Lotería

by Karla Arenas Valenti

  “¡Mira!” a little boy called. He pointed at the bright pink ribbon clearly framed against the backdrop of wings temporarily blocking the sun. Had it been the darker purple ribbon, it would have escaped his attention entirely. As it was, the little boy jumped, reaching for the strip of pink.

  “Careful!”

  A man on a bicycle with a basket full of oranges swerved to avoid hitting the little boy. With a citrus-scented crash, the man and his fruit tumbled off the bicycle.

  “See there?” Catrina indicated the little boy. “Cause…” Then she pointed at the rolling oranges. “Effect. One thing inevitably leads to another.”

  The oranges rolled gaily down the street. Life leaned over to pick one up, relishing the bright scent of the fruit’s flesh. In his reverie, he didn’t notice the curious bird that had landed on their table and was pecking at the deck of cards in the center.

  The two friends watched the oranges and the continued effect they had on everyone who crossed their path: one man tripped, which made another man laugh, and that led to a heated argument between them; a cluster of dogs raced after another orange, running in front of a car and causing a small traffic jam; a street entertainer gathered as many oranges as he could and juggled them, to the great delight of a group of tourists, who tipped him for his efforts.

  “All these lives were impacted by one stray ribbon, unspooling a series of events that were completely out of their control,” Catrina said. “None of these people had any choice in what happened.”

  As she spoke, the bird took flight—unseen by the two friends as it carried away the top card of the pile, thus unfurling a different destiny for the girl on the bus.

  “Everything is connected—you see?”

  Catrina and Life turned back to the table.

  “There is truth in what you say, of course.” But Life knew there was more to the story.

  “I can see you gathering your arguments.” Catrina smiled. “Let’s keep playing, and then you can tell me how I’m wrong.”

  “That I will.” Life returned her grin and flipped over the next card. “FRESCO Y OLOROSO, EN TODO TIEMPO HERMOSO.”

  “Well, that’s easy,” Catrina said. “FRESH AND FRAGRANT, BEAUTIFUL IN ANY SEASON. It’s the pine tree, of course!”

  Neither friend found the pine tree on their tabla, so Life flipped over another card. “LA COBIJA DE LOS POBRES.”

  “That is the sun, THE BLANKET OF THE POOR,” Catrina said.

  “And still no bean for either of us.”

  Life flipped over a third card. “LAS JARAS DE ADÁN, DONDE PEGAN, DAN,” he said.

  “THE ARROWS OF ADAM STRIKE WHERE THEY HIT. That’s rather cryptic,” Catrina responded.

  “Cryptic or not, I have it on my board!” Life placed his first black bean on the pictograph of the arrows.

  Catrina laughed. “Well, I’m glad you’re finally in the game.” She placed a black bean counter on her tabla as well.

  Santa María del Tule was a town that had sprouted around the enormous Árbol del Tule and the small chapel beneath its boughs. Almost everyone in Santa María del Tule worked in the tourist trade; those who didn’t kept the town itself up and running. Eugenio could saw, nail, weld, paint, or build anything. Fidelia was equally skilled with needle and thread. Usmail and his wife, Carmelita, ran the bakery, which enveloped the town in the smell of fresh bread from sunrise to sunset. There was also a well-regarded doctor. However, most people consulted with Clara’s aunt Chita first. She was known and beloved by all.

  As if to prove the point, as soon as Juana and Clara stepped off the bus, the clerk at the depot recognized them and waved them over. “Hola, Juana, Clara. Please tell Chita that Pablo’s foot is completely healed,” the clerk said. “I haven’t been able to make it over there.”

  Juana told the clerk she’d relay the message.

  A grocer along the way beckoned them into his store, where he gave Juana some guavas and a watermelon to take to Chita. “My stomach is back to normal.” He patted his oversized belly.

  The tortilla maker sent them on with a bundle of warm, freshly made tortillas; someone gave Juana a pair of shoes; and a young mechanic’s apprentice rushed out, gushing with a story of a successful marriage proposal. “Please thank Chita for me! Her advice was perfect.”

