Kind of Monster
✧ 2023 Ned Stuckey-French Nonfiction Contest Winner ✧
As girls, it started with Selena, Malinche, and La Llorona. Stories of bullets and blood, heartbreak hauntings that helped us understand our identity.
We were the exact age between then and there—middle school aged, dating boys aged, parents fighting aged. I call us girls, though what I mean is practically untapped, and preparing for what follows that.
We were young Chicanas. Though West Texas was Brown and white all around us, and we didn’t know who girls like us were meant to be. Instead, we relied on ourselves to grow the world of our culture. We listened to the wide-awake moon croon Selena’s “Dreaming of You” deep into the night. We found ojo, the bad-luck eye that scared us from looking at each other with envy. We spun around in the bathroom mirror, chanting names when we wanted to believe in the ghosts on the other side.
These pieces were tucked under mica rocks or hidden inside closets, waiting to be pulled out. Once we discovered them, we held them to our hearts. We carried them into our dreams.
§
In girlhood, there was stealing and unfair borrowing. There was the copying of outfits and bodies.
I want this, I once told Mom, showing her a photo of Selena Gomez’s feather-straight layered hair in one of her early music videos. Mom relayed the message to her hairstylist. We all stood together in a huddle at the salon, anticipating my small iPhone screen to deliver my deepest wishes. But the music video would not buffer, and Terry could not get a good look at Selena’s hair. We were inside the walls of Grandma’s old shop—no Wi-Fi, no windows. Just old people and hair shears. I left the salon looking like myself, which was the last thing I wanted.
At that age, I didn’t know much about myself outside of the reflection other people pointed back at me. I stole every bit of other girls that I could get my hands on: the oversized graphic t-shirts, the hoop earrings, the crushes. Occasionally, it ended poorly, like when my first boyfriend broke up with me for the girl he’d dated just before. He was mine first, she told me in the doorway of the middle school locker room, where we changed from girls to ounces inside. In high school the following year, girls harassed me over this same boy, though I no longer wanted him or even really thought of him at all. They’d stand behind me in the lunch line, susurrating threats in my ear: She’s not nearly as pretty as I expected.
But when it came to us Mexicana girls—to our Chicana identity—there was only sharing.
§
Our group was elastic and borderless. At school, we were always fluctuating, adding in new girls here and there. Not everyone was always Mexicana; not everyone was always Latina. But in my memory and in this story, four girls stick.
May was the furthest from me. She was quiet, with a laugh that turned boys’ heads. Her tan never lost its undertones of brown, not even in the deepest cut of winter. She had hazel-green eyes that reminded me of my Bratz dolls. May was the first person I ever met who I thought could become a real model: long fingers, polished oval nails, careful posture, a certainty coursing through her. She was like those girls on America’s Next Top Model—unwilling to break easily. I never heard her say a bad word about anyone, ever.
Vanessa and Stella were inseparable, two sisters split at birth. I loved them, and I loved ferociously just adjacent to them. Stella spoke with a lisp. She had the prettiest, squarest teeth I’d ever seen. She was always kidding, always smoking weed with the boys we hung around in class. I was not allowed to hang around the boys outside of class, but Stella did—in cars, in tents, in bleachers. She was the cool girl in every movie. Under her eyes were shadowy bags that only made her face look more chiseled, cheek-boned, and strong-jawed. She wore two long French braids, woven so black they turned to purple garden snakes alive under the sun.
Vanessa was the daydream. Petite girl, precious heart, a smile like Heidi Klum. She was the school sweetie. During class, she passed around her purple JanSport. One by one, we all reached our hands inside. The bag moved down aisles of desks, each of us pulling out handfuls of the Hot Cheetos she picked up from the gas station across the street. When the bell rang, the whole room left with stained red fingers.
Holding us together was Ambrosia. She had hair like ink and sideways-comma eyes. She was our leader but in the most generous of ways. When she felt the pause of summer’s uncertainty begin to stretch around us, she turned to us and said, Should I make my brother take us to the mall?
