by Loriel Ryon
The second daughter, “Josefa,” has an ability to work with nature. She can control insects—butterflies in particular—and she can also induce flowers to bloom. I’ve witnessed her turn pecan flowers into nuts as well. She is smart and curious and is still learning to harness her abilities. It is quite beautiful the way she works with the butterflies, like waves in the ocean.
The youngest, a son, “Raúl,” is ten, but no skill has presented itself for him yet. The skill seems to appear around the age of eleven or twelve, with slight variation. The father of the family does not have any sort of special skill or carry the Rodríguez name. This trait appears to come from the maternal side of the family.
I flipped the page over and read his account of how he cut his hand on purpose to see if Violeta could heal him. His words were clinical and matter-of-fact, leaving me to wonder if he really loved my sister after all.
I was sick to my stomach. Benjamín was here to study us and perhaps expose us. What if what happened to those other women happened to us? I had to fix this.
I took the journal back to our house and waited until morning. Then I showed Papá.
By lunchtime, Benjamín, his black trunk, and his slides were gone. Violeta refused to leave her room for weeks, completely heartbroken. I knocked on her door and tried to explain.
“Vi, he was going to expose us—you didn’t read what I read. They murdered people like us.”
I’ll never forget the look she gave me from behind swollen, red-rimmed eyes before she shut the door in my face.
I had betrayed her. Nothing would make her trust me again.
Her love was gone, and it was all my fault.
Thirty
WELA fell asleep after the story, and they decided to rest a little longer by the riverbed to stay close to water. Sonja and Ghita built a small fire at the base of the cottonwood tree, and Hasik went to collect pads of prickly pear cactus to roast.
“Do you think that was what Benjamín was really there for?” Ghita prodded the fire with a stick. “To expose them?”
“I don’t know,” Sonja said, twirling a burnt stick in the air and letting the smoke curl around them. “It seems like he really loved Violeta.”
“But he wouldn’t have turned on them.” Yolanda had never understood why everything about the trait had to be kept a secret, but now, with the mention of murders, her stomach tightened. She was beginning to understand.
After Hasik returned, they roasted the pads of prickly pear in the fire.
“Did you know I was the bigger twin?” Sonja said to Ghita as she thrust a pad of cactus into the crackling fire.
“You were only bigger because you stole all my resources.” Yolanda rolled her eyes. Sonja always bragged about being the bigger twin when they were born, like it was some sort of advantage she had had since birth.
Yolanda pet Rosalind Franklin, who was dozing in her lap. The T-shirt bandage was dirty and beginning to fall off. Yolanda tugged at it and looked at the wound underneath. Oddly enough, it looked as though it was beginning to close. The white tendons and fatty tissue were covered with fresh pink skin. Yolanda gently rubbed it with her thumb.
“Wela told me the story of our birth.” Sonja’s eyes twinkled. “Do you want to hear it?”
A twinge of jealousy knotted in Yolanda’s gut. Why was Wela always telling Sonja important things and telling her nothing? It wasn’t fair. Yolanda did want to know. She had always wanted to hear about Mamá and the day they were born, but no one would talk about it. “It’s too painful, mija,” Wela would say as a gloomy look came over her face. Dad and Welo were no better, and eventually Yolanda stopped asking.
“Yes.” Yolanda sat up straight. “Tell me.”
Sonja stepped around the fire and sat cross-legged next to Yolanda. “Wela said from the start Mamá knew something was wrong. It was as if she knew all along she wasn’t going to make it. She would tell her things like ‘Take care of my girls and always make sure they know how much I love them.’
“Toward the end of her pregnancy, a few days before we came, Mamá began to swell. Her feet, her hands, her face. She felt terrible. She could hardly walk. She was dizzy and tired and saw flashes of light in her eyes. When Dad came home and took her blood pressure, it was dangerously high, so they raced to the hospital. When they arrived, Mamá could barely see. The flashes of light and halos in her vision blinded her.”
