​Nana Coyo never slept on the night before the day of remembering.  As soon as the sun had dropped with certainty behind the western mountains, she arranged herself on a folding chair outside in her backyard.  She placed her feet on a hot water bottle and heaped a mountain of wool blankets over herself.  At her side, she kept a thermos of steaming atole with piloncillo and chocolate for wakefulness.  There was nowhere she’d rather be.
 
This year, the cycles of Earth and Cosmos arranged for the Moon to be wearing her darkest cloak.  Nana Coyo hummed and muttered.  She sang as the sky revealed what people nowadays would refer to as secrets.  Nana Coyo knew better.  Secrets are simply memories retained, she’d tell her adoptive son Lázaro.
 
When Lázaro was younger, he’d furrow his brow and complain about Nana Coyo and her ways of explaining things.  Why can’t you just talk like a normal person, he’d say.  She would laugh and tug at his ear.
 
“Te estoy entrenando a los oídos, hijo mío.”  One day he would know how to listen.
 
Now that Lázaro’s hair was greying and Nana Coyo was practically old enough to join the stars, he felt a longing in his bones to sit outside with her.  He could barely make out Nana Coyo’s silhouette against the blackness of the night.  He followed the sound of her voice, a trail of vocalizations beyond any language he recognized.  Clicks and trills.  Hoots and whistles.  Murmurs like the wings of hummingbirds.  As his eyes adjusted to the dark, he saw how starlight outlined her huddled figure.
 
Without a word, Lázaro set up his folding chair next to Nana Coyo.  She patted his knee.  He could feel a smile in the warmth of her hand.  She poured him a cup of atole.  He breathed in the smells of roasted corn ground into flour, boiled in water, and whisked into a frothy porridge.  As he raised the cup to his mouth, he could practically taste the hints of cinnamon and chocolate.  He felt Nana Coyo’s bony fingers gently intervene, pulling back his cup before he could take a sip.
 
“Antes de todo, una pruebadita para la Madrecita.”
 
Like she was assisting a child, Nana Coyo held Lázaro’s hands in her own.  She guided them down to the ground, where she tipped the cup and spilled out a taste of atole onto the cold and hardened dirt beneath their feet.
 
She whispered to the ground and sighed with satisfaction.
 
“Ahora sí, mi amor.  Drink up.”
 
And he did.
 
They sat for hours.  Nana Coyo sang.  She stretched her legs.  She clapped her hands.  She stomped her feet.  She settled into a chorus of sounds that only tall grasses know how to make in the wind.
 
Together, they drank the atole.
 
Without even intending it, Lázaro turned over his consciousness to the dark sky.  He forgot that he was awake, staring into the starry abyss, with only the smell of corn and the tug of gravity to remind him that he was still a terrestrial creature.  At some point during the night, he realized that he could understand the sounds being spoken by Nana Coyo.  Was she speaking Spanish? Was it English?  He couldn’t quite tell, but the words began to descend into him like the warming spread of awareness through his body.
 
“The Corn Mothers came to us long ago, mijo.  They seeded themselves into us, generation after generation.  Beings as big as the stars became morsels of nourishment.   In Madre Maíz, they came as clusters of constellations, all the colors of light, the energy of nuclear fusion—the glow of blue, yellow, red, orange, white, and every glimmer in between.  They joined with the stones and made their way into our bones, our cells, the spiraling ladders of the fabric of our being.  They fed us with the food of remembering because they knew a different kind of darkness would descend on the land.  It is not the blackness of the night but the disease of forgetfulness.  They knew there would come a day when we would eat and never be satiated.  Ravenous, we would devour everything in our path, as if we had no memories.” 
 
Nana Coyo poured the last of the atole into Lázaro’s cup.
 
“The Mothers are as close to you as your body.  On this night before the day of remembering, drink and eat, mi amor.  See them adorned in starlight and radiating with power.  Receive their ripened bellies.  Be filled by them.”
 
With that Nano Coyo cupped Lázaro’s head in her hands.  She turned his gaze toward the Eastern sky.  Against the mountains, the horizon began to define itself as the black night softened.  A shard of light pierced through the worlds and illuminated the shoulders of the mountains.
 
