We went to the botanica to pick out something nice and easy to heal Tami’s marriage. I knew it was falling apart because of all of the messages she sent and received from X, each one a little more risque than the other. Some of them started with a quick, “Hey babe,” and the others, well, let’s just say she shouldn’t have accepted them.
I watched her working on another message back to him. Her hands moved back and forth on the little phone punctuated with her tapping of acrylic nails. I knew each stroke meant another lie piled on top of one another.
“Boo, don’t say a damned word,” she whispered. “I just gotta sort this out.”
I know it’s stupid to think candles or spells can fix a broken marriage. I believe it needs more, something rougher, maybe tequila and a weekend away, both of them locked in a room and fed alcohol, letting the frustration and the fury finally dissolve into a heaping bed of forgiveness. I wanted her to fight for her husband, but it wasn’t my fight at all. It wasn’t my place, not like this.
But not with those damned phones. The ones that ring from the impulse or whims of a single man, vying for the affections (and winning them) as he continues on his way. But her husband, no doubt a pendejo at times, but a good man, an honest man. Jesus, he was going to be furious when he found out. I feared that I would have to house her again. She never showed me the purple, but I knew. Angry men from bad houses leave marks. Sometimes on faces, sometimes on walls. “Let him love you again,” I told her last year. “Let him say he’s sorry and just take him back. Just don’t act like too much of a boss and he will forget it.”
Because the new guy was threatening to “come right over and fight for her,” we had to find a curative, and the culandera was the one to help us in this moment.
I pointed to the yerbas first, asking how she felt about fire. “Pues, it’s fine, but I really need something stronger,” she lamented. “Last time I did some damned cleanse, I got pregnant. I just wanna sweep this shit right out.”
I suggested the card reader. He was a “seer,” the other women had told me.
“He can tell you things that we cannot even know in this lifetime,” Julia said. I believed her wide eyes, her earnestness. A set of red-rimmed and weary eyes followed me as we wrote our names on the clipboard. We were number 17, each of us waiting for answers and some kind of hope. We began the slow walk around the botanica to smell the yerbas again and view the miracle candles. Who knew how long this would take?
Of course, Jesus was there. Burn up the right candle and your dreams fall into place. Jewelry was there too, a different aisle than the snake oil and aluminum and painted milagros. Anoint yourself properly for the miracles to be produced. It’s not too expensive, but you may just have to get the incense and the itchy, ground powders too. Either way, it’s potent medicine and I am sure Tami would be willing to do what it takes to untangle this mess. Maybe.
“I just need to know who loves me more,” she whispered. “And I don’t think I’d ever leave him, but I want to be wanted, you know?”
Tami always gets like this when she’s near her period. Hysterical. In love. Flirting. And I just keep thinking to myself, “Why can’t I find a nice guy?” Why did the last one decide to up and go flirt with that puta down the street? The one whose kids walk around to the McDonald’s late to beg for some food with the money they took from her boyfriend’s pocket. I’m a nice person, I think to myself. But enough was enough, I guess.
I forgave them all. I forgave the stupid one for leaving the water boiling until the plastic bowl burnt up. I forgave the liar. I forgave the one who stole money from my worn wallet. I forgave the drunk. I tried to move on. When I found out about each one’s idiocy, I burnt a cedar stick and cleansed the front door with a new mop and my own medicine and I wore the rose water, sacred and sweet, to make sure that I would only attract the righteous, and to close off the bad energy, and mal ojos. But somehow, now I was alone.
I fingered a bracelet featuring blue eyes and a $5 price tag. “I’m going to get this for sure,” I said, motioning to the rack. “Haters gonna hate, but you gotta keep them off you, you know?”
Tami smiled. “Let’s get our cards read together,” she said.
I continued the slow circle around the shop, opening the drawers of the tiny silver and gold amulets one by one. “I like this leg,” I said to Tami. “It reminds me that no matter what happens, I can walk out quick-like and just start over, somewhere.”
She smiled and walked over to the magic candle section. I joined her and faced a row of pillared spell-reversal candles. I thought about what it meant to reverse the wicked things that had occurred. To delete the texts Tami received, and the abortion.
I stood up and picked up the candle and began to read the back. “I wish it undid the last five years,” I said. She laughed again. An old woman eavesdropping looked suspiciously at me as I put it down. I picked up the one next to it. It promised “amor.”
“And I don’t need to burn something for this,” I said. I started to laugh. The old woman crossed herself and then walked to the well-worn chair to sit and wait for her cards to be read. I hoped we would be next.
“Pero, you don’t want to mess around when you’re getting older. Who knows if your next baby will come out right, especially since you may have los ojos malos,” said Tami. She motioned to my stomach. I sat down. That’s why I had to get it done, I thought. Because of the drinking, the worry, the anxiety that maybe, just maybe, that baby, the angelito in heaven, would come back this time, to a home free from pills or booze, or a daddy that even wanted it.
She was right, of course, which was why I sat down and waited for the card reader to motion for us to come back behind the beaded curtains. Funny how these things seem ritualistic. The anxiety of waiting for the moments to align quite right. The curiosity and a ten dollar bill to fix it.
I had a lot on my mind. My own life, my baby, and the bigger question of how Tami could prevent her husband from leaving, or worse--staying angry, and to get rid of this spiteful lover, even if he was only texting her little cosas, poems sometimes. Jesus, this was not how I wanted to spend my Saturday.
“Mija,” he said. “How can I help?” I looked at his eyes, outlined with blue eyeliner, smeared slightly at the edge. I knew I had to ask him then or never. I breathed in and held my words in my throat, never looking away or confirming what I already knew about my life. I held my breath and exhaled slowly. Without hesitation, he answered me. “Cards can’t fix that,” he said. “Cards can only do so much, Mija.”
Comments