The Butterfly’s Daughter Read online

  Abuela tugged at the ends of her black crocheted shawl. “I thought maybe Sully could look at it.”

  There it was. Poor Sully, Luz thought. “That car is a beater. It might take more time than he has to offer.” Not to mention money that he’d never bill them for. “How many miles does it have?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know? And you bought it?”

  “It is a good car. I can tell.”

  God help me, Luz thought.

  Abuela’s back straightened and her smile slipped. Once more Luz saw the cloak of anxious worry slip over her grandmother’s usually serene expression. Abuela clasped her small hands before her, like a woman in prayer, and when she spoke her voice was grave.

  “Luz, we need this car.”

  Luz felt the morning’s anxiety stir again. “Why?”

  “We must go on a trip.”

  “A trip? Where?”

  “To San Antonio.”

  “Does this have to do with that phone call?”

  Abuela’s eyes widened with surprise that the phone call was mentioned, then her eyes shifted and after a pause, she delivered a quick, tentative nod.

  Luz thought as much. “Is there an emergency? Is Tía Maria sick?”

  “No. Not that.”

  “Then why the hurry?”

  “You must trust me, querida. We just have to go to San Antonio.”

  “Oh, Abuela . . .” Her grandmother had always planned to take Luz to visit her daughter and family in San Antonio. Unfortunately, money was always short and trips were as unrealized as Luz’s dreams. “I’d love to go. But right now, we just don’t have enough money.” It was the truth, but as soon as she said the words she saw Abuela’s face fall. “But if we’re careful and save our money, we can go next year.”

  Abuela clutched Luz’s hand. Her dark eyes flamed and her voice broke with emotion. “No, not next year. This year! Right away!”

  Luz rushed to wrap her arms around her grandmother. Abuela was barely five feet tall, slim in the shoulders and barrel-waisted. Luz was only four inches taller but she had to lean over her. Closing her eyes, she smelled in her hair the scents of corn and vanilla and all things safe and secure.

  “Okay, Abuelita,” she said reassuringly. “I’ll find a way, I promise. Don’t worry. I’ll get a second job. But let’s go inside now. It’s starting to rain again and you’re shivering. Your hands are like ice.”

  With one arm wrapped around Abuela’s shoulders she shepherded her back to the house. Luz didn’t know how she was going to keep her promise, but she’d figure that out later. Now she had to bring Abuela back inside, where it was warm.

  “I’m cold,” Abuela said. “I must go home.”

  Two

  The Rocky Mountains divide the migration pattern. Generally, monarchs west of the Rockies travel to small groves of trees along the California coast. Monarchs from the central and eastern Canadian provinces and the eastern and midwestern United States fly south to the oyamel forests in the mountains of Mexico. But they are the same species.

  The walls of Abuela’s kitchen were painted the rich, sun-kissed color of oranges; the chairs and table the color of limes. It was Luz’s favorite room and the heart of the house. Abuela went to her bedroom and reappeared looking composed in her long, black skirt and a voluminous flame-colored sweater that curled high around her neck, setting off her white hair and shining dark eyes. Luz carried cups of hot coffee to the table and poured in thick cream and sugar. The cinnamon smelled delicious, but Luz watched anxiously as Abuela listlessly stirred her cup.

  “Are you feeling okay?” Luz asked, thinking of Sully’s warnings. She searched Abuela’s face. “You look pale. Maybe you should go see the doctor.”

  “I don’t need a doctor,” she scoffed as she relinquished her spoon. It clanged against the rim of the cup. Abuela laid her fingers against her sallow cheek and began tapping. “I hardly slept last night. I had so much to think about. I am tired, this is all.”

  “Why don’t you lie down for a little while?”

  “I can’t,” she said with emphasis. “There is much to be done! So much to plan for our trip.”

  “Abuela, please,” Luz said, alarmed by her urgency. “Tell me what’s going on. Why must we go now? What’s the hurry?”

  Abuela adjusted her seat and her eyes appeared troubled. “I have my reasons, Luz,” she said, turning her head and lifting her chin in a gesture of hurt pride. “I am not some old woman losing my mind.”

