I find them both in the kitchen. These two little women, they fill the room like sunshine. Abuela Frida sits at the table, beaming at me above a bowl of untouched stew. And Nana Delfina sings a song in Mapudungún as she ladles out my own stew. She looks up as I enter. “Delfina is giving you extra gravy—your favorite.”
“You remembered after all this time! Thank you, Nana.”
Delfina looks at me in mock shock. “To think, Niña Celeste, that Delfina could forget one thing about any of her girls!”
“I’m one of her girls too.” Abuela Frida’s smile is like a little girl’s. “See”—she holds her bowl up for me to see—“extra potatoes.”
I sit next to my grandmother and scoot my chair over to be closer to her. It is so very good to be home and yet still so very unreal to me. I’ve dreamed of a moment like this—a meal like this one—for so long, and now I don’t quite know what to do with it, or with myself.
Abuela Frida seems to read my thoughts. “Time to eat, Celeste. Just taste one bite at a time.”
Oh, Abuela, how I missed you!
Suddenly the doorbell rings. I jump out of my skin. Half in excitement, half in fear. Could it be my parents? Or could it be the police?
I hold my breath until Nana Delfina comes back smiling. “A special visitor has arrived for you, Celeste,” she says excitedly. “Nana Delfina’s favorite young gentleman—with blue eyes and a big appetite, and who loves Nana’s cooking! Can you guess?”
“Cristóbal!”
I run down the hall toward the front door.
“Celeste!” None other than Cristóbal Williams shouts my name as he lifts me up and spins me around in a big hug.
I watch as Cristóbal reaches into his knapsack and pulls out a bunch of wildflowers, purple, red, and yellow. “I picked them on my walk up Butterfly Hill, one by one, until . . .” His voice trails off, and I watch as his cheeks turn from pink to bright red. I feel my own face flushing too. He pushes the bouquet toward me and finishes by saying hastily: “Here, Celeste, like old times.”
“Gracias, Cristóbal.”
I smile at him shyly. Cristóbal looks different. I guess, like me, he is older. But there is something else. His eyes are no longer cloudy with dreams. They are alert, and his face has grown sharper, thinner. Everything about Cristóbal is watchful. What happened to that drowsy boy I left behind?
I take his hand and lead him to the kitchen. “Come in and say hello . . .” I look at him curiously. “Wait—how did you know I was home? Your pendulum?”
Cristóbal blushes. “Well, yes . . . partly. And partly because your Abuela Frida called me on the telephone.”
“He’s been coming quite often to check on us ladies,” Abuela Frida pipes up as we enter the kitchen. “Hola, Querido Cristóbal.” She smiles at him as he kisses her cheek.
“Buenos días, señora.”
“Let’s go take a walk. All right, Abuela?” I ask.
“Sí, Querida, you two have much to catch up on,” Abuela says. “Just stay on Butterfly Hill.”
“Cristóbal, keep her safe,” Delfina adds, beaming in Cristóbal’s direction.
“Thank you for coming and visiting them,” I say as we shut the door behind us.
“De nada. It was nothing.” He brushes it off and takes a deep breath. “It’s a beautiful day. You must have missed days like this on Butterfly Hill.” He gives me a sidelong glance.
“I did. I especially missed my walks with you.”
We walk in silence, close to each other, for a while. Then, tentatively, I say, “Tell me about our friends.”
Cristóbal stares down at his feet, and we walk a bit longer. Then he pulls me down onto a bench and looks into my eyes. “Lucila and her parents. We still have no idea. I am sorry, Celeste. It has just been me and Marisol for a long while. I should have brought her with me, but I wanted to see you for myself. . . . Ana moved with her family to México.”
It’s too much to comprehend. I feel like a machine as I ask, “And Gloria?”
“Her father moved her to a private school, just a few weeks after you left. I haven’t seen her, but Marisol saw her once in a dress shop.”
“And what happened?”
“Marisol can tell you the details—”
“I’ll stop by her house first thing tomorrow. I’m dying to see her,” I interrupt him. “I’m sorry, Cristóbal. Go on. What happened then?”
