Cleanse

Fire became our tradition after Abuelita died. Esmé clutched my hand like she did when she was still a child as the smoke rose into the night sky. An orange glow flickered in the town below where our home once stood. The bright moon illuminated the dry land and we could see dotted figures weaving around homes, fighting against the fire. We watched and waited for Mamá but it could be hours still.

“She should let the whole place burn,” Esmé muttered.

I squeezed her hand. “Don’t say things like that.”

“If they catch her, she’ll be hung.”

“They won’t,” I assured her.

“But if they do-“

A howl interrupted her and Teddy brayed, nudging Esmé’s arm. She extended it to let him snuggle his soft head against her side.    

“How far will we go this time?” she asked.

I shrugged. “As far as we can manage. The wagon is on its last journey.”

I nodded to the shambling piece of wood, the uneven wheels that meant a bumpy ride, the leather tarp thinning to the point of tears that would eventually rip open wide to the harsh sunlight. We had to take less belongings this time. Next time, it may just be what we can carry on our backs if we couldn’t get a new wagon. Mamá was good at swindling money, but she wasn’t that good.

“Mamá will want to leave as soon as the sun’s up.”

I led Esmé to the wagon and Teddy followed us. As she crawled in, he stuck his head through the tarp and let out a pathetic whine. I pushed his head back and scratched the white patch of fur on his nose.

“You’ll be fine,” I assured him.

He shook his head, flapping his ears around. I gave him a pat and climbed into the wagon.

*

Mamá had returned sometime before we woke up that morning. She had Teddy strapped to the wagon, ready to go without a moment’s rest. That’s what Mamá was good at. She took care of business, unphased by the hard decisions she had to make time and time again to keep Esmé and I alive. She didn’t bat an eye when we would inevitably load up the wagon in the dead of night, sending the two of us away before she set off a spark and stoked the blaze until it consumed the house and watching that it didn’t take any others along with it. She started to call it our cleansing, the ridding of our old selves to start anew somewhere else. We never kept a home for long, but at least Mamá allowed us to keep our names, something we could hold onto as our lives were interrupted more and more frequently.

Esmé was the hardest to hide. She often went into fits of rage and that’s when they would notice something different about her, then they’d notice something different about all of us. A widowed woman, who arrived with a donkey pulling a wagon, two children in tow. It was once easy to create a new story for us, often Esmé and I would conjure the next one as we travelled to our new home, but eventually, the ideas began to dry up. Our lies were stretched thinner and thinner until we couldn’t mask who we were and had torch our home before it was done to us, just as they had done to Abuelita.

As always, I was given the map. I was the best of us at reading the landmarks and interpreting these often-inaccurate depictions of what the land was supposed to look like. All too often, we would stumble on a town that wasn’t supposed to be there or a expect to find a river, but instead, find a dried up canyon. The worse were the uncharted Native reservations, in which no amount of studying the map would guide us through.

Days we travelled, aiming north to avoid the wild Native territories. We looked white enough for them to distrust us. If only they would give us the chance to explain that we were hated as much as they were.

Across the vast expanse of desert, a line of tents began to form on the horizon. Mamá feared the worst and we began to turn east until I recognized the blue of military uniforms. Mamá was hesitant to continue, but after my insistence, we caught up with the moving encampment.

“This must be the big railroad everyone’s been talking about,” Esmé muttered as we got closer.

“They’ll take anyone for labor,” Mamá replied, keeping her eyes ahead. She meant me, of course. A strong young man with brown skin would be just what they were looking for. Mamá would have to use her tricks to convince them to let her and Esmé stay.

The moment we were spotted, the uniformed men confronted us and brought us to the man in charge of the laborers. Mamá did her thing, using her lovely voice to tell her story: a widowed mother desperately searching for work for her son.

Their eyes fell on me and the approval was immediate.

“This is no place for you womenfolk,” the one in charge remarked.

Mamá didn’t bat an eye. “You need someone to cook for all these hungry men.”

It wasn’t a question.

“You bring hungry mouths to feed,” the man responded.

“And you need someone to care for their injuries. My daughter and I will work only for food and water. You will only pay my son.”

He was ensnared without ever realizing. He nodded and I was set to work.

Few of the other workers looked like me but the white men laboring at my side didn’t sound like any of the men in charge. Instead, their words flowed in a singsong way, blending together and making it difficult to understand. Still, I listened as I toiled next to them. Although toil is hardly what I did.

The ground gave into each spoke I hammered in with far less effort than my companions had to endure. I moved quickly down the line, far exceeding the numbers any others managed to accomplish in a day.

“You need to slow down,” Esmé chided one night. “They’ll notice and we’ll have to leave again.”

“It’s not like we’ll be leaving a home,” I muttered.

“Still.”

“Why don’t you try to do the labor? I did it the hard way. This work isn’t like anything else.”

“I’m tired of running away.”

“And you think I’m not? You’re the reason we usually have to leave. Because you can’t control yourself.”

The tent slowly darkened to the same shade as Esmé’s brown eyes.

“This is exactly what I mean,” I said and left the tent. I followed the laid-out tracks, letting the cool desert air clear my thoughts.

