Let Their Spirits Dance Read Free Page A

she balances herself easily on her cane. I haven’t seen her walk this fast in years.
    â€œBe careful Mom, you’ll fall.” She ignores me and walks into her bedroom with me trailing at her side. The room is lit by veladoras flickering before the image of El Santo Niño de Atocha, a fancy name for the Christ Child. The Christ Child is dressed in a simple blue robe with a brown mantle over His shoulders. In one hand he holds a stalk of wheat, in the other a scepter topped with a globe of the world. His dark, wavy hair is down to his shoulders and frames His small, somber face. The picture is propped on top of a white-draped oak dresser. My mother decorates an altar in honor of El Santo Niño every Christmas and prays a nine-day novena. The candlelight is white, friendly. It hushes me, yet I feel the need to dispel its shadows and reach for the light switch.
    â€œNo, mija! Spirits don’t like bright light.”
    â€œSpirits?”
    â€œLook.” She leads me to the window and lifts a corner of the drapes.
    â€œWhat do you see?”
    â€œNothing but Cholo acting like he’s got the rabies.”
    â€œLook carefully.” My mother’s voice is urgent.
    I look intently. I’m glad there’s nobody around to see me next to Mom. My face is red and raw. The pink rayon bathrobe is tight around my shoulders, its frayed ribbon sags at my collarbone. I can’t imagine what my fellow teachers at Jimenez Elementary would say if they saw me now. It’s so ironic after the whole school worked on a unit on nonviolence. I’m already worried my face won’t heal in time to make it back to my second-grade class after Christmas break.
    Trees are still, not a leaf blowing. Through the misty air, I see the star of Bethlehem blinking over Blanche’s house across the street. Its light is multicolored, red, blue, yellow. I make out the white fence posts of the wooden pen in Blanche’s backyard that used to belong to her proud rooster, Fireball. After El Cielito was zoned “industrial” by the city, Blanche had to get rid of all her animals, including Chiva, the black and white goat that gave up her milk for Blanche’s kids. Fireball was gone long before that, captured and made into chicken soup by a local who got tired of being woken up at four in the morning.
    A souped-up Malibu with a muffler that sounds like a motorcycle pulls up into the driveway of the shiftless renters next door. A man opens the door and creeps out.
    â€œI see a guy getting out of a car next door.”
    â€œNever mind about him,” Mom says, exasperated that I don’t see anything else. “They come and go at that house all night long.”
    Cholo is standing in the spot where the passion vine used to grow, barking at me as I look out the window.
    â€œStop, you mangy dog!” The dog runs around in a half circle and barks toward the chain link fence, cringes, snarls, barks again.
    â€œWhat’s wrong with the dog?”
    â€œHe sees Jesse’s spirit. Los animales see the spirit world.”
    Cholo’s barking gets all the dogs in the neighborhood going. One by one, the dogs start barking, some louder, some softer, until an eerie howl sounds, and the last dog stops barking.
    â€œThis is spooky.”
    Mom is insistent. “Do you see my mijito? Is he wearing his uniform?”
    â€œNo, Mom, I don’t see Jesse.” I’m looking hard, scanning the dark, expecting what?
    â€œI heard his voice tonight. Jesse’s voice!”
    â€œYou were dreaming.”
    â€œNo! My eyes were open. I could barely hear him, but it was him talking to someone—other men. Voices. He promised me, don’t you remember, Teresa, promised me at the airport that I would hear his voice again!”
    â€œCon calma, Mom. Calm down. Jesse said all kinds of things. He said we’d read about him in a book, too.”
    â€œIf only I had listened harder. I don’t