The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina (13)

The enchantment of the valley broke. Marimar couldn’t stand it. She boarded a bus. She took with her a duffle bag of clothes, a potted plant, and her stolen porcelain cup with big roses painted on the sides. She cried the whole way to New York.

She wasn’t crying now on the road leading home. “You can still love someone even after they hurt you.”

“Doesn’t mean we should.” Rey side-eyed her, his full mouth smirking, the cigarette burning as quickly as his nerves.

“Maybe she was right about the family curse,” Marimar said. She tried for joking but it came out morose.

“Latino families just think they’re cursed because they won’t blame God or the Virgin Mary or colonization.”

At that, she snorted. “Maybe we’re not like other families.”

“Don’t you ever feel lied to?”

Marimar eyed the radio. White Snake on a loop felt like a specific kind of torture. Her vision drifted to the perfect, periwinkle sky. “You have to be more specific.”

“Like all of her stories. The fairy creatures and magic shit.”

“All grandmothers tell their grandkids stories,” Marimar said.

“Yeah, but I always felt like Orquídea meant them. I thought she was being literal when she talked about the monsters waiting outside the house. That if she left, something would come and get her. Get us, too.”

“Maybe her monsters were real once, did you ever think about that?” Marimar turned to look at her cousin. His eyes and crooked nose were all his father, but those high cheekbones and lips were his mom’s. She remembered the boy she used to chase around. He’d use aluminum foil and tin to make himself an armor. They’d go by the lake and race up the hills and protect the land. They’d wait for the monsters that never came.

“Maybe,” he said, and the word lingered between them. “That’s only because we don’t know her. Not really.”

“Did you ever ask?”

He sucked his teeth and jammed the butt of his cigarette in the ashtray. “Did I ever ask our grandmother about her life? Obviously. All she’d say was that she was born in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and moved to Four Rivers with Papi Luis. Once, I said I needed her help for my class ancestry project, and she said it didn’t matter. I failed my fucking family tree because I couldn’t fill it out.”

“Yeah, I’m sure your kindergarten GPA was real affected.”

“It was seventh grade, bitch,” he said. “Remember when your mom died, and you asked Orquídea to get in touch with your father, and she said you were better off not knowing him? Like—”

“I know you worship your dad, but that doesn’t mean everyone wants to or does. We don’t know what her reasons were for the things she did.”

“Well, I wanted to know. Don’t you think it’s strange that Orquídea never leaves her property? That she has a cemetery full of her dead fucking husbands? She spent our whole childhoods saying how important it was to stay together, to be a family, but when her kids wanted to go their own way, she kicked them out. Orquídea doesn’t just push people away; she scorches and salts the earth. That’s not right. That’s fucked and you know it.”

Marimar gnawed on her cuticle again. She remembered when she was a little girl and did the same thing, her thumb would be raw practically down to the bone. She’d watched in the open, airy kitchen as her grandmother had cut a leaf from her aloe vera plant, split open the green fleshy skin with the precision of a surgeon. She scooped out the jelly from inside and slathered it on her skin. It burned, and later on, when Marimar stuck her thumb in her mouth, she cried at the rancid taste, but she’d stopped sucking her thumb by the end of the week.

Marimar knew that Rey was right. Their grandmother wasn’t perfect, but she had come from a different time. They didn’t know her. But what more did Rey want?

“Do you remember lighting those votive candles and making wishes,” he asked. “She said they’d come true.”

“Yeah,” she said. “What did you wish for?”

He took a deep breath. “A boyfriend.”

She grinned wide. “Was that the summer you were caught in the barn with the Kowalski boy?”

“Best seven minutes in heaven I’ve ever had.” He drummed his fingers to the bass of the song, the crescendo that lent itself to the open road. If he closed his eyes, he could picture his father playing air guitar at the Yankees Stadium parking lot while they pregamed with hotdogs. “You?”

“Better grades, straight teeth, to meet my dad one day.” All Pena had told Marimar about her father was that he’d swept into Pena’s life like a storm and vanished just as quickly. Marimar knew Orquídea had been opposed to the union because when the subject of her father came up, she’d bite down on her tongue and grumble. Marimar knew he’d left her mother a silver ring emblazoned with a starburst, which was lost in the lake when Pena drowned.

If she could go back, if the wishes whispered to the candles on their grandmother’s strange altar could actually come true, she would have been more discerning with them. Maybe ask the universe for a computer that worked or a story inspiration that went past chapter three instead of wishing to meet the father she’d never seen. “At least I got braces that year.”