Osprey - 1-5-2016 at 07:21 AM
The term "Let sleeping dogs lie" comes to mind but since you woke me up here's a piece some of you might enjoy. 4 pages.
Auralia
I guess almost everyone in Santa Isabela knew about Auralia and her problems at the ranch near Los Frailes. The place is hard to find, just a hard
scrabble little outpost up a lonely canyon in the Trinidad mountains. Several years ago I heard about the goat woman but not enough to even wonder
about what that meant, who she was. Later I heard scant talk about her strange behavior, her unhealthy relationship with the animals.
Now the whole village is abuzz with talk about her, how to help her, who should go down there. What changed was the fact that her husband Rigo had a
run in with a steer and can’t keep the place together any longer and they need help. People have tried to help before but way back when, Rigo shunned
the charity they offered – Auralia would give any foodstuffs that came their way to the goats and because goats will eat almost anything it did the
family unit little good to receive the meager help from DIF and people from the municipio.
Carmen Cosio is taking up a little collection of foodstuff to try to get it directly to Auralia and the rancher and perhaps convince her that her
beloved goats can only survive if she feeds herself, keeps up her waning strength. Carmen is the one who told me the back story about the animals.
Many long years ago Auralia lost two baby girls, one after the other and somehow the trauma caused her to totally transfer her natural feelings as a
mother to the many goats that follow her daily around the ranch. So great became the bond that she believes all the goats are her natural children.
As far as I know no one has been able to convince Auralia she needs mental care – the would-be care givers use the word demente but since she’s never
been examined nobody can say how this situation came to be, what exactly is her mental condition and how, if possible, she could get help. Her only
known relatives are her sister Maria and her niece, Monica who live together in Cabo Pulmo, the little village that is a part of a popular marine
reserve not far from the ranch.
I drove over to Carmen’s house and delivered some supplies for the family. Carmen and her sister planned to drive the long bumpy, dusty road to the
ranch the next day to see what they could do. About six that evening Carmen called to say her sister could not make the trip and asked if I would like
to spend the day with her on the trip. I had many misgivings but I let my heart rule my head and told her I would be ready with a cooler, lunch and
refrescos at my front gate at seven the next morning.
Cabo Pulmo is a very small village so we left early hoping somebody there would lead us to Maria’s house to ask for help from Maria and Monica. It was
a good move because it took us a while to make the drive, spot somebody up early, find the house and beg for an interview. They were both there but
were not willing to help as we had hoped. Monica said for years they had tried to lure Auralia away from the ranch so they could take her to Chametla
near La Paz and have her examined. Between Rigo’s rath and threats, Auralia’s insane babbling and fury and the goat’s nipping and butting it was
really no contest.
They told us the police would not help, Mexico’s social services offices visited the ranch several times, left some food and medical aid but did not
make a difference in conditions there. Padre Alfonzo of San Jose del Cabo also tried and was sent packing by the daunting obstacles in his path to
intervention and aid.
Carmen was very disappointed. She had planned on taking one or both of Auralia’s relatives to the ranch for support; on their last visit to the ranch,
Auralia appeared not to recognize them and when she became agitated Rigo had asked them to leave. I began to have doubts about my visit --- would just
the sight of a stranger, a gringo, make things even harder for Carmen to get some communication going.
Before we could rethink the visit, we found ourselves slowly driving right through the open gate to the ranch and stopping close to the house, the
woman and the sights and smells and sounds of her large troop of goat-children.
Before Auralia could retreat to the house, Carmen was out of the car smiling and waving and saying her name; beckoning Auralia to wait, to come closer
to the car. I stayed put and just tried to be a harmless witness.
Here’s what the witness saw. Next to the house was a beater pickup truck with a flat tire. Beyond, behind the house I saw part of another newer
truck. Something or someone was moving among the trees up in the crease of the canyon. A man, I presumed the husband, Rigo was on a wooden
bed-mattress affair on the porch --- his typical cowboy hat, jeans, western shirt were terribly soiled as was the filthy cast that covered his broken
leg.
There were seven adult goats and twice that many kids butting and playing around the woman as she moved. Auralia looked to be about sixty or more
years, barefoot, wearing an old worn dress. While Rigo motioned for Carmen to go away, Auralia seemed torn between retreat and coming forward. Carmen
pushed her way through the goats and finally reached out to Auralia to hug her, touch her. When Carmen told her she had food for the children, Auralia
walked with her to the rear of the car. Carmen had made up two food boxes, one for the goats, one for the house.
While Auralia smiled and pawed through the goat food, Carmen grabbed the other box and headed for the house with Auralia and the herd now following
both women. They came back out of the house minus one food box and the two women spent the next few minutes chatting and feeding the frolicking herd.
Carmen hugged her one last time and got back in the car and we made our quick and quiet exit.
“Wow, Carmen, good moves with the hugs, the boxes. What did she say?”
