“What happened to the dog?” the priest asked, realizing he had yet to meet the man turned into a sack of fleas.
“He died a couple years ago,” the witch responded. “A pack of coyotes killed him. He was old, and very small, and with only three good legs he couldn’t run too fast. He was easy prey for the wild canines. My two elder daughters laughed so hard when they learned how the poor dog had died that they slightly wet their undergarments. I laughed, too. It’s hard not to laugh when they do; their laughter is like lilting water. But I felt his passing. I too had become fond of him. He had a name. We called him Skinny.”
4
In which we are invited to a ball inside of a cemetery
As each of her two elder daughters turned nine, the mother continued her explanation, she took them to their first Sabbath, where they vowed to love and honor Satan and all things foul in a ceremony equivalent to the one nuns have when they commit to love the Lord and his church. Instead of wearing a bride’s white dress, a decked veil, and pearls and flowers woven in their hair, however, the two girls wore black gowns and bones of dead animals in their hair; and to complete the ceremony, instead of kissing a crucifix, as a bride of Christ would have done, they bent and kissed the Devil’s second mouth, the one in his posterior. The Devil found them agreeable and pretty, and after eating their offerings—a chubby unchristened baby each—he gave them a swarm of flies and a black toad as their familiars, to serve them in every matter in return for blood.
One year later, around the time the youngest turned six, the witch reckoned that the little girl was old enough to be introduced to the pleasures of infernal partying and began preparing her for the occasion of her first Sabbath. They walked to Third Street in Santa Monica and the woman bought for her a black dress and a pair of shoes at a pawn shop for twenty cents.
“It was a complete waste of money,” the woman interrupted her own story with a growl.
Getting new clothes made the little girl shiver with excitement. To her innocent eyes, the raggedy dress looked like an elegant gown, even if it was half-eaten by moths and had a few holes through which you could insert your fingers. She liked her new shoes especially. They happened to be her very first. Unlike her sisters, who had secrets to hide, she ran barefoot. If you have no secrets to hide, you can be spared a pair, was the mother’s reasoning behind it. Glass, nails, or hot pavement were not a real concern because, with the years, she had developed thick soles full of calluses. The new shoes were one size too big, but the mother wouldn’t pay for any better. It didn’t matter. The little girl squirmed with happiness the moment she tried them on. A little uncomfortable at first, she learned to walk in them gracefully, and before you could say la fée carabosse recoule, recule, recoula! she was running in them, jumping in them, clapping and dancing. Had she known what a princess ballerina looked like, she would have felt like one, but never had she seen any real dancer.
The mother had, however, and thought that her daughter looked ridiculous. When the little girl approached to say thanks with a curtsy, as she saw her sisters had done earlier for their presents, a silk ribbon for Victoria and a Japanese paper doll for Rosa, the witch gave her a box in the side of the head that caused her to stumble.
“You look like a monkey!” Victoria scowled at her when, back at home, the girl tried on her new garments.
“You look like a monkey’s butthole covered in vomit!” added Rosa.
It was an unfair comparison, to be honest, since neither one had ever seen a real monkey.
“SHUT UP!” the drunkard yelled from the bed, where he had been sleeping. “Shut up or I’ll give you good reason to cry!”
At night, while their parents slept, the two sisters bragged to the little girl about the countless delights of being the Devil’s servants. The two of them slept on a cot at the foot of their parents’ bed; the little girl slept on the floor over some damp rags by the hearth. From above, the sisters commented on how pleasant was the smell of sulfur that emanated from the demons, on how much fun it was to dance naked around the bonfire, how tasty were the bat-wings soup and the cake of lizards, how much wine and liquor they had drunk, and how much candy they ate during the Sabbath. All of this in a quiet voice, for they feared awakening their parents. They celebrated especially the qualities of the Devil: how brave, strong and beautiful he was; how powerful he looked as he munched unchristened babies in his jaws; how tall and dark he was, how thin was his waist, and how firm, round and hairy were his buttocks.
“It pains so much the way we love him!”
They expounded upon how much more charming and alluring the Devil was compared to the pale and bony Jesus that hung inside the Church they attended on Sundays, that looked down at you and knew all of what you did at all times.
“Even when you fart.”
“The Little Master closes an eye to all your misdemeanors.”
“He respects your privacy.”
“He doesn’t care about your noises.”
“He likes them.”
“He likes you the way you are. You don’t have to be nice—”
“—or to do nice things.”
“He likes it when you lie—”
“—and when you steal—”
“—or when you hurt people.”
“And he is so handsome!”
Victoria insisted that the Devil looked the best as a black dog; her sister, that as a buck he looked the most attractive. Both rejoiced in the memories of how low hung his balls and how thick was his penis. What a pleasure it was to celebrate his rise, drinking wine and cursing in all directions, dancing back to back with all the other witches, swearing by all high and mighty to cause grief and unhappiness to others!
The little girl listened in total fascination. The stories frightened her, but she wished with all her heart to succeed at the Sabbath.
“I made out with Prince Baal,” said Victoria, referring to the fiend as if he were a boy she’d met at one of her catechism classes.
“I kissed his buttocks,” said Rosa.
“I kissed the palms of his hands, his horns, and hooves,” argued again Victoria.
“Little thing,” Rosa played with her curls. “Unless you kiss his seat, no honor is transferred upon thee.”
On Friday morning, the three girls went to church. They were to take communion, bring the hosts back home, and mix them with baby blood and excrement to make biscuits for the Devil.
“It will be yummy!” Victoria laughed, spilling out of her mouth parts of her breakfast.
The little girl planned to obey her mother’s instructions to a T. Of course she did; one does not plan to fail, even if one is prone to failure. She thought all this as she played hoppity-hop with her new shoes, jumping over the ponds and running through the marshes on their way to the parish: She would confess her sins first. She would say that she had been mean, and that she had called her sisters bad names, as recommended by her mother; that she had fought with them, and that she’d been vain and disobedient. She wouldn’t tell the priest that she and her sisters had peed on her neighbors’ roof to make their son die of measles, however.
“Mami will be mad if we don’t keep that a secret,” Victoria reminded her with a threatening fist.
She would take communion, without salivating too much, lest she ruin the wafer, and she would hide it. Back at home, she would pee on it and mix it with chicken droppings and blood from the little brown pup, who still counted as a baby. She wouldn’t hurt him, just pull a few ticks off his pelt and squeeze them in the