“Fuck you.”
“I’m serious, you have mildly rough hetero sex, and you try to kill the guy.”
“I hate you.”
“You love me. And miss me. Though I’m glad I’m not there for your sexcapades.” She heard him sigh. A clatter like he dropped brushes or something. “Do you need me to come out there?”
“Where are you?”
“Enrolled in an art class at Hunter. I hate the teachers, but I’ll give it a shot.”
“No, I’ll be fine. Just let me know if anything weird happens to you.”
“My sex is always weird, Marimar.”
“Goodbye,” she said and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep. The bud at her throat shut once again.
Six days later, Chris showed up again, even though it clearly pained him to get out of his truck. She took one look at his crooked smile, pressed her hand against his chest. He was ready to forgive her, to turn the occurrence into a funny, strange story he might tell at a bar one day. She didn’t want that, she’d decided. Before he said anything, she ended it, and he left quietly and softly. His sad smile was imprinted in her, like the heat of the kiss he left on her shoulder every morning for a month and day.
She watched him disappear up the hill and turn onto the road. Orquídea had warned her to not make the same mistakes. To love. But she’d also warned her to protect her magic. How could she do both, if letting Chris near her meant unraveling a part of herself she wasn’t ready to face? Maybe not ever.
She stood at the bottom of the hill so long she was startled by the first flurries of snow dotting her cheeks where her tears should have been. But she didn’t cry for Christian Sandoval. She smelled winter approaching and got to work instead.
Marimar found an axe and hacked up the dead trees for firewood. Stacked the logs neatly in the corner of her shed. She left the window open to air out the scent of leather and sandalwood that Chris had left behind. She hung her sheets in a line, and they smelled like unseasonable lavender that had sprung up in the valley over the last month.
When it was so quiet that she couldn’t bear her own thoughts, so quiet not even Gabo doled out a song, Marimar tried to talk to the ceiba tree that used to be her grandmother. She pressed her palms against the bark. She begged, first in quiet whispers.
“Please, what am I supposed to do?”
Then in screams. “Tell me what it all means! What am I supposed to do with a fucking flower growing out of my throat?”
When her questions continued to go unanswered, Marimar started talking to her instead. Confessing things she never would have as a girl. Sneaking out with Rey and going into town to watch movies with the other kids. Drinking Orquídea’s liquor stash in junior high. It occurred to Marimar that Orquídea must have known all of those things and more. She talked to a tree because it was easier than calling one of the Montoyas. And saying what? Nothing has changed. Some progress on the house. I think I broke a good man’s heart. Our magic hurt him.
She waited for the miraculous things that Orquídea had once made happen—calling down the rain. A house appearing where there hadn’t been one before. Summoning spirits. But Marimar was not Orquídea Divina. She was just alone.
One day, Marimar found a pocketknife on the floor made of steel and some sort of animal bone. Chris’s knife, the one he’d used that night. She used it to try and cut off the flower at her throat, but she passed out from the pain. When she woke up, her sheets were covered in blood and the stem that protruded from her flesh grew a lone green thorn instead.
She would not try this again for a while.
When the first heavy snow fell in Four Rivers, the leaves of the ceiba tree never turned. They remained a strange sharp green as snow fell all around them. Eventually, Marimar gave up talking to Orquídea, and there was nothing she could do on the property until spring. She felt like she had slowly transformed into a bear, ready for hibernation. All the grief she hadn’t let herself feel when her mother and aunt died washed over her threefold. Even though she hadn’t lost Rey, she missed him. She even missed Tatinelly, though they had never been as close. The hollow shape within her heart seemed to grow. That wasn’t the point of having come back here. That wasn’t the point of having stayed. Marimar was like the earth covered by layers of ice and snow. She needed rest. She needed to heal.
She slept for six months.
During her time under, she dreamed. Most of the time she was floating in outer space with the stars. She could see her mother but at a distance, so far away. Then she would just fade. Once, only once, she heard an echo, faint, but there. “Find me.”