“Nothing I really wanted to hear. She kept talking about the federales. I couldn’t make any sense of it. Maybe they had visits by federal police about
the animals or some ranch child around here not attending school.”
“I did see something, someone up beyond the trees moving about. I thought at first it was a goat but whatever it was it was taller than a goat, way up
above the cottonwoods.”
“Well, it was a good start I think, a first step. I’ll come back in a couple of weeks and do this again until I get her to open up a little. She
started saying my name right there at the end.”
It had been a long day so after a light meal and a shower I turned in early but could not sleep. The whole ranch trip had a haunting quality I
couldn’t shake. The woman I saw at the ranch was active and animated and I just can’t think of her as the victim of Alzheimer’s disease so she must be
psychotic, delusional but not likely a danger to herself or others.
In the quiet darkness of my room I looped what I imagined it might be like for her tortured days and nights trying to satisfy all her animal children
while finding some water and scraps for herself and perhaps Rigo. Digging in the ruined garden would surely lead to stifling frustration. I can see
her and her troop at first light trudging up to the seep at the mouth of the canyon to start the day with a few small sips of water right out of the
ground. Likely the same water with the same bacteria that took her two babies.
I believe infant deaths by dehydration are rampant in the tropics --- diarrhea signals to the mother that the child needs water/milk/food to survive
but sometimes that’s just not enough and their homes, the children are too far from stores and clinics to get serious help and life-saving liquids
administered in time. Perhaps Auralia thinks she is saving the baby goats, as she might have saved her two babes, with precious liquids as soon as the
light shows her where the water is.
Perhaps the balance of her daylight struggle is a cruel and continuous scavenge of a canyon stripped of every living thing by animals which, on other
ranches, at least return to the ranchers the sustenance of milk, cheese and meat to keep their caring shepherds fit and healthy.
Rigo’s life is joyless. He has worn out his welcome at all the ranches and homes of friends in the area; they know the costly animal feed they give
him will be used in the wrong way, feeding Auralia’s sickness and her animals. He begs for food from neighbors that Auralia takes from him with the
promise she’ll eat it but he knows it’s all in vain, all a crazy lie with no malice attached.
I know I should try to sleep, close off my restless mind and stifle the imagined miasma that must hang in the terrible stillness of the old house at
night. The more I fight it, the more I seem to be drawn inside the strange and awful reality the woman faces until fatigue takes her down to fitful
sleep.
At my place, I don’t know whether I slept that night or not. I made the morning coffee while the sky was still an inky curtain and an hour later I
decided that you don’t have to lose your own precious babies to feel the pain. You only need to come close to those who sometimes suffer from the
subtle dangers of tribal life in rural Mexico. Over time it might be possible that you can be infected by the madness an old woman carries in her head
or feel yourself following her and her furry family through the murky dawn to the clanking of a brass bell.
AKgringo - 1-5-2016 at 10:04 AM
It is good that you were able to release a couple of more inmates from the asylum of your imagination. It has to be over crowded in there!
Well done, vivid characters,,,,as always!
BigBearRider - 1-5-2016 at 10:11 AM
Good story. Thanks for posting.
nandopedal - 1-5-2016 at 02:34 PM
Well done, and by the way if you ever want to meet somebody with a great deal of resemblance to Auralia just go visit Rancho Guadalupe up in the
Sierra de San Francisco, it is the last ranch right before you enter Canyon de Santa Teresa, the few families that live there seem to be able to help
a woman that lives nearby by herself and about 20 or so goats, two times that I have been there I have seen her, Ramon Villavicencio one of the guides
to the murals told me that she lost it when her husband passed...........or was that the inspiration for your fiction?
Osprey - 1-5-2016 at 02:59 PM
Nando, that's a long way for me to travel in my current condition. As to inspiration: I heard a rumor from two different Mexican ladies in town about
The Goat Woman and that's all I needed for the whole story.
Olivia, the lady who cleans our house was telling me about a trip she was about to take to one of our local ranchos where she said her aunt, who died
some years ago, once lived with some goats. I read her snippets of the story (in my fractured Spanish) and she began to cry. When she embellished,
filled in the blanks, it was like she was the author of the piece.
To say thanks and to please her I'm having a professional translator in Mexico translate the piece for her and her family.
Maybe I'm channeling for some of my Mexican neighbors and friends. Maybe Alaska Maxx is right and my fictional characters are escaping from the
asylum.
gnukid - 1-5-2016 at 03:08 PM
in the mountains above La Ribera
[Edited on 1-5-2016 by gnukid]
Udo - 1-5-2016 at 03:23 PM
..."while the sky was still an inky curtain..."
Just think about that for a few minutes...
A brilliant metaphor, Jorge!
Only you could come up with such a poetic writing, George.
Sweetwater - 1-5-2016 at 03:31 PM
Well written, Gracias.