Wela woke, her eyes glistening with tears. “Oh, mijas, the day you were born was the happiest and saddest day of my life all at once.” Tears spilled over her cheeks as she sucked in a sharp breath and pressed a palm to her chest. “Let me finish the story.
“The doctor told us she was very sick and she needed to deliver right away. There was no time for an epidural. They needed to put her to sleep. But your mamá refused.
“ ‘No. My babies need me,’ ” she said. She was calm but firm.
“ ‘But, Alejandra, your life is in danger. You could die.’ ”
“She stood her ground.
“And so they prepped her for surgery, placed the needle in her back, and began to cut her as soon as she was numb. By then her blood pressure was so high, she couldn’t see at all—her vision was completely gone.
“Sonja came first. When I saw her, I was scared she was bleeding from the head, but then I realized she had your father’s red hair.” Wela turned to Sonja. “You turned pink and screamed immediately, and we all breathed a sigh of relief. When they put you next to your mamá, even though she could no longer see you, she breathed you in, kissed you, and you calmed instantly.”
Wela turned to Yolanda. “Then you came. The smallest human I have ever seen. You were covered with black hair all over your body. And you were blue. The nurses and doctors tried everything to revive you, but they said you were too small. Born too soon for your size. But your mamá, from underneath the blue layers of fabric, said, ‘Bring her here.’ And your father picked you up in his big arms, your tiny body flopping gently in his hands, and brought you to her. He laid you against her warm cheek. She smelled you and kissed you. Then, with her last breath, she blew the healing breath over you.
“Your tiny blue body began to pink up, and your fingers curled. Then your toes. And then the most glorious sound I have ever heard. Your cry.”
Tears dripped down Wela’s cheeks, and she wiped them away with her palm.
Yolanda stood, walked around the fire, and sat beside Wela. “Why haven’t you ever told me that story before?” She put an arm around Wela. Her throat was tight. She’d always known Mamá hadn’t made it. It had framed her entire life. It was why she lived with her dad and abuelos. But to hear the truth from Wela was devastating. She imagined her dad and abuelos standing there holding two infants and losing their wife and daughter at the same time.
“It was so hard, mija. I lost a piece of my soul that day—even though I gained you girls.”
Yolanda cleared her throat. “Why did you tell this to Sonja?”
“I knew eventually I would tell you both. But I told her first because her gift came first, and I needed her to understand the power she held inside her. That we all hold inside of us.”
A realization washed over Yolanda. Mamá had saved her life. She had sacrificed herself so Yolanda could live. “So, Mamá—she could heal … like your sister? Like Violeta?”
Wela nodded, the flames from the fire dancing in her eyes. “Your Mamá’s gift was healing, like my sister, Vi.”
After Wela finished her story, everyone but Yolanda dozed under the cottonwood tree for an afternoon snooze. She couldn’t stop running the new information through her mind.
It all made perfect sense. Mamá was a medic in the army and had saved Dad’s life. She must have healed him, too. Yolanda’s heart was fuller after that, knowing what Mamá had done for her, someone she resembled so much but knew so little about. But something still wasn’t sitting well with her.
Mamá sacrificed herself to save Yolanda. She refused to let the docto
r put her under anesthesia because she knew she would have to be awake to save her baby.
To save Yolanda.
Then she thought about Dad and how devastated he must have been about Mamá’s sacrifice and to be left alone with two baby girls.
The ability to heal was wonderful, but also quite frightening.
The thought gripped her. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing she didn’t have a gift.
Wela had called it a beautiful plague.
Maybe it was a plague.
Thirty-one
YOLANDA woke to the sun piercing through the cottonwood branches. She must have fallen asleep after all. She yawned and stretched. She was getting better at sleeping outside. When she rolled over, she saw Wela was awake, playing with the latch on the metal box.
Yolanda tucked her arm under her head. “I hope telling us the story didn’t make you too sad.”
