The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina

by Zoraida Cordova

  She kicked him awake.

  “Orquídea!” Bolívar Londoño III got on his knees and stopped just shy of touching her. She shut her eyes. The steel was leaving her. How could she protect her heart from brittle things? She was the brittle thing. She didn’t have a “Lucho” to look out for her.

  “Don’t,” she said. “Don’t say my name. Don’t look at me. Leave.”

  He pressed his palms together in supplication. “Those girls were a gift from the Baron Amarand. They meant nothing to me. I—I just couldn’t refuse him. He’s given us so much.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest and leaned against her door. “Then return to your gift, Señor Londoño.”

  “They meant nothing,” he repeated.

  But she should have known. When a man dismisses other women as nothing, he would eventually do the same to her.

  “You said that, Bolívar.”

  He looked pained when she said his name like that. Without the usual love or admiration. He raked his hair away from his eyes. Her belly gave a tight squeeze at the smell of him—lemongrass and sandalwood and smoke.

  “The day I met you,” he said, “I knew that you’d been sent to me by the stars. You were the one I’d been waiting for because I wished for you, my dearest love. My truest love. And now that I have you, I’ll never let you go. I never want to hurt you again.”

  He grasped her hand, and she was foolish enough to let him take it. She thought he was trying to stand, but he was only shifting. Getting on one knee. He brandished a round pale sapphire set in gold. “Marry me, Divina.”

  Stunned, she got down on her knees to better look into his eyes, and said, “There’s something you should know. Bad luck follows me around. It’s attached to me. Stitched to my skin. I believe it now. You might be part of that curse.”

  “We will make our own luck, Orquídea. Mi divina. Mi vida. Will you marry me?”

  She should have said no. Should have known that the world never punished greedy men for their ill-gotten wishes. Instead she said, “I will.”

  She let him slide the ring on her slender finger, and led him inside. They shared a kiss that made her forget the last several hours. She rewrote the evening so that she saw only him, on his knee, presenting her with a ring. He tasted like licorice and mint, and when he made love to her, he repeated, “you are mine. You are mine.”

  Later, while he slept, she heard that voice again. The Living Star, calling out to her.

  I will be here when you change your mind.

  21

  A HIGHLY IMPROBABLE BUT WELCOME COINCIDENCE

  After scattering Félix Montoya’s ashes, they stopped by a farmer’s market unlike any Marimar had ever seen. While Jefita did the shopping, Ana Cruz was their guide through the busy rows of vendors. Raw meat hung from metal hooks, chickens, by their feet. Neat blocks of blue crabs were stacked like crustacean citadels. Bushels of corn and fresh herbs. Avocados so large they looked like footballs. Bins of dates and towers of coconuts. Ana Cruz treated them to fresh coconuts. A slender man, who introduced himself as Ewel from Esmeraldas, hacked open the tops with a sharp machete, jammed a straw in, and offered Marimar a straight, white smile she was happy to return. The sensory overload of it all was strangely familiar. Everywhere Marimar turned, she tried to imagine a young Orquídea walking ahead of her.

  Back at the Buenasuerte house, Jefita got to work preparing dishes. She prided herself on making everything with the freshest, purest ingredients, just like her mom and grandmother had taught her. When Marimar tried to help, she ushered her out of her kitchen and into the enclosed courtyard with her cousins.

  Ana Cruz busied herself searching for the photographs and keepsakes she’d promised them. While Tatinelly checked on Mike, and Rey and Rhiannon relaxed in twin hammocks, Marimar paced barefoot on hexagonal red tiles. The yard had a palm and mango tree with baby mangos that were just starting to grow. Bright hibiscus flowers dotted a wall of green vines, and fragrant rose bushes bloomed.

  “You’re making me dizzy,” Rey told her.

  “I thought you were napping,” Marimar shot back.

  Rhiannon shut her eyes but giggled. “Uncle Rey said you worry too much.”

  “I did say that,” Rey admitted.

  “Isn’t it a little strange being in this house?” Marimar asked. “A few days ago you were perfectly happy to stay in Four Rivers.”

  Rey lowered his sunglasses. “Maybe being in a beautiful house where people are actually nice to me changed my mind.”

