Up until then, Ellie’s summer visits in the campo had always felt easy. The tios and tias never really looked at the girl long enough to notice when she raced down the hill to the river basin to kiss Isa under the canopy of ceiba trees. Of this Tio Virgilio was certain.
The week started like any other trip to the casita in August. Ellie and her family arrived late in the night from Nueva York to the familiar sound of Tio Virgilio’s guard dogs at the gate. Everyone expected to be up early with the crowing, but the roosters were uncharacteristically quiet. The tios and tias could not explain their silence. Ellie had noticed that their appetites were poor and their combs were fading when she went out to feed the hens that morning. She asked Tia Mary if the roosters were sick. “They can’t all be sick,” said Tia. Worry started to spread throughout the casita as they talked about the disappearance of the crowing.
But that was not the only thing in the casita that had gone missing.
First, a newspaper article Ellie hid in her suitcase in between her assigned summer books had disappeared overnight. After unpacking, she had tucked it between the mosquito net and the mattress of the bed she shared with Tia Mary. She planned to show the article to Isa first thing, at the river basin. In secret. But come morning, the cut-out was nowhere to be found. Ellie searched the floors, lifted up the mattress, and came up short. No article. Only the cacata webs and small insect carcasses caught on the net. Almost instantly, Ellie moved to blame her brother Johnny, but learned that he was off early that morning to the colmados with primos Chepe and Nino. Of this Tio Virgilio was certain.
With the disappeared crow and cut-out, Ellie knew something already felt different about the day and something worse was coming to the casita.
Two hours later, Ellie and Isa started on the secret trail they could map with their eyes closed—past the sour smell of manure from Tío Virgilio’s conuco, under the umbrella of flamboyán trees, and into the towering banana and elephant trees. Thirteen-year old Ellie kept stopping on the trail because she felt like they were being followed. Like a pair of eyeballs past the green thicket was tracking their movements. As she made her way down, her body twitched at every stalk creaking in the wind. “Listen,” she said. “Did you hear that?”
“It’s probably just Alfonso,” Isa said.
“I thought you said he’d meet us there.”
“Or maybe it’s an animalito.”
Ellie suddenly felt like one of Tio Virgilio’s scariest children’s stories was coming to life, with fangs and teeth. A bamboo stalk creaked in the distance and Ellie pulled Isa into the shrubs with her. She searched to see if her older brother Johnny had followed them. If she had to pick a monster, she chose her brother over a creeping creature in the woods.
Isa laughed out loud at her friend, then continued on ahead, barefoot and unafraid of the critters that could latch on. “Stop worrying” she said, her shiny curls bouncing along behind her. “Y por fin, stop thinking about that viejo’s children's stories.”
Though Isa was only a year older, it felt to Ellie like Isa was now suddenly too old to believe in the cuentos they had grown up with.
After the fifteen-minute hike down, the trees opened up to the Jánico river, blue-green and alive. Ellie looked at how the tree limbs hugged the river bank tight. Every time she came to the basin, she remembered Tio Virgilio’s story about the river flood of 1958 and wondered how hard his hold on the tree limb had to be to survive the raging waters that took three of his childhood friends. He’d flex his wiry muscles, tip his sombrero de paja, and tell Ellie and Johnny, “That’s why you gringos have no cojones,” spitting out the chewing tobacco so it hit the ground next to them with a thwack. Ellie wondered if she would be able to hold on tight if the river waters suddenly grew angry and rough with her that morning.
Alfonso was waiting in the water. Isa settled herself on a rock next to him and arranged the coladores they had brought with them to do what they had come for.
“Y tu no saluda?” Alfonso yelled at Ellie.
"Chacho, claro que si," Ellie said as she walked towards him, planting a kiss on each side of his cheek. He looked different than Ellie remembered. Slimmed out. His cheeks had hollowed and the dyed blonde at the tips of his hair made it look like a halo. He looked pretty, like a billboard model in New York.
Isa lifted her arms and shimmied her light-pink camisole off above her head, revealing the hand-me-down Victoria Secret bra one of her tías had no doubt sent over in a plastic barrel from the States. She looked so hot, Ellie thought. Then Isa reached down and removed the oversized t-shirt Ellie had draped over her body. “Ahora, ponte a trabajaí,” she said, exaggerating the í in her campesino accent in a way that made Ellie melt and laugh at the same time.
