Coco Middle Grade Novel

by Diana Lopez

  Every traveler has a problem, but no one seems as upset as the woman they’re walking toward. She’s in the far corner of the room, wearing a purple dress and a shoemaker’s apron. She is not shy about ordering people around. “I demand to speak to the person in charge!”

  A beleaguered caseworker cringes. “I’m sorry, señora. It says here no one put up your photo.”

  The angry traveler puts her hands on her hips as she coldly eyes the worker’s old desktop computer. “My family always—always—puts my photo on the ofrenda! That devil box tells you nothing but lies!” In a swift movement she removes her shoe, and when she smacks the computer, Miguel can’t help thinking about Abuelita slapping the mariachi. That’s when he sees it. This must be…

  “Mamá Imelda?” Papá Julio says.

  She turns her shoe on Papá Julio, who steps back and yelps. Luckily, she recognizes him before she strikes. “¡Oh, mi familia! Tell this woman and her devil box that my photo is on the ofrenda.”

  Papá Julio hangs his head. “Well, we never made it to the ofrenda.”

  “What?!”

  “We ran into, um…um…”

  Mamá Imelda’s eyes fall on Miguel, and as they gaze at each other, Miguel remembers her photo. She is the skeletal version of the woman who held young Coco on her lap.

  “Miguel?” she gasps.

  “Mamá Imelda?” He’s not sure if he’s supposed to hug her, shake her hand, or bow as if greeting royalty. Before he can find out, she says, “What is going on?”

  Just then, a side door opens and a clerk peeks in. “You the Rivera family?”

  Before they can answer, the computer short-circuits. “That’s what it gets for telling lies,” Mamá Imelda says with a satisfied look on her face. “C’mon,” she urges, following the clerk to his corner office.

  The door closes behind them, muffling the chaos of the outer room. Most of the space is in shadows, but banker lamps light the desk and reveal boxes, papers, and dusty cabinets. Through the tall windows, Miguel spots the colorful lights of the city, and occasionally a spotlight sweeps across the room.

  “Well, you’re cursed,” says the clerk.

  “What?!” Miguel exclaims. He always suspected it, but this is still terrible news.

  The clerk flips through the accordion folds of a massive printout. “I pulled the record and it says here that you, uhh—Ooo-boy!—you robbed a grave?!”

  The family gasps.

  “We’ve raised a monster!” Tía Victoria cries.

  “And of all nights,” the clerk adds. “Día de los Muertos is a night to give to the dead. You stole from the dead.”

  “But I wasn’t stealing the guitar!” Miguel says in self-defense.

  “Guitar?” Mamá Imelda’s tone suggests it’s a dirty word.

  “It was my great-great-grandfather’s,” Miguel continues. “He would have wanted me to have it.”

  “Ah-ah-ah!” Mamá Imelda interjects. “We do not speak of that…that musician!” She cannot hide the disgust in her voice. “He is dead to this family!”

  “Uh, you’re all dead,” Miguel says.

  Dante stands on his back legs, and his front paws reach for the clerk’s offering from the Land of the Living, a bowl of sweets on the desk.

  “Achoo!” The clerk sneezes. “I am sorry. Whose alebrije is that?”

  Miguel tries to pull Dante away. “That’s just Dante.”

  “He sure doesn’t look like an alebrije,” Tía Rosita says, gesturing toward the windows, where fantastical creatures flutter outside.

  “He just looks like a plain old dog,” Tío Oscar says.

  “Or a sausage someone dropped in a barbershop,” finishes Tío Felipe.

  “Whatever he is,” the clerk says, “I am—achoo!—terribly allergic.”

  “But Dante doesn’t have any hair,” Miguel points out.

  “And I don’t have a nose, and yet here we are. Achoo!”

  Mamá Imelda quickly gets them back to the subject. “But none of this explains why I couldn’t cross over,” she says.

  Then Miguel remembers what Tía Rosita had told him earlier. In order to cross the Marigold Bridge, your picture has to be on someone’s ofrenda. Mamá Imelda is right. Her family always puts out her photo, but at the moment, that photo is in Miguel’s pocket. He reaches in and sheepishly pulls it out.

