Summer of the Mariposas Read online

  When we got back to the car, Velia had Pita in a fierce headlock. Our baby sister was squealing like a piglet, but Velia had her hands over Pita’s mouth to keep her from crying out too loud.

  “What’s going on here?” I asked, hauling the door open and jumping in the front seat. Pita was crying silently, her body shaking.

  “Little Miss Tattletale here was going to call Mamá,” Delia hissed through clenched teeth. “She had a handful of change and she was trying to leave the car. She said she was tired and hungry and she was going home.”

  “Start the car!” Juanita demanded, dumping out the sodas on the floorboard and jumping in the front seat. “Hurry! They’re looking at us. Let’s get out of here before these two get us in trouble.”

  I didn’t have to ask who was looking at us. The middle-aged woman and her husband were peering out the shop window, watching us. Juanita reached down for two sodas. She handed one to Delia and they made a show of opening them. As we pulled out of the gas station, Delia put on a bright, happy smile on her face and waved good-bye to the couple as Juanita guzzled down her soda enthusiastically.

  “¡Chiflada!” Velia hissed, letting go of Pita and pushing her aside.

  “Guys, you’ve got to stop tormenting each other,” I said, as we made our way down the highway. “We’re about to hit Castaños, and I want us to stop and eat a real meal, but not if you’re going to act like this. I can’t have you turn on us, Pita. We’re in this together, remember? And Velia, you can’t treat her like she’s an animal.”

  “It’s her fault,” Velia spurted, her hazel eyes burning with resentment. “She bit me, the little mongrel.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “I tried to keep her in the car, but she bit me. See? My arm is still bleeding.” Velia held out her slim arm and I assessed the damage.

  At the sight of purple teeth marks on Velia’s forearm, I lost it. “That’s it!” I said. “We’re not stopping in Castaños. We’re driving straight through. We’ll stop to rest in the woods. You guys are just going to have to wait for me while I go back and get us some real food from a restaurant. It’s a shame too, because take-out food doesn’t taste nearly as good as when it’s served warm. You’re just going to have to eat your tacos all cold and stiff.”

  “I don’t care!” Pita kicked the backseat. “You can keep your stupid tacos. The first chance I get, I’m telling — I’m being kidnapped!”

  Juanita’s head turned back faster than you can spin a top. “Kidnapped?”

  “You heard me. I’m turning you in!” Pita insisted, crossing her arms. Tears were rolling down her face, her eyes were red orbs of anger, but she wasn’t making so much as a whimper, which was unusual for her. She usually wails louder than a smoke alarm.

  “I told you we should’ve left her behind,” Delia told Velia.

  “Yeah? Then she would’ve told Mamá where we were going, and they would’ve found us by now.”

  “True,” Delia whispered as she turned to face forward. For the rest of the ride, we all ignored our disloyal little sister. Pita, her face scrunched, cried that she was hungry, so I assured her we would be stopping soon. After we passed Castaños, I took the nearest country road to the left and drove into the woods. We found a small clearing where we all got out to stretch our legs and catch our breath. We’d been on the road for at least four hours and my body felt numb. None of us were used to sitting around too long.

  “I’m going back into town,” I said after a while, and nobody complained. Juanita, Delia, and Velia unpacked some of the blankets and backpacks from the trunk. I left them there, resting sedately under the shade of a tall ash tree, far off into the woods, out of sight of anyone driving by.

  Castaños was small — deserted. I’d noticed that on the way through, which was what made it the perfect place to stop. The less people saw of us, the better. The only street vendor I found was stationed at the edge of town. I got out of the car and bought some tacos and more sodas to go. The vendor pretended that he couldn’t break the twenty dollars I handed him, so I made him give me the change in sodas, an act he did not like, but I didn’t have time to make change anywhere else, and I was not going to tip him ten dollars. I was in a hurry to get back to the girls.

