Monstrilio, p.8
Monstrilio, page 8
“I’ll find it.”
“And?”
“We’ll see.” Magos took a strawberry and licked the dripping condensed milk from it. She caught me staring and smiled. I stuffed a strawberry in my mouth.
“Flaqui, it’s been, what? Three weeks?”
“Ten days.”
“Only ten?” Magos slumped on the chair, her spine quitting. “Wow. I.…” She stared past me, scanning the apartment as if she was just then realizing she was at my place.
I kept my apartment full of trinkets that encased moments I believed were worth remembering, a physical accumulation of my life in order to make sure it wasn’t passing by unnoticed. Some of these things retained their memories: a brunch where I laughed until my belly ached; a trip to Argentina, farther than I ever thought I would travel; a day out in the rain; a complicated and successful surgery. But many others had given up their ghosts and stood soulless: a small Talavera vase, a framed poster of a film I couldn’t remember watching, stained glass butterflies, a cat alebrije with a broken tail. I should’ve gotten rid of them, but I was waiting for their ghosts to come back. My apartment could only hold so many things. I could afford a larger one. I could afford a damn house. But I liked my tiny apartment. It had seen me grow from a person who could barely afford it to someone who could upgrade easily. It hadn’t judged me; why would I judge it?
Magos straightened. “The lung must be looking for me. Wondering why I left it.”
“If it’s alive. Joseph hammered it. You told me yourself it was dead.”
“I was distraught, Flaqui. All of you wanted it dead, so I thought it was too. It must have only passed out. My poor lung.”
Magos pushed her bowl away though there were still a couple of strawberries left. I picked them out of her bowl. Magos cleared the rest of the table.
I didn’t think we’d find the monster. Its cadaver had likely been taken by a tlacuache or stray dog or scavenger bird. But not finding it would be the worst outcome. What Magos needed was closure. If we found the monster dead, then we could pick up where we left off, with the zombies and her smell’s prolonged stay in my apartment. Magos and her grief, lumbering along its course, twisted and potholed as that course was.
Of course, there was a chance we might find the monster alive. Jackie was indeed careful with what she said. And if we did find the monster alive, well, I had no clue what would happen.
We met Jackie outside Lucía’s house. Almendra barked at us, wondering why we weren’t going in. I brought a fishing net, Jackie a shovel, and Magos nothing. Magos made us promise we wouldn’t attack the monster, only catch it. I wasn’t sure if Jackie would keep her promise, and I didn’t blame her.
Jackie led us west. I expected to go south to Chapultepec; a park seemed like where a monster would go. These streets were too residential, nothing but walls hiding huge houses. We tiptoed to the tree Jackie had seen the monster hanging from, Magos in the lead, Jackie and me behind with net and shovel raised and ready. The tree was empty. We walked up and down both sides of the street looking up the fat trees, trying to catch a glimpse of the black furry ball. Jackie walked tentatively, afraid the thing would jump on her and try to eat her. I wasn’t afraid. I believed the thing was dead.
“Poop!” Magos screamed, and she lifted up a ball of excrement the size and shape of a golf ball. “It’s the lung’s poop!” Magos dropped it and wiped her hand on the tracksuit pants she was wearing. Mine. I offered her a tissue. She took it and stuffed it into the jacket pocket. Magos followed the monster’s shit and we followed her. We spent an hour going up and down the streets of las Lomas, spiraling out from where Jackie first saw the monster, along the walled houses, past the manicured shrubs, under the jacarandas, ficuses, and other trees with names I didn’t know, canopies spreading wide and pleasantly shading the sun. I had once been wonderstruck by these streets, so rich and alien, so not mine, back when Magos and Lucía first took me into their home. Magos hadn’t known me well then. I hadn’t cared. I’d latched on to the idea of becoming a doctor like a monomaniacal tick, and I would’ve had to quit school if she hadn’t offered their help.
I was conceived unexpectedly when my parents were in their forties and my brother already sixteen. My mother believed I was a demon sent to ruin her family. She blamed me for her depression, for her quitting her job, and for my brother going to jail. Apart from church, she spent most days locked in her room watching TV. My father worked days at a pharmaceutical factory and nights as a watchman at an industrial park. She blamed me for his absence too.
