by A. C. Wise
Esmeralda opens one of the drawers under her bed, pushing scarves and belts aside until she finds the photograph tucked away at the bottom. She brushes her fingers across its surface. She snuck downstairs after her mother, grandmother, and sister had gone to bed, and retrieved the photograph from the trash under the sink. She’d never seen her grandmother and mother argue quite like that before, and she had to know. Touching the photograph now, she almost expects to find coffee grounds and the remnants of broken glass dusting her fingertips, but they come away clean.
The photograph is black and white, taken when her mother was only sixteen. The house in the background is Esmeralda’s grandparents’, the rear fin of her grandfather’s Cadillac, his pride and joy, just visible at the left of the frame. A young man stands with his arm around her mother’s shoulders. They’re both wearing uniforms from their high school tennis team, her mother holding her racquet. They are both smiling, her mother’s smile shy, awkward, like she isn’t certain of her growing body yet, where the young man’s smile is easy. Yet there’s the faintest shadow, tucked into the corner of that smile, barely noticeable, except Esmeralda knows to look. The young man in the photograph—now the woman in Bunny’s office—Mamá’s brother.
Trying to reconcile the impossibility of the situation makes Esmeralda’s pulse race all over again. Her mother’s brother, the uncle she’s never met—never even knew existed for the first several years of her life beyond cryptic whispers of “shameful behavior” quickly silenced whenever Esmeralda or her sister walked in the room—is right down the hall. Should she say something? Introduce herself?
The thought makes her palms sweat. What would she even say?
“Mind telling me what that was all about?”
Startled, Esmeralda drops the photograph. Bunny stands in the doorway, one hand on the knob, the other on her hip, brow arched, waiting. Sheepish, Esmeralda retrieves the brittle square, with her mother and uncle’s faces staring up at her. She clutches the photograph hard.
“I think the woman you were talking to is my uncle. I mean, I’m not sure. I’ve never met him. Her.”
“Whoa.” Bunny’s expression changes in a blink; she steps into the room.
Esmeralda makes space for her on the bed, handing over the photograph. “That’s him with my mother when they were young.”
Esmeralda studies Bunny’s nails; it’s easier than meeting her eyes. Today they’re metallic violet, picking up the subtle hints of purple shimmering in Bunny’s dress. Esmeralda can’t help thinking of storm clouds.
“That’s not what I was expecting. You wanna talk about it?”
“It’s complicated,” Esmeralda says.
“I have time.” Bunny gives her the edge of a smile.
Esmeralda’s known Bunny the longest of any member of the Glitter Squadron. In fact, she’s known Bunny longer than almost anyone else in her life, besides family. After her parents’ divorce, her mother moved them around so much there was never time to settle down, make friends. Putting down roots was dangerous; it was only a matter of time before they were ripped up again. But things are different, the Glitter Squadron, their mansion, this is home. She can trust Bunny with this tale.
“I didn’t even know I had an uncle until I was ten,” Esmeralda says.
Bunny pats her hand and gives her an encouraging smile. Esmeralda releases a breath that’s shakier than she would like.
“When my parents got divorced, we stayed with my grandmother for a little while. It was supposed to make things easier on my mother while she took care of court stuff and finding us a new place to live. I think it made things worse though. They were both tense nearly the entire time we stayed there.”
Looking back now, Esmeralda understands. She can’t imagine living with her mother again at her age, going back home after having spent so many years building her own life. After a week, they’d be at each other’s throats, and back then they’d lived with her grandmother for at least three months. The incident with the broken picture had taken place one of the first nights they’d been there.
“One night, my mother and grandmother got into a big fight. My sister and I hid upstairs, trying to listen in, and I saw my mother take one of my grandmother’s photographs and deliberately smash it.”
Esmeralda picks up the photograph lying on the bed between them. This time, she focuses not on her uncle, but the girl beside him, her mother. Both siblings squint in the sunlight, her mother all knobby knees and elbows with none of the soft roundness she has now, still growing into her body. It’s her eyes that strike Esmeralda, unshadowed, unlined, so free of the cares that have filled them all of Esmeralda’s life.
