The Butterfly’s Daughter (16 page)

“But they don't want to communicate with me!”

“You don't know that.”

“Then why doesn't my mother call Maria back?”

“As you pointed out, I don't know her well enough to answer that. But you've put a lot on her shoulders. She's probably in shock, struggling with her emotions. And she needs time to prepare your daughter.”

Her tears subsided as she took in this possibility. “Luz,” Mariposa said in a soft voice. She sniffed and wiped her eyes. “Of course.”

“Be patient, Mariposa. Have a little faith. They gave you sixteen years. Give them a few more weeks. Trust me. One way or the other, you'll hear from them.”

Fat in the form of lipid proteins not only fuels the monarch's flight of one to three thousand miles, but it must last until the next spring when they begin the flight back north. As they migrate southward, monarchs stop to nectar, and they actually gain weight during the trip.

T
he sun was high in the sky on the fourth day of her journey. Luz had driven through St. Louis early in the morning when the sunshine sparkled on the gleaming glass skyscrapers. She'd gawked at the famous St. Louis arch, but as a midwestern girl, she got her biggest thrill from crossing the bridge over the mighty Mississippi River. She thought she and Ofelia were like Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, on an adventure, riding the highway due west toward Kansas City.

The highway flattened into monotony soon after. While she drove seemingly endless miles, Luz figured she'd got maybe four hours of sleep before Ofelia telephoned the night before, and now she'd been driving for over seven hours. In the past three hours they'd stopped three times for Ofelia to pee while Luz chugged down Red Bulls and coffee.

She opened the window wider, hoping the air would help her stay awake, but the coolness of morning was replaced by warm humidity. Ofelia had moved to the backseat so she could stretch out,
at least a little. Luz yawned loudly, wishing for the hundredth time that she had a radio to help keep her mind busy. She glanced at the passenger seat. Her copilot was a Chihuahua, curled up like a cat on the now soiled and wrinkled green satin coat.

“Ofelia?” Luz called to the back. She was feeling a little desperate to stay awake and hoped some conversation would help. “Are you awake?”

“Yeah.”

“I'm sorry if the open window woke you up.”

“The fresh air feels good. And it stinks in here.”

Luz glanced in the rearview mirror. The backseat was littered with empty water bottles, wrinkled magazines, and candy and fast-food wrappers. Her attention was caught by Ofelia's fingers busily working over the box of ashes.

“What are you doing back there?”

There was a pause, then Ofelia replied, “I'm, uh, making a little surprise for you with your box of ashes.”

“
What?
”

“Don't worry. It's nothing you can't undo. I just felt sorry for your
abuela
to have her ashes in such a plain cardboard box. It seemed, I dunno, sad.”

There was an uncomfortable silence while Luz's face flamed. “I purposely didn't buy one of the more expensive urns or fancy boxes at the funeral home,” she explained. “Not because I was cheap or anything. I decided to let my
tía
Maria pick out something nice in San Antonio. She's Abuela's daughter, and she didn't get to come to the funeral.”

“She didn't come to her own mother's funeral?” Ofelia said in horror. “That's pretty lame.”

“It wasn't her fault. She didn't know. I couldn't reach her. She
must've moved or something because her old phone number was disconnected.”

“Didn't you try information?”

“Of course I did,” Luz said reprovingly.

“Well, I guess that's okay then.”

“I just hope I find her.”

After a pause Ofelia said, “Wait a minute. You mean you haven't found your aunt yet?”

“Not yet.”

“What? Girl, you're on your way to see her, only she doesn't know you're coming?”

Luz shrugged. Ofelia spun off a string of words in Spanish that Luz was just as glad she couldn't understand.

“Don't get too worked up about it,” Luz said. “We don't want that baby coming. Besides, when you think about it, it's not so different from what we're doing with you.”

“You're crazy. Yes, it is.”

“Oh? Did you reach your aunt yet?”

“No, but at least I got her number.” Ofelia smiled weakly. “She's just not answering.”

