Abuela asked, “What kind of herbs?”
“Bruja kind.”
“She say what for?”
“I didn’t ask. Who knows if she even knows how to use them, but has that ever stopped anyone? ”
“Did you get her name?” Abuela’s white, caterpillar eyebrows pulled together, lips pursed.
“No. She handed me the money and ran off. Very rude. But if I had to say, she was about your granddaughter’s age. A little shorter. Too much make-up.”
A chill ran beneath my skin and the hairs on my arms stood up.
“I’ll watch out for this girl. Thank you, Margarita,” Abuela said as she walked past me and out the door.
Part of me wanted to ask Abuela if it was Marcela. Every time Marcela came up, though, the tables turned and I was the one being scolded for something or another. Regardless, if she had those herbs, it couldn’t be for anything good, right? And how would she even know what to do with them? And what were they exactly?
Too many questions that needed answers—as if I didn’t have enough questions already.
As we walked back to the border, I suddenly noticed something. It was quiet outside. There were a few people mingling, but for the most part, the streets were bare, and many shops had closed their doors.
“Where is everyone?”
“Siesta,” Abuela replied.
¿Siesta? That didn’t make sense. “It can’t be. That’s around two in the afternoon. It’s only ten in the morning, if that.”
Abuela only responded by pointing her finger to a clock tower up ahead: 2:14 p.m.
“How . . . ” I couldn’t finish the sentence. We had lost at least four hours in the shop, when it seemed we spent no more than ten minutes . . . twenty at most!
Abuela said, “Don’t think about it.”
And I didn’t. I couldn’t. How can you think about losing four hours in ten minutes? You couldn’t. That’s loco.
Doce
I RETURNED TO SCHOOL the second week in January with mixed emotions. Part of me was sad because I had enjoyed only working with Abuela over the break. Now that I was back at school, I would be overloaded once again with homework and healing responsibilities. Another part of me was apprehensive. Marcela’s suspension was over, and I imagined she would be more pissed at me than she was before. That morning, when the brick building of the school came into sight, I prayed that somehow, someway, I’d be spared Marcela for the entire semester if not for the rest of my life.
Either I wasn’t praying correctly or God didn’t hear me, because the first person I saw as soon as I walked into my first period was Marcela sitting in the back row. She sat in the far right corner, looking ahead at the blackboard. No one spoke to her. For that matter, no one sat at the desks in front or beside her. Everyone sat closer to the door and did their best not to look her way.
She looked at me as soon as I walked in, and her eyes grew dark. She turned away and looked out the window, but her hands gripped the edges of her desk—she was not happy. Neither was I. I sat down in the front row, first seat, closest to the door, as far from Marcela as I possibly could. And still, I felt too close.
What was she doing in my class? This was an Advanced English class, and Marcela only took regular classes. Did she miraculously grow a brain and hoped to get into college or something? I didn’t see that happening in my lifetime.
It was the most excruciating hour of the day. I tried to look forward and listen to the teacher, but the entire time I felt Marcela’s eyes boring into me with all the ways she wanted to gut me. After a while I started to picture all the creative ways Marcela could kill me: stab me with a sharp pencil in the throat, knife to the back, slam my head into the tiled floor a few times, perhaps? I wanted so desperately to turn and give her the finger or a mean sneer, but it wouldn’t help my situation. It’d probably set Marcela off, and then somehow Abuela would magically hear about it, and—bam!—I’d be the one in trouble.
At lunch, I looked for Laura so I could ask her about Marcela, but I didn’t have a chance. When I sat down, Laura was already gossiping with the twins, Bella and Estrella. They were seniors like Laura.
“Can you believe it? I bet her mother had a fit when she found out,” Estrella said.
“Yeah, well, can you imagine? Her favorite daughter pregnant? My mom would have hit me, too!” Bella added.
My ears perked up. “Who’s pregnant?”
Bella and Estrella looked at me as if I was a two-headed alien. They didn’t really like me since Laura had included me at their lunch table. I didn’t like them either. They gossiped too much and liked to laugh at other people’s misfortunes.
