Cristina Devereaux Ramirez: our own up and coming professor and author
The Witch of Missouri Street
by Cristina D. Ramirez
I don’t remember what happened. I wasn’t even born. My family says, because of what happened, I was born with a birthmark in the perfect shape of a crescent moon on my shoulder. My brothers, sister and Tias all have their own version of the story, but I know the one my mother, Ramona, tells is the truth. When anyone mentions the story of the witch of Missouri street, my mother’s face goes as blank as a sheet of paper, and with the look in her eyes she seems to travel back to that time in 1941 to the western strip of Missouri Street in El Paso, Texas that is no longer there.
My family owned a mom and pop grocery story on the corner of Missouri Street and Ochoa called Gonzalez Grocery. Ramona opened the store a bit after the depression, and it served a large part of the Mexican barrio between Missouri and Wyoming Streets. The store was small, but it had the feel of home. The store was stocked with bread, milk, butter, flour, cheese, tortillas (flour and corn), fresh corn, vegetables and fruit. If you came in, you were a member of the barrio, the family. My mother like clockwork would wake up at 5 a.m. to prepare breakfast for my two older brothers and sister, and open the store. She would start the day by sweeping the front porch of dust that had covered it over night. People trickled in and out of the store all day. “Buenos días, Ramona!” The people would say. “Buenos días!” Ramona would answer back.
She loved her customers, and they loved her. She was a permanent fixture on the corner of Missouri and Ochoa Streets. My older brothers would come home after school and help by bagging groceries and throwing out the day’s trash. Women would come in the afternoons before getting busy with making supper. They would congregate, stand around the counters like birds, drink their coca-cola and eat sandwiches Ramona had made at the end of a long, desert day. The store would close around six, unless my mother knew that someone would be coming by later.
One cool late-February morning in 1941 when my mother was pregnant with me, she went to sweep the front steps of dust and dirt as she had always done, but that morning she found four large globs of cooled red wax poured on the cement and some other substance, foul-smelling, spread on the steps. Ramona stood frozen staring at the suspicious hardened wax and the excrement (caca) on the cement. Now, my mother was such a superstitious woman that if she accidentally put her dress on inside out, she would leave it on inside out until twelve o’clock in the afternoon, the change of astral time. We thought our mother superstitious because of the peculiar things she believed, so we knew the sight of the hardened wax would cause her great concern. She immediately thought that someone was trying to put a curse on her family. She cleaned it up as quickly as possible, and went about her day with the morning’s image strongly implanted in her mind.
As the sun crept over the sky and to the west, Soledad, or, Chole, a neighbor and regular customer, walked across the street from her house to Gonzalez Grocery for her afternoon snack and chat with my mother before she went off to work. Chole worked at a local factory. She worked nights and slept days. Chole would come home around 2 a.m., sit out on the second story balcony of her apartment and smoke a cigarette. This she had done for many years. But the night before, she had seen something unusual and had come to report it.
“Vi (I saw) this figure come out of de shadows, Ramona! De figure wore a black cape that fell in streams to de ground. Dios mio, I did not know what to do. The figure had a look of evil. I crossed myself many times and said de rosary I don’t know how many times. There were many shadows last night, because there was only a slice of the moon.” Sounding like a canary, Chole continued to recount in a mixture of Spanish and English what she had seen happen in front of Gonzalez Grocery.
“De figure stopped in front of your grocery store and started to dance ‘round. It was so strange. De figure went from one end of the store to the other many times. Each time it turned ‘round to go back, de breeze caught the long black cape and it fluttered high over the figure’s head like a wall of bats.” She got up and stretched her arms out and dipped one arm down and the other straight in the air moving like a windmill. She continued, “Te digo, (I tell you) it was a awful sight. Y luego de figure then pulled out a candle from de cape and lit it. It looked like she wanted to burn the store! This is when I really became scared, I thought she’d catch de store on fire. I heard a faint cry or moan as if someone was in pain. De noise for sure came from the direction of dis figure. I was frozen like de statues of saints I see at church. Ay, por el amor de Dios Ramona, que bueno (I’m glad) everything is all right. I don’t know what I would’ve done if your store had burnt down and I hadn’t done anything about it.”
“Ya, ya,” Ramona said, consoling this frightened kitten of a woman. “No te preocupes, don’t you worry, maybe the witch won’t come back,” Ramona said with a hesitant voice, as if she did not believe the words she had just uttered. As she heard the details of this event, Ramona quickly suppressed the idea that had quickly come to her mind — someone was trying to cast a spell, not on the store, but on her family!
Chole continued, “Well, you’d better believe that I will be out again tonight to see what happens. If I see de figure again, what should I do? We can’t have this witch casting spells on our gente. We must protect our souls.” Chole quickly added, all the while shaking in her shoes.
Ramona did not answer. She sat as quiet as midnight. Her eyes stared off out into a place beyond the windows. “No hagas nada. Do nothing. Just watch her and let us know what she does. Be careful.”
