by Cate Tiernan
I tried to sit up. “My parents! Where are they? Are they okay? Can I see them?”
Jennifer choked a little and looked at her mom. Mrs. Hirsch pressed her lips together.
Here’s what was weird: I knew they were dead. I remembered what happened. But it was like if I refused to admit it, it wouldn’t be true. Like I would pass some kind of test, maybe for loyalty, and I would be rewarded by having my parents back again.
“Where are they?” I asked again. “Where’s my mom?” Just like that I was hysterical all over again. I started yelling for my mom, for someone to get me out of here. A nurse came running, and I felt something cold going into the IV drip. I fell back onto my bed and floated into blessed, empty darkness.
• • •
I didn’t take final exams or go to prom or show up on Senior Party Day. I didn’t go to graduation, but two days after the ceremony I got my high school diploma in the mail. They gave me a pass because of my family tragedy.
My tia Juliana, my mom’s sister, came and stayed with me for ten days. She took over and dealt with everything. There was no funeral—our kind didn’t have funerals. You know why? Because one didn’t call attention to the weakness of the dead. One left them behind and moved on, so they could be scavenged by other animals in a harsher, less Disney version of the circle of life. Of course, in modern society one can’t just leave human bodies lying around. But there was no public funeral or sitting shiva or visitation or anything.
However, my dad’s office sent a huge fruit basket, and my mom’s students brought a sympathy card that everyone had signed to our house. That was all before I got home from the hospital. After I got home, Tia Juliana clucked over me. She was deeply sad but functioning better than I was. Basically I was a total wreck, on tranquilizers, crying, having nightmares. One night she and I were sitting at the kitchen table with a neighbor’s casserole in front of us. We looked at each other and suddenly we were both crying. She reached out and took my hand.
I was so glad she was here, especially to deal with the various authorities—the police had ruled my parents’ deaths suspicious, but had no leads. There had been the paw prints of a large cat, but some injuries had been caused by a knife blade. No weapon had been found; there were no fingerprints. At the time, I had seen that my father’s chest had been cut open. Now I knew that someone had taken his heart. Who would do something like that?
“It was like the Talofomé,” I said to my tia, not really meaning it.
“The Talofomé?” Her face was beautiful and sad. “No, cara. I’m afraid it was a real haguaro, not a legend. Maybe a haguaro and pelado together.” I hadn’t heard the word pelado in ages—my parents had thought it was tacky to have a separate word to mean regular people, people who weren’t haguari. Especially since pelado basically meant “naked.”
I knew it wasn’t the Talofomé, the devil jaguar that parents used to tell their children about, to make them behave. The fairy tale went that the Talofomé was so unhappy at being an ugly devil that he would search the world for haguari and eat their hearts, to try to feel better. Naughty children were especially appealing to him. My parents were old-fashioned in some ways, but they had never pulled the threat of the Talofomé on me.
But someone—something—had taken my father’s heart.
A few nights after I got home, we were sitting on the green living room couch not watching some stupid show on Papi’s flat-screen TV, and Tia Juliana quietly asked me what had happened.
Hesitantly, flinching from the pain, I told her. About the growl from the woods, how I ran, how I changed. How I’d come back to find Papi dead and Mami dying. Mami had been her older sister—now Juliana was an only child. Her parents, my grandparents, had died years ago.
Tia Juliana gasped once or twice as I haltingly told my story.
“I’m so sorry I ran away,” I said, crying in shame. “I should have stayed.”
“And die along with them?” Tia Juliana said, tears in her voice. “You obeyed your mother. She would have been furious if you’d disobeyed her, stayed, and gotten killed.” She patted my hand. “I would have been furious too.”
That was when I fell apart for the hundredth time. Leaning against her, I cried with huge, racking sobs, feeling like my ribs were splitting open.
“I was a bad daughter!” I cried without meaning to, as Tia Juliana put her arm around me and stroked my hair. There. I’d said it, admitted it out loud. The world might as well know.
“Why do you say such a thing?” she asked, handing me a tissue.