We all nodded, yes, yes. Or, no, no, let’s stay here, settling ourselves around her kitchen table. Ambrosia had a house that welcomed all of us in. Behind the yellowing grass and bush clovers out front, the door fell open. There were always bodies inside: cooking, calling through the walls, sitting in front of the glow of the television, laughing at George Lopez, or howling at Scary Movie 1, 2, and 3. Her family rarely put on any kind of special show for us, which I both liked and felt unnerved by. I came from a family who cleaned every surface of the house before our guests arrived. We never let ourselves be seen bare. But Ambrosia’s family was not like that. Her brother would bully me if I gave him the chance. Her grandmother would get onto us for bringing mud into the house if we weren’t careful. And though their authenticity scared me, I also knew it meant that they loved us.
Even me—the confused Chicana girl, hanging on to every story, every word, carrying details home in my pockets to scatter across my bed for studying later.
§
In those days, summer was for Baby Bash and the sea green community pool. It was for lakeside walks and fresh celebrity gossip—Nina Dobrev’s vampire boyfriends, Jelena’s breakup, Ashley Tisdale’s new nose. Back then, our city was not anything but home, though we girls could feel ourselves growing bigger inside of it. We’d walk through our neighborhoods together at dusk, where the setting sun hung against the sky as a cantaloupe moon, and feel the breath of the world hit our shoulders. We were thirteen.
Around the lake lips of Lubbock, we heard the water cries of La Llorona. She was the Indigenous woman who drowned her babies in rage after finding her lover with another woman. We felt the breeze of La Lechuza’s owl wings brushing against the backs of our thighs as the world got darker, warning us to get home before she ripped into our plum-hearts. La Lechuza was the witch who warned her village that the Devil was on his way. Once night fell, she was hunted down, and burned by the townsmen who feared her omen. They did not consider that the Devil was them.
But we believed La Lechuza. We heard her whistle cries, and we felt the Devil’s echoes in the form of the Night Hag, watching us sleep, knees on our chests, pressing our spines into the mattress like railroad tracks ready to be burned through.
We knew these women-monsters were real. Everyone around us knew these stories. Usually, Ambrosia’s brother or May’s cousins told us about them. Born from the mouths of men, these stories made sense to us. Of course, women would turn vengeful under their tongues. Women could turn into anything a man wanted because the world would believe him.
We knew from early on that there is no right way to be a Chicana girl, but there are a million wrong ones. You cannot be too white to be unidentifiable; you cannot be too dark or else you’ll be forgotten as Latina altogether. You can’t have an accent punctuating your tongue, but you should be fluent in Spanish, even if your parents forget to teach you. Don’t talk back; transcend your treacherous fate as a woman. Go far and chase the stars. Don’t leave us behind.
We knew we had to stick together, Ambrosia and May and Vanessa and Stella and me, or else we might be named next.
§
Mostly, the details we collected came from the TV. Anything for Selenas, we said, studying J. Lo’s lip-lined pout. Or, Secuurity, secuurity from Anjelah Johnson’s Bon Qui Qui comedy skits. We recited her nail salon bit, too, mimicking the lilting accent of fictional Chinese nail tech Mei Ling. We never considered that we might be perpetuating harm toward other people by repeating these skits, but that doesn’t mean that we weren’t. We were following the lead of every Latina we could see. We didn’t know what colorism or classism or racism were, not really. This is how rituals that didn’t belong to us slipped into our grip; this is how we played unnuanced pretend.
The better details came from our 7/11 snacks—Hot Cheetos with nacho cheese and white plastic forks; AriZona teas with sour candies on the side. They came from the folk stories each of us girls collected. From our matching accessories—gold and silver bracelets and rings, borrowed back and forth in the schoolyard.
This kind of sharing continued as I grew older with new Latinx friends. In high school, Shelby and Dee taught me superstitions around the aisles of the grocery store. Their grandmother, who they call Mom, said prayers for us girls while their Grandpoo cooked us chorizo on the stove. In college, JJ and Camila traded dating stories with me. Sitting on plush private university couches, slices of free paper-plate pizza on our laps, we unpacked what was machismo and what was just hetero.
