“One time I asked her why she didn’t have a trace of an accent. I barely even heard her speak Spanish. And you do remember what she said?”
“She said she mixed dirt from the backyard, red rock clay, and peppermint leaves in a bowl and then scrapped her tongue with it.” Marimar was laughing so hard she could barely breathe. “Then you did that to try and pass your German class.”
Rey could practically feel the grit of the dirt in his mouth and the earthworm that he hadn’t noticed.
“It’s okay to be gullible kids, Rey,” she told him, nudging her arm against his. “That’s the whole point of being a kid. You believe things before the world proves you wrong.”
Why did his grandmother make him so mad? Thinking of her sometimes filled him with a sense of naivete that made him uncomfortable. Like he’d spent a lifetime watching a magician and then learned how simple her tricks were. He’d thought of his grandmother as a witch, a bruja with a house that buzzed with magic. Pantries filled with never-ending supplies of coffee and rice and sugar. With land that was always green and fertile. It wasn’t her fault that he’d become logical—that she must have had a steady shipment that came when he had been too busy chasing farm boys, or that her land was in a valley called Four Fucking Rivers and of course it was fertile.
Orquídea’s legacy was flash and secrets and half lies. Sweet memories that curdled with truth and bitterness over time. She wasn’t a bruja and she wasn’t powerful. He didn’t want to be anything like that. He was mad at himself for realizing too late that her stories were just stories. That she wasn’t a witch with magic tucked away like a silver coin between clever fingers, snatched behind a fool’s ear. She was just a lonely old woman who had survived a great deal of loss. And yet, despite everything she was and couldn’t be, she was a fixture in his mind. Orquídea Divina Montoya could not die. Not now, not ever. It worried him suddenly.
“I don’t feel lied to,” Marimar finally said.
“Good for you,” he said softly, and turned up the volume. The road ahead was open, and he hit the gas, like if he went fast enough, he’d fly.
5
THE FLOWER OF THE RIVER SHORE
The day her mother married for the first time, Orquídea helped her get ready. She’d glued river pearls to a diadem and spent all night sewing the veil. Her future stepfather promised to give Isabela Montoya the world, but Orquídea still wanted her contribution to be perfect. On the big day, mother and daughter sat in the small room with a vanity. It was the last time they’d be alone together for a while.
“You look like a queen,” Orquídea said, admiring her work in the mirror.
“Come here.” Isabela reached for her daughter. She was a young woman now dressed in a blush pink dress and gleaming white shoes with buckles on them. Her arms and legs were strong from swimming and walking and fishing. Her long, perfect curls wild with humidity and river water; beautiful brown skin that looked soft as velvet. Her elegant features caught all the wrong attention. Some of the locals called her La Flor de la Orilla, the flower of the shore. A name Isabela detested because it sounded cheap.
Orquídea didn’t like it because she knew she wasn’t a flower, delicate and pretty and waiting to be plucked. For what? To be smelled? To sit in a glass of water until she withered? She was more than that. She wanted to be rooted so deep into the earth that nothing, no human, no force of nature, save an act of the heavens themselves, could rip her out.
“Things are going to be different for us now,” Isabela promised. “Better.”
Before Orquídea could speak, the door opened and Roberta Montoya waltzed in, clutching a hat box and a smaller ring box. She greeted her granddaughter with a curt nod, then turned to Isabela.
“I wore this on my wedding day, and my mother on hers,” Roberta explained, lifting the hat box lid. “God has given you a second chance, and so will I.”
Isabela was stunned. Not because of the intricate lace veil spilling out of the box. But because it had been so many years since she’d heard her mother’s voice that she had forgotten the cadence of it. Roberta removed the pearl diadem and Orquídea caught it before it hit the floor.
“Why are you standing there, girl?” Roberta snapped at Orquídea and shoved the smaller box against her chest. “Make yourself useful. Deliver these cufflinks to Mr. Buenasuerte.”
Orquídea looked to her mother, waiting for Isabela to interject. But she only stared at her own reflection, hidden behind gauzy white lace, as if the moment her husband peeled it back she’d be a new woman.
