My great-grandmother used to live in the South Valley of Albuquerque. As in most cities, the further south you go, the more likely you are to be shot by some punk kid in an old caddie. Needless to say, the South Valley in ABQ is already a pretty terrifying place. My Grandma Chelo was a tough woman, and she knew how to handle herself in most situations. As with many strong, Mexican women, Grandma Chelo had little room for nonsense. Hell, one time I said the word, “shit”, and she literally washed my mouth out with bar soap! When Grandma Chelo told us not to do something, you bet your ass we listened. If we didn't heed her advice then we'd learn a hard lesson. This is the story of a lesson learned.
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In New Mexico we have a saying popularized by many different PSA’s over the years – “Ditches are deadly, stay away.” This saying came from the need to protect children from being swept away in either the Rio Grande River or the many arroyos designed to irrigate farms or defer water during sudden monsoons that plague our state every summer through fall. When these massive, unexpected rains come down, they have a tendency to cause flash floods in mere minutes. Anybody careless enough to be strolling through a ditch can be caught up in a flood and drown while fighting the current.
A kid getting caught in flash floods isn’t a modern day problem, however. When farming became popular with the Spanish along the Rio Grande in Mexico hundreds of years ago, children really liked to play in ditches. This became such a problem that the legend of “La Llorona”, (The Weeping Woman), was created to scare kids away from ditches.
The story involves a woman who is deeply in love with her husband in Old Mexico. Every day he showers her with affection, and she knows that she is the only one in his heart. They have two children, (usually boys), and they seem like a loving family. Gradually, the woman starts noticing that the man seems to show more love towards the kids than he does her. Her jealousy feeds as more and more of the man’s attention turns toward the boys. She feels unloved, and this feeling festers into madness.
One day the man went into town to shop for tools for their farm. The woman sees an opportunity to win back her husband’s affection. She takes her boys to the Rio Grande to give them a bath. In her ever-maddening mind she thinks that with the boys out of the picture the husband will have time to love her and only her. She makes the younger brother turn around while she quietly drowns the older one. After the devilish deed is done, she drowns the younger brother alongside his deceased sibling. Minutes later, the cloud of hysteria is clears, and the woman can finally see what she has done. Her sons’ bodies float lifelessly in the shallow waters of the Rio Grande. The woman is horrified as she realizes that she has killed her beloved children.
Now in some versions of the story she kills herself, but in others her husband comes home and kills her after seeing what she has done. Either way, the story ends on a supernatural note. Being a murderer, the woman is stuck in limbo while her innocent children ascend into heaven. The woman does not know that they are gone, and stricken with a strong desire to atone for her mistake and be with her boys once again, her spirit roams the banks of the Rio Grande crying out for them. To this day, if La Llorona sees children playing in a ditch she will catch them. When she realizes that they are not her children, she drowns them in the ditch out of anger.
All Mexican kids are told this story as a cautionary tale to make us stay away from ditches. For some reason the thought of a disgruntled spirit catching you in the middle of the night and drowning your ass in a river is more terrifying than the very real threat of a flash flood. Of course, no child really believes this myth as it is widely known that all our parents want to do is keep us safe from floods. This obvious push for safety was exactly why I never believed, until one stormy night in the South Valley.
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I must have been ten years old when I saw her. I can pinpoint my age because Men In Blackhad just come out, and I remember my cousin Crystal and I listening to Will Smith’s MIB rap song over and over again trying to memorize the lyrics. I know what you must be asking yourself, and the answer is yes – I do still remember all the words to that (and “Wild Wild West”). But the lure of Will Smith “pumping out some dope ass rhymes” wasn't enough to keep us in the house for long, and eventually we went to play outside with my brother, Matt.
My grandmother's backyard was a decent size. Mostly dirt with heaps of random junk strewn about, the yard was a fun playground for imaginative kids. There was an old clothes line suspended by metal poles that served as monkey bars, and an old shed we used as cover during heated matches of dodge ball. We weren’t allowed near the chain link fence that lined the boundary of Grandma’s yard. Just past the fence was a small dirt arroyo cutting through the neighborhood. I had never been past the fence, and the possibility of adventure beyond this border seemed undeniably appealing.
Matt, Crystal, and I played outside until the weather turned. The clouds quickly gathered in the New Mexico sky and grew dark with the promise of a sudden storm. The wind started to whip around us, causing Matt and Crystal to choose the comfort of a living room TV, and the safety of my unshakable grandmother. I, however, opted to stay outside and ride the storm out. I'm not sure what causes me to be so damn curious, but I've always had a nasty habit of sticking around until the end.