“I couldn’t ask my mother or grandmother about it of course. But I got the whole story later from family friends.”
Esmeralda sets the photograph down again, remembering the almost gleeful expression of her grandmother’s two oldest friends, taking turns to relate the story after a few glasses of sherry. They’d told it as if they were discussing characters in a telenovela, and not real people’s heartbreak and pain.
“Eduardo was…is…barely a year older than my mother. My grandfather wanted him to take over the family tailoring business, but he wasn’t interested. He dropped out of school and traveled, picking up odd jobs, making just enough to get to his next destination. There were postcards, occasional visits home, just enough contact that everyone assumed he would settle down eventually. Then one day he turned up out of the blue and announced he was moving back to Mexico, to Juchitán in Oaxaca to live as a muxe.”
Esmeralda pauses, taking a deep breath, looking at Bunny without fully raising her head. “In Zapotec culture it isn’t…” She falters, then tries again. “Muxes are a third gender, fluid—not male or female. They simply are.”
Bunny keeps her hand on Esmeralda’s.
“There are some parts of Mexico City that are as accepting as Juchitán, at least now, but not when my grandfather grew up. He was very traditional. His idea of Mexican life was very different from the traditions and culture in Juchitán. When my uncle chose to leave, my grandfather saw it as more than just a man choosing an unnatural lifestyle, going against God, he saw it as Eduardo renouncing his family and his culture.
“He took Eduardo’s choice personally, told him he was no longer part of the family, and if he ever tried to come home, he would be treated as an intruder. My grandfather would call the police and have him thrown in jail.”
Bunny’s fingers tighten, an involuntary motion. Esmeralda shrugs, apologizing for a man she’s never met, but whose blood flows in her veins.
“My grandmother’s friends, the ones who told me the story, said he would never admit it, but Eduardo leaving broke my grandfather’s heart. I never knew him but they said he was a proud man, stubborn, but family meant everything to him. At the time Eduardo left my grandfather was very sick. He’d been hiding it from the family, and he died less than a year after Eduardo left. I think my mother blamed Eduardo for their father’s death. She never forgave him.”
“That’s some heavy stuff,” Bunny says, gaze distant for a moment, frown tugging at the corners of her mouth.
Esmeralda knows that Bunny hasn’t spoken to her own family in years. For all she knows Bunny could have a niece or a nephew out there somewhere. She can imagine that person seeing Bunny walking down the street one day and feeling the way Esmeralda feels now.
Even though she knows it isn’t the same, Esmeralda understands how Bunny must feel, how her uncle must feel. Esmeralda talks to her mother, but she’s never said one word about the Glitter Squadron. Her mother thinks Esmeralda is just an accountant, that her day job is her life, not the identity she pulls on like a sweater to hide her true self. If it had been her mother in Bunny’s office, and not her uncle, what would she have done?
“So what did Eduardo want?”
“Well.” Bunny stands, taking up what Esmeralda has come to think of as her battle pose, legs braced akimbo, chin up, body tense and ready
for motion. Maybe it’s all the talk of family, but Bunny seems more agitated than the situation requires. There is a quiver beneath her skin; all she needs is an excuse to take something down with her harpoon.
“There’s a situation with a church in your…your uncle’s community. Some construction work woke something. Now the church is haunted. Haunted galore: statues weeping blood; flickering lights; unearthly wailing. The whole shebang.”
“Perhaps it’s a miracle?” The response leaps to Esmeralda’s lips before she can stop it, tasting of bile the minute it hits her tongue. “Sorry.” Esmeralda looks down, abashed. She can almost feel rosary beads passing through her fingers—penance for backtalk, for anything Mamá or the sisters at an interminable succession of Catholic schools considered unladylike. For blasphemy like this, Esmeralda might have had her backside striped by a ruler.
“So a ghost.” She sighs. “Why did she come to us? We fight the corporeal, if not exactly the normal.”
“We do have a reputation.” Bunny grins. “Not just for saving the world, but…I mean, look at us.” With a smooth gesture, she shows off her glorious curves, the light glinting off her dress, the frosted coif of her hair.
