Summer of the Mariposas Read online

  “Because it’s her fifteenth birthday,” I whispered. “It’s a quinceañera.”

  “Whose quinceañera?” Pita asked.

  “The girl in the picture,” Velia whispered.

  “The little girl in the picture?” Delia asked, horrified. “You mean . . . she’s not little anymore?”

  We were all dumbfounded at the realization that the dead man’s daughter was not a child anymore, but a young lady my own age. How could we proceed with such a different reality from the one we’d imagined? It was like our dreams were shattered. The girls looked disillusioned. I was more than shocked; I was dumbstruck. Presented with the current situation, I didn’t know what to do, how to proceed.

  Juanita pointed to the celebration taking place in the dead man’s front lawn. “We have to get out of here. We can’t ruin her special day!” she said, shaking me out of my stupor.

  “Shush. Keep it down. We don’t want to call attention to ourselves. Not yet, anyway.” I bit my fingernails and tried to figure out the best way to handle the situation. We could leave, of course, but where could we go? What could we do that didn’t involve taking the dead man with us?

  “We have to do something. We can’t just sit here and eat our hands,” Velia said, knocking my hand away from my face. She was just like Mamá, who didn’t believe in biting your nails, no matter what the circumstance.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. Going up to the house at this time would be more than inappropriate. It would be downright mean to ruin someone’s debut.

  “I think we should get out first,” Delia said.

  “No. We need to talk first,” I said, turning around to look right at the twins as I spoke. “Listen. When we get in there, they’re going to have lots of questions for us. But we have to be smart and have each other’s back. We can’t just blurt things out anymore like you did at the bridge.”

  Juanita turned around in her seat and looked at Pita specifically. “Yeah. We’ve come a long way. We can’t afford to blow it now. So you guys have to follow the rules of the cinco hermanitas. Let Odilia and I do all the talking and don’t contradict anything we say. And for God’s sake, don’t improvise. Too much cream spoils the tacos, so just keep it simple. Okay?”

  “Fine. Whatever,” Velia said, flapping her hand dismissively in front of Juanita’s face. “Can we get out now? I really have to pee. Does anyone else need to pee?”

  “I have to pee,” Pita piped up, squirming around in the backseat.

  “Stop fooling around. You can’t just go up there and ask to use their restroom. They don’t know us from Adam,” I whispered. Their commotion was only going to draw more attention to us.

  “But I do have to pee!” Pita started rocking back and forth, like she couldn’t hold it for one more second. I rolled my eyes and ignored her.

  “Stop whining and be quiet,” I said after a few seconds of further complaints. “I need to think, and we should keep a low profile until I figure out what to do.”

  “Maybe we should just drive away,” Delia whispered behind me. “Come back later, when the party’s over. We can find a store where we can use the restroom.”

  “Are you kidding?” Velia hissed. “We’re in Mexico and those are real Mexicans in there. These people can party till dawn.” Not to mention the stores we’d driven by had been dark, locked up like the puestecito. And our last resort would be to go in the woods. For this one single thing, the twins just wouldn’t rough it. So we always rode up to the nearest gas station to use the restroom when we were swimming.

  “Well, we can’t sit here all night waiting for the party to end,” Delia told her twin. “I don’t know about you, but Papá here is stinking up the car. Seriously — he’s giving me a headache.”

  “I don’t smell anything,” I said, and to prove it I took a deep breath. It was all I could do not to gag. The smell of death had been festering in the afternoon heat, and now it was unbearable.

  “I say we find a place to park it for the night, and by that I mean get a room somewhere,” Velia said, reaching over the front seat and touching my shoulder for a sign of concession.

  “Yeah. Like that’s gonna happen,” Juanita said. “Did you see the size of this place? They don’t even have a gas station here. We’d have to go back out to the highway if we wanted to find a motel.” She turned around to look at Velia in the backseat. “And how would we move the body into a room without calling attention to ourselves? It’s not like we can leave him in the car all night in the parking lot. Let’s face it, going to a motel is out of the question, and nothing else is open this late. I think you’re stuck sitting next to him until this party’s over.”

