Colour tattoo of the El Nopal loteria card, showing a green prickly pear cactus with red fruit, on the side of the torso.

El Nopal loteria card on the ribs

Ribs · Colour · Photo

A framed loteria-style card numbered 39 and labelled EL NOPAL, showing a green prickly pear cactus with red fruit and a pale blue and tan background. The bold outlines and flat, even shading give it a folk-art illustrative look, with the cactus rendered in several greens. The card is centred on the side of the torso, with the rest of the skin and a blue and white striped fabric edge visible around it.

Ribs Cactus Fruit Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The cantor had reached thirty-eight, the dried maize rattling in the tin, when Inés pushed her card across the oilcloth and asked him to call the one nobody in San Jerónimo wanted. El Nopal came up when the goats had eaten the last of the sweet corn and the wind had taken half the chapel roof. People said it was bad luck to shout it aloud.

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Her grandmother had planted the cactus by the well the year the river went underground. It was a thorny, stubborn thing, and every spring it put out new green pads that the women cut and boiled for the pot when there was nothing else. The children were told to leave the red fruit alone. Teodoro, who kept the tally for the game because he could count faster than anyone, said the fruit tasted of rust and that Inés was a fool to play with a card that brought dryness.

The cantor drew the card from the bottom of the basket, held it up to the lamp, and said it plainly: El nopal. Nobody laughed. Inés took the card home, pinned it to the wall above her bed, and went out to the well before dawn with a knife and a clay bowl.

By noon the whole village was standing at the well, passing the bowl from hand to hand. Teodoro ate a fruit, spat out the seeds, and said nothing about rust at all.