Petra’s Dream/Koppel/v.2
Petra’s Dream
by Phyllis Koppel
Petra squatted in a corner of her father’s hovel, looking out toward the dusty street, empty
during the siesta hours of the humid afternoon, while her two older sisters did chores around the
place. Their adobe home had dirt floors, and everything was dusty by noon. The hovel had little,
but their father had insisted the family eat together and the table had to be impeccable. “We may
be poor,” he had said, “but we’re not pigs.” None of this was on Petra mind. She’d been staring
outside for hours, waiting, but none in her family noticed.
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Her siblings and Father, drinking his daily bottle of tequila, sat to eat a scant dinner, and
when Petra didn’t join them at the table, her father tossed a tortilla her way. Their oldest brother
Carlos, rocked in the hammock, shirtless and smoking hand-rolled tobacco, fanning away flies,
shirking all responsibility or interaction with the family.
At thirteen, petite delicate Petra had hands like brown silk ribbons, beady eyes, and pouty
heart-shaped lips. Everything about Petra Herrera was tiny except for the thick black braid that
snaked down her back to her thighs. While her razor-sharp eyes watched the dusty street, she
dreamt of being far from this fly-ridden village, beyond the confines of her family, and a long
way from her current life of misery. Petra knew her dreams were not like those of other girls her
age, they were dreams that no woman of any age should have. She knew her fantasy of military
glory in the Revolution was impossible, so she curled into her long dirty skirt while still in the
dark corner of their shanty. She imagined herself galloping into enemy’s headquarters, freeing
prisoners, liberating concubines, gathering valuable enemy information, and shouting: ¡Viva
México!
With each bite Petra took of the stale tortilla, she imagined bullets, rifles, horses, and saw
her own long skirt torn down the middle made into pants.
“Do the dishes,” her father said in a hoarse voice, not looking at her. “Yesterday, I found
pieces of food stuck to a plate. Clean them good this time.” He muttered loud enough for her to
hear. “Good-for-nothing.” He flung a dirty wet rag at her and stormed out to the cantina.
I hope you rot in Hell. She stuck her tongue out as he exited the hovel.
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Gloria, Petra’s middle sister—her father’s favourite—spoke while leaving the table, the
food on her plate untouched. “At least you’re not the one he looks for when he comes back
stinking like an old goat.”
If Petra was tiny, Gloria was emaciated. A year older than Petra, Gloria was a foot taller
and weighed the same as the youngest sister. Gloria had stopped eating when their mother died
shortly after giving birth to Petra.
“You have to eat,” the eldest sister, Juana, constantly said. “You need your strength. To
fight him.” She knew what their father did to Gloria every night he came back drunk. She knew,
Carlos and Petra knew, the whole village knew.
“Nothing stops Papá when he’s been to the bars,” Gloria said. “Why eat? To keep living
under his tyrannical thumb? We live like prisoners.” Her voice belied her slender figure for it
was boisterous and low like her father’s. She sounded stronger than she looked.
Gathering her petticoat like clouds around her bosom, Gloria stormed out of the single
room which also served as kitchen, living and dining room. She stood in the sunny courtyard
fanning herself with a makeshift abanico.
“Don’t worry, Gloria,” said Carlos. “I’m working on getting us out of this place.”
The three sisters, five years apart, knew their older brother was more talk than action—he
hadn’t done an effective thing his entire life.
After their mother died giving birth to Petra, her father never forgave the infant. He
blamed her for taking the love of his life and treated her like a dog. As his drinking increased, he
wouldn’t allow the siblings to take care of the baby’s basic needs. Baby Petra often lay naked
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and dirty in a metate for days. Every time Juana or Gloria came into the room to tend to the baby,
their father exploded.
“Get out of here before I skin you alive,” he’d say. “This monster took your Mamá away
forever. She deserves to suffer worse than us.”
“Papá be reasonable,” Juana said. “It’s not the baby’s fault.”
Spiraling into an abyss, he would come home drunk at night, decide which sister had
helped baby Petra and then doled his punishments; a different one for each sister. Juana once got
tied to a 10-foot cactus for six days and seven nights when he found out she’d taken baby Petra
to the pediatrician for her first shots. When it was Gloria who’d helped Petra, his punishment
was physical, and no matter how much of a secret she tried to keep it, everyone knew of the
abuse she suffered.
Because of this situation, ever since she could remember, Petra believed she’d been born
with two good mothers named Gloria and Juana, and two fathers, Carlos the nice but lazy one,
and the other who was very bad. Despite having two mothers and fathers, the three sisters’
chances were not good. One rare day when the girls attended school, the head nun branded the
siblings as, ‘slow to develop due to the lack of a mother and an alcoholic father.’