  “He doesn’t smell so bad,” Pita said, pinching her nose. “I think the perfume’s working.”

  I had to admit it. “Juanita’s right,” I said. “We can’t get a room. Not until after we’ve delivered him.”

  “We could go back to the woods, camp out, wait until morning,” Juanita suggested as she stifled a yawn, laid her head back, and closed her eyes.

  “I am not going to sleep in the woods at night. I’m not a goat,” Delia retorted. “Next thing you know, you’ll be expecting me to sleep in a barn with horses and hay and God knows what else.”

  “And lechuzas? You want those evil owls climbing all over you while you sleep, pecking your eyes out?” Velia teased Delia in the backseat.

  “Shut up!” Delia retorted, pushing at her twin’s shoulder. “I don’t believe in that stuff.”

  “Of course you don’t,” Velia continued. “How about vampires and werewolves, you believe in those?”

  As if on cue, an enormous animal ran up to the car and jumped up onto the driver’s door. He stuck his gigantic head in through the window and barked wildly. Delia and Velia screamed. I jumped in my seat, throwing my left arm out to protect my face.

  The drooling, long-eared beast sniffed me and then yelped and clawed his way inside through the driver’s side window. I couldn’t see all of him at once, that’s how enormous this beast was. He had to be as big as me, but much heavier. His huge paws dug into my arms and thighs, his claws painfully cutting through my skin. He was so excited, he punched me in the stomach with a mammoth paw as he pulled the rest of his enormous body into the car. I would have doubled over in pain, except that his weight was plastering me against my seat.

  “Get him off me! Get him off me!” I screamed, but nobody could help. Juanita, in the front seat, was busy trying to get away from the beast — a Great Dane. In his excitement, the dog sniffed our clothes and licked our faces so frantically you’d think the frenzied creature had three heads. Finally the beast made his way over me and jumped into the backseat, which by that time only held the drowned man because fear had set the rest of my sisters into motion. They had all vacated the car long before I was free from the dog and able to open my door and crawl out.

  As I stumbled up to Juanita, Pita scooted over to me and clung to my waist, trying to hide behind me. We stood against the chain-link fence in front of the dead man’s neighbor’s house watching the gargantuan canine panting and licking his chops and whining inside the car. He sat next to the drowned man with his enormous paws neatly propped together on the dead man’s lap, his tail wagging a mile a minute.

  “Great. So much for keeping a low profile! Now I’m going to smell like a wet diaper,” Delia said, mopping over her saliva-slathered hair with the hem of her T-shirt. Her actions reminded me of my own condition, and I wiped at my face with my shirtsleeve. It was disgusting.

  “Do we have any of that perfume left?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Juanita said, without looking at us. “But it’s in my bag, next to Marmaduke’s evil twin. You wanna get it?”

  “Serberús!” The voice and a pitched whistle produced by the tall figure of a young man at the gate of the drowned man’s house made t
he mammoth canine stiffen in the backseat.

  “Go home, Serberús!” the young man commanded.

  “Serberús? Like the three-headed dog from Hades?” Delia asked, looking at me. “Well, he’s right about one thing. He’s got a Hell of a personality. But I’m not so sure he’s fierce enough for that name.”

  “I know. He’s nothing more than a big spoiled puppy,” the young man said, stepping forward. As if he’d been a circus beast trained to behave like a domesticated creature, the mammoth dog left the dead man’s side and slipped out of our car through the opposite rear window. He came around the car and sat docilely by the young man, waiting for his reward. The young man patted his forehead and pointed up the street, saying, “Go home, Serberús!”

  To our surprise, the dog trotted off into the darkness.

  “Are you okay, ladies? Sir?” the young man asked as he peered at the body of the drowned man sitting propped against the glass of the back window.

  “He’s fine,” Juanita jumped in.

  The dog owner stepped up to the car and reached for the back door. “What’s wrong with him?”

