The Ten Percent of Me That Still Asks

by Alba Machado

I laughed out loud at a woman recently. Like a bully. My cousin, Angie, and I, were at Walgreens, on one end of the refrigerated aisle and the woman, another shopper, was on the other end, easily twenty feet away from us. Angie dropped a box of ice cream bars and the woman said—from twenty feet away—“Oh, did I do that?” And then I said, “YOU ARE STANDING TWENTY FEET AWAY FROM US. DO YOU HAVE TELEKINESIS?” And then I laughed out loud, but, really, only like 90 percent of me was laughing. The other ten percent was asking, “DOES she have telekinesis?”

We’re more than 200 years beyond the Age of Reason but, still, we like our magic. We like to look up our horoscopes and make birthday wishes. When I was a kid, I loved it that my Mexican grandma put a raw egg in a bowl of water and left it under my bed so it would suck all the cold and flu out of me, and I loved it that my Cuban grandma left little cups of rum on the altar she built for her patron saint, Santa Barbara, saint of explosives.

And then, at fifteen, I found Jesus magic. This guy, he fed 5,000 people with only five loaves of bread and two fish, or maybe it was 4,000 people with seven loaves of bread—it depends on who you believe, John or Matthew—but either way, it’s impressive. Of course, you had to follow his rules, and there were a lot of them, and one of them was no other magic besides Jesus magic. For me, it was not easy to avoid non-Jesus magic. Not with Ouija boards and palm reading and Susie Castillo’s friendship bread, which was a Tupperware of dough that got passed around from friend to friend, each taking one-fourth of it, baking it, eating it, and replenishing the remaining dough with more doughy ingredients—a Tupperware of dough that really did seem like magic when it opened itself up in the middle of the night with a loud pop and you were not yet aware of how yeast worked. There was non-Jesus magic everywhere.

I even had a friend who called herself a Santera. Jackie Ramirez. I was at her place one day to tell her about Jesus and I really hoped she’d become a follower, too, because she, of all people, needed his kind of magic, not just because she practiced witchcraft, but also because she was a sixteen-year-old girl who had a two-year-old baby and a 25-year-old baby daddy—who was abusive. His name was George and she loved him. She told me that she loved him so much that just the day before she made him a big, fancy spaghetti dinner with a very special ingredient in the sauce: about two tablespoons of her menstrual blood. It was a love spell. As luck would have it, shortly after she finished explaining this to me, he appeared outside, yelling for her to let him in. “He’s drunk,” Jackie said to me. “He’s drunk and I never let him in when he’s drunk, because if I do he’ll just hit me, and then, later, he won’t even remember.” She told me that part of her love spell addressed just that. It was not only a stay-with-me spell; it was also a stop-beating-me spell. The shouting was joined by pounding and kicking and it all got louder and louder until there was a wail, a thud, and then silence. George was on the cement. We thought he’d just passed out from too much drinking, but, later, Jackie told me that he’d damaged a nerve in his leg and could no longer walk. He needed her to take care of him, so he wouldn’t leave. And he was confined to a wheelchair, so he wouldn’t beat her anymore. And ten percent of me was asking, “WHAT COULD I DO WITH MY MENSTRUAL BLOOD?”

And then there was Hector Barbosa. He was not a magic person. But for a brief, unforgettable moment, he helped to make me into a magic person, even though he came along well after high school, after it became a lot easier—and more desirable—for me to avoid magic, both the Jesus and non-Jesus varieties. Hector worked with me at a middle school on the southwest side of Chicago. We were both aides. He seemed nice enough at first; he was funny, he showed me the ropes, and most of the kids seemed to like him. I liked him. Until I didn’t. Until we were riding home from the Museum of Science and Industry with 70 fifth graders and I sat next to little Ahmad, who was doing his very best impression of a big boy, a boy who doesn’t cry, a boy who doesn’t tattletale, only I saw the shaking, the tears welling up in his eyes, and I asked him, I said, “Ahmad, sweetie, what’s wrong?” and after some hesitation, he finally told me that Francisco Garcia punched him in the face—because Hector told him to do just that. Hector. Grown-up Hector. The one whose job it was to do the exact opposite of telling one kid to punch another kid in the face. I comforted Ahmad the best I could, and then, when we got back to school, I pulled Hector aside to ask him what happened, and he said, “You know how it is. Frankie’s my boy. And that Ahmad kid’s a prick. He’s always following Frankie around, like—like a faggot. So, yeah, I told Frankie to handle his business.”

One of the things I loved most about Jesus was that, with his rulebook, you didn’t have to worry about whether or not your conscience was out-of-order; the book would tell you what was right and what was wrong. It was so easy. I could have told Hector, “Oh my god, your conscience is broken. You need this book.” But, then, the book might have been okay with punching people like Ahmad, since it was more than okay with throwing rocks at people like Ahmad—until they were dead. It’s a big part of the reason I wasn’t a fan anymore. Magic wasn’t going to help me now—or so I thought.

If you would have seen me the next few days, all you would have seen was a pudgy woman sitting at a dingy, battered desk with five shelves of old textbooks mounted on the wall behind me, like always. The way I felt, though, I was a cowboy in one of those old Westerns, perched at a window with a stalk of wheat between my teeth and a shotgun in my lap, waiting for the bad guys to show up. Hector had been reprimanded for his actions. He was now on probation. He was now required to have another adult present while he worked with children, at all times. And, of course, he was well aware that he had me to thank for all that.

I expected him to barge in guns a’ blazing. But he didn’t. He took his time. He let a full week pass and then when he finally appeared, I was alone, and his movements were slow and deliberate, like a predator who knew his prey was trapped. I tried to seem unimpressed while I wished I had health insurance and wondered why I never invested in pepper spray. I mean, he had a boxer’s physique and I wore granny panties. I knew I was unmatched. But still, when he got four feet away from me, I placed my hands on the desk, palms down, so I could get up, look him in the eyes and tell him in my very best impression of a big girl, “I’m not scared of you.” But I never did get up. I never did say anything. The very moment I placed my hands on the desk, palms down, all five of those shelves behind me came crashing down with the thundering weight of bronze, plywood, 125 or so thick, heavy textbooks—and my righteous indignation. The timing was so perfect that I felt very much like I had done that shit; that was me; I HAD TELEKINESIS, MOTHERFUCKER. Just like that woman in the refrigerated aisle at Walgreens. Only so much cooler. And Hector seemed to agree. He gasped, threw his hands up in surrender, and took his useless boxer’s physique right out of my sight. He resigned not long after.

And it was magic. Not Jesus magic or Santera magic, or any kind of magic you can conjure up at will. It was maybe the only kind of magic that's real: synchronicity. Our universe is so huge and complex and has so many moving parts that, yes, or course, at times, the stars will align; the perfect thing will happen at the perfect time; a Tupperware container will pop open, a man will become paralyzed, and a series of wall shelves ail come crashing down. Or my dousing will drop a box of ice cream bars in the refrigerated aisle at Walgreens. And I will become a bully who then remembers a bully who once played a part in making magic real.