“What the—” Juana said when a very fine dirt, like stardust from heaven, started to fall
into the courtyard where she was fanning herself.
“Sounds like a battalion’s coming,” Petra’s brother said. “Hide. Pancho Villa’s men are
worse than Papá.” Stacking two seed sacks, he nestled behind them. “Can anyone see me?”
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Juana, still at the table said to her brother, “The only battle I see around here is getting
you to do anything in this hut. It’ll be a fleapit before you know it if you don’t pull your weight.
Petra. Get on with the dishes. The place must be immaculate when Papá returns. We might be
poor, but we’re not pigs, remember that.”
Dragging her body out of the shadows to the table, Petra prepared to clean dishes when,
in the distance she heard Pancho Villa’s call to action.
¡Viva México!
Her sisters peeked from the hovel and jumped behind the seed sacks to seek refuge with
their brother. The dusty dirt rumbled the closer the Revolutionaries got to Petra’s village.
¡Viva México!
Villagers ran out of their homes in panic looking for somewhere to hide.
¡Viva México!
“Petra. Get over here,” said Gloria. “Are you out of your mind?”
“Petra.”
In the Herrera home, only she stood her ground.
The sound of horses galloping, men laughing, and women cackling neared. Under the
threshold, Petra’s heart was a rumble. With her siblings watching from the safety of their hiding
spot, Petra moved into the shadows, took her shirtwaist off and bound her small breasts with an
old apron she had shredded into strips. Donning her father’s clothes—a shirt that came down to
her knees tucked into pants that had to be held up by a length of jute—she ran out to meet the
great General Pancho Villa.
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Thunderous hoofs clapped on dry dirt blending with the whoops and clamour of people’s
voices . At first, it was just a muttering in the distance, the sounds all mixed up into one, but as
the rumble neared, Petra distinguished each resonance. Cocking her head to see better, she felt
her heartbeat quicken at the thought of meeting her hero.
She took a deep breath of the arid air and closed her eyes. In a blink, Pancho Villa’s men,
women, horses, and weapons galloped past tiny Petra’s hovel. Not noticing her. Never stopping
to eat, loot, pillage or recruit revolutionaries. Still in her father’s oversized clothes, Petra stood
under the threshold, dusty, windswept, and broken-hearted.
“You look as crazy as I did when Papá tied me to the cactus,” Juana said climbing out of
hiding. “Get out of those ridiculous clothes and get cleaning before Papá comes back.”
“Leave her alone,” Gloria said as Carlos helped her straddle the sacks. “Petra’s just trying
to get out of here. Don’t we all want to get away from Papá’s …” Gloria’s voice trailed.
Juana said, “You’re his favorite and you know it. He doesn’t make you work in the fields
like we have to. He doesn’t—”
“—Shut up,” Petra said in her teeny voice. “Who cares about anything when Pancho
Villa didn’t stop here? This village is too small for a big man like him.” She took her father’s
sombrero off her head, unbuttoned his shirt, and unbound her breasts. She sighed. “We’ll never
get out of here.” A tear rolled down her flat brown cheek as she blended into the shadows of her
corner.
“There are still things to be done, and that ball of dust that just passed through did not
help the situation” said Gloria. She took their father’s farm books from a crocus sack where she
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kept them for safety, opened the leatherette binding, and set an abacus before her. “Household
chores won’t get done by themselves if you’re all hiding behind sacks or in the penumbra.”
From the corner where she hid she resented Gloria as the family’s accountant since she
was better at math and science, when they went to school, but their father favoured Gloria, and
that was that.
A fan of tragedy, Juana skimmed through a cheap illustrated magazine which featured the
story of a woman who fell in love with a soldier and joined the army to be with him. “I’d never
do that,” she said after ‘reading’ a segment of the story. “Fall in love with a soldier. One-way
love is dangerous for the soul. If one must fall in love, it should be done with someone who will
be present and not marching to their death.”
“Get on with your work,” said Carlos atop the seed sacks applying Brillcream he’d found
in the dump to his slick black hair. “Looking like you do, more a man than a woman, you’re
lucky if anybody so much as glances your way Juana. Get to work, woman.”
“What am I to do if the Lord gifted me with a shapeless and hairy body? My clothes may
be loose-fitting, but my mind’s sharp as a whistle.”
Without taking her fingers off the abacus, Gloria said, “And it’ll go to mush if you don’t
stop reading that trash. Get on with your work. If Papá gets here and the place isn’t—”
“I know, I know.” Juana exhaled. “I’ll be tied to a flag post, or hung from a tree,
hopefully to die so I can get away from this hellhole.”
