by Loriel Ryon
Sonja glanced back. “I started trying at Wela’s urging.”
Yolanda felt a tickle on her finger.
She immediately let go of the serape, her heart in her throat.
A bee had climbed onto her hand.
She froze.
“Wela is trying to help me, but it’s hard.” Sonja waved her hand around haphazardly. “Any time I am not fully present and paying attention, the bees can get out of control.”
Yolanda moved her hand back near the fringe and let the bee crawl underneath the serape. She let out her breath all at once. That was close.
“Honestly, I don’t really like having them. Wela said one day I’ll appreciate the gift, but right now I wish I were just ordinary.”
That word stuck in Yolanda’s throat.
Ordinary? But she was ordinary.
She gulped.
Or maybe she wasn’t anymore.
* * *
They came upon rows of prickly pear cactus. They weren’t the usual green ones that Hasik had foraged for them, but a deep lavender covered with bright yellow flowers.
Hasik would love these, Yolanda thought.
Yolanda checked to make sure Wela was still asleep. “How did you and Ghita … happen?”
Sonja brushed a stray hair out of her face, disturbing a bee in her braid. It flew a loop around her head before settling back into a shadow of her hair. “We needed each other,” she said. “Actually, we needed you. But you weren’t there, so we found each other. We started hanging out, and then we happened to like each other more than friends …”
“I know. I know.” Yolanda rolled her eyes. “It’s so not fair—you got your first kiss way before me.”
“Oh brother. First kisses are so super awkward. I didn’t know where to put my lips or my hands. Right before we kissed, I was so nervous I thought I was going to barf. It was all kinds of weird. Now, second and third kisses, that’s when things get better.” Sonja smiled.
“So that kiss in the hallway was … ?”
Sonja held up four fingers. “Number four.”
“You really like her, don’t you?”
Sonja sighed, her eyes shining. “I do. She makes my knees wobble and my hands shake. She is what I think people are looking for when they write romantic songs and poems. She’s thoughtful and kind, smart. … Don’t get me wrong, she drives me crazy too, but there’s something about her …”
“What happened, then? Why have you been so … ?”
Sonja sighed again. “I don’t know. I guess my feelings are a mess.” Sonja ran her fingers along the dried desert grasses. Under her touch, the blades turned a deep green and softened with life. “I messed things up with her.”
“It’s not complicated.” Yolanda plucked a bit of the green grass and rolled it between her fingers. “If you like her, then be nice to her.”
Sonja glanced over her shoulder and rolled her eyes. “Says the girl who is nice to no one.”
“I’m nice,” Yolanda protested, and then she laughed. “Okay, I’m not that nice. All I’m saying is if you like Ghita, then date her, kiss her, like her. Why does it have to be so complicated?”
“To be honest, I was—I am worried about what you think. She’s your best friend. Or was your best friend, and I care about not hurting you.”
That news hit Yolanda in the chest, and the words left her. It never seemed that either of them really cared about her feelings. It was nice to hear Sonja say that. Then suddenly she felt guilty.
“Don’t worry about me.” Yolanda shrugged. “I’m fine with it. Whatever is going to make the two of you happy.” And she realized that was how she really felt. Sonja and Ghita liked each other, and even though that left her out, she wanted them both to be happy.
“Well, what’s Dad going to say? What if he doesn’t understand?”
“Dad will be fine,” Yolanda said. “He loves you.” She wrapped an arm around her sister. “And if I have to, I’ll make sure he understands.”
Sonja smiled. “Thanks, Yo.”
Yolanda hugged her sister. She heard the familiar buzzing of the bees and stood quickly. “Sorry,” she said, backing away. “The bees.”
“Yeah, we don’t need you getting stung out here.”
Yolanda glanced down the trail, and Sonja noticed.
“I hope Hasik is okay,” Sonja said. Then a wry smile came over her face. “You know, Hasik likes you.”
“Oh, no,” Yolanda protested, shaking her head. “I don’t think he—” Her palms began to sweat. Were they that obvious?
