The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina (44)

“Is that supposed to make me happy?” Marimar asked, towing away a charred piece of bone. Upon closer inspection, it was the roasted pig.

“Well, the two beefcakes I picked out for you aren’t helping. We have alcohol, an empty valley, and I’m pretty sure one of them is gay, so we could find out which.”

She laughed, but it didn’t quite reach deep inside. “You know how much I want to support and enforce the gay agenda, but I don’t think that hooking up with the guy who once called me a Smelly Satan Worshipper is going to make me feel better. Plus, Orquídea is right there.”

Rey lit a cigarette and looked down, already done with work even though they’d just started. “She’s a tree.”

“The tree is alive.”

They went on like that for days. Marimar going through the motions; Rey trying to cheer her up. Marimar saying three things to the crew: Hello, do you want something to drink?, and see you tomorrow.

Rey tasked himself with finding out every detail of their lives. Chris was allergic to poison ivy and failed at being a Boy Scout because he wound up in the hospital after falling into a pit of the stuff. Kalvin was the seventh kid in a giant family, so another reason he hadn’t gone off to college is because, by the time they got to the third kid, his parents had run out of money. Chris sang to the classic rock station he set up in his car and was full of semi-useless information about the sex lives of rock stars, but he killed at trivia nights at the pub. Kalvin had donated a kidney to his older sister two years ago. Chris tried to pull Marimar into conversation, but she mostly just smiled politely and tucked her hair behind her ear and pushed down the fluttering sensation beneath her skin when he looked at her that way.

Marimar had found camping gear in one of the sheds from when Caleb Jr. had discovered John Muir and had wanted to hike in every National Park. He’d gone to Yosemite once and returned home the next day. His tents and sleeping bags still smelled new.

She turned the camp they set up into a little home. Kept the firepit roaring when she couldn’t sleep, and the sound of dragonflies and frogs kept her up at night. Marimar discovered it was Kalvin who was gay when she was roaming through the orchards and found him and Rey kissing among the dead trees. Part of her wished that she wanted that. But she mostly wanted to be alone. To figure out why the flower bud at her throat hadn’t bloomed but Rhiannon’s and Rey’s had. It was the part of him that Kalvin kept touching.

A week after the fire, when Rey was still asleep with Kalvin in his tent, Marimar worked up the nerve to try and talk to Orquídea.

“You owe me more than this.” She pressed her hand to the undulating roots that could have only belonged to a tree that had been in the same place for hundreds of years. Bright green leaves rustled in the summer breeze. The moonstone center gleamed against the night. Pedrito’s serene, sleeping face haunted her even when she was awake. “What happened to you?”

But Marimar got no answers.

She put the anger toward her grandmother into her work, going through the destruction of the house like she was looking for a passage to the other side of the earth. Three weeks later, there were two piles—salvageable and not.

Among the things that could be saved were several stone mortars and pestles, bottles of herbs and seeds carefully labeled and protected in a metal box. Part of the portrait that Reymundo had gifted his grandmother; only the bottom half had burned. A photo album that Orquídea had kept in her room. The deed to the house and land. A tin box of letters with paper so thin, Marimar thought it was a miracle it hadn’t burned. Not a miracle. Magic. Then there was the Virgin Mary statue from the altar, the one where she’s depicted with brown skin and three crowns of stars. Orquídea’s favorite pen. And, to Rey’s joy, a trunk of records.

It didn’t feel like enough, but it was what was left. How could her grandmother’s entire life be reduced to these memories? She’d come to touch the green bud at her throat every time she was pensive, and she was growing used to the new appendage.

Gabo the rooster, whose feathers had turned an unnatural cobalt blue, had survived, too. If Orquídea had been telling the truth, then this made it Gabo’s third resurrection. Rey found him walking around through the ash, devouring fire beetles and trying to nest in a small crook of Orquídea’s roots. Sometimes Gabo walked alongside Marimar and Rey on crisp mornings when the fire pit wasn’t enough to keep them warm, so they took to heating up by walking up the steep hills.

“I’m going to get a record player,” Rey announced.

“You should try the antique shop on Main.”

“Kalvin’s sister works there. Maybe she’ll give me a discount.”

“But where are you going to plug it in? We don’t have electricity.”

“We will.” He sounded sure, bright. “You know what’s weird? That’s all I can hear. Even now. An earworm. Those songs that I played at the funeral. Or was it a wake? Or Shiva?”

“We’re not Jewish.”

“Caleb Soledad was.”

“Don’t invoke them. Enrique might show up.”

“Fuck Enrique. Also, we haven’t discussed the fact that our grandmother had five husbands. Five. I mean, get it, Grandma, but why wouldn’t she tell anyone about the first husband? Who do you think he was?”

Marimar shook her head. “I don’t know, but his ghost wasn’t there.”