When she woke up, it was spring. The earth around her was green. Wild. Orquídea’s tree had grown white cotton-like flowers. She was ready. The valley was ready.
Marimar hired a local contractor, but she insisted on carrying wooden planks and hammering nails along with them. It would take seven years to build her new house, because something always stopped construction. Once, it rained for so long the valley flooded. Marimar slept in her tent at the top of the hill until the water receded. Then there were electrical failures. Several townsfolk had petitioned to see evidence that Marimar owned the deed to the land. It was five more months before she was cleared to put in a work order, and when she did, the dragonflies and grasshoppers of the valley descended on the construction workers. They left of their own accord, and the workers that followed discovered several code violations and they had to redo it all anyway. One day, that entire team quit on account of ghosts and the zombie rooster that wouldn’t stop crowing. When the foundation was finally solidly built, Marimar decided to finish the rest herself. It would be hers, through and through. Her house was positioned right beside Orquídea’s tree. The ceiba that did not belong but had made a home there regardless.
Marimar kept moving. She enrolled in community college, but couldn’t quite find something to love, something that made her feel settled. Still, she went to classes and graduated. She’d see Chris at the farmer’s market or the hardware store, and he’d give a short wave before putting distance between them. He had met a nice girl, a baker, and they’d go on to have three kids, each named after famous baseball players. But before that, she noticed a new tattoo on the inside of his wrist. A twist of ivy.
Then, Marimar discovered she was good at something. Making things grow. She fixed the greenhouse. Even if she couldn’t figure out how to get her own flower bud to bloom, she had a green thumb. Those seeds that had survived the fire were still in their bottles. Roses. Orchids. Tulips. Geraniums. Carnations. Hyacinths. Foxglove. Baby’s breath. Daisies. Sunflowers. She made a garden of her own. She sold her flowers at the farmer’s market and more people knew her as Montoya than Marimar. She was the only one in Four Rivers, after all.
She called her family once a week, then once a month, then every other couple of months. She found that, after months of silence, she liked being alone too much. For a while she was okay with that. Silvia and the twins visited once. They’d never planted the seeds Orquídea had given them and chose to do it on the third anniversary of her transformation. Everyone visited once or twice, but never together. Never staying more than a couple of days or so. Enrique never came.
Seven years after the fire, Marimar sat down to have her eggs and black coffee for breakfast. Her rosebud still hadn’t bloomed, but her house was complete.
On what should have been another morning, the phone rang. The voice on the other line came rushed, urgent, weary.
“Tati, I can’t—slow down.”
“I’m sorry,” Tatinelly said. “It’s going to sound crazy.”
Marimar bit the side of her thumb. She looked out the window at her grandmother’s branches moving in the breeze. She absently pressed the pad of her thumb against the thorn on her flower bud.
“Try me.”
“I think someone is following us.” Tati made a strangled sound. “I shouldn’t even be saying this on the phone. Do you think I should?”
“Start over.
What makes you think that someone is following you?”
“Mike thinks I’m being crazy but there are times I see this man standing at the end of our block. When I go point him out, he’s gone. But Rhiannon sees him too. She says that he said hi to her once. I don’t know. I’ve just been thinking lately about how everything happened all those years ago. And we just left you, Marimar. We just left and we should have stayed and every time I wanted to call you I’d get scared that you were mad. Are you mad at me?”
“I’m not mad at you,” Marimar said, trying her best to sound gentle. “Have you called the police?”
Tati’s laugh verged on hysterical. “They agree with Mike. I explained to them about how Mamá Orquídea said we needed to protect—you know—but they looked at me like I should be institutionalized. I told Mike to tell them I’m not lying, but he said he can’t remember that day because he passed out before the fire. He thinks he dreamed it. I just—Can we come visit? Please? Please, Marimar.”
“Of course, you can come here,” Marimar said. “Stay as long as you need.”
