Hecate

 May 19, 2026

High winds all day and through the night.  The kind that sweep through the long elm branches near the casita and roar in waves.  Hour after hour.  Maddie stayed in the blanket cave I made for her, heavy moving blankets over a tall table with her most comfortable bed inside.  She peered out from the low opening I left for her, just big enough to get in and out with ease.  This wind played on my nerves, and I think also hers, and caused a sinus headache making me irritable. 

With the winds so loud and continuous when I heard an even louder, close thud, I looked out each window of the casita for what it might be.  An engine racing at full throttle, oscillating loud and louder, loud and louder.  I saw red lights flashing through my neighbor’s garage window next to my car port.  Brian, gone for ten days to South Carolina, had left his vintage silver hatchback Porsche locked in his garage.  Through the window I saw it jolt and turn one or two feet forward than back repeatedly.  The smell of gas had started to leak to the outside.

I grabbed a sweater and the set of keys Brian had left with me and went next door to unlock the front door.  I slowly opened it and saw facing me the huge TV screen covering half of the wall turned on to an action film, fast movement in bright colors.  The two standing lamps turned on.  Quickly I stepped back outside and locked the door. 

Confused, blaming the wind, I called Brian, left a message then called his friend, John, to come over.  He opened the garage door and fumes rolled out causing him to cough as he tried to cover his face with his arm.  Stepping unsteadily out of the Porsche was a woman with long uncombed black hair asking for a cigarette.  She had on a lavender shirt with cartoon figures on it like a pajama top, unbuttoned, with only her underwear and socks on. Over her socks were oversized red Gucci sliders. Her exposed brown legs were straight and long, her face wide with black eyebrows accentuating dark eyes.  I called 911.  She stumbled to the porch couch just outside the garage. After she sat down, smoking a Tiparillo from the pack she’d left in the car and which John retrieved for her, she told me her name was Hecate. I paused, curious. I knew of Hecate, the ancient goddess of the underworld and cross roads.

Then she told the police officer who had arrived that her name was Elena Maria Valdez Rodriguez.  Elena began to tell stories, high, and no doubt feeling the effects of carbon monoxide, she smiled then squinted as if something bright was hurting her eyes, then smiled again.  When she did, I could see gaps where a couple of her front teeth were gone.  She was easy with the officer, familiar with the process.  

She said she’d just gotten out of jail and this was her grandfather’s house, that he’d given her keys.  In response to more questions from the officer, she replied that no, her boyfriend, Jacob from the pueblo, had.  As she mentioned Jacob, she gave me a secretive, almost childish, smile and took a long drag on her Tiparillo. Two more officers came, one medical dispatch because of the high level of fumes she’d inhaled.  Elena had been released the day before from the psychiatric unit at the hospital down the street.  Born in 2003, not yet 23 years old.

She had walked into the house through an unlocked door, watched some TV and as she told the officers, took off her pants and danced through the house.  They also suspected she had jumped up and down on the largest bed.  She left ash from her cigarettes throughout the house, on table tops, in cups, in a box of knick-knacks.  She found the key to the Porsche in a bowl on the kitchen counter.  Repeatedly she said however that she could not figure out how to go in reverse.  If she had, she would have gone through the closed garage door.  The loud thud I heard came when she drove into a pile of plastic bins and cardboard boxes that cushioned her crash into the wall next to mine. 

Elena was restrained with flex cuffs and walked slowly away with the first officer.  As she did she said to me, “Look at the beautiful sky,” and pointed with her chin to the clouds with the light of the day’s end blinking brilliantly as they parted.  I was unwilling to look away from her for long though when I glanced up I also saw the waxing moon. I asked if she saw it but she was already on her way down the steps of the porch. 

What was happening in the sky last night? 

The winds are lighter today but still more present than I want them to be.  Maddie goes up and down the stairs, in and out the dog door.  My neighbor Brian is depressed about what happened and says he will move when the lease is up this summer.  He found a pair of women’s black slip-ons where his Gucci red sliders had been. His Porsche has scratches on its front fender and his insurance will pay for it.  $5,000.  He had filled the tank before he left and there was only a half tank remaining from her attempts to reverse it through the garage door.  He’s decided not to press charges.  What good would it do, he says. 

I recalled my fear of the Porsche exploding in a burst of accumulated gases or later of a corpse found inside the car from too much carbon monoxide.   The police officers said Elena was probably on fentanyl or meth.  They knew her they said and knew she needed help she was not getting.  The hospital was always full and was understaffed and poorly trained.

I went back to my casita last night with a glass of champagne from Brian’s refrigerator.  He’d offered John and I a drink while we spoke on the phone after the police left.  I felt oddly secure and at ease.  This afternoon when I told Alana the older woman who lives next door what had happened, she was quiet a moment and said it has changed here.  It used to be that the families would take care of their kids like Elena.  The brujas, she said, would help them, perhaps heal them.  But there are too many now, too many like this. 

Hecate, goddess who wanders at night, who accompanied the maiden Persephone back from the underworld.  Torch-bearer in the dark, guiding us to release what is ready to die so we can live.   Elena Hecate, goddess of witchcraft and deceptive smiles, of exploding cars.