Artwork by Larissa Ribeiro
A star reflects light. It is a distant light. It is a center, surrounded. It is what surrounds the center. A celestial body. It hides. Twinkles. Star is my name. Something quiet but also an incandescence. I like that word: its sound lingers like embers floating up to the night sky. Quiet.
In his dreams, he said something I did not understand. And I realize I can no longer think. Watery head like poorly kneaded nixtamal dough. It rains so much, and the sound is so loud and constant that any thought or idea disappears from my head before it even alights. I am empty. Or I am full of water. Perhaps it is the same.
If it keeps raining, I might forget my own name: Citlalli. Why am I not called Water or River? Why am I not called Thunder or even Rain? Something that can be heard. My name is Star, and inside this house I never leave, under so much rain, behind the clouds, no one can see the stars. No one ever hears a star. If my name were Wind, perhaps my path would be different.
It’s as if I were waiting for something all the time. Something that never happens. It might be that I am waiting for myself. As if the limits of things were not outside–in themselves–but within me. Silence. It’s as if this wet dough that I am were spread thin until it becomes nothing. Useless. When the city sleeps, when everything quiets, I feel useless. I only have this feeling left, this silence that is loving the man who sleeps deeply next to me. His heat. His thick, big hands, which cover my face and make me feel complete again. His large nose which smells me or touches my underarms. His black braid is almost as long as mine. Outside, the winds ripple the lake. In the canal, water shudders. Suddenly: music. I don’t feel useless anymore. The sound brings me back to my body. Draws a limit to the things in this world. I watch the reflection of the fire on the polish of the beaten earth floor. While its light dances, I sleep.
He is he. But I am also him, even though he is not me. Or not always. He is also the game. He is one with his yoke, with his rubber ball, hard, with the bones that crack and endure, with the floor of hardened fire, with his companions. But with me, he is other.
I wake before he does, before anyone in this house. I walk barefoot and feel the cold rise from the beaten earth floor up to my hips. The city awakens: the turkeys, the conch shell sounds in the distance. I take amaranth, I take the needle of carved bone and prick my finger. A blood offering. My blood for his. My blood so that today he may not die. My blood so that today he is still strong. My blood so that he may come back to me today. Red drops fall on the near-white amaranth. I mix blood and amaranth. I shape it into a ball, then the ball becomes a flower. May our days be so. I leave the offering.
The rain wanes. I can hear the rushes and reeds now, hear each drop fall on the lake, on the thatched roof. They mark a rhythm and suddenly break it with a pause or redoubling. I hear conches and drums in the distance. They call forth the day. Yesterday, before leaving, he gave me a necklace of shells. When I move through the house they make a dry noise. I skip a little and make them rattle. Their sound is almost hollow against my skin and the bones below.
I still smell of his sweat. I won’t wash until he comes back. Our sleeping quarters still smell of sex, and in the smell I can hear the echo of our voices, the crunching grind and crackle of our bodies against the petate mats. His last hoarse cry. The humid wood of the house also creaks as if someone had lain on the roof. Sex is not a game like the one he plays. Although it can be just as dangerous. To let another in. The hospitality of this body. To let exchange happen, to share and trade, and swap and bargain. To play. To touch one another reaching a limit, and then witness that limit disappear. To hear another’s breathing as if it were one’s own. Even more: only one breath. If he plays ball as he does sex, he might never die. Perhaps he’ll always win with his perfect rhythm. The wood of the house creaks again like a tortilla toasting in the fire. What little water is left stops falling now and opens a silence interrupted by the sound of voices. The enslaved speak outside.
To spend the rest of my life with him. To bear sons who will be warriors or ball players as well. To birth a daughter who will live inside, like me. That is my path, and I feel how water erases, or at least dilutes it. With every ball game my path nears its end. If the gods want it, he dies. If he dies, my path ends. Like a bird falling from the nest. There are days I wish my path did not depend on another’s, but this is how we came to be on this earth. And this is how I walk. Full of sounds, of small pleasures like these shells against my skin, like the ocarina’s song, like sex with him while it rains outside in the early morning. This is why my name means star. I am a celestial body, I’m good at reflecting light: his light.
I start threading the beads. One, another, and another: turquoise, coral, jade. To what use, I dare think sometimes, do we adore the gods? These gods have certain names, the southern gods have different names, and the enslaved have gods with yet other names. I have heard them speak them at night. I dare not think too much. Their path seems so far away from mine and yet both paths are invisible.
Some stars are luminous bodies that are suddenly seen and then extinguished. Other stars are double: an interlaced system of mutual attraction. Perhaps he is a star of a different kind than I. A star is also a celestial body that shines forth its own light. Perhaps I will one day.