After Eufemia and José were married, at first everything was precisely as they expected. Then Eufemia began putting out children as if she alone had been selected to repopulate the earth.
José did not mind the children, or even that she seemed to be pregnant most of the time. Nor could he complain that the births were draining her beauty. She had retained her complexion and barely a line etched her face. Even the pigment in her dark hair remained vibrant and rich. But Eufemia had become obsessed with breaking what she called "the curse."
Eufemia was the thirteenth child of a thirteenth child, a daughter, who also was the thirteenth child, a daughter, and so it had been down through thirteen generations. And José was the thirteenth child of a thirteenth child, a son, who also was the thirteenth child, also a son, and so it had been down through thirteen generations of his family as well. For that reason, Eufemia was certain José was precisely the right man with whom to break the curse.
She knew the breaker of the curse would be a male child, one who would grow to fulfill the prophecy predicting the arrival of a king. So she had gazed deeply into their firstborn's eyes seeking a sign. It would appear as an ingrained knowledge of the universe, and it would be lacking in most humans.
But it was not there.
The second and third children were girls, but was certain the fourth child, a boy, would be the one.
He wasn't.
Nor were the next two children, both boys, the fulfillment of the prophecy.
Numbers seven, eight and nine were all girls, and ten lacked the special quality for which she searched.
Eleven was a girl.
The arrival of the twelfth child, a boy and her last hope, sent her weeping to sleep before the altar of the church for three days and nights in hopes God himself would strike her down for her inability to break the curse.
Of course, He didn't.
In the thirteenth year of her marriage to José, Eufemia's womb lay dormant. Her own cycles crossed their arms and began to ignore those of the moon. In the fourteenth year, the trend continued.
I have succeeded. I did not break the curse with a child to fulfill the prophecy, but I can break it by not having another child. God the father says He will send no more than a person can bear. Well, what a woman bears is children, and I certainly can not bear even the thought of having a thirteenth child.
And in her mind, it was settled.
When she became pregnant again, the unthinkable—that a thirteenth child would be born to continue the curse—elevated her hatred and disgust for her husband.
I was wrong! He was not the one! By marrying him, I have missed my chance to break the curse!
Sitting before her mirror, glaring at her steadily expanding belly, she tore at her sleek black hair with her brush, all the while muttering. “It is all José's fault! I know it! He did not give me the child he was destined to give me, and now he has extended the curse!
She struck out at everyone more often and more strongly, and of course most often at José.
As her spirit grew meaner and her tongue sharper, he moved the office for his fishing business from his home to the back room of the cantina.
Often he slept there as well.
* * *
Still trembling involuntarily with the aftershadow of having given birth to yet another child, Eufemia grimaced and then sighed as the midwife laid the child on her stomach. “Thirteen,” Eufemia said. “Damnit! That is thirteen children! Even the Bible says no woman will have to tend to more than twelve children. I will not continue with this child.”
She looked away to the left and motioned weakly with her right hand. “Besides, look. He has no breath. He was born without breath. Take him away.”
On her stomach, the newborn infant twitched as the icy thought jabbed into his chest. His breath caught in his throat, and he stopped breathing. Then he took a great draught of air, coughed, and began crying.
Smiling with sympathy, the midwife shook her head. “Señora, I think the Bible does not say that.” She picked up the little boy and turned him to face his mother. “And he is breathing, señora. Very well, as you can hear. Look! He is a healthy, strong—”
Eufemia jerked her head around. Her glare sliced into the woman’s eyes. “Serafina, what can you possibly know of such things? You are merely a midwife! You are not a doctor, and you are not the pope!
“What do you know of the labor that begins as a gleam in a lustful husband’s eyes, peaks nine months later in agony, and continues for the rest of your life?
“You stain your hands and your life with the bloody children of other women, yet you have none of your own! You were born a female, but what do you know of being a woman? Nothing!
“I bear a curse! I am a woman burst twelve times over, and now thirteen! And if I tell you he has no breath, then damn it, he has no breath! I will not continue with this child, do you understand? Take him from me! I will not look upon him again!”