“That story always makes me sad, mija.” Wela brushed the dust off the top of the box. “But it’s no one’s fault. It’s just how it is.”
One by one the others woke and rolled over. Sonja yawned, and Hasik stretched his arms above his head.
Ghita rubbed her eyes and sat up. “So, what happened to Violeta?”
A few months later, a letter came from Benjamín. I saw it before anyone else, snuck up to Vi’s bedroom, and placed it on her pillow. I thought maybe she would forgive me if I got the letter to her before anyone else saw it, but what she did was so much worse than I could have imagined.
When Violeta went up to her bedroom later that day, I followed her and watched through a crack in the door. Her eyes darted nervously around, making sure she was alone. She ripped open the letter and read it. As her fingers brushed her lips, she pressed the letter to her chest and closed her eyes. From under the bed, she pulled out a small suitcase and tucked the letter into the cream lining. In went her best pair of brown shoes, two dresses, and undergarments. She latched it shut and swept it under the bed with the heel of her foot. A smile escaped from behind the fingertips pressed to her lips. Before she could see me, I crept back to my room. I waited until my sister went down to the barn before I ran back upstairs and read the letter.
Mi amor Violeta,
My draft number came up and I must go. But I will not go to war. I will flee the despicable nature of war. I cannot take part in the death and destruction of human life. It is much too precious to me. I bought you a bus ticket and I hope you will come to me. Run away with me, mi amor. Meet me on September 22 on the midnight train to Dallas. We can marry and hide in Mexico or anywhere else you want to so we can be together forever. I am desperate for you.
Te amo, Benjamín
My heart sank. She had already packed her bags—it wasn’t even a question to her whether or not she would go. She didn’t care about the truth. She was going to leave our family and be with him.
With Benjamín.
It would devastate our family if she left. I didn’t want to betray her again, so I did what I thought was best. I confronted her about the letter and made sure she understood the truth.
“He will tell everyone about us!” I said. “They killed people like us! Don’t you care?”
Violeta paced back and forth across the porch. It was late, and everyone else in the family was already in bed. “But I love him, Jo. I love him.” She wrung her hands. “I don’t believe he came here to hurt us. That’s not who he is. We fell in love. It doesn’t matter to me what his intentions were when he came here. It matters what they are now. I want to be with him.”
She wasn’t listening to me. I couldn’t change her mind.
I had to make sure she wouldn’t meet him. So I asked Cynthia for her help. Before dawn, on September twenty-second, I snuck into Violeta’s room and took the bus ticket while she slept.
Later that afternoon Violeta screamed as she fumbled through her suitcase. “Where is it, Jo?”
“You can’t go.” I said. “You can’t leave us.” I chewed the inside of my lip and held the bus ticket in my hands, folded like a paper bird. “I’m sorry, Vi. I can’t let you do this.”
Three butterflies flew underneath the folded paper and I let go. Their wings gently flapping, they carried it through the open window and down to the center of the orchard.
“No!” Violeta ran to the window.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m so sorry, Vi.”
Thirty-two
WELA, exhausted again, was back to sleep before Hasik and Yolanda had lifted her into the wheelbarrow and covered her with the serape.
As they were about to leave, Hasik said, “Uh-oh.”
Yolanda closed her eyes. This didn’t sound good. “What?” she said. She followed his gaze to the wheelbarrow.
The tire was flat.
Hasik attempted to push it, but it didn’t budge.
Wela’s butterflies perched in her flat gray hair as she snored softly.
They were stuck.
“What are we going to do?” Hasik dropped the handles of the wheelbarrow. “I can try to carry her, but I don’t think I can do that for long.”
Yolanda clenched her fists and looked up at the mountain they would have to climb. Even in the wheelbarrow, the task had seemed close to impossible. But now, with a flat tire, how would they ever get Wela up to the tree?
Sonja sat on a nearby a rock, moving a group of three bees into concentric circles between her palms as Rosalind Franklin nipped at them. As much as Yolanda didn’t want to admit it, only Sonja could solve this problem.
