream. I was afraid I’d hear something and disappointed when I didn’t.
    The memory of my brother fighting Ignacio was only the beginning of an avalanche of memories that would assail me at Mom’s. Memorieswould elbow in, demanding my attention, making all the secret places where I hid my brother’s death rise and erupt in me like the watery explosion I saw in my