  As I drove out of town, I saw an ancient woman standing in a blighted field. She stood watching me, her long gray hair caught in the wind like wisps of silver thread. I couldn’t see the details of her long tunic dress from this distance, but I could tell it was old and graying.

  “Llorona?” I whispered, slowing down to get a better look, but as I did, the mysterious woman turned away from me. I watched the road ahead for a good place to turn around, but when I looked back, the woman was gone. Disappeared, like she’d never been there.

  As I sped away, I had a suspicious feeling that I was needed back at our secluded rest stop, and I was right. As I drove off the road and up to our hiding place, I saw that Delia and Velia were lounging together under the tree. They looked like bookends, sitting right up against Pita, who was tied and gagged between them like a giant tamal rolled up in her own blanket.

  “What in the world . . . ?” I asked as I stumbled up the hill toward them.

  “She tried to run away,” Juanita explained. “We had to run after her, knock her down, and drag her back here. She did it again and again. A hundred times. It was getting ridiculous.”

  I handed Juanita the plates of food and shoved Delia away from Pita. “More ridiculous than this?” I asked, staring at them in disgust. If we hadn’t been two-thirds of the way to El Sacrificio already, I would have shoved them all back in the car and taken them back home.

  “They had no other choice,” Juanita whispered, defending her sisters. “She’s crazy.”

  Velia pushed Pita toward me and got up to stretch her long, coltish legs. “Yeah, her brain is fried!”

  Delia joined her twin to shake her legs out and kicked at Pita in the process. “She’s got mad cow disease!”

  “Don’t kick her!” I knelt down and removed Pita’s gag. “How could you do this to your own sister? This trip is supposed to help us get closer. We have to stick together, be nicer to each other from now on.”

  Pita squirmed miserably beside me like a cocooned butterfly trying to break free. “My arms are asleep.”

  “What makes you so righteous all of a sudden, Miss Know-It-All?” Velia taunted.

  I ignored Velia’s comment and started to undo the knots that held the blanket together around Pita’s body. “Get away from her. What’s the matter with you? She’s not a goat. She’s a human being, a child who’s obviously afraid.”

  “She’s a narc,” Delia started. “She won’t stop trying to turn us in.”

  “Are you okay?” I asked Pita as I removed the blanket and freed her completely.

  She nodded and threw herself into my arms, bawling. “I’m not a narc,” she wailed, clutching at my shoulder. “I just want to go home. I miss Mamá. I miss our Lotería games. I miss the mariposas!”

  “I know,” I whispered, holding her tightly. “I know, mamita, I know. But we’re almost there, and after we deliver this man to his family, we can all go home. I promise. You’ll get to sleep in your own bed tomorrow night. Can you just hang on for a few more hours? Maybe?”

  “Yes,” she whispered, worn out from her tearful release. “I think I can.”

  “Good,” I kissed her forehead. “Are you hungry? I brought you some of those baby taquitos. The little red ones you like, with guacamole. You want some?”

  She shook her head and buried her face in my shoulder. “No.”

  “You tired?” I asked her, feeling my heart twisting painfully within my chest. “You want to take a nap?”

  “Yes,” she whispered, snuggling her face into my neck.

  I fluffed a couple of pillows and laid them down
for us. “Well, why don’t you lie down here with me and rest,” I invited. Pita lay down and I put my right arm around her. Delia and Velia snorted in disgust. They turned their backs to us and opened up the containers of food.

  They started to eat the tacos. After they’d had their share of the food, they slid a tray over to our end of the blanket, their faces contrite. It was their way. They were often hotheaded but also fast to regret their harsh words; this was their peace offering of sorts. Juanita and I coaxed Pita to eat before taking a nap, which she finally did, with delight.

  After we ate, we all lay back down in the blankets and waited for the afternoon sun to burn itself down. When we awakened at dusk, we were covered in mariposas. The snout-nosed butterflies were everywhere, flittering in the air, resting on our bedclothes, even tangled in our hair.

