Llorona

Abstract

Llorona Sandra Del Rio Madrigal (bio) I don’t remember whether Tía Teresa called out of habit, or if she called because news travels fast when Latinas are involved. Maybe it was me who called, or maybe the call happened because my Tía could feel the loneliness echoing from my bowl of a body. But I do remember the phone’s tan wire coiled around my finger. Aged only twenty-four years, I explained the miscarriage. I told her what it felt like. I told her how I went into the bathroom hoping it would be like any trip. I told her about how I knew it wasn’t going to be like any other trip. About how I stood up and felt a softness caught beneath me. Felt my body about to drop every bone and muscle. How I curled my hand and began to reach inside myself, only to pull out an orb the size of a fig. How I saw blood I hadn’t seen in months flowing out of me. The blood had flooded the fig. The fig—the fetus—was shaped like a tear, a pink and purple tear, and it told me my body had already started grieving. I hadn’t yet finished telling my Tía about how I put the tear inside a clear container to show the doctors this gravestone of what might have been when she began to repeat, “No, Judith, no, no.” We gripped the phones as firmly as we could while our hands trembled along with our voices. She mourned with me. She repeated in a quiet cry, “¿Cómo no hice eso, cómo no lo hice como tú, cómo no lo hice?” How did I not do that, how did I not do what you did, how did I not catch them? “Mi bebé se fue. Perdí a mi bebé, allí vi en la tasa y el rojo, mi bebé se fue por la tasa, mi bebé, y no supe que era mi bebé hasta que se fue!” My baby left, I lost my baby, I saw the toilet and the red, my baby left me through the stream and I didn’t know it was my baby until they left! I cried with her. I was dizzy with the landline’s buzzing once we finally said goodbye—dizzy with its muting tone. I only thought of how I had held my [End Page 144] tear in my hands, holding the promise of hope that had only been a silent whisper. A flicker that would never light with the world. Yet, my tear. I held my tear, my baby. I couldn’t imagine myself pressing the lever in the same way my poor Tía had, allowing for my baby to be taken. I still hear my Tía’s mourning wails through the halls of my bones each time I look at my two children, who have been cut crisply by their lives. I hear Tía Teresa’s crying, and I think of her as la Llorona. Her words sweep memories of watching her baby leave; they sweep them into a stream. Mi bebe se fue, se me fue mi bebe. [End Page 145] Sandra Del Rio Madrigal sandra del rio madrigal is a University of Utah student pursuing a bachelor of arts in English, ethnic studies, and Latin American studies. Through her creative writing, Sandra investigates topics of liberation, Latinidad, and transnational feminism. Her research with Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies considers the relationship between individuals and their communities in contemporary times and produced the collaborative project Coalesce, Unpause. Sandra is also an organizer and speaker of the Migratory Monsters conversation series. Copyright © 2022 Frontiers Editorial Collective, Inc