Only Up to Us to Endure
Tales from the Underside: a snapshot from the Age of Monsters world. Please be advised, there is a trigger warning on this post for infant death.
When the doctor and the boy had taken their leave of The Den, Mamá Valentina stayed for some time in the garage. She dismissed Lorenzo, preferring her own company in times like these. The whole encounter had left her with a sinking feeling in the pit of her gut. They hadn’t seen the last of those two, and whatever came of it, it wouldn’t be good.
Like Doctor Hastings, Fernando had envisioned himself a hero. He had gone in 1910 to fight for the rights he so valiantly hoped his family would one day enjoy. When he didn’t come home, he had left her with a ring on her finger that no longer held a promise, and a life growing in her that changed overnight from a source of unending joy to one of the greatest sorrow. How could she hope to provide for a baby alone?
But if Valentina Ortiz was one thing, she was a fighter. Every day she fought, working the three jobs it took to fill the gaps left by Fernando. The gaps in her finances, that was. The ones in her heart would never recover. She scoured dishes and mended clothes and picked beans until she was round-bellied as the waxing moon. The other women shot her worried glances. They’d seen such desperation before. It almost always ended in tragedy.
Though Valentina’s arms were strong, and her heart was wide, there was hardly food enough for both of them. Mother and daughter had grown lean and weak together. To make matters worse, there was no doctor in the village in those days, only ancient medicine. It would have been enough, if things had gone easy, but when the baby came, it was as if all Valentina’s sadness clawed its way out along with the wan, soft-lunged child. Once the bleeding started, it didn’t stop, and the baby girl drew breath only long enough for Valentina to take her in her arms.
A man knows nothing of the ways in which a woman is a warrior, but the gods know, and there is justice in the end. As Valentina faded like a wilting red dahlia, her spirit didn’t die. Her heartbeat didn’t slow, it only grew faster, pulsating like the fire in the western sky. As she slipped from one world to the next, she emerged with brilliant wings and a tongue that would taste only the sweetest of nectars from then on.
For some time, it was sunlight and moonfall, sisters and a purpose much greater than herself. But on the worst nights, she found herself at the crossroad, with talons for hands and a kind of deathlessness that couldn’t be hidden. Lost children cried at the sight of her bone-bare face. They were always Adelina’s age, if she might have lived to see it. Valentina would only coo soft lullabies and take them by the hand, leading them back to the homes from which they were missing.
For twenty four years, she was one of many faithful companions to the great hummingbird, guiding him night by night to the mouth of the Underworld itself. And then, it all came crashing down. The sky had crumbled and she and her sisters fell with the stars.
From then on, there was always a crossroad. Always a lost child, but never her own. Not to have, not to keep, but only to carry through the night, sometimes by the hand and sometimes on her back. The littlest ones, she held in her arms, their faces turned from her so they would not scream.
No hay lugar como México, but the rolling lands she had known and loved for half a century held only pain. With nothing and no one to tie her to this place, she finally flew away, and looked back only through the candles of the ofrenda.
Decades later and a country away, Mamá Valentina had to reckon with herself. The boy was not hers, and yet, she had found him at the crossroad. With no parents to speak of and no home to which she might return him, she had made an unthinkable offer. Despite herself, and the many times she had learned the same heartbreaking lesson, Valentina Ortiz was not immune to the wicked temptation of hope.
Already, she loved him, as she had loved the others, as she had loved Adelina with all of her heart. It was a deep, inexplicable thing that had driven many of her sisters mad with hopeless longing. There was a reason children were cautioned against cihuateteo, but she had found other things to care for, other people to love. She did not need a baby anymore. Mamá Valentina had a clan, and nothing, not even Santiago De Leon, was going to take her family away from her.
Not again.