“I didn’t want to be . . .” I was crying so hard I could hardly breathe. “Haguari. I don’t want to be one! I just want to be normal!”
The hand stroking my hair stilled. Tia Juliana held me without saying anything for a long time. I wondered if she’d get up in disgust.
But now that I was confessing, I kept going. “They wanted me to change with them, do stuff together. I always said no. I didn’t come to Brazil these last couple of years because I know all you guys change, and I didn’t want to! I don’t want any part of it. And now something about being haguari killed my parents!” I was almost howling, curled up so tightly it felt like my bones would snap from tension. “My parents died thinking I was a disappointment! Thinking I didn’t love them!” This was the worst, and I shrieked in an agony so much more acute than when the dentist had accidentally let the Novocain wear off while he was drilling my tooth.
“But I did!” I sobbed, hiding my face in the velour of the couch. “I did love them! And now they’re gone! I can’t stand it, I can’t stand it!” Please let a nurse come in here now and knock me out. I couldn’t take this pain. I couldn’t live with it ripping holes in my heart this way. How could I possibly live through this?
Tia Juliana didn’t get up. She kept her arm around me and let me cry it out. Finally I slowed to hiccupping, gasping breaths. My eyes were burning and almost swollen shut. I was exhausted and wanted to go to sleep and never wake up.
“You want to be normal?” she said at last. I nodded wearily. “But darling, this is normal. You are normal. You’re just a haguara.”
“Being a haguara is not normal, compared to the whole rest of the world.”
“Everyone is different,” Tia Juliana said calmly in her accented English. Her hand stroked my hair again. “There are people with six fingers on each hand. People who have super, innate abilities. Savants. There are people who have no conscience, who can kill others without caring.” Her voice trailed off, but she took another breath. “People with injuries or illnesses that make them different. People who can’t have children. People who are extra brave, people who are extra smart or extra pretty or extra something else. What is normal? What does that look like?”
I couldn’t think straight, couldn’t come up with an argument.
“Your mami and papi knew that you loved them,” Tia Juliana said softly. “And they loved you, more than anything. They wanted you to be happy, and thought you would be happiest if you experienced the joy of being haguari. It’s our way, the way of our people. We’re beautiful and special, and haguari have existed since the earliest times. To deny that is . . . diminishing. And somewhat pointless, cara. But I know that your parents loved you so much, as is.”
Tears leaked out of my eyes. I’d made a big wet spot on the velour, and I traced through it with my finger, flattening the tiny fibers.
“I talked to your mami almost every week,” Tia Juliana said. “Never once did she say you were a disappointment. Never once did she say that she wished you were different.”
Amazingly, I had some sobs left, and I started crying again.
“She was proud of you. She wanted you to be happy. You were her dream child, her treasure. And she knew you loved her.”
“I hardly ever said it!” I said, bawling again.
“She knew.” My aunt sounded quite definite, and I desperately wanted to believe her. Then I felt like such a loser for wanting it to be that easy, that good. I did
n’t deserve to believe her, didn’t deserve to be the daughter of someone who knew I loved her even though I had rejected who I was, who she wanted me to be.
“She knew,” my aunt repeated. “And so did your papi. It’s okay, querida. The three of you loved each other. Love isn’t always easy or smooth. But it’s okay. You’re okay. They’re okay too.”
I wanted to believe that so much.
• • •
Almost a week later, Tia Juliana needed to finally go back to her own family, my tio Marc and my two cousins, who were younger than me.
“Please come with me,” she said as I watched her pack.
“I don’t want to leave here.” I was no longer taking tranquilizers, and my grief felt raw and rough-edged. Being awake was almost unbearably painful, and days went by where all I managed to do was eat a bowl of cereal.
“You shouldn’t be alone.”
“Jennifer comes over every day,” I said, which was true, especially now that school was out. I didn’t tell my aunt that Jennifer was due to leave soon for her annual trip to Israel.