  “They found us!” Pita shouted, jumping up and spinning around on the blankets like a ballerina. “I love you! I love you!” she kept chanting to the butterflies. The mariposas swirled and twirled around us like dark snowflakes in the surreal light of dusk, making the moment almost magical in its beauty. Little by little, the butterflies drifted away. Onward and forward they went, moving toward the car, with Pita dancing in their midst.

  I looked at the sun looming low in the horizon. “I think it’s time we moved on. It’s about to get dark, and I don’t want to see what kind of wild beasts roam these woods after dark.”

  “I think you’re right,” Juanita agreed. She got up and together we shook out the blankets and rolled them tight. Velia and Delia packed up our gear and we headed out again. We left the afternoon’s shenanigans far behind us as we drove farther and farther away from home. Our more sisterly mood had returned, at least for now.

  “What do you think his wife will say when she sees him?” Juanita asked in the darkness of the car. We had been driving for almost an hour under the blanket of night, and by our calculations we were about to hit El Sacrificio within the next few miles.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But it’s too late to turn back now. Besides, I think we’re doing the right thing.”

  Juanita reached over and patted me on the shoulder. “We’re doing more than the right thing,” she said. “We’re doing something honorable here. We’re making sure this man receives what’s coming to him.”

  “And what’s that?” Velia asked.

  “A proper funeral, of course,” Juanita informed her. “Being laid to rest in his own hometown, surrounded by his family and friends. Everyone deserves that. This is an admirable thing we are doing. They’ll thank us for this. His wife and his family will be eternally grateful to us. We might even end up in the news after all, but in an even greater light. We’ll be heroes.”

  “Heroines,” I corrected proudly.

  “In the news?” Delia asked. “Are we ready for it?”

  “Well, at least we’re better dressed!” Velia retorted from her seat in the back. I didn’t know that I agreed with her — we’d been driving all day in the hot summer sun, and we hadn’t bathed since before our swim yesterday.

  Delia squealed, as if the concept had finally sunk in and she couldn’t believe it. “We’re going to be celebrities!”

  “We’ll be in all the papers!” Juanita chimed in, turning to look at the twins in the backseat. “People will want our autographs.”

  “We’ll be famous?” Pita asked, her eyes full of wonder, as if they were starting to wake up to the seriousness of our situation.

  “There’s nothing to be nervous about,” Velia whispered. She wrapped her other arm around Pita’s shoulders and pulled her in close for a hug. “Being famous is like eating the best flan in the world. It’s so good, you can never get enough of it. Trust me, you’re going to love being in the spotlight.”

  In celebration, Juanita turned on the radio. Our favorite songbird, Selena, was singing happily about something fun and exciting, a song about love at first sight.

  “Bidi, bidi, bom, bom,” she sang. “Bidi, bidi, bom, bom.” Her voice on the radio was so exhilarating, so full of life, that, suddenly we were all singing. Our voices drowned out Selena’s, but we didn’t care. It wasn’t about listening to her, it was about singing along with her, about being in the moment with her. For a brief and joyful instant, she brought us closer together and made us enjoy each other’s company. She made us sisters again.

  LA MANO: “Dame la mano, hermanita,

  que no tengo hermano.”

  THE HAND: “Give me a hand, little sister,

  for I don’t have a brother.”

  It was almost ten at night by the time we finally arrived in El Sacrificio. The town was smaller than we’d expected. In fact, it wasn’t really a town. El Sacrificio was no more than a few dozen houses clustered around the country road we’d been traveling on since we’d turned east on Highway 57. At a puestecito, a corner store about to close down for the evening, I got out of the car and asked an elderly man who was sweeping the storehouse porch if he knew how to get to the dead man’s home. The old man squinted and looked toward the car before he answered.

  “He would have been better off staying gone,” the old man said, pointing to the car with his chin.

  “What?” I asked.

