Indigenous People's Day, Perrita's Flight

500 Años por Jorge Gonzalez-Camarena, Castillo de Chapultepec

Perrita’s Flight

Michael Sedano

Oh my god if there is a god how can there not be a god? There is a god! Those rolling hills, green and sparkling with gold and yellow California poppies, far as I can see! Blue skies, white clouds, the world is light!

The dog barks joyously now finding herself running in that quiet peaceful space. She stops to lick cool water trickling into a quiet pond. She answers the bre-ke-ke-kex-coax-coax of frogs with a song of her own. A bird hops away from a white sage bush, pretending injury to lure away the dog. The dog barks a laugh at the bird then snuffles her nose into the leaves where chirping babies give away their nest. 

From a distance beyond reckoning, a familiar voice calls her name, “Perritaaaaa!” The dog laughs at the mother bird and wheels about to chase toward the sound. So long ago she knew that voice, loved its kindness.

Perrita gallops at full speed, her short legs a blur as her eager paws dig into the slope. 

Cresting the hill, Perrita finds her bowl, shining and new, brimming with sobras. She fills her mouth. These beans aren’t the sour days-old podridos tasting of baking soda, but fresh frijolitos, de la olla with large chunks of fatty meat and morsels of tortilla. Life, at last, is good.

“Perriiiiiitaaaa!” The dog looks up at the blue sky and the noisy birds. She squints into the sunlight, rainbowed pure whiteness as through heavy fog. Below, the hills, green ground, up here, the birds circling, raucous noise of crows and gulls. 

Honking horns down there, speeding cars on the black asphalt freeway. Perrita feels weightless now, she is flying up in the air with the birds, flying, flying through the air, up away from the rushing traffic, the honking horn the screeching tires the chrome bumper.

A version of this story appears in Digging Through the Fat, I:1.