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“Don’t know why we even worry,” Carlos said. “We’ll never pay our debt to the
landlord. We’re condemned to stay and work the land and so will our children. Ask Gloria.
When have you seen a plus in those ledgers? When?”
“Get to work, everyone. Enough.” Gloria’s voice was even toned, reassuring in the face
of calamity.
Not wanting to see Juana tied to a cactus or Gloria called into her father’s bedroom, Petra
climbed out of the shadows, filled a tub with water from the well and scrubbed the dishes,
forcing everything out of her head except for her greatest wish.
She imagined revolutionary battles inside the bubbles. She peered into the largest soapy
dome and saw Pancho Villa fighting against the U.S. government in the 1919 Battle of Juárez.
The headlines were alarming; from the Washington Times, U.S. Calvary in Pursuit of Mexican
Bandit Forces; from the Battle Daily Bulletin, American Troops Cross Boarder; and from the
Alaska Daily Empire, Allies Reply Presented to Germans: Americans fear Villa’s Reprisal.
Although she’d never read these newspapers, she knew the names from the public radio
programs they heard when the family went to the downtown plaza to listen.
Inside a huge bubble on the largest plate, Petra sees the 1913 battle of Tierra Blanca,
when Villa’s men ram a locomotive filled with dynamite and percussion caps into the federal
soldiers’ camp. The explosion helps Pancho’s cavalry to overwhelm most of the troopers. The
others try to escape by stealing the engine. And there, in the center of the bubble is Petra
galloping after the escaped soldiers, jumping on to the locomotive and running across the train
cars’ roof. Shooting the boilerman and conductor she pulls the train to a stop. When Pancho
catches up, his men execute the federal soldiers and capture their guns and ammunition.
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Unable to stop herself, in the next bubble which at first looks normal with its
oily swirl of purples, greens and blues, she sees Pancho Villa’s downfall, the Battle of
Celaya. General Petra, having achieved her dream, leads a female platoon to face the enemy in
what would be the decisive battle of the Revolution. She calls the location, far from the federal
soldiers’ supply lines, one full of trenches and canals, where the battle would unfold. Galloping
full speed to blow up a bridge that will corral the enemy—
“Daydreaming again? Juana, waving her arms, interrupted Petra’s thoughts. “Hurry. If
the dishes don’t sparkle when Papá returns, you know he’ll take it out on me. I won’t forgive
you.”
Although Juana kept her long braids wrapped around her head like a helmet, when she let
them down, she still looked like a man. Her features were indelicate and her manner brusque.
Gloria moved as if to throttle Juana. “You don’t understand the first thing about Papá.
The hard work and bullying he doles upon Petra and you are nothing compared to what I must
endure.”
“We’ll get out one day,” Carlos said, offering no consolation.
Scrubbing until her fingers turned raw, Petra couldn’t stop thinking of the missed
opportunity. Outside their hovel, in the dusty yard, a pushcart tumbled over and Petra’s father
bulldozed into the house, stinking like a dead dog.
“What you’ve done all day, good for nothing?” His heavy hand smashed atop Petra’s
delicate shoulder and taking her by the braid, he turned her to face him. He tried to slap her face
but missed. His eyes glazed over. Lurching toward her, Petra dodged his heavy arms and he fell
to the bare ground, eating dirt before passing out.
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Gloria said to Petra, “Once you menstruate, if this bastard as much nears you, I’ll kill
him. I’ll cut his balls off and fry them in the plaza. Leave him there on the ground until he sobers
up; he looks toasted today. I’ll deal with his mess later. Go rest on the metate. And put a bandage
on those fingers,” she told Petra. “They look bad.”
Petra’s heart sang. Nobody had ever paid attention to her, not at home, not in her village,
not anywhere, but here was Gloria caring for her, noticing her fingers. That’s the way Gloria
was, always taking control of a situation with confidence, and cleaning others’ messes.
“I will,” Petra said in a tiny voice.
Gloria laughed. “Don’t worry. No doubt your Pancho Villa will return to ransack the
village, he always does I hear. Why do you want to join Villa’s hooligans anyway?”
“For the Revolution. For México. To right the wrongs the rich have meted on the
oppressed.”
“That’s bullshit propaganda, my dear. Become a woman first, then you can think of being
a revolutionary. You have lots of time ahead of you.”
Petra crawled on the large straw bed where all three sisters had slept together since their
mother’s death. Juana sighed as she looked at her picture-magazine.
“Why don’t you learn to read?” said Petra.