Serafina rose quickly, the babe still in her arms, and hurried through the curtained doorway into the kitchen. She glanced quickly at the man sitting at the table and whispered, “It is a little boy, señor. He is very strong. But what she says, it can harm a spirit so young.”
As José folded his newspaper and laid it in his lap, he looked up, and his gaze never wavered. His cheeks moved as his tongue working over and around a bit of hard candy in his mouth. His left leg was crossed over his right at the knee, and indifference etched in the lines on his face above his khaki work shirt. “She is well, then? It is plain enough to me that her voice remains strong.”
Turning her back to him, Serafina drew a pan of warm water and dropped a linen cloth into it. “She is well.” She squeezed the cloth with one hand and began washing the infant carefully. “And she is strong. At least enough to—” She wanted to add throw away a healthy baby, but she held her tongue.
José nodded, as if with resignation. Somehow Eufemia had found a way to harangue him even about things that were none of his business. He shook his head.
All of these birth goings-on. If thirteen children are too many, she should take it up with the church, or perhaps with God himself. It is none of my doing.
He opened his newspaper again and popped it to remove the creases, then began reading the page-four article about the fisherman from a village just up the coast.
The man had caught a fish with five numbers clearly marked in the natural scales on its side. The fisherman had radioed his wife to play those five numbers plus his lucky number, 8. She had done so and they had won the lottery.
But the next morning a sudden gale blew up. The man was swept overboard and lost to the sea.
A slight grin creased José’s face. That would be a way to get some money, but it would be Eufemia on the boat and being swept overboard the next day.
He folded the newspaper again and laid it in his lap. “You keep the boy here tonight and bring him to the house in the morning. She will change her mind.”
Serafina finished bathing the infant and wrapped him in an old apron. She glanced at the bundle in her arms, then at José. “Señor, I think—I think perhaps the orphanage at Agua Idelfonso, it might be better. Señora Eufemia seemed certain that—”
He spoke quietly, but the cruelty in his dark eyes filled her veins with ice. “No. You will bring the child in the morning. Do you understand?”
The midwife averted her gaze and nodded. “Sí, señor. I will do that.” She glanced again at the baby and tried on a smile, but it failed. She felt a strong urge to separate herself from the infant. Only heartache would ensue if she allowed herself to develop an attachment to the little one.
He would be better off in the orphanage than with a mother who speaks hatred and a father who does not care. She looked away and whispered, “But it is not for me to say.”
José looked up sharply. “What was that?”
Serafina shook her head. “Nada, señor. I will bring the child in the morning.”
“Good, good.” He bent forward, then stood. “You will tell my wife I will expect her home before dark.”
“But señor, it is already almost time for siesta. I would be happy to have her stay the night.”
“You said she is well, verdad?”
The midwife nodded.
“Before dark.” And he turned and left.
* * *
José paced toward the cantina at the far end of Agua Rocosa.
There can be only so many mean people on the earth. How I came to end up with Eufemia is beyond my ability to reason.
She had called him a “lustful husband,” but he had been to her bed very seldom over the past three or four years.
If she has given herself over to satisfying anyone’s lust, it is her own. And she is satisfying it with other men. But perhaps the worst part of living with her is her constant nagging and her seemingly overpowering desire to correct every single word that slips from my mouth.
That alone had been more than enough to turn him away from her. More often than not she was wrong, but he couldn’t bring himself to contradict her in public. And if he contradicted her later in the privacy of their home, she would turn away from him and not say a word for hours.
For precisely that reason, lately he had been contradicting her quite a lot.
He smiled. Her aloofness is a small price indeed to pay for peace.
At times he fantasized that someday he would once again hold forth on the mysteries of life without fearing her belittling rebuttal. That and the immediate remorse that he had spoken at all. Someday he might even once again enjoy a sense of peace without first having to slog through the waist-deep marshes of argumen. Perhaps he might even lie down to rest without feeling relieved from her most recent verbal onslaught.
It might even be nice occasionally to spend a day around the children, instead of storing myself away in the cantina. Perhaps this thirteenth child will lay to rest all the talk of the curse and her need to defeat it.
But like most things in life, it is all up to her.
* * *
As he walked into the cantina, José ran his hand over the stubble on his face. His thumb lingered for a moment on the scar along his right jawbone. He waved absently at the bartender, Juan-Carlos Salazár as he continued to his table.