  Marimar rolled her eyes. “Ana Cruz and Jefita are lovely. I mean because of how Orquídea felt about the rest of them.”

  His eyes were focused, serious in a way he only got when he couldn’t think of something sarcastic or petty to say. “We don’t know how she felt, though. Not really. Even if the other Buenasuertes were hateful, Ana Cruz isn’t. Jefita isn’t. If the roles were reversed, I’m sure anyone who has ever hated Enrique would love us.”

  Marimar remembered the Buenasuertes who had shown up at Four Rivers. Had Wilhelm Jr. ever returned to his ailing father the sucre note that Orquídea gave back? She hadn’t needed to say that she didn’t care for the Buenasuertes. That gesture said it all. In the end, family wasn’t about blood. Of course, Pena and Parcha’s brothers and sisters were all half-siblings, but it didn’t matter who their fathers were. It mattered that they shared a mother, a family. You could be born into a family, but you still had to choose them. Marimar looked at Rey and Tatinelly and Rhi. She would choose them.

  “Use your words Marimar,” Rey said, then added softly, “I know it’s hard, believe me.”

  She pressed her hand on her stomach. “Being so close to Orquídea’s past makes me scared of what we’re going to find. I think I’m just looking for someone to blame.”

  “We only have another day here,” he reminded her. “If we don’t find anything, we’ll go home and figure it out.”

  She nodded, but she couldn’t shake the restlessness that had crept up on her.

  “Jefita told me we could go to the park full of iguanas,” Rhiannon said. “Are we allowed to keep them and take them home?”

  “I’m guessing no, kiddo,” Rey said, taking off his sunglasses and biting one of the legs. “But we can try.”

  Marimar was too tired to reprimand Rey for putting thoughts of reptilian smuggling into their little cousin’s mind. She left them giggling in the garden and went back inside.

  Jefita had large pots steaming on the stove. Mounds of cubed meat. Seasoning powders and oils turning the pink flesh into a copper brown. She listened to music while she cooked, like Orquídea, and sang along off-key. Every now and then, Jefita touched a small gold Jesus pendant that rested on her chest.

  Marimar also reached for the bulb at her throat, pressed the tiny thorn that served as a reminder of the time she tried to cut it off.

  “Do you feel better after hearing people talk about Orquídea?” Jefita asked.

  “I don’t know if better is the right word.”

  “What word would you use?”

  Marimar thought for a moment, listening to the high-pitched pluck of guitars. “Curious, maybe. Angry, a bit. I still haven’t figured it out. For the last seven years, all I’ve done is stay in Four Rivers waiting for Orquídea to give me a sign. An answer. Something that would tell me why she did what she did. Who it was that she had run from. And then, nothing happened. I moved on with my life. We all did. Rey and his art. Tati and her family. The twins with their music. Everyone moved on.”

  Jefita’s eyes were filled with more kindness than Marimar had ever experienced from a near stranger. “And then?”

  “Then three people died, and I don’t know what to do. Sometimes I think it might have been easier for her to leave us behind than to tell us the truth. She became a tree rather than talk to us.”

  Jefita set the rice to cook, washed her hands, and sat next to Marimar.

  “I can’t guess for you. But when I knew Orquídea, she was just a
girl,” Jefita said. “They called her Niña Mala Suerte. But that never stopped her from being kind or from helping those who had less than she did. I don’t know what happened in those years she was gone, but the Orquídea I knew would have grabbed her destiny by the balls. She would have done what she needed to.”

  Marimar threw her head back and laughed. “I can believe that.”

  “Can I ask you, why is your gift different than the others?”

  Marimar shook her head. Orquídea had given each member of their family a seed, but Rey, Marimar, and Rhiannon had blooms growing out of their skin. Magic that needed protecting. Enrique had thrown his seed in the fire and he’d returned to Four Rivers worn and bruised. The others had planted theirs and their fortunes had flourished in different ways. Silvia had grown an entire garden. Caleb Jr. had bottled the scents he dreamed of. Juan Luis and Gastón had planted theirs in Four Rivers, and they went back once every few years just to see Orquídea’s tree and sing the songs that turned them into international stars.