Chole stood and looked at my mother for a few moments. The glance they exchanged was a serious one, both knowing that this was not something to be taken lightly. They broke their gaze without another word, and Chole left for work. The bell on the door tinkled off in the distance.
The sun was now quickly dropping behind the clouds and mountains giving the houses and trees a bright red glow. The glow prompted Ramona to recall that the desert is a place of mystery and magic. That thought pulled her mind back to Chole’s description of the witch in black scattering melted wax and spreading caca at the store’s doorstep. She scanned her memory as if looking through an old book and tried to find a reason why someone would want to do this.
Like finding a hunted word in the dictionary, a moment stood out in the pages of her mind. She remembered one night a few years back that she had had to walk home from the border town of Juarez. She had gone to the Mercado for some needed groceries she could not find in El Paso. The night was only moments away and her arms were loaded with food. She would catch a trolley in Juarez and be across the border in El Paso in no time.
As Ramona began to walk more quickly, a woman appeared from behind an adobe building. The woman’s face was dark and leathery from a life spent in the sun. Her hair was as black as a crow’s, long and matted. She wore an old, dirty blouse that showed her aged, sagging breasts and a long brown skirt that ruffled out from the waist; it was smeared with dirt and grass stains. Ramona stopped in her tracks frightened by the sudden appearance of the woman. Ramona’s eyes and the eyes of the woman met. Ramona recalled the eyes were those of a bruja, a witch — they were deep jade in color, and seemed to hold the universe. The women stood frozen by their gaze until the strange woman held out her hand to Ramona.
When she spoke, her voice was raspy like a paper bag, and asked in Spanish, “Do you have anything to spare for a poor woman and her hungry child?” The tone reminded Ramona of a border agent asking for her papeles, her papers. Keeping the woman’s gaze Ramona said, “I have nothing for you.” Now, night had taken hold within the few moments she had passed with the woman. Ramona said no more and began again on her way home. She felt that people passed her like ghosts.
Now, almost three years later, Ramona knew this old woman had come propelled by her memory of Ramona’s selfish rejection of a stranger, to impart revenge on her. At once Missouri Street seemed to sense the fear that permeated Ramona’s being. News of the unexpected visitor spread like a hungry fire from ear to ear, home to home. People retreated to their places of safety. No one came to the store that afternoon. They were going to wait for the witch to come again that night. The people of Missouri Street planned to wait for the visitor and capture her.
The night crept along its familiar path and began to hide the unfamiliar. Chole walked home this windless night not merely looking ahead, but behind her, between the bushes and at each shadow she passed. She stumbled upon her house without being aware of it, and scurried indoors. She walked out onto her balcony, sat down and lit her cigarette as if it would summon the figure out of the shadows of Missouri Street.
Chole looked at her watch, 1:58 a.m. With her cigarette hanging out of her mouth, she looked up and down the street. Her heart froze. The shadows stirred. She squinted her eyes and a figure was born out of the shadows and into the pale light. The figure, covered in black, floated to the front of Gonzalez Grocery and into the meager light of the street lamp. Chole did not know what the people of Missouri Street had planned to do. They, too, were watching what she was witnessing. It was the witch!
The night stood still as the witch moved from one end of the grocery store to the next. She took out her candle to light it to begin her gyrations, and began to moan, perhaps an incantation. From out of the darkness and shadows, a brave soul cried out, “La bruja, the witch, agarrenla! Get her!” From the curtain of night and into the light of the street lamp, people emerged with sticks, pipes and ropes to capture this intruder. About ten people ran down the street after this black-cloaked figure. They were an angry mob seeking the one who had committed a foul deed and were ready to deliver justice. The witch ran from the mob disappearing in and out of the shadows of Missouri St. The cape fluttered high in the air around the corner of Octavia Street, two blocks away, and into the closest alley. The mob caught up to the witch as they all came to a wall at the dead-end of the alley.
The moment hung in the cool February air as everyone stopped and caught their breaths. They stood staring at their victim, and knew they had the witch captured. The witch stood staring back. Her eyes were those of a cat. They glowed the color of jade. The mob stood motionless staring at the jade-fire eyes. She twirled around. Her cape fluttered high above her head while she laughed at their humanness.
Now, there are several versions of what happened. The people who were there saw things differently. Some say the witch picked up a piece of caliche (hard dry, chalk-like dirt) and drew the silhouette of a horse and carriage on the wall she had backed into. Some heard a loud neigh, and the rattle of carriage wheels as they saw her jump into the drawing as if into the carriage and disappear into the wall. Others say she turned herself into an owl and flew into the shadow of a mulberry tree whose branches spread above the wall. There was never agreement among the crowd about how the witch disappeared. There was agreement in only one fact – even though cornered, the witch had escaped!
I don’t remember what happened. I wasn’t even born. I was born May 9, 1941, four months later. On my left shoulder there is a perfect mark of a crescent moon. There are several accounts of the story that are still told around dinner tables with family who remember that night. Some say the witch didn’t get her spell cast. Others say she did. All the same, Gonzalez grocery is there no more.
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epourstory 