The day Dorotea Galia was kidnapped started before dawn. She struggled to wake up with the roosters crowing. Sleep paralysis has always been a problem in her family. She had been having night terrors. Strange dreams of a dying Angel, a wounded Lion roaring in darkness, the burning body of a woman with eyes like jewels in the sun. Dreams of her family with haunted eyes propped up in Post Mortem scenes for a photographer with a missing face and crippled hands. Of a Gypsy Fortune Teller screaming over a child’s corpse in ruined chapel beside a violent sea.
She often dreams about the undead. Singing spirits in the marshes, Vampire children at play in cemeteries at dusk with moldy skin. She feels watched by hollow eye sockets and fanged snarls, whispering psalms from the Bible with raspy voices only the the dying can hear. Ghouls missing noses beckoning for her to join them in the darkness beneath garbage strewn piers in a boardwalk pavillion fallen into the ocean. Of things only a grown woman should know to avoid. Violence inside a great Temple in Jerusalem, a voice that sounds like someone with a cut throat calling for help in a language lost to time from inside a coffin being carried to some unholy purpose.
Sometimes she dreams of the end of the world. Being alone on a vast seabed, a dark figure far off walking towards her that terrifies her to her core. The dark figure has 4 faces, that of a ferocious mare with red eyes facing north. Facing west a shrieking hawk with green eyes, the eastern face a goat with blue eyes and although she couldn’t see it. To the south she knew the final face out of sight was an angry spirit with a crown of gold and eyes of fire whispering curses in a language of magic made flesh.
Each time she blinked the figures red eyes were significantly closer, making her stomach twist in knots and her muscles spasm in panic. Suddenly the hellish creature loomed over her, three times her height seizing her with clawed hands, engulfing her in leathery wings. Its body was made of malformed metals and rock ore formed into blood soaked fur, thorny like a rose bush and crawling with ticks. A rancid stink burned her nostrils and eyes until she was choking on vomit in her throat.
Behind her like a whip across her back, a column of Angels suddenly blowing trumpets on shining cliffs, wind that brings terrible destruction. Tornados made of black wood and bent iron beams sweeping towards her, whipping up rushing waves 70 feet high. Of a Circus drowned in marshes, bloated bodies rocking back and forth, ebbing in-between dead trees in the creeping tide.
Clutching her messy sheets in panic, feeling some impending doom coming closer, dragging a cart of missing children. Of Tarot cards showing men impaled by swords and swinging from lynchings. Spirits illuminated in lanterns stalking behind mourners in a ritual to contact the dead. Faces cold and white.
Between the world of sleep and her true life. She can feel herself mumbling, answering voices in the wind. She can hear her Mother’s hoarse smokers cough, roosters calling the dawn and somewhere Vaqueros singing on their way to cross the river for “trabajar” in El Norte. The sweetness of morning soothes her. Crickets have turned to train horns mournful call from far off in Texas. Struggling to free her self from some creeping phantom. She shakes her self free from haunted dreams and allows a moment of peace after hours gasping for breath in the night lands.
Her Mother’s cramps and convulsions startle her, starting the day with insipid threats, howling and coughing. Banging on the wall for a glass of water. Dorotea makes the sign of the cross and smiles. Her neck was sweaty and her dress sticking to her skin from wetting the bed. Feeling ashamed but happy to be free from endless hours of tortured sleep in her humid makeshift bedroom.
Dorotea lives in a shanty town beside a southern dipping creek branching off the Rio Grande where sunken Mexican Navy boats lie just under the surface, that double as children’s playhouses during the dry season. She hid her collection of gold buttons, coins, her favorite doll and went out into the dark to do her chores. Gathering buckets of water from the river, sheering lambs and picking fruit.
Dorotea can hear bells from her sheep and chickens fighting. Roosters go into rages and attack the goats and ewes, making all the animals irritable. Soon it will be time for Birria soup if Mama hears them. Dorotea’s favorite is Navajo Jacob. A mighty Ram who has 6 crazy horns growing in all directions, golden eyes and smiles at her like the grandfather she never had. He is a good sheep and more than once has interceded when another goat or rooster tried to startle her from behind. Jacob is very calm and is the grandpa to many of the sheep. Mama hates him.
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Dorotea has 4 Brothers, most of whom left to join the Mexican Revolution that had been going on 5 years. Except for her oldest Brother who was in the US Army. Only Roberto the fool, the thief, the cat strangler and her three Sisters remain. Their little hovel is made from recycled wood from when a hurricane tore down a large fishing village before she was born. The house looks like it has burned down and been rebuilt over generations of less and less skilled carpenters.
