Cuento de Mi Id

“The Second Time”

“I’m sorry to do this,” I said, “but the moment can’t be put off any longer.”

The old man looked at me from the depths of his cell. “They asked for me?”

“No, but the State can’t be put off any longer. I have orders to carry out the sentence immediately and -- well -- orders are orders.”

I unlocked the cell door and led the old man out. He went along slowly but uncomplainingly. As we got to the courtyard, he looked around in puzzlement.

“Last time there was a crowd,” he said. “A big crowd.”

“My superiors want you to be executed in private,” I said. “They do not want another martyr to the cause.”

“In that case,” he said, “you should let me go.”

“I’m sorry. I can not. You’re much too dangerous for us to keep alive.”

“Too dangerous, huh?” The old man smiled.

“Of course. The world is very unstable nowadays. All it needs is one more fanatic to send it over the edge and plunge it into World War III. We can’t have that.”

“Have you no tolerance for a man with strong beliefs?”

“Sure, if he keeps them to himself. But when he starts gathering crowds around him and trying to convert others to his viewpoint... he’s a troublemaker.”

“Your world doesn’t seem to have much room for strong personalities.”

“Of course it does. We just can’t afford chaos.”

“I see,” said the old man. “And a man like me... would start chaos.”

“Of course.”

“You don’t really believe that.”

“I believe what I’m told to believe.”

“Then I pity you.”

Something about the old man got to me. If I were in his place, I would be scared to death, but the old man did not flinch an eyelash. I knew he must be trembling inside at the thought of his imminent death, yet he did not show it. Perhaps he was gripped by self-doubt about the validity of the cause he espoused and he didn’t want to show it. Yes, that was it.

If so, he didn’t say so. He just stood there silently, daring me to speak.

Finally he spoke. “All the healings I did... I suppose they don’t mean anything?”

“There was no reliable witnesses to any of them, “ I said. “Therefore, there were no healings.”

“What about the patients?”

“Either con-men or fools. In either case, hardly very convincing.”

“What about the dead man I resurrected?”

“Another phony miracle. And just as well, considering the population explosion.”

“You’re quite cynical for a young man. Surely you believe such things can happen.”

“I would not know. I have never seen them happen.”

The old man sighed. “Your world sounds like a sad one, Sergeant. Surely you must believe in something.”

“Sure, I do,” I said. “I believe in God.”

The old man laughed.

I glared at him. “Did I say something funny, old man?”

The old man fell silent.

“If I did, I wish you’d say so,” I said, “so that an old soldier like me can get in on the joke.”

The old man sighed.

“You wouldn’t understand,” he said.

He walked brusquely towards the end of the courtyard and turned towards me.

“Finish it,” he said.

I frowned. Something about the old man made me uneasy. He was not acting the way I had expected him to act.

Moreover, there was an air of familiarity about him -- as if he reminded me of an old family friend or a favorite uncle. Impossible, I thought. None of my family or friends would be caught dead associating with the type of scum the old man has associated with. Yet he talked to me as if he had known me all my life. As if I had known him long before he had been assigned to my prison.

Perhaps he was a fanatic, I thought. That would explain his reaction. In his mind, he was dying for his cause. Never mind if it was the right one. At least in his mind, he was doing something for the sake of whatever it was he believed in.

As for the air of familiarity, that could be explained too. People like him thrived on making converts wherever they went. No matter how unlikely the place or how unlikely the convert. And how better to make such converts than to feign friendship in even the most hostile environment.

I smiled when I realized this. Seen in that light, the old man no longer seemed so impressive.

“Turn around and face the wall,” I said.

He did so.

A couple of shots from my revolver and it was done.

Good, I thought, as I summoned some guards for burial detail. The old man was finished. One more would-be revolutionary had bitten the dust.

I started to turn around, then remembered to cross myself. As my fingers brushed across my crucifix, I suddenly seized it and brought it before my face.

It was at that moment that I finally realized where I had seen the old man’s face before.

Cuento de Mi Id

“The Last Day of Summer”

It was the last day of summer, and there was no one else on the beach.

Normally the beach would be quite crowded this time of year but now for some reason, it was empty. Quite empty.

Must be all the stuff that happened in Matamoros that did it, Callie thought. Stuff like that usually scares away the tourists; in fact, it always does.

But not her. She had waited too long for this break, this vacation. Waited too long for this week which was now drawing to a far too rapid end.