At the river basin, Ellie and Isa tried to create their own adventures; holding their breath underwater to see who could last the longest, daring each other to plunge from the tallest jutting rock, and on this visit, searching for the gold Ellie’s 80-year-old Abuela had told them she’d found at the basin when she was their age.
Isa had heard fulanos from the campo rumor that there were still flecks in the river even after the Gol’Que mierda had left it barren from over mining. Ellie heard Abuela refer to it as Gold Quest Mining Corp. Together, they hatched a plan: collect enough yellowy flakes so Isa could move to New York and be with Ellie. Isa would stay with one of her Tias or cousins, go back to high school and become whatever she wanted. Eventually, they would be able to marry each other now that gay-marriage was officially legal. Ellie had first heard the news on the Telemundo news cycle that Mami constantly played in the background (and which she had learned to tune out like white noise) until her mother’s scratchy voice pierced the air with: “Esto gays estan acabacando con el mundo.” But the energy in the streets had been palpable enough for Ellie to ignore any comment Mami would make. Couples that looked like Ellie and Isa—butch and femme–celebrated in the streets, hand-in-hand, and not one of them looked over their shoulders, like she did constantly. Ellie imagined them both in white one day, holding hands at an altar. All they needed was enough money for a plane ticket. Alfonso was at the river to help them. And if they got lucky, to save some gold for the peluqueria he wanted to open.
“There has to be por lo menos un chin buried in here,” Ellie said to Isa. They stood waist-deep in the cool water, passing the coladores they’d stolen from Tío Virgilio’s conunco along the river’s sediment. Ellie shook the grainy sand frantically through the strainer in her wet hands. Only glossy pebbles glinted back at her through the soot. But not a speck of gold had appeared.
“Your crazy aunt might be right,” Alfonso said, pulling his own metal strainer out. “There’s no Río de Oro here anymore.”
Since Ellie was a little girl, she’d heard the hushed stories of Mami’s sister, Tía Mary who went around the campos yelling about how the gringos were here to steal the land. “Antes éramos millonarios” and “Today, we have nothing” sounded up and down the dirt roads like a morning rooster. Tia Mary was rumored to have run away with a haitíano to the north country when she was sixteen. Then he disappeared from the campo overnight. Tia cried bloody murder in the casita so loud that the vecinos from the hill over could hear. They all agreed that she’d been endomoniada, placed under a spell. But no one mentioned that he had been deported or the people in the campo that secretly had a hand in it.
“There has to be some gold left,” Isa said, “Chepe said he found enough gold to buy cervezas for a week. Y tu sabe he’s always walking around smelling like vinagre.”
“That boy is a hablador,” Alfonso said.
Ellie looked up from the gray and black pebbles she was picking out from the colador and noticed how Isa’s body had taken on the shape of the land; curves swelling from places that kept her eyes glued, caramel skin shimmering from the sunlight that peeked in through the branches. Ellie swallowed the sight of her like a shot of the best spiced Mamajuana. When she heard the crunch of leaves underfoot from the distance, she turned her head towards the path they had run down an hour before and opened her eyes wide.
“I feel like something horrible is about to happen,” Ellie said as she searched the forest. Isa swam towards where Ellie had been shifting the strainer. She pulled herself up from the water, bumping shoulders with her.
“Nothing bad is going to happen,” Isa said, reaching out and tucking a loose strand from Ellie’s tightly braided hair behind her ear. She leaned in, planting her lips full on Ellie’s. In front of Alfonso, they could kiss. He was one of them. But Ellie felt eyes in the bushes and quickly moved away from Isa.
“Hay, tu si ere manganzona.”
Ellie turned to stare and in between the spaces, she made out a shape stooped low and lurking like a chupacabra. It was her older brother Johnny.
Another scramble in the trees sounded and she panicked that others from the casita had seen.
“Let’s just get out of here,” Ellie said, stepping out of the river towards the clothes they had left on the rock. “It’s too cold anyway.” She slipped on her jean shorts, put the tee back on, and tied the strings of her dirty Converse sneakers tightly around her ankle. She could hear Isa and Alfonso still paddling in the water.
“¿Vienen?” Ellie asked. The fear of having been found out overweighed everything else. If Johnny told anyone what he had seen, would she have to kneel on rice for hours, staring at the wall? Receive a whip with the correa? Would her mother get her church friends to perform an exorcism and try to rip her feelings out?
