Hagiography of a Bisabuela

Born between continents, hair was soaked in Bosporus, Eufemia prefers walking 

barefoot, only puts shoes on for guests. She is tall as wildgrass, spry as a rooster

that’s why Eufemia’s father warns her not to run the empty fields or duendes will 

match her steps. You see, Eufemia can’t tell you much of Tula or Toltecs, she’s not 

well-read, much less spoken, but Eufemia knows why dancers wear masks for 

the festival of Xantolo, understands her mother’s tongue and why her mother tells her 

only use the common one. At fifteen Eufemia stops offering to the gods. Is sentenced 

to the wheel. And when the bladed axle refuses to turn, the furnace is lit for her. 

When Eufemia first showed, she hoped the child wouldn’t come out as dark as her. 

Of course the child came out darker. Soon, Eufemia has eighteen partos. Five 

will survive. Neighbors gossip the devil can’t seem to get Eufemia off his mind, 

that at the springs El Popo feeds she tells her kids and nephews behave or she’ll have

to dip them by the leg like she used to defeather chickens. And yet, Eufemia steps 

from the furnace unburnt. Has the arena prepared for her. Spiked pits covered

in straw, but when she walks, the ground doesn’t give. By Eufemia’s 80th birthday, 

she’s heard of telephones, telegraphs, and wonders why any word need travel faster

than a mule. Because, you see, Eufemia was born two-thousand meters above the sea, 

so when she laughs, it carries over every ranch and field, like the one her father 

warned her for fear of caving mines below. But lately Eufemia can’t open her 

husband’s hands without hurting them. And today she’s outlived her oldest daughter. 

It’s on these nights Eufemia tries to hear God beneath her pillow, prefers to forget 

the dreams of loosed beasts bowing to her, licking a nicked shoulder clean, soothing

her raw heels. In the morning, Eufemia buys bread in town to sell in her village, 

goes about gathering dew in the arch of her foot, realizing her chest feels planted

with a sword and can’t seem now to remember where the hollow fields end.