She had waited too long for a lot of things. Perhaps that was why she finally decided to kick off her flip-flops, strip off her bikini and plunge into the warm waters of the Gulf.

Not that it mattered. There was no one around to see. No one around for miles. And her friends back at the beach house had their own dates -- and undoubtedly they were already doing things with them that were far more daring.

But Callie did not feel sorry for herself. No, Callie was too good a person to do that. Better to hold it in. To swallow it down. To pretend it did not exist.

She did not need a date. She never did. She never will. She probably would not know what to do with a man even if she did meet one.

But she did know how to swim. She took lessons at the Y. And no matter how depressed she felt tonight, there was no way she was going to emulate that Crissie girl in the Benchley novel. She was much smarter than that.

Just swim to the buoy and back, she thought. Simple. In fact, she could do it dog-paddling. And no one on the shore could see her. No one at all.

There.

She touched it.

Now swim back, she thought.

Quick.

Before the sharks come.

Not that they will come, of course. You don't find many man-eaters in the Gulf. But then there is always a first time.

So Callie closed her eyes to protect them from the salt. And she swam back to the beach, stopping every so often to check for triangular fins.

But there were none.

Told ya, she thought.

Sharks are the world's oldest movie cliché, anyway. Stuff like that doesn't happen to people like Callie in real life. It just doesn't.

But it could.

Good thing she's not having her period.

They are attracted by blood, you know.

But the deed was done. She was through. She was finished.

She stood up and walked out of the water, feeling more than a little brazen.

Imagine me, she thought. Callie Martin, an actual skinnydipper.

She smiled and then glanced toward her clothes.

Only to notice that they weren't there.

But they were just there a few minutes ago, she thought. I know. I saw them.

Then where did they go?

Instinctively, she covered herself. Wrapped her arms around her torso as much as for warmth as for modesty.

The night wind was feeling quite chilly upon her backside and Callie was already beginning to regret her impulsive midnight swim.

Where are my clothes? she thought. Where are they?

She thought of what her friends back at the beach house would say if they saw her now. The inferences they would make and the assumptions that would not be true.

She thought about her parents and her grandparents and the kids back in high school. Kids she'd never thought she'd see again after graduation but who were bound to come into her life again once the scandal hit.

Then Callie saw a young Mexican girl up upon the dunes. She was wearing a red bikini. Her red bikini. Callie knew that much by instinct.

The girl was not facing her, choosing instead to concentrate on a pair of flip-flops she was putting on. Her flip-flops! They had to be.

In spite of her nakedness, Callie ran up to the girl and grabbed her arm.

"Those are my things!" she started to yell. But then the words died in her throat.

The face that looked back at her had once been pretty -- but no more. It was much battered and scarred. Nor did the scars stop at the girl's face. They ran all down her body as if they were seams -- invisible from a distance, of course, but all too visible up close.

If that were the worst of it, Callie might have continued. But she had already felt the girl's arm. Felt the girl's leathery arm. And she also smelled the aroma of something oozing up from the girl's body.

Then the girl grinned. Not a gold-toothed grin but it was quite obvious to Callie that the teeth did not match up with the girl's lips. Nor did the knife which the girl produced from within her bikini bottom's waistband.

Callie screamed but the girl just laughed. A harsh, masculine laugh that could not have come from such a girl under normal circumstances.

Then Callie ran. Not toward the beach house. But toward the sea.

She reached the surf before the Mexican girl did. She dived into it without a moment's hesitation and surfaced only after she had passed the shallow area. Then she swam out toward the buoy.

Only then did she turn around.

Only then did she notice that the Mexican girl was not following her into the sea. In fact, she was quite content to wait for Callie upon the shore with the knife still in her hand.

Callie let go of the buoy and dived into the sea. When she surfaced again, the girl was still waiting for her on the beach. Her arms were crossed this time, but she was still waiting. And as the girl started to sit down upon the sand, Callie suddenly realized that the girl could very well wait there all night.

That's okay, she thought.

I'll just wait her out.

I can swim. I can tread water. But apparently she can't do any of that or else she'd be out here already.

Good thing for me.

Now I just have to wait for dawn to arrive.

As soon as people start showing up on the beach, she'll have to move. Granted, the results might be a little embarrassing for me, but better that than whatever thing that girl had in mind.

Besides, she thought, I'm a lot warmer here in the ocean than I would be on the beach.

So warm, in fact, that Callie never really felt the onset of her period until the first drops of blood hit the water.

And a black triangle started zigzagging its way through the ocean behind her.

