by Mary Alice
She was a wisp of a woman, so frail it looked like a gust of wind could blow her away, yet there was a tensile strength in her straight-backed carriage, like that of a dancer. Her soft, brown hair was long and fell in waves almost to the waist of her dowdy, blue floral dress. There was something familiar about her features. Luz thought she had to be some relative and she offered a small smile. The woman seemed surprised by it but her eyes lit up and she returned a shaky smile.
The tension in the room thickened as everyone stood in awkward stillness, staring at Luz with uneasy smiles on their faces. Luz felt her muscles bow up in the undercurrent. These two clearly were too old to be her cousins. Maybe an aunt and her husband? She looked to Tía Maria, expecting her to make introductions, but her aunt stayed in the background with her eyes glued to the other woman in the room.
The tall man put his hand on the woman’s shoulder and squeezed it. The woman startled slightly and looked back at him. Then she nodded and, with her gaze on Luz, walked a few steps toward her. Instinctively, Luz took a step back. The woman stopped advancing. Her eyes were filled with apprehension as her gaze swept over Luz’s face, as though memorizing each detail. She seemed to tremble with the effort.
Meanwhile Maria, unable to stand the tension a moment longer, rushed to the other woman’s side. “She looks like Mami, doesn’t she?”
The woman’s smile was bittersweet and she nodded her head.
Luz’s attention sharpened on the word Mami. “You knew my grandmother?” she asked her.
“Very well,” she replied. Her voice was calm and easy on the ear. “And you, of course, are Luz.”
“Yes.”
“¿Me conoces? Do you know who I am?”
The voice, the expression . . . Luz sensed she knew the answer, but she couldn’t quite grasp it. She shook her head tentatively. “No.”
Disappointment flickered in the woman’s eyes, replaced as quickly with understanding. “Luz,” she began, then hesitated. “Luz, I’m your mother.”
Luz heard the words but they didn’t make sense. “What?”
“It’s true,” Tía Maria interjected. “Honey, this is Mariposa. Your mother.”
Luz shook her head. “No,” she blurted. “No, that’s not possible. My mother is dead.”
“No, I’m not dead,” the woman said. “I’m here.”
Luz could only shake her head in denial. She felt like her head was spinning. The woman reached out to her but Luz recoiled, stepping back. “What’s going on here?” she cried accusingly. “Why are you saying that?” Her gaze swept from this woman, to her aunt, and finally to Sully. “Why are you doing this? Abuela told me my mother was dead!”
Everyone started speaking then, giving explanations that sounded to her ears like a garble of noise swirling around her. Mariposa, mother, Luz, true . . . Luz put her hands to her ears and closed her eyes. Everyone began pressing closer. Hands were touching her.
“Stop!” she shouted, squeezing her eyes tight. Immediately the room fell silent. Luz opened her eyes and saw everyone looking at her with expectant expressions. It was all too much. She turned on her heel and ran to the front door. She had to get away, to get some fresh air. She fumbled with the handle, but she couldn’t get the door to open. She pounded the wood and cried, “Let me out of here!”
Sully ran to her side. “Give us a minute,” he ordered everyone, putting his arm out to ward them off. “I’ve got this.”
Sully turned the handle and opened the door. Luz rushed out, escaping the madness, gulping huge mouthfuls of air as she ran to the curb. She ran to El Toro, where she could hide and feel safe. She yanked the door but it was locked. Her purse was in the house. Defeated, she wrapped her arms tight around herself and bent over, ravaged by the fulcrum of shock and pain that raged inside of her.
Then Sully was there. His arms were around her, familiar and strong, pressing her close against his chest. She’d forgotten how safe she felt in his arms and clung to him. He didn’t talk. He didn’t need to. He held on to her, an anchor while she gasped for air, adrift. She didn’t know how long they stood there, but in time she quieted enough to notice that his hands were stroking her hair. She heard his heart beating steadily in his chest.
Her lips moved against his shirt. “Sully?”
“Yeah, babe.”
“What’s going on? What are you doing here?”
“Oh, man, Luz.” He sighed. “Where do I begin? It’s been a crazy couple of days. But first, how are you? That’s what matters most.”
