Summer of the Mariposas Read online

  EL PÁJARO: “Pájaro, pajarito, encántanos

  con tu canto bonito.”

  THE BIRD: “Bird, little birdie, enchant us

  with your pretty song.”

  We can cross the border at dawn, pretend we’re going on vacation with our father,” Juanita suggested. We walked our bikes out of the woods and mounted them, ready to ride the rest of the way. “Once we’re through the checkpoints, we can drive straight to El Sacrificio.”

  “Excuse me, and how are we going to do that? Are you going to call your fairy godmother and ask her to turn a watermelon into a chariot?” I asked. “Because I don’t know about you, but I left my magic beans in my other shorts.”

  Juanita gave me the evil eye. “¡Calláte! I’m not stupid, so you can stop acting that way.”

  Velia patted her shirt pocket with a flattened hand. “It’s not like we’re broke; we have money now.”

  “You took his money?” Juanita asked, shocked. “I can’t believe you stole from a dead man.”

  “It doesn’t belong to us. We can’t just take it,” Pita said, looking scared.

  “We can if it’s for a good cause,” Delia said. “We’re not using it to buy ourselves stuff. It’s not like we’re really taking a vacation. We’re using it to take him home.”

  I thought of the drowned man again. We’d left him sitting by the riverbank, drying under a mulberry tree, the tiny mariposas clinging to his mouth and nostrils as if trying to resuscitate him.

  “Well, technically, we will be using it on ourselves, because he’s dead,” Juanita pointed out.

  “Okay,” I said, looking up at the darkening sky in frustration. “So how are we gonna get there? Do you even know where you’re going?”

  “We can take Papá’s old car. There’s an old map of Coahuila in the glove box,” Juanita said. She hit my arm with the back of her hand and then grabbed the handlebars of her bike as she pedaled off.

  “That car’s a lemon,” Velia yelled after her. She smacked her lips in disgust and then pedaled after Juanita.

  “It’s worse than a lemon,” her twin elaborated. Shaking our heads, Delia and I pushed off and rode our bikes at full speed trying to catch up with Juanita and Velia. I had to work extra hard because Pita was riding behind me, her arms wrapped tightly around my shoulders and waist, like a heavy backpack. “That car’s a pile of junk, Juanita,” Delia continued. “Not even a dung beetle would want to push that old ball of caca around, much less hold on to it. Mamá should have sold it a long time ago.”

  “Bought us some new school clothes or something,” Velia added, slowing down to talk to us.

  The girls were right, of course. About everything. The car was still running, so it was sellable. Since Mamá didn’t know how to drive, preferring to take the bus everywhere she went in Eagle Pass, she made me start it once a week and drive it around the block to keep the tires from going flat. But my hermanitas were mistaken if they thought I was going to drive them around in that death trap. It needed an oil change and the brakes squealed — and those were just the things I knew to watch out for. God only knew what else might be wrong with it.

  “See? You can’t even agree on how to get there,” I said, looking at Juanita for acknowledgment.

  “Well, we’re going. You can join us, like a good big sister, cinco hermanitas, together forever — or you can break our motto and stay behind like a coward.”

  I turned around, gritting my teeth. “That’s insane,” I growled as I pedaled on, wondering how to fix things without any real solutions coming to mind. Velia and Delia rode around Juanita and flanked me.

  “Listen, if you don’t take us Juanita is willing to drive,” Velia said without looking at me as she slowed down to match my unhurried pace.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “Juanita wouldn’t know how to find a gas pedal if it had a rattle on its tail. At least I have a driving permit. Let’s just get home for now. The right thing to do will come to us.”

  We let the conversation die off and pedaled our bikes back to the house in silence. When we got there, the sun was a luminous orange globe touching the horizon. Mamá had already left for work. She was a waitress at Mr. Gee’s, an all-night café off Main Street on the edge of town, so she was always gone by eight o’clock and didn’t come back until the next morning.