“Point taken.” Esmeralda returns the smile, but there’s a painful edge in it. It feels like holding a piece of broken glass in her mouth, trying not to get cut. There’s so much more she wants to ask Bunny about Eduardo, jealous of even their brief interaction. With all the moving they did, family is the only thing Esmeralda has ever had to root her, but at the same time she has so little in common with hers. Eduardo might actually understand her.
Has he ever even see a picture of her, or her sister? Did he try to come to her grandmother’s funeral?
Bunny touches her shoulder, startling her. “You were a million miles away there.”
“Family.”
“I understand.” Pain flickers in Bunny’s eyes so briefly Esmeralda almost misses it—a ghost beneath Bunny’s skin darting close to the surface before disappearing again.
“I told Eduardo to come back tomorrow. At ten.” Bunny leaves the words there, pointed, before gently closing Esmeralda’s door behind her.
ESMERALDA KNOCKS BEFORE ENTERING THE PARLOR.
“Hi. Um. Hello.”
Eduardo turns from studying the glamour shots, publicity photos, and framed press clippings from the Glitter Squadron’s many exploits that decorate the wall. She clutches a beaded handbag close as her eyes light on Esmeralda, wary. Her outfit today is every bit as beautiful as the one she wore yesterday. Esmeralda admires the intricate stitching, the crisp way her skirt falls—evidence it’s been freshly pressed.
“Bunny will be along in a moment. But I wanted to talk with you.”
Esmeralda hesitates. She can’t shake the feeling that it is her mother standing in front of her, and her heart pounds. She’s tried so many times to tell her mother about the Glitter Squadron. It’s been on the tip of her tongue, but she chickens out every time, and every time she does, it hurts. She can imagine Mamá’s judgment, the way she would look at Esmeralda if she knew where her daughter was—who she was talking to—right now. Esmeralda’s stomach clenches, but she forces herself to smile.
“Please, sit. Can I get you anything? Tea? Water?”
“I’m fine, thank you.” Eduardo sits. The wariness hasn’t left his eyes; faint lines surround them, a map, tracing his life’s pain.
Esmeralda tries to reconcile the woman in front of her with the smiling youth in the picture.
“My name is Esmeralda.” She holds her breath, waiting for a flicker of recognition. But, of course, if Eduardo knows of her at all, it would be by the name on her birth certificate. “Here.” She thrusts the photograph toward him, only considering a moment too late that it might be cruel.
Eduardo stares at the picture in her hand, but doesn’t touch it, knuckles white where she grips her handbag. “Where did you get that?” Eduardo’s eyes narrow.
The impulse to flee is strong but she forces herself to stay put. Eduardo’s expression changes from suspicion to alarm, then she relaxes just a fraction, looking at Esmeralda more closely. Does she see traces of her sister, her mother, even her father in Esmeralda’s eyes, the tilt of her chin? “Silvia is my mother,” Esmeralda says. “My grandmother is Sofia.”
“You’re…?” Eduardo doesn’t finish the sentence.
“I’m your niece.”
Esmeralda’s throat tightens. Her eyes prickle, and all she can think is how Bunny will chide her for ruining her make-up if she cries. Esmeralda puts her hand to her mouth, blinking until the tears retreat. “I’m sorry. I made a mess of that. I meant to…” She shakes her head.
“You look like her.” Eduardo’s voice breaks, dropping a tone, heavy with emotion.
Eduardo stands. It startles her to realize she’s taller than her uncle.
“Let me look at you.”
Esmeralda can’t help laughing, a broken sound that is almost a sob. She half expects Eduardo to pinch her cheeks, but she only touches the air around Esmeralda’s shoulders, her arms, taking the shape of her without contact. There’s admiration in her eyes, but they’re crowded with ghosts, too. There’s so much Esmeralda wants to ask, but she barely knows where to start.
“Do I have cousins?” The moment she says it, Esmeralda is afraid it’s the wrong thing to say. The look of regret in Eduardo’s eyes in unmistakable.
