ESTRELLA CHAVEZ
GOES TO
MYSTERY SCHOOL
Lesson I: Water
L.C. Matherne
I am The Cosmic
This is my Scroll
You are my servant
I guide your soul
I am Water
I am Day
I am Night
I made the beginning
The Sound
The Light
From Suns
From Void
From Tongues
I am employed
I am Truth
You will know Me
By my words
Here unspooling
JULY
The Tearful Eyes of Our Lady of Guadalupe
"For what is mysticism but a song of the divine, a swimming in the womb of God?”
Linda Chavez clicks off the Be Here Now radio show, bows her head, and folds her hands into her heart. “Thank you, Our Lady of Guadalupe, for this womb of God. For my girls, for the ranch, even for Victor. It’s not where I thought I’d be, not what I wanted, but it’s all been worthwhile—all the pain, all I’ve lost.”
She crosses herself as Marina, her oldest daughter—a blossoming thirteen—opens the key lid to the baby grand piano and summons Bach’s “Praeludium” in G-sharp minor. It’s melody pinches Linda’s heart.
Estrella, Linda’s ‘oops’ baby, a happy, fat toddler, crawls onto the piano bench next to Marina and hits random keys, making a cacophony and laughing.
“Such a light you bring, Estrella!” Marina coos, tickling her baby sister’s chin. “You’re everybody’s favorite and already funny, like your daddy.”
“She has a bit of a temper, but it seals her charm,” Linda says , her eyes full of love, as the old-fashioned house phone rings. She crosses broken rays of sunlight to answer the phone. ““It’s your father, no doubt, calling to see what’s for dinner. I swear that man loves to eat more than he loves to breathe.”
The piano goes quiet. “It’s not Dad,” Marina says, her eucalyptus-green eyes wide with terror.
Linda picks up the receiver.
“Pay attention, Linda. I’m going to tell you what to do.”
“Who is this?” Linda hisses, her voice tight.
“We have Victor.”
Linda’s heart freezes in her chest. After all this time, she almost thought they were safe.
“Do what we say, and we won’t kill him. We need three million American dollars. You have two days.” The line goes dead.
Estrella screams, and the room darkens Sudden lightning flashes outside.
“We must call Kit,” Marina says.
…
The quarter moon shines silver between fast-moving clouds above the ranch house that blazes with lights.
A black Mercedes sedan winds through the moonlight up the long driveway. The car stops, dust puffs from the tires. Yves Pearce, a meticulously dressed man in his early twenties, opens the back door. Kit Hamilton steps a stiletto heel onto the dusty drive.
“Thank God she’s here,” Linda says to Cesar, Victor’s brother, who stands next to her, his eyes bloodshot from the joint he puffs. “Kit will know what to do, unlike you, who were supposed to be watching Victor. You are useless, I swear, but by some cruel twist of fate, here you are again, involved in yet another life and death situation far beyond your pay grade. And you’re going to deal with Zandra. Why you ever married her I have no idea.”
Cesar shrugs. “I was watching him,” he replies. “But I can’t be with him every minute of the day. You know he has his interests.”
Linda glares at him as Kit and Yves approach. Kit, a tall, slender blonde strides ahead with her usual authority, but uncertainty pools in her blue eyes.
“Where’s Estrella?” Kit asks. “Keeping my goddaughter safe is our top priority. This kidnapping could just be a trick to expose her, though I’m certain they have no clue that they’re looking for his daughter. Saul has made sure of that.” She takes a deep breath. “I could take a dagger and cut out my own heart for not seeing the signs. I thought we’d secured what we needed to have in place for our protection. But maybe my powers are failing. I must talk to Babatunde.”
“Estrella’s with Marina,” Linda says. “Why Babatunde?”
“He’s near the caves. He may know something.” Kit replies.
“This is such bullshit,” Cesar says. “You’re looking for answers in a fairytale book. It’s the cartel, I’m telling you.”
Kit rolls her eyes at Cesar, pushing past him toward the house.