Juana stretched her muscular arms in a lazy gesture. “Don’t have to. Girls were never
taught when I was your age and, in any case, I can tell you, word for word, what this story is
about.” She went on to explain what the pictures meant, at least to her.
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“You’ve got some of it right,” Petra said as she read the illustrated magazine, “but you’ve
missed most of the details.”
“Yeah? Like what?”
“Like the woman dressing like a man to get into the army and then falling in love with
another guy, that’s what.”
“I haven’t got to that part, I guess.” Juana yawned and turned to go to sleep and Petra
curled against her sister’s body.
Before joining them, Gloria stared at their father passed out on the floor and covered in
vomit. She flinched. His snoring was laborious, and a stench escaped simultaneously from his
mouth and bottom with equal fierceness. Plugging her nose, Gloria mopped up with a towel. Her
father growled and Gloria froze. His breathing returned to its tortured pace and settled into a
wheeze. While she rose from the floor to join her sisters, her father’s heavy arm seized hers.
“Whore!” He said, breath hot like a donkey’s. “Where do you think you’re going? You
owe me. (belch) You owe me the services your Mamá can’t give anymore. Come.” He belched
again then hiccupped.
R109
Trying to pull Gloria down to the ground he struggled with her dress, and gave up in a
slobber.
“Father, go to your room,” she whispered. “You’re drunk and out of your senses. I’ll
help,” but he was dead weight, too heavy for a slight girl like her to handle.
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“Let him rot there,” Petra said from the sisters’ bed, combing Juana’s matted hair. “Better
yet, let’s hang him from a cactus like he did to Juana. He’s so drunk he won’t know what
happened.” She laughed but without malice.
“Shut. Up.” Their father’s snarl filled the hovel and then, as if this took all he had, the
following sentences dribbled out in patches. “I’ll hang ya from a cac-us and let vul … chures …
peck your … eyes.” He paused, hiccupped, stared around squinting, then grabbed at Gloria’s
arm, pushing her down. “Suck my … “He seemed to have forgotten what he was saying, so he
pulled on her arm again, but let go of her. His empty hand landed on the ground. “Puta …” he
said before he passed out.
He’d never done this before, try to have his way with Gloria in front of the siblings, and
Petra saw the shame in her sister’s face. Carlos, who was minding his business in a corner, did
nothing, as usual. He was all talk and no action.
“Nobody is to mention this,” said Gloria, her small face bright like a ripe chile, “Ever.”
Just then, their father wobbled to his feet, rising like the dead. His strong physique was
now frail, but his determination burned as strong as the smell of alcohol that oozed from his
pores. “I … got an annnnn-ouncement to make.” Trying to steady himself on a sack of seeds, he
sat on it instead. “I got an an… news for my un-grate-ful daughters.”
“What?” They said looking at one another, wondering what he meant and how had their
father got up at all. Petra’s heart sank to her belly.
“Glo-ria and Juana will marry in the morning.” He belched and farted before slumping
into the sack that was his bed. His head went limp over the edge making him look like a rag doll.
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“Papá. This is insane,” Juana cried from the corner of the cot. “Who’d want to marry us?
Me? Nobody wants a girl that looks like a boy.” She crossed her legs like a man and plumped her
skirt in the hollow her legs had created.
“And who’ll want to marry a woman who is not a virgin?” asked Gloria with venom in
her tone. “Who?” Tears poured down her gaunt face and tinkled down the contour of her small
breasts. “We’re damaged goods.”
“Who are these men anyway,” said Petra
“You’ll marry,” the father slurred.
Carlos, who’d left the corner and joined his sisters on the metate said, “You can’t sell
your daughters off to pay off our debt, Papá. You can’t go on having your way with Gloria,
hanging Juana and bullying Petra. You can’t go on belittling me, you just can’t.” Carlos fell to
his knees, fingers knitted over his forehead, pleading.
Their father began to roll off the bed, Carlos caught him in his arms then let him rest on
the ground. With his mouth touching dirt, their father said, “I ammm the head of this house. I
decide (hic) what happens.” Then, he barfed.
“No Papá,” said Carlos over his father’s slumped body. “You don’t decide; Señor
Grienssen decides. He’s the landowner, our landlord, the person your money should go to
because we owe him rent, not to the damn cantinas.”
Carlos dragged their unconscious father, vomit still on his chest, to the outhouse and left
him to sober up. His sisters felt a twinge of pride in him for stepping up to their rescue.
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“If only Pancho had stopped,” said Petra. “I’d be gone from this hell I’d blow up Papá as
fast as I’d blow up enemy troops.”