“No.” But the softness in her tone forgives the question, and a bittersweet smile touches her lips. “I was married for a little while. Her name was Isabel. But it didn’t work out.”
“You have a great-nephew,” Esmeralda says. “My sister’s son. I brought a picture.” She holds it out, shy—her sister and her nephew on the very same beach where, a day later, she would meet Bunny.
This picture, Eduardo does take, studying it a moment before handing it back. The sorrow-touched smile returns, but there’s something like fondness in her eyes. Esmeralda wishes she was better at this, wishes she knew what to say. She falls back on business.
“Bunny told me about the church—.”
“You’ll help?” The hope in Eduardo’s eyes is heartbreaking.
Esmeralda takes a risk and squeezes her uncle’s hand. ”It’s what family does.”
BUNNY KNOCKS SOFTLY, AND ESMERALDA LOOKS UP. SHE’S BEEN
sitting on her bed with her knees tucked up, her e-reader propped against them. She’s read the same paragraph at least five times.
“Want some company?” Bunny holds a large bottle of Pinot grigio and two glasses etched with shooting stars.
“Thanks.” Esmeralda smoothes the blankets and pushes pillows out of the way.
Bunny pours for both of them and hands Esmeralda a glass. “How are you doing?”
“Okay. I guess. It’s a lot.” Esmeralda swirls her glass before taking a sip.
“Have you spoken to your mother yet?”
“No. And I don’t plan to. Not unless Eduardo asks me to, that is.” Esmeralda presses her lips together. They’re silent for a moment, then Esmeralda shakes her head.
“It’s funny. I was thinking about the mission, and I can’t even remember the last time I was in a church.”
“Raised Catholic?”
“Communion, confirmation, the whole thing. My mother and I had a big fight about it when I was fifteen. I told her I didn’t want to go to church anymore, and she said as long as I lived under her roof I would go and that was the end of it.”
Esmeralda feels the familiar surge of guilt at talking to Bunny about her family. Esmeralda talks to her sister almost every day, but even she doesn’t know about the Glitter Squadron for fear it will get back to their mother. More and more, Esmeralda feels the gap; only part of her is with her family when she’s with them. The rest is with the Glitter Squadron. It feels dishonest and worse, it makes her feel fractured. If she continues to pull in opposite directions, something will break.
“I envy Starlight sometimes.” Esmeralda takes anothe
r sip of her wine. “I know it sounds like a horrible thing to say, what with her mama being so sick, but they’re so close. They share everything, you know?”
Bunny nods, refilling both of their glasses without a word. She twists the bottle to ensure not a single lost drop.
“Sometimes I think the only reason I stopped going to church when I left for college was to spite my mother, and I don’t even know why. Maybe it was a belated teenage rebellion thing. I remember thinking how stupid my mother must be to believe in God. It seemed so clearly like a myth to me, and I actually pitied her.”
Esmeralda shakes her head. Bunny offers a small smile.
“Teenagers,” Bunny says. “We always think we know everything at that age.”
“It’s embarrassing. I mean how arrogant do you have be to think you have everything figured out? But it’s weird.” Esmeralda pauses. “I mean, we’ve fought aliens and werewolves. I’ve seen how big and strange the universe is, but I still can’t help thinking my mother’s beliefs are wrong. Does that make me a horrible person?”
Bunny reaches out, covering Esmeralda’s hand briefly. “Just because her beliefs are fine for her doesn’t mean they’re right for you. Have you ever told her you’ve fought wolfweres?”
Esmeralda snorts. “I thought they were werewolves.”
Bunny’s smile widens. “Oh, honey, they were pure Tex Avery wolves who thought they were man enough to take on the Squadron. Poor things.”
Bunny pats Esmeralda’s hand again. “There, see, all you needed was a little wine to cheer you up. One more glass, and you’ll be right as rain and ready for the mission.”
“Sure.” Esmeralda makes herself smile, wishing the confidence she tries to convey with the expression was real. Bunny always knows the right thing to say, but Esmeralda still can’t quite shake the doubt gnawing at the back of her mind.