Laura turned to me. “Leta is.”
“Who’s that?”
“Freshman . . . Leta Gallos.”
Oh, shit. Señora Gallos, her daughter. I hadn’t told anyone. Actually I had sort of forgotten about her when I figured out my mother had had another baby. God, I was selfish. “How did it get out?” I asked
“Her mother found her trying to take a piss test! What a tonta. That’s why you do that stuff at school,” Bella said.
Poor Leta. Pregnant, just like my mother.
Laura and the twins continued to speak about Leta.
A little while later, I interrupted them. “Do you guys know why Marcela is in Advanced English?”
“I heard no other English teacher would allow her in their class. Mr. Martin’s brave, if you ask me.” Bella said.
Or stupid, I thought.
“Well, I heard her mom’s making her take the class,” Estrella countered.
I didn’t continue the conversation, and no one else seemed to want to either. The twins moved on to gossiping about who might have gotten Leta pregnant. Laura watched me for a few seconds, chewing at her lip as if she wanted to say something, but she never did.
I ate my food, not really in the mood for any part of the twins’ conversation.
At the end of lunch, a short guy walked up to our table.
“Laura Valdez?” He asked.
Laura turned to him. “That’s me.”
“The office sent me. Your mom called and needs you to call her back at the store. It’s important.”
Laura rolled her eyes. “Probably needs me to come in after school.” She picked up her Styrofoam tray. “I’ll talk to you guys later,” she said as she followed the boy.
Valdez. Laura’s mother. It stuck in my head and pounded at my temples. The pregnant Gallos girl. No, that couldn’t be it. I looked at Laura. She was almost out the cafeteria door. Someone called to her. She looked and waved. No, it couldn’t be Laura. Could it?
“Damn, Martha. Looks like you’ve seen a ghost,” Estrella said. “Marcela threatening you again?”
I shook my head.
No, but I think I had figured out how Sofía had helped my mother: Laura. She had raised Laura for her.
I managed to stay out of Marcela’s way the first day and even the first week. She continued to give me the death stare each morning in class. That wasn’t my biggest concern, though. Laura was. Was Laura my sister? Had Sofía taken my mother’s baby and raised it herself? Was that why Abuela didn’t like Sofía? Didn’t really want me to hang out with Laura?
Each day at lunch, I watched Laura, trying to see my mother in her. But each time I looked, I just didn’t see it. Maybe I didn’t want to see it. I didn’t look like my mother, either. Laura did have Jorge’s widow’s peak. Then again, Laura didn’t look like anyone in the family, not even her own mother or Abuela. Sofía had curly hair and Laura’s was straight . . . like my mother’s.
I didn’t mention my suspicions to Laura. I mean, how do you do that? “Hey, Laura, I think we are sisters”?
I needed more information. Carlita. She was the key. The key to knowing exactly what had happened and if Laura was who I thought she was.
Even though the Laura question laid heavily on my mind, I had other things that kept popping up in my life and kept me occupied. Like how Marcela stopped coming to schoo
l. Well, sort of. The second week of school—Friday—I came into class without looking in Marcela’s corner, as had become my habit. It wasn’t until class was halfway through that I noticed I hadn’t felt the prickly feeling working its way up my spine. I turned around and found Marcela wasn’t in her seat. I didn’t see her the rest of that day anywhere else at school, either. The next week she missed two days: Wednesday and Friday. A few days the next week, and the next and so on.
Eventually, she only showed up two or three days a week. Part of me was relieved. It was as if God had heard my prayer in some way. If only I could be satisfied with the silence that greeted our English teacher when he called out Marcela’s name. But I wasn’t. I couldn’t stop wondering where she was.
My gut told me that the girl that Margarita had spoken of was Marcela. Who else wanted power? Who else would go looking for it?