  “Oh…that…”

  “What did you do?” Mamá Imelda asks when she sees the folded picture in his hands.

  Miguel wishes he could put it back in his pocket, but there’s no turning back now. He unfolds it and the whole family gasps.

  “You took my photo off the ofrenda?”

  “It was an accident!” Miguel says.

  Mamá Imelda has no time for explanations. She turns to the clerk. “How do we send him back?”

  “Well, since it’s a family matter…” The clerk flips through pages in a book of rules and proceedings. Finally, he spots the answer. “The way to undo a family curse is to get your family’s blessing.”

  “That’s it?” Miguel can’t believe how easy it sounds.

  “Get your family’s blessing, and everything should go back to normal. But you gotta do it by sunrise.”

  “What happens at sunrise?” Miguel asks.

  Suddenly, Papá Julio’s eyes widen. “Oh, no! Your hand!”

  Miguel looks at his hand. The tip of one of his fingers is starting to turn skeletal. How can this be? Suddenly, he knows the truth: if he doesn’t return by sunrise, he’ll turn into a skeleton! Miguel goes pale with shock, and he gets woozy. He’s about to faint when Papá Julio catches him.

  “Are you okay, m’ijo?”

  Miguel nods, even though he is definitely not okay.

  “But not to worry,” the clerk says, ignoring the panicked expression on Miguel’s face. “Your family’s here. You can get your blessing right now.” He kneels next to Tía Rosita, searching for something. “Cempasúchil, cempasúchil,” he calls, as if beckoning a pet instead of a marigold. “Aha! Perdón, señora.” Tía Rosita titters delightedly as the clerk pulls a marigold petal from the hem of her dress.

  Meanwhile, Tía Victoria crosses her arms and scoffs.

  The clerk hands the petal to Mamá Imelda. “Now, you look at the living and say his name.”

  Mamá Imelda does as directed. “Miguel,” she says, looking at him with kindness and love in spite of all the trouble he’s caused.

  The clerk smiles. “Nailed it. Now say: I give you my blessing.”

  “I give you my blessing.”

  The marigold petal glows in her fingers. Miguel feels hopeful. This is going to work. It must! He’s about to go home.…But Mamá Imelda isn’t finished.

  “I give you my blessing to go home.”

  The glow of the marigold petal surges.

  “To be a good boy.”

  It gets even brighter.

  “To put my photo back on the ofrenda, and…” She pauses, as if making a decision. “And to never play music again.”

  The petal surges one last time.

  “What?” Miguel pleads to the clerk. “She can’t do that!”

  “Well, technically she can add any conditions she wants.”

  Miguel stares her down, desperately wanting to challenge the rule that she has enforced for so many years, that she keeps enforcing even from the Land of the Dead. But he’s no match for Mamá Imelda’s conviction. She’s firm in her resolve.

  “Fine,” Miguel mutters.

  The clerk nods, pleased. “Then,” he says to Imelda, “you hand the petal to Miguel.”

  She offers it to him, and he hesitates. Can he really live without music? But if he doesn’t grab the flower, he’ll turn into a skeleton. He must accept her condition. He reaches, his hand trembling because he’s not sure what’s going to happen next. But then, the minute he grabs the petal—whoosh! He disappears!

  Miguel is transported to Ernesto de la Cruz’s mausoleum by a whirlwind of petals. Once they settle on the grou
nd, he checks his hands. They’re back to normal! Plus, he isn’t transparent anymore. He slaps his cheeks, happy to feel the stings. Then he bumps his hips against the walls. He’s as solid as they are! He runs to the window and peeks out. “No skeletons!” he cheers, his voice echoing.

  He laughs, relieved. He’s about to run home and place Mamá Imelda’s photo on the ofrenda before Día de los Muertos is over, but then…

  He spots de la Cruz’s guitar. He aches to touch it, imagining little dents in his fingers from pressing the strings. Surely there’s time for the talent show and the ofrenda. He knows he shouldn’t disobey Mamá Imelda, but how would she know? He’s in the Land of the Living, and she’s in the Land of the Dead. Even if she finds out, it’ll be years before Miguel sees her again, years for her to forget.

