The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina (17)
Rey looked at his watch. The invitation said no earlier than 1:04 p.m., true solar noon. Orquídea was punctual, yet it was nearly three.
At the end of the road, nestled at the junction of surrounding hills, the ranch resembled a toy house with dozens of tiny dolls gathered around. If Marimar closed her eyes, she could picture everything within its walls. The floorboards that groaned in the middle of the night, as if the wood was still alive and trying to stretch free. Tall candles and rivers of wax melting into every crack they could find. Great open windows that let in the sweet smell of grass and hay and flowers. Fat chickens and pigs Marimar and Rey tormented while their mothers, Pena and Parcha, tended to the gardens. Back then, the ranch was palatial. Their own private world among the sky and mountains, and Orquídea Divina was the queen of it all.
Marimar swatted at a dragonfly that kept buzzing around her head. Rey puffed out his cigarette smoke and it took on the shape of a hummingbird.
The final stretch of the road was steep, the wind at their backs reaching out like hands and pushing them the rest of the way. When they were little, they’d race and roll down. Now they were trying to keep their balance, feet dashing until they landed in front of the ranch, where aunts and uncles and cousins they hadn’t seen in years waited.
Seeing them all like this was a unique experience. They weren’t the kind of family that celebrated holidays, except for the anniversary of Orquídea’s arrival to Four Rivers. It was her grandmother’s version of New Year’s, which she gave silly names to. The Year of the Apricot. The Year of the Chupacabra. Once, she’d let her uncle Caleb Jr. name the year, and he’d chosen the Year of the Pterodactyl because of his dinosaur phase. Marimar removed the invitation from her back pocket and unfolded it. She traced the words the Year of the Hummingbird. Orquídea’s favorite bird.
“What’s going on?” Marimar asked.
A disgruntled sound vibrated through the crowd.
“Orquídea being Orquídea,” Aunt Reina said through lips so pinched, her lipstick was feathering out like tiny veins.
Marimar counted her cousins, aunts, and uncles, but kept losing track. She leaned over to Rey and mumbled, “I guess this is what twelve years of four husbands looks like.”
“Goals, question mark?” Rey said with caution.
It was an impressive gathering for a woman who had claimed to come from nothing and been wanted by no one as a child. When Marimar had asked why everyone in the family carried the last name Montoya, even though it was the maternal last name, Orquídea simply said that she wanted to leave her mark, and besides, she went through all the trouble of giving birth each time.
The offshoots of Montoyas went as follows:
Marimar and Rey represented their dead mothers, Pena and Parcha Montoya, and the family branch that sprung from their grandfather, Luis Osvaldo Galarza Pincay, who had made the journey from Ecuador to Four Rivers with Orquídea and Gabo the rooster. He’d died when their daughters were small, from something Orquídea called a patatús, and Marimar understood it roughly meant a fright. Pena Montoya was never married, and all Marimar knew of her father was that he’d left before Marimar was born. Parcha Montoya Restrepo, as an act of rebellion, gave Rey the middle name of Montoya instead.
Next was Héctor Antonio Trujillo-Chen, a Puerto Rican-Chinese professor who’d wandered down the hill in order to inquire about the aroma of coffee. He’d been guest lecturing on the subject of agriculture at the community college when he drove by. After his class, he returned to call on Orquídea, who had taken to his lovely eyes and sturdy height, and they were married the following spring. They had three children, who were all present. Félix Antonio Montoya Trujillo-Chen, his wife Reina, their daughter Tatinelly, and her husband Mike Sullivan. Florecida Dulce Montoya and her daughter Penelope. Silvia Aracely Montoya Lupino, her husband Frederico, and their twin sons, Gastón and Juan Luis.
After Héctor passed, from an infection brought on by experimenting with plant hybrids, came Caleb Soledad. Caleb, like most people, ended up in Four Rivers because he’d gotten lost. He had no phone, no quarters hidden in the glove compartment, and the tank of gas, which he’d just filled, had somehow leaked out and left him stranded two miles away from the house. He was a chemist, by way of Texas, driving around the country trying to come up with the perfect perfume. They fell in love in her garden, and when Marimar had first heard this story, she’d definitely thought that meant they’d had sex. The Soledad-Montoya siblings had the same strong brows, angular jaws, deep olive skin, and green eyes as their father. There were the twins, Enrique and Ernesta, and Caleb Jr. None of them had children yet.
Marimar looked around for Orquídea’s fourth husband, Martin Harrison, a retired Jazz musician from New Orleans who had found his way to Orquídea’s front porch because, somehow, he’d heard the sound of her music all the way up the road. He was not among the impatient legion of Montoyas.
It was then that Marimar realized what her aunt Reina meant by “Orquídea being Orquídea.” The pressure behind her belly button intensified. Marimar pushed her way through and darted up to the house, a swarm of dragonflies now trailing around her head. With every step, her heart descended into the pit of her stomach. Her childhood home was nothing like she remembered it, and even though she was expecting some wear and tear, she was not ready for this.