My father said I had to be patient with my mother; she was sick. “Why can’t she take medicine?” I asked, but my father said that her ailment was in her soul and only God could cure it. I prayed for her to get better. I was good. I kept the house spotless. I cooked my own meals and left my mother’s on a tray outside her door. She seldom ate my food, afraid I would poison her. “Why can’t you leave us alone?” she’d ask me, and I’d try harder. I wore old-fashioned dresses that made me look like a storybook good girl. Three starchy numbers with white scalloped necks that my father found at the tianguis: pastel blue, pastel pink, and pastel yellow. When I outgrew them, I wore my school uniform exclusively: skirt, knee-high socks, black shoes, and a forest-green cardigan.
Some days, if she was out of her room, she’d strip me naked, searching for marks on my body, something she could show her priest and my father to make them see I was in fact a demon. She’d scratch me as if my skin were peelable and my scaly demon flesh hid underneath. I brushed my long hair every night so it would shine. She’d mess it up when she tried to find horns on my head. I spoke softly and never cussed, but she would’ve been happier if I screeched and yelled obscenities.
In church, my mother was less afraid of me. She prayed for me with eyes tightly shut. There, she believed I could be saved, her family could be saved. I hated the kneeling, the Hail Marys, the Our Fathers, the bells and rituals, the priest’s pious voice as if he weren’t a regular man, the smell of incense and mothballs. Still, church was a respite, a place where my mother didn’t attack me. Sometimes she’d buy me an oblea with cajeta outside.
It took me years to realize that my mother would never see me as her daughter. It didn’t matter if I looked and acted the part of the sweet girl perfectly; to my mother I was a demon pretending to be good. Wily. Ready to destroy her whenever she let her guard down. At thirteen, when I finally understood that no matter what I did my mother would never love me, I acted even sweeter. Cloying. “Mamita,” I called her, smiling grotesquely. I turned her crucifixes upside down, scratched the eyes out of her Virgins. She slapped me, pulled my hair. “Leave me be!” she’d scream, and she’d hit me harder. When she tired, I made my voice lower, smiled wider, and growled demon-like, “Mamita, I love you.” I’d leave her weeping. I became her demon. I needed to break her before she broke me.
When I turned fourteen and my mother tried to poison me, my father sent me away to live with his aunt, my great-aunt Lety, a woman with a white buzz cut who spent her afternoons gossiping about family members I didn’t know. She was the first one to call me smart. She despised church but not God. Becoming a doctor seemed the hardest thing to accomplish and the closest thing to being godly. Aunt Lety saw me get accepted into the UNAM but died shortly after. I couldn’t quit school. So Magos took me in.
I lived with Magos, Lucía, and Jackie for over three years. Magos called us sisters but stopped once we both realized I was in love with her. Magos, the long-haired rich girl, friend of a friend, who had spoken to me at a party. Who had held on to my arm as if she’d known me for years. I left a month after she gave birth to Santiago. Joseph had moved in, and I was in the way. Besides, I could finally afford a place, the apartment in la del Valle I still lived in.
“Why can’t we find any more?” Magos asked.
“The monster can’t possibly shit all over las Lomas,” I said. “It’s shit is finite.”
“It must be around.”
“I hope so,” Jackie said. “Lucía won’t be able to sleep with that thing around.”
“You told Mami?”
“I’ll have to if we don’t catch it.”
Ten minutes later, Magos found a new trail of shit that led us to the entrance of the park that overlooks Barranca de Barrilaco.
“Should we go inside?” Magos asked.
“You’re the poop tracker,” I said.
In parts, the park was a forest, wild and chaotic, but in others it showed the manicuring hand of humans, cobbled paths, bougainvilleas in tended shrubs, handrails. We walked a series of woody trails crisscrossing the barranca over bridges. It had rained the past few days, making the park lush, green, and muddy.
“Over there.” Jackie pointed to a group of people peering down into the barranca.
A teenage couple held hands while a man poked a pair of eviscerated cats with a stick. The cats lay just centimeters away from where the barranca dropped. A woman held a hand over her mouth but didn’t look away. Trees shadowed the area. The smell of blood and insides betrayed no rot. These cats had been freshly killed.