Señor Salazár noticed the cloud over José’s face. A moment after the man had sat down, Juan-Carlos brought two cervezas to the table. He studied José’s face for a moment, then put the beers on the table and sat. “What is troubling you, my friend?”
José sighed and sipped his beer. “Eufemia has given birth to another child—a boy.”
“I thought she was through with all of that a few years ago.”
José nodded. “So did I.” He nodded. “And so did she.”
He took another drink of his beer. “The whole affair has her in a mood. She believes she knows a Bible verse that says God refutes nature after the twelfth child and that no woman is meant to have more than that. As this is the thirteenth child, she believes the child is not only the continuation of a curse, but that he himself is cursed.” He shook his head. “And since he was born to her, I suspect he is. And I suspect I am as well.”
The bartender only nodded. He thought to suggest removing the child from the home, but he held his tongue. José would never agree to leave the child with the orphanage at Agua Idelfonso. Nor would he consider leaving Eufemia. Their mutual hatred bound them together.
Better to just let him talk. “So what will you do, my friend?”
José looked up, his eyebrows arched. “Do? What can I do?” He shook his head. “Perhaps I will sleep in the back room a bit more often, but otherwise I do not know. As for the child, I managed to make my way. Perhaps he will make his way as well.”
* * *
Because José, behind those dark, threatening eyes, had ordered Serafina to bring his new son to the house this morning, she had done so. Still, she felt bad for obeying that particular order. As she stepped from the street and moved up the front walk to the house, she muttered, "If he believes Eufemia will forget about not wanting this child, he is crazy. I looked into her eyes. They were filled with anger at God and disappointment in herself. That is a toxic mixture."
She had looked into the child's eyes too, and that, at least, had made her feel better. He was a very special child. Flecks of the universe and a great depth of knowledge filled his eyes. As she stepped onto the porch, she glanced at the heavens and whispered, "This one will have a difficult road. Please watch out for him." Then she put a smile across her face and knocked on the door.
Eufemia opened the door and glared at her.
"Señora," Serafina said, "I have come to bring—"
Eufemia turned away. "I know what you bring." She indicated a filthy pallet on the floor. "Put it there. Good day to you." She walked into the back room of the house.
Serafina placed the little one on the pallet and gazed again into his wondrous eyes. "We will watch you, Beauty. We all will watch you." She straightened, turned, and crept quietly out of the house.
* * *
As Euemia stood over her ironing board an hour later, she had not changed her mind at all. But she had given up on the notion of defeating the curse. After all, it had defeated her. Instead, she simply put it out of her mind. As if she had never given it a moment's recognition since her own birth.
At the same time her focus had shifted. Now she worked hard to avoid developing a strong mistrust of God. She spoke to her iron. “I gave José six strong sons and six daughters, one for each of the first dozen years we were married. According to the Bible itself, I am finished.”
As if to punctuate the thought, she slapped the iron on the end of the ironing board and adjusted the khaki work shirt before her.
She had failed to get pregnant during the thirteenth and fourteenth years, and every month when her fertility bled back into the earth, she gave thanks for the Bible verse. The one that plainly stated God would not send more than she could bear.
She picked up the iron again. “The busybodies all quote the verse that says He will not send more trials or tribulations than a man can bear. But it is a man’s world, so of course they would quote that one.”
She set the iron down and adjusted the shirt again. “It is simply reasonable to assume He would not send more than a woman can bear either, and that means children. After all, every trial and tribulation a woman endures, every ache and pain she suffers, is on behalf of her children. Or the husband who implants them within her.” In fact, she was certain she had seen a Bible verse that read in exactly that way.
She ironed one sleeve of the shirt, set down the iron and aligned the other sleeve. Perhaps the quote is in the New Testament. She picked up the iron again. Perhaps they are even the words of Christ Himself. Quietly, she said, “When He spoke, He often began with a word like ‘verily.’”
And it came to her: Verily, just as my Father in Heaven would send no more trials and tribulations than a man can bear, so would He send no more children than a woman can bear.
She set the iron aside. “I remember it was something like that.”
