“We have no choice,” I say, but my reply is weak, and my resolve even more so.
“And who is it that dictates that?” Rosa screeches. This time her words are formed by that ancient jargon, and it sounds like gravel, grating and rough, and for a moment I feel as though I have my sister back. That it is She Who Cannot Be Turned standing in front of me and not the good girl Mamá turned her into. The heavy pounding in my chest is slowed. But She Who Cannot Be Turned has never refused to cut before. No matter to whom the life was attached. She raises her arms to that sky. “Who’s out there? Do you know, sister? Because as far as I know, there is only us. For lifetimes, we have been both the judge and the jury, the creator and the executioner.” Rosa’s face contorts oddly, and then I realize: she is crying. She is crying, this merciless sister of mine, and I cannot think how to react. She is ugly when she cries, and for a moment, I am pleased to see her like this. To see there is a crack in the alabaster, a flaw in the perfection. To see the mask of humanity begin to slip and the monster begin to emerge.
A lamenting cry fills the air. The thread begins to sing, and it’s a mournful, heartrending elegy, full of regret and remorse and an unfinished life. And with it those shears, all glinting and huge and terrifying, appear in Rosa’s outstretched palm. She screams, wrenching her hand out from under them. And they fall, tumbling through the air until they land with the blades wedged in the ground a few feet away.
She falls to her knees in front of me. “Who says there will be repercussions, sister?” she pleads. “What could be the harm in sparing this one life?”
Strands of her hair, now loose and tangled, cling to her cheeks and underneath her nose, plastered there by tears and snot. “It is by our hands that the scales are balanced, sister,” I say, brushing Rosa’s hair off her face and smoothing it back into place as best I can. “And it is a power that cannot be abused. One that is too large for any one of us to try to manipulate. It is a beast that can never be tamed.”
I take a deep breath and say the words I’ve been rehearsing in my head since last night. “It is a duty that surpasses everything. Even love.”
I need her to say that I’m right, but instead she turns her back on me and cradles her knees with her arms. “I won’t do it,” she says petulantly.
I glance toward those shears so mercilessly stabbed into the earth. My whole body trembles as I pick them up, but my hands are hesitant and unsure and I drop them twice before I have a steady grasp on them. They are so heavy I need both hands to manage them.
I don’t know how I’m going to hold the thread in order to cut it until Maria Elena slides toward me. She leans her head down to the thread in her hand and whispers something. Perhaps it’s good-bye. Then she holds it out, one tiny hand on each side of that thread. Its mournful cry is so loud I want to cover my ears. I catch Maria Elena’s eye. She nods her head. And with trembling hands I raise those shears and cut the thread.
The world is suddenly silent. In the distance, a lone coyote howls, and his forlorn cry echoes across the valley. Hours later, when I finally allow myself to cry, I know I will sound as desperate and lonely as that coyote separated from his pack.
Behind me, Rosa whimpers quietly. Her cheek is pressed against the dirt and her tearstained face smeared with the deep-red clay that covers the ground. I crawl toward her, marking my skirt with the same red that stains her face. Grabbing her hand, I tie one end of the cut thread around her ring finger.
Maria Elena settles herself in my lap, and I consider wrapping the other end of the thread around my own finger. Instead, I hold it out to the wind and we watch as it flutters away and disappears into the dark night sky.
Folks around here call us el destinos. They like to say we came from the stars. And when I stare up at the infinite heavens stretched out above us like a shroud, it’s hard to imagine we came from anywhere else.
I place my hand over Rosa’s trembling one, and after a moment, she intertwines her fingers with mine. And it is like this, while sitting on the hill, that my sisters and I wait for the day to blossom like a flower over the desert plateau.