“Stop your daydreaming,” Juana put her hand on Petra’s shoulders. “You’re young, too
young to be a soldier and besides, women don’t fight in the Revolution. Getting out of here is the
only thing you can do. I missed my opportunity and now I must stay to protect Gloria. You’ll
soon start bleeding and I couldn’t bare to see him do you any harm.”
“Won’t let him touch me,” Petra said. “I’ll kill him before he does.”
Gloria sat on the cot with her other sisters. “It isn’t that simple. Papá has never recovered
from losing Mamá—to this day he calls her name when—”
“—How can you make excuses for him?” demands Juana. “After all he does to you? Why
don’t you despise him?”
“He’s like two people. I hate the one that’s the monster, but I also see what he does for
this family. We mean the world to him.”
“The world my ass,” said Petra spitting on the dirt floor of their hut.
“Don’t judge him so harshly. He’s a broken man who grieves for Mamá everyday; I see
him crying, when he is certain no one is looking. The stress is too much for him, so he goes to
the cantina.”
“This gives him the right to have his way with you?” asked Carlos. “To treat Petra like an
animal? To use Juana like a puppet playing his deranged fantasies?”
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The sisters looked at their brother, mouths agape. He had been a quiet child who’d grown
into a silent man living under the shadow of their controlling father, and who never dared to
voice an opinion, until now.
“Missing Mamá doesn’t give him the right,” said Gloria, “but that is the only way I can
keep my sisters safe. Soon after our mother passed away, my sisters and I tried to console him
one night, to no avail. After everyone had gone to sleep, Papá drunk a bottle of tequila and
mistook me for Mamá. That was the only time he raped me. Now he’s so drunk, he passes out
before he can rip any garment off my body.”
Petra knew that was a lie but said nothing. The tight knot in her stomach turned to acid
and the same hatred she felt for her father brushed off on Gloria; for defending him, for putting
up with his abuse, for not wanting to strangle him.
The sun had set hours before and the three sisters fell asleep on the cot, fully clothed,
cocooned into each other. When Carlos was certain all three were deeply asleep, he left the hovel
to visit the whorehouse. It was the only way he could clear his conscience. Between the sweet
legs of his favourite girl, his guilt for not standing up to their father to save his sisters, dissipated.
That incapacitating wrench around his throat when he wants to tell their father to stop picking on
the girls lets loose at last in the rancid room for rent. There, he can say all he wants, the things
that pain his heart, at a fraction of what his father spends in the bars.
Before sunrise the next morning, a ruckus coming from the East woke the girls.
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“Pancho!” Petra ran out into the dark, ready to join the revolution. Two men on horses
galloped right to the hovel’s entrance. “What do you want here?” she asked realizing it wasn’t
her hero, her hopes smashed.
“That can’t be one of them,” said the man on the taller horse and with the bigger
moustache. “She’s like, what? Eleven? Twelve? Still a child. No señor!” Jumping off the horse
and wobbling, he pulled a machete and tried to aim at Petra. He was slightly left. “You got any
older sisters?”
The smell of stale alcohol hit Petra like a brick, made her want to puke this early in the
morning. Figuring the men weren’t steady either, she answered, “None of your business,” and
put her hands on her waist to make herself look bigger.
The second man was off his horse and lurched toward Petra. She skirted around him and
ran to the back of their hovel to alert her sisters. The machete-wielding intruder rode his horse
right into their wooden hovel, cracking the threshold and splintering the wall.
Before the sisters could react, the man scooped Gloria off the bed and put her face-down
over the saddle. He told his partner, “Take the ugly one. This deal ain’t looking so sweet no
more, no matter how much the bastard owes us. Let’s git.”
The second man pulled Juana out of the bed but, being of slender statue, was
unsuccessful in flinging her muscular body over his bony shoulder. Juana’s head landed against
his chest as she punched him as hard as she could.
“Get your dirty hands off me,” she spat on his face. When she tried to pull away, he
punched her so hard it knocked her out. Dragging her to his horse, he mounted Juana’s limp
body and the two men cantered away with their loot.
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Helpless and alone, soon the horses silhouetted against the early bright, taking her sisters
further. Petrified, Petra looked for a way to rescue them, but her thoughts were spiked
balls bouncing in her brain. The hacienda horses were locked in the stables and the keys
were somewhere in the big house. It’d take too long to find them without Mr. Grienssen
discovering her intrusion. Besides, she wasn’t allowed to ride without someone watching.
A silly rule her sisters came up with out of nowhere one day when they saw her hurling
over barrels and cacti.