  Luz reached out to lay her hand over Abuela’s. It was small but firm, her fingers bent from a lifetime of labor. When she was young, Esperanza had raised two children alone on a farm in rural Mexico while her husband toiled in the United States. Years later she traveled alone to Milwaukee and worked as a cook in a restaurant to provide a home for her granddaughter. These strong, beautiful hands had created the only home Luz had ever known.

  “I know that, Abuelita,” Luz said, her heart pumping with love as she bent to kiss her knuckles.

  Abuela’s face relaxed into a smile and she turned her wrist to hold Luz’s hands. “Mi preciosa, it will be a good thing for us to take this journey together. It will give us time to talk. I thought long about this. First, we will go to San Antonio. But then, together, we will go to Mexico. It is time for you to learn where you are from.”

  Luz pulled away and folded her hands under her arms. “I’m not from Mexico. I was born here, in Milwaukee. I’m American.”

  “Mexico is where your family is from. And . . .” Abuela took a breath. “You must meet your family,” she said firmly.

  “Family? There’s always been only you and me.”

  “Why do you say that? There is Tía Maria and her children—your cousins—in San Antonio. And your tío Manolo in Mexico. And others . . .”

  “I don’t even know them.” Luz frowned and stared at the murky coffee in her cup. How could Abuela expect her to care about relatives she’d never met or who never cared enough to come visit?

  Abuela had two children by her first marriage. Her elder daughter, Maria, lived in San Antonio with her two children, cousins who never wrote or called. Abuela’s only son, Manolo, had returned to Mexico to take over the family store. They were all strangers to her. Luz wouldn’t recognize them if she passed them in the street.

  “Besides, what would we talk about? I can barely even speak Spanish.”

  “Sí, I know,” Abuela said with a sorry shake of her head. “This is my fault. You do not want me to talk to you in Spanish. Only English.” She sighed. “You can be so stubborn.”

  “It’s no one’s fault, Abuela,” she said, looking away. “I just don’t see the point. I don’t speak German either. Or know my father’s family.”

  “Him.” Abuela’s lip curled. “He is nothing to us. We do not even know his family name. I will never forgive him for abandoning your mother.”

  Luz’s voice was soft. “Maybe he didn’t abandon her. Maybe he just didn’t want me.”

  “Ah, no, querida! Who wouldn’t want you? You are the only thing that is good from that union.”

  Luz looked at her short, unkempt nails, feeling unsure.

  “Your family—tu familia—comes through your mother. Through me,” she said in a tremulous voice, bringing her clenched fist to her heart. “Mi niña, have I taught you nothing? Have I given you nothing? ¡Mira! Look around you. These colors, the food you eat, and the music you hear—all these things are Mexican. The stories I tell you are so you know who I am. And who you are.” She bent her head and said more softly, “And who your mother is.” She looked up, renewed conviction ringing in her voice. “Mexico is in your blood. You should be proud of your heritage.”

  Luz glanced under lowered lids at Abuela sitting across the heavy wood table, idly fingering the thick braid that fell like a heavy rope over her shoulder. Sometimes she felt as tightly bound to her culture and its expectations for her as a woman as her grandmother’s long, traditional braid. She
was proud of her Mexican heritage. Yet Luz didn’t want to be defined by it. She wanted the freedom to discover herself.

  Abuela brought her hand up to cup Luz’s cheek. Her fingers felt papery and cool and her dark eyes pulsed with meaning. “We must talk about Mariposa, your mother.”

  “I don’t remember her,” she said softly. “She’s been dead so long she’s becoming some vague memory, more a feeling than someone real. I’m forgetting her and it makes me sad.”

  Abuela’s brows gathered over troubled eyes. “Luz,” she said, stumbling for words. “There is much you don’t know about Mariposa.”

  “I know she was beautiful.”

  “Sí,” she replied, arching her brow in memory. “Very.”

  “Am I at all like my mother?” She heard the pleading in her own voice.

  Abuela hesitated. Luz felt the heat of her gaze on her, searching for traces of family resemblance. She knew Abuela worried about her American granddaughter who did not know her family traditions and did not speak her native language.

