Hurricane Jaguar

Ana Luisa’s fingers were used to flipping corn tortillas, four at a time, over the stove. She never burned herself badly. Ms. Almita couldn’t do it herself; her inch-long acrylics wouldn’t allow her. Those fingers were meant for flipping through issues of Vanidades, and for hitting little Valentina’s mouth when she said an impolite word at the dinner table.
Ana went through her day’s to-do list in her head, as she stood over the small blue flame and rapidly warming tortillas. Her scrambled eggs with chorizo were frying over another burner. She could feel the coolness from the terracotta tiles beneath her through her rubber slippers.
Flip, flip, flip, flip.
“Ana?” A nasally, dragging voice came from behind her. Ms. Almita sat at the breakfast table, her hand supporting her forehead dramatically. In the other, she held her phone, her dark blue thumbnail swished up and down along the screen.
“Yes, Ms. Almita?” Ana Luisa looked over her shoulder, and felt the heat of the flame tease her palms. She gasped and recoiled swiftly. Ms. Almita looked up through her eyelash extensions, offended at the interruption.
The kitchen was bright, with large windows for sunlight to enter and white-washed walls for it to dance and bounce off. Its soaring ceilings and Spanish arches created an oversized frame over the two lonely women. Ana and Ms. Almita were an orphan and a widow, respectively.
“Have you seen this?” She stretched her arm out, turning the phone towards Ana Luisa.
Hurricane Boris Expected to Make Landfall in Q. Roo within 24 Hours, the headline read. The article had already been out for 8 hours. Ana Luisa had not seen that. She didn’t have a smartphone, and the radio she listened to in the morning was always tuned to her old station in Guatemala. She knew any Mexican news of importance would always make its way to her at some point during her work day. It didn’t usually happen this early.
“But the newsman yesterday said it would stay in the ocean,” Ana said, staring at the bright screen, shoulders fallen. Ms. Almita huffed, and pushed her chair back.
“This is no good. No good!” She raised her hands up in surrender to the wrath of the world.
Ana gazed at the floor as she walked by. This house had cement walls, a foot and a half thick. They lived on a hill, in a well-planned neighborhood that boasted an effective drainage system. In the outlying villages somewhere, there was a woman sweeping a mud floor in a thatch house.
But what Ms. Almita had on her mind wasn’t this house. It was a board house a little farther up the highway: the jungle getaway that her and Mr. Valdez would escape to, when he could get away for a weekend. It would never survive a Category 3. Neither would its paintings, pottery, china, and vintage handcrafted furniture. Ms. Almita explained all this to Ana, very slowly, the way one talks to a foreigner of lesser education and status, as she turned the stove off, and scooped some eggs and chorizo up with a warm tortilla.
“We have to go get what we can.”
There was no conversation on the drive. The winds were so strong on the long stretch of unending highway, that the metal of the vehicle rattled, and Ana held the wheel at ten and two with an iron grip. All she could see in her mind’s eye was the red truck being lifted by the breeze, and promptly flung into the surrounding trees, flipped and abandoned. The car kept shaking.
When the wind’s threatening howls became too much to bear, Ana Luisa fumbled with the knobs on the radio. Every announcer was trying to be helpful: giving tips on what canned foods to buy, explaining how to find your nearest hurricane shelter, advising citizens that their pets would know where to find refuge, if let loose. Ana was jealous of this animal instinct that humans seemed to have missed out on. Here she was, embarking on a journey to retrieve treasures she would never touch.

Ana had never liked seeing the jaguars in the zoo. They were sad, and small, and had scars. The vets and scientists did good work at the zoo, but that meant that its animals all had some tragic backstory. Injured, orphaned, born in captivity.
Ana’s mama, Maria, stood next to her, equal in height with her then nine-year old. While Ana Luisa sat on a cement block and looked at the beasts through the chain link fence, her mother stood at her ice cream cart, and rang its bell. Children on school trips, in plaid skirts and neatly pressed button down shirts would run by, throwing rocks at the jaguars, or hollering until the animals retreated to the trees. Then they’d turn their pockets inside out looking for coins to buy Doña Maria’s paletas, in coconut, pineapple, lima, or even mango, when the season was right.
During a lapse in the crowds of field trips and family outings, Ana’s mother looked down at her daughter, who had no uniform, nor pockets full of coins, and who threw no rocks. They had left Guatemala two weeks before. The job at the zoo came quickly, after Maria searched the city on her first day there, asking strangers for work. The pain in her joints from manning the cart paled in comparison to the pain Ana Luisa’s father inflicted on her during his worst nights.
