Rosa de la Muerte (Rose of Death)

Sallow light plays a twisted game of hide and seek against the shadowy backdrop of her workbench; jagged glimmers occasionally wink from her deadly tools as theyre deftly maneuvered. A solitary fly bumps its fat, sickly green body against the flickering florescent light; casting macabre shadows along the walls adding a sense of desperation to the already chilled room. Her family has never approved of her work; saying its not appropriate for someone her age and upbringing, especially not here, not in Little Mexico. Who would protect her they had asked; with all the gangs, murderers and rapists. Moving to Dallas in the early 1970s, she interviewed for many jobs, refusing all offers until the day she walked into Capilla de la Paz Eterna. The waiting room, with its faded Madonnas, suffocating scent of a thousand snuffed candles and long dead flowers, echoing of heartbreak and tears, had appealed to something visceral and deep inside her. Sitting there, she had looked into the faces around her; faces twisted with hopelessness, heavy beneath veils of suffering and torment. Their eyes, clouded and full of despair, looking back at her with half vanquished hope she had something to offer them; something to deaden the ache of emptiness in their souls. The life they wanted returned, she couldnt offer, but something else instead. Rosa de la Muerte they call her now; the Rose of Death. A morbid title to be sure but proof of appreciation for her ability to take a form, mangled by deaths cold hand, and return to it the face of a lover, a sibling, a parent or a friend. Hands moving with the dexterity of a surgeon; she bends over her work, hardly noticing the dankness of her surroundings; oblivious to the fallen body of the fly who, just minutes earlier, had been filled with determination and life. Music is her muse with the soothing rhythms enticing her hands into their dangerous yet competent tango; she hums along, the discordant notes of Sonic Youths Kool Thing providing an odd yet vibrant backdrop to the somber scene. This one had been especially bad; the young face so badly damaged, la policia used dental impressions to identify the body. The boy, barely thirteen, had been cut down by a hail of bullets walking his younger sister to her first day of school. Surviving only because of the shielding body of her older brother, little Maria had been inconsolable; primal cries escaping from her small body as she clung to his damaged, lifeless body. For the forty minutes it took them to carry away his body, all she knew was the ugliness of hatred; her innocence fading along with the light in her brothers eyes. Straightening from her tedious work; she reaches for a small, worn photograph with one hand while massaging the small of her back with the other. She stares critically at her work; eyes occasionally shifting to glance at the picture she holds. Many hours she has spent, lovingly and carefully recreating this masterpiece that had been so angrily and pointlessly undone. Finally, satisfied and spent, she

simply nods to herself. Twin faces look back at her, the one in the photograph now mirrored on her slab. Tomorrow this face will bring a much needed respite to a mourning mother and a bandage to the torn heart of a sister. Nobody needs to know the wreckage that lies beneath the surface; those are her secrets. She has made him beautiful once again; that is her gift and of it, she gives willingly.

Christine Coulson November 24, 2010