In the Sonora Market, there were stalls where all the candles sold were black, except for the tall vigil candles in red glasses marked Death Against My Enemies or Evil Eye Unblinking. In these stalls Petra asked, and asked again, until she found someone who would teach her the spell and sell her the ingredients.
She woke herself at three in the morning, took Diego by the hand, and led him into the narrow courtyard of the vecinidad. As if breathing, the ghostly shapes of drying laundry stirred against the stars. Diego clutched his bare chest and shivered as Petra lit the black candle. It was in the shape of an owl, and she perched it in a hole in the concrete where it would be out of the breeze. She poured water into the wide pail that served the children as a bath. "Get in. Now sit down."
"Mama, it's cold."
"It's cold sleeping in the park, too. You'll have a better life this way. It's for your sake that I'm doing this." She pushed him down into the water, soaking his underpants. Diego cried.
"Shh! You'll wake someone." She scooped water in a bowl and poured it over his head. He whimpered, and she seized his chin. "Silence!"
She cut her thumb with the razor. The ointment had hardened in its little jar, and it wasn't softened much by the drops of blood she added. Petra dug the ointment out with her finger and had to press very hard to paint Diego's skin with it. He flinched, but he didn't make another sound, except to say, "It stinks."
Around her son's neck she painted a shirt collar. On his collarbone, she made a triangle for the knot of a necktie, then painted the tie down to his navel. "Diego Deverez, my son, here is your destiny," she said. She painted his chest with lapels. "You are going to go to school and learn your numbers. You are going to learn English."
She painted pockets for the suit. She pressed his wrist bones hard to smear on buttons for his cuffs. "You will get a job in a bank, where you will work hard and make lots of money." She painted a peso sign on each palm. Then she took him by the shoulders.
"I'll give you some savings, and we'll buy a nice house in Satellite City. You'll take care of your mama, and you'll never, ever leave her. This is your dream, now. This is our dream together."
She pulled out two of her hairs by the roots. One she tied, like a choker, around Diego's throat. That was difficult. The ends were hard to see in the dark. Even harder was tying the other hair around her own neck. She couldn't see what she was doing, and she had to start over again several times while Diego sat shivering.
"For your sake," she said to him again.
She scooped more water over his head, then scrubbed him with black soap and a stone until the ointment was rubbed so deep that it couldn't be seen. She dried him off, blew out the candle. Under the electric light of their room, his skin was red and raw. He cried again, and she let him. "Go to sleep," she said, "and dream about the nice house we're going to have in Satellite City."
In the morning the hairs were gone.
She repeated the ritual for the next two nights, then left the black owl burning when she went to work. By the time she came home, it had consumed itself.
Now, she thought, we'll see.
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