I marveled at the sky as the clouds sat so still above. Rain had started to sprinkle down, just to give me a taste of the deluge to follow. Thunder struck mercilessly in my ears, but the vision of lightning was nowhere to be found. There was an eerie calm between thunderclaps. Wind whistled low as the only other sound was the rattle of the chain link fence. It was this fence that was my gateway to adventure. I was determined to experience something, feel something, and what better to feel than the sensory overload of a raging New Mexico storm?
There was a big arroyo by my house on the other side of the city, and I always enjoyed seeing it filled with surging water. I had never seen the arroyo by my grandmother's house up close, but for all I knew it could've been a canyon! The thought was tantalizing, and if this storm was going to be raging then I wanted a front row seat. There was no fear in my heart, but a giddy beat raced on in my chest. I stood at the forbidden fence, took a deep breath, and pushed forward.
The arroyo was a bit small. It was perhaps four feet deep with water sitting from a previous rainfall. It stretched beyond what I could see in either direction. Lights from other houses fought the encroaching darkness. Through dark gray clouds and the haze of rain I could see that the storm was picking up, and there were only minutes before water would pour down, flooding the area. I had always loved the moments before a storm. They heighten your senses, and make you feel so small in a chaotic world.
The rain hit me in an instant. What was once a slight drizzle of rain had become an onslaught of heavy pellets striking my skin. I loved every minute of it as I basked in the feeling of complete immersion in this power of nature. Time seems to flow according to perspective, and in those few minutes of torrential downpour I felt as if an hour had gone by. Rarely do I feel so alive than in the moments when I surrender myself to nature.
After a few minutes had gone by I decided that my family might start worrying about me if I stayed out much longer. As I walked back into the yard and shut the gate, the rain slowed drastically. My back was toward the arroyo, which I was positive was devoid of people merely thirty seconds earlier. Suddenly, I felt a strange chill throughout my body beyond the icy blast of the wind. This chill seemed to originate from inside my body and crawl up my spine. I was still close to the fence when I turned around one more time to face the ditch.
There she was: the woman in white, her dress flowing gently in the breeze. She was walking slowly along the side of the arroyo. The light was dim, but her impossibly pale skin seemed to radiate through the darkness. Her hair was long and black, swaying softly along her sides. Her dress was slightly tattered, but did not seem to be wet for the amount of rain that had just come down. She was maybe twenty feet away from me, and her features struck me far more than the haze of the storm should have allowed.
I stood there watching her as she walked alongside the arroyo to the left of me. I could feel my heart slow as my breathing became shallow. When she was directly in front of me, she stopped. The woman slowly turned toward me but stared past me – over my shoulder toward nothing. In those few seconds, as I studied her face, time seemed to stand still. Her lips stayed shut, but as I looked into her eyes a sudden, deafening sound hit my right ear. It was somewhere between a scream and a harsh breath, but whatever it was buckled my knees, sending me crashing to the ground. I caught myself as my fist hit the dirt. Shaking off the fall, I quickly peered up toward the woman, but she had already started walking down the side of the arroyo, almost out of sight.
Inside the house, I changed out of my wet clothes and went into the living room where my brother sat with my grandma on the couch. They were watching Spanish TV like my grandma preferred, even though we never understood anything happening on Sabado Gigante. I had enough of Mexican stories for one night so I tuned it out. I lay down on the furry, dark brown carpet – as I always enjoyed doing for some reason – and I fell into a deep sleep.
***
Over the years, I told two girlfriends the story of that night, but I never told anybody else. It wasn't until the summer after I turned twenty-six that I told my family. My sister was in town, and we were all visiting at my Grandma Pat's (Grandma Chelo's daughter). We were sitting down, reminiscing about Grandma Chelo, who had passed away a few years earlier. We started talking about her old house in the South Valley when my mom made a comment about seeing La Llorona in the arroyo as a child. I was pretty shocked, because I had always written off that night as the product of my imagination. After that it was revealed that my sister had a similar experience.
I was absolutely intrigued that the three of us could have all had experiences with this woman years apart from one another. It was an interesting connection that we had to this house and to each other that none of us had ever known existed until that moment. And just as my heart had slowed during the storm and the brief sight of the Ditch Witch, I felt my body surge with the possibility of adventure once again. All I wanted to do was find my great grandmother's house once again during a dark, stormy night. I'd swing around back and walk the edge of the arroyo, hoping to glimpse this mysterious woman again. I'm not sure if flash floods or murderous ghosts are the bigger threat, but I wouldn't mind finding out. I mean, ditches are deadly, but the allure of the unknown is irresistible.
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