Rogelia's House of Magic Read Free Page A

fear shot through Xochitl like a bullet. She sat bolt upright in bed, dripping with sweat. Startled, she looked around the sparsely decorated room. The dream faded and reality came flooding back. She grasped the wishing bracelet on her left wrist just to make sure it was still there.
    Xochitl fell back onto her bed, rolled on her tummy, and buried her face deep in her pillow. Outside her house in the Wilshire Square barrio, she could hear children laughing, women gossiping about whoever wasn’t within earshot, and a Mexican
novela
blaring from someone’s television. She tried to let the noise drown out her thoughts of the accident, but it was impossible.
    Xochitl jumped off the bed and wandered out of her bedroom to the living room. She didn’t want to remember. It was too painful. It felt like the accident had happened yesterday, and then again, it felt like it could have happened a lifetime ago. She twisted the bracelet back and forth.
    Xochitl paced in front of the shrine dedicated to La Virgen de Guadalupe, known as Our Lady of Guadalupe in English, that her father had placed prominently in the living room. She paused to glance up at the statue of the Madonna with her loving, downcast eyes. But when she received no comfort from La Virgen de Guadalupe, she bolted out the front door, hopped onto a decrepit, rusty bike that her dad had bought her at a garage sale, and pedaled as fast as her legs could carry her.
    Xochitl’s raven black hair whipped in the wind behind her, beating her back like a flail. She lifted her dark brown face to the late-morning sun, hoping the warm rays could pierce the coldness she felt inside. Faster and faster Xochitl rode, her breathing short and shallow. She had no idea where she was going. Wherever she ended up, Xochitl hoped that when she got there, she wouldn’t be able to recall her frantic search through the creosote for her sister. She wanted to will the images away.

    She could still hear her own screaming when the side door burst open on impact and Graciela fell out. In her mind’s eye she saw herself landing hard on her hands and knees, her skin breaking on contact with the rocky cliff and oozing blood. Clutching her legs close to her body, she rolled across thousands of shardlike stones. Scrambling over the desert floor, ripping long gashes in her knees, she found Graciela with her eyes wide open, staring unseeing into the dark nighttime sky.

    Clutching the handlebars of her bike, Xochitl looked around as if waking up from a nightmare. She was now on a high bank of the Santa Ana River. Being here was like being in Mexico. A familiar land scorched by the sun—occasionally spotted with succulents, creeping jimsonweed, and cordgrass. Still, it was a little freaky that every time she got on a bike and rode without thinking, she ended up at this river.
    As Xochitl wiped her watery eyes, she thought bitterly how if she had stayed in Mexico, Graciela might still be alive. Xochitl got off the bike, propped it up on its kickstand, and marched through tall cattails down to the river’s edge. Yellow-bellied American goldfinches chirped happily in the fields of anise. A turkey vulture circled above her head with its sleek black body and ugly red face. Xochitl reached down and brushed the top of a mugwort bush. She could name most of the healing plants here—yerba buena, mountain misery, white sage—from the lessons Nana had given her and Graciela back home. She touched the tip of an aloe branch. After the accident Nana had mended Xochitl’s wounds with this plant’s sticky goo. But Nana couldn’t do anything to save Graciela’s life.
    As the most trusted
curandera
in the entire state of Jalisco, Nana had treated every disease imaginable with her crazy singing and the plants she grew in her garden. Xochitl had seen people carried in on a stretcher walk out on their own after only an hour with Nana. The townsfolk called on Nana for problems of the soul and heart as well as the body.