I would say that I am sorry, Solís, but I had to.
I had to leave.
I woke in a haze. I always did. The remnants of the story I had given up swam within me, so when my eyes opened, regret flooded my mind. What had I done? Why did I feel so terrible?
It took some time for me to collect myself, and I rolled over to see Raúl and his bushy hair flowing over his face. He was still asleep, and there was a line of drool over his pillow. I smiled at that; it brought me home. It reminded me of where I was.
I rose and set about my morning chores—change the waste pot if it was my day, get la estufa running for Mamá, feed las cabras—while I continued to separate myself from the residual story. Mamá woke up in the middle of this, then kissed me on the cheek as she set to making some tea for herself. She loved this specific mixture of nettles and rosemary, and the scent of it filled the whole house in minutes.
But I enjoyed our quiet company. She watched me rush around to get things done. “You hunting agua today?” she asked, stirring the pot of water. “We’re getting pretty low.”
“Later,” I said. “Have to stop by Lito’s first, see if there are any mensajes for us.”
“You spend a lot of time there,” she said.
“Lito is my friend,” I said, slipping on my leather huaraches near the door.
“Don’t you have any friends your age, mija?”
I stared at her, delivering my accusation silently before saying it aloud. “Like who?”
“Well, what about Ana?”
As soon as the name left her mouth, I watched the realization hit her. She wrinkled up her face. “Lo siento, Xochitl. I forgot.”
“Do you need anything else, Mamá?” I asked, hoping to change the subject.
“No. Hurry back, though. I think Raúl wanted to go with you to find agua.”
“I know,” I said.
“Did you have a good time at the gathering last night?” she said, and I resisted the urge to groan at her. This again, I thought.
“Estuvo bien. Food was good.”
“Do you remember what you ate?”
It’s true that I was often disoriented after giving back a story, but everyone seemed to believe that I lost entire days’ worth of time, and they always spoke to me as if I were a forgetful child.
“Estoy bien, Mamá,” I said. “Promise.”
She turned back to the tea brewing on la estufa. “Well, you know how you get.”
I didn’t want to hate her. It was difficult in those moments to control the rage that surged in me. So I let out a deep breath before saying, “I’ll be right back!”
I looked to her before I left, but she was occupied with her tea. Probably on purpose. How could she forget that my friends were all gone? That there wasn’t anyone but Lito left for me? How could she assume I was so forgetful when she couldn’t remember this one thing about me?
I pushed the burlap cloth aside and stepped out as the frustration brimmed in me. It wasn’t that I thought my parents didn’t care about me. But I couldn’t bring myself to tell them how I really felt. Would they think I was ungrateful? Selfish?
I just wanted more. Was that so bad?
I shook off the exhaustion creeping around my eyes and head, knowing I should have slept off the ritual longer. My body ached, and if I didn’t get more sleep, it would be terribly sore the next morning. I raised my hands above my head and stretched, and a grunt echoed to my right.
Rogelio’s home was only twenty or thirty paces from ours, and I watched him as another snore ripped through the silent morning. His head had dropped down; his chin touched his chest. An empty bottle of tesgüino was tipped over at his side.
I may not have remembered exactly what his story was, but everyone knew he was un borracho. He was probably still drunk, even after I’d taken his story. He absolved himself through me, then went right back to it. What was I supposed to do? I only guided secrets out of people; I did not guide them to be a better person. Still, someone should get him indoors before the sun baked him.
I kept walking, the guilt needling into me. I silently resolved to help Rogelio if he was still outside when I came back. I couldn’t ignore a clear duty when it presented itself to me. It was an unstoppable instinct in me, to do right by others, even if I didn’t want to. And I definitely didn’t want his smelly breath or his sweaty hands on me again.
María’s vacas snorted at me as I passed them. They sat behind a shaky wooden fence whose posts teetered at various angles, as if they were as drunk as Rogelio. I expected to see María tending to them, as the sun had been up for over an hour at that point, gradually baking the world around us. But she was nowhere in sight, so I pushed on toward Manolito’s.
My huaraches slapped against the dirt, kicking up dust as I walked, my heart a drum, beat after beat. Not from the activity, but from the anticipation. I came upon the well in the center of Empalme. It was a stone structure, small but dependable.
I gazed at the men gathered there, trading chisme, their long knives resting on their shoulders or against the well. No Julio. They glanced at me but otherwise did not acknowledge that I existed.
I was relieved. This was the best part of my day, and I didn’t want them to ruin it. What would Manolito have for me today? What story would he give me?
I passed la señora Sánchez, who was on her way for her daily allotment of water, and I greeted her, too, but we kept the interaction muted and brief. I picked up the pace after that, distracting myself with thoughts about los mensajeros that Manolito employed, who took packages and letters across the punishing desert up to Obregán, sometimes south to las aldeas that rested against las montañas down there. And what was beyond that? I didn’t know. But those mensajeros brought with them stories. Not the kind that I took from willing bodies, but those of their travels. Of what Obregán looked like. Of Solado, days and days to the north, so far away that few people ever had stories of that place. We were an isolated aldea, our ancestors few, and Empalme lay between two brutal ranges of montañas. I hoped that Manolito had some chisme he could pass along to me, anything that would make my world seem bigger. He was my only source. Los mensajeros did not live in Empalme; they only visited. So few of us had roots here in this aldea. We had a saying: If you left Empalme, you did not come back. As I sped toward Lito’s, I wondered if anyone else craved escape as much as I did.
Manolito’s mercadito rose above the group of homes built of clay and stone that stood around it, and it was still one of the biggest structures in our aldea. Most of Empalme was constructed of hardened mud, mixed by hand and then left to dry in the baking heat. But Manolito had connections. He knew people, people from cities like Obregán or Hermosillo, real places with mercados that were ten times the size of his own, that overflowed with food and wares from all over. His door was lined with some shiny stone he’d been given, but the rest was made mostly of wood from un árbol that grew only in the desert north of Obregán: whitethorn.
I stepped up to el mercadito and raised a hand to knock on it, but Manolito must have anticipated me. The door swung open away from me, and I stood there, awkward, my hand raised in the air. He laughed at me, the sound rushing out of him, his dark mustache drooping at the corners. “Xochitl, buenos días. What are you doing?”