Cuento de Mi Id

“Overheard at the Door of a Cottage on the Shore of a Dark Scottish Lake”

For the last time, Beastie, Tokyo is thataway. I don't care what your GPS told you.

Cuento de Mi Id

“Caged”

As he looked out between the gray metal bars of his current residence and stared at the lady he adored, he could not help noting how much more attention she seemed to pay to the apple on her desk than she did to him.

Apparently, what the bards of old had said was true. Sometimes it was not so easy to be the teacher's pet.

Cuento de Mi Id

“The Surprise Party”

It was a scenario that Ashley had seen in a thousand sitcoms; the hurried single woman rushes home to take a quick bath, undresses in her darkened foyer and then enters her living room just in time to be greeted by a surprise party.

And yet they never say what happens next.

Does the poor woman run back into the darkened foyer in order to hastily redress and then rejoin her guests?

Does she eventually lower the hands she raised to unsuccessfully safeguard her modesty and then pretend to be a good sport about the whole thing?

Does she choose to play the role of the modest maiden and faint, hoping against hope that her guests will be gone when she awakens?

Or does the sitcom woman do what Ashley now does -- reach behind her upper back and start tugging on the small, flesh-colored zipper which is hidden there?

Aye, there's the ticket. After all, Ashley had already revealed enough of herself to the crowd before her. Why not go ahead and reveal the whole thing?

She smiles as the zipper descends and her real self emerges from her skin-tight birthday suit. Already the smiles are fading and the laughter is becoming more and more nervous.

“What's the matter?” she wants to ask them. “Haven't you ever seen a naked woman before?”

Then the last of her covering drops onto the floor and Ashley steps out of it in all her true glory.

“Surprise,” she starts to say, but her words, alas, are drowned out by screams.

Cuento de Mi Id

“Love in Bain”

The hot bath water pressed down upon Diana's less-than-flat stomach like an insistent hand. It surrounded her limbs and pubes -- even her torso -- and would have covered her neck and head if she had allowed it.

But she did not allow it. She had kept it at bay -- just as she had kept her ex-husband Dennis at bay. The water flowed into orifices of Diana's body that only Dennis had known. Flowed there because Diana allowed it to flow there. She and the water became one in a way that she and Dennis had never become. Yet she still remained Diana.

That was important to her. Dennis had never wanted her to be Diana. He had wanted her to be “Diane” -- that giggly little creature she had been in the early days of their marriage. The one who shied away from confrontation. Who depended upon Dennis to kill the mouse. Who preformed oral sex when Dennis wanted to have oral sex without ever getting so much as a back rub in return. That Diane was gone. Drowned within her flesh. Instead there was now Diana. Cool. Calm. Assertive.

Taking a hot bath in the middle of the afternoon because she wanted to take a hot bath. Not another hot shower like the ones she took before she went to work. Those were over all too quickly, and no matter how long she spent taking them, she always felt a chill when she got out. As if the water had flowed over her, not into her.

Baths were different. You could take a hot bath in the dead of winter, and if you stayed in long enough, you could get out without shivering. You just didn't soak in the water. You became the water. Your body's temperature and the bath water's temperature became one. You didn't lie there, naked, waiting for someone to hold you, waiting for an embrace that never came....

Enough fretting about the past. Almost time to get out of the tub.

Diana still had weekend errands to run today. Shops to visit. Groceries to buy. Weeds to uproot. Dry cleaning to pick up.

She glanced at her scattered clothing and imagined going to the mall to buy a whole new wardrobe. Perhaps that blue dress she had seen at Joske's. Or the red dress in the front window at Dillard's. Or perhaps she could just go there as she was now -- without a stitch on. Just walk through the mall naked and watch the customers squirm in embarrassment and avert their eyes. Converting to nudism would no doubt help her save a fortune on her clothing costs. However, her heating bills would probably go through the roof come wintertime.

And in any event, why stay here?

If one were going to be naked, why not migrate to a warmer climate?.

She imagined herself naked on a beach at Cancun. Mariachis were playing in the distance, and dark-skinned men were dragging reluctant señoritas up a nearby pyramid.

Strange. She never realized that there were pyramids in this location...

Perhaps Egypt.

Egypt where the sand invaded every orifice and the smart women learned to shave down there for sanitary reasons. A whip was cracking over a relucant work crew in the distance. A naked servant was massaging her weary back. She looked into a brass mirror -- and saw all the worries of the world reflected in her eyes...

