Like Son by Felicia Luna Lemus

is for you, Consuela,” the curandera continued without answering. She handed my father’s mother a powder of crushed chamomile flowers and roasted chili peppers. “Mix it with hot water. Drink one cup each morning at sunrise until the baby is born.”
    “Thank you.”
    “Go to church before you leave. Pray,” the curandera said.
    And so, the final day before her departure, my father’s mother woke before sunrise for her visit to the church and, as was her new habit, she prepared the sour tea she’d been prescribed. Nose pinched to get the mixture down into her empty stomach without retching, she drank the tea. Cup cleaned and left to dry, she kissed her still-sleeping daughter and husband and set out on the five miles of dirt road to church.
    May we all reach our destination in good health. May my son know his home even though he will be born so far from it , she planned her prayer as she walked in the foggy morning air. Tired after only a mile, she stopped to pick up a honey-colored pebble from the dirt road. When her son was born, she thought, she would put the rock in the palm of his hand. She would tell him to reach for it whenever life brought anxiety. Over the years, the small, rough stone would turn smooth-comfort and dark-oiled from his fingertip caresses.
    This pebble is your home, my love , she could hear herself telling him, and she bristled against the sentimentality of her thoughts. She missed her usual unwavering sensibility—life was so much easier without strong emotions—but she’d come to accept that her old ways simply weren’t possible when she could feel a child squirming and kicking just below her heart. She felt possessed, this creature inside literally moving her, making her as sensitive and emotional as the original gods. Frustrated, she continued toward the church.
    Once there, my father’s mother lit candles and prayed to have her overwhelming fears lifted away. Usually God warmed her to let her know she’d been heard. That day the church remained damp and chilled. She wandered out to the plaza to stand in the late-morning sun, to collect herself for her final walk home. As she sat at the plaza fountain’s edge, Nahui Olin appeared and stood directly in front of her, much too close for a simple friendly hello.
    My father’s mother, the young woman who had cleaned Nahui’s dilapidated family manor for years, knew personally about Nahui’s intense flirtations, the sort that back then could only be politely referred to as eccentricities . Countless were the times Nahui—a woman of fifty who painted her face brightly, dressed in the manner of teenaged harlots, and who sometimes spoke as only sailors did—had made her blush and forget the task at hand. There was the day Nahui serenaded her with the mariachi song “Por un Amor” as she tried to sweep and mop and dust. For a love/I’ve cried droplets of blood from my heart/You’ve left my soul wounded … And then there was the afternoon Nahui insisted she choose which she thought was the prettiest dress in a fancy Parisian magazine. The next week, my father’s mother arrived to clean Nahui’s house and was presented with the dress, custom-made for her. Please, mi amor, try it on. The color suits you so. But my father’s mother knew instinctively—from her upbringing, from all she’d been taught at church—that such behavior was scandalous, that it was devil’s play. And so, although she was flattered and she sometimes smiled in return without intending to, she tried not to encourage Nahui. Really, all she could do when Nahui suddenly appeared with her insistent interruptions was pray that she would walk away just as abruptly. The day at the fountain, my father’s mother hoped for the mercy of such convenience. But it was not meant to be.
    “Consuela, I wrote this for you,” Nahui said, tapping the book she held in her hand.
    Everyone knew of course about Nahui’s artist friends and that she herself wrote poems, that she