The Butterfly’s Daughter (33 page)

“That's been around for ages,” Luz said incredulously. She was distracted by Serena, who was trying to nose into her glass, and set the dog back on the floor. Serena sneezed her displeasure and promptly began jumping up on Luz's leg again.

“Well, I'd never heard of it. I'm a summer,” Margaret said, and stepped back to survey her numerous purchases. “And these are the colors I should wear.”

Luz felt a little giddy from the wine and Margaret's happiness. She walked around the bed littered with clothing, taking in the soft hues of summer. Margaret chose styles that were more sleek and chic than clothes Luz might have picked out for herself. She was still stuck in the college-girl look. As she held up a crisp pale peach blouse, a tweedy straight skirt, high-heeled pumps, Luz thought maybe
she'd
look nice in these more sophisticated styles, too.

Luz reached down to pick up a hand-painted scarf in brilliant shades of red. “Now this one speaks to me,” she said, letting the silk slide through her fingers like water.

Margaret walked over and, reaching down, picked the scarf back up and handed it to Luz. “I'm glad you like it because I bought it
for you. See how you were naturally drawn to it? That's because you're a winter,” she informed her. “Red is your color.”

Luz hurried to the mirror to wrap the fine silk around her neck. The brilliant ruby hue set off Luz's creamy skin and contrasted with her glossy black hair. “Oh, Margaret. I've never had such a beautiful scarf.”

Margaret grinned with affection. “I thought you could use a little color, too.”

Luz felt ashamed of her earlier thoughts about all Margaret's beige. “Actually, I don't have a lot of red clothes. Abuela wears . . .
wore
red a lot. And she always looked beautiful in it.” Her voice drifted as she stared at her reflection. She'd begun wearing her hair bound in the traditional long braid that fell down her back, like Abuela had done. Today, in this gorgeous color, she caught glimpses of Abuela staring back at her.

Margaret set her glass down and began folding her purchases with the expert precision of a sales clerk and stacking them neatly back into the bags. “I thought you might wear that scarf to dress up that plain black dress you plan to wear when you meet your aunt.”

Luz felt all the joy of the moment fizzle, like air escaping a pin-pricked balloon. “
If
I meet my aunt.” She took a long sip of her wine and turned away from the mirror.

“No luck, I take it?”

“I can't believe it's a dead end.” Luz sat on the edge of the bed, feeling again the hopelessness of the day's defeat. “I honestly, truly believed I would find her. I can be so naive.”

“I don't know. Optimism isn't necessarily the same as naïveté. San Antonio is a big city,” Margaret replied, stretching out on the mattress beside her. “It doesn't mean she isn't here somewhere. I
was thinking. A lot of people don't use landlines anymore. If she only has a cell phone, the phone book wouldn't list her.”

“Oh, God,” Luz groaned. She'd not thought of that possibility but it made sense. “If that's the case I'll never find her without hiring a detective. And I sure don't have the money to do that.” Luz felt the weight of her failure. “I can't even afford to keep looking. I'm burning through my cash in this city.”

Margaret turned on her side and held her head up on her palm. “Here's a crazy thought. What if we admit that we can't find her and move on?”

Luz sipped her wine. She didn't reply.

“Now seems like the right time to bring this up,” Margaret began, pulling herself into a sitting position. She tucked her legs beneath her and leaned forward with intent. “We spent two days here and admittedly, we've gone through all the possibilities. Since we didn't find your aunt, I'm thinking we should leave El Toro here and fly to Mexico.” She put her hands up to stall Luz's objections. “I know you don't have much money, and I'm not rich either, but I do have enough to buy two round-trip plane tickets to Morelia. I did a little research on the Internet and the fares aren't so bad from here. And there are several flights a day.”

“But,” Luz began hesitatingly, “we'd still have to rent a car when we got there. It's not like there are tours to Angangueo.”

“Actually, yes, there are. Straight to the sanctuaries. I think it's the way to go. Once we're in Morelia, we could arrange a trip to the sanctuaries with a tour guide. It's all aboveboard, organized, and it's safe.”

“Yeah, but for how much?”

“For both of us, a couple thousand dollars.”