“We’ll see you later, flaca,” Alfonso called out. Ellie began her climb back to Tio’s conuco and left them to search for the gold on their own in the murky waters.
Ellie knew what she was long before anyone else noticed. But she hid it. The only ones who suspected what Ellie really was were the kids at school back in Brooklyn who bullied her over the fact that she never shared who any of her crushes were. They had started calling her names like dyke, lesbo, and said she was disgusting. She was a girl that dressed like boys, baggy pants when Mami would let her. Johnny had seen the bullying happen on walks from catechism classes, but he said nothing. So she clung to a small group of trusted friends, just as she did in the campos. They were brown and from the projects, like her. They downloaded the latest indie-rock music off Limewire and avoided the stoops where Johnny had started smoking pot with his crew.
Ellie hid the truth about herself from everyone, but mostly from Johnny. When he wasn’t around, she stared hard at the posters of half-naked women Mami allowed him to put up on their shared bedroom walls. Johnny often joked about people like her and threw around the ‘f’ slur in conversation with his friends. One time, Ellie overheard Johnny joking with his friends over the fact that Yeison, the gay kid on his baseball team, was being benched all season. Without ever saying it to her face, Johnny made certain that Ellie knew a pata like her didn’t have a place among their friends and primos. Ellie was certain that she would never be accepted by Mami, Abuela, her Tios and Tias, but what hurt her most was knowing that her older brother would never accept her either. She tried to be careful.
At the river basin that day, Ellie hadn’t been careful enough. Now Johnny knew. And Ellie feared that he was going to taunt her with the truth the entire time they were in the campo.
When Ellie got back from the river, she turned the house upside down looking for Johnny. She searched every inch of Tío’s farmland. Peered around every corner, every opened door. Every muffled voice, snorting pig, and mooing cow felt like a pointed finger, a ticking time bomb. She searched the grounds of the conuco—found her tios dragging branches in the field, machetes dangling from their waists. Abuela was rocking in the wooden mesedoras, peeling the fresh habichuela rojas at her side. But no Johnny.
In the bedroom they all shared, she found Tia Mary sitting on the edge of her mattress. Ellie’s summer books were scattered on the bed around her thighs and Ellie’s laminated cut-out was in her fat fingers. Three nights ago, she used her mother’s sewing scissors to cut out the front page headline and the accompanying photo of two men kissing and laminated it with rows of scotch-tape: “New York Allows Same-Sex Marriage, Becoming Largest State to Pass Law.”
“Where did you find that?” Ellie asked.
“I found it this morning,” Tia said. “Se lo iba llevar uno de los pollos.”
“Damelo,” Ellie said, wondering if it had blown out from under the mattress in the night.
“What does it mean?” Tia said, thumbing the spot on the photo where the two men’s lips met.
“Nada, I brought it from school.”
“Do you feel this way?”
A hot flash flooded Ellie’s face. She fidgeted with the hem of her ripped, wet shorts. Stared at the verruga on Tia’s cheek turned pink and wrinkled.
“No,” she said as she shook her head.
“Confía en mi, mami,” Tia said.
“Y por qué?” Ellie said. “You’re endemoniada.” Her tongue felt thick and heavy in her mouth.
Tia Mary’s lips pressed into a thin line on her face and then her hand whipped Ellie across the face. “Don’t talk about things you don’t understand.” She moved slowly around the room, her bata billowing around her small body. It was a moment for Ellie to bridge the silence and apologize. But by that point, a knot like a hard boiled egg had lodged itself in Ellie’s throat.
“Cuando te volviste tan malcriada?” Tia asked. She exited the bedroom, taking the cutout with her, and leaving Ellie alone in the room that built with heat. The heat eventually drove her outside to desperately resume the search for Johnny.
With no working television in the campo, the primos had to find their own ways of staying engaged. They roamed the ceiba all day, returning back home when their mothers and abuelitas came out the casitas yelling their names like cotorras and handing out jalaos de orejas and corretasos to get inside for dinner. One summer, the dirt road had collapsed, a giant sinkhole appearing in its place. They had sat on the edge of the hole and told each other the scariest stories they could come up with about the things living in the black abyss.
Ellie usually looked forward to this time, but not today.
