Despite the smallness of my Texas hometown, I did not know her. I reached as I stared at her peaceful face in the local paper but I did not recognize the brown hair, careful make-up,toothless,silent smile age 26, .deceased. her accused murderer boasted no Heisman trophy,no t.v. charm, no millions for a glib lawyer. A poor, young chicana from robstown might as well be an irrelevant existence. Tally up another dead woman. I counted them trying to jump over fences and tripping over their big toes.somehow, I didn’t fall asleep.i wish I had known her. Every summer, I returned home to tally up another dead woman. a culture that venerates nuestra virgin maria, our mother, shouldn’t be letting it’s mothers bleed to death at the hands of husbands and lovers. maybe , it’s black and white, but I want to puke all over the print. I want to see it become pulpy and frothy with the pizza I ate for lunch. I wish I had known her. The eerie thing about parochial school is that church across the way, that multi-purpose building-“we’re available for all occasions”. Today, I sit on a slab in front of st. antony’s (patron saint of wives), under the flapping red,white, and blue cloth of independence, and watched the ceremony unfold. A little, tubby boy of 10 teetered back and forth with the luminous gold crucifix. No music, just the methodical bellow of the bells. The priest followed majestically behind the boy-a dark-skinned Christ figure swallowed up in red just like her. Her casket was pink. The caskets are always pink, as if dainty, frilly femininity can hide the blackness inside. There were no tears-only that awful silence of disbelief. Someone carried her children worriedly into the limo behind the hearse. to 2 kids- their mom. my mother once told me that when somebody good dies, it rains. As the procession rode off, the gray cloud that had been hovering overhead pressed heavy on the sky and I gasped for breath. It thundered and the rain fell as if god had climbed to the top of his throne and smashed giant balloons full of water. But I knew it was tears, tears of the ones before her-whose deaths had not stopped hers. They cried because they, like myself, did not know this beautiful woman, yet would someday meet her. 1990/1991