I tried to ask around as quietly as possible. There were ears and eyes everywhere in my school, as I had come to find out. Everyone I asked had no idea where she was, much less what she was doing. Some said she skipped with her gang to smoke weed. Others said she had a job across the border at a taco stand. And one person had heard she was selling drugs or making them. They were all pretty far-fetched to me, but this was Marcela we were talking about. Who knew?
The next two months went by in a blur with healing and school. And yet, two things occurred around the end of February that renewed my interest in my mother—not that she had ever left my mind exactly. Every day I ate lunch with Laura was a day of scrutinizing every expression she made: her hair, her eyes, the way she spoke and what she talked about. I just needed to see the connection between her and my mother.
I had to.
On a Thursday night, I had just taken a shower and returned to my room to lie down. I was exhausted. For some reason, my mother had plagued my mind all day. There wasn’t anything in particular that had made me think of her. It had begun as soon as I awoke, and it nagged me each hour and throughout the day.
During her teaching once, Abuela said to trust these nagging feelings. They meant something. I asked her what but she just shrugged and said, “Who knows? But when I pay attention to them, they seem to help me. Sometimes they save lives.”
When the feeling wouldn’t go away, I got a crazy idea. I grabbed a few candles and put them on the small dresser. I stood in front of the candles and closed my eyes and dug within my memory for a picture of my mother. Finally, I found it: a memory of her when she worked at the breakfast diner in Orlando. She looked down at me with an actual smile, not one of her Big Fakes, as she sat a plate of pancakes in front of me.
I then prayed. Attending church and learning to heal had given me some kind of faith that I wasn’t quite sure of, but I found myself believing the prayers I said sometimes. Maybe there was a God and a Jesus listening to me. I prayed mostly because it felt comforting to think that someone listened, knew my troubles and helped me to heal.
But now, I prayed for my mother. Not anything as specific as health or safety, I just prayed with her in my mind, and before I ended I asked God to let me discover what had happened to her and where to find her. When I opened my eyes I saw that the candles were lit. I stepped back in surprise, turned around and peeked down the hall. Abuela was in her room. I turned back to the candles. Had I done that? I hadn’t lit them, but somehow a flame flickered back and forth on each wick. These candles had a life of their own. I looked once more at them suspiciously, then hopped into bed.
When I woke up the next morning, they were still lit.
Two days later, Gloria brought over some enchiladas verdes that she had bought from some lady at church who was selling them to raise money for her son to go to college. Abuela made frijoles and arroz to go with them.
I took my first bite and couldn’t help myself. “God, these are so good.”
Gloria snapped her fingers two inches from my nose, “Hey, watch your mouth, chica!”
I stuck out my tongue when Gloria looked down to take a bite, but Abuela caught me.
“Clean the dishes after dinner and water the plants.”
My punishment. I fought not to argue back and nodded instead. They took the “Don’t say God’s name in vain” commandment way too seriously.
I ate silently, as did Abuela, while Gloria talked, which was pretty normal. She never shut up. Literally never. She was going on about some scandal in the neighborhood: Señora Ramírez, the one who lived in the orange house, not the white house, had caught her husband cheating on her with her own sister.
“You’ll probably have to go over there in a few days. Calm them down, cure their marriage. Más problemas. I told them that . . . ” The phone rang, cutting off Gloria.
We stopped eating and looked at each other. We never got any phone calls at this hour. We were more likely to get a knock on the door.
It rang again. Gloria and Abuela looked at me for a few seconds. I looked back confused. Finally, it dawned on me: they wanted me to answer the phone. I got up.
“Hello?”
No one responded, but someone gasped quietly.
“Hello?” I asked again.
No response. I turned and shrugged at Abuela and Gloria. Gloria was looking at me, but Abuela was not. Her back stiffened and her head tilted toward her plate. The next second, she let out a sigh, and her body heaved with a release of tension. A second later, she started eating again.
Something about that movement triggered a memory.
I gripped the phone tighter. “Mom?” I whispered into the phone.
No response, only breathing.
I whispered, “Can you hear me? Where are you? Mom?”
