Hayoula
“Llorando a Rodón en Butoh; 2” by Jorge Luna
Husband
When the husband first hears about the Hayoula from his hunch-backed mother, he scoffs. His beard pinpricks his calloused palms, stained permanently brown: car oil and exhaustion. A hissing sip of his clove tea; that scalding ache at the back of his throat. A Hayoula with jagged, ecru teeth like a falcon’s talons, eyes pearlescent blue, a smile reeking of pickled garlic and anchovies even kilometers away. Snap! and you would be clawed off from what makes you, you. His mother mumbles, her smile bereft of teeth, her eyes two weevils under her teacup-bottomed glasses.
He sucks on a sugar cube tethered in between his front teeth and says, “That’s a crazy, Maman Jaan.”
She yanks the front edge of her chador over her smoke-white hair and walks away, her cane a third leg. “Don’t underestimate the Hayoula. Watch your kid.”
“She’ll be fine, Maman Jaan.” He says, glancing back at Batman’s snarly smile on the rectangular TV screen playing Farsi-dubbed the Dark Knight.
Wife
Her mother-in-law’s hair was not whitened with flour, but under the grinding teeth of life. If anyone has seen Hayoula, it would be her. So, she hawks over her daughter, Maryam.
“The Hayoula lives in the TV. Lurks at the sharp edges of fairytale books. Who do you think gives you paper cuts? A drop of blood, and Hayoula’s belly will bulge for years,” her mother-in-law says.
She tucks in her daughter more tightly each night, so tight she has to linger for hours by the bedside to check for that hushed, sweet breath. From her daughter’s blanket, SpongeBob’s toothful smile sneers back at her. She reads her daughter’s books twice, running her index finger along the edges, hoarding all the paper cuts for herself. She scours the pages for Hayoula claw prints before borrowing the books from the library. The library is stacked with boxes of books, thanks to the Tehranians with too much Eskenas spilling out of their pockets who ship books to their village of Sefidak. Books with blond girls in white shoes with laces they had only seen on TV. What none of the girls in the books or TV wear: the local Savas sandals which the women braid every fall with Palmfil, the kind that scrape and scrabble at the tender flesh in between their toes, their skins scabbed over. They are meant to grow tougher with each season.
Sitting on the rusty entrance doorframe of their house, the wife is braiding a Sakav when she runs her index finger in the wrong direction. “The Hayoula!” her mother-in-law says, pointing her gnarly finger. Blood drips on her white skirt. “Our kids need shoes. Savas leaves toes exposed,” another mother says from across the narrow alley. Further down, a few elders, hunched over a backgammon board, sip their tea, crunch down on sunflower seeds. “Hayoula loves nibbling on tiny toes, sour and tender like young rhubarb shoots.” Another mother says, behind her in their living room, the strobe of TV light flashing, cartoon music spilling into the alley. You get the limo out front/Hottest styles, every shoe, every color.
The wife will talk to her husband tonight. For Maryam, they need to leave the village, need to get away from the Hayoula. Buy close toe shoes.
Husband
On TV, America smiles with porcelain teeth, homes with Carra marble floors, lights brighter than the sun. Why is it always sunny? Orange juice from a box. Tissues from a box they throw away after one use. No Hayoula there. “Hayoula is everywhere,” his mother says but what does she know? She’s getting old, mixing fact and fiction.
The village feels like it’s shrinking. It must be the Hayoula pissing in the water turning it bile-bitter, sleeping on the clouds so they sag low and gray. Worst of all, Hayoula has turned his daughter against him: “I want McDonalds, Baba. I want a white iPhone. I want a yellow dress like Bell, Baba.” With each new demand, he, too, shrinks. Never enough. Who is Bell? Where does McDonald live? His daughter is like a sun, setting further away from the clasp of his motor-oil-stained hands.
His mother, perched in a corner, a Howlite prayer bead draped over her palms, utters wordless prayers. Her eyes are turned upwards towards her God. “The Hayoula eats away contentment,” she says finally. From the tallest branch of the backyard’s lonely fig tree, a grackle croaks into the night.
Wife
They leave. On a bus. Away from Hayoula. Three other families from Sefidak are also on the same bus. Their lives rattle below their feet, in suitcases stuffed in the bus’s bloated belly. Her head lolling against the seat, she dreams of the cloudless sky elsewhere, homes with cement walls so thick no Hayoula can seep through. The luster of her daughter’s future almost blinding.
She hands her daughter a small bag of Doritos, a parting gift from a neighbor who got it from a brother in America. In the distant clouds, over the desert, a blue strobe of light. She ignores it, listens instead to the crunching sound in her daughter’s mouth. She plays a video of Dora, the Explorer, on her phone, covers her own eyes not to see. Boots and super cool exploradora. A whiff of pickled garlic she chases away by inhaling the bottle of rose water from Mashad, her mother in law’s parting gift. Anchovies. Another unmistakable flash of light. What if. Probably just a large blue heron. Or clouds glinting with rain. If she closes her eyes, she can almost see her daughter’s tiny toes, safe in white shoes but when she opens them: another flash so bright it hurts.
About the Author
Pegah Ouji is an Iranian American writer who writes in Farsi and English. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming from Joyland, Epiphany, Fugue, and Split Lip, among other publications. She has received scholarships from Kundiman, Sarah Lawrence Writing Institute, Hudson Valley Writers Center, Literary Arts, GrubStreet, and the Shipman Agency. She was a 2024 Emerging Writer Fellow at SmokeLong Quarterly. She is an editorial fellow at Roots. Wounds. Words. where she is working on an anthology of creative work by BIPOC justice-involved and impacted artists.
about the artist
Jorge Luna was born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico. As a child, Jorge was known to steal his mother’s point and shoot film camera to take the occasional picture of his toys. Once his mother developed the film Jorge collected a much unwanted earful and spanking. He finally received his first film camera, a Kodak Ektralite 10, when he was around twelve years old. Whilst a teenager, he discovered his addiction to live performance when he started off as a dj. Self-taught in photography, Jorge’s formal training is in acting. His work is and has been highly influenced by multiple survival jobs, including dj, car mechanic, server, salesperson, personal trainer, handy-person, photographer, and actor. However, his photography and acting pursuits are responsible for fostering a deep sense of curiosity, empathy, and persistence; elements that serve him well towards his artistic endeavours. Jorge is the recipient of an Individual Artist Grant from The Art Center of the Capital Region in New York State. His work has been on display in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Ontario, Canada, Schenectady, NY, and several galleries around NYC. Jorge has one son, and lives in New York with his wife.