She laid the shirt over the back of a chair, then raised her chin and spoke the rest aloud. Her voice intensified as if she were speaking on behalf of the Christ himself. After all, He too had been a child and had been endured by a mother. “Even the wife of the most lustful husband shall bear no more than twelve children, for such is the number of the tribes of Israel, themselves the children of God. Amen!”
And yet the child was there, lying on a pallet on the floor behind her. The thirteenth child.
She took a pair of dungarees from the basket and arranged them on the ironing board, then leaned forward for a moment and hissed, “It is all the fault of that meddling witch Serafina for finding breath in him when there was none! And when I, his own mother, had plainly declared there was none!”
Still, she would have to care for the infant, since he had indeed been born alive and she could not rationalize doing away with him. She regained her composure, picked up the iron and bent to the task of pressing the jeans. “On the other hand, I must defend my faith. The child is a curse, a blasphemy against the word of God and against His promise that He would not send more children than I could bear.”
Curse and blasphemy against God filtered through the defenseless infant’s psyche, nudged his soul aside and attached itself to his ribs.
Eufemia had been forced to drive one more child through her body than was the maximum allowed by God Himself. She couldn’t bear even the notion of having allowed that, much less the child itself.
The thought that perhaps she was being punished flitted across her mind. But she just as quickly dismissed it. “God would not punish me for having done no wrong. His own words said He would not send more than I could bear, so this is not God’s doing at all. The child is an anomaly. An evil anomaly.”
With that she dismissed any chance that would put her at cross purposes with God and cause her to mistrust His infinite wisdom.
Evil, evil, evil echoed through the child’s psyche and took up residence near cursed and blasphemy against God.
Eufemia dared not speak her next thought aloud for fear of accidentally conjuring what she hoped never to see.
He is the child of the devil. “Still, God allowed him to live even after I declared there was no breath in him.” She shrugged.
She would provide nominal care when she remembered to do so. The child would survive or not according to God’s will. “I will leave the whole matter up to God Himself.”
* * *
So there lay the newest baby on the pallet his father had quickly spread on the living room floor. As he went out the door, he said, “The child will be easier to watch there.”
Now and then the infant cried for his mother’s attention.
But her attention was not forthcoming, and each denial of physical contact attached one more dark anomaly to the soul striving within the tiny chest.
Eufemia changed his soiled diapers, of course, most of which were old stained dish towels, but she did so mechanically, with complete indifference. On those occasions she had lifted him from the floor without passion, neither angrily nor lovingly, and carried him to the dining room table at bent-arm’s length, facing him away from her.
She changed him on the table because it was as near as she could get to a neutral surface. Hewn of solid pine planks, it was hard and cold enough to show the child her complete disdain for him. For what she increasingly certain was the spawn of the devil. But it was neither hard enough nor cold enough to be considered cruel should the women from the church bazaar stop by. Neither did it provide the soft, comforting folds and scents of her featherbed, which this devil child certainly did not deserve.
He would never feel the warmth of her bosom nor see a smile on her face. He would never see her teeth except when she flashed them in anger. Her gaze met his only one time, the first time she had changed his diaper, when curiosity got the better of her and she studied his face.
Tiny black and golden bits speckled his deep, chocolate-brown eyes. But having completely forgotten the prophecy she had earlier lived to help fulfill, she took the specks as a sign that evil lived within him. It was then that she gave him his name. She held him at arm’s length and hissed, “You will be called Maldito, for you are a curse upon this house!”
Other than when she changed his diaper, he saw her only when she walked past the pallet on which he lay in the living room. Most often on her way to tending one of the children she actually loved, or to witness some important or interesting event or occurrence. On each occasion, her indifferent, receding form added to the despondency that was compressing his soul
On the days when she remembered to feed him, her motherly nurturing consisted of dropping an old baby bottle filled with goat’s milk onto his pallet as she passed. Most of the time the milk wasn’t yellowed or curdled, and most of the time it landed conveniently on the old pillow that smelled of dust and dog dander, alongside which he lay.
He would wriggle around, drawn by the comforting aroma of the goat’s milk, until he could suck on the oversized nipple, which was stiffened from long use and too much exposure to the sun.