  Soon after we got home from the river, the girls had another one of their yakking sessions in the twins’ room, and as a result, they were running around the house packing for their trip to Mexico. I didn’t intervene or stop them from packing. They were exhilarated by the idea of taking a long, adventurous journey, but I knew very well how this was going to turn out. They weren’t going anywhere. They just didn’t know it yet.

  I ignored them and went to the kitchen to fix them welfare burgers for dinner. We called them welfare burgers because we used regular sliced bread instead of buns. Mamá said buns were more expensive and they were the same exact thing, so she just didn’t see the point in wasting money on them.

  As for me, I wanted a sandwich. The long, hot summer day had made me hungry for something cold; so I took out the bologna and cheese. Because there was no mayo, I ate my sandwich dry as cardboard as I stood over the kitchen sink and looked out the window at the darkening sky. When I looked up at the kitchen clock on the wall by the back door I realized it was much later than I thought, so I went to talk to the girls.

  I poked my head into the twins’ room, humoring my sisters as they sorted through a pile of unfolded laundry in the middle of the full-size bed. “Dinner’s on the table. You need to eat to keep your strength up for that long drive.”

  “Do you think we’ll need sweaters?” Velia asked her twin, pulling an old tattered sweater out of the cluttered closet. She tucked it under her chin and displayed it over her flat chest.

  “It’s the middle of the canícula,” I said, stepping all the way into the room. “Why would you need a sweater during the hottest part of the summer?”

  “It gets cold in the desert,” Delia said. She sat cross-legged on their dilapidated dresser, smug as a cat.

  “We’re going to a desert?” Pita asked. “But I wanted to wear this dress.” She had put on her best church dress, a baby blue, short-sleeved silk dress she’d had for a long time. She twirled around and watched the full skirt swirl around her like an open umbrella. Then she stopped, looked at herself in the mirror, and tugged at the snug waistband. Clearly Pita wanted to impress Abuelita. She always had to try so much harder than the twins to feel pretty.

  “That dress doesn’t even fit you anymore.” Delia uncrossed her legs and jumped off the dresser. She poked Pita’s baby fat and pulled on the dress collar’s silk ribbon bow. “Too many tamales. You’ve got to stop eating so much, Fajita Pita. Wear something else. You look like a chile relleno in that.”

  “I don’t care. It’s my favorite dress, and I’m wearing it,” Pita whined as she slapped Delia’s hands away. “And don’t call me that!”

  I took Pita’s round face in my hands and squeezed her cheeks. “You don’t have to worry. We’re not going to any deserts.”

  “Coahuila is a desert, isn’t it? It’s next to Chihuahua, and Chihuahua is a desert,” Velia asked no one in particular.

  “Think so?” Delia furrowed her eyebrows. I rolled my eyes.

  “Of course not, calabazas. You’re such knuckleheads sometimes,” I said, looking around and talking to all of them at once. “Okay, let’s get this straight. First of all, only the western part of Coahuila is a desert. El Sacrificio isn’t, even though it’s just as hot as Eagle Pass in the summer. But we’re not going there anyway. So just get in there and eat your dinner. Then go to bed. It’s almost eight, too late to worry about the body tonight. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow!” Juanita complained as I turned aroun
d and started out of the room. “What do you mean tomorrow?”

  “But we have to go back tonight,” Delia whined. “To prep him.”

  “We’ll talk about it tomorrow,” I insisted. Then I turned around and left them there, whining and fighting again.

  I went to my room and entertained myself by reading a few pages of The Great Gatsby. It was on my summer reading list, and so far, I had not been able to get past the third chapter. My mind was on other matters, like how to settle the girls into bed without causing a riot.

  I played again with the idea of calling customs, to tell them about the body, but there was something else none of us had considered. Not even Juanita with her presumed giftedness had realized that once our swimming hole was discovered, we’d never be able to go back there. At the very least, the border patrol would keep an eye on that particular area of the river in case anyone else tried sneaking through that gap in the fence. We were lucky they hadn’t noticed us swimming there already. They might even close it off, making us leave our swimming days behind.

