We’ve always been depicted as old women, as if we’d sprung from the depths of hell as hideous spinster crones with hunched backs and clawed fingers crippled with arthritis. Mamá says that’s just an interpretation and we shouldn’t pay no mind to silly stories folks got in their heads; no one can dispute that my sister Rosa is the prettiest girl this side of El Paso. And Maria Elena’s leg might cause her trouble, but I dare you to look at that sweet face and tell me there isn’t beauty there. If I’m honest, though, I think I preferred our previous form to this one. At least then the mortals knew to leave us well enough alone.
It’s late now. I can feel my eyelids getting heavy, and I know I need to start making my way back home if I don’t want one of my father’s peónes finding me tomorrow morning when they bring the cattle out to pasture. The thought of them finding me asleep in the desert like some lost lamb, with dust gathered in the folds of my serape and my dark hair unraveling from its plait, makes me cringe. I was never much one for the nighttime; that’s Rosa’s time. When the moon is full and the village asleep, my sister roams the plains with her hair flying loose in the warm desert wind. My time is day, with the cocina alive with heat and noise and the smell of bread baking in the horno lingering in the air. And Maria Elena, the youngest of us all, her time is the morning, when the sun is just a whisper in the sky. That’s what Mamá calls us: ma?ana, día y noche. Morning, day, and night.
From where I sit I can barely make out the ranch in the dark. The flickering light of a solitary oil lamp burning in a window is the only indication that the house stands there at all. I glance down and examine the thread I hold protectively in my hand. Right now, it’s a deep carmine color, dyed such by Maria Elena’s careful hands. But according to those stars burning high above my head, that color is soon to fade. With that thought, I shiver in the dark, and even I’m unsure whether it’s because I’m cold or afraid.
I start down the hill, zigzagging past the puffs of white yucca flowers that stand out against the night like floating apparitions. As I approach our adobe home, I can just make out Rosa’s pretty hair in the moonlight. At first, I think perhaps she is waiting for me, as if our roles are a torch we have to pass off, as if day has to hand the sun over to the night. Then I see James. I freeze, and my wool skirt catches in the spines of a lechuguilla plant.
It’s been a few years since Texas won its independence, and though Papá still doesn’t trust the Americanos, with their harsh dialect and strange trading wares, James is different. James has been here all his life — even before my sisters and I were found wandering in the desert. He is as much Tejano as we are. That is, if we are Tejano at all.
James gently tilts Rosa’s chin and leans his face toward hers, and I look up again at the stars, embarrassed by the intimacy of it. The sky makes even the desert look small; though it was the desert that could have killed our mortal forms on that first night, it was the sky, so black in its infinity, that we feared.
I wake the next day to the sounds of Maria Elena hard at work on her loom. As usual, I have slept through most of the morning. I stretch and then rise to roll up my bed to put it away for the day. We sleep on sheepskins covered with wool blankets. They make for soft and pliable beds.
Walking into Maria Elena’s weaving room is like pushing into a spiderweb; a catacomb of interwoven strands of yarn hangs from the ceiling and across the smooth adobe walls in brilliant shades of red, yellow, and green. In the center of it all stands the loom, stretching high over Maria Elena’s small head.
Maria Elena insists that this lifetime is her favorite. It’s true that she says that about every place we’ve been, but Maria Elena lives for beginnings. New place. New people. New day. She’s often awake far before the crow of el gallo echoes across the rancho, setting to work on her loom before the sun has peeked up over the horizon.
I make my way into the room and find the loom has stopped. Maria Elena’s head is bent and she has a tiny thread cupped in her hands. Hearing my footsteps, she looks up. Her expression is one of hope and sanguinity. “One of the villagers gave birth this morning,” she says, holding the thread up for my inspection.
I gently pluck the thread from Maria Elena’s dainty grip, but I don’t have to look very closely to see that it isn’t going to last very long. The thread’s intended green hue has already faded, the color slowly being replaced by a shimmering silver with which I am all too familiar. Even if I hadn’t already read it in the stars last night, I would know. The child’s only fate is death.
Maria Elena’s face falls when I shake my head. If we wait any longer, the mother’s thread will begin to turn as well. If nothing else, lifetimes of experience have taught me this. “Go wake up Rosa,” I say. “They won’t last until tonight.”