  Marimar? She’d built a house. She’d resuscitated the valley. Was that enough? It would have been so if she didn’t feel so unfinished. That had to be it. That had to be why she’d never gotten the flower bud at her throat to open, only grow thorns.

  “Just another one of Orquídea’s secrets,” she said, and gave a smile she didn’t quite feel.

  “I hope being here will help you find answers,” Jefita told her. “It is not natural to be too far from your roots.”

  Once, she would have agreed. Orquídea had planted herself in Four Rivers. It didn’t get more literal than that.

  “In my family,” Jefita continued, mincing red onions without a tear in sight, meanwhile Marimar blinked against the burn, “those kinds of markings are signs that someone was blessed by God.”

  “Sorry to disappoint you, Jefita,” Marimar said. “But we’re nonbelievers.”

  Jefita shook her head but chuckled as she sprinkled salt. Marimar closed her eyes and imagined her house. The salt in the grain of the wood. Orquídea holding rough salt crystals in her hands like dull diamonds. There was an ache pressing under her belly button. She’d had that feeling before en route back to Four Rivers the day of the fire. Why was it happening so far away?

  “I’ll believe twice as hard for you. Besides, it doesn’t have to be my God. It can be a powerful being. A saint. Something. Otherwise, we would all have such blessings.”

  “Don’t you have plenty of blessings, Jefita?” Marimar was curious.

  “Of course, I do. I was blessed by Diosito Santo. A good life is enough. I mean a physical representation of that blessing. Like a sixth finger.”

  “Or a tail?”

  Jefita widened her eyes and made the symbol of the cross. “No. No tails.”

  Rey and Rhiannon came back inside to escape the rising heat. Rey grabbed an orange from the fruit bowl and started peeling it. “What did I miss?”

  “Jefita thinks our flowers were blessings from saints.”

  “I am very saint-like,” he said.

  “Ay, niño,” Jefita admonished.

  But she wasn’t wrong. Since their arrival and visit to the river, word had spread that there were three American-born Ecuadorians with real honest-to-God flowers growing out of their skin and bones. The people wanted to see miracles. For the next few hours, there was a flood of visitors at their door. They wanted to see the girl with the rose on her forehead and the artist with the one on his hand. Marimar was less of an attraction. Most whispered, wondering what was so special about her. They were in luck, because Marimar had spent years wondering the very same thing. There was even a group of teenage girls who brought an offering of chips and chocolate covered cookies with sticky marshmallow centers. They had T-shirts with Juan Luis and Gastón’s faces screen-printed on them and had written the initials JLG in glitter on the apples of their cheeks, which made Tatinelly ask for her own.

  Jefita put a stop to it in time for dinner, refusing to answer the door for anyone and warning them that the family was tired and not there to be watched like penguins at the zoo. She brewed a special tea made of anise, lemongrass, and herbs she didn’t have names for to help comfort “Sick Mister Sullivan” as she called Mike.

  Before they sat down to eat, Ana Cruz finally emerged from a storage closet, her hair in disarray, and announced, “I found it!”

  Rey helped her carry the box of photographs, letters, clothes, and what looked like a poster.

  “My mother kept everything my sister left behind.” Ana Cruz picked up a photo album yellow with age. Clear plastic sheets covered grainy photos. Before she opened it, she looked at Marimar and said, “Your coloring is different but you look a lot like our mother.”

  The first photo was of a woman, her hair pinned up in an elegant bun with a side part. Marimar didn’t look like her own mother or Orquídea. For a long time she had wondered if the face in the mirror belonged to the father that had left. But there she was, seeing her likeness in the great-grandmother she’d never met.

  “Same eyes and face. It’s so weird,” Tatinelly said, delighted.

  Marimar flipped the page and saw the Montoya-Buenasuerte wedding. She recognized Orquídea in a simple dress, off to the side.

  “What was your mother’s name?” Rey asked, pointing at the bride.

  “Isabela Belén Montoya Buenasuerte,” Ana Cruz said. “She was disinherited because she had Orquídea out of wedlock. Took the money her mother gave her and built a house. That’s where she met my father.”

