Telling Fortunes in Phoenix

Chui

Chui hunkered very still in the mesquite, listening to the discussion between the man and the woman. He could not follow everything they said but he’d seen the limp bodies of his family carried into the building and was very worried that they could all die. These two were not the kindly ranch owners his father had told him about, that was certain.

After talking, the blond man drove away in a car and the blonde woman finished moving the little ones into the room with Chui’s mother. As la rubia returned to the house Chui stood and stretched and was almost caught when she trotted back across the yard with a black bag in her hand. He ducked into hiding again and stayed in that position until his legs fell asleep while he watched her going in and out of the rooms, spending a small time in each before carefully locking the doors behind her. He dared not be seen or heard. The woman was more frightening than the man.

Finally she finished and gave a last look around her yard before going to the big house. Chui waited where he was until the front door closed, then straightened and worked his legs until the feeling returned. He approached the house stealthily. The cement porch and stairs made no sound as he moved toward a window that looked into a kitchen with a round wooden table surrounded by four wooden chairs. A fresh breeze blew past him toward another window open over the sink. He shivered in his light shirt.

Standing stone-like in the darkness beside the wash of light from the kitchen he watched the woman seat herself at the table. She chunked a key ring down then placed a spoon, an eye dropper, a glass of water, and a pointed knife in a neat row. She lit a candle and her white face became whiter in its glow. With the steady movements of religious ritual she pulled a small plastic bag from her top pocket and, using the tip of the knife, placed a tiny amount of brown powder into the spoon. Using the eye dropper she pulled up water from the glass and transferred drop after drop onto the powder. When she deemed the spoon full she moved it over the candle flame, a miniature pot over a miniature stove, holding it solemnly in place until the little stew boiled up. The spoon was then carefully placed on the table top to cool while she removed a syringe from a sterile package.

Chui recognized syringes. He’d seen them when he received his vacunas (vaccinations) at La Clinica (the Clinic).

His older cousins talked about drugs, but other than the ever-present marijuana his village was so small that even the bigger boys had never seen any. The buying, selling and use of drugs was a common topic, though their effects were of little interest. What was of great interest was money. The tales told of the drug sellers spoke only of the cars they drove and the handsome clothes they wore and the beautiful women they possessed.

This woman sitting in her brightly lit kitchen was preparing a drug, this was clear.

The spoon’s contents had cooled, the woman drew the golden liquid into the barrel of the syringe through a tiny wad of cotton. She wrapped a band around her left upper arm, tying it and regarding the veins below. One at the crook seemed adequate. She tapped it, then placed the needle against the taut skin and pierced, drawing her life’s blood into the barrel of the syringe before slowly pushing the plunger to inject the amber fluid into her vein. Carefully, she released the band above the elbow before pulling the needle out. She sighed.

Chui felt gorge rise in his throat as he watched but did not look away, certain that if he closed his eyes she would hear the beat of his lashes and capture him where he stood.

The woman’s head began to nod, then she jerked in her chair and shuffled to the sink to vomit. Chui took deep silent breaths through his open mouth to stop his own increasing desire to throw up. He reminded himself that this woman was very dangerous. She rinsed her mouth with water, her head hanging over the sink. She moved away from the table through an archway into a dark adjoining room and laid on a couch with an arm over her forehead, barely breathing. Was she dead?

Chui could not take his eyes off of the horrible woman until his attention was somehow captured by the large ring of keys glowing on the kitchen table, glittering in the wavering candle glow. His eyes hurried back to the blonde lying in the dark then returned to the table.

Could he get those keys? He felt dizzy and ill. No, she would wake and grab him with her dreadful hands. He couldn’t bear it if she touched him. She seemed a ghost, lying unconscious, pale and still. The wind whispered past his neck.

He stood in the gloom and thought of his sister, locked in a little room. These devils did not bring them here to kill them. Something worse was waiting for them and the white man would return, this ghost woman would recover from the drug. He must help his sister.

He looked again to the couch where she lay, felled and lifeless. He moved into the wash of light and put his leg over the window sill. She made no movement. He brought in the other leg and was now in the room, then took a careful step toward the table. And another. On the third step the floor squeaked and he stopped, rigid, and peering at the pale rancher on the couch. Did her eye glint? Was she watching from between nearly closed lids?

Chui stopped, rocking unsteadily on his feet. The Ghost Woman did not move. He stepped sideways, his eyes never leaving her face. He took another step and another but saw no movement from the reclining form in the dark pretending not to see. When his hip bumped the table he stopped, certain she would leap up, but she laid still as a corpse. He dragged his eyes from her to look at the keys, then leaned over, inch by inch and slowly grasped them. They chinked as he gathered them up and he looked to the woman again. She never moved but he felt her taunting presence as he crept backward to the window.

He did not remember leaving the kitchen, only the white face shining in the dark room beyond. When he was in the yard he ran to the long row of buildings and crouched in its shadow, crying.

Stop! he told himself. You are a man, stop crying like a baby! This almost made him laugh through his tears. He was not a man, he was a ten year old boy. The nearness of his own laughter reminded him that this was not a dream and he began breathing again. Time did not stand still and he must rescue his family. Soon the White Man would return.