Out in front of Tio’s conuco, the campesino primos had gathered to play a game of policías y ladrones. Every shrub, leaf, and root had lost its color and turned blue by that time. In that dusk, they could only see the reflection of the bright full moon in each other’s eyes and the silhouettes of each other’s mismatched, teenage bodies. And there was Johnny in the middle of the group.
Since Johnny was the eldest of the group at fifteen, he called the shots of the game. He stood tall over them, illuminated like a Santo by the plastic flashlight he pointed at himself from under his chin. In Spanish, so the primos could understand, he explained the rules of the game they would be playing. They would divide into two groups: the police officers and the thieves. Officers would give the thieves a head start, but once the chase began and you were tagged, straight to jail you went. Johnny, Chepe, and Nino were of course part of the policias. Ellie, Isa, and Alfonso, part of the ladrones. Free ladrones could tag the captured ones to make them free again. The game was over once all the ladrones were trapped in jail.
Once the game began, the lot of primos scattered across the campo brush, navigating the campo’s dense thicket through the almost pitch-black to find cover.
Back in Brooklyn, Johnny would find it funny to incorporate cruel twists and pranks in the games they played. The time they bought goldfish, five for a dollar to watch them swim for money like the horses at the racetracks, and Johnny’s fish were losing, so he spilled them on the sidewalk to watch them squirm. Ellie had knelt down on the concrete, holding onto the slimy bodies as they suffocated in her hand. The worst was when Johnny shook Ellie’s bed at witching hour after watching The Exorcist and playing with the Ouija board in their old apartment. Ellie couldn’t sleep for days, waking up in the middle of the night to pray, until Johnny called her a chicken and admitted it had been him. In every game they played, Johnny went a step too far. She expected no different in this game at the campo.
Ellie followed Isa’s outline in the dark, her hips swaying gently in front of her as they trailed up the hill behind Johnny. To jump over shrubs and tree roots, Isa’s hand reached back to guide Ellie up. But Ellie refused her help, worried that Johnny was watching. At the top of the hill, Ellie could still see the glow of bombillos in Tío Virgilio’s casita through the trees. At the casita, the tios continued to banter over bottles of Brugal, and the tias shared the last bits of neighborly bochinche while they finished cooking dinner. The lights of the casita and the adults’ distant laughter promised Ellie the way back when the primos were all done playing their game.
Johnny’s last rule of the game stated that the primos had to remain quiet. They were all to stay hushed, not a peep or a shout, or they would be banished to the jail in the animal den.
As the children went quiet to begin the first round, the rustling plantain trees and sounds of the campo’s fauna were a scary movie soundtrack of its own, reminding Ellie of the background music in the horror movies she watched back home in Brooklyn. The clicking of the cicadas and the croaking of the frogs made the stories about the demon possessions and the chupacabra seem even more real. It didn’t help that on their way to Tio Virgilio’s casita from the airport, she passed meat stands on the road with severed goat heads left on picks to dry, muddy-dark blood forming into pools beneath them on the rods.
All the primos agreed to Johnny’s rules, hushed anticipation overwhelming them, giggling and pinching at each other, and placing bets on who would trip and yell the loudest.
Isa poked at Ellie’s waist to ease her tenseness. “Relájate, Ellie.”
Ellie’s skin tingled from her touch, a fluttery feeling rising up in her stomach.
As Johnny’s countdown began, the primos were off, each quietly crunching the ground beneath them as they found cover.
Ellie took measured, hurried strides, stepping over roots and crouching under branches. She was still the smallest of the group at thirteen and she knew Johnny would never side with her in front of the primos. They’d joke along with him if she dared to ask them for help, squealing about how the little gringa lost her footing every time she came back, “Ya se le perdio lo de tiguere,” they’d mock: she’s forgotten her fieriness. Then they waited for those who were policias to find them.
They heard the animals in the den down the hill; the soft clucking of the chickens in Tio’s coop and the quiet snorting of the pigs. Ellie shivered. The campo night was cold, and though the air was thick, wind from the hilltop chilled it enough so that the cool whipped against her ankles every so often and made her buckle like a goat that’s been scared.
“Ellie, you’re done,” he said, tagging her from behind. “Pa la carcel!”
Ellie jumped up, rolling her eyes at the predictability.
“Coño,” Ellie yelled as one of her shins scraped a branch, slicing a thin red line across her shin. “Me di!”