  “He’s not feeling well,” Velia explained, getting between the young man and the car door just in time to prevent a catastrophe.

  “He’s dead . . . tired,” Delia interjected. She laughed nervously and shuffled her feet around.

  This wasn’t the time to blurt out the real reason behind our arrival at the house. “It’s been a long trip,” I said, trying to deviate the conversation away from the drowned man.

  “Forgive me. I am being rude. I have not introduced myself. My name is Efraín Pérdido. I am sorry about my abuelito’s dog. He meant you no harm,” the young man said. “Excuse me, but I didn’t catch your names. Are you friends of Beatriz?”

  “Beatriz?” Juanita asked, looking toward the house.

  “La quinceañera. She is my little sister,” Efraín explained, putting his hand on his chest and bowing his head slightly as a form of introduction.

  I looked closely at the wide-set eyes and squared jawline of the young man. He looked vaguely like the little boy in the picture in Gabriel Pérdido’s wallet, which weighed me down as I thought of the distressing news we were bearing. Dressed formally as he was, in a black tuxedo, it was obvious that he was part of the debut court, the escort of one of the birthday girl’s attendants perhaps. It became very clear to me that we couldn’t finish what we’d started that morning, not yet anyway.

  “We’re more like friends of the family,” I started. “But we’ve come at a bad time. We’ll be back tomorrow.”

  “Nonsense,” the young man said, raising his arms in exaggerated welcome. “A fiesta is the best time to greet friends of the family. My sister’s quinceañera is turning out to be quite a reunion. We just met some cousins from Sabinas today. But you have not told me your names.”

  “We are the Garza sisters,” Juanita began. “This is Odilia. She is the eldest, and this is Delia and that’s Velia. They’re twins. This little one is Pita, and I’m Juanita. Listen, can we use your restroom? We’ve been holding it for a while.”

  “Of course, of course,” Efraín said, extending his arm and stepping aside so that we might pass into the front yard. “You are welcomed at our festivity. Tell me, how do you know our family?”

  “Well, we don’t know anyone else. Just him,” I said, pointing at the drowned man and then looking back at the girl in the white dress. She was walking around with her mother, clinging to her arm, happily greeting the guests.

  A voice from the darkness spoke. “Efraín, who are you talking to?”

  We all turned around to see an older man coming toward us. He was wearing black jeans, a nice pressed shirt with a bejeweled bolo tie, and a cowboy hat. He was too old to be part of the debut court. He was obviously not a chambelán or escort, but the authority in his voice made me think he was someone of importance.

  “These girls just arrived. They’re from your side of the family, I think, abuelo,” the young man said, turning around to face the other man.

  “Really?” the older man said. “Let me see. You look like my nieces from Nava, but I haven’t seen you since you were bitty little things. Is that my compadre in there?”

  Before we could stop him, the older man was stooped over holding onto the front door window, looking into the backseat of our car. He started to say something, and then suddenly, he stopped.

  “Well?” the young man asked.

  “¡Madre de Dios!” the older man whispered, still looking into the backseat of our car. “Gabriel, is that you?”

  “Gabriel?” the young man in the tuxedo asked, leaning forward to peer into the car again. “It can’t be!”

  “Inés!” the old man turned around and started shouting toward the house. “Inés! Inés! ¡Hija mía!”

  We stood huddled by the fence, dreading the inevitable as we watched both the Quinceañera and her mother freeze in their tracks. The music stopped and both mother and daughter turned around to look at the old man as he yelled, “Inés, my daughter! Listen to me, m’ija. Gabriel is home! Inés! Your husband is home!”

  As if we were in a B-rated movie, time seemed to stand still. I froze, unable to think. How could I warn them without making it worse? To my horror, everyone stopped talking and looked at the mother of the birthday girl. She stood rigidly holding her daughter’s shoulders with both hands as if to stop herself from fainting.