Diana was old. And growing old. But she had not really lived yet. She had not even seen the Library of Alexandria. But no, the Christians had burned that down just last year. No, the Muslims did. Never mind. The two cults always blamed each other as cults always do. And crawling across the floor was a scarab. She looked at the scarab and remembered...

Lying outside a villa near Pompeii.

Mount Vesuvius was smoking in the distance, and one of the maids was talking about a possible eruption. Impossible, Diane said. The volcano has been quiet for years.

Besides, she added, gesturing towards her lares and penates, do you think that these would ever let any harm come to me?

Meanwhile, the outside sky began to fill with ash...

Diana was modeling for the great sculptor Praxiteles, and the studio was cold. There was a draft upon her body she did not care to think about, and she hoped that the old man's fee was worth it. To be immortalized in art, he had said. And yet her stomach rumbled.

Forget art, Diana thought. One life is enough for me. Just let me be prosperous in this one. And not end up like the aged ones who started out in the temples of Aphrodite and ended up becoming priestesses of Artemis...

The revolution was coming.

Diana's lover was upon her. He still had her cunt in his mouth when the mob burst through the bedroom door. They dragged them both out by their hair and made her kiss the severed head of her dead maid-servant. Then, of course, they threw her onto the wagon...

They wanted answers, of course. But Diana did not have anything to tell them.

That did not matter to the Inquisition. One of her neighbors had known something and now they wanted confirmation. They tested her with a pin, searching for a spot on her body where there was no pain, and instead they found that her body had an infinite number of spots that were sensitive to the touch of a pin. They stripped her naked so that their search would be more thorough and then they cursed her for her nakedness.

Then they showed Diana the tub.

They showed her the tub.

The tub. Where she lay awaiting a summons from the Grand Sultan. A black eunuch scrubbed her back and a white eunuch caressed her toes. Briefly Diana thought of another tub.

Then she forgot it...

Then she remembered it...

Then forgot it...

She had no life now that her husband had been killed in battle. Now she was the sultan's wife. One of them, at least. Or at least she was a concubine. Or a...

The tub, she thought. Something is within the tub. A dark shape. A mosaic, perhaps. It looked like...

A wasserliche. That's what they called it in German. But it was still a dead body. Diana glanced at the innocent young face and regretted having stayed so long at the factory. If only she had come home sooner, her daughter would not have died. She would have been --

But wait...

Diana had no daughter...

Yes, she did. She remembered giving birth to her. She remembered the fun she had conceiving her, and the pain she felt when her husband was killed in the war, and the misery she had felt trying to get by in the dark time afterwards...

And yet...

A bird flew overhead. It was a raven...

She pictured herself in the raven's place and seeing with a raven's eyes...

She saw a distant city ahead...

Then a distant ocean...

Then a distant harbor...

There was a lady in the harbor...

A tall, green maiden with a big torch and a spiked helmet...

And within the city, there was a skyscraper...

On the skyscraper was a balcony...

The balcony led to an apartment...

The apartment had a bathroom...

The bathroom door was only halfway open, but she could see that the room was occupied by someone taking a bath. Or at least someone who had been taking a bath but who had apparently fallen asleep while doing so...

She started to brush the curtain aside. But the curtain would not yield to her fingertips even though she was once again human...

However, she could step through the bathtub curtain and look down upon the tub's occupant...

Look down and see a middle-aged, heavyset brunette floating like Ophelia upon the waters...

Only this brunette was not quite floating...

In fact, her head was under water...

Diana gasped. That body in the water was her...

She once again reached out, this time in desperation. But her hands passed right through the body in the tub. They passed through everything, in fact. And as her hands passed through the bath water, she could tell that the water was really quite cold -- as if it had been sitting there for a long, long time...

. Now what do I do? Diana thought.

What could she do?

And yet...

No more periods, she thought.

No more weight problems.

And, of course, no more ex-husband to worry about.

Why should she complain?.

She was free now. .

Hadn't she always wanted to be free?.

Not like this, she thought.

Then she once more glanced down at her body.

Remembered the sensation of the warm bath water upon her skin and within her genitals.

Oh, well, Diana thought. Now I have all time and space before me. Come to think of it, who really needs a body anyway? Had I not just traveled quite a long way just using my mind?

Diana walked off and tried to imagine herself wrapped in silk.

But for some reason, she still felt naked.