“Uh-huh,” Luz drawled with a smug smile. Part of what endeared Ofelia to her was that they were both alone in the world. She peered again in the rearview mirror to see Ofelia plucking at string around the box. “So, what
are
you doing to that box?”

“I just thought . . . Well, in my village in Mexico, on the Day of the Dead we decorate the graves to show respect. It's my favorite holiday of the year. All over town there are special flower stands that sell
cempasuchitl
. Those are the bright orange marigolds we use for decorations. It's the favorite flower of the goddess
Xochiquetzal, the goddess of flowers. It's supposed to remind us that life, like the beautiful flowers, quickly fades.”

“Where'd you get
those
marigolds?” Luz asked, looking at the four marigold heads that Ofelia was trying to attach to the box with twine. The petals were curling and tipped in brown.

“I found them at the last gas station. They were dying anyway.” Ofelia looked up. When their gazes met in the mirror they burst out laughing. Ofelia returned to her craft, made a few adjustments, then lifted the box higher to show off her handiwork with obvious pride. “I don't have any tape so I used that twine you put on Serena. I just tied it around the box and stuck the flowers in. I'll tape it all down later, but it's pretty, isn't it? And look here. You said Abuela liked candy and McDonald's, so I took the breakfast muffin wrappers and my old candy wrappers and made little paper flowers.” She plucked at the edges of one, then said, “It'll look better when I get some tape, of course.”

“It looks . . .” Luz drifted off. It was so thoughtful of Ofelia. Luz thought the box covered with faded marigolds and fast-food wrapper flowers looked, if not exactly pretty, at least a lot better than a plain cardboard box. It looked
cared for
. Tears filled Luz's eyes.

“Oh, shit, Luz. I'm sorry. It's bad, isn't it? I should've asked you first before I started doing all this. It's your
abuela,
after all. Sometimes I act first and think later.”

Luz sniffed and wiped her eyes with a hasty swipe. “No, it's not that. I like it. It's really nice. It's just . . . I should've done it myself.”

Ofelia leaned forward to lay her hand on Luz's shoulder and offered her a consoling pat. “She knows you loved her.”

Luz felt a big empty hole open up in her heart. Each day since Abuela's death, living was like walking a tightrope with no net.
As long as she kept her eyes straight ahead and didn't look down she did okay. But the minute she lost her step she fell into a vast nothingness. She felt swallowed up now and her voice shook as she spoke.

“I never did anything important for Abuela while she was alive to show her how much I loved her. I was such a kid. I took her being there for granted. That's a big part of why I'm making this trip. It's kind of a memorial to her.”

“And this box will be her
ofrenda
.”

“What's an
ofrenda
?”

“That's the special altar we build on the Day of the Dead for our family members who died. It's traditional. We put their favorite foods,
pan de muerto,
and drinks and things on the altar as offerings and decorate it with flowers so that when the spirits return to their homes, they'll feel welcomed. My
abuela
used to make the best chocolate cake for special occasions. So when she died my aunts made the recipe for her spirit. Only they made the cake look like a coffin.”

“Isn't that kind of creepy?”

“No way! It's what we do. On the Day of the Dead everywhere you look you'll see coffins and skeletons and stuff like that. Not scary like Halloween. It's more respectful. It's a big deal and lasts for days. But every family is different. Every town is different. Some are solemn and some not so much.” She laughed lightly at some private memory.

An
ofrenda
for Abuela, Luz thought. Her experiences in Chicago with Ofelia had given her a new appreciation for the Mexican culture—working in the restaurant, speaking the language. When she was a girl she'd studied hard at school to get good grades so that she could go to college. She embraced her American culture and distanced herself from her Mexican heritage. But when she
was in trouble in the city, it was her Mexican culture that made her feel like she belonged.

“Abuela would love that I was making her an
ofrenda
. I never would've thought of it on my own. Thanks, Ofelia.”

“You don't have to thank me. We're friends, and that's what friends do.”

Luz kept her eyes on the road ahead, and her lips shifted into a watery smile. She may not have a family, but she had a friend. After all, friends were relatives you made for yourself.