With nothing else to do, she bolted after the intruders but stopped almost as fast as
she’d taken off realizing she’d never catch up and, if she did, she wouldn’t be able to free
her sisters.
Some general I’d make. Petra slowed to a halt and kicked the dirt road. She’d
have to tell their father, if she could bring him back to consciousness. Feeling like a loser
for not having done something, anything to save her sisters she figured that Pancho
wouldn’t be impressed with her first real attempt at a rescue.
“Wake up, Papá, get up.”
It took Petra a long time to wake her father who was a heavy sleeper when drunk. Their
brother Carlos had once joked that their father could sleep through an earthquake during a
hurricane if he’d had enough to drink. Mr. Herrera grumbled before moving his large body just
an inch. With a voice that seemed to have passed through a tortilla press, he snorted, “leave me
alone, creature of the devil. Diablo!”
“Papá get up. They kidnapped Gloria and Juana, and Carlos isn’t here. Get up.”
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This brought life to the oozing lump that had been her father moments ago. He seemed
wide awake now. Stretching, letting the smell of alcohol that oozed through his pores float in the
room, he smiled. “The boys came to get their brides. Good.”
“Not boys Papá,” Petra’s blood rushed through her veins. “Nasty, horrible men. Look
what they did to the place. The imbécil rode right into our home Papá.”
“What?” He looked around the hovel as if for the first time. “When the hell did this
happen?”
Petra’s imagination took flight as it did when she was nervous or uncomfortable.
“Minutes ago; you slept right through it Papá. Those horrid men crashed in here with machetes,
nearly cut Gloria’s hair off. There were two of them punching the spirits out of my sisters until
they couldn’t take it no more, Papá. Then, they had their way with them right in front of me.
When I started to scream to try and wake you up, they hit me to shut me up, but when I didn’t
they rolled jute into a ball and rammed it in my mouth. I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t breathe. I had
to watch.”
Petra’s father was in his overalls in a flash. “The bastards had their way with my
daughters before marrying them? I’ll kill them. I’ll kill their brothers and sisters. I’ll kill whole
family. Which way did they go? I’ll show them nobody touches my family without God’s
blessing first. Which way?”
Petra pointed.
“Where do you think you’re going?” said her father when Petra donned her straw hat.
“To get my sisters. We must hurry.”
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His hand flew to Petra’s cheek knocking her to the ground. “I can’t have a silly girl
keeping me back. Stay here and don’t move. You hear? Stay.” His eyes told Petra, or what else.
Slumped on the cot with her head on her knees, Petra’s world crumbled. People took her
for granted and nobody believed she could be a great revolutionary. Nobody.
Despondent, she kneeled on the cot and leaned out the window, a square opening on the
adobe wall, when a little girl’s voice caught her attention.
“I saw it all,” said the landowner’s daughter, Elisa Grienssen, jumping from a barrel
where she’d been hiding. Petra’s father yelped and put both hands over his heart.
“Don’t ever do that—” and realizing who the nine-year old was, “—please, Miss
Grienssen, refrain from such antics. My heart can’t take it.”
“I saw it all,” she repeated in that singsong that drove Petra crazy.
“What are you talking about child, and why are you out of the house so early in the
morning? If Mr. Grienssen sees you here, I’ll be to blame. Scat. I have important business.
Man’s business.”
“Take me home, Señor? I’ll tell you what happened on the way and I’ll tell Daddy you
helped me.” The girl’s big smile, black eyes and cascading curly brown locks were hard to resist.
“Boss would kill me if I left you out here alone. Walk fast. I’ve got no time to lose.”
Petra was incensed when her father took annoying, lying Elisa to the hacienda instead of
saving her sisters. She jumped out of the window hole and shadowed closely behind.
“Want to know what happened?” said Elisa.
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Petra’s Dream/Koppel/v.2
“Shut up and hurry. Happened with what?”
“Your daughters.”
“You saw?”
Nodding, Elisa said, “I wake up at nights and walk; sometimes I know it and sometimes I
don’t, but when I saw Petra coming out of your house, I knew I was awake.”
“For Christ’s sake, to the point child. To the point.”
“A lot of men on horses came right up to your door. Petra asked what they wanted but the
men got off the horses and hit her so hard she fell on the floor. Then, like five of them ran into
your house and took Gloria and Juana. Petra ran after them shouting but when she couldn’t catch
up to them, she fell on the ground crying.”
“Petra crying? She didn’t even cry when she was born,” said Mr Herrera in wonder.
“I swear all this is true Señor.”