  Juana laughed at the idea that her sister had moved from healing to counseling on matters of love. Still, she offered the boy her congratulations. “I’m sure Chita will be delighted to know.”

  Juana and Chita had grown up in a village on the outskirts of Oaxaca City. Chita was the eldest, and she had married young, leaving her family and moving to her husband’s town, Santa María del Tule.

  Chita had been lonely at first, and visited Juana and their parents as often as she could. But when her mother-in-law fell ill, Chita became the primary caregiver. By then she was already pregnant with her first child. As it turned out, she found a new friend in her mother-in-law, an ancient woman with weathered brown skin, silver plaits that hung down to her waist, and a profound love of all things living. She understood—intuitively—how things grew and flourished, which plants healed and which plants harmed, which herbs brought joy or sorrow or fear or love. She also had a magical garden with an unparalleled bounty of plants and flowers and trees that seemed to exist only in her domain.

  Before she died, the old woman passed along her wealth of knowledge, teaching Chita everything she knew about the mysterious rules that governed the world of plants—and her plants, in particular. And so it was that Chita inherited her mother-in-law’s love and skill. On the day her first son, Manolo, arrived, Chita’s own garden sprouted all at once and in full bloom. It was her mother-in-law’s blessing, and from that moment on Chita became the town healer.

  “¡Ya llegamos!” Juana called out when they arrived at Chita’s bright orange house.

  A row of slender organ cacti leaned against the wall, and a lush purple-and-white bougainvillea plant spilled over the top of the house. Juana peered into her sister’s window, a view that led right into a clean and colorful kitchen. “We’re here!” she repeated.

  “I’m in the back,” Chita replied, and Clara and her mother followed the stone path beside the house out to Chita’s garden.

  Two fig trees heavy with fruit flanked the entrance to the path. Ceramic pots of various shapes and sizes lined the way. Some held tall and spiky cacti, while others boasted flowering plants with buds of yellow and orange; a pair of succulents grew in a rooster-shaped pot.

  The path ended at a terrace with a few chairs and a table set beneath a pergola. Flowering vines crawled up and around the wooden posts that supported the roof of the pergola. Esteban sat at the table, peering under a small overturned box.

  “What are you up to, little cousin?” Clara leaned over his shoulder.

  Esteban looked up. He turned in his chair and wrapped his arms around Clara. “I’m so happy to see you!”

  Clara hugged him back. “So, what’s hiding under there?” She pointed at the box.

  “A spider,” Esteban said. “Did you know spiders can’t see in the dark?”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “But they can sense vibrations,” Esteban went on. “That’s how they get around.”

  “Interesting…”

  “¡Hola, chicas!” Chita waved at Juana and Clara from the garden.

  Her house was small and modest, but her garden was bountiful and gave the home the air of a grand estate. There were large agaves with fat and fibrous leaves, prickly pear cacti, and aloe plants. Cycads rose from the ground like giant pineapples with green headdresses, interspersed between huajes, the trees from which Oaxaca got its name, with their fernlike leaves and long seedpods like enormous green beans.

  Along the terrace, Chita had planted flor de mayo plants, with five-petal blossoms that resembl
ed stars. Bees flitted dizzyingly between hibiscus flowers and bell-flowered dahlias as big as Clara’s hand.

  Of course, Chita grew herbs used for cooking, and there were all manner of fruit trees: guava, avocado, dragon fruit, plum, and lime. Many of these plants were native to Oaxaca and grew in all the local gardens. But Chita also had plants that came from other regions and thrived only in her garden: vanilla plants, cacao trees, achiotes with bright red thorny flowers.

  There were plants that seemed unreal to Clara: jade-green vines that defied gravity, held aloft by blossoms that looked like butterfly wings; plants that produced perfectly spherical fruit with smooth, transparent skin; a tree no taller than Clara herself, with branches that extended horizontally and fruit that hung like drops. It was these very fruits that Chita was collecting when she waved Juana and Clara over.

