Alma

Naomi Portillo

The moon was full above the house.

The hens had hushed their chittering and even the house dogs had stopped pacing outside in the patio. The one entity present was the song of the crickets deep beneath the bushes and the silent creak of my grandmother’s wooden chair as she rocked herself. Her fingers worked slowly to sew a patch on the jeans I’d gotten off the plane with: the daisy patterned patch, probably taken from some old shirt of hers, contrasted the blue of my jeans quite startingly and I cringed a little. I’d scraped my knee as soon as we’d left the taxi, unfamiliar with the bumpy terrain surrounding my grandmother’s home. I’d wept a little and she’d called me a clumsy American before taking me inside and setting some chipped ice chunks on my cut. She had scolded my mother for coddling me moments after. The nearest neighbors were maybe half a mile away, so I could hear their conversation on the other side of the house as if they were yelling the words right in my ear. It didn’t help that the walls were thin and that instead of glass, the windows were barred so noise could come in and out as it wished.

The Salvadoran houses were certainly different from those in the States. This one was smaller, with peeling cream paint and sparse old-fashioned and mismatched furniture that did little to match the jade-tiled floors. There wasn’t any air conditioning, the beds were stiff and there wasn’t a shower, just a shallow basin with cold water and a ragged bucket. My mother had

given me a cold glare when I had asked earlier if my grandmother was poor.  She’d told us she was going to take a short nap but I thought the jetlag got the best of her. It had been maybe five hours and she hadn’t left the bedroom, so I’d joined my grandmother and her sole lantern on the patio. I was pretty sleepy but found it amusing that I could stay up later than my mother. My grandma had fed me a tortilla with cheese and then sat herself down with my jeans, a needle, and thread. She must have noticed my boredom because she sniffed loudly and asked me about school. We did a little back and forth with questions about life in the States

and I realized she was trying to get to know me, given our little familiarity. She sewed and sewed while I fidgeted with my tongue. It was maybe my second time seeing her in person, so I wasn’t sure how to respond.

“¿Qué piensas del pueblo?” she asked me, and I stared at her, dumbfounded. My mother barely spoke Spanish back home; she said there was simply no use. I tried to piece her words together and the best I could come to understand was What do you think of the town? 

“It’s dark,” I said, not sure if I used the right word. It could have meant something completely different, for all I knew, but she seemed to accept my reply anyway. “No deberías tenerle miedo a la oscuridad,” You shouldn’t be scared of the dark, she said, frowning. “Tu miedo solo los invita.” Your fear only invites them.

I raised my eyebrows. “Who?”

She glanced both ways before leaning in to whisper to me. “Lo que te digo ahora mismo, nadie más puede saberlo. ¿Entiendes?” What I tell you right now, no one else can know about. Understand?

I nodded dumbly, sluggishly. She went on talking while I translated in my head: “When I was your age, I was a very curious child. Much like yourself. My own grandmother had told me stories about the creatures of this country. One night, I woke up to one calling my name…”

I must have nodded off because I felt myself flinching back to reality. I batted my eyes, rubbing them so hard I could hear them squish in their sockets. I looked up to see my grandmother’s chair empty. No jeans, no needle, no thread. As if she had never been there. There was a ball in my throat and I tried to swallow my panic, but the lantern light was dwindling and the crickets had gone quiet. I ran back inside the house, only to find my mother wasn't in her bed either. In fact, the bed looked perfectly made, bare of any creases and cold to the touch. Our luggage was missing, and the plate I’d left on the table was gone. 

My heart was beating so fast it panged in my ears like a stampede. I figured I was too stunned to cry, so I ran back outside and tried to steady my breaths. The wind howled and within seconds, the lantern flame was extinguished. The only thing keeping me from darkness was the moonlight, half hidden by clouds that I hadn’t noticed were there before. 

I heard an echo of a name follow the wind and the hairs on my arms rose. I stood frozen on the patio, my limbs so still I could have been a statue. When I heard it a second time, I was able to recognize it: Alma. My grandmother’s name.

Without thinking, I felt myself taking small steps toward the voice. It was feminine, whiny almost, like an old lady weeping. It sounded far, but close enough to give me goosebumps. I walked mindlessly, the crunch of the dirt beneath my shoes the only thing tethering me to the earth. When I glanced behind my shoulder, I realized I’d walked far enough that the house was no longer in sight. I was surrounded by endless open fields and a gaping black sky, yet the calls sounded as if they were right in front of me. 

I didn’t know how long I walked. I looked down at my feet and didn’t recognize the shoes as my own, but it was too dark to tell. At one point, I was no longer treading on dirt, but sand. I could hear the churn of a stream nearby; the clashing of water against the rocks and the trickle of the current. I clumsily descended a slippery boulder and was met with the thin stream, glistening from the faint moonshine. I caught my reflection on the water and my stomach turned. It looked like me—but then it looked like someone completely different. My hair was curlier, messier, and

I was wearing a pale yellow shirt I had no recollection of ever owning. My cheeks were hollower, my nose curvier, and my ears rounder. Soon, the reflection was interrupted by a silhouette behind me and then a ripple in the water. I snapped out of my bewilderment and when I heard the call this time, I could feel her presence, so I turned around.