She gave a short laugh. “I don’t know.”
“Okay. Fair answer.” He paused, then began again. “A couple of days ago I was in your house doing the stuff you asked me to do when your phone rang. At first I thought it was you and listened in. Then I heard this woman talking on the answering machine, saying ‘Mami.’ It wasn’t long before I figured out she didn’t know that Abuela died. I thought she was your aunt, so I grabbed the phone, right? But she’d already hung up. So I got her number from the phone ID and called her right back.
“It wasn’t your aunt. But when she said she was your mother it didn’t make any sense. You told me your mother was dead. That’s when I knew something was out of whack. All I could think of was you driving out here and hell, Luz. I didn’t want you walking blind into all this. All alone. But I couldn’t reach you. So I did the only thing I could think of. I got on a plane and came down here.”
“To be with me.”
“I told you. I’d be here if you needed me. Wherever you were.”
She paused, letting that sink in and feeling the strength of his love for her warming the chill in her heart.
“So,” she said, then swallowed. She couldn’t push the words out. “So, that woman is my mother?”
“Looks like it.”
She brought her fist to her mouth. How could her mother be alive? Her mind wouldn’t accept it. Abuela had told her she was dead. All these years . . . But even as she denied it, a small voice cried from deep within, trembling with hope and wonder: Could it be possible? Joy at the possibility, fear that it could be true, swirled inside of her, making her feel dizzy.
She leaned back to look into Sully’s face. He returned her gaze, his blue eyes steady and sure. He had her in his arms again and was not letting her go. Again she rested her head on his chest.
“My mother is alive,” she said more calmly. Saying the words aloud, hearing them, helped her accept the truth.
“Yes.”
“But, Sully, where has she been all these years?”
“I think that’s something you should ask her.”
Luz shook her head, feeling a panic rise up in her chest at confronting the woman. “No. I don’t want to talk to her. I’m not ready yet. I don’t know what to say!”
He patted her shoulder consolingly. “I can understand that,” he said. “But if it’s any consolation, I think she’s more afraid than you are. Luz, think. You’ve always talked about how much you missed your mother. How you wanted to know more about her.”
“I thought she was dead.”
“But she’s not! She’s alive. All you ever dreamed about is standing in that room.”
Luz turned her head to look across the scrubby, weed-strewn yard to the house. The distance seemed too far.
“I’ll come with you,” he said, cajoling. “You won’t be alone.”
She hesitated, feeling a stubborn anger that wanted to dig in, to turn her back on the woman who had turned her back on her.
“Just for a little while.”
“Maybe just for a little while,” she said reluctantly. “I have to get Serena.”
“You can leave whenever you want. Just give me the word and we’re outta there.” He released her and took a step back. He held her shoulders and gave her a gentle shake. “Are you ready?”
She nodded and straightened, smoothing out her hair. Sully wrapped an arm around her and they began walking toward the house, so close that they were bumping hips. When they
reached the front door her hand paused on the door handle and she looked up at Sully.
“It was you who told them that Abuela died.”
“Yeah. It was hard, but I did it for you.”
All conversation ceased when Luz walked back into the room. She felt Sully’s strength beside her even as he let his hand slide from her shoulder so she could stand alone. Tía Maria sat in the great red chair, stroking Serena, who was perched on the cushion of her belly, her nose delicately resting between her paws in repose. She didn’t jump up when Luz walked in, but merely raised her gaze and watched.
The tall man, whose name Luz still didn’t know, stood beside the woman she now knew was her mother. Luz took a moment to look at her, to search her face and features for anything that might trigger some memory.
It was her age that had fooled her. In the photographs Mariposa was a dewy, exuberant young woman. She had Abuela’s high cheekbones, as Luz did. But Mariposa’s other features were softer, more European, like those of her father, Hector. It occurred to Luz that it was only the photographs she could refer to. No personal memory of her mother came to mind. None at all. That harsh reality struck her as suddenly very sad and she felt her eyes moisten.
Luz also saw Mariposa’s fragility. She looked like she was holding herself together by a very slender thread. Luz didn’t know what had happened to her mother during all those years she was gone, but it was clear that she was wounded.
