The Indio

We remember when he first came to town. The way his shoes were polished, shiny even. But it wasn’t his shoes we noticed first, it wasn’t the way his hair spiked up in the back or how he grimaced when he laughed so he didn’t show his crooked front tooth.

"Indio," is what we whispered when he walked through the glass doors of John Adams Middle School. We had never seen a Mexican so dark. We knew he heard us whispering, when he walked in, but we couldn’t hide our disbelief. So dark, his skin the color of soil after a rainfall.

 “Is he black? '' We asked each other. “Un negrito dominicano?” 

“No, no tiene el pelo rizado,” one of us answered. “And he’s Mexican. His parents are from México.”

 “So his skin is black, but he’s not, that doesn’t make any sense.” He glanced up from his desk then, brow furrowed and we wondered if we’d spoken too loudly. He was probably used to the comments. The speculation was nothing new to him. Still, he kept his eyes on his page as he worked, as if afraid our gaze would cause him to melt into a puddle on the floor. Soon the teacher asked us to pull the blinds up and rays of light pierced our necks, pricked our skulls, sunk into our ears and stayed there.

“We have a new student,” Mr. Moreno said. “Tenemos un estudiante nuevo. De donde eres?” The new kid jolted in his seat, and looked at the teacher. 

“México,” he said. Mr. Moreno smiled. We were all from México, or at the very least our parents were. Saying you were from México in Texas, in a town just a few miles from the border was about as useful as saying you were from the moon. Seeing Mr. Moreno smile, gave us permission to do so. We shared glances behind our green and yellow natural sciences book, eyebrows raised, eyes wide. There was a pause as the teacher waited for the new kid to elaborate and when he didn’t he cleared his throat and tried again. 

“I know you’re from México, what I meant was which part?” The Indio scratched his head. He had two fine white scars on the back of his hand. 

“Guadalajara,” he said in one rushed breath. He said it like a prayer he couldn’t get out fast enough. As if there were too many syllables and not enough time. We supposed there were. 

“Alright,” Mr Moreno said, “everyone make sure to give Jimmy a warm welcome.” At first we didn’t know who he was talking about. We turned in our seats looking for a Jim, a Jimmy, that we had missed before. Someone that would wave at us from the corner of the room as if they’d walked through a wall, burst through the metal pipes like water. But there was no one in the corner. A tiny piece of the already chipped wall paper disintegrated into white dust. That’s when our skin started prickling and the room took a collective breath as we turned our attention toward him. It couldn’t be. Not the gringo name for the Indio. Did his parents think the name was going to make him blend in? That it was going to help him on the other side? One of us let out a giggle, his fingers stuffed in his mouth. That was it. We were all dying. Chairs were squeaking, books were dropped and our throats ached. We only stopped to catch our breath. “SILENCE” the teacher yelled, but he was smirking too.

 At recess we asked the Indio over and over again what his name was and he said “JEEMEE” with one of the most aggressive latino accents we’d ever heard. Hearing that gringo name with the Indio’s horrific accent sent us over the edge every time, pounding our fists, gasping for air.  

Even now, we’re not sure when the rumors about the curse started. But they trickled in slowly at first. The way the Indio barely spoke. Could he even understand English? Yes, we decided--he followed directions when Mr. Moreno asked him to get out his notebook to get up out of his seat. But that was it, he didn’t speak to us. To make matters worse, at recess he seemed to disappear altogether. We would walk out of class in a stream of laughter. Somewhere between the pounding of feet in the hallway the Indio vanished. He was there one minute and gone the next. We asked each other:

“Did you see where he ran off to? He was right behind you, right?” But no one knew anything. When recess was over he’d be waiting next to the door of our classroom. Back against the concrete, shoes suspiciously shiny, his mouth quirked up to the side. He looked amused, and that infuriated us even more. 

“Where did this little Indio get off?” We whisper-shouted as we walked into class. We knew he could hear us too, because his smirk widened, creeping up the sides of his mouth like a thorny weed. He had his chance, we told ourselves, we asked him his name, and tried to find him at recess. There was no excuse for the self indulgent smirk, the knowing sheen to his brown-black eyes.  

We sat under the shade of the ash tree in the field next to the schoolyard, the grass pin straight and bleached yellow by the sun. We agreed that one of us would follow him every recess--we needed to know where he went. 

Listening to Maria’s footsteps was like listening to the sound of trees growing. She walked as if she was always suspended thousands of feet in the air by a giant tightrope. It was a unanimous decision. Maria would go first. 

She gave us a furtive nod the next day as we headed out for recess. We awaited her return with an uneven breath, half hoping that she didn’t come back so we could know for sure. So we could tell someone that the curse had taken her too. 