In the moonlight, another figure stood away from the tents. I paused and turned away.

“’ey,” the boy called out.

I glanced back. He motioned for me to join him. I recognized him as one of the boys with the singsong type of voice who always covered his pale skin as he worked in the bright sunlight. His ears had turned bright red before he started wrapping most of his face in a scarf.

“You’re de fast workin’ wan, ain’t yer?”

“What?”

He repeated his question more slowly.

“I guess I am.”

“Me name’s Ollie.”

“Sofronio.”

He repeated my name, mimicking the way I rolled the r. It sounded strange in his voice, but I wanted him to say it again.

“’oy chucker yer git de spokes in de groun’ so fast?”

“I don’t understand.”

Ollie thought a moment. “How do ya git de spokes in de groun’ so fast?” he asked once more, slowing down his words.

“Just strong, I guess.”              

He chuckled. “Wi’ dem skinny arms?”

“Looks can be deceiving.”

His eyes took a lingering look that he made no effort to hide from me. And I made no effort to hide that I had noticed. I had noticed him every day, catching his eyes always looking my way, but not with the envy and the disbelief of the others at how quickly I worked with such little strain. He actually looked at me in ways that sometimes women had done before. A flattery, of course, but my eyes would stray past them to their brother or to the shoe shining boy that no one ever looked at. Or the son of the destitute gambler, who no decent girl would ever marry. The night the gambler found us, we had to burn down another house. The only time we weren’t caught for the other reason that made us different.

And I would always look back at Ollie. Let our eyes meet, yet we hadn’t said a word to one another until this moment. I wanted to hear my name in his voice again but he wanted something else. Something else that had me sneaking into his tent, had his mouth preoccupied with something other than my name.

 Shouts awoke the entire camp, followed by gunfire. The spine-tingling yells from the warriors riding in on horseback, loosing arrows on the encampment. Mamá held the flap of our tent closed as chaos swirled around us. We would be safe within. We were always safe with Mamá.

But Ollie wasn’t safe out there. I strained my ears for the sound of his voice, dreading the idea of hearing pain or fear from him. Teddy brayed in a panic but he would be safe as well. Mamá protected all of us.

The raid lasted far too long. Every moment, my heart pounded harder and faster in my chest. My throat swelled with the urge to call out to Ollie, to lead him into our tent and out of harm’s way. But I had to endure it all in silence, lest Mamá’s protection falter.

When all went still, I rushed out. Bodies of Natives lay scattered throughout the camp. Tents were ruined with piercings, blood seeping out into the orange tinted dirt. Mamá helped gather the wounded while I searched frantically for Ollie. I tried his tent first and found it empty. The relief I felt was only miniscule. I still had to find him.

A hand stopped my search. One of the bosses.

“Don’t stand around boy. Start helping.” I blinked teary eyes and the hand gripped my arm tighter. “You, boy, help,” he said with slow and angry words.

It wasn’t until the sun was nearly up when I found Ollie. Mamá called me to his side as she tended to his injuries. Mamá always knew everything.

 I took his sweaty hand in mine and wiped his forehead clean. Blood seeped through the banding around his torso, staining into the cot beneath him.

“Mamá,” I begged but she shook her head. He was supposed to die. If he didn’t, they would know. “Just stop the bleeding,” I pressed on, my whispered voice cracking.

 “There’s nothing we can do,” Mamá said. She looked into my eyes with the same look she had whenever she told us we had to leave our home once again. A face absent of emotion, hardened with all that she had sacrificed so that we never suffered the same fate as Abuelita.

I dropped my head and nodded. “Can I be alone with him?”

 Mamá touched my cheek. “He won’t suffer much longer.”

  She left me alone, clinging to Ollie’s hand. I sobbed, pressing his fingers to my lips.

“Sofronio,” he whispered. His eyes parted slightly to look at me. His face twisted in agony, his whole body shaking.

“Say it once more,” I begged him.

“S…S…S…”

My hand reached across and rested on his bleeding abdomen. “Just say my name,” I whispered.

“Sofronio.”

I drew my hand from the sticky bandages. Ollie’s body stilled and his ragged breathing slowed until it evened out. The pain on his face shifted to shock, confusion.

“It’s going to be alright now,” I assured him. My clean hand reached for his cheek, leaning over to kiss him, but Ollie jerked away from me. He shoved me back, kicking himself away.

“Devil! Git away, devil!”

The blood drained from my body and my stomach twisted into a knot. I backed away, looking frantically to and fro.

 “Ollie…”

“DEVIL!”

No fire to cleanse ourselves this time. We simply ran with nothing packed. No wagon to rest our weary selves in. Only Teddy, who could manage one of us at a time. Mamá and Esmé didn’t speak to me for many nights but I had no words to share. Esmé cried and cried. I had been so distracted with Ollie that I never realized that she too had fallen in love. We had never made that mistake. Sometimes, we got attached to our temporary homes. Sometimes we even made friends. I once held the unwanted son of a gambler in my arms but never had we fallen in love. In those tents, we had finally found ourselves a home. But the only thing we ever keep are our names.