The Painted Boy

  “There is no spirit of this place,” I tell her. “Not anymore. There’s only a medicine wheel of power spinning in my head. There’s only me.”

  “Then you are not looking deeply enough.”

  “Could you please just say something in plain language? Just for once.”

  “I am speaking as plainly as I can,” she says. “I don’t have your connection to this place. I cannot find its spirit for you.”

  This is pointless. Nothing has changed. We might both be big scary dragons now, but we’re not equal. At least not in her eyes. So far as she’s concerned, I’m always going to be the student who has to figure this crap out on my own. And if that’s the case . . .

  “You should probably go,” I tell her.

  “James . . .”

  “No, really. We don’t have anything to say to each other. Not anymore. We probably never did. You call me ‘grandson, ’ but I’ve always just been this—what? Apprentice, I guess. This kid you could manipulate.”

  I can see a flash of anger in her eyes, but I don’t care.

  “You are my grandson. You will always be—”

  “The kid that you and your other dragon buddies were going to put down if you decided I wasn’t using my magical superpowers properly.”

  “That’s unfair.”

  “But it’s true, isn’t it?”

  “We wield enormous power,” she says. “Because of this there must be certain checks and balances.”

  “Or you could just explain things clearly so that a kid like me doesn’t go off into the unknown without a clue.”

  “The journey into our power that we must take—alone—that has always been the way of the yellow dragons.”

  “Well, then all I can say is that the way of the yellow dragons is pretty messed up.”

  I can see the dragon fire in her eyes now. She stands taller, her mouth a tight, stern line.

  “What are you going to do?” I ask. “Attack me?”

  “You have no idea how much—”

  “That’ll go over well with the others, won’t it?” I say, cutting her off again. “Maybe they’ll come and put you down.”

  For a moment I think she’s going to make me listen to whatever new BS she’s got to say, but she surprises me. All she does is give me a brusque nod, then turns away.

  I track her as she leaves the mall. I track her all the way back to the airport where she sits glowering at her gate.

  I’m not proud of how I treated her. I guess it all just boiled over—seeing her, listening to those platitudes that I’ve already heard a million times before. I’m not proud, but I’m not ready to take any of it back.

  Except . . . except . . .

  I can’t let go of this one thing she said.

  Now our emperors are the spirits of the places we have chosen to protect.

  In this case, that’d be Señora Elena. She had been the spirit of this desert and the barrios that have been built on its skin. She used to be connected to everything the way I am now, but I took that away from her. I am the spirit of this place now.

  Except . . .

  I remember Rita telling me how all Señora Elena does is sit in her house, trying to deal with the loss. I just have to think of her and I can see her on the wheel and know that’s still true.

  I remember Señora Elena telling me she was ready to give up the responsibility. She’d said she welcomed the opportunity.

  But maybe she didn’t realize exactly what that meant.

  I do. Yeah, I’ve got the big medicine wheel spinning around in my head. And maybe I feel alone, or at least disassociated from all these pinpricks of spirits that I can find on every spoke of the wheel, but that’s my own doing, isn’t it? Because I decided that I can’t be with my friends anymore. But for all my whining and complaining, the bottom line is I revel in this connection to everything.

  It’s got nothing to do with the duty put on me by my yellow dragon genes and everything to do with how amazing the connection is. This sense of belonging, seeing how every little thing affects everything else, big and small and in between. I don’t care that I’m at the center of it all. I care about how everything connects and I get to see it. I get to be a part of it all.

  If I had to give it up the way Señora Elena did . . .

  I realize I have to go see her.

  I lose Paupau just as I’m walking up to Señora Elena’s door. Her plane must have left the runway. I knock on the door. There’s no answer—not the first time I knock, nor the second or third—but I know Señora Elena is inside. So I open the door and walk in.

  I go through the kitchen and see her sitting in her living room, still watched over by Jesus on his cross on one wall, Our Lady of Guadalupe on the other.

  “I’m fine, I’m fine,” she says without lifting her head.

  “I can see that,” I tell her.

  She looks up at the sound of my voice.

  “Oh, it’s you,” she says. “I thought you were one of the neighbors, checking up on me. They think I’ve suddenly become helpless.”

  “Maybe they’re just worried because all you do is sit in here.”

  She shrugs it off. I know how she feels. I’ve never liked people fussing over me, either.

  “You’re doing a good job,” she says instead, changing the subject. “You’ve done Maria proud.”

  Just hearing her name hurts.

  I try to keep the dragon to the fore. The dragon doesn’t worry about personal things. He just does his job. But there are buttons people can push, names that kick right through the walls the dragon keeps around us.

  So now it’s my turn to change the subject.

  “There’s something I want to try,” I say. “I don’t want to explain it exactly, in case it doesn’t work, but . . .”

  She raises an eyebrow.

  “But I was hoping you’d give me permission to try.”

  I’m doing such a bad job of this.

  “This affects me personally?” she asks.

  I nod.

  “I know you can talk to the elements,” she says. “I know the medicine wheel I carried lies inside you now. What new abilities have you uncovered in yourself?”