My whole life, this is how Chicana culture made sense to me: girls, laughing and living, giving all our found pieces to one another, building a tapestry we could see ourselves in.
§
But we found uncertainty in our experiences too. Let’s travel back. Here we are, seventh grade. Ambrosia’s television lights up the carpet, microwave popcorn thumps in the kitchen. Pink Kool-Aid powder dusts itself over the counter. The air of Ambrosia’s house is as quiet as it can be with all of us inside of it. Her parents are asleep. Across the house, her brother strums a thick-necked bass in his room. We feel it hum through our chests. Time is a fortune we fold. We move from room to room in a clique, pressing our palms against every door frame.
Inside the kitchen, we promise that we will stay up until the sun rises to meet us. This oath makes me nervous; I have an intimate relationship with sleep and a fraught one with being unconscious around others. Even though these are the girls I trust the most in the world, I have seen what happens at sleepovers. I have seen Sharpies hit skin. I think: I will shove toothpicks in my eyes. I will hold Listerine between my cheeks until my whole face burns.
I watch Ambrosia stir the Kool-Aid, which will soon be a bloodstain on our lips. May wanders off to the leather couch in the living room so she can text some guy who is not her boyfriend, just some guy she met at the movies. It’s not even anything between them, she says.
Stella, Vanessa, and I stick close together. We stand in the quiet cathedral of Ambrosia’s kitchen, our elbows on the counter. We’ve just finished watching The Grudge for the third time. There’s a kick in horror movies that feels holy to us. We can’t get enough of the quick-flush beat of our hearts, pumping blood like bike pedals, going-going, as we sit side by side in the warmth of each other’s fear. This is our favorite way to practice, to bond.
Across the room, I’m watching Ambrosia’s wrist move in circles around the plastic pitcher. I don’t like Kool-Aid much, but I love the ritual of it. I’m obsessed with anything that might be considered a rite. I search for routines of life everywhere, but especially when I’m with these girls. The first fight my parents ever had: whether to raise me and my brother Catholic or Baptist. We ended up neither.
Holy crap, did you see that? Vanessa asks from beside me, grabbing my and Stella’s elbows. She’s staring at the black-mirrored window behind Ambrosia. Her eyes are wide.
What? Stella says, her body mirroring Vanessa’s. I drag my eyes to the window too, following them.
I saw something out there, she says, nodding toward the bushes out front. Ambrosia pulls her wet spoon from the pitcher. Red drops of Kool-Aid hit the tile floor.
We all move to the window, but the countertop is in our way. We need a better view. Ambrosia drops her spoon in the sink and says, Follow me, and we do until we’re heading for the front door. May plops her phone between the couch pillows and comes after us. The five of us cram our bodies into the entryway. Ambrosia pulls the thick wood door open until there is nothing but a locked glass door separating us from the night. Our faces mirror off it, pulling us closer. We lean in.
Then, we see it. Outside, in the bushes, there is a human face staring back at us. It’s a pale moonlit face, sneering with teeth, unhuman. We watch it blink at us, then move back into the bush, flashing gone before our hearts even hit our stomachs.
We don’t scream. Our breaths catch in our throats. We watch Ambrosia grab the wooden door, slap it shut, and snap the lock. We shoot ourselves back into the living room.
What was that, what was that, what was that, we say from the tucked corner of Ambrosia’s couch, knees hugged to ourselves. We do not wake her parents. We do not tell her brother. We laugh from the pits of our stomachs at the shock of that face. We decide, in the end, that it must have been a neighborhood cat, osmosed with our remembering of The Grudge.
It’s that same old story. Girls altogether, seeing what isn’t there.
§
We made it until sunrise. At the first sight of it, we dropped our bodies around the house—sharing Ambrosia’s bed, spread across the couches, sprawled out on the floor, exhausted. But before sleep could grab us, Stella began telling us the story of La Malinche, the Indigenous girl who was taken from her family and enslaved by her own people.
