Sisters, Strangers, and Starting Over

by Belinda Acosta

  “Why?” Beatriz sniffed.

  Ana thought a moment. “Because you’re like your hair—all crazy and wild—and he’s more like a crew cut. He likes order and routine. I mean, that trip to Paris he arranged? I couldn’t believe that!”

  “That’s not so surprising,” Beatriz said. “He may not seem it, but Larry is really very romantic at heart. Of course, I’ll have to work on him to throw out the itinerary I know he’s probably already written and rewritten and convince him to go off the beaten path. That is, if he still wants to go with me.”

  “Ay, mujer…”

  “Maybe that’s why we used to work so well. I loosened him up, and coming from my crazy family and their wacky ways, he was safe and dependable.”

  “Stop saying ‘used to,’ ” Ana said. “He just needs to think, to get his head straight.”

  “Maybe.”

  Ana pondered what Beatriz had told her. She always remembered Beatriz as being as strong and decisive as she was now. No-nonsense, fearless. She never thought of her as a girl who made decisions based on her desperation to keep a man—any man. Then again, Larry was not just any man to her.

  “Look,” Ana said. “I know if you had to do it over again, maybe you would have told Perla to stay. And maybe she would have left anyway. I know you think that’s what you should have done, but sending her back home like you did—that wasn’t the wrong thing to do, either.”

  Ana let the idea hang in the air awhile before she added, “I know what you want to happen with Celeste. What does Larry want?”

  “He wants me to let Celeste go with Erasmo and Norma.”

  “Well, would that be so bad?”

  “You were the one who reminded me that Perla sent her to me, not to Erasmo or anyone else!”

  “I know, but really—let’s try and think about this dispassionately. Would it be the end of the world?”

  But when it came to Beatriz and Perla, there was no such thing as dispassionate. When they were girls, it was all about the novelty. Perla was the new, shiny jewel of the family, and Beatriz was the older, amazing sister who would do anything for her baby sister. Anything. There was a mutual sense of awe they had for one another that quickly faded when Beatriz became a teenager and Perla was a girl. They forgot, the way children do, how much they meant to each other when childish squabbles and imagined slights began to grow like toadstools over their feelings for one another—large and ugly but ultimately rootless. Beatriz’s wonder over those tiny fingers and toes, smiling to the music of baby Perla’s coos, got lost over time in the frustration of a teenager who wanted to be free. And to Perla, Beatriz was the older, luckier sister. She got to leave the house when she wanted, had lots of friends, and could make the family listen to her, while Perla pulled at pant legs, trying so hard to be heard above their laughter.

  Most of the time when Beatriz left the house, it was to go to work—nothing glamorous or mysterious about that. She had friends and boyfriends, but not as many as the little girl counted. And when Beatriz went off to work while her friends were hanging out, the sight of Perla playing in the yard was a reminder that her little sister was freer than she ever had been as the oldest girl among a family of boys. The grass is always greener.

  “Really?” Ana asked again, trying to be helpful. “If Celeste lived with Erasmo and Norma, that would be the end of the world?”

  “She was sent to me,” Beatriz said. “Ay, qué no! Can you imagine? Norma would turn the poor girl into a mini-Guadalupana in no time!”

  “There is no such thing.”

  “Oh! You know she’d find a way. She’d have the poor girl in metallic chanclas and capri pants in no time,” Beatriz said.

  “You’re worried about her fashion sense?”

  “No, but living out in the country, alone, with Norma?”

  “I don’t know how Erasmo does it,” Ana let slip. She wanted to bite her tongue, but Beatriz burst out laughing and Ana was happy to hear her friend return to her old self.

  “So, have you checked out what Celeste brought in that envelope?” Ana asked.

  “Not really. Larry said he looked inside and didn’t like what he saw, and now—I guess I should take a look for myself.”

  “I can help you, if you want to bring it over here,” Ana offered. “I don’t want to leave mi’jo in case he gets worse. He never gets sick, so—”

  “No, no, no. You stay with Diego. I can do it. I need to do it.”