“Yes he does. He always talks about how smart you are. He has a major crush on you. He came all this way, out in the desert—for you.”
Yolanda thought of him lying on the riverbed and hoped she was right and had helped him.
“Wait a second! You like him too, don’t you?” Sonja broke out into a huge grin. “I can see it on your face.”
“I don’t know—I don’t know,” Yolanda said quickly. Her cheeks burned.
“You DO like him!”
Yolanda’s heart thumped in her chest. She did like Hasik. He was kind to her. And smart and funny. And Sonja had shared so much about Ghita. It was time to be honest with herself. And with Sonja. “Yeah, I like him,” she said finally.
Sonja clapped her hands together. “Yay!” she said happily.
Yolanda laughed.
Wela stirred on the serape and opened her eyes. Her skin was gray and matched her dull hair. “Water,” she said.
Yolanda helped her sip from the water bottle.
“Mijas, we are almost there. I can feel it,” Wela said. “It’s time to tell you about the tree.”
Thirty-nine
ONCE I told Mami and Papá about what Cynthia and Fiona did, they demanded justice. For months they fought with the sheriff, begging him to do something. Anything.
Mami even confronted Pastor Jones. But nothing ever came of it.
It never does in a town where everyone calls you a bruja.
One by one, like a plague on our land, the burned trees fell. This tree, then that one. Papá and Raúl cut them into pieces and sold the firewood. It sapped my parents’ savings. We had little food and no money that winter. The Rodríguez pecans were no more.
Violeta’s tree was the only one left, standing tall and proud on the butte.
Mami rocked in her chair by the window, staring into the dying orchard, hoping maybe we got it all wrong. Maybe the orchard wasn’t dying. Maybe Vi wasn’t gone.
Her fingers were red and raw from pulling at her skin. She would whisper to herself over and over again, “It’s a strange land, for a strange family.”
The following spring, the desert air was crisp as the winds blew in and I led Mami outside to the porch swing for some fresh air. She was swinging back and forth, her mouth agape.
I followed her gaze to Violeta’s tree.
The family tree.
It still stood proud and tall. But it wasn’t bare and black as it had been the entire winter.
It was green.
Violeta’s tree had bloomed.
Raúl and I rode out there and sat underneath it, surrounded by the gravestones of our family.
He breathed in the air from the tree, leaned back and crossed his arms behind his head. “This is the best I’ve felt in a while.” He gazed up at the overhanging branches. “It’s like she’s here with us, isn’t it?”
I glanced around, shaded by the lush green-and-white beauty surrounding us. Long chains of lime-green buds dangled above. I felt lucky to be able see this. I felt lucky this one had survived.
“Can we come here every day?” Raúl spread out his arms. “I feel so amazing here.”
It was her tree.
I knew in my gut she had healed it.
Whenever we went back to the sadness of the house, it swallowed us whole. The grief wove itself into the walls, the floors, and our existence like an insidious infection.
It hurt us all.
But especially
Raúl.
His eyes darkened and his face paled whenever we walked up the steps to the house. It was like it was making him sick.
So every day that spring and through the summer, Raúl and I rode out to the tree and spent as much time as we could there. It was the happiest we could be, sitting under her tree.
By autumn, the leaves were golden yellow and the outer shells of the nuts had begun to split open, ready to harvest. Raúl climbed up the rough, thick branches and shook the tree, raining hard brown shells all around me.
He jumped down and helped me gather the nuts into a large sack.
“How much do you know about the family?” Raúl said. “¿Quién es?” He dug a stick into a dust-covered V in the gravestone. “Who is this?”
The name read VALENTINA RODRÍGUEZ-DOMÍNGUEZ. And underneath, TELEPATÍA.
“I think that’s Mami’s sister, Valentina.” I grabbed a handful of nuts from the ground and placed them into my sack.
“What was her gift?”
“Telepatía. It means she could read minds.”
