From the novel Rock Sky Woman

Mister slept with his hand flung across his chest, fingers curled around the Pepsi bottle. Every hour or so, when I reapplied the salve to his wounds, Mercedes's yellow face floated up in front of me, and I tasted the bitter bile of hatred.

"You'll be sorry," she said when I carried him out of her trailer that morning. She sucked the last of her cigarette and jammed it into a beer can already stuffed with butts. "I don't care if you are a witch. You'll regret this day." Someone had taped cardboard over the two windows in the room, and in the wavering blue light of the TV, her face swam before my eyes. I could have killed her.

Outside on the sagging porch, black flies swarmed around a pile of junk: bags of garbage and old clothes, bottles, a broken tricycle. The rope hanging from a dried-up apricot tree looked more like a noose than a swing, and the whole yard stank of rotting meat. Two buzzards dipped their wings above our heads in an effortless circle, and from somewhere behind the house, a cuckoo bird whistled.

"Brownie," said Mister, tugging on my arm, and for the first time, I saw the stiff, bloated dog that lay dead beneath the trash heap.

"This is a bad place," I said. "We're leaving."

"Goodbye, Brownie," he called over his shoulder, but his voice had a flat, hollow sound, like the wind that blows through the canyon on starless nights.

The sun was even with the shoulder of the mountain when we came to the edge of the canyon and looked down the thin, rocky path that snaked into the Rio Grande. Below us, a yellow raft covered with tiny people swirled in the current. When white settlers first came to Taos, they mistook this trail for a road--at least that's what Andy tells the tourists in the plaza after he sells them a newspaper. For a small fee, he offers to show them the rotten planks of an old bathhouse the gringos built over the hot spring after they gave up on building a bridge. "You can soak in the spring," he says, twisting the feather in his cap. "Some people go naked." It's hard enough to imagine that old geezer slipping and sliding down the wall of the canyon; when I think of people actually tying their horses to a covered wagon and trying to get from one side to the other-- the way Andy says they did--I feel a deep pity for the whites.

It took me two hours to dig a hole big enough for Mister to stand in with his arms crossed over his chest. His head wobbled with half-sleep as I lifted him out of the stroller and lowered him down, but when the cool dirt touched his bare feet, he jerked awake.

"Mama," he said flatly.

"Ro ro mi hijito," I whispered, holding him firmly with one hand as I scooped dirt around him.

Suddenly, he screamed, "Let me out!"

"Mother Earth is holding you," I told him. "Tierra de Mama loves you."

"I have to pee," he said, and his eyes filled with tears.

I told him to water the earth. It is all good, I said, the pee-pee and the tears. To the earth, it is like rain. But he wanted to get out, and when I pressed the dirt around his neck, he started to panic.

"Abuela, my chest hurts. Tierra de Mama squeezes me."

"She holds you close to her heart. Con gusto."

When he began to cry, I pressed my cheek against his. "Chis, poor baby." His tears ran into our mouths as I prayed, "Great Spirit, Great Friend, Mahaya and Mother Earth, thank you for this day."

"Espirito," I told Mister. "Breathe. Don't stop breathing."

I breathed in and out for both of us, slow and deep, again and again. With my hand on his throat, feeling his butterfly pulse, I slowed my own heart rate to calm him.

When he stopped struggling, I gave him a sip of Pepsi and stuck his Spiderman umbrella into the dirt, to protect his face from the sun.

I opened my medicine bag and took out the sacred eagle feather, which I passed over his head as I prayed to the Great Spirit. Then I lit a bundle of sage and waved the smoke over both of us. "The earth is your true mother," I told Mister. "You are in her lap, and she is wrapping her arms around you. See how strong she is. How warm." I touched some dust to his wet cheek. "She loves you. Listen to her. Te amo, and I love you too, hija." Then I told him the story of creation.

"In the beginning, Black Sky and Earth Woman bore the children who live in the belly of Mother Earth. Some people call the first son Black Hac• ct´cin. Some call him Cristo, and some call him Jesus. These children made toys out of clay: a yellow sun and an orange moon, trees and flowers and coyotes and snakes and women and men. They made the bees and the ants and the things that make up the things too small for us to see. When the sun escaped through a hole to the surface of the earth, the little clay people --- the Jicarilla Apache --- followed the light. As they came up through the hole, God breathed vida into them."

"With the breath of life came knowledge. They understood the talk of plants and animals and the slow dances of the stars. Their feet knew the steps that bring water, and their hands knew the cures for envídia, susto, espante, and mal suerte. The Jicarilla were made in God's image."

"At first, they followed the circle of the sun and moon and stayed close to God, but then they got busy and forgot Him. Gradually, they forgot everything. Only the curanderos remembered, and we remember for everyone. My grandmother Elizabeth Peshligai taught me these things. Her name means White Flint Knife, and she is your bisabuela. Abuela Elizabeth lived in the Pueblo because the conquistadors wanted a wall around the Indians, but to the Jicarilla Apache, there is no wall but the sky, and no home but the earth."

"Okay," said Mister, and he closed his eyes.

Lying belly-down beside him, with the sun warming the back of my head, my heart slowed to the beat of the Great Mother's heart. Do not be afraid, I told myself. Do not hope. After a long time, I began to feel the wiry grass pushing through the cracked earth, and from the top of Taos Mountain, the drip, drip, drip of melting snow. One drop of water clung to the next, on and on, gathering force. Slowly, the bud of Mister's new soul began to swell against my own, pushing outward with mysterious force. I prayed for it to open.

All at once, my spirit left my body --- a light flickering down a tunnel --- and flew down the rock-strewn path of the gorge into the cold dark water below. "Dig!" shouted the guide on the raft. "Dig! Dig! Dig!"

Then I felt the woosh of a hawk's wing, and his scream rasped down in my own throat--"Kree-eee-ar!"

"Keee-rrrrr!" I answered, jumping to my feet. "Kree-eee-ar!" Then the hawk told me that God cannot move through a heart as twisted as an old root, as hard as a bone. To heal Mister, I must spit out my own poison. I must pray for Mercedes. If Creator had told me, "Bite the head off a live rattlesnake," I would have said, "Yes!" but for a long time I could not pray for Mercedes. I watched the orange raft swirl down the gorge and disappear; then I looked at Mister's head sticking out of the sand. I brushed a fly away from his swollen eye and took a deep breath.

"Great Spirit," I prayed. "May that bitch and her pimp have peace, prosperity, happiness, and a greater love than she has ever known." I went on to pray for her mother and father, and her grandparents, and their people. I prayed for her vehicle, that it would run for her, and for food to come to her table. I prayed that she would have short lines at the welfare office and that her drug dealers would not cheat her too much. I prayed that when guilt came upon her with all of hell's fury, she might find the peace of forgiveness.

When I opened my eyes, the sun was high in the sky. Afraid to look at Mister, in case his soul had not come back, I watched a red ant crawl from the toe of my shoe to the end of the shovel and along the handle and across the blade. It teetered on the edge before slipping out of sight. Then, from the corner of my eye, I saw the red umbrella move.

"¿Dónde está mi madre?" Mister asked.

"Your mother is here." I said, sweeping my arm across the mesa. "Rock, sky, woman. We are your mother now." Then I dug him up.