“If you change your mind, will you call me?” Tia Juliana asked. She looked at me seriously, her blond hair pulled back in a no-nonsense yet somehow chic bun, her dark eyes so like mine.
I nodded. “Yes. If I change my mind, I’ll call you. I’ll come.”
“You won’t have to change, if you come,” she said, surprising me. “No one will force you to feel beautiful, or have fun or excitement.” A tiny smile played around her lips, the first one since she’d arrived.
“That’s a relief,” I said. “The gods know I don’t want that.” We shared a look then, and I knew I’d be grateful to my aunt forever. I had one last question. “Tia, do you know about the family book?” The one Papi had mentioned right before the attack.
Tia Juliana looked surprised. “Of course. Every family has one. The oldest child in each family inherits it.” She looked confused, but then her face cleared. “Oh, you turned eighteen! Did you get the family book?”
I shook my head. “I’d never heard of it. Papi was starting to tell me about it, but he . . . didn’t finish.”
“Oh. Well, it’s bound to be around here, cara. After I go, you can search for it. It will be like a big scrapbook, but maybe bound in leather.”
“Okay.” I had no idea whether I wanted to find it or not. It sounded like it would be full of my family tree and haguari history, and I didn’t want to delve into that right now. Maybe in a little while.
Then Tia Juliana was gone and the house was extremely empty and quiet. Before this had happened, I’d always loved it when I had the house to myself. I would turn my music up loud, belt out songs, and dance with ambitious, no doubt goofy moves I’d never let anyone see. Now I wandered silently through a house that seemed foreign and cold. In the living room I stopped in front of the altar my parents had made to our gods, Tzechuro and Tzechura. The altar sat in a small, red-painted alcove cut into the living room wall. Papi had told me the altar had belonged to his parents, and to their parents before them, for generations. It did look really old, the carved wood smooth from time and touch, the symbols almost worn away in places.
The main shelf held statues of the Tzechuri, who had created our people at the dawn of time, as the legends went. Tzechura was reclining, resting on one elbow, looking calmly forward. Her body was dark, very old ivory, inlaid with ebony rosettes and spots. Her eyes were yellow sapphires. Tzechuro was rearing back on his haunches, his face in a snarl, one paw raised with claws outstretched. His eyes were emeralds, and his fangs were mother-of-pearl.
When I was little, my parents would show me the altar and tell the stories of how Tzechuro had been made from the sun and Tzechura had been born of the moon. The sun had seen jaguars and admired their strength and beauty, and the moon had seen humans and recognized that they were the smartest of all the creatures. So the sun and the moon together created a new race that combined the best qualities of jaguar and human, and thus were born haguari.
Apparently all haguari today were the direct descendants of Tzechuro and Tzechura, in the way that many people believe that all humans came from Adam and Eve. When I was little, I’d accepted these stories the way that children accept Bible stories, and when I was ten I realized that this was my parents’ religion, and they intended it to be mine, too. I was old enough to know that none of my friends worshipped these gods; none of them had jaguar altars in their houses. At first it seemed quirky, almost amusing, as if my parents were Hare Krishnas or something, but by the time I was thirteen and really being immersed in haguari culture it began to seem freakish and even disturbing. One more thing for me to reject.
But privately, I’d never been able to shake the idea of the Tzechuri as being our gods, my gods. I wanted to be an atheist, but something deep down couldn’t accept that haguari had just happened, that we were a weird genetic mishmash. Having gods born of the sun and the moon who combined us on purpose actually seemed to make more sense. As much as I denied it publicly, my inner self always felt embraced by the jaguar gods.
In the quiet house I dusted the altar, which I had refused to do for my parents. On Friday night I lit the altar candles, which I used to sneer at them doing. I couldn’t bring myself to sing the prayers I knew. That would be going too far.
About fifty times a day some small sound made me look up, as if Mami or Papi had just come home and was unlocking the door, turning on a light. The continual realization and disappointment that they would never come home again left me wrung out and exhausted.
• • •
Jennifer came over every day after school, and then stayed all day for the first days of summer. Much too soon, it was time for her to go to Israel.