  “Bueno, call me back if you need to,” Ana said. “Any time, no matter how late.”

  Beatriz hung up with Ana and decided to look at the papers while the kids were distracted with their movie. She had to think back to where she’d last seen Celeste’s envelope. When she remembered that Larry had been looking through it, she knew just where it was: wedged in the seat in the armchair in their bedroom. She gave Celeste and Raúl one last check and then headed up to her bedroom, silently closing the door behind her. There it was, just where he’d left it. She took a deep breath, retrieved the envelope, and moved to the bed, where she dumped the contents before her. The first things that stood out were Celeste’s birth certificate, which Beatriz had already seen, and then Perla’s death certificate. She still couldn’t bear to read that yet and turned it facedown. Inside a smaller envelope were two passports, one for Celeste, the other for Perla, which Beatriz looked at for a long time, studying the adult face of her little sister. The eyes and the shape of her face were the same, but the weight of twenty-some years that had passed between them was evident. There was a dullness to her complexion. A roughness, Beatriz suspected, that came from working outside, or in the heat, or from standing on your feet all day. There were no traces of the little girl she grew up with, the image Beatriz held on to, the one that came to her in her dreams, and that made another sinkhole in her heart.

  The other papers were unremarkable but useful—Celeste’s last report card, a name tag from a factory where Perla worked, the immunization report Beatriz had wondered about earlier… the odds and ends of a life that seem like clutter until it’s all that is left for those who follow to try and extract some kind of meaning. Another envelope had three photos. One was of Celeste as a baby, and one was of Celeste and Perla, taken a year or so earlier. The last one was an older shot that Beatriz had almost forgotten: her school picture from her senior year at Our Lady of the Lake High School. Beatriz turned it over and saw handwriting from a younger version of herself: “Tomi tormenta.” Beatriz shook her head, remembering how this was her last senior photo and how Perla had begged and whined and threw a fit asking for it, till her mother ordered her to give it to the girl. Beatriz hated that she was made to give it to Perla instead of the cute new boy at school. What was his name? She didn’t even remember. The photo had obviously been carried for many years. A hard crease ran like a scar across Beatriz’s younger face, but it had been flattened smooth over time. The ink on the back of the photo had obviously survived a run through the wash or an accidental spill, or the humidity of a pants pocket. Beatriz was touched. After all these years and all that had passed between them, Beatriz couldn’t believe her sister had kept her photo among her most important things.

  She turned back to Perla’s passport photo, wishing it could speak when the other papers on the bed caught her eye. Most of them were photocopies of police reports about women and how they died. Who are these women? Beatriz thought.

  The notes along the edges of the photocopies were in another person’s handwriting. None of this made sense to her. She had gathered the papers and began to stuff them back into the envelope when she felt something in the bottom. She turned it upside down, but whatever it was, it was stuck inside. She looked in and saw the two flash drives Larry had mentioned taped to the bottom of the envelope. She reached in and pried them loose and held them in her hand.

  What do you suppose…? she wondered. There’s only one way to find out.

  * * *

  Raúl and Celeste had finished watching The Wolf Man and roll
ed onto their backs to look into the branches of the jacaranda tree.

  “So, you liked that?” Raúl asked.

  Celeste nodded. “I like those old scary movies.”

  “Really?” Raúl was amazed. “That’s so weird!”

  “Why? You like them.”

  “No! I mean, it’s just that I never meet anybody who likes them as much as I do, especially girls.”

  Celeste shrugged. “My mom liked them, too. We used to watch them on TV when I was little.”

  “They didn’t scare you?” Raúl asked.

  “No.”

  Raúl was used to good monsters, monsters with souls, monsters who were misunderstood or who didn’t understand themselves and wanted to belong. Movie monsters were nothing to Celeste. The kind of monsters Celeste truly feared were faceless, shameless, and without, it seemed, the capacity for mercy. The monsters Celeste feared were not anything Raúl could have imagined in his worst nightmare.

