Summer of the Mariposas Read online

  “It is always the same way,” she said, her expression helpless in a worn, weary face. The woman’s hair was long and disheveled, and her long tunic dress was torn and frayed. I could tell it used to be a white robe of some kind when it was new, but it was so old it was gray now. On the whole, she looked unkempt and malnourished, close to death. “They drown before I can reach them. It is my nightmare, my destiny, my fate to search endlessly for them by night only to find them drowned with the sigh of morning.”

  Recognition entered my mind, and I froze, unable to speak.

  The woman’s eyes softened and she looked sad. “You know who I am, don’t you?”

  “Llorona?” I whispered the dreadful name before I could censor myself. Most women would be offended to be mistaken for the ghostly apparition, but she did not flinch at the horrific namesake. Instead, her smile was apologetic and teary — it evoked compassion rather than fear.

  “Some call me that,” she admitted, as she tried to take my hand. “Do not be afraid. I cannot harm you.”

  Was she saying she was La Llorona? As much as the idea of talking to a ghost fascinated me, it also frightened me. I had heard so many awful things about La Llorona that I couldn’t help it, I pulled away from her and took a few steps back. “But you . . . killed your children.” It was common knowledge, more than a legend. Every mother on both sides of the border warns her children that La Llorona will get them if they wander too close to the river. I couldn’t help but wonder if by playing in it all summer, we hadn’t cursed ourselves.

  “I know what they say,” she admitted. “I’ve heard the stories many times through the centuries. But they are mistaken. I did not drown my chiquitos.”

  “You didn’t? Then why do they run away from you?” I looked back at the dark river, wondering if I had really seen her children drowning. Had I imagined trying to save them? Was it possible I was dreaming all this?

  La Llorona stepped away from me and turned to the river. She wrapped her arms around herself as if the memory gave her a chill. “We were arguing that night — their father, Hernán, and I — about his decision to leave. We fought over the children, dragged them into our pain. Mis hijos were so scared, so confused, that they fled toward the river in darkness and drowned. It is a nightmare I experience every night, a memory I am forever reliving.”

  I went to stand beside her. Her loss was unimaginable, and suddenly she was very human to me. “Why do you look for them, if you know they are dead?”

  “It is a punishment I impose on myself,” La Llorona began. “A penance for my part in it. I should have been more careful, made sure they were always safe. I want them to come back to me, but they won’t — or can’t. I do not know the reason behind it, but they are being kept from me. I would never take the children that play at the river, the way people say I do. I do not want other children. They could never replace my chiquitos. Believe me — you and your sisters have nothing to worry about. I am not here to harm you.”

  I considered her words and wondered why someone would willingly punish herself for all eternity. It seemed implausible to me. But then again, I was standing on the edge of the river talking to a ghost. Nothing was normal. Nothing made sense. “Then what do you want from us?”

  “You were chosen for the goodness in your heart,” she explained. “Like Juan Diego, the most humble of the Virgen’s children, you are noble and kindhearted. You displayed great courage when you jumped into the water to save my sons. Your sister was right when she said finding the body of the drowned man was not an accident.”

  She took my hand once again, her touch still deathly cold. Standing beside the hackberry shrubs with hundreds of empty desiccated cocoons still clinging to their branches and a carpet of butterfly corpses under her feet, La Llorona did not look anything like a malevolent specter. She looked more like a tired, heavily burdened woman.

  “My sisters are waiting,” I said, trying to take my hand from hers so that I might escape if I had to.

  La Llorona let go of my hand. “Please, try to have faith. I am here in your service, to guide and protect you,” she said.

  I put my hands under my arms to warm them. “Protect me? From what?”

  “Yes,” she said, a wry smile curling around her lips. She had a look of age about her, despite appearing no older than Mamá. It was something in her eyes, the sorrow of long ages lived in them. “It is an eternal atonement, to watch over the children of the sun, the children of my people, the Azteca bloodline.”