“Bawk, bawk, la marimacho is scared,” Chepe yelled out from the distance, “Why don’t you macho up?” Nino clucked, laughing hysterically.
Ellie held her breath. She knew the insult had been coming. The cousins were already looking Ellie up and down for wearing the oversized shirts. “Eso no era de Johnny,” Nino had asked her. Ellie had defended herself, said that Nino wished they had packed it in a plastic-barrel from New York, like all of his other clothes. Nino had quieted. Ellie could tell she had stung him.
Now, they were retaliating.
“I’m not a marimacho!” Ellie yelled. She wanted badly to run towards each primo, push them down the hill so that they too could feel the scald of their words.
Johnny joined in, clucking along, each sound a stone thrown in her direction. But four days ago, Johnny had rescued her. Before arriving at Tio Virgilio’s casita, Mami, Ellie, and Johnny needed to jump out of the jipeta to push it up the muddy hillside road that led to Tio’s casita. Determined to push the car alongside her family, Ellie had lost her footing in the mud and almost slipped beneath the car. Afraid that Ellie would be crushed under the weight of the vehicle, Johnny’s yells of caution—“Ellie slipped!”—had pierced everyone’s ears over the huffing and puffing. He’d alerted the entire campo that the family had arrived. After pulling herself up from the dirt, Johnny hugged Ellie so hard that she had to push him off.
Now, Johnny shone his flashlight down at her face. “Go to the jail,” Johnny said. His hand pointed towards the bombillos of Tio’s casita. She wondered where Isa and Alfonso were hiding. Where had they sought refuge?
A knot built up in Ellie’s throat as Johnny backed away.
The same tonal ringing that Johnny’s cries had left in Ellie’s ears returned again. Ellie’s cheeks wetted as she made her way towards the animal den, pulling apart branches, unsure of where she was stepping but following the light towards Tio’s casita.
Then it happened—the bombillos in the casita went off and the campo went pitch black.
“¡Se fue la luz!” Ellie heard the adults cry out in unison from inside the house.
Un apagón.
Ellie could only feel her way through the dark and overcome her fear of the night now. She fought through the panic building in her body. She listened for the animals in Tio’s den to guide her. They shuffled, as if picking up on something, as if sensing that something darker than the night was among them.
When she reached the animals, Ellie felt her way along the metal fence of the den. She neared a baby goat, standing next to its sibling, and the image of the blood pouring out of the goat's head on the way to the campo returned to her, crystal-clear in her mind. She peeked inside and noticed that the animals had all gathered at the end closest to Tio’s house, away from her, walking over each other in agitation. She stuck her hand in, and a goat let out a bleat, panicked and distressed. Ellie knew something wasn’t right, but she was alone in the designated jail.
A low, feral growl escaped an animal nearby. It was guttural and unnatural. Ellie froze, her breath hitched. A shadow cast itself above her body as she took her next careful step toward Tio’s conuco. Every single hair in her body stood up as if on command. Afraid to turn around and look at what was now behind her, Ellie stared down into the tin of water the animals drank from and froze in shock at what she saw in the reflection: the Chupacabra. It looked just like the monster that had haunted Ellie’s imagination growing up. It revealed its bloodshot beady eyes, hunched spine, and spikes jutting out of its skin like a deformed, rabid bat that would rip out her esophagus with its fangs in one swipe. It hissed, prompting Ellie to yell as loud as possible towards the other children to warn them: “¡El Chupacabra! ¡El Chupacabra!”
As the inverter turned on inside the casita, the creature took off, and all the primos began running behind her, joining in on Ellie’s panicked screams and proclamations. They had seen it too, Ellie thought. Nobody, not even their campesino primos, was immune to the terror a possible Chupacabra on-the-loose incited. She joined the primos and ran towards the casita.
Johnny was the first to get Tio Virgilio from inside, “Tio! Tio! ¡El Chupacabra!”
The adults stirred to turn their heads away from the chisme and gather themselves from cackling and conversations over coffee.
“¿Y es verdad?” Tio asked. Johnny began a rant about how the creature was swooping in and out of the sky, stalking them like prey, repeating how it had almost stolen Ellie if they hadn’t run into the house fast enough. Ellie couldn’t tell if the primos were being serious, but together they had convinced Tio to go outside and check on the animals.