  “None. I just . . .”

  I should just tell her, I think, but then she smiles.

  “So long as you don’t try to change who I am,” she says, “or have some bit of medicine that’s supposed to magically cheer me up, I give you my permission to try your mysterious experiment.”

  “You’re very trusting.”

  She shrugs. “You are my heir, and really, what do I have to lose? But,” she adds, “if it doesn’t work, I want to know what it was that you were attempting to do.”

  “Sure.”

  I call up the medicine wheel in my head. Finding Señora Elena on it is a piece of cake—she’s sitting right in front of me. But then it gets trickier.

  I talk about the medicine wheel like it’s got weight and substance, as though it’s this big wagon wheel turning around in my head. But it’s actually far more delicate and complex. Instead of sturdy wooden spokes, I have millions of little threads radiating from me, each of them connected to every being or place, every cousin and five-fingered being and stray dog in the barrio, every dry wash and plant and gust of wind. If I don’t think about them, I have no problem dealing with their presence. It’s like electricity running through a house—you only think about it when you flick a switch. Otherwise it’s just there. Same here. If I want to find someone or something specific, the little search engine does its thing and immediately connects me to the right thread.

  But what I’m looking for now is the memory of one of those threads, the one that was broken when El Tigre died and Señora Elena gave up her connection to the medicine wheel so that it would all come to me. The intricate spider-web pattern suddenly becomes a bewildering chaos.

  It takes me a long time to find that one elusive thread. I don’t know what Señora Elena thinks of me just standing in front of her,
all my attention focused on a place she can no longer go. I can’t look at her. I have to center all my attention on what I’m doing.

  Time goes by—I don’t know how much—and I sift through the threads with meticulous patience. Then finally I sense an echo, follow the echo through to the memory, unravel the memory, and there it is.

  I get a little rush of satisfaction, but it’s quickly replaced by a growing frustration because I can’t get a grip on it. Every time I get close, it slides away through my metaphorical fingers, slippery as mercury.

  My frustration is making things worse and I’m afraid that I’m going to lose it again. So I use the part of me that’s the dragon. The scales whisper in my mind and he surges forward, snagging the thread firmly between the points of two enormous claws. We admire it for a moment, then we fling it to where Señora Elena sits unknowing. The end of the thread entwines with the one that connects her to the hub where I am and—just like that—now there are two of us at the center of the medicine wheel.

  I open eyes I hadn’t realized I’d closed to see Señora Elena jerk upright in her chair as though she just got an electric shock. Her features darken with a flush, her eyes widen.

  “What—what have you done?” she asks.

  But she knows. I can tell by the grin on her face and the blossom of pleasure I feel through our connection on the medicine wheel.

  “I saw my grandmother earlier today,” I say. “She told me the usual bunch of stuff I didn’t want to hear, but one thing stood out and made sense: I’m a yellow dragon. I’m not an emperor. I serve the emperor.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Sure, you do. There are no more emperors. So now we serve the spirit of the place that we protect. I can’t be both protector and emperor.”

  “You . . .”

  I nod. “You’re the spirit and I’m your protector.”

  “I . . . I didn’t realize such a thing was possible.”

  “Neither did I. But it’s cool, right? This is what you wanted, to be reconnected.”

  She gives me a slow nod.

  “How can I ever repay you for this gift?” she says.

  I shake my head. “You don’t owe me anything. It’s my duty to keep you safe, and I’m guessing, happy.”

  She leans back in her chair with a contented smile. I can feel her reestablish her own connections to the wheel and decide to leave her to it while I make us some tea. When I come back from the kitchen, a steaming mug in either hand, she’s settled and calm, the way she was when Rita first brought me around to see her. But I already knew that through my own connection to the wheel, and through it, to her.

  “Now what happens?” she asks.

  “I don’t know. I guess we’ll work it out as we go along. You’re the boss again, but this time you’ve got me to watch your back.”

  She nods. “Why are you living out at the East Pueblo Mall? It’s an awful place.”

  “I don’t know. It seemed to suit my mood.”

  Which is lighter now. The dark cloud hanging over me has thinned—probably because things are right in the dragon’s world now. He has an emperor to serve.

  “You could live here,” Señora Elena says.

  I’m at a loss.

  “Oh, don’t look at me like that. I might be old, but I can still take care of myself. I let Maria look after me for her sake, not mine. The girl needed someone to take care of after all she’d been through. I’m only offering you a place to live, and the cousins are already used to coming here with their problems.”

  Maria.

  Señora Elena’s happiness doesn’t take that pain away.

  “Come with me,” I say, offering her my hand.

  Our fingers clasp and I take her to el entre, to the plateau and the tall cairn of stones that mark Maria’s grave. Señora Elena’s eyes fill with tears.

  “She was such a brave girl,” she finally says. “I had no idea how brave.”

  “Yeah, she knew I’d screw it up. She knew I’d either freeze, or explode—neither of which would have solved anything—so she took it on herself to deal with El Tigre.”

  “She made the choice,” Señora Elena says, her voice gentle. “You can’t blame yourself.”