  He opened the door and placed the broom against the inside wall. “He has no business being here today. What does he want to do? Ruin that poor girl’s day?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, confused. “Do you know him?”

  “Of course I do. Everyone knows each other around here,” the elderly man said as he took a rag out of his apron and began to wipe down the metal domino tables folded out by the front door. “He’s a good for nothing. Un vago. But that’s none of my business — flour from a different sack, as far as I’m concerned.”

  “Well, do you know how to get there?” I asked again. But instead of answering me, the store owner turned away and left me standing there. Then he went into the tiny depot, closed the door, and came to the window to pull down the shade. A moment later the porch light went out and I stood there, wondering what I had done wrong.

  “You’re almost there,” a woman’s voice whispered from the darkness. I turned around and almost jumped at the sight of a female figure coming out of the shadows from behind the storehouse, like a ghost.

  “God, you scared me,” I said, holding a hand to my chest as if to stop my heart from fluttering out of it.

  “You’ve come a long way,” the woman whispered as she inched her way toward me, never really leaving the shadows of the porch, but getting closer and closer to me, until I could finally see her face. “I’m proud of you, Odilia.”

  “Llorona,” I whispered her name in grateful recognition.

  “You’re almost there,” she continued. “Just follow the sound of the whispering moon, listen to her sighs. It’s a small pink house. You can’t miss it tonight.”

  “Wait,” I said, as she started to drift back into the shadows. “Is this part of your destiny? To watch over us, help us when we need you?”

  “I will be watching you as you deliver him, and afterward too,” La Llorona said. “But I cannot interfere with your journey. There are rules that must be followed, and I will not be able to break them. There is only so much I will be able to do. The rest is up to you. You must face your own fears and fight your own battles as you go along. That’s why I gave you the ear pendant.”

  “Fight my own battles?” I asked. “What are you talking about?” I’d battled too much with my sisters on this trip already. I was ready for some peace.

  “I’ve said too much. It is not for me to explain,” La Llorona whispered. She turned away and disappeared into the darkness, leaving me alone with her cryptic words. But I didn’t have time to decipher their meaning. I had to get out of the night air. El mal aire can kill you if you linger in it too long. So I turned away fr
om the puestecito, got in the car, and drove on, trying to finish what we’d started that morning. As we left the cluster of houses behind, I looked up at the moon and tried listening to her sighs. I wasn’t sure it was the moon that sighed, but I could hear something, a wisp of music, a whisper of song.

  “What’s going on?” Juanita asked when I stopped the car and poked my head out the window, trying to hear where the soft sound was coming from.

  I held my hand up with my palm out, signaling Juanita to stop talking. “Shhh. Listen,” I said. “It’s coming from over there.”

  La Llorona had been right; there was no way of missing the pink house, not with a party going on in the front yard. A small mariachi band was playing in the background, and people were either dancing on the lawn or sitting at folding chairs at small round tables, which had been draped with white linens and decorated with white floral arrangements.

  Juanita leaned over me for a closer look out of my window. “What do you think’s going on?”

  “I don’t know, some kind of fiesta,” I whispered. I passed the house and inconspicuously parked next door, just in front of their neighbor’s fence, away from the lights strung on trees and all around the dead man’s yard. The dimness of the night hid us from the guests, and we sat quietly inside our vehicle observing everything from a dark, safe distance.

  “I think someone’s having a wedding.” Velia pointed. “See, there’s the bride sitting at that long table by the band.”

  “That’s not a wedding dress,” Juanita said. We all peered out of the car without making any attempt to get out. I don’t think any of us had the courage to crash a party by delivering a dead man to it.

  “It’s not?” Velia asked.

  “No,” I said, suddenly understanding. A cold chill went up my spine as I realized what was going on at the drowned man’s house. “There’s no groom.”

  “Then why is she wearing a white dress?” Pita’s voice from the backseat was small and innocent.