“Do you think mine will ever come?” Raúl crouched down in front of Violeta’s gravestone, raised a thumb, and cleaned the dust from the letters of her name.
I shrugged. I wasn’t sure. He was only eleven. “Mine came around twelve.” I sat down. A butterfly perched on my fingertip, and I gently blew on its wings, letting it catch a puff of air and fly away. I picked up one of the shiny brown nuts and held it in my palm. I tapped the top and it burst open, revealing the pecan inside.
“Don’t you think it’s strange the tree made nuts?” Raúl asked. He was swinging from a lower limb.
I placed the nut in my mouth. “Why do you say that?”
“Because usually they need to be cross-pollinated. Pecan trees don’t pollinate themselves. And all the other trees are dead.” He wrapped his legs around the branch.
His words didn’t matter as I chewed the nut. It was the sweetest pecan I had ever tasted.
“Raúl, you have to try this,” I said, handing him the other half.
That afternoon we rode back to the house, our arms overloaded with bags and bags of pecans, the warm autumn sun at our backs. We were thrilled.
These nuts would save the orchard.
We brought them to Papá.
His eyes darkened and his jaw set tight. He snatched the sacks and threw them straight into the fire. “Never, ever go to that tree again.” His eyes glistened with the tears he tried to hold back. “¿Entendido? Never.”
I couldn’t understand why he would react that way. He should have been pleased that we were going to save the orchard. Raúl said it was because Papá was so devastated over losing Violeta that seeing the orchard blooming again and life going on without her was too much for him to bear.
Forty
AS THEY continued to climb, Yolanda’s breath quickened. Sonja was in the front, pulling the serape, and Yolanda stayed in the back, carefully avoiding the bees. As Wela slept, Yolanda had a foreboding feeling they were running out of time. If Wela died before they got her to the tree, Yolanda would never forgive herself. She found herself checking Wela over and over again, making sure she was still breathing.
“You know, Yo, I wish I were like you.” Sonja picked her way through a thick grove of ocotillo. Bright red flowers emerged from the tops of the long arms, emitting an earthy vanilla aroma.
Yolanda raised an eyebrow. “Me?”
“You are so smart and independent. You don’t care what anyone else thinks about you. I would have never had the courage to take Wela here on my own.”
Sonja’s words surprised her. “I’m not on my own. You, Ghita, and Hasik came.” Then it hit her. She’d needed them on this journey. “I wouldn’t have made it this far without you guys.”
“Maybe, but you were determined to do it on your own.”
“That was a little stupid,” Yolanda admitted. “I would have never been able to get Wela here without you and your bees. I would have had to give up way back there.” A bee crawled onto the back of Yolanda’s hand and she swatted it away quickly. “And all your outdoor skills—I would have never made it.”
Sonja laughed, but her eyes were sad. They trudged up the trail for a few moments in silence.
“Do you ever wonder about Welo?” Sonja said. “Like where is he? Is he with Mamá? What happened to him—after he took his last breath? Where did he go?”
Those questions made Yolanda dizzy. She didn’t like to think about those kinds of things. She didn’t want to look at Sonja either, and kept her eyes down, but before she could stop herself, the words came pouring out. “I really miss him.”
They walked for a few more moments in silence.
“Me too.”
Three days before Welo died, Yolanda had stayed in the library all day long, filling up the final pages of a third spiral notebook. Dad had asked her to come home early that day. He wanted to spend time together, as a family. But Yolanda, too engrossed in her work, did not come home until dinner.
Well after dark, when everyone was asleep, Yolanda crept into Welo’s bedroom. Wela slept next to him, and Sonja snored softly on a small pallet of blankets she had made on the floor.
Yolanda smoothed the yellow serape over his chest and whispered, “I didn’t find a cure today, Welo, but I’ll keep looking.”
Welo’s eyelids fluttered. He grabbed her hand and squeezed. “Stay with me, mija.”
Yolanda kissed Welo’s hand. “I want to, but I’ve got work to do.”
