The Murderer of Isacio

THERE IS A PICTURE of me standing with my cousin Nemecia in the bean field. On the back is penciled in my mother’s hand, Nemecia and Maria, Tajique, 1929. Nemecia is thirteen; I am six. She is wearing a rayon dress that falls to her knees, glass beads, and real silk stockings, gifts from her mother in California. She wears a close-fitting hat, like a helmet, and her smiling lips are pursed. She holds tight to my hand. Even in my white dress I look like a boy; my hair, which I have cut myself, is short and jagged. Nemecia’s head is tilted; she looks out from under her eyelashes at the camera. My expression is sullen, guilty. I don’t remember the occasion for the photograph, or why we were dressed up in the middle of the dusty field. All I remember of the day is that Nemecia’s shoes had heels, and she had to walk tipped forward on her toes to prevent them from sinking into the dirt.

Nemecia was the daughter of my mother’s sister. She came to live with my parents before I was born because my Aunt Benigna couldn’t care for her. Later, when Aunt Benigna recovered and moved to Los Angeles, Nemecia had already lived with us for so long that she stayed. This was not unusual in our New Mexico town in those years between the wars; if someone died, or came upon hard times, or simply had too many children, there were always aunts or sisters or grandmothers with room for an extra child.
The day after I was born my great-aunt Paulita led Nemecia into my mother’s bedroom to meet me. Nemecia was carrying the porcelain baby doll that had once belonged to Aunt Benigna. When they moved the blanket from my face so that she could see me, she smashed her doll against the plank floor. The pieces were all found; my father glued them together, wiping the...

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...tween Nemecia’s knees, my face in her hands, her attention swept over me the way I imagined a wave would, warm and slow and salty.
Night after night I sat between her knees while she opened and reopened the wound. One day she’d make a game of it, tell me that I looked like a pirate; another day she’d say it was her duty to mark me because I had sinned. Daily she and my mother worked against each other, my mother spreading salve on the scab each morning, Nemecia easing it open each night with her nails. “Why don’t you heal, hijita?” my mother wondered as she fed me cloves of raw garlic. Why didn’t I tell her? I don’t know exactly, but I suppose I needed to be drawn into Nemecia’s story.
By the time Nemecia finally lost interest and let my cheek heal, the scar reached from the side of my nose to my lip. It made me look dissatisfied, and it turned purple in the winter.