* * *
Marimar took a sip of her coffee and let out a slow breath. She tried to go through her catalog of memories. Remembered calling Rey all those years ago and asking if anything weird had happened to him. For the Montoyas, weird was their normal. She couldn’t think of anything that stood out, but if she was honest with herself, she’d stopped searching. She didn’t care about unearthing Orquídea’s past, and she didn’t care to know who her birth father was, and she just wanted to tend to her flowers and work on maintaining the valley. She’d gotten what she’d asked for, mostly. Peace. Home.
Something was coming that was going to disrupt that. She felt it in the chill of the air. The hard breeze slammed the shutters closed. Gabo screeched louder than he’d done in ages. The phone rang again.
“Tati?” she answered.
A sound broke through, but it wasn’t Tatinelly. It was white noise, the crackle of a dead radio station, a voice she’d heard once in her dream during her hibernation, and he said, “Open the door, Marimar.”
15
THE KING OF THE EARTH
The first lie Rey told himself upon returning to New York City was that he was only doing this to keep his promise to Orquídea. You can’t lie to the dead. Although Marimar insisted that Orquídea wasn’t dead dead. She was still gone, and they were still fucked.
On his first day of classes, people had stared. For once, it was nice not to wear a sensible blazer or colors that made him look like he’d fade into the muted shades of a mountain side. It was winter and he’d opted for cashmere sweaters in emerald green, the bloody red of pomegranates ripped in half. He didn’t want to be one of those New Yorkers who always wore black, mostly because he wasn’t a New Yorker. He was from Four Rivers, the product of women who were transmutable. First mortal, then divine.
Rey had told Marimar that he hated his teachers. Each one possessed an air of boredom. They walked around the studio checking in on his progress. Too slow. Too sloppy. Was that supposed to be modernism? He didn’t understand terms or categories. He was the oldest one in each of his classes filled with unkempt freshmen who smelled of marijuana and three-day-old arm pits. Once, while eating slices of pizza in the glass walkways that bridged the different buildings of Hunter College, one of the girls from his class had sat beside him. Her hair was blonde at the bottom and dark at the roots from excess oil.
“Can I touch it?” she asked.
He’d nearly choked on his pizza. “Pardon?”
“The flower.” She looked at him as if he should have known. “Is it real?”
“It’s real, and no, you can’t.”
She rolled her eyes and got to her feet like a child who’d been denied something. As he went to take another bite of his pizza, she grabbed his wrist. Tugged on a petal. He remembered the time his mother had dragged him out of school by his ear for fighting. Only it was a thousand times worse. He’d never had a piece of himself ripped out so violently.
When he screamed and people started looking, she let go. He lay on the ground for half an hour before someone checked on him, and another half an hour before one of the security guards told him he was bleeding on the floor.
He hadn’t even gotten to finish his pizza.
Hence, Rey hated going to art classes at Hunter College. He didn’t see the girl in his class anymore, but he imagined what he’d say if he did. He couldn’t very well punch a girl, even if she’d assaulted him. He couldn’t call the police or explain his rose.
Orquídea’s voice came to him in those moments. Protect your magic.
Had his grandmother really been envisioning a dirty art student when she uttered those final words?
Ever since then, Rey was more careful. He made do with those ungodly long-sleeve sweaters with the holes in the sleeve. He felt like an emo kid who’d gotten lost on the way to a My Chemical Romance music video. Or a housewife from Manhattan putting on athleisure wear. The intersection of that particular clothing item did not make Rey feel settled, but it was a necessary precaution.
He told himself he could drop out. He already had a degree. He’d already humored his grandmother. But there was a moment when he stood at his easel, when he put on his headphones, when he rolled up his sleeves, when he was alone in the studio—well, it didn’t all suck.
He didn’t stop painting. Couldn’t stop. Part of him was chasing the high he’d felt that first time when he’d locked himself in his room and worked on the portrait of Orquídea as a young girl. He was stubborn, kept to himself, and didn’t listen to his professors. He barely had a 3.0 average.
