Libertad

written by Michelle Jaimes | illustrations by Nieves Winslow | layout by Siobhán Chapman

Once upon a time, not so long ago, not so far away, there lived a girl who could smell curses. They smelled of sulfur and open sewage and made the hairs on her arms stand warily. She was surprised to find a sickeningly sweet smell clinging to her best friends and believed she was cursed to fall in love with each one of them, but falling for straight people is a curse that befalls many queer folk, not just her. That wasn’t her main concern at the moment, however. A more foul smelling, and surely detrimental, curse had settled itself deep beneath the concrete roads of South Central Los Angeles.

A monster lived beneath the community’s feet. Its huge tentacles stretched from Exposition Park to Watts, curling itself around every neighborhood, every house, every family. It dug its way up through sidewalks and roads, cracking them open into potholes and uneven roads that jostled cars and punctured tires. It discharged hot fumes that drove the youth wild and made them act out against their teachers and parents. It made mothers chant under their breaths and fathers bang their fists on tables. It made teachers slouch in their desks and the police draw their weapons. It fed from the power lines, drank from the water pipes and found warmth from the gas tanks, sucking electricity, water and heat from homes.

Nobody but her best friend believed her. She was going to find it. And she was going to kill it.

“So, how do we find this… cucuí?”

“It’s not the cucuí, Lupe.”

“Whatever.” Lupe flipped her long black hair dismissively, but she failed to meet my eyes. She didn’t want me to know how scared she actually was.

“El cucuí is something our parents made up in order to scare us into obedience. Like the boogeyman for white people. But this thing don’t affect no white people around here.”

“What white people?” she asked.“

The USC kids,” I replied.

“Oh. I guess they don’t count. They’re not part of our neighborhood,” she said.

“They have security guards posted around campus, protecting them from us. They kick us out of our homes to build dorms. Of course they’re part of our neighborhood.”

She shrugged.

We were sitting outside Doña Sofía’s house eating raspados before going inside. If there was anyone who knew about the monster, it was her. She does brujería, witchcraft. My mom took me to her once. I don’t really remember what it was for. Sofía just rubbed a whole egg over my body, then cracked it open over a glass of water. I think it was to detect evil magic cast upon me. Why my mother thought someone was doing witchcraft on me, I have no idea. Maybe she sensed the flaming gay demon living inside me.

Doña Sofía had a tiny jungle in front of her house. It was dense with the citric fragrance of orange trees, the minty scent of rosemary, and the sharp smell of cilantro. I could only see the roof of the house. La Sonora Dinamita sounded through the door. She must’ve been cleaning.

I hesitated in front of her door. I used to think she was some sort of con artist, but one day while my mom and our neighbor Luz chatted on the front steps of my apartment, she passed by. When she was out of hearing range the neighbor turned to my mother with the look that meant she was about to share gossip.

“Did you hear about what happened to Niña Ana?”

“No,” my mother shook her head. Luz knew everything about everyone in and outside our neighborhood. She was that type of person.

“Remember how I told you her husband was cheating on her? Remember? With that lady in Figueroa? With three kids?”

My mother could only nod between the words.

“She paid that bruja to put a spell on him! And guess what?”

This time my mother had a chance to interject,

“What? What’d happened to him?”

“She turned him into a frog.”

At this, I had to cover my mouth to hide my giggles. The spell was supposed to make him so ugly that no woman would want him, and according to Luz, he turned into a frog. His belly swelled, his neck disappeared, and his voice croaked, deep and low from his throat.

The thought of holding so much power delighted me. Niña Ana was my babysitter and she used to pick me up from school along with her daughter and take me to her house. I hardly ever saw her husband before that. But after I overheard my mother and the neighbor talk about him, I saw him every day when he came home and tiptoed to lift his shrunken form to give his wife a kiss.

Lupe shoved me forward. I was about to knock when Doña Sofía’s voice sounded through the door.

“The door is unlocked. Come into the dark.” Her voice croaked in raspy with raspy vowels.

Lupe and I stared at each other.

“Yo, that’s scary as fuck,” Lupe whispered to me, her dark eyes wide.

I nodded but opened the door anyway. Scary or not, I needed answers.

“I’ve been expecting you.” Doña Sofía said.

She sat in the lazy swirling ribbons of smoke with the only light peeking from between the curtains. There was a black cat lounging on her lap, its green orbs following us apathetically, mirroring her dark ones.