Linda stops her a few feet in front of the wrought iron front door. “Zandra doesn’t know yet.”
“Oh, come on.” Kit’s eyes land on Cesar. “She’s your wife.”
He looks away. “I’m not telling her any bad news. You tell her—it’s your fairytale.”
Kit straightens her cream silk blouse. “Well let’s do this, then.” She tosses Yves a bottle of Xanax from her purse. “There’s liquor in the kitchen. She likes scotch.”
…
Zandra Chavez reclines on the sofa, a telenovela murmuring from the TV. Her black hair is wrapped around curlers; one eyebrow drawn in on her round face. She wears a dressing gown and holds her hands out, fingers spread wide so as not to ruin her wet nails.
She looks from Kit to Yves to Cesar, who averts his gaze, and finally to Linda. “What the hell is going on?” she accuses. “Why is Miss High and Mighty Kit Hamilton here with her so-called butler? I sense death.”
Linda, finding all the eyes she searches turned away, finally says, “Victor’s been kidnapped by the narcos. We have to figure out how to get him back.”
Zandra screams loud and long, then falls to the floor, where she shouts prayers between more bloodcurdling screams. Cesar bends awkwardly to comfort his wife. Yves takes the Xanax to the kitchen.
“Mami! What’s wrong?”
Alfonso, Zandra and Cesar’s oldest son, runs into the room. A wisp of mustache tickles his thirteen-year-old lip. He takes his mother’s hand as Yves, like a benign wind, appears with an icy drink.
Zandra drinks it in three gulps, then turns her eyes of fury to Linda.
“How could you keep this from me? You think you’re better than me, that I deserve nothing.”
“Keep what from you, Mami?” Alfonso looks from his mother to Linda and back.
Linda's voice finally cracks. “Your Uncle Victor has been kidnapped by the narcos.” She brushes back a tear. “I know you worship your Uncle Victor, and he loves you too, so much, but we adults need to handle the situation now. Alfonso, you take care of your mother. We’ll be in the kitchen.”
Alfonso stands, Zandra already passed out cold from the laced drink. “I’m coming to the kitchen, too,” he says, his voice resonating from a new, low register. “I know who I am, what blood flows in my body. I am the nephew and godson of Victor Chavez, champion of the people. If anyone hurts my uncle, I will kill them myself.”
…
“Talk to me, Babatunde. What have you heard?” Kit sits at the head of the humble Chavez kitchen table, phone to her ear.
“It is the Proletum,” an elegant, African-inflected voice replies through the crackled line. “Saul is certain of it. They do not have the sword, so more demands will surely come. Expect a negotiation.”
“They must have at least one of the knives to have held onto him for this long,” Kit says. “I’m at the ranch. Call if you hear anything new.” She hangs up the phone. “Babatunde says Proletum.”
“Of course it is the Proletum,” Marina says, drifting into the room.
Linda rolls her eyes and sighs. “We all agree the water needs to be pure and free, but I just can’t listen to this nonsense about demonic cults and angels and demons roaming the earth. Wickedness is as old as time. There is no evil conspiracy pulling the strings of the world, just an endless struggle. It’s the narcos and we know how to deal with them – pay them off.”
“What’s Proletum? Are they demons or angels?” Alfonso asks, taking a sip of the coffee Yves places before him.
“The Proletum is nothing,” Cesar says. “You’re too young to be here, anyway. Go to bed.”
“I’m not going to bed. I just drank coffee.” Alfonso sets down his chipped china cup and puffs out his skinny chest.
“The Proletum are the bad guys,” Marina says to Alfonso, her younger cousin by two years. “Don’t worry. We’re the good guys and we always win in the end.”
“It’s the narcos,” Cesar says. “You know how they feel about Victor.”
Linda nods.
“And…” Cesar casts his eyes down as he makes the sign of the cross.
“What, Cesar?” Linda asks. “What do you know?”
Cesar shakes his head and sighs. “Say what you will, but I can keep a secret. If you were to cut me open right now, secrets would seep from my body with my blood.”
