The Other Mother

“I cannot do yoga anymore.”

The girl in front of me is sobbing. Tears, snot, face contorted in a pained expression. The whole thing.

“Why are you acting like this?” I chuckle, embarrassed for the girl.

Even though I’m trying to help her, to alert her to her behavior, she does nothing but repeat what I said, at the time, in the same tone, so that I can barely talk.

“Stop.” I say, but so does she.

I shake my head, trying to focus, but out of the corner of my eye I see her shake her head too.

Janette is 28, not pregnant, not on her period, not ovulating, she’s basically a man. Janette doesn’t know what it feels like to be a man. Janette doesn’t know what it feels like to be a woman either. She reads a lot of books though, and sometimes everything thing around her makes her cry. She also needs to pee.

Janette bursts into the women’s room on the first floor of the admissions building. Janette works as an office manager here, for now, but lately she’s been spending most of her time managing her emotions at home.

Janette doesn’t remember how she got to work, she just remembers standing

Janette really shouldn’t be here, not today, the astrology is bad. There’s a chill in the air.

Janette bursts into the women’s room and finds another woman, looking at her through a little window above the faucet.

The other woman is shaking her head, a lot, like she’s trying to rid herself of a thought, or her brain, or her head.

“Oh my God! Stop that!” Janette screaches towards the woman, reaches towards the woman, she tries to grab her by the shoulders and shake her vigorously, but she misses.

“Stop that! Stop that! You’ll hurt yourself, surely!” Janette yells, but the shaking is shaking so aggressively that Janette starts to feel far away.

There’s a bit of darkness mixed with the feeling of an oncoming wave, and the shaking stops, the women calm down. A stillness settles over the entire place, an uneasiness settles. Janette looks at the other windows in front of the other faucets and does not understand.

“Um, he, sorry about that” the woman says in a shy, disembodied voice. Janette steps back from the other woman and drops her head, noticing for the first time, that she isn’t wearing any shoes.

“I must have forgotten them when I left home.” Janette’s thoughts move very slowly in her mind.

Janette’s brown eyes go up the length of her body, nothing else is out of place. Janette’s eyes get bored of their own body and travel towards the mirror. She finds the other woman’s collar bone, sharp, sick? Janette’s eyes travel up her long slender neck, backlit by her long black hair, long, long, long black hair. Her hair is messy, filled with leaves, debris, small sticks.

Janette’s hand reaches out instinctively to remove one of the sticks. The other woman lets her. Janette tries to pull on the stick, but she misses.

Janette’s eyes, lost and liquid, travel back up to the other woman’s collar bone. It’s so sharp, so perfect, how did she get it so sharp? Janette wants to lick the spot next to the other woman’s ear, Janette wants her tongue to drift down to the knife sitting on the other woman’s chest, sheathed in her skin.

Janette can’t remember the last time she felt desire like this, and it starts to scare her. She wants to look around, to look away, to look at her phone, to look anywhere, but the other woman keeps her gaze there.

Janette can’t control her desire, Janette can’t control, Janette’s never had any control, Janette’s eyes meet the eyes of the other woman.

And…

Janette grew up in a small, dusty town. She got used to the tumbleweeds passing through, and the people staying the same. People were bored, so people were crazy, always thinking up new ways to make up fun out of thin air.

The kids were the same way, that’s the new generation of misfits and toys, and they have their own tricks now, but back then they took what they saw from their parents.

And their parents were superstitious, ridiculously so, dangerously so. So, they say.

Janette’s mom was a death doula, a birth doula, a life doula. Janette’s mom had taught her a thing or too.

The town was small, and many were poor, but some were rich. Janette’s mom was rich and no one knew why.

The family was not superstitious, but the long past patriarch had been. His body ached and pained, and he thought about things that were very, very true.

Janette’s mom knew how to summon the dead, and she used them to summon wealth into her life. That’s it, that’s the whole thing. Not that wild, other people do it too.

“Janette, darling, celesital beauty. Come here my goddess.” Her mom’s voice rises up high into the house, above the incense, the clove smoke, the ceiling beams, the termites. Four stories up, to Janette.