  There was another photo. All of the Buenasuertes stood at the grand steps of a house. Isabela was older, more elegant in her finery. And Orquídea, again, off to the side as if she’d walked into the photo while it was being taken as opposed to being a part of it.

  “Our parents were too hard on my sister,” Ana Cruz lamented.

  But Marimar understood the real issue as she looked at the family portraits. More and more photos, and each one was the same. The Buenasuertes at the park, at the beach, in their Sunday best, and Orquídea always apart. Marimar’s words grew thorns. “Surely Wilhelm Buenasuerte had no problem with his wife’s little brown daughter, as long as she stayed in her place.”

  Ana Cruz’s cheeks turned pink, but she did not make excuses for her father. Instead, she changed the subject, as if Marimar had said nothing at all. “I see Orquídea never took her husband’s last name. She remained Montoya until the end.”

  “It’s kind of hard when all five of your husbands die in a ten- to twelve-year period,” Rey said. “Think of the paperwork.”

  Marimar flicked his ear.

  “What? We were all thinking it.”

  Rhiannon giggled. “I wasn’t thinking that, Uncle Reymundo.”

  Jefita made the sign of the cross again and said, “I hope they’ve patched up their differences in heaven.”

  Rey, Marimar, and Tatinelly shared a strangled silence. They knew exactly where their grandmother was, and it wasn’t in heaven. Unless the GPS for heaven was Four Rivers, USA.

  Ana Cruz put aside every photo of Orquídea so that the Montoyas could keep them. The rest of the box was filled with dresses. A few seashells. A school uniform. A white communion dress, and a handmade veil with dozens of shiny oblong pearls. Rey and Tatinelly took turns trying it on, but Marimar kept searching. Her fingers itched with promise, like they had only just begun to scratch the surface of the mystery that was Orquídea Divina Montoya.

  “Is this a hunting knife?” Marimar asked and wielded a small blade with sea-green patina on the rusted copper studs on the handle.

  Jefita clapped her hands once. “Orquídea’s fishing knife. She could gut a river fish in seconds. Drove her mother furious when she didn’t stop.”

  “Can I keep this?” Marimar asked. She didn’t know why she wanted it, or what she could do with a decades-old blade that had all but lost its edge, but Ana Cruz parted with another part of her sister.

  There were letters, but they were from Orquídea t
o Ana Cruz. “My father never showed them to me. I didn’t find them until after he passed and I had to clean out his office. She talked about traveling the world, but she was careful not to include too much information. She spoke of the man she was in love with and described life in each city.”

  Rey let go of a strangled sigh. “I thought she was just afraid to see the world. Turns out she saw, she conquered, and she said ‘no thanks.’ ”

  Marimar tried not to laugh. Pieces of Orquídea were coming together. She’d left the abusive Buenasuerte house. She’d met a man. Traveled the world. She went to the valley. What were they missing?

  “This still smells like burned sugar,” Tatinelly said as she unfurled a poster. It was for an old-fashioned circus with a girl in a glittering dress made of pearls sitting on a crescent moon. The Londoño Spectacular Spectacular! featuring Wolf Girl, Orquídea Divina, and the Living Star!

  “Holy shit,” Tatinelly breathed.

  Rhiannon repeated it and ran off deep into the house like an echo of her mother. “Holy shit! Holy shit! Holy shit!”

  No one in the room was more delighted than Rey. “Grandmother was a showgirl!”

  “You have her legs, Marimar,” Tati said.

  Marimar looked at the woman on the poster. She tried to remember a time her grandmother had smiled so vividly, so joyously. Like there was life inside of her. But she couldn’t quite conjure the image.

  On the poster, Orquídea must have been eighteen then. She didn’t have Pena until she was at least twenty, she knew that much.

  “So, when you said she ran away, you meant she joined the circus.”

  “My mother told me,” Ana Cruz said. “I’ve been struggling with whether to tell you.”

  “Why?” Rey asked. “We’re millennials. We’re desensitized and have no shame.”

  Marimar wanted to argue, but then decided her cousin was right. She didn’t understand why it was a big deal that a girl had run away and joined the circus. But then again, this was not her world or generation. She’d grown up barefoot and free in a valley full of magic. These were all things her grandmother could have told them and known she was safe recounting her past. So why hadn’t she?