But during the end of the semester student showcase, when anyone walked past his paintings, they stopped. They looked. Some even wept. That attention was too much. Rey had been searching for a reprieve from the crowded show, and made the mistake of winding up in a small corner. He didn’t notice that someone had followed him, and he didn’t notice the guy block him in until it was too late. The stranger was in his early twenties, broad chested, and taller than Rey. His cheeks were pink from the box wine being served.
“I’ve been looking at you all night,” the stranger said, so close Rey smelled the sour milk breath on him.
“Good for you,” Rey said and did the only thing he could. He tried to push past him.
The stranger pressed Rey against the wall with the spread of his forearm. Rey’s mouth went dry, muscles soft as jelly. He’d been in so many fights, clawed his way out of groups of boys who tried to get him to man up. He thought of his father teaching him how to punch, how to take a hit and let it roll off so you could get away. But that was all before.
The stranger traced Rey’s arm and brushed a thumb across the soft rose petals. Rey thought of how Marimar said that poison ivy had attacked her boyfriend when he got a little passionate with her. He’d laughed but here, as panic paralyzed the drop of common sense he usually had, he was mad. Mad that he was surrounded by marble and glass and cement instead of dirt and grass and hills.
His attacker’s grip tightened and this time, he cried out. Rey felt the warm trickle of blood before he saw it. A dozen thorns, each one half an inch long, had protruded from his skin.
“What’s wrong with you, freak?” the drunk stranger yelled, staring at the blood running out of his palms from perfect tiny punctures.
“What’s going on here?” someone shouted. Professor Something, Rey realized.
The attacker shoved his bloody hand in his pocket. “Just congratulating Rey on a good show.”
“Is that right?” the professor asked Rey, who cradled his flowered hand against his chest.
He nodded. Again, who would believe him?
The stranger scurried off, but the professor remained. He was of average height and build. A full head of hair gone completely silver and forget-me-not blue eyes. No, hyacinth blue. Pretty fucking flower blue. Despite his coloring, his face was young. He wore an emerald blazer and a tiepin with a garnet on i
t, and jeans to throw off his wealth. He kept his distance, but homed his gaze on Rey, whose heart was a sledgehammer against his ribs.
“Can I call you a cab?”
At that, Rey laughed. He felt like a diffused time bomb as he said, “Actually, I prefer to be called Rey. Professor—”
“Edward Knight.”
* * *
Edward Knight, an art critic who doubled as a professor, took Rey under his wing and into his bed.
Rey, with his beautiful smile and honey brown eyes. The body he’d carved like Michelangelo did David. Eddie had swept into Rey’s life the night of the party and hadn’t left his side since. Rey gave art school one last semester, but his heart told him it wasn’t for him. While Eddie was never Rey’s teacher, he made time to stop by Rey’s apartment every day and see his progress.
Sometimes he had nothing to say, simply sat on a chair and watched Rey work. Stroke by stroke until the painting was finished.
“Why do you look so shocked?” Rey asked one night.
“Not shocked. Fascinated.”
“Because of my rose?”
“Because you don’t hesitate. From the first moment your brush touches canvas, you don’t stop. You barely even eat. It’s like you’re—”
“I’m inspired,” Rey interrupted, because he didn’t like the word possessed.
Rey worked on what he called weird shit, but Eddie preferred to call surrealism, even though surrealism was passé now. Rey didn’t know the names of famous artists or movements. He used his art history textbooks as palettes if his palette paper ran out. When Eddie took him to a real gallery show, Rey mostly smiled and drank champagne while all of Eddie’s friends spoke in rapid-fire French. He was surprised to find that none of them touched him, not even a casual tap on the shoulder. It almost felt like they’d been warned. That Eddie was his shield against the art scene that felt so foreign. After all, no matter how much schooling he’d had, his degree, how long he’d lived in New York City, when he was in the escargot-filled belly of art critics, Rey still felt like a townie from the middle of nowhere.
The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina Page 15