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La Huesera, or, flesh to bone IRE’NE LARA SILVA My tongue runs along the stretch of her tendons. I hold her foot delicately in my hand. Feel the spasming bunch of red muscle in my mouth. Her bones tinkling against my teeth. This is the way it must be. With my hands feeling out the hurt, the places where bone was ripped from its place. Hold the flesh with my mouth. And with hands larger than my hands, I twist her frame, thrusting the bone into the hollows anxious to embrace them. Tiny thunders sound along her body. Calling the spirit along the skin. Tears slip from my eyes without sobbing. With hands smaller than my hands, I bind flesh to flesh with tears. Whispering to the spirit. The spirit has been hiding. The spirit wants to stay hidden. The spirit must be called. Prayer with my breath. Inhaling. Prayer on my breath. Exhaling. Prayer in my breath. My hands flickering with measured curls of heat. My feet shifting until they rest, both solid and light, against the ground. Palms of my hands on her shoulders. Breath. Circles gradually increasing in pressure. Warm animal scent rising up, my nostrils flaring, my lungs filling, until I feel my pores exuding our commingled scents. It doesn’t matter that it’s night. Dark. That the wind is cool. That there are no stars. No sounds. The stillness is its own echo. It doesn’t matter that I don’t know her name. Where she came from. How she came to be here. It only matters that I found her. Only matters that when I touched her, I felt warmth still stirring inside her bones. So much blood darkening the earth around her. Violence a darker stain around her. But her spirit had not flown. Her spirit answered when I called. My name is Maite Hernandez Ayala. I was sixteen years old when I came here to work. I brought my sister Raquel with me. She was fifteen. People said we looked like twins. Both of us with long black hair, slightly tilted black eyes, too light to be morenas, too dark to be blancas. Ama said we had cuerpos de limosneras , so thin we could wear anything. People said we were pretty, that we looked like dolls. La suerte de la fea, la bonita lo desea, my mother would say, and tell us that looks weren’t as important as working hard, being honest, or having faith. ♦ ♦ ♦ 100 ♦ Ire’ne Lara Silva Ama prayed all the time. Before she got out of bed, as she was making the tortillas, before we ate, while she was washing dishes, while she fed the animals and weeded the garden. Each meal, each time she sat down, lay down, got up. The constant low murmuring of her prayers eased me into sleep, made me feel safe, followed me everywhere I went. Then she took sick. She didn’t complain of any pain, but she was always tired. She grew thinner. Her eyes had too much light coming out of them. We made her go to the doctor in the next town. He gave her something for the pain. One morning, she couldn’t get out of bed. Shattered bone does not mend, they said. Crushed pelvises cannot be remade. They also said the screams were long gone. That spilled blood couldn’t speak. But I can hear them. I hear them all the time. They keep me from sleeping. They paint my dreams in the wrong colors. Too many hands. The taste of brutal men. The sound of flesh being torn. Bones breaking and speaking. The whispers of blood as it touches the earth and spirals out. Death and violence soaking into the earth. Death and violence on the wind. And the scorpions raise their tails. The small insects go still. The coyotes howl and the whirlwinds whisper despair. The ocotillo and the nopal shudder, hiding their blooms, extending their spines. We sold all our animals. Sold the rest of our land. Finally, we had to sell our little house. For many years, Ama had been a partera and a sobadora. She’d delivered many of the children we’d gone to school with, and people would often knock on our door at all times, needing Ama’s healing touch. She massaged out all kinds of pains and aches, stretching and twisting limbs and torsos. In all those years, she’d only taken donations. And...

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