“Nothing much, I guess. Gloria’s mother just grabbed her hand and rushed her out of the store, but Marisol said that she caught Gloria’s eye and she looked sad and frightened, but then Gloria looked down at her hands, and when she looked up again, her eyes were hard like she had never known Marisol.”
“Poor Gloria! Poor Marisol!” And I ache to think of Lucila. Just trying to wrap my lips around her name feels like a hand choking my throat.
“Celeste, be careful if you see Gloria, please.” Cristóbal takes hold of my arm. “So much has gone on here while you’ve been away. Her father was working for the Dictator, in the Ministry of Justice, and he rose to a really powerful position. Even now everyone fears him.”
“Maybe even Gloria herself,” I answer him. “The smartest student in the entire school! Don’t tell me she doesn’t know the difference between right and wrong!” And all of a sudden I feel angry and luckier than I had ever realized to have the parents I have. “Cristóbal, as much as the way my parents lived their lives worries me and causes me to miss them every minute now, I couldn’t imagine fearing them, or disliking who they are.”
Cristóbal nods. “I know. I am so glad my mother is my mother too, with her vegetable stand. Oh, did I tell you she branched out? She is selling roses now too! She told me to bring you some, with her love.”
“And I bet you forgot!” I laugh. “Is that why you picked me wildflowers?”
Cristóbal shrugs his shoulders with a sheepish smile and yawns. “Maybe. . . . You’ll never know.” And for a moment it is like old times.
This Crumbling Wall
That night Nana Delfina tucks me into bed like I am still a little girl. “Niña,” she says, “you must make a promise to Delfina that you won’t go any farther than Butterfly Hill on your own.” What?! After being away from Valparaíso, after dreaming of seeing my friends and favorite sites and sounds for so very long?
“But, Nana, why?!” I protest. “I have been taking the cable cars all over the city by myself since I was ten!”
Delfina is stern. “It is still dangerous out there, Celeste. There is confusion and violence. The Dictator’s soldiers are angry. And the people of Valparaíso are angry. Abuela Frida feels that it is no place for a young girl. Your grandmother doesn’t need to worry any more than she does already.”
“Sí, Nana.” And so I promise, mostly because I am too frustrated, confused, and oh so tired to argue with her more.
The next morning I wake up to a basket full of memories. The rain outside sounds out of tune, like an orchestra of flutes and bells and violins when the conductor is away. I feel almost like a stranger in my own blue room. Even in this house. I look out the window. I don’t have the heart to shout like I used to, but I whisper, “Good morning, Valparaíso! Good morning, pelicans!”
There’s no answer. I know the pelicans are watching over me somehow, but they still haven’t returned to Butterfly Hill.
I wrap Nana’s green shawl around my shoulders and tiptoe downstairs. No one else is awake yet. I turn the radio on softly. A deep, low voice tells me that the entire country of Chile has become a giant cemetery. I hear something about graves that sends icicles through my heart. I am scared of my own history. I shiver and walk to the kitchen to make myself some coffee with a bit of cinnamon and warm milk.
After I drink my coffee, I write a note for Delfina: Out greeting Butterfly Hill, Nana! I put on my mother’s raincoat. It is much too long for me but still carries her scent. My head becomes full with just four words: Mamá, where are you? I blink hard and step outside.
I walk the winding streets of Butterfly Hill, pausing to look at the old houses, big and small, purple and yellow. I turn a corner and find a concrete wall that used to be like any other old wall. But now it is painted with indigenous faces, baskets filled with fresh bread, even the face of the murdered Presidente Alarcón.
This crumbling wall, I realize, has become a notebook where people tell their stories.
I walk a bit more and come to a tall house with a balcony facing the harbor. Its orange paint isn’t as vibrant as I remember, and it’s cracked in some places. I take a deep breath and knock on the door. After a few seconds I hear footsteps, and the door opens—just a crack at first, and then it widens. There stands a girl with long black hair. Tall and curvy in tight brown pants and red boots, she definitely looks like she’s in high school! She stares and looks surprised for a moment, and then her dark eyes widen in recognition.