When we saw her coming down the grassy hill at the far corner of the field, we rushed her. A stampede of feet and dirt that didn’t destroy the gnawing feeling we’d felt in the bottom of our stomachs for weeks now. Maria seemed to enjoy this. Her teeth, straight and white, were crowding her face. 

“He had no idea I was there,” she told us in a hushed tone. “No way, I was hiding behind trees and, and the wind was so loud it sounded like bones breaking. The grasses that looked more like straw were pushed flat to the earth by the intensity of the wind.” We shared glances, anticipating what was coming next. Maria had a flair for the dramatic, and when she got attention she liked to hold onto it as long as possible. 

  “He walked over this hill,” she gave the earth a little pat. “And then when he headed down this dusty road, nothing but grass and cattle down there, he whipped his head around and started chanting in a language I didn’t understand. It wasn’t Spanish or English.”

 She paused. 

“Probably one of those Indio languages,” Lucia asserted, her green eyes solemn. We all nodded, brows furrowed. 

“Then what happened,” one of us asked. 

“That’s when the wind started to change,” Maria murmured, the whites of her eyes more visible than ever. “Big gusts blew the dust up from the road and it all swirled around us. It sunk into my eyelashes, got stuck in my throat and I couldn’t see him any more. He was surrounded by a whirlwind of dust. If I stayed any longer, my lungs would have filled up. So I ran,” she said. I had to.”

A tense silence coated the classroom like wallpaper when the Indio returned, the same toothless smile glued to his face. We studied his hair, not even the slightest bit of dust coated his ink-black locks. We examined his shoes, no mud, or dust, polished and glowing--like always. 

“Brujeria,” we muttered into our matematicas textbooks.  

Maria’s story had only made us more curious. We had to know more about what he was up to at recess. We decided that Hector would follow him next. Hector, who always walked on his toes, as if he was afraid the ground would break like glass if he let the entirety of his foot touch it. 

“I saw him scale an ash tree like it was nothing,” he told us, “like it was as easy as climbing up the stairs. He was a blur, no human could have done it that fast.”

 We sat in a circle, legs crossed.

“He probably learned that in the jungle,” one of us said. No one laughed. 

“But here’s the thing,” Hector continued, and waited until he could hear our skin crawl, until he could hear the sound of the sun inch lower in the sky. “I walked up to the ash tree, the one where the bark has almost peeled off. I got to its base, where the soil swallowed the bottoms of my shoes, where I could smell the dew clinging to the grass. I placed my hands on the tree and looked up.” We waited, some of us uprooting grass and tearing it apart, our eyes never leaving Hector’s face. 

“Well, keep going then!” one of us urged. Hector smiled. 

“I checked every branch,” he said at last, “but the Indio wasn’t in the tree. It was impossible. It was as if he’d gotten to the top of that ash, bits of peeling brown bark stuck to his shirt and pants, and kept climbing until he reached the clouds.” Maybe the tree did keep going forever. Maybe he was sitting on a cloud somewhere, laughing at us. 

We crossed our hearts, the way we’d seen our mothers do it at mass. One tap on each shoulder. How futbolistas on the tele did it. All drama. A sustained glance at the sky, faces solemn. For a while no one said anything. The bell rang out, and even then we stayed seated, knees touching, our legs sticky from sitting in the grass. One of us got up slowly, and then we all followed, waking up from a stupor. From visions of a little boy climbing the sky. When we walked into class that day, he was already seated, writing something in his notebook. He didn’t even look up as we entered the room. 

“Alright,” Mr. Moreno said, “let's begin in chapter three of your science textbooks.” 

No one followed him during recess after that. We agreed that day, as soon as the last bell rang. We would stay away from the Indio for a while. It was getting too spooky, too dangerous. There was no telling what he was capable of. 

But then parent teacher conferences came around. Mid October and the earth was still so hot it made the bottoms of our feet ache. When the Indio walked in with his mother it was impossible not to look. We forgot about upsetting him, about the magic, about what he would do to us. There were no thoughts left in our heads as we stared, open mouthed, at the gym doors.

The Indios mother was white. Not Mexican white, with pale skin but dark eyes and pin straight black hair. No, she looked like a white woman, like she came over on the freaking mayflower. All light brown hair, that glowed golden as she stood in the doorway, backlit by the sun. She looked expensive too, we noticed as she drew closer. Her eyebrows were perfectly manicured, ending in sharp points. Though the outfit she wore was simple, a t-shirt and jeans, little things caught our eye. Gave us clues that she came from money. 