Before leaving, Tio turned to the adults to mention that ladrones could be trying to steal his livestock, something every neighbor had convinced themselves of as a possibility.
With his shotgun in hand, Tio stepped out to investigate the incident.
The primos, all curious, followed behind as Tio scoped the land. The primos, including Johnny and Isa, trailed behind the adults and their campesino cousins.
After ten minutes on the lookout, everyone threw their hands up in defeat. Tio joked about how the Chupacabra could have a feast tonight because he would have succumbed to the bottle of Brugal waiting for him inside, “Ay, que se coma lo que sea.”
Ellie shrieked. “That’s it?”
No matter how urgently Ellie pleaded for them to continue the search, no one listened. Tio returned with her other uncles, laughing about finding the real monster—a tarantula so big it could have gotten to one of the children and eaten them up.
Ellie knew there were otherworldly things in these campos, but was what she had seen real? Was the creature really still out there?
She refused to go out that night, though Johnny and the other primos had kept exploring. She quadrupled the prayers Mami had taught her.
When Johnny returned, Ellie stood up to confront him.
“I know you saw us,” she said.
Johnny turned his back to her. Before sleeping that night, he turned to look at her, winked, and made three mocking kissing sounds.
By the second full day in the campo, Ellie had made her mind up: she would end things with Isa. She didn’t want to give Johnny any other reason to torture her. She wasn’t ready to come out yet.
Before the family’s welcome party at Tio Virgilio’s, Isa came to ask Ellie to go to the river. She guided Isa to the top of the conuco’s water tank that Tio opened every time it rained. They had swam there together as children, catching the sapitos that would make their way in and releasing them out into the campo.
“We have to stop doing this,” Ellie said. She stared out at the campo. The hills rolled lime green, their brilliance burning.
“You’re too chicken to follow your own heart. What happened to our plans?”
“Johnny knows. That’s what happened.”
“When are you ever going to stand up for yourself?” she said. She hopped down from the tank and walked away to her own family’s casita.
By 5pm, everyone had gathered at the family’s welcome party. All the adults and primos danced to bachata and merengue tipico in the sala, the bocina’s base blaring so hard, it rattled the crucifix of Jesus Christ nailed to the wooden wall.
Ellie’s skin still tingled hours after the chupacabra sighting and the looming threat of exposure by Tia Mary and Johnny. At the party, Isa avoided Ellie and danced with Johnny. Ellie watched as her older brother twirled Isa like they had all been taught as kids. She swallowed back the bile rising in her throat, thinking about Johnny’s kissy noises the night before, the stewed goat Abuela had cooked for lunch now acid on her tongue.
“Esa mujercita si sabe bailar,” Ellie heard the Tíos say over the twang of bachata guitars and drums. She turned and saw their noses pointed toward Isa, one Tío lifting his foot off the floor in excitement.
Though Isa was only a year older than Ellie at fourteen, the adults had always treated her like she was older; even Ellie’s own mother asked Isa to do things they never asked of Ellie: “Go to the carretera and get me a cigarro,” “Tell fulano to play me these numbers in the lotto,” “Go clean the floors para la fiesta tonight.” It seemed that, though only a few years had passed since all the primos were treated like children with Ellie, the campesino boys and girls here in DR had matured hastily, some as old as Johnny with kids of their own.
Across the sala, Tia Mary danced with Tio Felipe. Ellie wanted to puke thinking about how she had insulted her. When she slept on her bed last night, Tia Mary’s back was turned to Ellie. They hadn’t talked outside of Ellie’s daily chores: feed the chickens, grind the cafe, mash the platanos for the morning mangu. So when Ellie caught Tia Mary’s eyes on her, she averted her gaze, catching Tío Virgilio’s eyes accidentally. He appeared promptly before her in the sala, his calloused hand outstretched for a dance. Ellie hated dancing at occasions like these. And Tío’s farm stench would always cling to her body after they were done dancing.
“Me la pasas?” Alfonso asked Tio, who quickly handed Ellie’s hand as if he were disgusted.
“Y que le pasa a el?” Alfonso said.
Ellie loved the way Alfonso spun her in circles, their hips in sync.
When the song stopped, the two of them bent over huffing, laughing at their silly moves, how they had switched roles—Ellie leading and Alfonso following—and how they sucked at it bad.