“Celeste?!” she gasps. “Is it really you?” Marisol throws her arms around me, and we hug each other for a long time in silence. She smells like her mother’s Chanel No. 5!
I laugh and say, “You’re still stealing dabs of your mother’s perfume?”
Marisol sniffles and giggles at the same time. “Can you believe she just bought me my own bottle for my birthday? Ay, amiga! Can you believe we are thirteen? It has been so long!” She hugs me again. “Celeste, I have missed you so much! Too much!”
Marisol suddenly looks much older than her fourteen years. “Too much has changed, Celeste. Even you, a little bit. You look so serious! I probably do too, I guess . . .”
I put my arm around her. “Walk up with me to my house, Mari, and have lunch with me!”
Marisol nods excitedly. “Let me just leave a note for Mamá. She is working with the pescadoras, cutting up fish to sell in the market, to make some extra money these days. Can you imagine my mamá letting herself get all smelly and covered with fish guts?” Marisol smiles ruefully. I try to picture the elegant Señora López like that and shake my head. “Papá didn’t want her to, but she insisted. He hasn’t had steady work ever since the General . . .”
She looks down as she puts her own raincoat on. “But enough of that! It’s all anyone talks about! I am so sick of thinking about it! So sick of living in it!” She looks at me, her eyes welling with tears. “Celeste, don’t be mad, but sometimes I envied you being so far away from Valparaíso!”
I look down. “Sometimes I envied you for being here,” I admit.
As we leave, she locks the front door, which used to be always open so anyone could come in and say hello.
Perched on Invisible Things
The next morning I am awakened by a nightmare.
I was running down the beach, chasing my parents and calling their names, but they dove into the ocean and disappeared.
I drag myself downstairs to the kitchen, feeling I will go crazy worrying about Mamá and Papá. The light through the windows is so bright! I squint, letting my eyes get accustomed to the rainbow palette of colors all around me. I didn’t realize how much more dim and muted the light was on Juliette Cove.
I have to distract myself! “Delfina, let me help you!” I insist, and begin to list off all the chores I learned to do on Juliette Cove. “Sweeping, dusting, making spaghetti . . .”
“My niña Celeste, so independent now! Just like a good American,” she teases, and hands me a knife to chop basil. She knows that chopping basil next to her is my favorite thing in the world.
Even though I am happy to be with Abuela Frida and Delfina, a whole day at home seems like a very long time, especially when I can’t leave Butterfly Hill and so much is going on in the city below us! But Abuela Frida doesn’t want me to go to school until my parents return. “Too many changes at once,” she explains to me in German, which she now speaks more than Spanish. “Too many questions from too many people.” Abuela Frida’s gaze has become like a weightless bird that perches on invisible things. Her blue eyes are so pale, they remind me of Kim’s paper birds.
Part of me is afraid to go back to school, so I don’t protest too much. I don’t want to upset my grandmother. I suspect she is keeping me close by because she still can’t quite believe that I am really home.
So I sit by her on her favorite green velvet sofa. The blue yarn is limp in her hands. She snoozes off much more often than she knits now. Her soft snores will forever remind me of a bumblebee. Before lunch I read to Abuela Frida from Papá’s copy of Neruda’s Odes to Common Things. She especially likes the poem about the onion. “It makes my eyes water just hearing your voice, Celeste of my soul! Can’t you smell the room thick with onions, or is that just Delfina’s potato soup?”
And now in the afternoon I read to her from the thick copy of Little Women that Miss Rose gave to me, translating as I go. Abuela beams as I read, “ ‘Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents.’ ” I have read Little Women cover to cover two times. The youngest, Amy, with her curly yellow hair, reminds me of Gloria. Where is my old friend now? Are we even friends anymore?
From behind the closed parlor door I hear the faint ring of the doorbell. It is probably Señora Atkinson wanting some tea and gossip. I turn my eyes back to the heavy book in my lap and reread the part when the girls’ father comes home from the Civil War: “ ‘Mr. March became invisible in the embrace of four pairs of loving arms.’ ”
And what about Papá? I think. Why hasn’t he come back to us?