  He gets a mischievous smile and grabs the guitar. “Mariachi Plaza, here I come!” he says, taking two steps toward the door before—whoosh!

  Another whirlwind of marigolds returns him to the clerk’s office, startling the family. They turn toward Miguel, his hands still in the position of holding the guitar. Miguel glances down. His hands are empty, and once again, he sees the skeletal tip of a finger. It’s as if he never left.

  “Two seconds and you already break your promise?” Mamá Imelda scolds.

  “This isn’t fair,” Miguel cries. “It’s my life! You already had yours!”

  She takes a deep breath, and he can tell she’s about to say something she’s repeated many times before. “Let me tell you about my life,” she begins. “When I was a young woman, I was happily married until the day—”

  “I know. I know,” Miguel says. “I’ve been hearing this story my whole life.”

  “That’s good,” she says, softening. “You should know your history. The events of the past have made us who we are today.” She gestures to her family, and they nod.

  “I understand why you banned music,” Miguel says, “but you can’t let one person ruin it for everybody. Music has good qualities, too. It makes people happy. It makes them fall in love.”

  “This is true,” Papá Julio says. “I met Coco at los bailes—”

  “Shoes,” Mamá Imelda interrupts, “can also make people fall in love. Just ask your abuelita and Papá Franco.”

  “He never got blisters,” Tía Victoria says.

  “And,” Mamá Imelda continues, “making shoes puts food on the table and a roof over your head.”

  “This is also true,” Papá Julio says. “We never went hungry and we always had a roof. It never leaked.”

  “But—” Miguel begins.

  Mamá Imelda holds out her hand. “Ah-ah-ah. Let me finish. Music causes nothing but trouble. Not only did my good-for-nothing husband leave his familia, but any time someone is tempted by music, something bad happens. Our distant cousin used his money to buy a trumpet instead of a coat. Winter came, and what could he do to keep warm? He had to wrap himself in a blanket that he kept tripping over. When Papá Julio first came to our shop, he couldn’t stop humming songs, and he smashed his finger in the doorway because he was too distracted by the memory of music.” Papá Julio holds up a finger, and sure enough, it’s a little crooked. “So you see, music brings nothing but pain to this family,” Mamá Imelda says.

  Miguel realizes that Mamá Imelda is as stubbornly against music as he is for it. She will never give her blessing without conditions. For a moment, he feels utterly defeated, but then he gets an idea. After all, Mamá Imelda isn’t the only ancestor in the room. He grabs a marigold petal from the floor and offers it to his great-grandfather. “Papá Julio, I ask for your blessing.”

  The old man looks at Mamá Imelda, who hardens her brow. Cowed, he shakes his head and pulls down his hat.

  “Tía Rosita?” Miguel tries. “Oscar, Felipe? Tía Victoria?”

  They all refuse the petal and shake their heads.

  “Don’t make this hard, m’ijo,” Mamá Imelda says. “You go home my way or no way.”

  “You really hate music that much?”

  “I will not let you go down the same path he did.”

  Miguel turns away from the family and pulls out the photo. “The same path he did,” he mutters to himself as he looks at the man with the missing face. De la Cruz’s words echo in his head again: Seize your moment. Music is in my blood.

  And it’s in my blood, too, Miguel thinks. He runs his skeletal finger along the guitar in the photo. “He’s family,” Miguel whispers to himself.

  “Listen to your mamá Imelda,” Tía Victoria urges.

  “She’s just looking out for you,” says Tío Oscar.

  “Be reasonable,” Tía Rosita suggests.

  Miguel slowly backs toward the door. “Con permiso. I need to visit the restroom. Be right back!”

  He steps out and then he hears the clerk. “Uhh, should we tell him there are no restrooms in the Land of the Dead?”

  He doesn’t have a chance to hear his family’s answer, because he runs away. They aren’t the only people he’s related to. He can go to someone else, and this person will give a blessing for everything Miguel wants—a trip back home and music!

  By the time Coco and Julio celebrated their tenth wedding anniversary, they were skilled shoemakers. Julio took great pride in his work. He even invited his sister, Rosita, to join them in the workshop. For Coco, making shoes was a chore no different from sweeping the patio or hanging sheets on the clothesline.