  “Welcome to your home,” she said, her customary greeting.

  Clara hugged her aunt.

  “I’m glad you came,” Chita told her, but her smile was framed by lines of worry.

  “What is this?” Clara asked, pointing at the fruit in Chita’s hand.

  “Try it.” Chita handed Clara one of the drop-shaped fruits. It was deep green, plump, and velvety soft. Clara held it up to her nose.

  “It has no smell on the outside,” Chita explained. “You have to bite into it.”

  As soon as Clara did, an explosion of flavor burst in her mouth.

  “It smells like chocolate!” Juana exclaimed.

  It tasted like chocolate, too, but there was a hint of something else.

  “What is it?” Clara asked, wiping a drop of juice off her chin.

  Chita smiled. “I call it chocanela.”

  “Chocolate-cinnamon!” Clara replied. “That’s exactly what it is.” She handed the fruit to Juana. “Try it.”

  “This is the first season the tree has yielded fruit,” Chita explained. “I’ve been nurturing it for years.”

  “It’s wonderful,” Juana and Clara said in unison.

  Chita laughed. “Well, let’s get some of these bundled up for you to take home.”

  Chita handed Juana and Clara a basket each, laden with fruits and flowers. As they passed the table where Esteban sat, Chita gently admonished him.

  “Esteban, you know very well we must honor all living creatures.” She pointed at the box. “It is not our right to restrict anyone’s freedom. We always pay a price for doing so.”

  Esteban sighed, but he lifted the box and released the spider.

  “Here, give me a hand with this,” Clara told her cousin, and she passed Esteban one of the chocanelas. The fruit fell and landed on the table with a soft splat. A small crack split the chocanela flesh, and a wave of chocolate and cinnamon wafted up toward them.

  “Oops,” Clara said.

  “Ha! Better for us!” Esteban scooped up the fruit. “We get to eat that one for lunch.” He followed Clara into the kitchen.

  “Where are the boys?” Juana asked as she unpacked the food she had brought, as well as the gifts from the townspeople.

  No sooner had the question been asked than Esteban’s brothers bounded into the kitchen.

  “¡Hola, Tía!” They each planted a kiss on Juana’s cheeks and gave Clara a hug.

  “We smelled your food,” Manolo said.

  “And the chocanela!” Victor added, grabbing a slice of fruit off the platter.

  The boys got to work setting places for everyone, taking the food out to the terrace, adding a sparkling pitcher of green lemonade in the center. Beads of moisture dripped from the glass pitcher onto the table, creating a small puddle that Esteban’s spider deftly avoided.

  As they ate, Juana relayed the various messages she’d been given. Chita took her time explaining each case, and Esteban’s brothers supplemented their mother’s stories with silly faces and jokes. It wasn’t long before Juana’s anxiety vanished entirely.

  Esteban, however, was immune to his mother’s magic. His leg bounced nervously under the table, and he stared at Clara with an intensity she couldn’t ignore.

  “You’re going to burn a hole right through me,” Clara whispered. She reached out and tickled him. Esteban laughed, and for a brief moment the tension was broken.

  “Aren’t you hungry?” She looked at his plate. Esteban was not one to skip meals, especially when it involved Juana’s food.

  The boy shook his head.

  “I know you’re worried.” She put an arm around him. “But I’m sure it’s nothing.” The words rang false between them. “Anyway, you should eat. You’re starting to look like La Catrina!” She squeezed his arm and gave him another tickle.

  Esteban’s laughter released a growl of hunger, and with gratitude (for he truly did love to eat), he picked up his fork. Between mouthfuls, he told her about his friends and a new tongue twister he had learned. “Do you want to hear it?”

  “Sure,” she replied.

  “Tres tristes tigres, tragaban trigo en un trigal.”

  “What?” Clara burst out laughing. “ ‘Three sad tigers gobbled up wheat in a wheat field.’ What kind of tongue twister is that?”

  “Try it!”

