“I’ve heard worse,” Divina said, nonplussed. She leaned over and gave Hawk a peck on the cheek. “So lovely to meet you, Papá.”
Somewhat shyly, Hawk kissed her cheek too.
The waiter rushed over to set another place and fill a water glass. He handed the girl a menu and stood by until she gave her order.
“I totally get your ambivalence,” the girl said to Hawk. “You know? In meeting up with me. It must’ve been a shock when you heard about me.”
Hawk didn’t respond. It wasn’t ambivalence, he thought, but bewilderment. Beyond her near-mystic presence, the girl was astonishing to look at, to be sure. Divina removed her neo-Victorian, double-breasted satin jacket. A golden sash of sorts emphasized a long torso and a small waist. Her corset showed off overflowing breasts, which both men pretended not to notice. They were relieved when the waiter returned with the soup and they could focus on something else.
Meanwhile, Hawk gathered up his courage to inquire about her mother. Haltingly, he asked, “Where is María Villafuerte?”
Divina arched an eyebrow. The mention of María seemed to change her mood. Her brow furrowed as she looked at one man and then the other. “She left this earth only days after giving birth to me.”
Gordo snuck a quick glance over at Hawk for his reaction. Divina had already told him how she’d been raised by her mother’s family.
Hawk lowered his gaze. How had he not felt María’s departure from this life and always hoped she’d return? When he looked up at Divina, their daughter, they were back — the four million strong.
This time, one stepped forward. His headdress, mostly of quetzal feathers, was spectacular. “We have sent you our daughter,” he said to Hawk. “She has traveled many miles from what was our kingdom to your land, which was once also our place of origin. But she has also traveled across time upon our wishes. Rejoice, Hawk, in this reunion. She has much to share with you and will do so. Open your heart.”
Hawk understood that for the prince or king warrior who had just spoken to him, heart meant his mind too. He gave Divina a sideways look as he took a spoonful of posole. Now he began to recognize her. She was not the goddess of death as he had initially proclaimed. (He might instead have picked up that at the moment that she was a messenger of death — relaying to him María’s passing.)
And while she may well have been his biological offspring, she might have had other reasons to come up to New Mexico — Nuevo México, at one time part of Nueva España — from Mexico City, formerly the Great Empire of Tenochtitlán. Perhaps, as the warrior apparition told him, she had come to relay something very important. It was 2021, exactly five hundred long years since the Conquest of Mexico. Maybe the gods had decided to return. Or at least one of them had, in the form of a steampunk rocker.
Good Lord, he was in for a wild ride.
Hunger
by Miriam Sagan
St. Catherine Indian School
Life was just fine for Trevor until it took a bad turn on Tuesday. It was now Wednesday, and he still didn’t know what to do. His older brother had given him a lot of advice about girls, but not about this.
“Avoid crazy girls,” his bro had told him. “All girls are somewhat crazy, but, for example... don’t let stoned girls sit in your car. It’s hard to get them out.” Trevor did not have a car, but he nodded. “Never never fuck a girl who is drunk. Always have...” his brother demonstrated with the foil packet, “a condom. Two or three. Personally, I wouldn’t even fuck a girl who is crying hard. Be careful. A crazy girl may not be your fault, but she IS your problem.”
Trevor nodded like a person who had options about when and who to fuck. It wasn’t a complete disgrace being a virgin at fourteen, the time of his brother’s lecture. But by the time he was fifteen and three months he definitely felt behind the curve. Then, enter Ava. She was small and bosomy, shy but chatty, and unremittingly sarcastic and bossy. As a second brother, Trevor was primed for sarcasm and direct orders. She was also really cute. She’d been kind of mousy in elementary school, and then she went to private school for middle, and something happened. When they met up again at a charter high school they were still vaguely friends, and she was armed with copy of Our Bodies, Ourselves and lube and Trevor realized why life was worth living in a way that had nothing to do with magic mushrooms. Everything was fine until yesterday.
“I’m your type,” Ava had told him.
“What’s my type?”
“Short brunette,” she said.
The truth came to him — his type was a pretty girl who liked him. But he didn’t share that. And she wasn’t crazy. She had hypoglycemia and had to be fed regularly — but he’d had guinea pigs. Her mother was a bit spacey and was obsessed with her job at the opera. At first, Trevor, raised by his pioneer stock — type mom, was shocked there were no regular meals at Ava’s. But there also was no parental supervision — and they could just lock the bedroom door.
Ava’s friends were a bit annoying — they cut themselves with X-Acto blades and threw up from eating hash brownies — but they were no worse than anyone else. Until yesterday when one of them lent Ava Michael Pollan’s book The Omnivore’s Dilemma, which Ava devoured in a double period of Japanese. And she decided to stop eating. For good.
“I’m not going to eat anymore,” Ava told Trevor.
“You’ve got anorexia?”
“Of course not. It’s just that... food is really disgusting... sausage...”
“So don’t eat sausage. Aren’t you Jewish? Don’t eat pork.”
“Meat is disgusting.”
“So be vegan,” Trevor said.
“You think cabbages don’t have feelings? Trees do! Maybe potatoes...” She looked stricken.
That was yesterday. Today she said she’d skipped dinner last night, and breakfast. Her mom didn’t notice. He saw she ate no lunch.
“I think I’m going to faint,” she said.
And he hoped she would. Then the nurse would know. But she didn’t.
They went to his house after school. But there was nothing to do. His mom was home, so no closed door. Ava wouldn’t eat, so no snacks. Usually he loved that she played video games and Dungeons & Dragons, but neither of them was in the mood.
“Let’s go,” he said. It was starting to feel like spring, but the sun was still going down pretty early.
“Be back by nine, it’s a school night,” his mom called. “And are you kids going to get something for dinner?”
“Yes, yes. Bye, Mom.”
He hopped on his bike, and she on the bar. Was she lighter than yesterday? Was she going to die? He wished he could ask his brother, but his brother had gone to State and this seemed like an in-person question.
He turned off the suburban streets and onto the dirt track. It was overgrown with dry weeds. Some dead cottonwood leaves drifted down. In the distance, at the far edge of the houses, they could hear a weird howling sound.
“Is that a weredog or something?” Ava asked.
“Pit bulls?”
“It doesn’t sound... normal... I bet it’s a weredog with slobbering mouth and burning red eyes...”
“It’s creepy,” he agreed.
They climbed over the chain-link fence, left the bike, and walked the rest of the rutted path. The sun seemed to be sinking quickly, and it was colder.
The ruin of St. Catherine Indian School loomed up before them, familiar and yet foreboding.
“My mom always calls it St. Kate’s,” Ava said. “But we never do. We always use its full name.”