Aurora
Read Time:2 Minute, 52 Second
Aurora Jimenez Cuellar lay panting in the cool darkness, amniotic fluid running down her thighs. Perspiration beaded her forehead, trickling down her face and dripping onto the desert floor. Her green eyes stared at the moon as she thanked the Blessed Virgin. Her son would be an American!
The Humane Borders volunteer heard it again as she finished restocking the water station. Stronger now. A baby crying. Mouth slightly open, the woman slowed her breathing and listened. Yes! She ran toward the sound, nearly tripping over the woman. A girl, really. Dead eyes gazing sightlessly upward, hands cupped together as if in prayer. Lifting the woman’s skirt, she scooped up the crying newborn and raced to the jeep.
Aurora still lay in her supplicant position hours later, yet not alone. Streams of ants now joined her, their columns advancing across her face and under her skirt as the sun rose in the desert sky.
Adam woke abruptly, tugging on the covers. He felt a chill though the room was quite warm. He’d dreamed of the woman again. A girl, really. It was late at night, and she was walking thru the desert. Stopping to pray, in Spanish. The dreams coming more often now, almost every night. Always the same dream, ever since the incident with the old man.
Only this time she’d turned and looked directly at him, whispering “Me howe“.
Sitting in the passenger seat with his mother as they waited for the light to turn, Adam sensed someone watching him closely. He turned and gazed into green eyes set in a weathered brown face, eyes which widened as their owner whispered “Aurora”, then with urgency “Aurora” . Harshly now, as if his throat was parched with thirst “Aurora!”
Puzzled, he stared back at the old man as the car pulled away, watching him begin to run after them. He faltered, finally stopping in the middle of the street.Cars honked but he paid no mind, only watching the car recede till it became but a speck in the distance.
School came easy to him, the dreams didn’t affect his studies. In his spare time he had begun to look at maps, maps of the Sonora desert along the border with Mexico.
She would turn and look directly at him, whispering “Me howe”.
One Saturday he packed a lunch and took the car out, telling his mother he’d be home before dark. He drove several hours, taking dirt roads and finally getting out and walking. He was surprised at how easily he found the water station.
He walked a little further, stopping to listen to the wind. It seemed to whisper to him, it whispered “Me howe“. He knelt and dug a small hole, placed something inside then covered it up, smoothing it over with his hand. After a while he rose to his feet, retracing his steps to the car.
Somewhere between Bisbee and Benson, Adam stopped to fill his tank. A young Mexican woman and a small boy sat in the shade, between them a cooler filled with sodas.
Purchasing one, he handed her a five and indicated she should keep the change. Adam got in his car, smiled at her and drove off, heading north.
Such a nice young man, she thought. And so handsome. Green eyes! She hoped her son would grow up to be like that nice young man. Leaning over, she kissed his head. “Mi hijo”. My son.
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Oso: Thanks for the link to your story. It’s very heart-wrenching, spiritual and magical. I’d like to read more of your “short stories”.
Pam,
Thank you for reading, and for your comments.
Be careful what you wish for though, I just may send you some!
After reading your short story and reading the comments I went back and re-read it again. Very moving, very deep, very beautiful, and very sad. And of course, very well-written, Oso. Thanks for sharing it.
If we keep this up, I will be trying in vain to convince you that Jesus is your Lord and Savior a year from now.
By the way, I don’t think anyone knows what you are talking about with the “magic” vs. “science” discussion, which would bother me normally, but we are in the land of the mysterious now, and it just fits.
Perhaps we never had that discussion at all, and each of us merely dreamed the same dream. Ooooooh.
I generally don’t know what I’m talking about, so it’s good to drag people down to my level.
Getting a little spooky now. Gonna have to do a little peyote, chase it with snapple. Later John !
Thank you Tim.
Intriguing. I had to read it two or three times myself. At firat I was thinking reincarnation but it is much more mystical and symbolic than simple ole returning in someone else’s clothing. I kind of lean toward Krell’s third plan.
btw, are your eyes green?
Leslie,
I remember a woman in East LA, used to walk around always looking surprised, eyebrows lifted to draw attention to her green eyes!
No,just plain ole brown. Just seemed like a way to connect the characters, from mother to (maybe) father to son.
I meant her father,grandfather to the son.
On second thought, maybe I’d better just start cutting and pasting and have the damned thing sent to a publisher for you 😉
Jess could illustrate, she’s good at cat pictures!
It was a lovely, lovely story, Oso.
I can start editing that book next week, so you’d better get to work… 🙂
Oso, I have come back to this post 3 or more times and each time it seems to change. Very complex…very good.
I’m curious…so I will tell what I see..and hope for feedback. Perhaps with all artistic endeavors, it means different things to different people.
First thought.
When Adam comes back to the place where his mother died, this sacred ground, he buries something of value to show the importance of remembering your heritage and honoring the path that others took before you that brought you into the world.
Second thought..
About never forgetting the constant painful struggle of people trying to better their lives. The woman and the daughter symbolize the people currently making that journey and Adam represents the one that made it across.