“What. The. Hell?” Linda breaks into an involuntary shout. “Tell me everything right now, Cesar.”
“But I just want you to know that, if I didn’t think it could help Victor, I would never say anything because he asked me not to, and I would never betray my brother.”
Cesar makes the sign of the cross a second time. Finally, he speaks. “Last week, Gabriel Estrada and Victor got into a fistfight in the city.”
“Gabriel Estrada is the kingpin of the Cobras, the most evil cartel,” Alfonso says. “They say he killed forty men in one night.”
Cesar nods at his son, then continues. “We were at the bar, having a drink before we came back to the ranch. Gabriel walked past, and Victor stuck out his foot and tripped him. Gabriel landed face down on the grungy floor. Then Victor said, ‘How’s Rosanna Gomez, you piece of dirt?’ Rosanna’s mother found her in their yard, sliced open from her belly to her chest because she refused to marry Gabriel’s brother. She was thirteen.”
“My God,” Kit says. “Marina’s thirteen. Why are these men so wicked?”
“Me and Victor got some good punches in before we fought our way out of the bar, but it’s only a matter of time. You can’t humiliate Gabriel Estrada and live. Not even Victor, who has the strength of five men. But I think they’ll take the money, too. Besides, you already have all the water stuff locked up I thought, years ago.”
The phone rings. Linda’s fingers tremble as she picks up the receiver.
“Get a pen, Linda. I’m going to tell you where to bring the money,” a gravelly voice commands.
“We want proof of life.” Linda presses the phone more firmly to her ear.
Heavy footsteps, grunts, and shattering glass sound through the line, then a ragged breath. “Mi corazón, I don’t know these men. Don’t pay them. They’re going to kill me anyway.”
“Victor!” Linda cries, as more shouts and crashes come through the phone.
The gravelly voice comes back, winded. “There’s your proof of life. Come to Mary of Guadalupe church in Tlaxcala the day after tomorrow at 5:00. Just you, or he dies.”
The line goes dead. Linda puts the phone back in the cradle, her whole body shaking.
Alfonso speaks first. “Should we call the police?”
Everyone laughs.
“The police are the narcos, at least on that we can all agree,” Cesar says.
A wail pierces the heavy air like the howl of a dog.
“Estrella!” Marina runs from the room and returns with Estrella in her arms. Hugo, Zandra and Cesar’s five-year-old son, trails behind.
“Estrella had a nightmare,” Marina says. “Monsters.”
Lightning brightens the room from outside. Thunder booms.
Marina holds Estrella until her screams turn into broken-breath tears. “They will kill Father either way,” Marina says, breaking the quiet. “There is no reason to pay them.”
…
Late in the night, almost morning, the moon sunk below the horizon, Linda cries into her pillow. Marina enters her mother’s chamber and kisses her worried brow.
As she does, the room glows with a soft, pink light. A butterfly flutters through the open window. Outside, birds break into song.
“It’s going to be okay, Momma,” Marina says. “They can’t hurt him. It’s only his body.”
…
The south Mexican sun, not yet fully risen, sends a gray light over the plain. Linda presses the puffy skin around her eyes, dresses, then makes her way back to the kitchen. From the corner of the window, she watches her daughters play together in the courtyard.
Marina gives Estrella a stick and some leaves to play with, then punches, kicks, and jumps. She bends her back in half, transitions until she’s standing on her head, and rests there for several minutes, finally sitting cross-legged, head bowed in prayer. She chants softly. “Shanti, shanti, shanti.”
Estrella giggles and sits cross-legged, too, chanting with her sister.
Marina opens her partially closed eyes. “Not a word of Spanish, just flawless Sanskrit. I love you, Little Star,” she says, jumping soundlessly to her feet. Estrella motions for her sister to take her in her arms. Marina pulls her up without touching her. Estrella floats to her hip, laughing with delight.