In addition to changing his diaper twice a day and feeding him once or twice a day except when she forgot, Eufemia bathed him twice a week in the kitchen sink, on Saturday and Wednesday.
Eventually Maldito learned to crawl, then to pull himself up, and then to walk without so much as an “Oh my” or a smile from his parents or his siblings.
After he began walking, which his parents took as a clear sign that he could make his own way in the world, he changed his own clothing and ate when the family ate if he happened to be around when dinner was served. His favorite time was when he scrambled onto a stool at the table while the others were there because he was as close then to the members of his family as he ever came.
But of course, their proximity was only circumstantial and never intended to make a positive difference. Even when his mother or one of his sisters reached over his shoulder to ladle posole into his bowl, he felt no warmth from their skin, not even a slight tickling from their breath.
The small hairs on his arms did not reach for them even in the winter when everything was drier than arid and electricity ruled the air.
As for baths, once he could walk he bathed when he noticed the other children bathing. Per Eufemia’s rules, they would not commingle with him. But when he timed it just right he was able to slip into the tub after they had used it but before they had dumped out the water.
* * *
When he was just over a year old, Maldito managed to push open the screen door. He began stumbling about on the uneven boards that comprised the front porch. No one seemed to notice or care.
A few weeks later his world—the living room and the front porch—suddenly became too small when he noticed the massive rose bushes forming an arc over the end of the sidewalk near the road. He wandered off the porch to explore.
Over the next several months, he explored every nook and cranny in the front yard and underneath the porch and all sorts of new things from a distance: The makeshift garage where his father and two of his brothers cleaned and dressed deer. The clothesline where his mother and some of his sisters sometimes hung up wet clothing. The Grass Yard where his father let the bermuda grass grow taller than a toddler by a good foot. It was as if Maldito himself owned the land and the house and the garage and the Grass Yard. And he lived there alone, for no matter where he went, nobody took any notice of him.
When he was almost three, as he climbed up to the porch, he stumbled over the edge of one of the steps. He fell, and a bent, rusted nail ripped a jagged wound through his left cheekbone just beneath his eye.
He screamed and cried, but no one came. The severe physical pain coupled with his constant emotional pain caused his spirit to ebb past the darkness lodged alongside it. Frantic for the warmth and comfort of a human touch, he rose and crossed the porch. He toddled back inside, still sobbing.
At her ironing board, his mother glanced over her shoulder, then turned her back to him and continued with her ironing. A sister came through the back door and went into the bathroom. Nobody else was around.
His spirit waned, the darkness ebbed, and in desperation he fell across the old leather ottoman and pressed his cheek tightly against his father’s shirt. The act inadvertently but effectively stemmed the flow of blood. The heady scent comforted him a bit, although his father had held him only twice during his first three years of life.
Like his brothers, who kept their distance at all times, his father came close to him in his early years only to vent his frustrations at having been born angry and mean and possibly without a soul.
Little Maldito fell asleep there, his thumb in his mouth, his face pressed hard into his father’s sweaty shirt, and dreamed the first and only pleasant dream he would have in that house.
A scant hour later he was jerked into hell, his father holding him again, but this time over his knees as he raised harsh, angry red welts on Maldito’s bare bottom with his leather belt, payment for soiling his best cantina shirt.
A cold darkness crept around Maldito’s heart, and that was the last time anyone ever saw him cry.
* * *
Before he was five years old the boy understood the meaning of the name his mother had given him. He had given up on ever being tucked in, kissed on the cheek or forehead, or included in the nightly round of “goodnights” and “sleep tights” that the others issued to each other in a solid circle. The round was necessary, he was certain, to ward off the chupacabra and other evil spirits.
He lay in silence each night, tears drying in privacy on his cheeks, and wished only that he could at least sleep inside that circle. But his cot was not in the house. It was on the screened-in back porch next to the deer-dressing garage. The segment of the porch that stretched out toward the neighbor’s house.
Eerie shadows played across the windows of that house all night in the moaning wind, and his father had pointed out those shadows and warned him against them as an sinister grin spread across his face. “If you lie very still, perhaps they will not notice you.” His laughter, which faded as he went into the house, did nothing to indicate to Maldito that his father might be joking.
