Our Lady of Slaughter

Scarlett Diaz Power

We were all named Guadalupe, us seven girls. Papi’s name was Guadalupe, too. He said it was like the Romans did. “All daughters had the same name,” he explained. “Only one, and always after their fathers. Julius would become Julia.”

Mami had wanted us named Maria, after her and her Mami before her, but both names honored the Virgin, so she conceded, and we were all Guadalupe. She called us by our numbers, another Roman thing to do, Papi praised. To her, we were Guadalupe I, II, III, IV, V, VI, and VII. Papi didn’t bother with numbers. Instead, he would shout “Guadalupe,” and seven heads of dark hair would pop up from around the house, all calling back “Yes?” in girlish echoes.

When we first heard rumors of a dangerous fever in an apartment building in Havana, we thought nothing of it. It was on the far side of town and Papi said it would blow over. But then it crept closer, jumping from one neighborhood to the next, until it came to us, in our little blue house. We all caught the fever, as we did all things together. We just didn’t expect it to be the thing that separated us.

Guadalupe VII died first. The youngest but not the smallest. The fever struck, and in a night she was gone. Guadalupe IV lingered for days until death finally came as a mercy. By then, the rest of us had recovered, except for Guadalupe VI. It was like our limbs had been severed, two echoes of ourselves lost, with a third growing fainter, slowly falling into that same impenetrable void.

Guadalupe VI’s fever reached a raging peak. We sat at the table that night, ready to greet death. The sky was full of stars, and the moon was bright, reflecting into the house and illuminating our terrified faces. We didn’t dare turn on a light, as if it might invite death’s presence too soon. In the middle of the night, Guadalupe VI emerged from bed in a sweat-soaked dressing gown, and we gathered her up, steadying her nine-year-old body. She asked for one last meal of café con leche. Mami couldn’t help but say yes. What else could we do but grant a dying girl her final wish? Guadalupe VI was so weak that we had to hold her up in our lap. We placed the porcelain cup to her dry, cracked lips as she took slow sips.

“It’s good,” she murmured when she was done, voice a tenuous whisper, head lolling back onto our shoulders. We could still feel her with us then, but only just.

Afterwards, she was tucked back into bed and we kissed her goodnight—but really it was goodbye. The sweat from her forehead lingered on our lips.

The next day, however, her fever had broken. It was thanks to the café con leche, we all agreed, and as we made her a second cup of the magical substance, she declared herself no longer a Guadalupe.

“It’s Cachita,” she said, sitting at the dining room table and kicking her feet that couldn’t yet reach the floor. “I know who I am now.” With the window behind her, she was bathed in the light of the sun, haloed by the rays peeking through the branches of the large tree outside. She looked, for all the world, like a marble statue of Our Lady of Charity, the saint she’d named herself after, and the patron of our island. None of us bothered to ask why the choice of name; the loss of her from ourselves was all that mattered.

Though small for her age, there was something untouchable about her after the fever. Papi couldn’t argue with her pronouncement; he only twisted his mouth into a thin, displeased line. He had been rendered mute after Guadalupe VII died in his arms. He was not a man who was prepared to face the reality of hardship. He worked as a lector in a cigar factory, reading to factory workers all day. He lived in history, magic, and stories. His hands, washed clean every morning at work before making the sign of the cross, were never dirty.

With no voice he had no job, and Mami had to borrow money from Tía Isabela, who worked as a seamstress and had very little money to spare. Papi became a fleeting ghostly presence around the house, leaving and returning at odd hours. As the sun kept turning and the days became brighter and impossibly hotter, it took several weeks for Papi’s voice to return to him. It came out as a hoarse croak. Mami sent him off to work anyway, but he returned at night reeking of liquor and lacking in money.

Then he disappeared.