“I told my mom I couldn’t leave you,” Jennifer said.
After I had gotten home from the hospital, she’d held me while I cried. Many times. She’d cried too. Sometimes Tia Juliana had held both of us, and all three of us had cried.
“How long will you be gone?” I asked, like I did every summer. I examined my choices for dinner: chicken noodle or split pea soup. I was still having trouble eating—food got stuck in my throat. My clothes were getting loose.
“Until the first week of August,” she said. “Then I have to pack to go to New York. I’ve been assigned a roommate and everything. Listen, Viv—Mom says she’ll pay for you to go to Israel, and my aunt said she’d love to have you spend the summer. Please come. Don’t make me go by myself.”
Right then I realized she hadn’t called me HD since my parents had died. I guessed I was no longer a Heartbreaking Disappointment. Because there was no one left to disappoint.
I got out the can opener and thought about going to Israel. It was tempting. I’d never been. As much as Jennifer complained about it, I knew she actually had a great time there. I’d seen the pictures on Facebook. She had six cousins; they all had friends; they did lots of fun stuff. I could be surrounded by loud, busy people. I could have that in Brazil, too, with my family.
But mostly I wanted to lie in my bed under the covers and never move again.
“That sounds great,” I said. “Tell your mom thanks so much. But . . . I guess I’ll just stay put.” I dumped the chicken noodle soup into a plastic mixing bowl and stuck it in the microwave. My mom had hated the microwave. I punched buttons and the turntable started going around.
“Are you sure?” Jennifer looked worried.
“I think so,” I said, and shrugged. The microwave dinged. I took out the bowl and got a spoon and managed a few bites before it felt like if I ate any more I would hurl. I looked over at Jennifer and gave a smile that even I could tell was sickly and unconvincing. “I’ll be okay.”
• • •
Jennifer left for Tel Aviv. We both cried. She hugged me like she’d never see me again.
Then I was really on my own. Other friends from school came by, of course, but I was even more awkward than usual and a couple of times burst into tears. Embarrassing for ev
eryone. So I quit letting them visit. After Jennifer left, my days were endless and silent, as if I were enveloped by a slow, still fog of pain. As if moving too quickly would rip the caul, and the sudden, horrifying brightness of my nightmarish reality would shine on me.
I closed the door to my parents’ room and caught myself tiptoeing past it as if they were in there, asleep. Every once in a while, if I was really falling apart, I went in and threw myself on their bed, clutching the pillows, burying my face in the maroon silk quilt, breathing in the faint scents of my dad’s shaving cream, my mom’s favorite perfume.
It was hard to go to sleep. Sometimes right before I dozed off I was dropped into a memory of running through the woods, sharp scents making my nose twitch. I’d bounded fifteen feet in the air with no effort. I’d heard the quick, faint heartbeats of birds, had smelled a rabbit that knew I was nearby. The memory was clear as a mountain lake, as sharp as a blade of sedge grass, and sometimes it seemed more real than my waking days.
My tia Juliana had dealt with the bank stuff—arranging to have all the bills paid automatically. I had not the slightest concept of how to do any of that, so it was a blessing. Then one day toward the end of June the lawyer called me and asked about some papers: my parents’ green cards, their marriage certificate, my birth certificate. I said I would find them and bring them to her. Tia Juliana had already worked with the lawyer, but I guessed there were a few loose ends.
My dad’s office had once been a small bedroom. We’d only needed two of our four bedrooms, so we had a guest room and his office. The room was cool and dark, with the wood paneling that was in almost every room in the house. Most of the rooms had been painted, but this one was still woody. It smelled like his aftershave. It felt like he was in the kitchen and would walk in here any second.
His files were organized and labeled neatly in English, and under the IMPORTANT PAPERS tab I found a small silver key. I remembered that he kept really crucial stuff in the fireproof safe on the floor of the closet. Though it was small, it weighed a ton. I dragged it out, pulling and pushing it along the textured olive-green carpet, and fitted the silver key into its lock.