“What? I don't have that much money!”

“But it covers everything—transportation, hotels, food, fees.”

“I don't have that much,” Luz repeated. She shook her head dejectedly, feeling the day's failures press in on her. “I just don't.”

“Luz,” Margaret said with some exasperation. She poured more wine into Luz's glass, filling it to the top. Then she replenished her own glass. “We're both committed to this trip. It's do or die. So I say, let's pool our money and get her done. It doesn't matter how much each of us puts down. I'll make up the difference. If it weren't for you, I wouldn't be going on this trip in the first place. So let's just do it. What do you say?”

Luz moistened her lips at the prospect. She turned the plastic glass in her hand around and around. She hadn't expected this. Margaret made it seem so easy. So reasonable. But why did every instinct in her body scream no?

Perhaps because for her, this wasn't just a trip to see the butterflies. For her, the purpose of the trip was to bring Abuela's ashes home. This journey had crystallized her goal to include meeting her extended family, to honor Abuela, and to sit with them at her gravesite on the Day of the Dead.

And her most secret wish was so ethereal that she didn't dare admit it to Sully or Margaret, even to herself. In the deepest corner of her heart, she believed, as her ancestors had believed for centuries, that the spirit of her grandmother would return in the form of a monarch butterfly for the Day of the Dead. She held tight to her faith that she would feel Abuela's presence when the monarchs came through her village. What was faith but belief in something unexplainable?

Luz set down her wineglass and clasped her hands together. “Margaret, first, thank you,” she said sincerely. “It's a really nice offer and I appreciate it. But, for me this trip is about more than
going to see the butterfly sanctuaries. I'm bringing Abuela's ashes home.” She brought her hands up in a gesture of exasperation. “But without my aunt, I don't know how I can do it. I've just got to find her.” She stood up and, overwhelmed with the frustration of her failure, threw the address book on the floor. “Where is she?” she cried.

“Wait. What's that?” Margaret asked, staring at the floor.

Luz turned around and followed Margaret's gaze. The address book had fallen open to the back page. “What?”

Margaret stretched clumsily from the bed to reach out and grab the book from the floor. Then she pulled herself back onto the mattress and swung her legs around to sit up and look carefully at the page. “Look at this,” she said, pointing to a number scribbled at an angle across the last page of the book. “Right here. What's this number?”

“I don't know,” Luz replied with a shrug of dejection. “There's no name.”

“But it has a San Antonio area code.”

Luz's attention perked up and she stepped closer to look at it again. She tamped down the spark of hope in her chest. “So? Abuela was very neat. She'd have put the number down in the right place.”

“Hey, I'm neat and organized, too. But when I'm in a hurry I jot down a number on anything I can find. Backs of envelopes, scraps of paper . . . you should see my desk at the end of a day. When I have time, I put the numbers in my address book. Sometimes, it's days later and I can't remember whose number it is.”

“Do you think . . .?”

“What have you got to lose?”

Luz stared at the number and mustered the courage to try again.
Her hopes had been dashed so many times, and people could be very rude when they thought their privacy was being invaded.

“Luz? What are you waiting for?”

Luz climbed across the mattress to the phone. She took a deep breath and dialed the number with quick, jabbing motions. It rang once. Her mind ordered her not to get her hopes up. It rang again. She looked over at Margaret. She was sitting at the edge of the mattress and, meeting Luz's gaze, gave her a thumbs-up. On the third ring, a woman answered the phone.

“Hello?” The woman sounded a bit breathless, like she'd run to answer it.

“Uh, hi. This is Luz Avila,” Luz began as she had fifteen times before. “I'm—”

“Thank God.”

The chrysalis appears to be at rest but in truth a dramatic transformation is occurring within. Sudden movements are observed if they are disturbed but otherwise, movement is limited. They are well camouflaged, since they have no other means of defense against predators.

L
uz tried not to have too high expectations as she drove to a suburb just outside the city limits. She was nervous enough just to meet her aunt and tell her the sad news of Abuela's passing. She had no idea how Tía Maria would react and she only hoped she wouldn't kill the messenger. She glanced back at the box of Abuela's ashes.