Petra’s blood boiled. She’s such a liar. Once I save my sisters, she’s gonna get a good
whoopin’ from me and I don’t even care who gets mad. I hate her. She felt like jumping from
behind the cactus and delivering that whooping right now but there were more important things
at stake.
“Sure, it’s true,” Petra’s father said to Elisa as they neared the hacienda’s grand entrance.
“Just don’t tell the boss none of this, ok? He mustn’t know about the men on horses, promise?”
The young girl pulled his pinky finger and hopped back home humming a song she had
learned in school. Petra grabbed a corner of her shirt and bit on it hard; leave Elisa alone. She’ll
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Petra’s Dream/Koppel/v.2
get what she deserves. Not now, not now. I must save my sisters, then I’ll deal with that lying
snob.
R110
Hiding behind a barrel cactus, Petra saw her father walk toward the stables mumbling to
himself. She got closer and heard him say, “Marrying Gloria and Juana should’ve been perfect. I
thought for sure my luck had changed when the men at the bar accepted to marry them instead of
paying the debt I owed. What could have been better?” Mr. Herrera stumbled, hiccupped then
said, “Stop being such a revolutionary all the time, child. Don’t you think I saw you hiding? Or
do you think your father talks to himself like a madman?”
Petra had seen him talking to himself like a madman many a night.
“I never imagined my daughters would be abducted and raped. I’m going to make this
good, to unravel my own mess, however late I may be.”
Leaving her hiding spot, Petra stood next to her father who smelled like a wet street dog.
“I’m going to rescue my sisters too.”
“This is a matter for men to settle, not children. My daughters’ reputations are at stake.”
“What did you expect from those two burros?” said Petra. “Anyone could have seen they
were trouble, from far away.”
Mounting the horse, he said, “You’d know about trouble alright,” and hurtled off, leaving
Petra behind. She felt smaller than a flea. Seeing no other horse around, she straddled a burro
and followed her father in search of her abducted sisters - the donkey hee-hawing all the way in
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Petra’s Dream/Koppel/v.2
protest. Although Petra’s father was a strong man, he barely trotted his horse in front of her,
Petra guessed for fear of toppling over. How could he? This was an emergency.
On the unwilling donkey who brayed and wailed, Petra followed behind; the bouncing
left and right lulling her into an unexpected calm and focus. Like any good General, she planned
and mapped the battle before them. Atop her burro, she’d ram into the bandits’ home, then
ripping crucifixes off the walls, she’d use them to impale the bastards and save her sisters. She’d
take Gloria and her father would rescue Juana who was heavier to carry. Then, like the wind,
they’d ride back home; covering the lascivious traitors in dust as they galloped away into the
sunset, while Pancho Villa’s troops were on their way to their next revolutionary battle. Pancho
always played a part in Petra’s dreams.
Her donkey tripped. “Whoa …” Petra calmed the beast and when, around a bend the dust
settled amidst the cacti and carcasses that dotted the landscape, she caught up to her father’s
horse. It was lying on the ground, its neighing sounding as if it was coming straight out of depths
of Hell. Her father was also on the ground.
“Damn animal,” said he. “Help me up. I can walk.” It was hard to hear because of the
squealing horse and Petra hesitated, unsure if she wanted to help. The horse’s right hind leg
didn’t look right. An excruciating yelp bounced off the hills when she offered her hand; she
couldn’t tell if it came from her father or the horse. She had warned him many times before that
he was working the horse too hard. Only a week earlier she had repeated what she had
memorized from a book she’d found in school about horses:
“Out of 205 bones in a horse’s body, Papá, 80 of them are on its legs, so don’t work the
horse so hard especially ‘cause most of its weight is on its front.”
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Petra’s Dream/Koppel/v.2
“The horse knows what’s its doing, child. It’ll stop workin’ when it needs to. Get lost,
wontcha?”
“Move,” she said to her father, “In case I flinch and miss. The horse broke its leg; don’t
wanna shoot you by mistake.” She immediately regretted saying this. She took aim. Through the
long clear tunnel of the eyepiece Petra aimed at the horse. Then, she moved slightly, to her
pathetic father who was still on the ground in agony. Their eyes locked. Petra cocked the trigger.
He said nothing but his head shook slightly, too proud to show his fear. She raised the rifle to her
line of sight and, Pow, in one swift move she turned, shot the gun and secured the trigger.
The sound reverberated in her brain, then all went still; the birds stopped chirping, the
bugs buzzing and the centipedes crawling. Everything stood perfectly still as the horse gave its
last yelp and Petra’s soul sank into an abyss.
“Can you make it onto the burro?” she asked her father.