  Still, she enjoyed her hours in the shoemaking shop, because mixed with the factory sounds were the voices and laughter of Coco’s twin uncles, her mother, her husband, her sister-in-law, and her two daughters, Victoria and Elena, who did their part by fetching water or picking up scraps that fell to the floor. Even Mamá Imelda’s cat hung around, playing hide-and-seek by curling in dark corners or trotting across the overhead beams.

  Coco glanced around the shop, smiling as she watched her mother going over the accounts, her uncles reviewing sketches for new designs, and Rosita teaching Victoria how to count while they inventoried the supplies. Coco was delighted to see her daughters surrounded by people who loved them. Everyone played a role in their care, even the uncles who made toys out of shoes that, for some reason or other, didn’t pass Mamá Imelda’s inspection. One time they put wheels on a pair of wingtips so the girls could push them around like toy cars. Another time they added long straps to ankle boots, and the girls carried them like purses. When they made slippers for the girls, they used buttons and ribbons to add faces, and instead of wearing them, the girls used them as dolls.

  Coco’s heart warmed when she spotted Julio with Elena. She was the youngest daughter, but she had the most passion for making shoes.

  “Like this,” Julio said, licking a piece of thread and guiding it through a needle.

  Elena had her own needle and thread. She squinted as she aimed for the tiny hole. She kept missing, but instead of giving up, she tried harder, biting her lower lip in concentration. When she finally succeeded, Julio clapped proudly.

  “Te amo, Papá,” Elena said, and he kissed her forehead in response.

  Now that she had children of her own, Coco understood Mamá Imelda’s strict rules. Parents often did know best, and they had to make decisions to protect their family, like when Coco had banned her girls from running in the workshop so they wouldn’t trip over tools.

  Still, when Julio taught them a new skill, Coco wondered about her own father’s lessons. When Julio played with them, Coco wondered about the games she and her father had played. Even though her memory of him was hazy, she could still remember his voice and how he’d made her feel—happy and loved—the same emotions she felt when she heard music.

  Coco sighed and got back to work. As she carefully carved a fleur-de-lis onto leather for some western boots, Tío Oscar peeked over her shoulder and gave an approving nod. “Don’t forget to keep it damp,” he said. She listened, dipping a sponge in a bucket and squeezing the excess water before moistening the leather. It was importan
t to keep it damp, but not wet.

  Once she finished carving with the swivel knife, she took the beveler tool and lightly tapped it along the design to smooth out the edges. It took a while, but eventually she finished. Then she stood up and did a few shoulder rolls to release the tension from hunching over the table so long. One down, one to go, she thought, because every design had to be carved twice to make a pair of shoes.

  “I’m going to take a break and stretch my legs,” Coco announced. “I’ll bring some lemonade when I get back.”

  “We’ll be waiting,” the uncles said.

  “Don’t add too much sugar,” Mamá Imelda advised.

  Coco knew the family assumed that “stretching her legs” meant taking a long walk, but she had another idea. She snuck around the compound, pulled a tall wooden box against the wall, and used it to climb into an attic space. She had discovered the hideout years before. It was her secret, the only place where she could be herself.

  She wanted to follow her mother’s rules, but she couldn’t ignore the rhythms that stirred in her heart, so she took off her work boots and put on the slippers she kept there. They fit snugly, and when she stood, she could feel the ridges on the floorboards.

  She climbed back out of the attic and returned to the courtyard. After making sure she was alone, she tuned out the wind chimes and the distant workshop sounds, focusing instead on the memory of her father’s voice as he played the guitar and sang.

  Little by little, she began to dance, first swaying, then stepping side to side, and finally twirling and hopping. She made wide circles with her arms and shook her hips, the whole time imagining herself in a dance studio with her father on the stage. She began to spin—slow, slow, then speeding up, twirling faster and faster! She became a joyous blur of movement as she hopped onto the ledge of a water fountain, skipping across it and twirling again, but then—whoosh!—she lost her balance!

  “Ahh!” Coco shrieked as she fell to the ground.

  She felt dazed at first, and when she shook off the dirt, she discovered that she had scraped her elbow and sprained her ankle. “Ow, ow,” she said at the throbbing pain.