“I'm doing what you asked,” Luz said aloud. “Help me say the right thing.”

Serena sat primly in the passenger seat. She'd had a bath and her nails trimmed. Her large eyes were wide in a state of alert. “You know something's up, don't you?” Luz said. Serena looked at her, yawned, then faced the windshield again.

After a half-hour drive, Luz pulled up to a modest, one-story white stucco house with a low, red-tiled roof in the popular southwestern style. She parked at the curb and climbed slowly out of the car. She couldn't shake the feeling she was being watched. Luz
had taken great care with her appearance. She'd ironed the hated black dress, polished her black pumps, and even bought a pair of nylons for the event. She especially hated nylons and rarely wore them, thinking it was one of the perks of having tawny skin. But she wanted to make a good impression on her aunt, and more, she wanted to show her that Abuela did a good job raising her. Margaret had wound her hair into a braid and she wore Abuela's silver and pearl earrings. “Don't forget your scarf,” Margaret had told her. “You don't want to look like you're going to a funeral.”

From the look of the front yard, it was obvious her aunt did not inherit her mother's love of gardening. It was a mournful, thirsty bit of land choked with weeds. Serena promptly peed on it. They walked along the cracked cement sidewalk up to the front door. Here, at least, someone had taken a broom to the porch and placed a cheery orange mum by the front door. The price tag was still on the colored paper. Luz smiled, touched that her aunt had made the effort.

It took her nine days and over twelve hundred miles to find her aunt. Driving the half hour from the motel to this front door was the hardest leg of the journey. But she'd done it. She adjusted her grip on Serena and reached out for the doorbell, but before she could push it, the door flung open and Luz saw a smiling face and a sea of red.

“Oh!
Mi sobrina,
Luz! You're here! Let me look at you.
Ay, mira! Mira!
” Tía Maria brought her hands up to her tear-stained face. “You look so much like my mother!”

Her aunt flung her arms out for a heartfelt embrace. Luz could see no course but to step into it. Maria was a large woman, robust and full breasted, and while she pressed Luz to her cheek, Luz was pleasantly surprised to discover she smelled of maize and vanilla,
like Abuela. That scent triggered a surge of emotion and Luz blinked back tears.

“Come in! Come in!” Maria exclaimed, and stepped back from the door.

“Thank you,” Luz said, firmly holding the photo album and Serena as she crossed the threshold. “I'm sorry I had to bring my dog. Is it okay for her to come in? I couldn't leave her at the hotel and it's too hot to leave her in the car. She won't pee. I'll hold her.”

“I love dogs!” Maria said, and made a beeline for Serena, bending over to smile sweetly into the dog's bulging eyes. “A Chihuahua!” she exclaimed, clasping her hands together in a gesture very much like Abuela's. “Oh, she's a beauty. A fawn. My favorite color. Come here, baby,” she said, reaching out to take Serena into her arms. Luz thought Serena would cringe from the woman with the big voice, but she went eagerly into Tía Maria's arms, her tail wagging, and commenced licking her face.

“She's so sweet!” Maria was completely captured by the dog. “I used to have one, too,” she said wistfully. “Cha Chi died a year ago. Eighteen years I had her. I haven't had the heart to get another one yet. But aren't you the prettiest girl?”

Luz studied her aunt as she crooned to Serena. She had Abuela's dark eyes and possibly her nose, but in stature and features, she appeared to resemble her father, Luis, more.

“
Ay,
I can't get over how much you look like Mami,” Maria said again, shaking her head with a sad expression. “Except for the eyes, of course. Those are from your father.” She sniffed. “But your hair, your face. Your body! You even move like her.
Es increíble
. Give me your jacket, and sit, please!”

Luz held her hands tightly in front of her and looked around the small living room. A large, overstuffed tan faux-suede sofa
too big for the room was crammed up beside a huge red recliner placed in front of a large television. Beyond the living room was a side room used as a dining room and beyond that, a wall of sliding glass doors that presumably led to the patio. It struck Luz as odd that the heavy red drapes were drawn, making the inside dark and closed in. Luz sat on the edge of the sofa with her hands clasped on her knees.