Yolanda walked over to Sonja, with each step hoping that she could come up with a solution, a different one, where she didn’t need Sonja or her skill, but she knew in her heart this was the only way. She needed her sister.
“How much control do you have?” Yolanda tucked a frizz of curly brown hair behind her ear and ducked as a stray bee whizzed by her head. “Of the bees?”
Sonja looked up, and the bumblebees buzzed faster and faster, as though she were juggling them. It was amazing how they flew and didn’t collide.
Yolanda shifted back, away from the bees.
“Why?” Sonja asked.
Yolanda paused, not wanting to say the words, not wanting to need Sonja’s help, but Wela’s story had given her an idea. “I’m wondering if we can use your skill,” Yolanda said, “to, you know … move her.”
A puzzled look crossed Sonja’s face. “How would that even work?”
“Well, all right—if you don’t think …”
“Wait.” Ghita jumped up and walked over. “What are you thinking?”
Yolanda peeled the serape from Wela and laid it on the ground. “This might sound crazy, but if we can get the bees to work together, maybe they can make this blanket … fly.” Yolanda smoothed the fabric of the serape with her palms. “Like Wela’s story with the bus ticket. She got the butterflies to carry it.” Yolanda pointed overhead. “There’s a beehive in the cottonwood tree. An entire swarm of them.”
“I don’t know …” Sonja chewed the inside of her cracked lip and ran a hand along her braid. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to. And even if I could, I don’t think it would hold her.”
“You could at least try,” Ghita said. “What else are we going to do?”
Sonja didn’t seem convinced, but Ghita was already halfway up the tree, so Sonja followed with a machete. Hasik and Yolanda straightened out the serape while Rosalind Franklin tugged at the chancla precariously hanging from Wela’s foot.
“Do you think this will work?” Hasik knelt and flicked a speck of dirt off the serape.
“I have no idea, but it’s our only hope to get moving again.” She glanced at Wela, who was looking more frail with her dulling gray hair and sunken eyes. “We are running out of time.”
When Sonja returned, bees surrounded her as she held a papery gray nest in her hands. Yolanda instinctively stepped back as Sonja approached and set it on the ground in front of the blanket.
Ghita grabbed the fringe on one side of the blank
et while Hasik took the other, spreading the serape between them and holding it taut. Rosalind Franklin lay under the shade of the wheelbarrow, the brown chancla between her paws, and gnawed at the leather.
Yolanda watched as Sonja concentrated on the nest and the bees began to emerge. A couple at first, one at time, joining a swirling ball of bees in between her palms. The ball grew larger and larger and the buzzing louder and louder as Sonja spread her palms apart until the swarm was the size of a basketball. Ghita and Hasik held the blanket up over their heads as Sonja slowly walked underneath the blanket with the buzzing ball. When she flattened her palms, the swarm spread out and formed a blanket of its own, made up of buzzing bumblebees. Sonja walked out from underneath the blanket, leaving the bees behind.
“Now—slowly lower the blanket onto the bees,” Sonja instructed.
Ghita and Hasik lowered the blanket on top of the bumblebees. One edge of the blanket fell, and Sonja spread out her hands, moving bees to that corner. The blanket evened out, floating above the ground.
“It’s working,” Sonja said, a slight surprise in her voice.
“It sure is,” Yolanda said. Relief washed over her. Now if it would only hold.
Sonja pushed her hand down in the center of the blanket to test the weight, but it crashed down into a colorful heap. Bees angrily flew out from underneath the blanket. Yolanda bolted as fast as she could away from the swarm. As Sonja worked to calm them, Wela stirred from the commotion.
“Where are we?” she asked sleepily.
“We have a flat tire, and we can’t move the wheelbarrow. We need your help,” Yolanda said. “I thought we could move you on the blanket. Sonja got the bees to fly underneath it and hold it up, but it won’t hold your weight.”
Sonja held the swarm of buzzing bees between her palms again.