The Last Karankawas(31)

The drive stretched nearly double the amount of time it should have taken, according to Carlos. Magdalena made them all pray the rosary on the way, then ask the earth and the ocean for safety, too, for good measure. At the cabin, Luz had put her mother’s quilt on the guest bed, orange with white flowers that looked like the jasmine Magdalena grew by the back patio. Carly fell asleep beneath that quilt, listening to the sounds of cicadas, smelling sun-warmed river cooling into night. Her feet tucked against her grandmother’s, breathing her in.

The next day they watched the news together. Jess described the gridlock, how cars ran out of gas left and right, stalled out or overheated in the blistering sun. When they saw a report of a bus carrying nursing home residents that caught fire on the freeway, Magdalena cried.

“You were lucky,” Carlos said. They spent two days in the cabin and then Rita, quite contrary, juked northeast. It was almost laughable. “I guess that was all for nothing,” Carlos said as they loaded up the car again, and Magdalena had nodded from the backseat. “Next time we stay,” she said sternly.

Carly had run her hands through her hair and replied then, as she does now: “Yes, Grandma.” Had lied then, as she lies now. “We’ll stay.”



* * *



They stop on Seawall before they head home. It is the middle of the week, and the public beaches aren’t swamped yet with late-summer tourists. As a habit, Carly rolls up her jeans and cuffs them mid-calf, then checks her glove compartment for the bottle of baby oil she keeps there to remove tar flecks. They may not need them; these days, tar rarely washes in from the tankers on the bay, not like when they were kids, and she and Jess would walk back to Fish Village with smears of black across their feet and calves.

Clouds have gathered, just enough to break up some of the heat; sunbeams lance through, spotlighting sections of the water. They kick off their flip-flops and leave them on the sand. Jess points to a pelican, yards away. It dives toward the water at high speed and levels out, belly feathers kissing the surface. Low, never wavering. She watches it until it curves around a bend, toward the jetties, and is gone.

Jess disappears, too. When Carly spots him again, he has walked farther down the beach, bending down to gather something, and she realizes he is gathering discarded palm fronds. “You’re an idiot,” she says as he returns with them, but she reaches out to squeeze his hand, touched in spite of herself.

“Maybe we can burn them,” he teases. “Your grandma can tell us how.”

He begins brushing the grit and bits of trash away. Carly looks back for pelicans, but she does not see any more.



* * *



“Tell me, Grandma. About the Karankawas.” Her voice, trembling in her young throat from terror. Outside thunder and rain—a tropical storm? A hurricane? Carly cannot remember, only recalls the pounding water against the windows, the wind like a woman screaming. The rattle of the roof makes her think of The Wizard of Oz, fearing they will lift off the ground and spin in the air, land in a place she cannot imagine, a world unlike any she knows. The horror. She buries her face in the pillow, smelling her grandmother: Vicks and Pond’s, Dove soap.

“Our people, ni?a? Okay. Ven, here.” Magdalena draws the girl’s head from the pillow, lays it on her own thigh. The cotton and embroidery of her nightgown a comforting scratch on Carly’s cheek. “They would not be scared of storms, ves. They never were. They respected them, but they did not let the weather keep them afraid. Storms are part of the world, this world, this place. You love it here, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“So did they, and we must, too. To love this place is to love its bad parts también. The brown water, the heat, the zancudos. The storms.”



* * *



Carly visits alone on her next day off that week. She brings another box of cookies and the palm fronds she decides she is being silly about: Where is the harm? Certainly Magdalena won’t have access to anything causing fire. They both can wind them into crucifix shapes, as they used to every Palm Sunday. But instead Carly walks in to find her grandmother on the floor, curled up in a ball, rocking back and forth, chanting nonsense. The box and palms fall to the ground. A seizure, Carly thinks as she rushes to her side, saying her grandmother’s name over and over before realizing this is no seizure. Magdalena is lucid—mostly—telling her, “Stop, ni?a, stop, I’m fine, it is simply the ancient Karankawa tongue, I am letting the spirits speak through me so they will protect us from the storm.” Carly insists no as she shakes her shoulders—“We don’t know anything yet, it could move somewhere else, dissipate over Cuba.” But Magdalena rises to her knees, slaps her palms against the floor and lowers her forehead to the ground, still muttering words Carly cannot understand. “For protection, ni?a, we will need it. Ruega conmigo.” Tears stream down Carly’s cheeks. Part of her wants to. The girl she once was, braiding oleanders into her hair and smearing lard across her shoulders as if it were alligator grease, longs to put her head down beside her grandmother and chant made-up words, believe they mean something, believe they are the kind of people who can control long-ago Indian spirits. But she cannot; it must be the Maharlika in her that keeps her from pretending. Her mother never trusted, and she ran without looking back. Her father, too. Lightning in Carly’s blood again, sparking through. Tell me, Grandma. About the Karankawas. But she turns away. The grandmother who loved her and raised her, who never left, is praying the rosary in Spanish now, “Dios te salve María, llena eres de gracia.” And Carly, full of shame, with shaking hands and a bright knowledge of what she can do, abandons the box where it lies and throws the palm fronds in the trash can by the door, leaving without another word.