  Raúl sat up to face his cousin.

  “It’s sure going to be different having a girl around here,” he said. “All this time, it’s just been us guys, except for ’Amá.”

  “Different how?” Celeste asked. She still wasn’t convinced that staying was a good idea, but she was interested in hearing what Raúl thought it might be like.

  “Well, like, what was it they were talking about in the kitchen? You know, when Tía Norma got excited about you turning fifteen?”

  “The quinceañera?”

  “Yeah, that. What’s that all about?”

  Celeste shrugged. She didn’t really want to talk about it. The whole thing seemed out of the question, now that her mother was gone.

  “Well, is it fun?” Raúl pressed. “What do you have to do?”

  “Well, if I did have one,” Celeste began. Although it was a sore subject, she liked Raúl and appreciated his curiosity. She could see he had el corazón en la frente; he was all heart. “First we would go to church, and then later there would be food and a cake. Some girls have really fancy ones with a band and limos and stuff,” she said. “But I don’t think mine would be like that.”

  “That’s it?” Raúl asked. “It sounds like a big birthday party at church.”

  “Sort of. The party isn’t at the church, though. That’s later.”

  “But why? How come girls do it but not boys?”

  “Because you don’t look as good in the dresses as we do,” Celeste said with a straight face. It was the first time Raúl had heard her crack a joke, and it made him laugh.

  “No, really—what’s the big deal? What’s so special about fifteen?”

  Celeste sat and thought a moment. For her, the year she turned fifteen would always be associated with her mother being killed, of seeing her in a box and then taken away. She would associate turning fifteen with being alone in a strange city, meeting unfamiliar people she was told were her family, and wondering when the novelty would wear off and they would send her back home—her real home—where she belonged.

  “Well, for me, nothing,” Celeste said dryly. “But for mi ’amá, she thought it was important. I was going to do it for her. I thought maybe if I did it, I would figure out what it was about. So I guess now I won’t ever know.”

  “I don’t know,” Raúl said. “It sounded like Tía Norma had it all figured out for you.”

  “But all that stuff doesn’t mean anything if you don’t have people around that mean something to you,” she said.

  “Oh,” Raúl said awkwardly. “You don’t like us?” He suddenly felt self-conscious, wondering if Celeste was just being nice, watching The Wolf Man with him when she was really bored the way his cousin Seamus always was when he watched Raúl’s old movies with him.

  “No, it’s not like that,” she assured him. “Everyone here is nice. But my home is in El Paso. I know mi ’amá wants me to be here, but I don’t think I should be.”

  “Why? Because of Seamus?”

  Celeste was still unsure of who was who.

  “The two boys who were here earlier—Seamus and Wally. Seamus is the grumpy one. Don’t let him bother you. And I already told you about Carlos. You’re not going to tell anybody, right? What I said about him going to culinary school?”

  “I told you I wasn’t,” Celeste said. She liked Raúl, and even though she could tell her aunt Beatriz meant well, her intense desire to get close to Celeste was having the opposite effect. No, Celeste didn’t believe she belonged here, and she wasn’t sure that she ever would.

  THIRTEEN

  Beatriz made her way downstairs and into Larry’s office, turned on the computer, and stuck in one of the flash drives. It uploaded several electronic folders, each labeled with initials and a date.

  Well, here goes, she thought and gave a short, silent prayer. She clicked on one of the folders, selected one of the files inside, and opened it. What she saw looked like scanned documents: police reports, newspaper clippings, and more death certificates. She could see that another folder was filled with JPEGs. She clicked on one to open it, and as soon as she did instantly wished she hadn’t. She found herself looking at the most gruesome photos she’d ever seen: a mutilated body, so distorted and swollen it didn’t look human. It took a moment to register what she was looking at, but when it came to her, she nearly shrieked.

