Let Their Spirits Dance: A Novel

Chapter One

1968

The passion vine bloomed until late November the year Jesse died. Amazing. Every morning I walked out on the rough slab of concrete that led to the wooden trellis leaning against the side of the house to check for blossoms. Warm September days in Arizona fueled the vine's growth, and the cool days of October should have signaled it to stop. Still, in 1968, truth was suspended in midair, and the passion vine forced blooms into the cold, gray days of November. Each blossom lived one day. All that beauty for just one day.

Early missionaries saw the mystery of Christ's passion in the flower's intricate design. The petals symbolize the ten apostles at the Crucifixion, the rays of the corona are the crown of thorns, the five anthers the wounds, the three stigmas the nails, the coiling tendrils the cords and whips, and the five-lobed leaves the cruel hands of the persecutors. The flower was fully open, a purple-white disc, translucent in the gray dawn. Dewdrops shone on the petals. I felt around the flower's delicate stamen, feeling pollen under my fingertips; the petals felt thick, rubbery. The smell of dead leaves, wet earth, and moist wood hung in the air.

I shivered in my flannel nightgown and bare feet. My face felt numb. I knew my nose was turning red. The evergreen tree in the front yard and the skinny chinaberry tree growing by the woodshed glowed in the early morning light. Across the street, Fireball, the Williamses' rooster, crowed. El Cielito, my old barrio, was coming alive - awkwardly, like a dinosaur rising to its feet.

I spotted Duke, our old German shepherd, walking toward me from the backyard. Jesse had named our dog Duke for the song "Duke of Earl" that we practiced dancing to in the living room. We made the old 45 go round so many times the needle cracked. It was worth it, because all our dips and spins matched perfectly, and Jesse felt so good about his dancing he even asked Mary Ann to dance with him at his eighth-grade graduation party.

Jesse said Duke was seventy-seven years old in dog years. That was two years ago. Poor Duke, no wonder he was walking so slow, dragging around over seventy years of chasing cats and cars. He padded toward me in silence, yawning once. Seeing me there was no surprise. Duke picked a path parallel to the water hose that ran along the hard-packed earth to a row of hedges that grew against the chicken-wire fence, separating our property from our neighbors, the Navarros.

Duke came up to me, brushing along the side of my leg. He nuzzled the hem of my nightgown with his wet nose. I saw patches of bald spots on Duke's brown back, and his tail wagged like a melancholy pendulum between his back legs. "Good dog," I said patting him. "Sit, Duke. Sit here." I pointed to the spot next to me. Jesse had taught Duke how to sit, jump on lawn chairs, retrieve a baseball, and scare the mailman.

With Duke at my side, I stared at the tangled passion vine and through its spidery web of stems and leaves at my mother's bedroom window, blocked off from the outside world by curtains that had faded in the sun. I knew my mother was in her room crying. Crying was all my mother did after Jesse was killed in Vietnam.

I hardly recognized her anymore. I had grown used to every expression of her face, all the ups and downs of her eyebrows, and the way the tiny wrinkles on her chin smoothed out when she smiled. I couldn't describe her face anymore. I didn't want to. I had to make myself stop wanting to hear her sing in the mornings while she made breakfast for me, Priscilla, and Paul, got coffee ready for my dad, and clattered the dishes around until we all got up. I couldn't even talk to Jesse about it, this whole worry about my mom, unless I went out to the passion vine.

I knew my father wasn't in the bedroom with my mother. How could he be? He could only take so much of her tears, then he pulled back, retreating into his own thoughts, into the circle of smoke made by cigarettes he forgot to finish smoking. He let his coffee, café con leche, get cold. Cigarette ashes got all over the kitchen table. When he felt the cigarette burn his fingers, he put it out in one hard motion in the ashtray, then he gulped down more coffee, but he wouldn't go back into the bedroom with Mom. My parents lived in the same house as strangers long before Jesse died.

There was more between my parents than Jesse's death. There was Consuelo. Since I could remember, Consuelo's name was whispered, shouted, and swept out of our house over and over again, and it reappeared, a spider's web stubbornly clinging to a dark corner of the living room. The spider's web stood up to blasts of air spewing from the swamp cooler that made wheezing sounds when the humidity was up. It was a reminder to me that Consuelo was there, entangling us in a web of lies and shame, holding us captive, hexing my father, Tía Katia said, with his own photograph and a pin pushed right into his heart.

Anger was a balled fist between my breasts. It made me want to rip the passion vine apart, reach for my mother right through the glass, and make her stop crying. No one was around except Duke, keeping guard. It was too early for El Cielito's winos to begin their morning trek down the alley to the liquor store. It was two hours before I had to catch the bus to Palo...

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Let Their Spirits Dance by Duarte, Stella Pope Excerpted by permission.
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