Hidden Ponds was a jewel of a garden center. They drove over a small, gurgling river on a narrow wooden bridge, then past a wall of pine into a charming enclave of small, rough-hewn outbuildings. Luz parked in the gravel lot and climbed from the driver's seat, grateful and relieved to be out of the car at last. Her legs felt weak while she stretched her arms high over her head, yawning noisily. The sky was impossibly blue, with big, puffy white clouds like balls of cotton. Then she let her sleepy gaze sweep across the nursery. A slow smile spread across her face. This was more like a hidden garden from a time past than a retail nursery. In the distance she got a peek between late-season flowers of shimmering water from a pond. Hovering over them fluttered sweet, yellow sulfur butterflies. Luz felt astonished and even a little awestruck.

“Hey,
chica
! Give me a hand, will ya? I can't get out of here.”

Luz hurried around the car and opened the passenger door. The dog leaped out first, made a beeline for a patch of grass, and commenced mad sniffing. Luz pushed forward the squeaky front seat and helped Ofelia through the cramped opening. It was like pushing the
Queen Mary
through the Holland Tunnel. First came
her head of wild hair, which sprang open like an umbrella, followed by her belly, which seemed to be getting larger each time she squeezed out of the car.

“God, I'm so fat!” Ofelia put one hand on her back while she caught her breath and looked around, squinting in the sun.

The stark light revealed how the day-old bruise around her eye had become an angry, deep violet and yellow color. A row of thin Band-Aids that Luz had purchased at a gas station bound together a jagged wound that cut through her beautiful arched brow. Ofelia lay her hand on her belly in an absentminded gesture. Luz noticed a purplish band of skin circling her wrist like a bracelet and felt a renewed surge of protectiveness toward her friend.

Ofelia had changed into a clean maternity top trimmed with roses, more demure than the form-fitting hot pink top she wore to dinner the other night. Luz was wearing the same jeans and long-sleeved waffle Henley top she'd hurriedly put on at Las Damas racing to get to Ofelia's. Was that only last night? Luz wondered, stupefied by how long ago it felt. Ofelia pulled out a pair of mammoth sunglasses from her purse. They practically covered the upper half of her face. She'd purchased these, too, at one of the gas stations.

Ofelia slowly looked around. “This place hasn't changed much.”

“No?” Luz said, looking out at the picture postcard. “And you left here because . . .?”

Ofelia smirked. “I was seventeen.”

Luz laughed and put her hands on her hips. “Well, it's really nice here. All those gardens and flowers.”

“Do you know how much work it takes to care for all those beds of flowers? Huh? Well, I do. And let me tell you, it's lots.”

“I'm guessing that had something to do with your leaving? Somehow I can't picture you gardening.”

“I dunno. It was hard work, don't get me wrong. Bending over and pulling weeds, lifting plants—that's backbreaking labor. And we didn't get paid much. But honestly? No, that wasn't the reason.” Ofelia sighed, and Luz imagined the expression in her eyes as she saw her lips purse in thought.

“There wasn't nothing for me if I stayed here. It wasn't exactly my dream job, you know? Plus my aunt and I were having trouble. I wanted to go out all the time with my friends and she had a new boyfriend. It didn't take a degree to figure out I was in the way. Besides, I was afraid I'd end up like my aunt, thirtysomething and divorced and lookin' old before my time. I was reading all those magazines—you know, like
Seventeen
and
Cosmo
—about what other girls were doing with their lives and I thought, Why not me? So I saved my money and as soon as I graduated I took the bus out.”

“To Chicago.”

“Yeah. Then I met Angel and . . .” Ofelia's face fell and she looked down at her belly. “When I left I was all about making something of myself, how I was too good for this place. And now I'm back and look at me. Pregnant and broke.” She compressed her lips as her face contorted. “Angel was right. I'm such a loser.”

“No, you're not. You can't listen to him. He's the loser!” Luz hated to see that Ofelia's usual fight had gone, leaving only this defeated shell.