In that moment, Lázaro felt his own clenched heart cleave open.  His body spilled to the ground.  In heaving sobs, he wrapped himself around Nana Coyo’s feet.  He gave his waters to her body and to the body of the Earth.  He offered his tears, his spit, the vapors of his breath.
 
When he finally came to stillness, Nana Coyo pulled out her left foot and gently rested it on the small of Lázaro’s back.  She applied the slightest pressure, and he breathed in deeply, as if reacquainting himself with air. 
 
They rested this way, the two of them.  Together at the precipice between worlds, they greeted the day of remembering.

Read other stories about Lázaro and Nana Coyo:
Lázaro and Nana Coyo Praise the Monsoons
Lázaro and the Santito Rescue Mission​

​Last night I dreamt that I was bathing my baby in a pool of water. A tiger appeared out of the darkness and stepped into the water. She walked slowly, deliberately. Her eyes were on me.
 
She came right up to me and brushed up against my body.  She leaned into me. I could feel her rib cage against my back. My breath caught as I felt the enormity of her being.  Muscles of solid mass. Fierceness. Strength of a magnitude beyond anything I’d known. In an instant—less than an instant—she could decide whether my baby and I lived or died. I loved this tiger even as I feared her.
 
My body trembled, and I was more awake than I’d ever been. I looked at my baby, continuing to bathe her. Each drop of water mattered. Each stroke of her head.
 
"Here we are together," I told her. “Right now.”
 
I felt the kind of joy that makes hearts weep.
 
"One day the tiger will eat us," I said.
 
At that, the tiger pulled away and walked out of the pool.
 
Water dripped from her body. I don’t remember if she turned around to look back at me. All I could feel was that place on my back where she’d leaned into me. She’d imprinted herself onto me.
 
When I close my eyes, I can still remember her warmth.
 
I want you to claim your joy now, she said.
 
This is not the time for waiting.

A man sat down on the couch at the far end of the waiting room.  He sighed and fished a leatherbound book out of his briefcase.  An old Mexican tin lamp glowed next to him on the side table.  Concealed speakers piped out some kind of chants.  Or was it whistles?  Maybe flutes, possibly rattles.  The man shifted uncomfortably in his seat, telling himself he would never get used to this place.  He pulled on the red ribbon in his book marking the page for the day’s reading.
 
“Buenos días Señor Zumárraga,.  Te traigo un chocolate?” 
 
The offer came from the woman seated at the front desk.  She looked the way she always did.  Her midnight-black hair was pulled back tautly and wrapped into a shiny bun at the base of her head.  Her nails were impeccably filed, polished; her lipstick the most brilliant shade of red.  She wore her signature silver earrings—a configuration of geometric shapes with the triangles dangling their points all the way down to her shoulders.  At a certain angle, the earrings were oddly reminiscent of daggers, the man thought. 
 
Every week, the man felt unnerved by this moment—the moment when Señorita Coyo would offer him a steaming cup of hot chocolate, which she retrieved from some unseen kitchen down the back hallway.  It was only hot chocolate, he’d told himself week after week.  Yet here he was, poised on the edge of this decision that tugged at him with an odd sense of gravity. 
 
Should he or shouldn’t he?
 
Today he would.
 
“Sí, gracias Señorita Coyo.”  
 
She winked at him and wandered off.
 
She always did that—wink at him.  The man felt his neck grow hot under his tight collar.  He'd been to a half-dozen other therapy offices in the last year.  None of them felt quite like this.  There was no coffee or tea here.  Only hot chocolate.  There were no copies of The New Yorker or Arizona Highways arranged tidily on a coffee table.  Instead there were stacks of old books that looked like they came from a hippie’s library discards.  Bookcases lined the walls.  They were overstuffed with figurines, stones, dried plants, live plants, photographs, and enough feathers to lend flight to the whole mishmash. 
 