It was 1am when almost everyone had left and it was on Ellie to clean with the women. They packed up food and swept the floor, collecting the glass bottles stacked around them.
That’s when Ellie saw them. Intoxicated and swaying. Chepe and Nino shoving Johnny. Her brother’s furrowed brows, the sweat glistening off from the sides of his caesar shape-up. Though Johnny was taller and older, Chepe and Nino almost doubled him in size. Physical labor in the campo had made them stalky. Johnny had the build of a lanky baseball pitcher.
Ellie walked towards the cooler next to where the boys were chugging frías.
“He likes you,” Chepe said. He shoved her brother.
Nino egged him on, punching his shoulder. “You gonna let that slide?”
Johnny winced. “Watch and see,” Johnny said walking towards the conuco, where the primos still lingered.
Ellie leaned the mop against the side of the wall, sneaking out before any of the tias noticed. She followed, crouching behind them until she could hide behind the metal fence of the animal den. She watched Isa and Alfonso talking in the distance. Her insides churned and her heart thumped in her chest. She remembered the face of the chupacabra. How it had stared up at her in the reflection, its fangs bloodcurdling.
Johnny approached them. “Mira este pájaro,” he said, sticking his chest out big. “You think you can stare at me all night like a pato and I wouldn’t notice?” He shoved Alfonso towards the den.
Ellie slid down against the wood, a profound wave of cowardice freezing her in place. She wanted to yell, No, Johnny, no, but she remained silent.
“Hit him, Johnny,” Chepe yelled.
Johnny balled up his fist. “You’re going to learn a lesson,” he said.
Ellie peered through the wooden slats. Johnny punched Alfonso, sweeping him onto the ground. Alfonso coughed blood. The primos took turns, each one taking the best shot they could and holding Isa back. They stopped when a shot gun suddenly rung in the air. Ellie saw Tia Mary holding Tio Virgilio's escopeta in her arms, smoke swirling above her head from the gun's fire. Before her aunt could see who they were, the boys had taken off, each retreating into the ceiba.
“Y qué fue lo que pasó aquí?” Tía asked when she approached them.
Isa’s cries pierced the air. “Esos monstruos,” she repeated, over and over. When Ellie left her hiding place in the animal den and walked towards them, she did so with her head hung low.
“Deja que el chupacabra les enseñen,” Tia said.
Isa looked at Ellie and words struggled to form on her lips.
“Alcahueta!” Alfonso said as he wiped his mouth of blood and walked back to the casita with Isa and Tia Mary. His arms were around both of their shoulders and the two of them supported him as he limped back to the casita.
Ellie stood frozen there, watching them disappear, regret like a coarse blade ripping through her guts. In the bucket of water where the animals drink, Ellie stared long and hard at the strange reflection looking back at her in the glow of the moonlight.
The next two days in the campo passed slowly. She cared for the hens and then went to the river basin alone. This time, she abandoned her torn up converses at the casita and stepped on the mud, dirt sliming up between her toes. She welcomed the tiny creatures that could’ve latched on. She allowed the roots braided into the ground to kiss her feet and crouched under the ceiba tree. Then she walked over to where her aunt was sitting on a river stone and took a seat next to her.
“This is my Jean,” Tia said. She had reached into her bra, and pulled out a folded photograph. In the photo, Tia was standing next to a man and they were dressed as bride and groom.
Ellie took the picture in her hands.
“My brothers told me he had abandoned me,” Tia said. “My brothers got him deported back to Haiti. Esos monstruos,” Tia said.
She started digging into her bra again and this time unfolded the cut-out newspaper from home. “Sometimes the biggest monster is silence,” Tia Mary said. Ellie held the cut-out and bit her lower lip as Tia stood up to slowly walk back up towards the conuco.
Ellie stared hard at the river and looked at her reflection in the water. She looked at the picture of the two men in her hands and waded in the calm water. At night, she made her way alone to Isa’s casita. For the first time, she was unafraid.
Of this Tio Virgilio was certain.
Contributor Notes
Emily del Carmen Ramirez is a queer Dominican American writer born and raised in the clattering heart of a Brooklyn, NYCHA community. She is a 2025 Kweli Journal Fellow, a PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow, a Periplus Collective fellow, and a VONA fellow. She is currently at work on a short story collection that explores Dominican folklore and identity.