The wedding was small, but elegant. Orquídea was forced to give up her seat for her grandmother. From the balcony of the church, she watched Isabela get her second chance at happiness. None of them—not the Buenasuerte clan, not the priest, and certainly not the Montoyas—noticed her up there, anxiously plucking out the pearls from the bed of glue on the diadem. And none of them knew that if not for Orquídea, the flower of the shore, there wouldn’t be a wedding, a second chance, to begin with.
She had spent the afternoon fishing when she first caught the attention of the man who would become her stepfather. He was a land developer and civil engineer. One of those men who waltzed into small, muddy neighborhoods and provincial towns. They laid down concrete, foundations for the city, roads and boardwalks. They left their mark. They always left children behind, too. In Ecuador, a place still transforming, still changing into what it wanted to be, a civil engineer was as common as the tomcats that prowled the neighborhoods. It was a respectable and secure job, with projects being commissioned by the government.
Along the strip of houses near the river where Orquídea lived, there was nothing to develop. At least, that’s what Wilhelm Buenasuerte decided upon cursory inspection. As he trekked the unnamed road all the way to the shore, he tucked his gold pendant under his shirt, rolled up his pants to the ankles to avoid the mud, and kept his hands in his pockets.
When he retrieved his handkerchief to mop sweat off his stern brow, his wallet fell, and Orquídea Montoya happened to be walking home at that moment with her basket of fish to fry for dinner. She gathered his wallet and shouted after him. Though her clothes were clean—except for the usual splatter of river water—and though she showered every day, Wilhelm took a step away from her, startled by the child that came up to his hip.
She offered his wallet back. “You dropped this.”
Wilhelm Buenasuerte was born to a German mother and an Ecuadorian father. That is to say, his father was half Spaniard and half Indigenous, part of the mestizaje of the country. But he considered himself Ecuadorian to the bone. His eyes were not quite brown and not quite green. His nose was not quite crooked and not quite straight. His hair was not quite blond and not quite brown. His skin was not quite white but whiter than most. He was proud of everything that made up his whole. That was why, after being educated in Germany, he returned to his father’s land—his birthplace—to make it better, to make it more.
“Thank you, child,” he said. He took out a five sucre note and placed it in her hand.
By then, Orquídea had hated when men shoved money in her fist. Her father—the man who’d fathered her—had done so. The men who bought fish from her did it, too. Once, a man tried to give her ten sucres so she’d follow him home. She was only ten and she’d thrown dirt in his eyes and run all the way home and barricaded herself in. She did not think this man was that way, but who was she to say?
That was when her mother came bounding down the dusty street yelling her daughter’s name. Isabela Montoya’s porcelain white cheeks were flushed, and her black hair had come undone from the sensible bun she always wore it in.
When she got a good look at the classy, distinguished man in front of her, Isabela relaxed. “I hope my daughter is not bothering you, sir.”
Wilhelm Buenasuerte was too stunned to speak. Something inside his chest gave a terrible squeeze. For a moment he considered whether or not he was having a heart attack. He was too young for that, but his fa
ther had died from one, hadn’t he? No, it had to be something else. The woman before him was dressed for an office, with a beauty that was so delicate, he felt the incomprehensible urge to do everything he could to protect it. She wore no wedding band, but she had a child that was perhaps twelve. An early mishap of her youth. His father had always told him women were easily led astray and they needed good men to keep them in the ways of family and God. Wilhelm Buenasuerte considered himself a good man.
“No bother at all, Mrs.—?” he held out his hand and paused to allow her an introduction.
“Miss Isabela Montoya,” she emphasized her availability.
He gave the dirt road another once over. The wide río Guayas held a quiet promise. Suddenly, Wilhelm could see a highway that would cut through here one day. A boardwalk would stretch all the way to the cerro Santa Ana. First, these shacks and dinky fishing canoes needed to go. Perhaps he’d been in too much of a hurry to dismiss this spot of land. Wilhelm Buenasuerte found a reason to stay.
