Goose in the Pond - Earlene Fowler [105]
A puff of smoke snapped our attention back to the stage, and through the smoke an apparition in white appeared. I gasped along with the rest of the audience. Her dress was long, silvery, and appeared to be made of layers and layers of cobwebs. Straight black hair streaked with white flowed down past her waist. Her face, a pale green white, seemed to pulsate in the flickering light of the single candle she held. Her nails were as red as fresh blood. Dolores had really started out our Late-Night Cabaret with a bang.
“Have you seen her perform this yet?” I whispered to Jillian.
“No,” she whispered back. “I’ve never even heard this folktale.”
Dolores lifted her hands, nails flashing in the candlelight, and began her story.
“Once in a small village in Mexico there was a very beautiful peasant woman. Her hair was as black as the sky’s darkest night and her lips as red and inviting as the finest wine. All the young hombres were in love with her. She was her parents’ only child, born in their old age, a gift from the blessed Madre de Dios. She was loved and cherished by all who came in contact with her. She worked for the richest lady in town, washing her fine linens in the clean, clear river. One day, when she was at the river washing her mistress’s fine lace she was spotted by a passing hidalgo, a Spanish nobleman of great riches who had come to town to court her mistress. But he fell instantly in love with the beautiful and innocent peasant girl. Being a man of dashing looks and flattering words, he seduced her there by the flowing green river. They met there day after day for weeks. When it became apparent she was with child, the nobleman’s visits ceased, and she was left broken-hearted to bear the child in shame. He married her mistress and took her to live with him in the beautiful hacienda that he had described to the peasant girl each day after they made love. The peasant girl returned to her parents’ small cottage and lived her life weaving brilliantly colored rugs each with a strand of green river flowing through them. When her son was three, the hidalgo returned to the village. The peasant girl was very happy, for she had believed in her heart of hearts that he would someday return. But she soon realized he only returned to claim his son, telling her she could never be his wife, that she was not of the right class, and that because her former mistress, his new wife, was unable to bear a child, she had given him permission to bring his son to live with them so his family name would continue. He would give the peasant girl two goats and a pearl rosary in exchange for her son.
“ ‘Let me stay with my child one more night,’ she begged him. He agreed and made plans to come back the next day. Late that night she took the child down to the river and drowned him. Laying his small body out on the bank where she and the nobleman had made love, she took a wood-handled knife and plunged it deep into her chest, the last words on her lips curses on the man who had betrayed her not once, but twice. And because of those curses, the nobleman was never able to make love to another woman, and his wife shriveled up and died from a disease that turned her skin the texture of a snake’s, her punishment for trying to steal another woman’s child.”
Dolores pointed a long red fingernail into the audience. “La Llarona still lives among us today. At midnight you can see her walking among the reeds in the marshes wailing for her lost child, weeping for the love betrayed her. You men!” She flicked her hand, and a spark of fire flew from it, causing the audience to jump then titter in nervous laughter. “Do not stay out all night drinking and seduce a woman only to leave her to cry alone as you stagger back to the woman you have left at home. La Llarona will find you, and when she does, you may lose more than the cerveza and tequila you have consumed. And you women who steal the hopes and dreams of your sisters, La Llarona will find you, too, and your dreams will turn