Third thought…
Adam has actually died but his spirit is in transition. This tells of his journey back from being taken to “a better material place” as hoped by his mom when she gave up her life, to a better spiritual place, the only holy place of reference that he knows, which is the site of his moms death.
You have a gift, Oso.
I second Krell’s thoughts about your talents Oso. I felt so many emotions whilst reading your piece, and I do have relatives, not that far back in my lineage, who swam the muddy river to freedom here in the US. 😉 Krell has a kitteh for her gravatar. Being a leftwing nutjob that runs a neighborhood feline rescue, I notice those that love our four legged friends. They are always compassionate and left of center.
A beautiful and poignant story. The child, grown to adulthood, acknowledging the dawn of his birth? Many interpretations, and even the quasi-religious ones warm my crusty atheist heart.
@ Dusty, that is no “kitteh”, that is a bone-rending, dog-chasing, bad-ass beastie! (He was a rescue too. As Krell and I are leftwing rescuers of many cats, as well!)
MH,
Thank you. You know,from things John Myste has written, I’ve come to understand my religious belief is somewhat based on “magic”, in the sense that it is not logical but I believe anyway. It was not intended as criticism by him, rather an observation that rings true.What I regard as simple faith, expressed another way. I tried to touch on it here too, one could see the hand of God/total lack involvement of God and feel completely right either way.
Thank you to Mother Hen and Krell for taking care of our four-legged critters that some people think are expendable. I swear the homeless kittehs (to me they are all kittehs) we take care of are much more loving and appreciating than the ingrates that live in our house. 😉
@ Dusty… Well, if your going to be a nutjob..leftwing is the only way to go. 🙂
I AM fortunate that Mother Hen is charitable towards strays. I think that’s how she originally had an interest in me…way back in those court’n times. Just me and my lonely pink velour recliner.
Krell, Mother Hen sounds like a wonderful human being..and it’s not easy finding those folks in this day and age. 😉
Sweet Jaysus..you really have a pink velour chair? That alone makes you an interesting person. ;p
Well…yes, I did.
I think my sole possessions at the time consisted of….
pink velour recliner chair that I slept on.
homemade tube amp stereo system complete with British Mullard matched tubes.
about a 1000 obscure scientific journals kept in a cardboard box.
a framed picture that was a perfect photograph scene of this little cottage on a hill that had a white picket fence and perfectly manicured lawn and shrubs in front. But somehow a silverfish had crawled between the glass and the photograph at the store. I loved it! I thought it was ironic..
Needless to say, I had some baggage.
Ahh..Mother Hen. She can cuss like a sailor, but yet be perfectly at ease at the most formal of events. So intelligent that she can discuss any topic from behavioral psychology to Mandelbrot sets to Quantum Physics. She is the master of debate and can absolutely destroy someone during discussion of a topic, but always chooses not to. Her love of animals and care for the rejected never ceases to amaze.
Not only is she the love of my life but she transforms me into a much, much, much better person. If it wasn’t for her, I probably would be living in a tiny log cabin somewhere, writing my manifesto.
Besides, she’s probably the only one that understands my very quirky humor.
Krell,
Returning to sacred ground was where the story took me,but the upward struggle was circumstance, looking back it’s more integral than I’d realized.
Your third thought-it hadn’t occurred to me, yet his mother guiding him (thru prayer to the Virgin if you’re so inclined)or maybe guiding him thru a kind of spiritual consciousness to a better place spiritually after bringing him to a better place on the physical plane is a concept in keeping with Lakota and other Indian traditions, in a sense the belief that our reality isn’t real, the world of dreams is what we aspire to. I posted once of seeing my father for the first time in over 50 years, not since his death. He came to me in a dream and expressed sorrow that I’d had to leave him,the understanding that he is in the real world and I’m in the false one,and he was sorry. I hugged him and told him it was okay.
A fourth connection, the man who may have been Aurora’s father shreiking psychic or Catholic imagery which reached Aurora, her soul trapped in the desert and released by her son.
Oso, my mysterious friend. You keep these talents hidden too much, always ranting about economics. Well done my friend, well done.
I agree with Holte, mysterious and well told. More mysterious than most, I should say.
Glimmertain, my friend!
… and the Goddess spoke through him.
I heard a story like that…mi poco corazón.
It’s a beautiful story Bro.
Hi C.H.
Not knowing Spanish, Adam would hear “Mi Hijo” ( pronounced as one word,mihijo)as something like “Me Howe”. I wasn’t sure how else to put it phonetically, without bringing to mind some kind of “ho” joke. Glad you liked it man!
Got ya. That’s kind of what I thought. Having the prurient mind that I do, I also wondered about the “ho” issue.
Yep, a non-spanish speaking American wouldn’t parse the phrase correctly Oso. Such a good story!
That was a fun read, Oso. Help me out, though. I didn’t quite catch on to the significance of the statement, me howe.
What a marvelous piece of writing! It delivered on an emotional level. That is rare. Thanks my friend.
Mysterious and well told. You have the skills of an excellent short story writer.
Took me back to my religious lessons at school “The prayers of the righteous are powerful and effective.” Which excludes most people who pray.