Cover

So Far from God

Also by Ana Castillo

I Ask the Impossible

Peel My Love Like an Onion

Goddess of the Americas

Massacre of the Dreamers

Sapogonia

My Father Was a Toltec

The Mixquiahuala Letters

Watercolor Women and the Opaque Man

Psst … I Have Something to Tell You, Mi Amor

Title Page

Dedication

To all the trees that gave their life to the telling of these stories

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A m’jito, Marcel, y a las siguientes siete generaciones

Acknowledgments

I am indebted to the members of the Southwest Organizing Project who assisted in my research; above all, for the inspiration I received from their consciousness, ongoing commitment, and hope.

Muchos thank yous to my apreciado editor, Gerald Howard, and, as always, thanks Susan B.!

“So Far from God—So near the United States”

PORFIRIO DIAZ, Dictator of Mexico during the Mexican Civil War

So Far from God

1

An Account of the First Astonishing Occurrence in the Lives of a Woman Named Sofia and Her Four Fated Daughters; and the Equally Astonishing Return of Her Wayward Husband

La Loca was only three years old when she died. Her mother Sofi woke at twelve midnight to the howling and neighing of the five dogs, six cats, and four horses, whose custom it was to go freely in and out of the house. Sofi got up and tiptoed out of her room. The animals were kicking and crying and running back and forth with their ears back and fur standing on end, but Sofi couldn’t make out what their agitation was about.

She checked the bedroom with the three older girls: Esperanza, the eldest, had her arms wrapped around the two smaller ones, Fe and Caridad. They were sleeping strangely undisturbed by the excitement of the animals.

Sofi went back into her own room where her baby, the three-year-old, had slept ever since Sofi’s husband disappeared. Sofi put the baseball bat that she had taken with her when checking the house back under the bed—“just in case” she encountered some tonto who had gotten ideas about the woman who lived alone with her four little girls by the ditch at the end of the road.

It was then that she noticed the baby, although apparently asleep, jerking. Jerking, jerking, the little body possessed by something unknown that caused her to thrash about violently until finally she fell off the bed. Sofi ran around to pick her up, but she was so frightened by her little daughter’s seizure she stopped short.

The baby continued to thrash about, banging her little arms and legs against the hard stone floor, white foam mixed with a little blood spilling from the corners of her mouth; and worst of all, her eyes were now opened, rolled all the way to the top of her head.