“Cielito,” she began, and Ana looked up through her sticky black bangs. “We will find something better here. I know it.” Truthfully, Ana Luisa was happy with her new life already. She didn’t want to go to school, and even though the jaguars saddened her, they were better company than her drunken, old father used to be.
Maria's job at the zoo came and went; then, she had been a hotel maid twice, and a house maid once, confined to the backgrounds of other people’s lives. She didn’t know how many jobs she would lose after accusations of stealing things she’d never even wanted, but it happened often. And Ana Luisa beared witness to it all, until well into her teen years. The unsteady turnover of cleaning jobs only stopped when one night, Maria never returned from work. No reports were filed. No funeral was held. Ana was on her own, and had been ever since.

When she finally found her old station, the tension in her shoulders released, and she softened her grip on the wheel. In the passenger seat, Ms. Almita was bundling her rain jacket, to rest it between her head and the window. As the Guatemalan radio announcer described the predicted impact of the hurricane on the north of her country, the area she came from, her boss’s manicured hands reached out, and spun the car radio’s knob down, until his voice faded out into nothing. Ana drove for the next few hours in silent annoyance, while the sounds of soft snores and clanging metal steadily increased her ire.
She turned onto a dirt road diverging from the highway, and the noises of the jungle followed the truck wherever it went. The howler monkeys and birds and insects all seemed to shriek with panic, accompanied by the first rumblings of thunder. Ms Almita had been roused by the uneven terrain, and explained that the land they were driving through for the past five minutes all belonged to the Valdezes. Ana didn’t like to think of it. It wasn’t right for something so wild and so free to be owned.
When the small house came into view, Ana found comfort. It was tiny, and suspended on stilts so it sat on par with the tops of some of the shorter trees. Ms Almita described it as “cozy.” Ana Luisa lived in a house like this as a young girl, but not as a stylistic choice.
The wind made the house rock slightly on its legs, but when they approached it, Ana could see that it was well-structured. These sorts of houses were meant to withstand these winds, she convinced herself. Raindrops started to fall, and their impact on the zinc roof made a tinny beat as the women made their way up the stairs. They stood on the porch, which wrapped around the wooden house, and Ana looked out into the trees while Ms. Almita fumbled with the door. The shaking of the structure was disconcerting, but Ana assured herself that the money they probably put into this house would save it from falling.
Inside, the place was filled with expressions of wealth disguised as art. They set off retrieving Ms Almita’s most treasured items until their pile became overwhelming.
Ana Luisa’s arms were laden with vases and first-edition books, when a surge of wind caused the house to rattle with an immense force. She maintained her balance by leaning against a corner. With a deep breath, she steadied herself, and looked up, down a hallway with a door on one side and a crowded gallery wall at its end. There, staring back at her, among fishing trophies and hunted animal heads, was a framed female nude. Her figure was beautiful, but confusing. It was made of a whirlwind of color, none flesh-like. She was undeniably beautiful and mysterious.
Ana approached it, but the house shook in the wind again, more fiercely than before, and she knew the structure was straining. The impact of the raindrops on the roof became deeper, and more forceful.
Then, from behind the locked door beside her she could hear movement, frenzied and intemperate. Impossibly quick, dauntingly heavy footsteps. Ms. Almita’s head spun around from where she leaned over her pile of retrieved riches, near the entrance. The women looked at each other, both thinking the same question, knowing the answer would not be what they hoped.
Was that you?
Thunder crashed, closer now. On the other side of the door, there was a thud. They heard something heavy rolling lazily across the floor. Both Ana and Ms. Almita froze in silence with their gazes locked on each other. Behind the locked door in question, was an office, for practicality. Inside, hid a few things that Ms. Almita had been hoping to retrieve. She rose, and jerked her head, commanding Ana Luisa to open the door.
She must be crazy, Ana thought, and violently shook her head. Then, she scurried over to the pile to relieve her arms of their heavy burden.
“Jefa,” Ana Luisa said, “Let’s go. Let’s take all this back to the truck and go. Por favor.” Ms. Almita looked at the office door and on cue, thunder crashed heavily once more. Without a word, she began to pick up items from their pile and walk out the front door.
The women covered the valuables with their jackets, allowing themselves to be soaked in the rain while they made their multiple trips between the house and the backseat of the truck. Ana retrieved the nude last, and took great care to keep it from getting wet. She set it down and sat in the driver’s seat, waiting for Ms. Almita to return.