“What happened?” I asked.
The man with the stick pointed to a tree that rose from deep in the barranca. On one of the branches hung the monster like a black, round, furry fruit. “That thing killed them.”
“My lung!” Magos tried to run to it, but the drop was steep. She tried sliding down, but I pulled her away before she tumbled below. “Lung!” she shouted. The monster curled up to face us. “Lung!”
“Don’t call it,” the woman who covered her mouth said.
“Lung!” The monster swung to a branch closer to us, nimble with its arm-tail. “Lung!” It swung closer.
The woman scrambled away. The monster landed on a shrub that stuck out from the barranca’s wall, just a few meters down from us. The girl in the couple threw a rock at it. Missed. The man hit the ground with his stick, but the monster didn’t flinch. The girl picked up another rock.
“Don’t,” Magos said. “We’re professionals. Lena, tell them we’re professionals.”
“What?”
“We’ve come to take this animal away. Lena, tell them.”
“We’ve come to take this animal away.”
“Professional what?” the girl asked. The man with the stick stepped closer.
“Step back,” I said, surgeon mode activated. I waved my net high in the air. “We’re professionals.” I elbowed Jackie, and she raised her shovel too. “Step back now,” I said.
The teenage couple and the man with the stick joined the woman down the trail. The monster opened its mouth and growled. Its fangs glistened bloody. Magos slid toward it, but I pulled her back up.
“I’ll get it,” I said. “Jackie, hold me.” Jackie took my hand. “Magos, hold Jackie and anchor yourself to that tree, okay?” We made a chain. I slid down the barranca. The monster recoiled. “Magos, call it.”
“Let me get it.”
“Call it!”
“Lung! Lung, come here.” The monster’s black marble eyes bulged out at Magos’s voice. It growled inquisitively. I would get one shot with the net. If I failed to catch it, I was pretty sure it wouldn’t stay put. “Lung. Little lung,” Magos called.
The monster let go of the shrub. It didn’t fall. It was wedged in. Its arm-tail curled up, like a periscope. Its eyes froze on mine. I swung the net. The monster jumped toward me. I slipped from Jackie’s grip.
Fuck.
I scratched but couldn’t get a grip on anything. I hit something as I tumbled down. Leaves fluttered above me.
I saw sky.
The barranca’s wall loomed above me. I inhaled to confirm I was alive. I smelled mud. I hurt. I was wet. I shifted to get up, but there was no ground to hold me. I was on a ledge. I held on. Pain shot through my left wrist, but I didn’t let go. There was still a steep drop into the barranca below. I managed to sit up, my legs dangling. I touched my head, trying to find out if I’d hit it. I could’ve broken my neck.
“Help!” I screamed. “Help!” I couldn’t see Jackie or Magos, or anyone, but I heard commotion above me.
“Lena.” Jackie peered from above.
“Help!”
She disappeared. I heard voices. Arguments.
“Help!”
I couldn’t climb out of the barranca on my own. And I didn’t know how much longer the ledge would support me. I didn’t know if I could survive another fall.
“Help!”
“Hold on!” Jackie said.
She slid down slowly, holding on to the man with the stick. The man with the stick slid too. I reached toward Jackie, but we were too far apart. Jackie told the man to go down farther. He tried but the mud was too slippery. He almost let Jackie fall. She held his hand with both of hers. He pulled Jackie back up. I got on my knees. Something cracked. I hugged the wall and dug my fingers in.
Jackie slid down again. Slower. The man held her hand. The boy in the couple held the man’s hand. Someone held him. I placed a foot on the rock to test its strength. To make sure it wouldn’t crumble. I pushed myself up. My foot slipped on the mud. Jackie grabbed my hand. I held on to a crevice in the wall with the other. I didn’t care how much it hurt. How much my hand wanted to slip away. The man pulled. Jackie pulled.
I crawled out.
I was muddy and scratched up, but no one was paying any attention to me. Magos was holding the monster like a baby. The girl wanted to touch it but was too scared to dare. The boy and the man didn’t come near the thing.
“What is it?” the girl asked.
“A rare species,” Magos said.
