Extracts from Medea Sang me a Corrido

MEDEA THE WITCH

‘It was a fireball.

Fuck, girl, a witch. Bit by bit, the fireball morphed into one of those army-green, fourth-generation Volkswagen Jettas. I was finally fucking losing it from all the weed, I thought. Fully unhinged. The pregnancy gave me a nervous breakdown. No, I swear I saw it, clear as day: a Jetta with winged snakes airbrushed on either side cutting through the sky over La Judas. It touched down in front of the mural to the Virgin of Guadalupe. One of the doors opened vertically—that’s right, girl, like a Lamborghini, that Jetta was souped up—and out stepped a woman dressed in all black. Her hair was done in these dope cornrows. Iconic, queen of the barrio. I saw her walk into my building. 

Five minutes later, she was knocking on my front door. What the fuck? I opened up, and there she was. A doña in her thirties, but, like, still hot. She had gray eyes and snake tats on her arms. My name’s Medea, she said, I’m here to help. I let her in, and she sat in the living room.’

MEDEA THE MIDWIFE

‘Medea told me to lie back on the couch. She felt around my belly and said: This isn’t an abortion anymore, it’s a premature birth. You’re about twenty-two weeks along. She told me the birth would be painful and extremely bloody, that the fetus would come out alive but wouldn’t survive, that it’d be grueling, both physically and emotionally, but she’d be with me every step of the way. I told her I’d made up my mind. The day before, I’d donated everything I’d bought for Eliot, my unborn baby, to a group of future mamas.

Medea opened her Carnicería La Bonita bag and pulled out a ton of herbs, vials, and medicines. She went to the kitchen. I followed her and sat on one of the stools at the breakfast counter. She grabbed an enamel pot, poured in a little water, and started throwing in dragon’s beard, common rue, Hades’s breath. She said every ingredient aloud, super theatrical and dramatic. A 360-degree vedette, girl, that was Medea. She sang and danced while dumping a ton of stuff in the pot. Finally, she set it on the stovetop and started chanting: Isis, Astarte, Diana, Hecate, Demeter, Kali, Inanna, again and again, twirling like a woman possessed while she chanted, but she did it to like a rap beat or whatever, like she was busting out a new single.’

MEDEA THE PSYCHOPOMP

‘The soldiers buried me off a small road near town, about a hundred meters from the asphalt. They dug a hole, tossed in my body, covered it with lime and dirt. Everything went dark, then I woke up in a desert. I heard barking in the distance and saw Belibellaco walking toward me with a woman. She was around thirty years old, white, snake tats all the way down her arms with the heads inked on her hands. Dressed in black. Giant hoop earrings, also snakes. Cornrows. She passed me Belibellaco’s leash. I hugged him and asked the woman: What the fuck? Where am I? Where’s Sardis? She said Sardis was alive, that he was in critical condition, but he’d pull through. 

She waved her hands and a table appeared, then a sofa. On the table was the food my old lady used to make. The woman in black gave me a music player and headphones, then hugged me like nobody had ever hugged me before. She said: Wait here for your mom. Your corrido is over, but it was a great one. Achilles and Ulysses would be jealous of everything you’ve accomplished. Then she kissed me on the forehead and shot through the sky in a snake-drawn carriage.’

MEDEA THE MOURNER

‘Medea sang under her breath:

Until we find them is the cry of the mothers who search—

of the fearless, untiring, all-terrain mothers,

admired but alone in an indifferent land.

What is the harvest of a land that sows bodies?

Walking the desert, the hills, the mountains,

the highways covered in huisache and mesquites.

Digging holes in the death camps.

Scraping earth from mass graves

with hands and shovels and machetes

with ice picks and sticks under the sun.

Until we find them.

Walking and walking and walking, searching, searching

with their faces hung from our necks like totems.

Walking and walking and walking, stick in hand,

tapping the ground in search of turned earth.

One hundred and thirty thousand missing.

Sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers.

One day they left home and never returned.’

MEDEA THE FEMINIST

‘I can’t change the past, maybe because my past was written by the misogyny of men, the same misogyny that has, for thousands of years, written us as emotional.

As evil, twisted, and depraved.

Or as good and pure.

No nuance.

As irrational.

Because the most heinous thing my creator could imagine was a bad woman who kills her children out of jealousy.

Because they’re too scared to write about a woman who cuts the balls off the unfaithful.

Because in their minds, women are unidimensional.

Flat.

Either angelically good or perverse troublemakers.

But we’re both.

At the same time.

How to write about a woman who breaks the mold?

Make her go crazy and murder her children.

And they call this a classic?

Great writers.

Geniuses.

Intellectuals.

I can’t change my past because it was written by a man,

but I can change my present,

if that present is written by a woman who helps me redeem myself,

who gives me more dimensions,

who makes me complex,

someone prone to mistakes but also to kindness.'