She waved at the couch opposite her and we sat. “Here,” she took out a card with La Virgen de Guadalupe. I reached for it but she handed it to Lupe instead.

“What’s this?” Lupe asked.

“Protection,” she answered.

“Protection?”

“Yes. You’ll need it. There’s a darkness surrounding you, mija. Just because your name’s Guadalupe doesn’t mean you don’t need extra protection from the supernatural.”

“Supernatural?” Lupe asked, her voice small. Lupe was scared of everything, especially things like ghosts and demons.

Sofía only nodded.

“But what could she possibly need protection from?” I said because she looked too spooked to speak.

“I see a darkness around, getting closer and closer. You’ll need a savior when it finally reaches you,” Sofía said.

“But that is not why you are here, I assume,” She continued.

We both nodded. I expected her to tell us why we were here, but when she didn’t say anything I scrambled for words. She looked so powerful sitting there with a black cat on her lap, guarding her like a black panther, mystic incense slithering around her dark skin. She looked like a deity. I momentarily believed she knew everything.

“We’re here to ask you about the monster under our city. Kids are disappearing. People are being chased from their homes by something. They think it’s a demon, but I know it’s not. I can feel it. Can’t you?” I asked her. If she truly did magic, she could sense it, too. I couldn’t be the only one.

“Oh! That demon is nothing new. It has been here for years. My grandmother saw it come in the 20s, and it grew and grew in the 50s and my mother saw it devour angry young boys and poison homes in the 80s. Its brothers and sisters plague many parts of the world.”

“But how do I defeat it? How can I defeat something so old and so powerful?” I asked.

“It won’t be easy. You are so young. But you are not so easily pacified and that will make you strong. Here,” she said and handed me a prayer candle. It didn’t have a saint on it. “This will light your way through the tunnels. And this will keep you awake. The black fog makes you sleep. Do you know the song ‘La Llorona?’” she asked.

I nodded.

“Good. Sing it to the creature. The entrance is in Menlo Elementary, the underground staircase. You’ll know when you see it,” she said.

“Thank you,” I said and took the candle and teabags. The cat on her lap launched itself off her. Lupe and I shrieked. It caught a large shiny cockroach and taunted it between its paws before it grew bored and ate it.

“I don’t know about this, man,” Lupe said through chattering teeth.

“You chickening out on me?” I asked.

“Nah. It’s just, why we gotta do this at night?” She hugged herself.

“Like they’re gonna let us walk into the tunnels under the school during the day, no problem. Don’t worry man. You got your Virgen.”

We both looked at the image of the saint lady. It was the same woman we’d prayed to our entire lives, except she was browner and looked less like a white woman and looked more like Lupe and me. When has a white woman protected me anyway? The strongest woman I know is my mom, and she’s dark as hell.

“What am I supposed to do when the el cucuí comes after me, huh? Throw it at it?” she asked.

“How am I supposed to know? That woman gives me the creeps, and your ass sure as hell wasn’t about to stay any longer to ask la bruja about her magic.”

“Whatever.”

The moonlight was weak against the shadows of the elementary school. The lights were on, but it just shielded whatever was in the darkness. Anything could be hiding in the shadows, watching us.

“What if the police come? They’ll see two brown girls and think we’re tagging or something, or doing some gang shit,” she said, her breath making the candle flame flicker.

“That’s not gonna happen. C’mon.”

We descended the steps and I was instantly hit with the putrid smell of sulfur. When I was a student here, kids used to say some ghost haunted the place. They used to say it came up when a kid was all alone, lure it into its underground lair and eat them. There was no one when I peered into the darkness

“Okay, ready?” I asked her. She looked like she was about to cry but nodded anyway. Was I being selfish? I didn’t want to do this alone. “You don’t have to do this, you know.”

“Don’t be stupid. You’re my favorite person in the world. I don’t want to grow old without you.” I scoffed to hide the bubble of emotion that rose to my face. She was my favorite person in the world, too. I reminded myself that we were friends and she would never see me that way. She was straight.

We each took a sip of the tea Doña Sofía had given us. It tasted like regular manzanilla, but who knows what type of magic she put in it.

We crept into the darkness. She clutched my arm, which would have been nice if I wasn’t so scared.

“Hey, I gotta tell you something, y’know, before we die,” she whispered. “We’re not going to die.”

“Yeah, yeah. But, in case we do, I just want to say that I like you. I know you’re not gay like your mom thinks you are. But, you know, I don’t want to die and regret not telling you.”