Janette follows the sound to her mother, in the bathroom, doing her makeup. Her hair was long, dark, flowing like rivers down her back. Her eyes were black, surrounded with clusters of fake eye lashes, barely holding onto to the spindly eyelashes she had left. Her face was beautiful — there is no way to explain how strong her beauty shone even through the bruises sprinkled across her face.

Two black eyes, one bloody nose, purples and blues and light green polka dots smattered across her cheekbones.

At the sight of her mother, staring into the mirror, doing her makeup, covering up her polka dots. Janette burst out laughing.

Janette’s mother had eyes ringed in red too, but Janette hadn’t seen that detail until her mom’s eyes looked at hers. Locked with hers, that Janette noticed her mother’s makeup was being taken off, even as she put it on, by the tears falling down her face.

Janette giggles — “Mama! You look like a clown.” The mother looks at her with hungry hatred, but Janette won’t stop giggling, can’t stop giggling. Oh why can’t Janette stop giggling?

And then Mama loses her mind. Janette regrets what she has done — yes, she does, as her mother rages on and on.

Jeanette’s mother is beautiful; Jeanette loves her so.

That night Mama taught Jeanette how to summon demons with long dark hair, beaten up faces, in various states of disarray.

“Mama?” Jeanette whispers into the eyes of the other woman in the bathroom.

The woman shakes her head and grows deathly still.

“It’s other mother, missy.”

Jeanette’s feet turn to run, but the rest of her doesn’t turn. Her spine thinks about severing itself.

“And you’re going to hell.”

Maniacal laughter fills Jeannette’s ears, and she feels a definite tug on her ankle, annoying, but insignificant; Jeanette is far away, in something similar to a Women’s room, a Girl’s room.

Jeanette is staring at her reflection in the mirror, her reflection is younger, wilder, eyes filled with genuine terror. Her hands glued to the faucet handle, stuck moving it up and down; 1,2,3 — the lights flashing 1,2,3

“La Llorona, La Llorona, La Llorona” is all she can hear in a pattern of ONE TWO THREE.

Until the bathroom goes dark. The sound of children’s feet running away mixes with the sound of their laughter, as they run away, leaving her, leaving her, always leaving her.

Jeanette feels a sharp tug on my ankle, and she’s moving, flying so fast that it knocks the consciousness back into her just as she hits the bottom of the lake. Her eyes are black now too, overflowing with water, submerged under the water.

The Other Mother ripples above, somehow clearer through the water. If Janette were still alive, she would have seen that the Mother is weeping.

Nearby a newly discharged marine goes on a run. 3.5 miles along the bank of the Rio Grande.

He feels good today. He feels rested. He feels feral. He feels like getting into a little trouble.

He sees her on mile 2, as if he had summoned her with his horniness.

“She’s beautiful” he mutters under his breath, and his body drifts toward her. He grows thirsty, he grows closer, he sees her hair, and suddenly it’s the only thing in the world that could quench his thirst.

But…

The woman is crying, and so so beautiful, and he wants to know why such a woman is crying, so deeply and mournfully into the Rio Grande.

“Are you ok?” Asks the man who is sort of well meaning.

“I will be,” says the woman who is slightly less well meaning.

“So much rain this summer.” The woman says, wiping her tears even though they never stopped running.

“It’s my first spring here.” says the man

But the man isn’t sure that the woman has heard him as her crying re-intensifies until she’s wailing like the wind that whips it’s tongues across his body when he runs at night.

“Are you ok?” the man asks?

He steps closer and places one hand on her shoulder. The woman’s hair is so long his hand seems to sink within it as he searches for her cold skin.

Next to the couple sits an onlooker, Jerry. A man on a lunch break. A normal sort of regular guy.

Jerry, who has seen the whole exchange, shakes his head and chuckles.

“Some things never change.”

He crumples his paper bag and takes the long way to get up before shuffling away. He knows better than to look back at the woman and her newest lover. He knows better than to slow down his pace when he hear the splash of a body going over into the canal.

As he walks the 4 blocks had to work, Jerry makes a mental note to update his Ofrinda.

Unrelated? Or a witness who does all that he can?