A large, ornately framed photo of a rocky hillside hung above the sofa—over the man’s head as he sat and waited.  The image irritated him to no end.  The photography showed lack of skill, and the hill itself was wholly unremarkable.  Drab.  Dotted with nondescript shrubbery.  Why choose this expensive frame for such a blob of a hill?  Why place it here?  Week after week of sitting beneath the gaze of the hill, the man couldn’t help but occasionally study the image, as if to uncover its secret value.  All he could discern was a pile of dirt and weeds.
 
Señorita Coyo returned with his hot chocolate and placed the mug and saucer on the side table.  She tucked an embroidered cloth napkin under the lip of the saucer.
 
“Try to enjoy, Señor Zumárraga.”  She walked away before he could respond.
 
The man sighed.
 
He cleared his throat and reached for the mug.  Cradling it in his hands, he caught a whiff of the steam and felt his senses spring to life.  Each sip seemed to register a different taste—sweet, then salty, a spicy earthiness when he exhaled.  Something about this chocolate was intoxicating.  He felt the edges of his being grow fuzzy, as if with one foolishly deep inhale, he might forget his very name. 
 
“Don’t give in,” he whispered to himself.
 
“Perdón Señor?” Señorita Coyo inquired from behind her desk.
 
He shook his head and waved her off.
 
The man stood and began to pace the small length of open floor in front of the couch.  The movement kept him from descending into the fullness of the chocolate.  He traveled back and forth, the hillside casting a backdrop to his struggle.
 
With the last slurp of chocolate the man breathed out satisfied.  He was still securely tethered to everything he knew about himself and his purpose.
 
He glanced down at the remnants of ground cocoa at the bottom of the mug.  There was something glistening amidst the sediment.  He tilted the mug to catch the light.  There they were.  Shimmering specs in the muddy silt of the chocolate.  He was about to try to retrieve one of the particles, when Señorita Coyo interrupted.
 
“Señor Zumárraga, La Madre will see you now.”
 
The man stood still.  Stunned.  What had she said?  La Madre?
 
“Who will see me now?” he asked, with a bit too much urgency on his tongue.
 
Señorita Coyo was unphased.  “La Doctora.  La Doctora will see you now.”
 
“Is that what you said before?” the man asked accusingly.
 
He walked up to the reception desk.
 
“Who else would you be here to see?” she inquired with a smile.  “Perhaps a little less chocolate for you next time, Señor?” 
 
She winked.
 
The man handed her his emptied mug.  He stopped.
 
“Did you add something glittery to the chocolate?  Why does it sparkle at the bottom of the cup?”
 
“Oh that,” she waved her hand dismissively.  “That’s just the mica from the pinch of dirt we add to each cup.  It’s what makes the chocolate so irresistible.”
 
Dirt? The man felt his face redden.  Dirt in his drink?  Before he could utter another word, he heard his name from the back hallway.
 
“Señor Zumárraga.”
 
The voice of La Doctora was at once steady and expansive.  He heard her chuckling from the recesses of the office. 
 
“Bring your inquisition directly to me, Señor.” 
 
“Sí, Doctora,” he replied.
 
The man felt on the edge of forgetting again—a forgetting that was oddly similar to remembering.
 
He sheepishly smiled at Señorita Coyo.  Then he turned and followed the voice that called to him.

December 12, 2022

​Once upon a time, there was a portal that opened up between worlds.  By today’s accounting, the events transpired 491 years ago.  By other measures, it’s difficult to know what happened when.  It might have been yesterday. 
 
Stories came to be told about what occurred.  The stories were whittled down by vigilant editors who ensured only the most palatable of retellings.  All the names were changed.  Names were, after all, the most dangerous of all words.  Names could hide truths that came with scaly skins and furry faces, yellowed eyes, forked tongues and musky odors.  Names could spark memories. 
 
So it was that only the most pleasing of all the names were to be codified in books, preached from pulpits and plazas.  Only the prettiest paintings commissioned for gilded altars.
 
But late at night, by the glow of the embers, there were those who uttered stories they dared not repeat by the light of day.
 
“Today when I sang the verses to the one they call Guadalupe, I heard the howl of a wolf behind me and the rushing currents of a river.  Every hair on my body stood on end.”
 