“Lupe, I’m pansexual,” I said.

“Say what?” She released my arm so fast I was startled and accidentally knocked the candle from her hand. The glass shattered on impact and the light went out. I blindly patted the floor in search of the candle, trying my best to avoid the glass, and felt something smooth and velvety. Disturbed, I retracted my hand. Thankfully I brought a lighter. I found the candle intact and lit it.

“Lupe, babosa, don’t scare me like-”

I was stunned mid-sentence because in place of Lupe was a child.

“Hi!” he said.

I screamed.

“Where the fuck is Lupe?” I asked.

“Who’s Lupe?” he asked.

“My friend. She was standing right there,” I pointed.

“Oh! You mean pretty girl with long black hair? She’s asleep,” he said.

“Asleep? Asleep where? What do you mean?” I asked.

“Calm down. She’s just over here. Follow me please,” he said and walked ahead of me.

It was when my eyes adjusted to the light that I realized that he wasn’t any ordinary child. He was bony everywhere except for his belly, which was rotund and protruding. His skin was pale blue, almost white. Perhaps it was because he didn’t have a shirt; the only barrier between him and the chilly tunnel was a colorful blanket across his shoulders. He had a straw hat and his feet were backward and left dark foot-sized pools of water behind. White lilies lined our path, glowing under the candlelight, but they did nothing to mask the smell of rot. In fact, the smell might’ve been coming from them.

The longer we walked the more the fog pressed down on my back. The weak flame hardly touched the black tendrils around it now. I followed the child only by the sharp sound of his footsteps. The steady click click click of his heels fell on the dirt ground like horse hooves.

The sound stopped and in the child’s place was a white man with blonde hair and blue eyes who looked like he walked off the set of a Shakespearean play, except he had a smartphone in his hand and his feet were still backward.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Where’s Lupe?”

“Sleeping,” he answered.

“Where?” I asked.

“Behind you,” he said.

I turned, and there she was sitting on the the floor, surrounded by lilies, with eyes wide open.

“What do you mean she’s asleep? She’s awake.”

“Ah. That’s where you are wrong. She is clearly asleep. Ignorant of the world.”

“Alright. How do I wake her up?”

“Only she can wake herself.” Clearly, this was the monster, right? The monster ruining people’s lives is a mad white man living in underground tunnels. So I sang the song Sofía told me to sing, the song I’ve heard my mother sing to be countless of times.

“No se que tienen las flores llorona...” The earth around gave a great tremor. The poignant smell of dirt overwhelmed the tunnel. “Hay de mí llorona, llorona que un campo lirio…” A great roar came from deeper within as chunks of earth crumbled and crashed to the ground. I couldn’t see the man anymore, but I kept singing anyway.

“El que no sabe de amores llorona no sabe lo que es martirio.” It was hard to sing now because I was crying. My voice carried the shrill haunting tone of my voice throughout the tunnels. “Lupe, c’mon. Get up.” I lifted her to her feet. We ran and ran. Finally, when we were out of the tunnel and out of the school I set her down and let her stare at nothing for a while. She looked up at me and stretched her arms out for a hug. I leaned down and embraced her.

“I saw it, Libertad. I saw the darkness,” she whispered to me.

“It’s okay. He’s gone, buried under the Earth,” I told her, but she shook her head.

“No. He’s still alive. He lives inside of us all,” she said.

“Lupe, what do you mean? Are you okay?” I asked.

“Yes, I’m fine. But we still have work to do.”

“Okay,” I said to appease her, but really, I had not idea what she was talking about.

“Let’s go home,” I said.

“Dos besos llevo en el alma llorona, que no se apartan de mi,” she sang. I shivered.

It’d been a week since our journey under the tunnels and we were finally on our first date.

We stood in the fumes of the taco stand waiting for our carne asadas. The sound of police sirens sounded nearby when she clutched my arm, the same dazed look in her eyes as that night.

“Do you feel it, Libertad?” she asked.

“Feel what?” I asked.

Her eyes swam with tears and she turned away from me before they fell.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, trying to get her to look at me.

“It’ll never end, will it?” she asked. “What will never end?”

“The monster. It’ll never die. We can’t kill it. It’s not like that,” she said. I shook my head before giving her a hug.

“No, we can’t. But it’s okay, as long as we’ve each other, we can face any monster that comes our way,” I said.

I stepped back to look at her. She didn’t look like she believed me, but she held my hand anyway and crossed herself.