“Breakfast!” Zandra’s call breaks Linda’s concentration. “If you spied on your husband the way you’re spying on your girls, we wouldn’t be in this mess,” she says from behind Linda as Marina and Estrella traipse to the kitchen.
Linda looks again. On the warming bricks of the courtyard, Estrella’s stick and leaves transform into a thriving branch—every second, a new shoot growing.
…
“I’m going to pay them.” Linda says to Kit in the afternoon courtyard that’s blind with sun. They smoke cigarettes together, as they have for almost two decades. “After everything Victor has done for me, I will not leave him to die at the hands of his enemies.”
Kit looks to the dry, rolling hills, where pines droop in the July heat. “I’ll give you the money then.”
“I can’t accept your money. You know that. I still have what’s left of my inheritance. It’s enough.”
Kit nods. “What is it they say about pride coming before a fall? But whatever happens, I’ll always be here for you and the girls, and the Water Trust, too. Whatever it takes, whatever the consequences.”
“These are some heavy consequences,” Linda says. “And they just keep coming.”
Estrella toddles into the courtyard and climbs onto Linda’s lap. “I want my daddy. Now.”
“Her first words! And a complete sentence.” Linda swallows. “This morning, I think she was flying.”
Kit gives Linda a look of victory. “Very, very smart, with some highly unusual talents. And she’s just getting started. You’ll see. Just like we’ve been telling you.”
“I want my daddy now!” Estrella screams, her eyes intense.
A hot wind blows through the ranch, dark clouds gather in the blue sky. Thunder rumbles, lightning flashes.
…
Our Lady of Guadalupe Church peeks up from the desert. A wind-battered cross fixes to its sagging roof, all its windows are broken. Linda breathes into her fear as two men with machine guns step outside the sand-beaten chapel.
“They’re here. Two of them so far,” she whispers into the wire she wears under her headscarf, her heart beating fast.
A man with an eye patch taps on the window with his gun. “Get out.”
Linda descends, chanting silently to herself, “Stay calm, stay calm, stay calm.”
The man examines the empty Jeep. “Where’s the money?”
“Where’s my husband?”
The man pulls back the barrel of his gun.
Linda’s heart spasms. Stay calm, stay calm, stay calm. “Show me Victor,” she says in a low, steady voice.
The man grabs Linda by the neck and drags her into the church. She struggles to breathe as her dangling feet make a trail in the sand and her knees bang into the doorframe.
Inside, a naked man hangs, nailed to the massive wooden cross on the altar.
“Victor!”
He raises his bloody head from the cross. “My love, why are you here? I told you they would kill me.”
“Take him down!” Linda screams.
Eye Patch Man slams Linda into the dusty wall of the church. “Show us the money, we take him down.”
“Don’t touch her, pendejo!” Victor shouts from the cross. He breaks one hand free from its nail—the cross sways. A man at the foot of the cross unsheathes a knife with a black crystal hilt and cuts Victor’s calf muscle. Victor screams and goes limp.
Linda takes a breath and stands at her full height. “Take him down first, and then I’ll give you the money.”
“Put another nail, Domingo,” the man with the eye patch replies.
A man in the front pew rises and puts down his machine gun to pick up a hammer and nail from the floor.
“Don’t worry, mi corazón, this doesn’t hurt as much as you think. Call in your people. Keep the money, take care of the girls. And remember we all are water. They can’t destroy us. I will always be with you. You’ll see.” Victor moans as the man hammers a nail into his palm.
Linda grabs Eye Patch Man’s arm and pulls him outside, running, tripping and falling as tears make a thin mud of the dust on her face. She claws at the sand to unearth a leather bag.
Eye Patch Man squats and rifles through the stacks of money, then hits Linda across the face with his gun; she collapses into the sand. “Kill him and let’s go,” he says into a walkie-talkie.
Gunshots ring out in the church, hundreds of them.
…
Blood trickles into Linda’s mouth as ATVs swarm from every direction, their passengers firing machine guns. Eye Patch Man runs inside with the money and reemerges with five men, all loaded with weapons.