  “Not so much in looks. You have her beautiful skin. So creamy and smooth. Mariposa was taller, and so thin a gust of wind could blow her away. And often did,” she added with a bittersweet smile. “You and I, we are made of more sturdy stock, eh?”

  Luz cringed. Sturdy in her mind meant strong bones, oxen, hardly what a young woman wanted to hear. Luz was full-bodied with rounded breasts and curvy hips. Plump, mean girls might say. Curvaceous, Sully said.

  Seeing her reaction, Abuela tsked and shook her head, frustrated with the English language. “No, maybe I use the wrong word. I mean steady, eh? We have both feet rooted on the ground. Your mother”—Abuela paused and her eyes grew sad—“she had both feet planted firmly in the air.”

  Luz’s eyes widened with surprise. Abuela had only ever spoken of her mother as a princess in some fairy tale, using superlatives and terms of praise. She’d never heard Abuela criticize her perfect daughter.

  “Sometimes, I think that’s better,” Luz said. “You have more fun.”

  “No! More trouble, that is all.” Abuela shook her head slowly, exposing a weary sadness. “My poor, foolish daughter. For all that she enjoyed life, she made it hard, too. Mariposa was a flighty creature. Like the butterfly I named her for. You could never pin her down. I used to think that was her gift.” She shrugged and regret flashed in her eyes. “But it was also her flaw.”

  Luz wiped a strand of hair from her forehead, pausing to take all of Abuela’s words in. She saw deep lines carved into Abuela’s face, more obvious today with her fatigue. A new grief seemed to weigh heavily on her, causing her shoulders to droop. Most important, these words of criticism and despair came from a dark place in her heart she’d never revealed to Luz before.

  “Perhaps if I had been more strict,” Abuela continued. “I never should have allowed Mariposa to go to the university.”

  “Why wouldn’t you want her to go to college?” Luz asked indignantly. She’d give anything for the chance to go to college.

  “What does a beautiful woman need with school, eh? Mariposa should have stayed at home and married a good man. Her life would have been so different. She might have—” Abuela stopped herself, closing her eyes for a moment with a sigh. “But her father was an educated man and insisted.”

  Luz knew the end of this story as well. Abuela had been deeply suspicious of the idea of sending her beautiful daughter—the only child of her second marriage—away to the university. Abuela could read and write in both English and Spanish, but for her, these were necessary skills, not ones used for pleasure. Cooking, gardening, sewing—these were skills she valued as a woman. Abuela’s worst fears were realized. Mariposa had been at the university for less than a year before she ran off to America with a German student, a young man she had never brought home to meet her father and mother. Years later, when Luz had wanted to go to college, Abuela didn’t forbid her, but neither did she support her. She wanted Luz to marry Sully and to settle down as a wife and mother. “What do you want with all those books?” she’d ask when she saw Luz squirreled in her room reading.

  Abuela looked deeply into Luz’s eyes, her face softening with affection. “Mariposa was impulsive. But you are fortaleza, eh? Strong and dependable. You have a special light in your eyes that comes from your soul. I saw this the moment you were born.”

  Luz looked away, disturbed that she couldn’t see that light shining in her own eyes. “Maybe my mother wasn’t impulsive,” she said, feeling a sudden urge to defend her dead mother. “Maybe she was like the goddess Little Nana. She had courage. She wasn’t afraid to jump into the flame.”

  “Listen to me, Luz. I am old enough to know I do not have all the answers. But I know this. Impulsive is not the same as courage. True courage comes from the heart. Tu corazón. Sometimes, it takes more courage not to jump and to stand strong. When each of us looks into the fire, we must decide for ourselves whether to jump.”

  Abuela leaned back in her chair, her eyes bright with resolution. “But you and me, we must jump now.” Her wizened face softened and she reached out across the table, wiggling her fingers, luring her granddaughter to place her hands in her outstretched ones, as she did when Luz was a little girl. Luz obliged.

  “I see in your eyes your doubts. Do not worry. This journey will answer many of your questions,” Abuela said. “We will go to San Antonio in our fine car. We will see our family there. Then, we will continue on to Mexico. To Angangueo, where Manolo and my family live. What a reunion we shall have! Then finally, we will go to the mountains to see the butterflies. Together, as we always planned we would. Soon you will stand at the precipice of the Sacred Circle, as my mother stood with me, and I stood with your mother. As we have done for generations. You will dance with the butterflies. You will take your place with the goddesses.”