Her family has modest crops, a couple trees of bad fruit and vines of sour grapes. Still a blessing as many have nothing to eat and must travel into the Estados Unidos to escape blight and starvation. Many girls here turn to prostitution for “gabachos” in Texas. Despite abject poverty it is a pretty place where butterflies and song birds dart among wildflowers on the banks of the Rio Bravo.
Dorotea was like a slave in their leaning little shack. She did not dance or sing the old Spanish songs her family had long survived on, singing for the gringo farmers parties in Brownsville. Dorotea had other talents, art, poetry and had an easy way with taming fierce animals. She was born in 1899, practically full grown she was still nymph-like, seeming more at home in flights of elfin fantasy.
Dorotea’s dreams were so real, as if the promise of adventure and travel was a song in the wind. She mused about being captain of a ship on a voyage of discovery, the conductor of a train cresting wild mountain passes, to one day be a scientist who saves the lives of multitudes and maybe be the first to document new wonders in the far vistas of the high Himalayas, distant Borneo and the deepest Amazon.
Her Mother Laurena “Reina” Luz, now plump as a balloon was once the “Beauty of the Rio Grande Valley”. A mean spirited but glamorous woman in her youth. Reina ran away with a traveling Wall Street land speculator. Coming home pregnant and rejected, she learned to hate her life and any sparkle of joy in her children that reminded her of her lost youth.
Soon her Mother married Reynaldo Hidalgo Rivera-Orazco. A charming man who wore the most expensive Mariachi suits you have ever seen. Came sweeping into town with a band and took the broken woman with her bastard son on the road for years. Making good money but spending it as fast as they made it.
Before long Dorotea’s Mother was pregnant and her days of singing in the touring band were over. She was sent to raise their large family at his families abandoned ranch in a nameless Colonia on the western outskirts of Matamoros. He was orphaned young and inherited cattle and lands that had fallen into disrepair long ago.
The state of Tamaulipas rests on the Texas border overlooking a fork of the Rio Bravo, where the border snakes and shifts towards the eastern wetlands. Together Laurena and Reynaldo had 5 more children.
Reynaldo Hidalgo was an unwise drunk. One night he followed angry group of cowboys into the street for a fight and in the morning he was found savagely beaten to death. Dragged down the street until every bone in his body was broken and stabbed multiple times. No gringo was ever brought to justice.
Lastly Dorotea was born after a tryst with a traveling Frenchman who was in the area looking for work as a banker, but in reality was one step away from the law after a series of schemes and long history of violence all thought the Southern US.
There was also the matter of suspicion of murdering a French heiress in New Orleans and fleeing with jewels, treasury bonds and family heirlooms. He was such a liar the family never learned his true name. His story changed depending on who he told it to. Might be a blessing he didn’t teach his wickedness to his young daughter.
His time with Dorotea’s Mother ended after a whirlwind romance when Dorotea was 3. US Marshals dragged him off the hang for a crime he spent his last moments on earth denying. Something about pushing railroad inspector off a train trestle in a botched robbery. That not only stole nothing, but got all his co-conspirators caught, all laying blame on the “Frenchman” who escaped.
All her Father left the youngest child with was a last name, “Galia.” Deriving from the ancient name of France, Gaul. He was a pleasant man despite being tricky and seemed like he had genuine affection for his new family, was never unkind of the other children of earlier courtships. The house had an easy calm at home.
Dorotea was the most lovely of the sisters, gaining the eternal hate of her mother. Despite her mothers lack of English she knew a few phrases like “Little Whore” that she used frequently. There was no cause for this hostility other than her mother projecting her inadequacies on her daughter.
She was universally seen as an Angel by the towns people who noticed her kindness, honesty and work ethic that none of the rest of the family had. Her face and arms were dark from long days in the sun, the color of rich cinnamon and her hair had wisps of honey blonde.
Dorotea was happy on the surface but always watched with a long face the trains leaving beyond the horizon, the travelers crossing the border to see what opportunity the big cities of the US had in store. She would walk beside the train cars and look in on animals en route to farms, slaughter houses and traveling carnivals.
She wondered about the world, history, modern inventions and far off lands. She was an avid reader of victorian fantasy works, and was wise beyond her years. She had a fairy-like light in her eyes, wandering the hills and valleys of spring like an Angel of Mercy for injured animals and even migrating birds would stop to frolic beside her in ponds, shaded glades and bubbling brooks.