  “Aztec?” I asked, surprised. Mamá never said we were Aztec. Papá was fair-haired and light-complected, implying a Spanish bloodline rather than native Mexican, but Mamá did have olive skin, black hair, and dark eyes.

  “Yes. You are descendant of a great people,” she continued, pulling my attention away from my wild, erratic thoughts and making me focus on the situation at hand.

  At that very moment, the sun burst out from beneath the horizon, and La Llorona’s features changed. She went from being a tired woman to looking downright frightening. Her disheveled hair suddenly turned completely white. The loose silvery strands writhed around her head like serpentine ghosts, more fearsome than Medusa’s. La Llorona’s gaunt face shriveled up like a pale raisin, becoming sallow and ashen, creased by centuries of wrinkles and dark blotches. But it was her eyes that scared me the most. They turned a deep, evil black. They glittered like cursed gemstones. I was so terrified I couldn’t move, but I trembled where I stood. I couldn’t speak for a moment — my throat tightened and I was having trouble breathing.

  “Don’t be afraid,” she pleaded. “I don’t have much time. Once the sun rises completely I must go back.”

  The gentleness of her voice calmed me a little, and I was able to reply, though I wanted to run away, back to my hermanitas. “G-go back where? Why are you here?”

  “I have been sent here to help you find your way,” La Llorona said. “There is a path designed for everyone and everyone must walk in his or her path. This is your path. You must walk it. To refuse would be . . . unfortunate.”

  Unfortunate. The word felt ominous, coming from La Llorona herself, and my body stiffened in response. I fought to speak, to get out the words to the question that was suddenly weighing heavily on my mind. “Am I going to be cursed, like . . . like . . . you, if I don’t — walk my path?”

  “Change must take place. It is important. To remain as you are would lead to isolation. You would be doomed to a lonely existence, ripped apart from those you love.”

  I threw up my arms and let out a frustrated sigh. “You’re speaking in riddles.” I didn’t understand what La Llorona wanted me to do. How was I supposed to change, to find my way? What did that even mean?

  “Then let me speak plainly,” La Llorona began. “You must go to El Sacrificio and take the drowned man back to his family.” The sun had finished rising and its full radiance was dissolving La Llorona’s form. She stooped to hide under the shade of a cluster of huisache trees, looking almost translucent.

  “But . . . we don’t even know who he is. Sure, we have his wallet, but we’re just kids,” I began.

  “It’s not all about him,” La Llorona assured me. “This is about you and your loved ones too. Your family is lost in turmoil. You must find each other, become whole again.” Though La Llorona’s body was translucent, her eyes remained untouched — dark and luminous in the shadows of the huisache trees.

  “Are you saying that this is about the trouble between Mamá and Papá?”

  “This is about all of you: your sisters, your parents, even your abuela,” La Llorona continued. “You must travel to the other side, into the land of your ancestors, to find each other again.”

  Before I could ask her to clarify her puzzle — after all, my sisters were all right here with me — I heard Juanita’s voice, then Delia and Velia calling out for me. I turned towa
rd the clearing.

  “Here, take this,” La Llorona said, reaching for me again. This time I did not pull away as she placed something bulky and cold into the palm of my hand and closed it tightly for me, her bony fingers pressing against my own. Though she appeared to age before my eyes, her skin felt youthful and firm as it made contact with mine. “You will need it, for your journey will be filled with many hardships. Your courage and conviction will be tested throughout your travels. You must accept it and use it.”

  I opened my hand to look at it, wondering. Before I could ask, she said, “An ear pendant.” I held it up to the light, where the gold glittered in the morning sun as I twirled it between my fingertips. At the base of the ear pendant, a serpent’s fangs held a small loop. Within the loop five wide rings were suspended, each one larger than the last, nesting snugly inside each other, like the rings of Saturn.