“It’s only a damn donkey. Of course I can, simpleton,” But, Mr. Herrera was wrong
again. On both accounts; getting onto the animal and her intelligence.
“I can leave you here, you know? Go for my sisters alone. Save them. Leave you here to
rot with the dead horse.” She looked to the large black birds that had begun circling above them.
“Vulture food.”
Petra’s father tried to heave himself off the ground. The unbearable agony in his ankle
tortured him, yet he still managed to say, “Respect. I’m your father.”
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Petra’s Dream/Koppel/v.2
“What kind of father sells his daughters to monsters like those?” All the anger and fury
inside of Petra welled into an eddy of raw emotions sitting right under her detonator.
“I thought I was giving them away in marriage,” he protested.
“Selling them into slavery, you mean.”
“Let it go. I’ll make this good. Help me on to the burro. We’ll save them together.”
Petra walked the donkey and her father rode atop, in the same position that the bandidos
had taken his daughters, ass up, into the desert. In Petra’s mind, she was bringing the traitors to
trial; returning soldiers captured by the enemy; advancing Pancho’s troops beyond the borders,
into the United States and its oil-starved citizens.
The earth rumbled when two men flew by in full gallop chased by federal soldiers.
Nobody noticed the lithe girl that walked a donkey with her father slumped on its back.
“Viva México!” the men screeched and sped off. Only Petra noticed the stick of dynamite
that rolled from a pouch they carried. As fast as they came, the whirlwind disappeared leaving
her a little richer.
“We have ammunition,” she told her father.
Near the outskirts of their neighbouring village, a small hut put together in between tree
branches made Petra falter. Instead of facing daylight, its small opening blended into the dark
ground like if it wanted to be part of the tree and not be seen. She stopped the donkey and held
her arm up high indicating to her father to be quiet.
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Petra’s Dream/Koppel/v.2
With her other hand firmly around the stick of dynamite, she approached the structure. It
was dark on the shady side of the tree and Petra couldn’t see inside. She checked for the
phosphorous sticks she always carried in her skirt’s pocket knowing she always carried at least
three.
“In case I start smoking tobacco like men do,” she once told Gloria who had inquired
after finding the matches in Petra’s skirt whilst laundering. “But, most likely, to blow something
up to smithereens.”
Gloria had not smiled.
“What are you looking for?” a small voice nearly made Petra jump out of her skin. A
young boy who had seen her peering into his play cave circled her and stood his ground at the
entrance.
Seeing the kid was maybe three years her junior she ventured, “I’m looking for my
sisters. Seen any thugs entering the village with two women on their horses, butt to the sky?”
He pointed to a small wooden house and jumped into the dark hole of his imaginary cave.
At the bandido’s home, Petra parked the burro by their door with her father still slouched
over it. She circled the house looking for somewhere to stick the dynamite and found a hollow
under what appeared to be the bedroom, there was a pink lace curtain and a picture of Jesus
hanging from a hook.
Returning to the hunched figure on the burro, she shouted into the hut, “We’ve come for
my sisters. Come out and return what is ours.”
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Petra’s Dream/Koppel/v.2
Laughter, not unlike the one at the cantinas, came out of the house.
“I repeat, give us back my sisters.”
The two men came out carrying a bottle of tequila in one hand and bolstering a lump of
something female in the other arm. The women were hardly recognizable as Petra’s sisters. They
were barefoot and their hair looked like a scarecrow’s nest.
“You again?” the taller bandido said, and both men laughed. “You’re a real pest, you
know? Kid, go back home and put your drunk father to bed.”
“Not until I get my sisters back.” Petra stepped closer. She came up to the tallest man’s
waist. In her makeshift pant-skirt, she felt tiny.
“Can you believe this wimp?” the shorter man asked. “Let’s get rid of her once and for
all.”
As he let go of his loot, Gloria collapsed like a rag doll on the porch. Lurching toward
Petra, she managed to skirt him, her size an advantage and his inebriated state the clincher. When
Petra circled back to make sure her sister was ok, Gloria waved her away.
“Go after the bastards,” she whispered, “I’ll be fine.”
“Get away from the hut, quick,” said Petra as she ran to light the stick of dynamite. Glad
it had a long lead, she said. “If Juana’s here, get her out, fast.”
Both men, in their inebriated state, ran after her. “Grab the brat,” they said and stumbled.
When they got up, they bumped into one another rather than making headway.
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Petra’s Dream/Koppel/v.2
“Grab yourselves,” Petra said, luring them to the bedroom above the spot where she had
lit the dynamite. Just before it detonated, Petra jumped out of the window, shattering Jesus’
picture.
INSERT R111 here
27