Delfina pokes her head in and motions for me to come. “Niña Celeste, you have a special visitor.”
“Oh, Delfina, could it be? Is it Ma—”
“No, Querida,” Delfina interrupts me, the smile suddenly falling from her face. “It’s Señora Atkinson. She’s come to say hello.”
Two Roads on the Map of My Heart
I can’t just sit here anymore and not do anything. I am going crazy without Mamá and Papá. At least Cristóbal comes to visit almost every afternoon. Today we sit on the swings in the backyard, and Cristóbal tells me how he set up a table next to his mother’s in the market. “After school I go there and use my pendulum, or read tarot cards and people’s palms. These days so many people are searching for the truth. The truth is only starting to come out in the newspapers, and people have been desperate for answers for years.”
“Abuela Frida tells me that everyone has to go to the Red Cross offices or the courts to ask about their loved ones. And hardly anyone gets answers. Everyone is searching for signs.”
“You wouldn’t believe the people who come to me. Men in suits with stern faces. Ladies with fur muffs and ruby bracelets. People who never before believed in what they called folk or peasants’ magic will come to my table and ask me to give them a reading. I am glad they come to me. I believe in what I do, and I charge a fair price. Because other people are taking advantage of all this fear. They are pretending to have answers that they don’t and are taking all of the people’s money. I guess it is because they themselves need money. It is getting harder and harder for some families to eat.”
Cristóbal begins to scoop up handfuls of sand from under the swings and watch it fall through his fingers. “I tell the people who come to me that I am only there to help them understand what they know in their hearts already. That the answers don’t come from me or anyone else, but from them. People give away their power so quickly when they are scared, Celeste. Being here during the dictatorship taught me that. I think that these horrible two years wouldn’t have happened at all if people had had more faith in themselves in the first place.”
I stare, mouth agape, at my friend. Drowsy no more, Cristóbal has just spoken more words to me than he ever did in the eleven years we were friends before I fled to Juliette Cove.
“Show me, Cristóbal, please! I have felt so scared and confused since I got back here. I think if I have to look at my parents’ empty places at the table one more time, I will go crazy! Tonight, though, you will sit next to me in my father’s chair, okay?”
Cristóbal smiles his
gentle smile, nods, and picks up my hand. He turns my palm over to face him and, with his fingers, brushes away the sand. A little shiver runs up my arm. I try to shrug it away and cast my eyes out to the harbor.
“When people started disappearing, so many of my mother’s friends showed up at our doorstep,” he murmurs. “They knew I’d had these special abilities since I was a little boy. Then word spread among neighbors and co-workers, until there was sometimes a big crowd outside my door. My mother thought that was dangerous, and she was right. So she told people to come to her vegetable stand instead. People would buy vegetables from her, and if they wanted a consultation with me, they would buy roses. That is how she began selling flowers. All kinds of flowers, but people knew that roses meant they wanted a reading. And white roses meant an urgent case.
“And Mamá would wrap the roses up in papers with the colors of the flag on the outside and the slogan the Dictator always said, ‘For God and Fatherland,’ as a disguise. That always made her sad, she said, to have to cover the beautiful gifts of the earth in hate and lies, but it was good protection for us. And deep inside one of the roses that had not yet opened its petals, she would put a tiny piece of paper with a date and a time on it. That told the person when they should come see me at our house. That way we never had a crowd, and I was able to help some people make the difficult decisions they were facing.
“It was so hard, Celeste. Imagine having to decide whether to flee or whether to hide, or whether to keep living your life in the open. Young parents wondering how to protect their small children. Or old parents desperate to find their grown children. Can you guess what color roses Mamá sold the most?”
“White.” It feels like there is sand in my throat. Cristóbal begins moving his fingers again, softly up and down the lines on my palm. I’ve never noticed how varied those lines are. Some are faint and some are deep canyons. Some cut sideways and some branch into two rivers.
I Lived on Butterfly Hill Page 18