“Today when I recited the words to the one they call María, the earth began to rattle beneath my feet.  Then from every direction, I heard the sound of a thousand rattlesnakes.  My heart pounded in my chest like a drum.”
 
“Today when I lit the candle before the one whose name we do not really know, I heard a voice tell me to go to the river where the priests take the cows to drink.  The voice instructed me to dig at the place of the mirrored rock.  The voice said: ‘They have buried us there, finding us too displeasing to their senses.’”
 
“Will you come with me?”
 
“It will have to be under the cloak of night.”
 
“By the light of the stars and the waning moon.”
 
“We do not know who we will find, but the voice assures me she will be there.”

Mary emerged from the west that night.  She traveled the Tucson Mountains, following the dusty hillside paths carved out by mule deer and javelinas.  Her sights were set on Tumamoc Hill, a distinctive butte on the western edge of the city.  Named for the regal horned lizard in the O’odham language, the hill was now, ironically, crowned with spiky antennae and transmission equipment.  In spite of the added eyesores, the hill retained an unmistakable presence.  When Mary arrived at the trailhead gate just after midnight, Tumamoc indeed rose like a regal being before her.  Mary bowed and whispered the ancient greeting to this old friend.
 
Tumamoc Hill overlooked the Tucson Basin, a great earthen bowl framed by mountain ranges that hugged the horizon in every direction.  Over millions of years, the landforms here had been molded by massive volcanic events and tectonic dances.  The basin more aptly might have been named a cauldron or womb, as some of the most unique lifeforms of the Sonoran Desert made their home here.  It was precisely in this basin that present-day urban-dwellers sprawled out into the desert city of Tucson.  They filled every nook and cranny and even started to build up into the sides of the mountains themselves.  As the city-goers hustled and bustled through daily life, ancient memories were still flickering.  An old story still unfolding beneath their feet.
 
So it was that Mary waited that night on the edge of the great basin, by the trailhead gate at the base of Tumamoc Hill.  Guadalupe wasn’t here yet.  She was late.  Across the street shone the brightly-lit hospital complex named after Mary herself.  Beyond the reach of the hospital’s glow, the land was blanketed in the rich darkness of the new moon.  On a night like tonight, the only way to navigate the climb up the hill was by the subtlety of starlight and the good sense of sure feet. 
 
Mary sat on a boulder. She stretched her arms up and yawned.  Her veil dropped to the ground and she shook out her hair.  A slender, brown checkered nightsnake dropped from under her garment and landed at her feet.  She bent over and affectionately guided the snake onto her right hand.  It traveled up and curled around her forearm.  Such simple details—veil, hair, snake—but the makeover was dramatic.  She went from the classically contained Mother Mary to a Mary who would surely elicit a double- and triple-take from any passerby. 
 
Even before Mary spotted Guadalupe bounding up the sidewalk, she knew what had detained the Madre.  No doubt Lupita had walked through all the old barrios, visiting every shrine, every mural, each roadside prayer stop on her way.   Who could blame her?  This was, after all, the Land of Lupe.  How could she not stop at each and every place where the longings gathered?
 
Guadalupe’s familiar voice broke through the quiet night.
 
“Ay Cabrona! You couldn’t even wait for me to get started!  Mírate! Ya estás practicamente bichi con la víbora vibrando!” 
 
Mary chuckled.  In spite of her youthful appearance, Guadalupe cussed like an old crone who just couldn’t be bothered with propriety.
 
“Hello to you too!” Mary called out.  “If you hadn’t noticed, you’re late!”
 
They both laughed, walked up to each other and embraced.  They pressed their foreheads together and lingered here as they breathed in each other’s scents, delighting in the pungency of their different flavors. 
 
“All jokes aside,” Guadalupe explained, “there were a lot of prayers left out for me tonight.”
 
“I know,” Mary whispered, squeezing Guadalupe’s hand.  “I can smell them in you.  I can smell them in the air.”
 
Guadalupe nodded.  “The longing is building.”

​Sitting in front of a fire in the coolness of a desert night, Our Lady of Guadalupe and Mother Mary settle into an all-night chat.  There is so much to talk about—current events, past events, lovers, children, births, deaths, their travels and appearances, where they see it all going.  They also love to chuckle about one of Guadalupe’s pet peeves:  people’s tendency to mistake her for Mother Mary. 
 
