No one knows why someone does something other than the person that did it. Sometimes the person that did it doesn’t know themselves why they did what they did. And, if by some chance they do know, they won’t tell you.
She took careful, messily calculated stomps throughout Weltmuseum Wien after 8 two centiliters of Williamsbirne and 3 beers until she finally made it to the feather headdress.
She figured today was the right tempered drunkenness. She had finally found the courage to go see the feather headdress—as the museum titled it—during the last day of her study abroad program. Vienna wasn’t her first choice, but as a low-income child of immigrant parents she figured her only real chance to travel outside of Los Angeles was to anywhere under the pretense of studying economics for a Political Science degree she DIDN’T want.
Itzuri had been chasing the right tempered drunkenness that'll make her just insufferable enough to be able to write her horrifically self-absorbed novel, but not so much so she’d be half convinced she was having a hallucination again. Once, when she heard that absinthe could cause hallucinations if you drank enough, she went on a weekend-long bender. Sometime on either Saturday night or Sunday afternoon (she still can’t remember which it was) she thought she was having sex with Xolotl; it actually turned out to be a misfortunate event at a pow-wow with some Spanish asshole wearing a Mexica God mask.
The only conceivable issue with the chase of tempered drunkenness was that she never knew exactly when she was supposed to stop. When the vague feeling of relaxation and looseness morphed into the mirage of zealous confidence and parking lot vomit fits.
Itzuri took a couple of labored breaths trying to ignore the feeling at the pit of her stomach, numbed hands, and bone-curling ache. She wondered if this was close to half the anger Galvarino felt when the Spanish cut his hands off as a warning for the Mapuche. In retaliation he tied knives at the end of his stumps and ran into war again.
The original Wolverine.
Granted she also wanted to vomit, so maybe it wasn’t all anger.
She pressed her hands against the glass that surrounded the penacho, murmured to herself, “you’re a real beauty aren’t you?”
This unsurprisingly earned her a few disgusted stares from other museum-goers. She merely scowled in return, the same furrowed eyebrow, hard face she made at her family when in her younger, more formative years her family refused to call her Itzuri.
Her birth name was Rosario, but she had come to a revelation while her ears were ringing from Maná being played just a notch too loud to be comfortable: she was brown. Sorta brown. The type of brown that almost lets her pass as something not quite like desired whiteness, but maybe close to it on a slightly overcast day. The kind of brown that turns reddish-orange after a few hours of sunlight that earned her the less than loving nickname pinche india. Hate crime brown.
It had also inadvertently encouraged her family to buy her what they had dubbed Michael Jackson cream to keep the same placid shade of winter brown in the summer. Then she thought to herself, why exactly was she named Rosario? She only half-heartedly followed the Catholic faith and looked nothing like her pale, white, green-eyed grandmother she was named after.
When she had announced to her family about the name change they laughed at her and proceeded to ask if she was using too much of the ‘peace pipe.’ The next time it rained in their city her family yelled at her to stop dancing.
Nevermind that.
She willed God to give her a sign. Clarification. The headdress didn't really belong there. She knew that, Mexico knew that, annoying liberal white men that try to act like she isn’t a fetish knew that, and yet, for whatever reason Austria simply didn’t. Though she supposed more accurately that white, hispanophobic, anti-Mexican prick—Prof. Dr. Wassermann—didn’t.
“I’ll leave my study abroad program early. I’ll go back to Mexico. I will even go back to using my given name.” That was a lie, still, she was only half Catholic. She’ll repent with 3 Hail Marys and a sizable three dollars and sixty cent donation, half of her bank account. It was only fair, it was the colonizers' religion after all. Not hers.
It does not belong here.
Itzuri knew she was crazy. Overzealous, passionate, angry like every drunk in her family, she didn’t think she was hearing voices crazy.
Yet.
Thoroughly freaked out, she pulled her hands back like they were on fire. Maybe she should go back on her Klonopin, go back to church, drop her red—
I know you can hear me. Take me home.
The air in the room was thick and smelled vaguely stale like much of the old architecture in Europe. The headdress looked like it was glowing, tantalizing, like Maggie the stripper that lived down the street from her in Mexico. That was when she saw him. In the glass, less of a traditional Western ghost and more of a reflection. His face was sharp, eyes as dark as volcanic stone. Ordained with gold, jade, and a pelt draped over his shoulders.
Well, he was hot. Absurdly so. Like most of the guys in her pueblo. Her eyes traveled down to his—
Not like that! Moctezuma yelled.
Itzuri grinned in response, leaning forward trying to display her breasts as if that would change his mind.
He stared at her bewildered, even if he wanted to—he doesn’t—the physicality. He chose to ignore her.
I belong in Tenochtitlan.
Itzuri blinked and looked around the museum before her eyes settled on the security camera. She points with her mouth at them, a nasty habit she picked up from her Salvadorian friend.
They took me from my city! They took everything! You stand in an Empire built from my bones, our people. And you hesitate?
Moctezuma’s reflection did not blink.
Neither did she.
Do you have any idea what it is like to be stolen? Have something stolen?
Itzuri had an idea. It must have felt like when the Americans started to move to Yucatán and kicked out the natives from the beaches, maybe like the unwilling night she had with the American military soldier. Or more simply, like when her sister stole her blouse.
Take me home. He sounds exasperated, he begs.
She raised an eyebrow at him, trying to will him. His eyes hardened.
Itzuri rolled her eyes, she’d never make it out of the museum. Much less Vienna. Yet his face fell, like this wasn’t the first time he’s asked. Years of protesting and groveling to leave falling on deaf ears of many.
There was a hand on her shoulder, a thick German voice asking her something she couldn’t understand.
The weight of her history—theirs—pressed against her until she didn’t feel like one person and she couldn’t breathe.
She felt like millions of Indians that begged for mercy while the Spanish raped, enslaved, and slaughtered them. Like those who were dragged from home.
And they were all telling her the same thing: run.