  “It is a likeness of Cihuacóatl, La Serpiente,” La Llorona explained, watching it glint in the morning sun. Along the bank we were almost fully exposed to the sun, though the thick woods continued to stretch for miles around us. “A most powerful amulet. It was given to me by my mother on my fifteenth birthday at the altar of Tenochtitlan, when I became a woman. It has magical properties, gifts from the gods. But you can only use it five times, once for every ring on its axis.” I examined the beautiful pendant. It had to be centuries old, if she was telling me the truth. “Take it,” she said when I tried handing it back. How could I take something so valuable? Even half a pair must be worth a fortune. “It belongs to you now. Wear it on your left ear. When you need help, take hold of it, spin it, and invoke the goddess, the Aztec queen, Tonantzin, the Holy Mother of all mankind, and ask for her magical assistance. Whatever you ask, she will provide.”

  “I — I can’t do this,” I told La Llorona. How could I take responsibility for something so powerful? It frightened me more than La Llorona herself to do such a thing.

  “This ear pendant can do many things,” La Llorona insisted. “It can change your aura and provide you with safe passage as you travel from your world into ours, but be careful to use it wisely; never call upon its power in anger or arrogance. You and your sisters must remain pure of heart on this journey, Odilia. Be courageous, but remember also to be noble and kind. If you do that, everything will be all right.”

  “Odilia? Is that you?” Juanita’s voice startled La Llorona, who stepped back into the brush.

  “They’re just little girls, dreaming up an adventure. I can’t drag them down to Mexico. I can’t sacrifice them to follow my path,” I whispered fiercely, still holding the ear pendant in front of me. But La Llorona wasn’t taking it back. I heard twigs breaking and footsteps getting closer from the direction of the swimming hole. The girls couldn’t see us from the path. We were hidden behind a heavy cluster of huisache trees. But if they veered off the path, they’d find me talking to a phantom.

  “This is not for you to do alone,” La Llorona said. “You must come together, you and your hermanitas. You must rejoice in the strength of sisterhood and return the man to his family.”

  “Because we’re lost?” I asked. Even as I said it, a pang of recognition that La Llorona was exactly right about us, that we were lost, fluttered to life within me much like the mariposas who were beginning to stir in the morning light. At the same time, La Llorona confirming Juanita’s crazy plan made me question my own sanity. But what if she was right? If doing something as simple as returning a dead man to his family would save our family, shouldn’t I try? Yet the thought of going into Mexico without telling Mamá where we were going or why made me feel awful. We hadn’t even left her a note. What would she think? Would she feel abandoned again?

  Delia and Velia were arguing with each other in the brush behind us. They weren’t more than ten feet away, but the cluster of huisaches sheltered us from their view. “She left!” Delia declared.

  “No. She wouldn’t do that. She wouldn’t leave us out here all alone,” Velia said, their voices getting closer and closer, until I knew they were only a few yards away.

  I focused back on the spectral woman whose voice was becoming more strained. “It is the only way,” La Llorona whispered. “Your mother and sisters need you! They are lost in despair.”

  They needed me right here, taking care of them. Mamá was depending on me to keep them safe. “I’m tired of your riddles. I’m taking them home,” I said, turning to go.

  “Please,” La Llorona pleaded, standing up and stepping in front of me. “You must take him back. Don’t do it for him. He’s just a man, one who committed a selfish act. Don’t do it for his wife either. She cries for him for her own selfish reasons. Don’t even do it for his little ones, who, like many children, have already turned to their play without thinking much of him anymore. Do it for your hermanitas. Deliver the man home to his family and then drive your sisters to El Sacrificio to see their abuela. Reunite your family, Odilia. It is all part of the journey you must take, the path to true happiness.”

  “Odilia? Who are you talking to?” Juanita burst through the brush from another direction. I thought she was with the twins behind the huisaches. She stopped abruptly and stared at me. “And why are your clothes all wet?” she asked.

  I looked around for La Llorona, but the apparition was gone. “Nobody,” I said, suddenly feeling stupid. I’m losing it, I thought, as I pushed branches aside, fighting my way back to the clearing.

  “But I heard voices,” Juanita insisted.