We’d spent weekends in thrift stores with our aunts and mothers sorting through racks and racks of costume jewelry. We knew what real gold looked like. And her earrings, rings and necklaces all had the sheen of truth to them. Her black boots had a subtle block heel that echoed across the gym. They looked like they were real leather, like they still had that fresh smell that was reserved for things that had never been worn. We thought about the last time we’d smelled something new--that smelled like the store it came from. A shirt from a birthday a few years ago. New packs of underwear, socks that our mamis gave us from the clearance aisle. We looked again at the Indio’s shoes, shiny and black and true. And glanced down at our own feet. At our faded hightops that were comically large, a hand me down from an older sister. At scuffed brown boots, with the plastic, imitation leather starting to peel away at the heel. How had we not noticed before? How the Indios’s hair always looked freshly cut. That his shirts fit him perfectly, that his clothing looked intentional. Like they were bought especially for him. Not a haphazard collection of items from older siblings, cousins, neighbors. We felt pinpricks of heat emerge in the corners of our eyes. 

Without even realizing it, we’d invented parents for the Indio. We imagined them poor, maybe in colorful clothes from a traditional Indio village. We imagined their faces to be a guant, their skin dull. Their brown-black eyes, glassy and haunted. Their carpeted floor would always have dirt tracked in. One look at his mother, all this theorizing evaporated. There was no dirt embedded in the Indio’s carpet. No strange stains that never seemed to go away. No, the Indio probably had wooden floors, so clean he could see his own muddied reflection in them. 

We expected the Indio to look smug, satisfied, at this revelation. But his gaze was trained on the ground, his shoulders slumped forward, his hands disappearing into the pockets of his jeans. The hush that had fallen across the room, when the Indio had walked in with his mother, was broken. In a rush of sound, teachers and parents approached his mother. Manuel’s mom, a short woman with a round face, spoke first. 

“It’s good to meet you, Miss…” She trailed off. When she was nervous her English got worse. We looked around the room and saw Manuel smooth his shirt repeatedly. It remained creased. The Indio’s mom raised her perfect eyebrows so high they almost disappeared into her blowout. 

“¿Por qué estás hablando en inglés? Somos mexicanos, sabes.” Her Spanish sounded odd, coming from a mouth like that, eyes like that. But then again, it wasn’t so unusual. We’d seen faces like that speaking Spanish on the tele, hosting a talk show or in a telenovela. But we rarely came across those people in real life. We had begun to think that they only existed on our tv screens, their faces beautiful and tragic at the same time. Looking off into the distance, as the music swelled behind them and the credits rolled.  

Soon, the Indio’s mom--or Valeria, as she urged us to call her--had drawn a small crowd of teachers and parents alike. Every so often, we heard laughter erupting from that corner of the gym. The Indio was nowhere to be seen. It was as if he’d sunk into the floorboards themselves. We crowded around the food tables, pretending to help ourselves to another plate of Lucia's mom’s tamales. 

“He’s probably off polishing his shoes somewhere!” one of us said.

“Getting his shoes polished, more like” Hector muttered, stroking his chin and narrowing his eyes. “Oh dear,” Hector continued, this time in a fake British accent. “It seems my shoes do need a bit of a shine.” He pretended to study his faded hightops, his hand on his chin. Then he placed his shoe on a foldout chair in front of him. “Manuel, why don’t you help me out?” We watched Manny give Hector an amused look as he got on his knees, taking a piece of imaginary cloth out of his pocket and rubbing it horizontally across Hector’s dirty sneaker. As Manny got up, Hector called “You missed a spot!” Manny threw up his hands and we all laughed, the sound echoing across the gym floor. Only Maria didn’t smile, her arms crossed. 

“Let’s go find him,” she said. “Mr Shiny shoes himself.” 

We checked every room of the school. Finally we spotted him behind the heavy velvet curtains of the theater. He was lying down, reading a book, its pages dogeared and the cover faded. Couldn’t he afford a new copy? He glanced up when we approached and raised an eyebrow, like he was expecting us. 

“Are you adopted?” one of us blurted. We hadn’t gone over what we would say when we found him. He let us wait. Let us watch him turn his head from one side to the other, as if deciding whether or not to respond. 

“No, I’m not,” he said at last. There was an edge to his tone that hadn’t been there before. And when he looked up, his chin jutted forward. Then he smiled. “Are any of you?” There was a pause. 

“Are any of us what?” Lucia said. 

His smile grew wider, and he laughed at our expressions. His crooked front tooth in full view. As if he’d forgotten about it completely. As if he’d never been ashamed of it at all. He walked forward and we parted for him, his smile still shocking us into silence; even as his shadow lengthened down the narrow aisle, and his shoulders vanished from view.