“Where are you taking it?” the man asked humbly, impressed by our heroics, fumbling as they were.
“A reserve.”
“In Chapultepec?”
“North. To Sonora. It’s a desert species.”
The group looked at each other, awed. My jeans were torn at the knee. My arm bled. I had more than one thorn stuck in my hand.
“Time to go,” I said.
“Flaqui. My goodness.” Magos picked a twig from my hair. The monster stared at me and growled. Magos held it closer and kissed its head.
My mother thought I was a monster and didn’t love me because of it. This thing, an actual fucking monster, was loved.
I pushed Magos on her way. Jackie hesitated to follow us. She could’ve told the group that we were impostors, that that thing wasn’t some desert animal, that it was dangerous and that the group should help her destroy it. Magos looked at her with pleading eyes. Jackie picked up her shovel, thanked the group, and walked away with us.
“How did you catch it?” I asked when we were close to Lucía’s house. The sky had darkened, and raindrops began to fall.
“Jackie tackled it,” Magos said, combing the monster’s fur with her fingers. “Has it grown? I think it’s grown. It’s heavier for sure.”
“Gotten fat on a diet of neighborhood cats,” I said.
Jackie stepped in front, halting us. “What are you going to do with it?”
“Take it home. With Lena.”
“I don’t want a monster in my house.”
“Please, Flaqui. We’ll keep it in your spare bedroom until we figure out something permanent.”
“Permanent?” Jackie asked. A car drove by, and we instinctively huddled toward a wall as if we were doing something criminal. “You mean to keep it?” Jackie whispered. “Mi niña, please. You just said that thing grew. How big is it going to get? It’s dangerous now. Imagine it larger.”
“Jackie’s got a point,” I said.
“Did it attack you? Any of you? It could have, but it didn’t. It’s learned its lesson.”
“Didn’t seem that way for the cats.”
“It just needs time. The lung will become a boy. You told me so, Jackie. Like your great-grandmother’s cousin.”
Magos held the monster out to Jackie. Jackie took a step back.
“What if it doesn’t grow into a boy? What if it remains like this? A wild thing? How will you keep it? Caged?”
“What’s the alternative?”
“Kill it,” I said.
“Flaqui!”
“Well, that is the alternative.”
Thunder rumbled. The rain got fatter.
“Enough!” Magos screamed, and she squeezed the monster. The monster squeaked. “Sorry.” It snaked its arm-tail around Magos’s bicep. “Jackie, thank you so much for leading me back to my lung. Thank you. Really. But it’s not your problem anymore. I’m sorry I kept it at the house. I’m sorry it attacked my mother. But from now on I swear you will never have to see it again if you don’t want to. We’re keeping it safe with us.”
“Us?” I asked.
“For now, Flaqui. Please. I don’t have anywhere else to go.”
She had her house in la Roma, but I didn’t say this. I wanted her to stay with me even if the price of her company was keeping the monster too. Jackie lifted her hands up in surrender.
“Fine,” she said and walked away.
“Please don’t tell my mother,” Magos screamed after her. “Please. Not yet.”
Jackie kept walking.
We kept the monster inside my spare bedroom with the door shut except when Magos went in to feed or play with it. The gap under the door was too narrow for the monster to squeeze through, Magos assured me, but at night we stuffed a towel in it. I was unable to sleep. I’d lost my Monday bathing routine, plus now Magos slept in my bed and I was housing a monster in the room across the hall. At night, I heard it scratch, hiss, and growl.
After a week of catching sleep only through brief naps in my office, I was exhausted. Magos didn’t snore but her breaths were loud. I tried to be lured into sleep by her breathing but after each exhale, her breath paused, and at every moment of stillness, I grew unsure if she would ever breathe again. I got out of bed.
Outside the monster’s door, I heard a growl, almost like a purr, like it was happy. I peered inside. The monster dangled from the ceiling’s light fixture. The streetlight’s glow illuminated its furry balloon body, swaying as if a breeze were blowing. I stepped in and closed the door behind me. A car’s headlights ran through the room. The monster curled up to face me and bared its fangs. It could attack me like it had attacked Lucía, but I didn’t run away. I stared back. The room stank despite Magos’s constant cleaning.