  “You know I’m no good at tongue twisters.” She didn’t like seeming dumb in front of Esteban, as clumsy with her words as she was with everything else.

  “Come on,” he said. “You’re always teaching me new things. Why can’t I teach you this?”

  “That’s different.”

  “It isn’t. Besides,” he added, “I know you’ll get it.”

  “Fine,” she sighed. “I’ll give it a try.”

  Esteban was a patient teacher, and for the next hour they nourished their bodies with food and their hearts with laughter as their tongues wrapped around silly words. In the garden the sun busily nourished the plants.

  Somewhere buried deep in the folds of Clara’s satchel, the dirt-colored scorpion with a black spot longed for nourishment, too. But he stayed put.

  His time would come, and soon.

  * * *

  On the other side of town, a small boy unveiled a gift.

  “Happy birthday, Adán,” his parents said.

  Adán gazed at the bow in his hands. It had been carved by his father. The wood was smooth and pliable; it felt cool to the touch. Engraved along the side were the words Con Amor.

  A leather quiver held a handful of arrows made by his mother. The arrowheads were perfect triangles of obsidian—volcanic glass. The fletchings consisted of real feathers, soft and white. In the light, the arrows seemed to shimmer.

  “Are they magic?” Adán asked, his eyes wide with the mystery of it.

  “They were made with a great deal of love,” his mother said. “Does that count as magic?”

  Adán laughed. “Yes! Gracias,” he said, and gave his parents a hug. “I love it!”

  It had been a difficult year for this small family. They had lost a baby in the womb, and their home in an earthquake. Adán and his parents had no family in the area, and they had taken to sleeping in their truck until they could get back on their feet. Work was hard to come by; food and water, too. This bow and arrow, while small and simple, meant everything to Adán. It meant that no matter how difficult things got or how sad his parents were or how lonely he sometimes felt, the important things—like birthdays—still mattered.

  “Can I go test it out?” Adán asked.

  “Of course!” his father said. “But we need to go somewhere open, where you won’t accidentally strike someone.” He laughed.

  The boy and his father walked out to a faraway field. The sun pulsed hot and bright upon them. But in the distance they could see darkness gathering. A drum of thunder rolled overhead.

  “It looks like it’s going to rain,” the boy’s father said. “Let’s not go too far.”

&n
bsp; So they chose an open spot not too far, but far enough.

  “Here?” Adán asked.

  “Perfect,” his father replied.

  After lunch, Chita, Esteban, Clara, and her mother walked to the tree. Clara’s bag thumped rhythmically at her side, matching her rapid heartbeat. Their happy mood had quickly faded, and Juana’s nervous tension coursed between them like an electric current. Even the sky seemed to respond, with distant flashes of light on the darkening horizon.

  Clara had seen El Árbol del Tule dozens of times, but it never failed to impress her, with its massive crown of green foliage threatening to overtake the small church in its shadow. As a child, she used to believe it was a giant, enchanted to live out its days as a tree. She had felt sorry for the giant, whom she imagined to be pretty bored sitting there frozen for eternity. Between visits she would collect secrets—whispers of things said and overheard—that she would then spill into the tree, like small offerings.

  For years, Clara believed the gnarly creatures shaped in the trunk were little gifts just for her, the tree’s way of thanking her for the secrets. Eventually, she learned that they were simply a phenomenon of the tree’s growth pattern. And yet, as she approached the tree, with Esteban at her side and her aunt and mother a few steps behind, Clara couldn’t help but wonder if maybe…just maybe…there had been a shred of truth in her childhood belief.

  As usual, tourists were gathered around the tree.

  “This giant,” the guide explained, “is nicknamed the Tree of Life because of the various life-forms you can see along its trunk.” He pointed out the Lion, a bulbous formation with an uncanny resemblance to a lion’s face framed by a wild mane. There was the Elephant, a fully formed baby pachyderm standing on the ground. The Crocodile was long and flat, appearing to crawl right out from under the roots.

  “It’s over here,” Esteban whispered, pointing away from the group of tourists.