Guadalupe insists there’s no good excuse for the mix-up.  She’s everywhere.  Sure Mary’s got her statues, candles, medals, and occasional billboard.  But Guadalupe, she looks back at you from murals, mosaics, shopping bags, produce displays at the grocery store, tortilla warmers, keychains, aprons, and bandanas.   She’s on the sides of mountains and on the feathered headdresses of brown-skinned warriors who dance her prayers into the dirt with their blood, sweat, and feet.  She even enjoys a good pun and hitches a ride on bumper stickers like “In Guad We Trust.”  How could people not know who she is?
 
With a glint in her eyes, Guadalupe complains to Mary.
 
“You’d think they’d get my name right, but it happens without fail.  Someone comes along, sees me, points: ‘Oh look, there’s Mother Mary.’” 
 
Guadalupe stomps her foot and waves a finger like any good Mexican mother. 
 
“Mother Mary que la nada!  Si aquí estoy practicamente con la penca en la frente! Do I look like I’m from Nazareth?” 
 
Mary rolls her eyes.
“Yes, you do! You’re as brown as the dirt on my feet.” 
 
Guadalupe continues her case. 
“In fact, I think they should call me by my real names!  My most treasured titles.  Juicy titles.  Tonantzin.  Coatlicue.  Tlazoteotl.  Mother of All the Gods. Mother of the Near and Far.  Why settle for the name the Spaniards pinned on me?  Even that was a case of mistaken identity.  Guadalupe was really la otra morena de Extremadura…”
 
She trails off into her history lesson and Mary chuckles.
 
“Right, because the humans can’t wait to see the forms you take with those names.  Rattlesnake-skirt with skull breastplate and talons for feet.  It takes a while to even identify where your face is on that statue of yours.  You’re too primordial.  Older than dirt.  They can’t take it!”
 
Egging her on, Mary adds:
“No wonder some of them space out into wishful thinking and call you Mother Mary.  My name is simple, not too many syllables, and only two colors—blue and white.”
 
Guadalupe throws up her arms dramatically, her eyes dancing. 
 
“Too primordial, tu Madre!  Mírate al espejo!  Estás mas vieja que la chingada.”
 
She points to Mary, who has cast off her cloak at some point during Guadalupe’s speech.  She is now stark naked, reclining against one of the boulders, picking at her teeth with a twig.  Her form is no longer easily recognizable as human.  Cow horns protrude from her head and her torso is covered in breasts that may more accurately be the domes of a bumblebee nest.  Her legs are furry, and a bright green serpent slithers around her belly. 
 
Guadalupe throws off her cloak too.  They fall into gales of laughter, the kind only very old women can get away with—knee-slapping howls and a few squirts of piss because why keep it in?   They double over, tears streaming down their mysterious faces.  They shake and dance.  They howl and whistle.  In the moonlight it becomes more evident just how old they are.  The mountains tremble a little with all the commotion.  Too much fun can set off earthquakes.  The two give each other knowing looks and begin to quiet down. 
 
In the chill of the night, they curl up with one another until it is impossible to know where one begins and the other ends.  They watch the fire until it recedes into a faint glow.  At dawn, the sky grows pink, and they disentangle themselves from each other.  They dust off their cloaks and veils.
 
They set out on the path back to civilization, and Mary becomes wistful.
 
“I do wish they’d give me more color and personality.  At the very least restore me to my brown skin.”
 
Guadalupe squeezes her hand.
 
“You know I’m not really offended that they call me by your name, right?  I’m just glad they call me by whatever name they need me to be.”
 
They nod in unison.
 
“May they shelter in our cloaks.”
 
“May they feel the warmth of our arms as close as their very heartbeat.”
 
“May they allow us to hold them and carry them through the changes to come.”
 
“We are here.  What need could there be for fear?”
 
They reach the place on the path where their courses diverge.  They slide into their cloaks and drape their veils over their heads, restoring their youthful appearances. 
 
It’s just easier that way for now.