Linda drags herself behind the Jeep as the men shoot at each other, bodies dropping with each exchange. The shots silence. Only Eye Patch and two of his men still stand, gun smoke drifting around them.
Linda wiggles like a snake into the driver’s seat of the Jeep, her hand on the ignition.
One of the shooters says, “At least we get the bonus. He said if she brought it, we could keep it.”
Eye Patch raises his gun and shoots twice, killing both men. “You mean I’m getting a bonus. I did all the work anyway.”
“The girls can’t lose us both,” Linda whispers through her tears. In one motion, she turns the key, puts the Jeep into reverse, and slams on the gas.
Eye Patch Man fires; one of the front tires deflate. He fires again into the engine; it catches fire. Linda runs, but he grabs her by the hair, drags her to the ground and kicks her in the ribs.
“This is how you die,” Eye Patch Man says.
“You would be ugly, even with both eyes,” Linda replies. “And the devil will feast on your flesh for eternity,” she spits, then begins to murmur the words to Hail Mary, steeling herself for death.
Eye Patch presses the gun to Linda’s forehead, it’s metal still hot. “He said not to kill you, but I don’t like you. You’re a stupid, mouthy bitch.” He squeezes the trigger.
Nothing happens.
He tries again.
Nothing.
He grunts in aggravation, then whips the gun across Linda’s face a second time.
Linda hears the crunch of her own bones before the world goes dark.
…
Blood dribbles down Linda’s cheek, her temples pound. With effort, she half-opens her right eye, the left swollen closed. A small brown eye of a puppy looks back at her. He appears to be part wolf—skinny, long tail, big paws. He nuzzles Linda’s neck. As he does, a calm comes over her, a relief from the pain, the power to stand. She limps unsteadily toward the church, the puppy keeping pace at her side.
Everywhere around her, bodies, machine guns, and blood dirty the desert sands. “These men were like my family,” she cries. “How will I tell their wives, their mothers, their children? Idid this. They all told me not to, but I did it anyway.”
“Linda.” Cesar’s weak voice summons her from the scarlet sands. He crawls out from behind an ATV, blood soaking his shirt. The puppy licks Cesar’s wounds, the bleeding stops. Cesar looks at Linda. “Maybe there are angels,” he says.
“Maybe,” Linda replies as they enter the church.
Butterflies, songbirds, and bees flutter around Victor’s bullet-riddled corpse. He hangs from the cross by his right arm, his left arm completely severed by the force of gunfire.
“Do you see the light shining all around him?” Cesar asks, his eyes bright with tears.
“All that they’ve been saying is true,” Linda replies, falling on her knees before the cross. “It isn’t about drugs, or even vengeance. It’s about the water.”
The puppy barks. A black Mercedes approaches through the empty desert.
…
The desert passes in a blur of oranges, pinks, and purples as the sun sets. Linda strokes the fur of the puppy. “I’m naming him Guadalupe,” she says. “And every day that he is alive, he will remind me to believe. I will remember that all this death was my doing because I doubted, because I thought I was smarter, I knew more. I must believe it all, even the parts that I don’t want to be true…about the demons. No matter who they are.”
Kit’s blue eyes meet Linda’s in the rearview mirror. “No matter who they are,” she says as Yves turns onto the long ranch road, into a cloud of toxic smoke.
Flames lick the sky.
“The girls!” Linda calls out. “The ranch! All I have left!”
Suddenly, a torrential sheet of rain pours down from what had been a cloudless sky.
Zandra and the four children stand in the downpour, watching their home burn to ash. Sirens sound in the distance.
Marina comes to the car window, water running rivers down her brow. “I couldn’t stop them. I tried...the rain…”
…
The rain stops, the last embers burn.
Estrella and Guadalupe cuddle in the backseat of the Mercedes. For the first time in two days, Victor Chavez’s young daughter sleeps.
The puppy extends his oversized paw around Estrella’s curled body, opens one wolfish eye, and growls.