  By the time the girls burst into my room, frayed backpacks and old bucket purses busting at the seams, I was all ready to go. I stood up, picked up my own backpack, hiked it high up on my shoulder, and faced them.

  “I’m going to Marisol’s house. I think she’s having a sleepover tonight.”

  “What? When did this come up? You didn’t mention it before!” Juanita’s continuous demanding tone was the most frustrating part of her. “What about the body? We said we’d take him back.”

  “I told you. We’re not going to Mexico,” I said decisively. “Mamá would kill us. Besides, she’s already mad. I called to tell her I won’t be here tonight to take care of you. She was so upset, she threatened to cut her hours short and come home. I think she’s already working on it.”

  It was a total lie — but they needed a reality check, and they wouldn’t call Mamá to confirm my story. Besides, while I made dinner, I’d developed a plan to have Mamá “be home” that night, if not in body, then in spirit.

  “So you all better be in bed by the time she gets here,” I continued. “You know how she gets when she’s in a bad mood.”

  “This isn’t fair!” Juanita screamed, her arms rigid and her face reddened with rage. She was actually crying. Juanita never cried. Her stubbornness usually led to yelling or bullying. It was unnerving. I don’t think I’d seen her cry since she found out Santa Claus wasn’t real. Suddenly I felt like the wicked stepmother in Snow White.

  Juanita, probably embarrassed at her tears, stormed out of the room. She didn’t go very far though — I could hear her mumbling under her breath in the hallway.

  Delia threw her backpack on the floor and kicked it to the corner of the room. “You’re an ignorant, goody-goody, wanna-be saint! ¡Una santurrona!” she declared.

  “And a sissy-face!” Velia added spitefully. Their remarks didn’t bother me. I was used to the twins’ stylized brand of cursing by now. They’d been doing it all summer, pretending they were old enough or even brave enough to curse like sailors, but never quite getting the words out. I was more worried that Juanita, who was glaring at me from the door, would do something drastic like storm out of the house and go back to the river.

  “I bet Marisol kicks her big fat behind out and she has to sneak back in here like a sewer rat,” Delia told Velia, flopping down next to her twin on the bed. They both looked at me like they were about to spit in my face, eyes glistening with wrath and frustration.

  Juanita came back into the room, looking more like herself again. “You’re a lousy sister!” she yelled.

  “Enough!” I finally raised my voice the way Mamá does when she’s done putting up with them. “Now go to bed before I call Mamá back and tell her what’s really going on. And you, stop cursing, or I’ll wash your mouths out with Clorox.”

  To my surprise, the twins flounced off the bed. All four of my sisters marched out and down the hall to the kitchen without another word. I went out the front door, locked it, and put the spare key to the deadbolt in my pocket. There was no other set of keys in the house to that door, so if they wanted to open it again, they’d have to wait until Mamá came home or jump out a window.

  The thought had barely entered my mind when I heard the unmistakable sound of a window being slid open. I turned around to look at the darkened house. The only light was in Pita’s room, which faced the front.

  “You can’t back out of this! We out-vote you four to one!” Juanita screamed, her body halfway out the window.

  I lifted my hand in the air, my index finger extended. “Rule Number One of the code of the cinco hermanitas: The eldest sister has the final word. Always. Good night.”

  I left the yard, closing the gate behind me noisily, so they could hear me leaving even in the moonless night. Then I walked resolutely up the sidewalk toward Brazos Street. The thought of them escaping through a window made me cringe. I froze momentarily before I reached the corner, but then I realized they wouldn’t do that. They might be wild, but they depended on me for everything. If I wasn’t in on it, it usually didn’t fly. That was the beauty of following the code of the five little sisters. We really did do everything together.