So on most nights he lay without moving, his eyes wide, his gaze glued to those windows. And he was certain the shadows were watching him as well. If he slept, he was certain they would slip from the windows and slouch from shadow to shadow across the yard until they crept up to his cot. They would draw him into a drooling, yawning maw that smelled of corpses and was filled with misshapen, rotted teeth infused with the rotting flesh of past victims.
Sometimes he thought even such a terrible fate as that might be preferable to the one he was living. His young life had become a cycle of being abandoned and frightened all night, and just as abandoned and despondent all day. He no longer wished for a father or mother who cared for him. He wished only that soon he would go to sleep and not awaken at all.
But he did continue to wake up each morning. And to escape the horrors of the night and the misery that was his waking life, in the daylight hours he began to wander farther and farther from home on the streets of Agua Rocosa.
He dared not stay out after darkness, for there were much larger, much more ominous shadows in the village than those on the neighbor’s windows. But the daylight hours were his.
Soon he began to notice individual letters and numerals. They were repeated in different combinations on various signs on street corners and in the windows of shops. Even on sheets of paper he occasionally found crumpled and lying near the edge of the street.
He listened closely as others pronounced the letters and words on the signs while talking with each other about them, and soon he began to piece together the puzzle of written communication. He memorized the sounds of each letter and some of the letter combinations, and soon he was able to figure out words by himself.
He kept his knowledge a secret from those in his family. The words he had learned were his, and they were magic. The knowledge of them made his chest feel lighter and even gave him a sense of wanting to smile occasionally. He still slept on the porch and he was still scared, but the words he had learned caused him to stop wishing for death. He felt more a part of human existence.
By the time he was six Maldito had practiced writing his name and a few other words he recognized or had sounded-out. He kept the small lead pencil stub he’d found and a few scraps of paper hidden beneath his clothing in an old boot box beneath his cot—either there or deep inside his pockets—and he practiced whenever he could.
He enjoyed the sounds of letters, and he enjoyed creating new sounds by combining letters into words. By age seven he had altogether stopped expecting the hugs and caresses his mother lavished on his siblings, but neither did he care. And just before his eighth birthday he was standing at the end of the sidewalk peering through the roses at a few small groups of children about his age. Not realizing his mother was standing behind him, he said, “I wonder where they are going? And for what purpose?”
Even with all he’d been through, the harshness of her voice startled him. “Those are good children, Maldito. They are not curses on their family.”
He spun around and looked at her.
A cruel smirk crept across her face. “Those children are going to learn numbers and letters, to make their families proud. There is no reason to waste such luxuries on a creature as cursed as you.”
Her comment stung his spine, trembled up through his consciousness and embedded itself in his ribs.
He put his hands behind his back. He clenched his fists until his little knuckles turned white and his fingernails drew blood from his palms. Only his own strength of will and his refusal to give her the satisfaction of knowing she had marked him kept him from doubling over with pain. For a long moment he glared at her, feeling nothing for her but pity.
Then he shook his head and walked into the house.
Thus ended the first period of Maldito’s life.
* * * * * * *
About the Persona
Gervasio Arrancado was born in a small shack in Mexico and raised in the orphanage at Agua Idelfonso, several kilometers, give or take a few, from the fictional fishing village of Agua Rocosa.
He is fortunate to have made the acquaintance of Augustus McCrae, Hub and Garth McCann, El Mariachi, Forest Gump, The Bride (Black Mamba), Agents J and K, and several other notables. To this day he lives at that place on the horizon where reality just folds into imagination.
About the Author
Harvey Stanbrough was born in New Mexico, seasoned in Texas and baked in Arizona. For a time, he wrote under five personas and several pseudonyms, but he takes a pill for that now and writes only under his own name. Mostly.
Harvey is an award-winning writer who follows Heinlein’s Rules avidly. He has written and published over 75 novels, 9 novellas, and over 230 short stories. He has also written 16 nonfiction books on writing. and he’s compiled and published 30 collections of short fiction and 5 critically acclaimed poetry collections.
To see his other works, please visit HarveyStanbrough.com.
For his best advice on writing, see his Daily Journal at HEStanbrough.com.