  Then silently, slowly, Inés Pérdido, wife of Gabriel Pérdido and mother of his two children, walked quietly past men, women, and children as if she were in a trance. She made her way toward our dusty old car with her daughter trailing behind her.

  The older man held out his arms to her, and Inés went into them instinctively. Efraín, the young man in the tuxedo, took the birthday girl in his arms and they all stood looking expectantly at the car door, as if waiting for the past to hit them in the face when it opened. The guests, who had left their tables and chairs to follow Inés and her daughter out to the car, crowded behind the fence, quietly waiting for the night’s drama to come to a head.

  “Is it really him?” Inés asked, her voice small and faint.

  “Sí, m’ija. It’s him.” The old man held his daughter against his chest and nodded. She sucked in a breath and smothered a whimper.

  “No llores, m’ija,” the old man said, stroking her hair as he begged her not to cry.

  Efraín’s voice quivered with emotion. “Mamá? Is it really him? After all these years. Is that really Papá? It doesn’t look like him.”

  “Papá?” the birthday girl whimpered. “No. No. He can’t do this to me. Not now. Not tonight.”

  “Beatriz, m’ija,” Inés started, her voice quivering with emotion.

  “It’s just like him, isn’t it, Mamá?” Beatriz continued, anger streaking her face with tears. “Just like him to ruin everything!”

  “Beatriz, por favor,” Inés begged, reaching out to take her daughter into her arms.

  Beatriz fought off her mother’s embrace. “He should have stayed gone!” Beatriz sobbed. “I hate him, Mamá! I hate him! Please, make him leave. I hate him!”

  “Beatriz,” Inés continued in her quivering voice. “He is your father. He has a right to be here. Please don’t deny him that.” Ines finally gathered her daughter in her arms, visibly trembling herself now. She looked at the car again, her eyes narrowing. “Why doesn’t he get out? What’s wrong with him?”

  “He can’t,” I said from my place at the fence.

  “It’s not that he can’t. He won’t. He’s a coward,” Efraín spit out, clenching and unclenching his hands.

  “Listen,” I started. “There’s something you should know.” I stepped toward Efraín, but he was faster than me.

  “Get out, you coward!” Efraín Pérdido screamed at his father.
Then without hesitation, he lifted the door handle and yanked the door open.

  “No!” I screamed.

  “Don’t do that!” Velia and Delia finished my thought, but they were too late. To everyone’s horror, the pillow cradling the drowned man’s head slid down the glass and Gabriel Pérdido’s body tipped over sideways, falling onto the cement sidewalk with his arms outstretched before him in full rigor mortis.

  The birthday girl’s head fell back and her body went limp. The crowd behind us gasped, and Pita screamed. Several of the guests moved quickly toward Beatriz, but her grandfather reached her just in time to stop her from hitting her head on the edge of the curved driveway.

  Efraín helped his grandfather carry his sister into the house with Inés and a slew of gabbing quinceañera attendants following close behind them. My sisters and I waited by the fence with the rest of the guests, who stood around the body speculating about Gabriel’s return.

  While everyone around us talked about the tragedy and asked themselves where he had been, the old man came back down the driveway to inspect the body of his daughter’s estranged husband.

  When he was done his face looked pale and drawn. He stood on the sidewalk and looked at us with haunted eyes. After a moment, he said, “Compadres, please, help me get my son-in-law into the house. He must be given his own measure of respect. It appears that our birthday celebration has turned into a wake. Please, if you could help me, amigos.”

  “Of course,” a man said, as he stepped out of the crowd to help.

  “Claro que sí,” another whispered as he too stepped forward.

  “At your service,” came the replies of several male guests as they stood beside Inés’s father.

  As six men lifted the body of the drowned man and started to carry him toward the house, the people around us started asking us questions. How did we know Gabriel? Why did it take him so long to return? Where had he been all these years? Was he involved with our mother, our aunt, our sister? In response to the last question, we shook our heads. But other than that, we kept our mouths shut. I was glad the girls were heeding my advice not to embellish because at that moment nothing we could have said would have made things better for them.