LULLABY FOR THE UNSEEN
1.
I DID NOT want to see a corpse. But I did want to.
So when mama said Don’t look as we approached the crowd, I squeezed my eyes shut until I saw sparks.
Although I must have watched a little when my eyelids got tired. And it does not count if it is only a tiny glimpse, a sneak peek at the how could this happen and the oh my lord and lady and all the saints, a glance of the but it was merely a child, only a monster would do something like this.
2.
There is a house that sits in the corner of two busy streets. It has a dirty coat of smog, mold, spit and piss. The once off-white walls are peeling, showing the house’s past lives when it was teal, bright yellow, maybe coppery orange. But barely anyone notices the house itself. People lean on its grimy walls not knowing—not wanting to know—someone lives there, perhaps no one does. This corner is used as an improvised bus stop because one day someone made the stop sign with their arm and the bus stopped and every other bus did too the next day and then the next, and they kept on stopping and people noticed. And when people notice something, things happen.
3.
Ariel. It is because of him that I have this scar.
He was my classmate. A very thin kid, shorter than me, with greasy black hair and sunken eyes that showed dark bags under them, maybe bruises, I do not know. He never cut his nails so the teachers reprimanded him constantly for that; until they grew tired, or stopped caring. He loved playing on the floor, I believe he did, because his school pants were soiled and had been patched several times.
4.
On the house that no one notices’ east side corner, steel grille adorns frosted glass panes showing that there were art deco pretensions in the early stages of construction of this brutalist-by-force building. The windows abruptly turn medieval as they approach the house next door, merely resembling arrowslits. If there was an attentive enough passerby, they would spot only one thing, though, the tinted-glass inverted crosses on the other side of the house.
5.
When I opened my Spanish notebook, I was greeted by Ariel’s handwriting: u like looking at kreepy stuff, don’t u? i’ll show u something kool.
I wanted to see, so I called mama and told her that I would be doing an assignment with my classmates after school, and that one of them would walk me home later in the afternoon.
6.
I’m telling you there are people in that house. I think they’re people. Some say they’re brujos. They keep duendes or some other small creature in that hideous place and charge fifty pesos to let you see them—or feel them—because the interior is pitch dark. Just before your eyes get used to the darkness, you hear tiny footsteps approaching and then something runs around and between your legs, scratching your skin, breathing warmly against it.
7.
Someone spread quicklime at the bus stop where the body had lain before. A couple of praying candles already burned out left smoke trails on the dirty wall.
Ariel said that the cool thing he wanted to show me was not on the street, but in his house. Inside, it reeked of rotten fruit and candle wax.
8.
A visitor who were to enter the house would notice that its door is comprised of three layers. A filigree wrought iron frame delicately covers ripple textured glass like in Spanish style buildings. But in the interior, a metal plate is carelessly soldered to the doorframe as a quick privacy measure or a way to not let light in.
9.
The dolls were carefully placed on an old sofa. Ariel said we could not touch them, only look. There must have been two dozen, maybe more. Unlike other dolls, their skin looked grey and wrinkly like old leather, their clothes were soiled. They all had bright eyes and long eyelashes, like the Christ child.
There are dolls that are not to be played with mama said one time in church when I asked about the ivory boy that was inside a bell jar.
10.
Similar to other local buildings, the house has an interior courtyard where a tejocote tree grows. Unlike those colonial houses, this space was not planned or intended, it came to be when a ceiling collapsed after an earthquake and was never rebuilt. Some of the rubble remains there because the inhabitants of the house refuse to take it out.
11.
We played in the inner courtyard where there are stairs that do not go anywhere. From the top, I could see a small house made out of rubble. Ariel told me it was the dolls’ house and I laughed because an ugly house was perfect for his ugly dolls. I said that, contrary to what he promised, they were not cool at all. He pushed me down the dilapidated stairs.
My eyebrow needed six stitches. Mama said I was lucky I did not lose an eye. She did not say anything about me lying to her, but I know she is disappointed in me. She will not let me play near Ariel’s house anymore.
12.
Sleep, my little one.
The boy’s inside the house.
And he is very tiny.
And he has broken bones.
Hushaby, my love.
The house is full of shadows.
And you seek praying candles.
And you hear praying songs.
Sleep, my little one.
The darkness is inside.
And you heard him approaching.
And you will feel his hands.
Hushaby, my love.
The boy has long, long nails.
And he walks in the shadows.
And he is very dead.
13.
A girl goes to that house alone, but no one notices her. No one sees her ringing the doorbell that sounds like a muffled buzzing coming from inside. Only she hears quick, small footsteps, like a child’s. But no one comes to answer. She rings again, and again she hears the buzzing and the footsteps that sound like moving away this time. She waits, but no one answers. She knocks on the metallic doorframe with a coin, then puts her ear close just to hear the footsteps further away. Yet she feels someone on the other side of the door listening, waiting, breathing heavily. She knocks again and says she’s one of Ariel’s friends from school who came here to forgive him. To ask him to forgive her. She apologizes for being so insistent right now, but she feels bad for what happened, for what she said that day. But she now has an answer to his question: She does, she loves looking at things she should not.
I saw your dead body that day on the floor, Ariel. I want to see you again.
No one notices that she slips a sheet of paper under the door. Her tight handwriting in sparkling purple ink. She apologizes again, but she thinks she should go home and stop bothering. Yet she stays to hear the rustling of paper. And the breathing on the other side sounds stronger and the small footsteps come closer and a metallic click reverberates.
And the door opens.