  Luz sighed with resignation, having heard this story many times before. Other children heard fairy tales about Hansel and Gretel, Sleeping Beauty, or Jack and the Beanstalk. Abuela had told Luz myths about the Aztec gods and goddesses and the monarch butterflies in the mountains of Mexico. But that’s all they were to Luz—childhood stories.

  “Last I looked,” Luz said with a self-deprecating smile, “goddesses didn’t work for minimum wage in a factory.”

  “Oh, yes they do!” Abuela said with a squeeze of her hands. “Goddesses are everywhere, if you look for them.”

  “Even if I wanted to go, I don’t think that car can make it all the way to Mexico.”

  “That little car has great heart. I have faith. And so should you. I dream of going all the way home to Mexico. But in truth, all that car has to do is get us to Texas. After that . . .” She shrugged. “We will hope for the best.” Abuela brightened and in a burst of enthusiasm rose from her chair. “I have studied the map. Wait!”

  A few minutes later Esperanza came hurrying back into the kitchen carrying sheets of paper and maps. She spread out a map on the table and pointed a gnarled finger at a spot she’d circled in red.

  “Here is Milwaukee, see? First, we go to San Antonio. Today I called Jorge Delgado. He owns the taqueria on Greenfield. Jorge made this drive a few months ago. He said if we have no problems, we can make it to San Antonio in three, maybe four days.”

  “If you return the car tomorrow and get your money back, you can buy a plane ticket to San Antonio and get there in one day. And you can visit with Tía Maria for as long as you like. Wouldn’t that be easier?”

  “But that would not include you. I also called the airlines today. To fly is very expensive. And,” she said, wagging her finger for emphasis, “when we get to Mexico, we would still need to drive a car to get to the mountains where your uncle Manolo lives. Look,” she said, pointing again at the map. “This is Morelia airport and this”—her finger moved several inches across the map to where the terrain was mountainous—“is where I grew up. See? We need a car.” She said the last in a manner that implied her logic was flawless and couldn’t be argued wi
th.

  Luz’s lips twitched. “You’ve been busy today.”

  Abuela nodded her head with conviction. “Sí. I plan and plan. We must arrive in Angangueo by November first, for the Day of the Dead. This is very important. It is when the monarchs return to our village on their way up the mountains.”

  Luz couldn’t deny the flurry of excitement she felt at the idea of making this trip with Abuela. She yearned to leave on some adventure, to see the world. Yet, her stomach also clenched at the thought of all the bills waiting to be paid, and now the added expenses of the VW.

  They put away the maps and enjoyed a leisurely dinner of chicken tamales with a verde sauce that was Abuela’s own recipe. While they ate, Luz listened patiently as Abuela talked about the journey and discussed their route, which would chase the monarch butterflies as they migrated south across the country.

  When dinner was finished and they began washing up the dishes, however, the harsh realities of their finances took root in Luz’s mind. It was fun to dream together, but she couldn’t let Abuela go on believing that in a few days’ time they would actually pack up and drive off on this adventure. She dried the last of the heavy green pottery plates and put it away in the cabinet. Abuela was rinsing the suds from the sink.

  “Abuela,” she began hesitatingly, folding the towel neatly in thirds. She set it on the counter. “I know how important this is to you. But . . .”

  Abuela’s hands stilled at the sink and she slowly turned. Her beautiful dark eyes turned wary as her smile fell.

  “Let’s think about the timing, okay?” Luz continued in a cajoling tone. “First, I have my job. I can’t just take off on a trip tomorrow. Then there are the bills. We really have to finish paying off our credit card debt. I won’t be getting a raise this year. But I’ll get a second job on the weekends.” She put on a brave smile. “We can do this, I know we can. But I really can’t see how we’ll be able to leave this week. We just can’t. Unless we win the lottery.” She laughed at her little joke but it fell flat. Abuela’s face crumpled with distress and disappointment.