“Alma.” This close, the voice sounded like a fork scratching the face of a china plate. I winced at the sheer despair in it, the screech in her throat that ran wild. The moon was not bright enough to illuminate her face, but I could see the pallor of her bony fingers against the blackness of her clothes. They look drenched and shredded as if she’d been in the middle of getting mauled by a sea creature. Her black hair was matted and spilled around the circumference of her head like petroleum. When she moved her hands to reach for me, I took steps backward until I inevitably tripped and fell to the earth. I still couldn't see her face—it wasn’t covered by anything yet my eyes couldn’t decipher her features. 

“I’m not Alma,” I heard myself say, though my voice sounded distant and a little unsure. 

“Come with me, Alma.” Her voice softened into a lullaby. “Let’s go home.” 

I cowered away, hugged my knees tight to my chest, and forced myself to look away from

her. In the reflection on the stream, I caught a glimpse of what was hidden beneath her hair. The skin on her face was pruned and gray, with bits flaking off to reveal ghostly white scabs. Her eyes were missing, hollow black sockets where they should have been, and her nose was gone completely, exposing part of her decaying skull. 

I yelped and just as I tried to get back on my feet, she wrapped her fingers around my right leg and pulled. My face was dragged down through the mud, scratching my cheek with jagged pebbles. I kicked at her but her fingers only dug deeper, cutting deep crescents into my skin. My screams were buried by dirt in my mouth and when I lifted my head to breathe, she placed a hand behind my head and plunged me into the water. 

I closed my mouth but I had already swallowed some water. When I tried to fight back, she pushed me further into the streambed, putting her weight on me until I could do nothing but thrash. It was too dark to see anything and I was sure the panic would kill me before the water could think of it. I was never taught how to swim—my mother didn’t think it important, living in the city. I’d wanted to, but she rather I learned something more useful like the piano, or maybe even soccer. 

I felt my eyes start to blur, yet through the dark folds of the stream, I could see myself. I realized this might have been my life playing before me—that this truly was the end. I saw my bedroom, my fish aquarium, and the dried spot on my striped duvet from when I’d spilled soda. Me, only a few years younger, playing with dolls I wished I looked like. I saw myself in elementary school, struggling through Spanish and hiding myself whenever someone laughed at my thick curls. I ran home to my mother, who frowned and straightened my hair every week from then on. Just a few hours ago, getting off the airplane and being appalled at the heat and the flies and the lack of buildings. Scared an exotic bug might crawl inside my ear while I lay on the rock-hard bed. Wary of the smell of food and the minute size of everything and what the people would think of me. I looked like them, but I felt more alien than I did back home where I looked like no one. 

I saw my grandmother and my mother arguing a little after that, throwing cold words at each other on my behalf. Debating on how I should be raised. How my mother should have never left for the States, because now it was her fault that I cringed at my meals or that I couldn’t roll my R’s. How selfish she had been holding back something so important from me. My mother had stamped off after their fight, muttering something in English that I didn’t quite catch.

My grandmother’s irate voice was enough to bring me back and only then did the echo of her last words to me ring in my ears: Your fear only invites them. That’s when I stopped trying to fight altogether. I let myself sink into the water, my limbs floating around me like I’d never truly had any real control of them, like they were suspended appendages and nothing more. The

seething of the stream seemed to calm and I could no longer feel the creature’s hands shoving me, or the absent air in my lungs; in fact, I could no longer feel the water at all. 

I gasped. 

My grandmother stared at me from her rocking chair, her mouth fixed in a straight line. She clicked her tongue and quickly redirected her eyes to the pair of jeans in her hands. Her fingers danced, sewing stitch after stitch until she finally tied the last thread into a knot. She handed them back to me and I could only stare back at her in awe; the daisies on the patch didn’t look so bad in the new lighting. I briskly ran my hands through my hair, dried and braided, my clothes, still the same pink shirt I left the airport with. 

“You shouldn’t be up so late.” I heard my mother’s voice crack. She leaned on the side of the patio door, covering her yawn with a palm.

I pulled myself to my feet and hesitantly joined her. Above, the moon was full again, unsheathed from any clouds. The lantern was lit yet again, illuminating the grounds and warming the sleeping dogs. I had never been more grateful to hear a cricket chirp in my life. The wind was gone, but I could still feel the goosebumps on the skin above my elbows. I met my grandmother’s gaze before I skipped after my mother, who’d gone back inside. 

I swore I saw a hint of a smile playing on her lips.