But she did not come down from the house again. Ana shook her leg, and stared at the porch, trying to will the woman into emerging from behind the screen door, but minutes passed and no one came down. Ana cursed, and went up to search for her, knowing exactly where she’d be.
When she entered the house, Ms. Almita’s soft palms were already trembling against the office door’s handle. She gripped.
Ana Luisa felt guilt.
The door swung slowly with a creak, and from its slight opening she could see a bookshelf lining the walls, floor to ceiling— majestic. As it widened, the books she saw became more and more disheveled, thrown off the shelf in haphazard disarray, most lying on the ground in the dark. Torn pages were strewn on the floor. Then, she noticed the thick, dark red blood spattered across the scene.
It trailed from the window, with its screen violently torn open, to the bookshelves, to the back of the room, behind the old mahogany desk. A growl came from behind it. The desk sat under a portrait of a stern-looking man, who Ana guessed was Mr. Valdez. When the door was fully open, the women could see a tail swaying from behind it. Their breaths hitched as the realization of what they’d happened upon dawned on them.
The animal arose with a pounce, and instantly it was up on the desk, landing with perfect feline grace and intimidation. A jaguar.
Ana lost her breath. Its beauty shook her tremendously.
The jaguar had a gash on its shoulder, which poured blood down its neck and front leg. It hovered that paw gingerly over the desk’s shiny surface, so as not to strain its injury.
In Ana’s periphery, Ms. Almita made a move. She spun around, but Ana was blocking the way, still frozen in wonder and awe. The jaguar responded to this sudden movement by jumping down closer, landing with its shoulder blades drawn up, its yellowing teeth bared. It wouldn’t be long before it was on them. Ms Almita shrieked. And with that shock to her eardrums, Ana Luisa found sense. Her hand wrapped around Ms Almita’s wrist with lighting speed, and she pulled her back out into the hall while she still had the chance. In her haste to slam the door, Ana caught Ms Almita’s foot, and she cried out with a curse, before pulling it out, and slamming the door shut.
The animal thrashed against the door and both women froze. They had to make a run for it. The jaguar would only have to jump back out the window and onto the wrap-around porch before it could get to them again. They had to hurry.
Ana just wanted to make it to the car. She wanted to buy fresh flowers for the kitchen table.
But the ceiling had begun to leak, and though Ms. Almita tried hard to escape with her injured leg, she slipped where a puddle had built right in front of the door. Panels of zinc on the roof had been ripped off by the wind, and the overcast sky was visible through the structure in some areas. Water rushed through these openings and splattered onto the floor. Ana rushed to help her boss, but she got up steadily on her own, determined to reach safety.
That’s when they noticed the sound of strong steps closing in, getting nearer. Before Ana knew it, she felt nails dig into her arm, and a grip that squeezed her skin with a purpose. Ms. Almita pulled, trying to force Ana in front of her, as bait, or a shield, or a sacrifice to some cruel god. But Ana stopped abruptly, unwilling to be forced, and without thinking, pushed back.
The door swung open on its hinges when Ms. Almita tripped through it, losing her footing and landing outside on the front porch. The rattling of the house was nauseating now, and the thunder cracked so heavily that the old truck’s alarm was triggered, and sounded loudly. Ana saw the blur of the animal’s jump when the lightning flashed, not even a second later.
It was unrelenting when it landed on top of the fallen woman. Ana saw it through the screen door, slashing and growling at Ms. Almita’s face and torso, until the blood soaked its paws and her body laid still.
Then, it looked at Ana through the screen door. Her heart forgot how to beat. It huffed through its nose, and maintained eye contact for a second before swinging itself around, and returning to the back of the house–– the shelter it had earned.
She could hear it return to the study with a lazy thump. When Ana steeled herself, she made her escape by holding her breath, and not looking at the scene on the porch. She sat in the driver’s seat, with her chest heaving up and down, hair dripping, eyes glazed over; she was looking forward, but not really. She pulled her seatbelt across her torso in a daze. The windshield was blurry with the flow of raindrops, but when her eyes finally focused, she couldn’t ignore the scene ahead of her: a steady drip of thick red, seeping between the balcony’s floorboards and collecting into a puddle below. A limp hand stretched out through the thin wooden railings.
She turned her head away, and instead looked over her shoulder, at the colorful nude leaning in the back seat. The misshapen woman was lonely in her frame, but the innocent peach flush on her cheeks showed that she didn’t mind being surrounded by all the other wonderful forgotten things in the car. Ana Luisa kept looking over her shoulder, as she turned the key in its ignition and backed out onto the muddy road.