LA LUZ

I open my eyes and look around. It’s dark at first but then I begin to see. I’m in our bedroom. On the bed below me, I see a girl asleep. White foam streams out of her mouth. The girl looks like me, but it can’t be me because I’m floating around on the ceiling. Only angels fly like this. I swoop down and peer at the girl’s face. It is me! How could that be? I’m up here. That isn’t possible is it? I must be having a crazy dream.

My parent’s double bed is next to the bunk bed I share with my brother. I glide over it and see Mamá. She’s asleep with the lamp on, sprawled across the bed with the blankets all tangled up in her legs. I’ve never seen her sleep in such a strange way. Where’s Papá? He’s usually next to her in bed except when he works p.m. shift and gets home after my brother and I are asleep.

A fist, wrapped in white cloth, crashes through the window and a hand reaches in to unlatch it. The broken window slides up and Papá climbs through it. Why didn’t he come through the door? Why is he holding his shirt to his nose?

I don’t see what happens next because suddenly I find myself swept outside. At least I think it’s outside because it’s dark, darker even than the darkest night I’ve ever seen. No stars, no moon, only the darkness like a black velvet curtain surrounds me. Where am I?

A pinpoint of light catches my eye and draws me like a magnet. I fly toward the light as it keeps getting brighter and larger until it swallows up the darkness. The brilliant light envelops me. I’m not scared. The light comforts me as it bathes me in its warm welcome. It feels good. I feel happy, happier than I’ve ever been before. I want to go further into it. I want to feel more of this golden light, but someone blocks my way. I swoop closer and see Abuelita, my great-grandmother, in a flowing white robe surrounded by shimmering light. She looks different from the Abuelita I’d known in Mamá Isabel’s house. That Abuelita had been a stooped old woman who couldn’t walk or talk. This Abuelita stands strong and tall, like she did in the pictures I’d seen of her when she was younger, before the stroke.

“What are you doing here? Where are we?” I ask. I’m confused because Abuelita is dead. I saw her in a coffin when they brought her to Mamá Isabel’s house for us to say good-by. Is this her ghost? But she doesn’t look like a ghost. She looks like anybody else would look except for the light glowing out of her. Abuelita smiles and hugs me. In her warm loving arms, I forget my questions. I bask in her light and feel safe.

“Go back, Margarita. It is not your time. Not yet.”

Abuelita speaks to me in Spanish, the only language she ever knew and she calls me Margarita. Padre Miguel baptized me Margarita and it was also Abuelita’s name. My cousins shortened my name to Rita and that’s what my family calls me. In Kindergarten, my teacher changed Margarita to Margie because she said as long as I lived in this country I should have an American name. She changed all my friends’ names in Spanish to English. From then on all my classmates and teachers have called me Margie.

Abuelita holds me at arm's length and says, “You have a job to do. Go back and observe; learn from what you see around you. Someday Morenci will be no more. The mine will swallow the town and the people will have to leave. You will be the memory and voice of Morenci. Go back!” Abuelita releases me and nudges me back toward the dark tunnel.

I yearn to hug Abuelita again. I want the light to absorb me. I stretch my arms out for her, but she’s no longer there. I feel myself being sucked back into the darkness. The light shrinks to a pinpoint in the distance and disappears.

I’m back in Morenci again. I see the houses scattered on the hills, the moon shining on their tin roofs. Across the way, I see the lights of a steam shovel as it dumps rocks into a waiting truck. Beneath me, I see Mamá racing down the hill below our house carrying a girl’s body. It’s my body! Mamá gets into the car and Papá drives away.

“Wait!” I yell, but no one hears. I fly after the car and find myself floating on its ceiling, looking down at my body in Mamá arms. It looks as if she’s kissing the other me on the lips and pushing on her chest.

I close my eyes. I cough, struggling for breath. I open my eyes to find Mamá’s worried face staring at me. I’m back in my body! I try to tell Mamá about the weird dream, but all I can do is cough. Papá drives us to the hospital. He tells the nurse we’ve been gassed. The nurse doesn’t let us see the doctor. She tells Papá to drive around in the fresh air instead. As he drives up and down the hills of Morenci, I hear my parents whispering in the front seat. I’m so busy trying to figure out what had happened to me that I don’t even try to listen.

* * * * *

Days later when I tell Mamá, she says I probably dreamed it. “Forget it.” Her explanation doesn't satisfy me. It didn’t seem like a dream. It was too real. I decide to tell Mamá Isabel. We’re living with her and Tata while we wait to move into our new house. Mamá refuses to go back to our old house.

Mamá Isabel holds me by my shoulders as Abuelita did and looks deep into my eyes. “This is true, what you say to me?” she says in Spanish. Mamá Isabel knows English, but she prefers not to speak it. I nod, not taking my eyes off hers.

“I believe you. Mamá was a curandera, a wise woman who healed people. She was a partera too and delivered most of the Mexican children of Morenci before she got sick.” A tear traces her cheek. I get a lump in my throat.

“You have been chosen for something very special to be sent back from la luz. Keep this secret in your heart. When the time comes you will know what needs to be done.” She blesses me with the sign of the cross on my forehead and hugs me.

I’m a curious child. I like to listen to adults talking while I pretend to read a book. It used to make me feel guilty about spying on people this way. Whenever I confessed it to Padre Miguel, he gave me two Hail Marys to say so I always thought it was a sin. Now I know it’s okay. It’s my job. I listen to them talk even though I don’t understand some of the things they say. Someday I will.

I love hearing my grandparents tell stories about old times in Morenci. Now I beg them for more every chance I get. I like sitting with Tata under the mora tree and hearing about the Morenci he knew as a young man. I help Mamá Isabel in the kitchen just to hear her tell about when Mamá and her sisters were little. These stories I tell to my little cousins. Repeating them over and over again so I won’t forget how they go. That way I know the stories will be there for a time when I’ll need them. When I was in la luz, Abuelita told me to watch and listen because I’m to be the memory and voice of Morenci. I want to be ready.