The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina (6)
The kids below looked up and, realizing who it was, tittered and whisper-hissed the words bruja loca.
Shutting the window and turning the latch, Marimar returned to her desk. The computer was still frozen on the spinning rainbow wheel of death, and so she picked up the envelope. No one wrote letters anymore, not the way she’d seen her grandmother do it. Orquídea would sit at the large dining table with her stationery box, a little metal spoon, and tubes of wax she made herself. Marimar had wondered who she wrote to since Orquídea didn’t have any friends that Marimar knew of, and for a period of time, all their family lived in the same big house. Her grandmother had only ever responded with, “I’m writing letters to my past.”
Marimar peeled off the wax seal and opened the envelope. It had been six years since she’d spoken to Orquídea. Though her grandmother sent them a Christmas card every year—for some reason those did go through the United States Postal Service and always smelled of cinnamon and cloves—Marimar had never reciprocated. Now, she held the new letter to her nose, breathing in the scents of Four Rivers. Of coffee and fresh grass and the seconds before torrential rain. There was also something extra that hadn’t been there when she’d left, but she couldn’t name it.
Marimar withdrew the sturdy cardstock and read the elegant cursive. She shut her eyes and felt a tugging sensation right behind her belly button. Orquídea was so many things: evasive, silent, mean, secretive, loving, and a liar. But she wasn’t dramatic enough for this.
Wasn’t she?
When Marimar was five and chased fireflies around the hills, her grandmother told her to be careful because they could really burn. When Marimar was six and decided she didn’t want to eat chickens in solidarity with Gabo and his wives, her grandmother had told her that the dead chicken’s soul would go to chicken hell if it wasn’t completely consumed. Orquídea told her if she swam to the bottom of the lake, there would be a passageway waiting there to take her to the other side of the world where sea monsters lived. That baking during her menstruation curdled milk, and cooking while angry embittered the food. Tiny, little untruths that Marimar now chalked up to things grandmothers said.
She took a deep breath and reread the letter. No, the invitation. The time is here. I am dying. Come and collect your inheritance.
Marimar picked up her phone and went to text Rey, but the screen glitched.
“Fucking hell,” she muttered. The flickering lights, the computer, her phone. It was all Orquídea’s doing. Certain technology just didn’t pair well with things that came from her grandmother, not even Marimar herself.
This couldn’t wait. She pulled her jean jacket from the back of her chair, grabbed her keys, Walkman, and headphones. When she attempted to lock the door, the key jammed for two minutes before she was able to turn it. Crossing the street, a cab took an extra sharp turn and nearly rammed into her even though she’d had the right of way. As she hurried across the crosswalk, she stepped into an ankle-deep puddle that she swore hadn’t been there before.
Finally safe on the other side, she took a moment to hit play on her Sony CD player and press the foam headphones against her ears. The heavy bass blared as she made the uphill trek along Lexington Avenue to Rey’s office. It was only thirty blocks and she needed the fresh air anyway. She made this walk every day to school. It hadn’t been much different than walking up the hills around her grandmother’s house in Four Rivers, except she’d traded rocks and grass for glittering concrete. Both had cut the strong muscles of her calves and thighs.
El Barrio came alive after sundown like the goblin markets she’d read about in poems. Here, the streets were loud and always smelled of fried meat, dough, plantains, and the underlying rot that rose in billowing steam from New York City’s sewers. She stopped at the kosher deli crammed between two buildings that looked like they might cave in overhead. Outside, four old men played cards and checkers on rickety tables and plastic chairs. Two boys not old enough to shave whistled as she stepped inside. She bought two bagels with extra cream cheese and ignored the same boys who sucked their teeth, accusing her of thinking she was all that. One of the men wearing a bright blue Mets jersey looked up and caught her eye, telling her, “Dios te bendiga, mamita.”
To him and his blessing, she said, “Goodnight.”
When she got to the corner of the street, a homeless man flashed his penis and tried to chase her with his stream of urine.
Marimar couldn’t quite figure out why New York City refused to love her. She’d moved there for high school, after her mother’s tragic and untimely death. She was thirteen and she’d loved Four Rivers once. Still did. With its green hills and clusters of dragonflies that went with her everywhere. But after her mom died, Orquídea left Marimar no choice but to leave.
Most kids would want to trade Nowhere, USA, for the Big City. Four Rivers was technically somewhere. It just wasn’t somewhere most people wanted to be. Only Marimar wasn’t sure she was a Big City kind of girl. Back then, she didn’t know what kind of girl she was, except an orphan living with her tía Parcha and cousin Reymundo in a cluttered apartment facing a street that was always crowded with traffic like one of Manhattan’s clogged arteries. The city’s tough love provided a series of lessons that a soft place like Four Rivers could never teach her. She’d learned how to arm her face the minute she stepped out the door because of boys and men who cast lines her way like she was another fish in that filthy Hudson they called a river. She learned New York evolved because it survived on blood. It was loud because it was a symphony of people shouting their dreams and hoping to be heard. Marimar had longed to add her dreams to that song but when she tried, her voice was a whisper.