The silence stretched between the lines. I closed my eyes and reached through the phone with my don, a desperate attempt. It was all I could think of. I sent it out like I did when I healed. I wasn’t even sure it would work. Through the phone I heard another gasp and then a click.
I slammed the phone against the receiver. The phone fell off the receiver and hung by its cord. Clenching my fists tightly, I fought not to hit the wall. One breath. Two. Three. I picked up the phone and placed it on the receiver a little more softly, even though I wanted to slam it about five more times.
When I returned to the table, I didn’t look at Gloria and I couldn’t look at Abuela. I only looked at their plates. Abuela was almost done. I picked up the fork and began eating again, not tasting the cheesy, spicy deliciousness of the enchiladas any longer. Gloria picked up her fork too.
I would have been happy to finish the meal in silence, but of course, Gloria did not allow it.
“Humph,” she paused, “that was pleasant . . . Más problemas, like I was saying . . . ” And she continued with the story about the cheating husband between mouthfuls.
Later, I realized it was the first time I could ever remember calling my mother, “Mom.”
Trece
ONE TUESDAY IN MARCH I returned home from school later than usual because I had Statistics tutoring. My body dragged itself through the living room and into the kitchen. I hadn’t been getting much sleep, and the effects were pounding my body. Every night for the last few weeks, I had tossed and turned in bed, wondering and wondering. Where was my mother? Who was the baby? What happened?
The aroma of caldo met me in the living room and was confirmed when I found Abuela standing in front of the stove, dropping pieces of chicken into a boiling pot.
“Someone sick?” I asked throwing my bag down next to the wall.
Abuela sighed in a way that said she was displeased that I had just thrown my bag on the floor. I pretended I didn’t see and sat down.
“Why does someone have to be sick? We prevent sickness, just as we heal.”
Whatever. I was too tired to ask what she meant. I relaxed into the chair, glad to be home and able to rest for just a moment before Abuela sent me to the healing room to clean, or prepare something, or before she made me do my homework, which I dreaded. Statistics and an essay. Kill me now. But for a
moment, no thinking, just . . .
“Martha!” I jumped and almost fell out of the chair. Damn. I had fallen asleep.
A bowl of soup had been placed on the table for me, and Abuela stood next to me with a look of satisfaction on her face.
“See? Prevent!” She turned around, grabbed her own bowl and sat down on the other side of the table. I hated when she was right.
Gloria wasn’t eating with us tonight, not that I minded. I could only handle a certain number of her snide comments. Probably as many as she could handle of my sarcastic ones.
We ate in silence, but spoonfuls away from finishing, Abuela spoke. “I have a cousin that lives in Mexico.”
I paused, the spoonful of soup halfway to my mouth. “Okay.”
She pursed her lips and continued. “My cousin has a daughter who is about to birth twin boys, and they want me there when the children come.”
“Okay . . . ” I repeated. What was the problem? Mexico was only a few blocks over.
“Ay, Martha! Enough ‘okay,’ ‘okay.’ Can I finish already?”
“I thought you wanted me to say something.” I guess I couldn’t do anything right. I brought the bowl to my mouth to slurp the last bit of soup . . . loudly.
“If I had . . . never mind! Stop slurping! They don’t live across the border. They live about eight hours in. I will be gone two days. And because of school . . . ”
My ears perked up. I tried not to show my excitement with a smile or worse: interest in the fact that Abuela would be gone for two days. And the best part: I’d be alone—two days of paradise in Laredo, or the closest damn thing to paradise in Laredo anyway. I was never left alone in this burning hole. Abuela or Gloria were always around.
I tried to maintain my cool. “Okay.” Simple, sweet, and it didn’t divert from my previous responses. I even added a nonchalant shrug for effect. After setting the bowl down, I grabbed a piece of bread from the center of the table and started breaking it apart and eating it.
“I don’t know if I should . . . ”
No, she couldn’t do this to me. “Why not? Don’t not go because of me.”
Secrets of the Casa Rosada Page 17