Cuento de Mi Id

“The Eyes of a Revolutionary”

Never trust a revolutionary, my father used to say. You have only to look into their eyes to see what they really are. For their eyes aren't normal eyes. And they look right through you as if you weren't really human. Which readily explains the things they say. And the things they do.

I never laughed at my father when he said this. I could tell by the expression in his own eyes that he was serious about this. He would joke about a lot of things but never this subject. He never told me how he knew all this. Did he read from a book somewhere or did he learn it from someone who had lived through the last revolution in his homeland? He never said. But each time he told it to me, he had the air of someone revealing a great truth.

And, of course, he never told me in front of anyone else. Not even my mother.

*************************************************************************************************************

Five years into the War and my mother and I were staying at her mother's house. The news was always on and my mother was tired of always having to work two jobs. We had not seen my father in ages but my mother still jumped when the phone rang. Her mother always scolded us whenever we got home late but my mother ignored her. And tried to ignore the black sedan parked outside across the street...

*************************************************************************************************************

My father used to tell me about the old woman he knew back in his hometown. How contemptuous she had been of the last batch of revolutionaries to ride through that town and how much she liked to compare them to the men in uniform that she had known in her youth.

“The French, you see, now they knew something about uniforms. But today's bunch... They're little more than barbarians. How awful!”

My father was home early because the boss had decided to let him go. He had been working at the office six months -- longer than some of his Anglo co-workers -- but in the end, they let him go.

My mother asked him in whispers what he will do next.

“Don't worry, mi amor,” he said. "I'll find something.”

“But if you don't...”

“If I don't, we'll move.”

“And if you still don't find something...”

“Then we'll move again.”

Five years later, my father took us both aside and said that the two of us were going back to Detroit to live with my mother's mother. My father would follow but not for a long time. In the meantime we were not to mention his name or speculate where he might be. He made us both swear that we would never tell anyone about him.

“If anyone asks about me,” he said, “You don't know. If anyone claims to know something about me, you don't know. As far as you know, I went away one day and did not come back. Believe me, mijo, as much as I would like to pretend otherwise, it's better this way.”

He hugged both of us quite strongly and then left. I have not seen him in the flesh since then.

*************************************************************************************************************

My grandmother was talking about the news again but my mother would not listen. “Shut it off, mother,” she said. “It's almost time to eat.”

“Why do they do it?" my grandmother asked. “Why do they act like such ingrates? Don't those people understand the concept of loyalty?”

My mother seemed on the verge of saying something but instead she cleared her throat and said, “Loyalty is a two-way street, mother.” Then she fell silent as if she had accidentally confessed something.

Outside across the street, a black sedan was still waiting. Every so often, it drove off, only to be replaced almost immediately by a vehicle of a similar color. What the men in the car were waiting for, my mother would not say. As far as she was concerned, the sedan did not even exist.

*************************************************************************************************************

When my father was still living with us, he used to teach me English using flash cards. He would write down English words and sentences and then teach me to say them over and over again until l could say them in my sleep. He was never prouder till the day came when I no longer spoke with an accent.

He used to go to old book stores throughout the city and buy books about the last revolution in his homeland. He often said that he preferred the books that were written by Americans because the books written by people of his homeland tended to be more personality-oriented. Americans were not always as objective about the revolution as my father would like, but at least they tended to focus more on what actually happened as opposed to what so-and-so did or said. “Of course, the way things are going in this country,” he would sometimes joke, “American history books will someday be the same way. But hopefully neither you nor I will be around when that happens.”

*************************************************************************************************************

Last night there was a knock on the door.

A man in a black raincoat said we would have to leave. There had been an incident at the local nuclear plant and the entire neighborhood was being evacuated.

“I just knew they should have dealt with those people while they had the chance,” said my grandmother.

My mother just held her breath and fingered her rosary.

As we packed up to leave, I noticed that the black sedan was no longer across the street. Nor was there any car in its place. I finished packing my suitcase and took it out to my grandparents' car.

My grandmother was looking worriedly toward the north -- in the direction of the fallen power plant.

My mother as always looked in all directions.

Then she got into the back seat beside me and hugged me.

She said something in Spanish but her voice was so low that I could not hear her.

The next day, after we entered the relocation camp, my grandparents bought a newspaper. On the cover was a sketch of a man who looked like my father. But it could not have been my father for my father's eyes were brown and the man in the sketch had black irises. More to the point, the eyes in the newspaper sketch seemed to look right through me. Just like the eyes that my father had once described. The eyes of a revolutionary.