Let Their Spirits Dance by Stella Pope Duarte Page A

winking, the other was blinking. They dressed in black as a rule, and only broke the color code by wearing navy blue on occasions when people died during the holiday season. That was their most festive attire. Their daughter, Marie, was a scandal. She had wild red hair that was shocking to the other family members. At funerals, in broad daylight, it looked like it had been set on fire. Finally, Marie hid her hair under huge hats, and that comforted the family.
    The Murphys buried Don Florencío in an old pioneer cemetery for only fifty dollars as a service to the community. The cemetery was overgrown with weeds and short, stumpy trees with misshapen limbs. They marked his grave with a wooden cross, and eventually the cross was blown away by the wind. It was fitting. Don Florencío wasn’t in his grave anyway. Neither was Jesse. A new form …I had forgotten Don Florencío’s prophecy.
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    â€¢ I THINK BACK , now, at what Don Florencío said, the words of an old man steeped in legend and magic. Jesse, a warrior? Perhaps. I don’t believe warriors are made in the womb, no matter what the old man saw. There are plans, evil plans that take over the minds of men and search the deepest recesses of where hatred lurks, ready to spring. The beginning of a war may take place in an office building with windows overlooking the White House, or in the meanest hovel deep in the jungle. Soft, manicured hands can sign decrees of death and war, as can dirty, blood-crusted hands in villages where people no longer expect the sun to rise. War is the battleground of the human heart where avarice, hatred, greed for power, for money, for land, are allowed to thrive. The Godless man begins to sense that in the entire universe his right to live in the manner he chooses is the only way to live. The disorder in his soul is the beginning of war.

Private War ·
    M orning comes and goes with no word from El Santo Niño. My old bedroom has warmed up enough to make me want to stay under the covers. If my face didn’t hurt so much, I probably would. The adrenaline that ran through me last night is gone, leaving in my body a tender, open wound. I have plans to search the house in broad daylight and convince my mother that the voices she heard were only a dream. I’m wondering if it’s me I’m trying to convince. I find out by way of a weather report that the mist hanging in the air the night of the voices was a low pressure point, a cloud that dangled too close to earth. So that explains the hazy air—but what about the rest?
    My mother’s always been a dreamer, dreaming dreams for everybody, why not this time? Mom’s good at seeing the insides of things. Maybe she’s like Jesse, seeing with an Ixpetz, a polished eye that looks through flesh as easily as seeing through glass. She could see my father’s weakness, the darkness in him that led him away from her to find his match in his lover, Consuelo. He could never be Mom’s equal. He was earth, flinty rock. She was wind, an invisible stream he could never hope to touch. She knew us, too—her children—stole glances into our souls. If she knew Jesse would never come back, she didn’t say it. That was one line of truth my mother never crossed.
    Mom’s got a good memory, too. She didn’t forget anything Jesse toldus at the airport. I’ve tried to forget what he said for the last thirty years. I never understood why he told me he’d never come back. His words got caught in the chambers of my heart and flowed out to every cell in my body. My head, eyes, feet, skin, every part of me knew. My mind battled the truth and a war began inside me. There’s nothing worse than a private war going on inside you every day. I should have climbed on the plane with Jesse, I would have been better off in Vietnam, at close range, waiting for the words to come true. I was in my own Vietnam anyway, whether anyone knew it or