When Hernán Cortés arrived in the Paynala, he bought Malinche and a ton of other people from their families. But Malinche was valuable because she knew so many languages and could get along with just about anybody. Hernan was so impressed with her that he kept her around all the time. So obviously, they fell in love. Malinche hadn’t been loved or even really looked at in forever if that tells you anything. So, she helped him take over Paynala—all the homes of those who left her to suffer, all the children and the food. And they didn’t stop until there were no more Aztec or Mayan empires left at all, she said.
The blue-lit room was quiet as we waited for an ending, but one did not come. I would later learn that this was only one way to tell the story of Malinche. In some versions, she was a gift given to Cortés. In others, she was an orphan instead of a daughter. But this is how Stella told the story, rooting Malinche’s sad truth inside us.
In the darkness, we asked, What happened to her?
Stella’s voice was slow and close to sleep. They were the last words we heard before the heavy-tired rolled over us. She was named the traitor who ruined everything.
§
As we grew older, very quickly, boxes started appearing all around us. The boxes began telling us who girls like us could be.
CHECK ONE, the boxes said: Estacado or Coronado High School. Advanced Placement or Regular. Race or ethnicity. I got used to checking Coronado, AP, White and Latinx. I got used to the cool, hard press of melamine desks. I began staying after school for the yearbook and Calc tutoring. I spent hours in front of cable TV while completing thick layers of homework.
By the time I turned seventeen, I forgot what it meant to be a part of the girls who knew monsters. We had all either gone to different schools or no longer had class together. The boxes built our lives in different directions.
This is what it meant to get older: to feel the world shrinking.
§
The way the girls and I lost touch felt fated. It’s only when I look back that I can see how swiftly the cable of time slipped from our grip. Today, Ambrosia is a teacher in Lubbock. She posts love letters to her younger self on Facebook and girls comment things like, Your friendship changed my life. May is gone, off social media, and I know nothing about her, except that sometimes she and Ambrosia stay in touch. Stella and Vanessa are still friends, girls who travel miles and miles to see one another. I am the furthest away from all of them.
When I’m alone, I put the stories we collected as girls next to each other. The overlaps name themselves. All these stories contain bad women whom the world hates. All these women made only one mistake. All these women wanted love. All these women felt what they weren’t supposed to. All these women ruined everything for everyone. All these women were monsters, magicians.
All these women—exiled for eternity.
§
Sometimes, when I look in the mirror, I see a monster playing pretend as a woman.
She has slick oiled skin and pores deep like wells. Her complexion is neither brown nor white, but pockmarked red, and bumpy on the forehead. She has the ghost of a unibrow her mom taught her how to pluck and smeared winged liner that won’t stay put. Horrible black rings appear around her eyes at night when she washes her human face down the sink. She has muscles and teeth; she has makeup placed like a rite. She has a selfish heart that thinks of herself first. She is what men fear.
Other days, I see a girl. In her reflection: the face of everyone she’s ever loved, looking back, wide-awake, to her.
§
The Malinche tree, named after betrayal’s beauty, is also known as El Flamboyan, the Flame Tree—a symbol of pride and hope in Puerto Rico. It’s made of bursts of red brighter than lipstick. The branches are winding-limbed, nearly in motion. Right side up, this tree looks like a woman carrying a blooming burden on her back. Flipped, it looks like a shadowed figure standing over a pool of blood.
This tree has magical branches. They reach out, shadowing the earth from the sky heating up overhead. The trunk is thick and sure, a backbone taken for granted.
A backbone like the girls who used to carry my fear with me. When I look back on those girls, I see that they were the first Chicanas who taught me how to be. We were experts at pointing our love in the same direction.
Sometimes, I imagine all of us girls there underneath La Malinche’s shade, sharing stories about who we’ve let ourselves be.
CIARA ALFARO is a Chicana writer, romantic, and descendant of magicians from Lubbock, Texas. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Passages North, Mid-American Review, Subnivean, Swamp Pink, Best American Essays, and more. A Pushcart Prize nominee, Ciara is the recipient of awards and artist residencies from Iron Horse Literary Review, the AWP Intro Journals Prize, Colgate University, Hedgebrook, Good Hart Artist Residency, and the Anderson Center. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Minnesota.