* * *
Orquídea never spent the money Wilhelm Buenasuerte had given her. But on the day of her death, she would return it.
6
THE FIRST DEATH OF ORQUÍDEA DIVINA
Marimar knew they were almost home when she licked her lips and could taste a hint of salt.
They’d spent the night in Lawrence, Kansas, at a cheap hotel in the downtown college area. They were both too wired to sleep, and spent the night drinking at a bar covered in neon lights with a country metal band caterwauling their way through pop covers. Everything closed at midnight, so she smoked Rey’s cigarettes and gave money to a howling busker while Rey got his palm read by an undergrad covered in piercings and tattoos. They woke up before sunrise, showered, and got back on the road.
“What did the fortune-teller say to you?” Marimar asked.
“She said I’d save someone’s life one day,” Rey said.
“Cryptic.”
“And that I’d take a trip and meet a handsome stranger.” The last bit he said with a coquettish emphasis.
“Fancy. Maybe he has a brother and we can double date.”
“Maybe he’ll have an evil twin and we can live out one of my mom’s favorite telenovelas.”
“Don’t they all have evil twins?”
“We should have brought her with us to tell the family’s fortunes.”
They went on and on for the rest of the drive, talking about anything and everything that wasn’t their family. But when the air thickened with the pungent smell of unturned earth and wildflowers, of salty air when they were so far from the sea, they fell quiet.
At first, she thought that nothing had changed in these lands—not the unyielding sun, not the hungry wild earth, and not the tire-eating road that led all the way home. But then she breathed deeper and found a new scent—something that hadn’t been there when she’d left six years before. It was the same thing she couldn’t identify on the invitation—decay.
Marimar kept the windows rolled down just enough that the wind whistled past and dry leaves made their way between the cracks and onto her lap. She held a green leaf by the stem. For a moment, she thought she could close her eyes and see the makeup of its whole being, the tree it had come from, and the earth that nurtured it. She held the leaf to her nose and wished she had a book with her to press it into. Then she let it fall to her feet among the drive’s collection of fast-food containers and empty coffee cups.
Rey’s truck jostled from side to side, his trinkets swinging from the rearview mirror.
“You’d think she’d have the road paved by now,” he muttered.
“Paving roads?” Marimar said, taking on their grandmother’s stern voice. “That would make it seem like I want people to find their way here.”
Rey put the dusty red jeep in park behind a neat row of cars off the side of the unnamed road that lead to Orquídea’s house. “That’s as far as this piece of crap is getting.”
The other factions of the Montoya clan were already there. Enrique’s Lamborghini was covered up with a black tarp. Cousin Tatinelly’s pink Beetle was sandwiched between two silver sedans. There were other cars she didn’t recognize, all parked at a hasty angle, but there were a lot of family members she hadn’t seen in years. When she’d lived there, it had only been Orquídea, her step-grandad Martin, her mom, Tía Parcha, and Rey. She hadn’t seen this many people there, maybe ever. There certainly weren’t this many people when her mom died. Orquídea had told the other Montoyas to stay away for their own good. Marimar still hadn’t forgiven her grandmother for that. And yet, when Marimar inhaled the valley air so deeply that her lungs hurt, she couldn’t wait to get to the bottom of the hill.
Rey pulled out his pack of cigarettes and slapped it against the palm of his hand. “Let’s just get this over with.”
“Nothing brings family together like the promise of riches,” Marimar said, slamming her door shut. She was barefoot. When she was little, she’d liked to wiggle her toes in the ground like they were worms. But the dirt was too dry now, and she dug through the back seat until she found her beat-up penny loafers.