  I tucked the ear pendant into my pocket for safekeeping. “Me too. I think it’s Delia and Velia arguing again.”

  “No,” Juanita said. “I heard them, but I heard you too. You were talking to someone out here.”

  “I wasn’t.” That was one thing I hated about Juanita, the way she clung to things and wouldn’t let them go, like a dim-witted gnat stuck on a piece of rotting fruit. I couldn’t explain to her who I’d been talking to, but she wouldn’t let it go.

  “Yes, you were. I heard you,” she insisted. “Why are you lying to me?”

  “Okay. Fine,” I finally admitted. “I was talking to La Llorona. She wants us to take the drowned man home. I tried telling her we couldn’t, but she said we have to do it because it’s our destiny or something. I couldn’t understand her. She talks in riddles. There. I admit it. I was talking to a ghost. Are you happy now?”

  “Fine. Don’t tell me. I don’t care! I don’t have to know!” Juanita clamped her mouth shut and stalked off. I followed close behind without saying another word. If I’d known the truth was the one thing that could shut Juanita up for good, I would have stopped lying to her years ago.

  EL VENADO: “No es venado, es venada,

  y hay cinco en mi ramada.”

  THE DEER: “It’s not a deer, it’s a doe, and

  there are five of them in my arbor.”

  Instead of helping Juanita carry the body, I went to sit in the driver’s seat of Papá’s car to be sure Juanita didn’t try her driving stunt again. Looking at myself in the rearview mirror, I took the cubic zirconia stud out of my left ear and replaced it with La Llorona’s elaborate ear pendant. The zirconia studs weren’t expensive, but they were a birthday gift from Mamá, so I didn’t want to lose them. I attached both studs to an old envelope I found in the car and tucked them safely into the glove box. Still looking at myself, I shook my head, trying to get used to the weight of La Llorona’s ear pendant. I watched it glint in the daylight and wondered if it really was magical. It looked ancient and mysteriously beautiful, and for a moment, I thought it glittered magically.

  Juanita rested her forearms on the driver’s window and looked at the ear pendant. “Where did you get that?”

  “I found it,” I said, twisting at the back of it to make it stay in place. It would take time to get used to the great weight of it pulling down on my small earlobe.

&
nbsp; “Nice,” she said, touching it gingerly. “Can I try it on?”

  “No,” I said. “It’s not mi — ”

  “It’s not what?” Juanita’s eyes narrowed as if she was trying to put together a word puzzle.

  “It’s not . . . not. Nothing,” I said, stammering on my words like a stalling engine. “Don’t you have something better to do than stand around looking at me? I’m not that interesting.”

  Her face dropped sheepishly. “Well, I think I’m going to need some help. He weighs a ton. Dead weight, you know.”

  “Oh, no,” I said, getting out of the car and slamming the door shut. “This is your show, not mine.”

  “Fine! Whatever!” Juanita walked away in a huff. I leaned back against the car, crossed my arms, and watched as she enlisted the help of Velia and Delia.

  Even though I had put on the earring, I refused to admit that I was seriously considering taking the body back home to his wife and kids. It was unfathomable. This is stupid, I kept telling myself. Ghosts aren’t real, and they don’t give you expensive presents. I should go home and have my head examined.

  “Okay,” Juanita said. After positioning the body in the backseat with the side of his face resting against a pillow, looking like he was trying to sleep, Juanita took a list out of her back pocket and started rattling off its contents. “Blankets?” she asked.

  “Check,” Velia verified.

  “Flashlight? “ Juanita continued.

  “Check.” Delia patted her hip, and for the first time, I saw that she had a sort of tool belt full of odds and ends wrapped around her waist. It was one of Mamá’s worn waitress aprons with loops and odd-shaped pockets sewn awkwardly all over it.

  I pointed at the absurd contraption. “What’s in there?” I asked.

  “In this?” Delia asked, grinning with ingenious pride, her perfect smile brilliant. “Medical kit, makeup, perfume, scissors, batteries, candles . . .”