He gripped her hand a bit tighter. He glanced at Wela, who was sleeping beside him. “I know you don’t care about it now, but I need you to finish my work. Figure out the gift. If we can explain it to the world, then maybe they will understand. People won’t treat Wela this way anymore. Or you and Sonja when your gifts come.”
Yolanda held up her hand and shook her head. “Welo, I am going to find a cure for you. To make you better. You can finish your own work—when you are better.”
“But, Yo—please.” His eyes were desperate and pleading. “I want a good life for you.”
“I know, Welo.” Yolanda had patted him on the arm. “I’m close. I just need to keep looking.” She closed the door behind her and continued her research in her bedroom.
Two days later, Dad told her the doctors were changing Welo’s pain medication. Things were not looking good. “He doesn’t have much longer,” he had said.
With that news, Yolanda hopped on her bike and rode away furiously, toward the college. She couldn’t look at Welo and tell him she had failed.
She had to find the cure. She had to save him.
But she didn’t.
Welo died that afternoon. He died while she had six health magazines splayed out on the table. He took his last breaths as she jotted down notes about things that didn’t cure cancer.
Wela was there.
Dad was there.
Sonja was there.
Yolanda wasn’t.
“How did he go?” Yolanda asked as they marched up the mountain, the dry grasses scratching her shins. “How did he die?” Her voice cracked. She had never wanted to know before this. It had been too hard to even think about.
Sonja’s face grew solemn. “Peacefully,” she said. “It was quiet. He asked to go outside, and so we propped him on the porch swing and covered him with a blanket. I lay next to him, my head on his lap. I sang him a song. Dad and Wela sat on the floor next to him and held his hands. That’s all he wanted in the end, to be with us.”
Yolanda’s insides twisted painfully as she pictured the scene. It sounded so achingly beautiful. “I can’t believe I missed it.” The guilt overwhelmed her, and she couldn’t breathe. Why couldn’t she face the truth?
Sonja’s eyes glistened. “He knew that it would be hard for you. You were determined to save him. He knew that.”
Yolanda hadn’t wanted to miss his last moments. That wasn’t her plan. Her plan was to save his life so they could have many more moments together
. So he could teach her everything he knew about science and genetics and life. So that he could finish his work.
But that didn’t happen.
“I was so mad at Mrs. Patel.” Yolanda wiped away her tears. “I was so mad at her for not being there. I was mad she didn’t save him.”
“Her own mother was sick,” Sonja said. “She had to go.”
“Hasik told me.” Yolanda shook her head. “I didn’t know. That’s why Ghita left too.”
Sonja nodded. “It was hard for Ghita when she came back. She lost her grandmother and you, her best friend. She didn’t know how to talk to you about it.”
“She disappeared. She left me.”
Sonja’s head snapped up. “No one left you, Yo,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “You. You were the one who left everyone.”
Yolanda stopped, Sonja’s words hitting her. Sonja was right.
She had closed everyone off. She’d closed herself off before he died. When death was the only outcome, she’d hidden in her books and research, not willing to face the reality of what was going to happen.
They walked for a few more moments in silence.
“You and Welo are a lot alike,” Sonja said. “Always wanting to be alone.”
Yolanda hadn’t thought much of it before, but she liked to be alone. It was her way of focusing and dealing with the world, taking it in. Coping. She could close the door and cry and not have to answer to anyone.
“Do you hate me?” Sonja asked. “Because of Ghita?”
“What a strange question. No, of course not.”
“Do you hate Ghita?”
“No.”
“Then why does it feel like you do? Since Welo died, you treat us like we wronged you. At first I thought it was your grieving thing. Wela said everyone grieves in their own way, but now I’m beginning to think it’s something else.” Sonja’s freckled cheeks were pale, exhaustion behind her eyes. “Is it because … you know … we like each other? Because I didn’t mean for it to happen. It wasn’t on purpose.”
“It’s not that.” Yolanda knew she needed to say the truth. She needed to finally say what was bothering her about Ghita and Sonja.