Rey shook his head but marched dutifully on beside her, pulling out a white invitation bleeding black scrawl, his thumb tracing his grandmother’s perfect calligraphy. He wondered if she was pulling one of the games she did when he and Marimar and Tatinelly were kids. She’d hide items around the house and give them clues, like they had to find something that had many eyes but could not see. Marimar had brought a button, Rey had brought a potato, and Tatinelly picked up a picture from the fireplace mantel. Maybe this invitation was a riddle, too. Come and collect. Maybe she wasn’t dying…
They began their walk down the steep hill. Marimar used to run across the green trying to wake the fairies that lived among the twisted gardens. Orquídea liked to tell stories of the winged creatures that protected the ranch with their otherworldly magics born right from the stars. Orquídea had promised that if Marimar found her spark, if she showed potential, she’d wake the fairies. But no matter how much she tried and tried, Marimar’s power would not wake, and she never saw any—there were too many bugs and dragonflies in the way.
Arm in arm with Rey, Marimar fought the urge to sprint into the tall grass fields and search for the winged beasties once again. But if the fairies had once protected the valley, they were long gone by now. The grass was yellowing the closer they got to house. The stench of unturned earth became more pronounced. For so long, the people of Four Rivers had called the Montoyas witches and other crueler things, but there was no magic here by the state of things, if there ever had been.
“Jesus, what happened?” Rey asked.
Was Orquídea simply too old to keep the land thriving and healthy on her own? The rest of Four Rivers had seemed fine on the drive in—the diner, the gas station, the video store—like it had been petrified in time. But this—this was different.
Marimar remembered one terribly hot summer. It was so arid, she felt like she was growing lizard skin. They didn’t have an air conditioner because they’d never needed it before. But her mother, Pena Montoya, wasn’t going to stand for the drought. She put on a record and dialed up the volume. She dragged Orquídea and Marimar outside and said, “Let’s call down the rain.”
Then they went outside, their voices singing to the sky, their bare feet kicking up dust. And when the sky broke open with thunder and lighting and what looked like shooting stars, Orquídea rushed them inside, and Martin mixed up a lemonade that was ice-cold and tasted bitter and sweet and perfect.
The pressure behind Marimar’s belly button returned. She was overcome with the sensation that something was about to end and there was nothing she could do to stop it.
“This is depressing, and she’s not even dead yet.” Rey wedged another cigarette between his dry lips. This time his hands shook as he cranked the lighter’s sparkwheel.
Marimar wanted to laugh, but the crowd gathered in front of the homestead gave her pause. She rem
embered Orquidea’s stories of angry villagers who tried, and failed, to run her out of town when she and her late grandfather had arrived. But this wasn’t a horde of strangers. This was her family.
“Why is everyone standing outside?” she asked.
Rey looked at his watch. The invitation said no earlier than 1:04 p.m., true solar noon. Orquídea was punctual, yet it was nearly three.
At the end of the road, nestled at the junction of surrounding hills, the ranch resembled a toy house with dozens of tiny dolls gathered around. If Marimar closed her eyes, she could picture everything within its walls. The floorboards that groaned in the middle of the night, as if the wood was still alive and trying to stretch free. Tall candles and rivers of wax melting into every crack they could find. Great open windows that let in the sweet smell of grass and hay and flowers. Fat chickens and pigs Marimar and Rey tormented while their mothers, Pena and Parcha, tended to the gardens. Back then, the ranch was palatial. Their own private world among the sky and mountains, and Orquídea Divina was the queen of it all.
Marimar swatted at a dragonfly that kept buzzing around her head. Rey puffed out his cigarette smoke and it took on the shape of a hummingbird.
The final stretch of the road was steep, the wind at their backs reaching out like hands and pushing them the rest of the way. When they were little, they’d race and roll down. Now they were trying to keep their balance, feet dashing until they landed in front of the ranch, where aunts and uncles and cousins they hadn’t seen in years waited.
Seeing them all like this was a unique experience. They weren’t the kind of family that celebrated holidays, except for the anniversary of Orquídea’s arrival to Four Rivers. It was her grandmother’s version of New Year’s, which she gave silly names to. The Year of the Apricot. The Year of the Chupacabra. Once, she’d let her uncle Caleb Jr. name the year, and he’d chosen the Year of the Pterodactyl because of his dinosaur phase. Marimar removed the invitation from her back pocket and unfolded it. She traced the words the Year of the Hummingbird. Orquídea’s favorite bird.
The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina Page 5