  I walked around the corner, past the Aguileras’ house, and cut across two empty lots, where I got the left leg of my jeans tangled up on some bramble weeds. I had to stop to pull the brambles off, and then I turned up Zamora Street toward Mr. Gee’s. Peering in through the glass door, I saw that Mamá was standing at the counter, slicing pie with a heavy knife. Her black hair was twisted up in a haphazard knot and the dark circles under her eyes were more pronounced tonight. She’d been working so hard lately. Guilt stabbed at me, but I pushed it away. Even though I knew it would make Mamá mad, I needed to talk to her.

  As if she had ESP, Mamá froze in midslice and looked up, making immediate eye contact with me. The sight of me standing there with my nose pressed against the glass made Mamá clench her mouth, and she cut through the crust of that pie like she wanted to kill it. She finished plating the slice of pie before she left the counter. I opened the door and started to go inside, but she hurried to meet me. Taking my arm in a vicelike grip, she turned me around and marched me back outside.

  “What are you doing here?” She massaged her forehead with her fingertips, rubbing at the worry line between her eyebrows as if she wanted to erase it.

  “It’s important,” I started, noticing the deep-set lines on her ring finger where her wedding band used to sit. It had been months since she’d stopped wearing it, but apparently wearing it over the years even after gaining a lot of weight had left her finger scarred.

  Mamá used to be skinny before she got married, then she got really fat. I mean really fat, like almost three hundred pounds fat. But she lost it all in the eleven months since Papá left, so she was back to being thin again. Not skinny thin like she used to be when she was a girl, the way the twins are now, but definitely thinner. So thin, in fact, she didn’t look like our Mamá anymore. But I wasn’t worried about her anymore, because she wasn’t as sad as she used to be and she was eating again. She looked more like me and Juanita now, strong and voluptuous, but tired from working so hard.

  “We talked about this, Odilia,” Mamá warned in Spanish. “Unless it’s an emergency, you can’t come here. One more incident like the last one, and I’m out of here. Is that what you want? To get me fired?”

  Last time I was here, I was trying to get Pita to come back home. She’d made such a scene, bursting into the café to whine to Mamá that the girls were picking on her again. “No, but . . . the girls — ” I started again.

  “I don’t want to hear it, Odilia,” Mamá warned, her upper lip getting thinner and tighter as she spoke. “I’ve told you before, if nobody’s dying and the house isn’t on fire, it’s not an emergency.”

  How could I convince
her without giving anything away? “But they’re being ridiculous,” I continued, blinking nervously now, because we had caught the attention of Mr. Moore, the restaurant manager.

  Mamá tried to control her temper by closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. “I mean it, Odilia. Take care of your sisters. I can’t be in two places at once.” This wasn’t working. I was only bothering Mamá, and she couldn’t help me anyway. I wanted to scream at Mamá and tell her that everything wasn’t going to be okay, that I couldn’t take care of it, but then Mr. Moore burst through the door, almost knocking us both down.

  “Is there a problem?” Mr. Moore asked, standing halfway out of the restaurant and holding the door open. His bald pink head was covered in sweat. It glistened like a Christmas ornament under the fluorescent lighting spilling out from the café. I felt like taking the cleaning rag from his apron pocket and wiping it down for him, but that wouldn’t have been nice, no matter how good it would have made me feel to do it.

  “Oh, no. Odilia just came over to pick up some money for eggs,” Mamá assured her boss, quickly switching to English. Reaching into the front pocket of her apron, she made a show of pulling out a couple of dollar bills and handing them to me.

  Mr. Moore shook his head. “And this is more important than keeping your job?”

  “No. It’s not. And Odilia knows better. It won’t happen again,” Mamá whispered. Normally, Mamá doesn’t let people mistreat her. She knows how to defend herself, but she had to act all meek and mild because Mr. Moore was a big fat slop-eating hog and she needed this job. After all, it wasn’t like she had many career options without a high school diploma. She spoke English well enough despite the fact that she only went as far as the third grade in Mexico — which was all her parents had money for — and she hadn’t come to the States until she met and married Papá when she was just seventeen years old. Up to now he’d always taken care of her.