For a week, we waited. We rationed our food. Then another week passed, and the week after that we used up the last of our rice. Mami collected fruits from the trees for our meals. We washed off the ants and flies as best we could, digging our thumbs into rotted guavas. The innards of putrefied coconuts became our meat. We drank cafecito to fill our stomachs. Guadalupe Cachita poured spoiled coconut milk into her drink, calling it café con leche, though it was no such thing.

A new soul seemed to have emerged in her after the fever, one that we could not yet comprehend. She spoke to the tree in our backyard and said it gave her recipes that would feed us. She began preparing them, but with only dirt and leaves as ingredients, they were inedible at best, and rotten at worst. She snatched a dead butterfly from the ground and, plucking off its powdery yellow wings, ate it whole. Then she used the wings as a spice in a meal that she tried to serve us as lunch.

As our stomachs ate away at themselves, and our hands trembled from the cafecito so badly that we could hardly sew the embroidered cloths we tried to sell for money, Mami left to find Papi, with a promise to return soon. We sat in the backyard, weakly fanning ourselves, heads resting in each other’s laps, trying to ignore our hunger. Guadalupe Cachita sat apart from us, staring into our neighbor Ochún’s yard, watching the chickens run.

A hawk was circling them overhead, inching lower and lower to the ground. That same hawk had been coming around for ages, but Ochún always ran out with a broom to swat it away, having almost a sixth sense for when her chickens were in danger. But she was not coming to their rescue that day.

“Do you know where Ochún is?” Guadalupe Cachita asked.

“Visiting her son,” we guessed, shrugging.

Ochún lived alone, and her name was not actually Ochún. But she had named herself after the Santería goddess so long ago nobody remembered what her original name was. She was a strange old woman—widowed, but with lots of children who’d moved away. We didn’t understand why she didn’t go to live with one of them, why she stayed in her squat pink home, with only chickens for company. She left to see her son only on rare occasions, and, less often, her daughters.

Guadalupe Cachita threw a stone at the hawk. It missed, but it scared the hawk enough that it flew in the other direction, away from its meal, and into the tree in our yard, watching with hungry eyes.

Pleased, Guadalupe Cachita smiled, pressing herself against the rickety fence between our yard and Ochún’s. She was outgrowing her blue sailor dress that had once been ours. “She has so many chickens,” she exclaimed, leaning further still, nearly tumbling into Ochún’s yard, “but I don’t see any eggs.”

“What would that matter?”

“We could eat them,” she said, as if it were obvious.

“But they’re not ours.”

“What does that matter, if we’re starving?”

“Mami will come home with Papi soon, and then we’ll eat.”

Guadalupe Cachita huffed, crossing her arms in annoyance. “And if she doesn’t?” She didn’t wait for our answer; instead, she hopped the fence, landing with a thud in Ochún’s yard. She entered with determination, not looking back at us for permission or reassurance. We wouldn’t, of course, have given either.

The chickens scattered at her entrance, squawking in fear, as if they knew her mind. Perhaps they did. Maybe some part of them remembered Ochún doing the same thing to them—slowly killing their family and friends—and felt a similar danger in her. But there was one who didn’t run or squawk. It simply sat there, gazing at Guadalupe Cachita with trusting eyes. Our sister approached it slowly, steps uncertain and cautious. She needn’t have been so careful, though. The chicken made no move of resistance, only clucked in greeting, before its airways were rapidly sealed off by Guadalupe Cachita’s hands around its long-feathered neck.

The death was not pretty. The poor thing shook and spasmed, and Guadalupe Cachita’s grip wasn’t strong enough, so terrible squeaks of pain and fear escaped from the creature. We’d seen Mami kill chickens before, always quick and easy, barely a sound uttered, and then we would have our dinner. We’d never witnessed so grisly a murder.

The other chickens hid behind rocks and trees, and one chicken flew onto the roof, while we stood rooted to the ground. We watched our sister struggle with the chicken, kneeling on the ground as she managed to fully twist its neck, finally putting it out of its misery. When Guadalupe Cachita looked up at us, she smiled broadly despite the tears rolling down her cheeks.