  “Oh, Jesus!” she said out loud. She ripped the flash drive from the computer. A warning on the screen indicated that the device she’d just removed hadn’t been done so correctly and that she might have damaged the files. Beatriz didn’t know if she’d damaged the files, and she didn’t care; she just knew that whatever she’d seen was so horrendous, it would take a long time to wash the image from her memory. Whatever it was, whoever it was, she didn’t want to imagine it or think about it ever again. She sat in the chair a moment and closed her eyes to calm herself. She could feel her heart pounding in her chest and her stomach churning. She might have let the full rush of nausea overtake her, except she was interrupted by a small voice.

  “ ’Amá?”

  Beatriz opened her eyes and saw Celeste and Raúl standing in the door. They could both see by the expression on her face that Beatriz was deeply disturbed by something, but neither of them knew what to say or how to react.

  “Hi,” Beatriz said, trying to sound cheery.

  “She says she’s tired and wants to lay down. Should I take her upstairs?” Raúl asked, motioning to Celeste.

  “Sure, but let me go upstairs and change the bed for you,” Beatriz said.

  “No,” Celeste said. She looked anxiously at Raúl, then down to the floor. Beatriz was happy Celeste was bonding with her son, but she could see she had a lot of work to do to make her way in with her, as well.

  “Qué pasó, mi’ja?” Beatriz asked gently.

  “Nothing. My stuff is down here. I just want to lay down,” Celeste said.

  “Okay,” Beatriz said. “It’s okay. If you want to sleep down here, you can sleep down here.” She didn’t understand why Celeste would turn down the comfort of a full-sized bed for a couch, but she stopped her impulse to convince her otherwise. She was still rattled from what she had seen, and she needed to gather herself to begin to ask all the necessary questions about what had happened to Celeste and Perla in El Paso. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know, or if she would ever really know the truth, but she knew that she would have to be stronger and more patient than she had ever imagined.

  Long after the kids were asleep, Beatriz sat in the living room, waiting for Larry.

  Maybe Ana is right. she thought. He just needs some time to think. Of course, he’ll come home.

  Her heart leapt when the front door opened, but it wasn’t Larry. It was Carlos, back from his evening with Marisol. Carlos didn’t see his mother when he first walked in.

  “Hola,” Beatriz said lightly, trying not to startle her son.

  “Crap! ’Amá! Why are you sitting in the dark?” Carlos turned on a lamp. “You should go to sleep, young lady,” he joked. “Don�
�t you have work tomorrow?”

  “No, I took the week off,” she said.

  “Well, lucky you,” Carlos said. He had to go to work early the next morning and was wiped out, spending the evening explaining to Marisol why he still hadn’t settled things with his parents about going to culinary school. “When’s Dad coming back?” He yawned.

  “What do you mean?” Beatriz said, trying to sound casual. Carlos wasn’t buying it.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing, mi’jo. Everyone is asleep, so try not to make too much noise up there, por fa’.”

  “Okay.” But Carlos didn’t move. He knew something wasn’t right. “Where’s Dad?”

  “What do you mean, ‘Where’s Dad’?”

  “ ’Amá, really? His car isn’t outside.”

  “Oh. Well, he left, son. He’ll be back. He’ll be back.”

  Carlos’s heart sank. “Did you all have a fight about me?”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “Because your eye makeup is still messed up, and Dad’s not here, and you’re acting all weird.”

  Beatriz thought about fibbing to her son, but as she looked into his face she could see he would not buy it. She motioned for him to follow her into the kitchen.

  “Was it about me? Did he tell you about me and Marisol?”

  “Oh, no, sweetheart! I mean, yes, he told me about your plans, but our little disagreement had nothing to do with you. Trust me,” Beatriz said gently. “Don’t worry, mi’jo. Pero, the kids don’t know, so keep it to yourself, por fa’. Trust me. It will be over before you know it.”

  Beatriz placed her hands on either side of Carlos’s concerned face. She looked into his deep brown eyes and saw that he was no longer a boy but a young man. The reality of her oldest child being grown enough to leave home amazed her. Was this the kid who got messy from head to toe making mud pies as a kid, selling them for a nickel—a dime if they were covered with stone “nuts”?