  “You mean I shouldn’t, which isn’t the same thing at all.”

  “I suppose it isn’t.”

  “I just wish I could have had the chance to know her better.”

  “So do I.”

  I turn to look at her in surprise. “But—”

  “I had no idea she’d planned to do this thing,” Señora Elena says, “so how well did I truly know her?”

  We fall silent. Standing there on the edge of the plateau, we listen to the wind, and pay our respects for a long time. After a while I start to talk. I tell Señora Elena about the man I met here, how he taught me about the dragonfire.

  “He called himself Abuelo?” she asks.

  I nod.

  “I have heard stories of this man, or one very like him. They say he is the son of one of the thunders and a coyote woman. Meeting him can be a moment of either tremendous good luck or bad, depending on his mood.”

  “I guess I caught him in a good one.”

  She nods. “Or he saw a kinship in you. He is as displaced a being as you dragons are when you are away from your homelands.”

  “I suppose. . . .”

  I look away across the mountains.

  “Rita told me about this man named Jesus Abarca,” I say after a few moments. “He’s the northside barrio version of you, I guess.”

  Señora nods. “I know him. He is a good man.”

  “I was wondering if we should offer him some help with the bandas up there.”

  “I think we need to clean our own house first,” she says.

  “But the gangs are all gone.”

  “Yes. But we still have poverty. We still have all the things that brought the gangs into being in the first place.” She smiles. “Do you know what would be a wonderful symbol of hope and change?”

  I shake my head.

  “If you finished high school.”

  “Oh, come on. You’ve got to be kidding. I’m this—whatever I am now. How is anything I might learn in school going to help me with the job I have right now?”

  Señora Elena shrugs. “Consider it. Think of how it will look to the barrio children. The dragon thinks it’s an important thing to do. They will want to look big in your eyes, so they will follow suit. Perhaps you see no use for education, but it will be of great help to them.”

  “How would they even know I’m the dragon?”

  She laughs. “There are no secrets here. Haven’t you figured that out yet?”

  I think about what it would be like. Different from Chicago, at least. I wouldn’t have to hide the dragon on my back, for one thing. Maybe I could even convince myself I was living a normal life.

  “I’ll think about it,” I tell her.

  “Please do. Maria thought it was important. You could do it to honor her.”

  “Way to play the guilt card.”

  Her only response is a smile.

  When we get back to the barrio I have to go take care of a couple of gangbangers who still can’t seem to get it through their heads that they’re not welcome south of the San Pedro River. They’re at Rosalie’s school, by the stands at the baseball diamond, trying to move some dope. It doesn’t take me long, even though one of them is stupid enough to pull a knife.

  I send them packing and climb up into the stands. Sitting up there, I have a good view of the whole school yard and the low, rambling adobe building that’s Cochise Vista High School. I watch some kids run laps on the oval, but my gaze keeps drifting back to the school building.

  The medicine wheel tells me Rosalie’s in there.

  I know there’s still unfinished business between us, but I don’t know how to approach her, where to start with it.

  I end up going back to the Ghost Mall. I thought that by connecting Señora Elena back to
the wheel my life would get simpler. That everything would fall into place and make sense. But all it’s done is given me more to work through.

  I’m not in the same mood that first brought me to the Ghost Mall, but for all its ruin, it’s still a good place to be on my own and think.

  “Tell me again why this had to wait until after school,” Anna said.

  She and Rosalie were walking east on Camino Senita, heading into East Pueblo. Anna had two dogs, one leash in either hand. Rosalie dealt with five of them, somehow managing to keep them all from getting tangled. Oswaldo walked beside her, too well-behaved to need a leash.

  “I’ve already missed enough days as it is,” Rosalie told her, “and with it being so busy at the restaurant, I haven’t had the chance to catch up.”

  “I said I’d come by and help.”

  “I know. And I appreciate it. But that doesn’t mean I can just keep cutting classes. Leave it!”

  The last was directed at little Pepito who was at the end of his leash, trying to investigate a dead bird.

  “I get it,” Anna said. “But you know me. Once I decide to do something—”

  “You just do it.”

  Rosalie looked ahead toward the ruins of the abandoned East Pueblo Mall.

  “God, this place is still so creepy,” she said. “Even knowing the ’bangers won’t be there.”

  Behind the chain-link fence, the parking lot shimmered in the heat and seemed to stretch into forever before it finally reached the boarded-up mall. It was slowly being reclaimed by the desert. Weeds and scrub and cacti grew out of the pavement. But three tall saguaros that had once stood sentinel by the front entrance were lying on their sides. It had taken sixty, maybe seventy years for them to reach that height, but thanks to the gangbangers they were now dead and browning.

  Anna led the way to one of the holes in the fence, and Rosalie let the dogs off their leashes, one by one.

  “Okay,” she said to them. “Go wild.”

  And off they went, running in circles, Oswaldo in the lead. Rosalie draped the leashes around her neck.

  “Do you think Jay’s actually going to be here?” Anna asked.

  “Who knows? You heard what Lupita said.”