“Well, you’ve done it now,” said a voice, and we turned to see Ochún on the street, having observed from there the mutilation of her chicken. She wore a neat red dress, and her long gray hair was pulled back into a low bun with a hat on top of her head. “I come back from church to this?”

She entered her backyard, stepping easily over her fence even in heels. She went to Guadalupe Cachita, who was still kneeling before the dead chicken. “Oh, poor Sabine,” Ochún said, clucking her tongue sadly. “You were always such a sweet thing. Dumb as a brick, but sweet.”

Guadalupe Cachita looked up at Ochún, eyes bright. “I’m sorry for her,” she said. “But we’re hungry.”

“Where’s your Mami?”

“Off to find Papi.”

Ochún knelt, taking the dead Sabine in her arms. “Come,” she demanded, gesturing for us to follow her into the home. Her kitchen was untidy, with pots and pans strewn about, and cold cups of half-drunk café con leche sitting on every surface in chipped mugs, the milk inside rotten and curdled. In the corner was an altar with a statue of her goddess and Our Lady of Charity, with offerings of sweet treats for the both of them.

Sabine was laid out on the kitchen table, prone. “Do you know how to pluck a chicken?”

Guadalupe Cachita shook her head.

Ochún hummed, grasping a sharp butcher’s knife. “Watch,” she ordered, and severed Sabine’s head. “The head should have been removed during slaughter.” Then she turned sternly toward our sister. “You tried to steal my chicken, Guadalupe.”

“You have plenty,” Guadalupe Cachita shot back, crossing her arms petulantly. “And it’s Cachita now.”

Ochún began pulling out organs from Sabine’s neck, then stopped and handed over the knife. “Well, Cachita, you killed her; you prepare her.”

Our sister’s knife skills were shaky, but she did her best under Ochún’s instruction, until Sabine’s feathers were plucked and her organs removed. Guadalupe Cachita presented the chicken to Ochún.

“Take her,” was Ochún’s answer. “I have more chickens.”

“Thank you,” Guadalupe Cachita said, now clutching at Sabine’s mutilated corpse like a precious thing. “I’m sorry.”

“No, you aren’t, because I wouldn’t be.” The two stared into each other’s eyes for a long moment in some secret communion we could not understand. “Next time you want a chicken, just tell me,” Ochún said. “And say a prayer for Sabine before you eat her.”

At home, we helped cook the chicken. With no rice left and only a few spices, it was a plain meal, but more than we’d had in weeks. We ate Sabine’s flesh so ours could keep going, and we were glad of it. We were still eating her tender body when Mami walked in. Papi trailing behind her, holding an armful of yucas, and wearing no shoes.

“We sold them,” Mami said, in response to our staring at his feet, and then demanded, “Where did you get the chicken?”

Guadalupe Cachita plated some meat and handed it over to Mami. “Her name is Sabine. Eat.”

That night, Guadalupe Cachita climbed the tree in our backyard, shooing away the hawk, and making her bed for the evening. We found her in the morning, hugging the tree branch like a beloved doll. One of Ochún’s chickens had gotten through the gate into our yard and was clucking on the ground beneath Guadalupe Cachita, sitting atop an egg. Ochún was watching from her back porch, a slight smile on her lips.

“Did you do this?” we asked.

Ochún simply looked up to Guadalupe Cachita still sleeping in the tree, barren branches outstretched behind her like bony plucked wings, and walked back inside.

When Guadalupe Cachita awoke, she slid down the trunk and picked up the egg as if she had expected it. For months the little chicken came into the yard every day to deliver an egg, in payment for not being eaten, which Guadalupe Cachita honored until the winter when we ate her.

The slaughter was much more peaceful that time, as Guadalupe Cachita snapped the chicken’s neck quickly, its head coming clean off, and gave us her offering with bloody hands and her face a terrifying mask of serenity.