But so was she, Luz decided, and lifted her chin in indignation. “Where were you?” she demanded.
Mariposa straightened as though struck, but she sucked in her breath and moved closer, grasping at the opening to a first conversation. She clasped her hands tight before her, seemingly gathering her words. “That is a very long, very difficult story,” she began. “One I’m not proud of.”
“I’m not a little girl anymore,” Luz said, cold as ice. “You left her a long time ago. I’m grown up now. I can handle it.”
Mariposa’s hand shook as she brought it to her neck.
Tía Maria spoke up. “Luz . . .”
The tall man reached out to put his hand on Tía Maria’s arm, silencing her.
Mariposa said, “It might be true that you can handle hearing it. But I’m not sure I can handle telling it. Of course, I’ll try.” She paused, then brought her head up to look Luz in the eyes. “I left you because I am an addict.”
Luz cringed at the word. It conjured up sordid images in her mind that she shied away from.
“I have been clean for five years. Three years in prison, and two since I got out.”
“Prison?”
“Yes.”
Luz put her hands to her face, feeling numb, letting her fingers slide down her cheeks to clasp tightly at her chest. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. The mother she’d envisioned in her mind, the perfect woman of her dreams, the good mother Abuela had told stories about . . . this woman was a drug-addict ex-convict?
“Luz,” Mariposa said, coming closer.
Luz dropped her hands and returned a guarded look, unaware she had stepped back.
“Will you take a walk with me?”
“Why would I want to take a walk with you?”
“Because we need to be alone,” Mariposa replied in an even voice. “And because I always find my mind is clearer when I’m outdoors. Please?”
Luz resented that she’d discovered something that she and her mother had in common. She glanced up at the others, all of them watching intently.
“Okay,” she agreed warily.
Her mother reached out to her but Luz jerked away. “Don’t touch me.”
Immediately, Mariposa withdrew. “I’m sorry. Okay, I won’t.”
Nervously, with trepidation, they retraced the steps Luz had taken moments earlier, out the front door to the sidewalk, where they began to walk. Autumn had painted the old oaks that lined the street of the neighborhood. The sidewalk wasn’t wide but they walked side by side, their shoulders occasionally bumping. Each time she felt the brush Luz tightened her shoulders and drew away.
They walked in silence, allowing the pieces to settle in their minds like the leaves floating from trees to the earth. Despite the anger Luz felt toward this woman for leaving her all those many years ago, she couldn’t deny the girlish wonder she felt at the realization that the woman walking at her side was her mother. It seemed impossible. Unreal, like she was walking in her own dream.
Mariposa had a long stride but she slowed to keep pace with Luz. “You’ve grown up to be a lovely young woman,” she told her.
“You can thank Abuela for that,” Luz replied crisply.
“I wish I could.”
“You could have if you’d bothered to call her. It’s too late now, isn’t it?”
Mariposa walked in silence several steps before she answered raggedly, “I know. I have to live with that.”
Luz refused to feel sorry for her. Yet she realized in that moment that she had power over this woman. Each word was a land mine.
“Why were you in prison?” Luz asked.
“For trafficking drugs.”
“Trafficking? You didn’t just take drugs. You sold them, too?” she asked bitterly.
Mariposa didn’t flinch. “Technically, I carried them. Across the border. I was what they called a mule. I’ve done all sorts of things, most of them unpleasant. Do you want me to tell you all of them now? Or is it enough to say an addict does whatever she has to, to get the drugs? I deserved to go to prison. I served my time. I’ve been clean for five years.”
Luz stopped walking and clenched her fists at her sides. “Why didn’t you come home?” she cried. “Abuela would’ve helped you. We both would have.”
Mariposa stopped and closed her eyes. “There’s no way I can explain to you the irrational savageness of addiction. I . . . I didn’t see the way out.”
“But you said you were clean now?”
“Yes. After I got out of prison, I went directly into therapy. It took me a long time just to get through a day without using. A day turned into a week. A week into a month. A month into a year. When I felt strong enough, I tried to contact you.”
“Why bother?” she said bitterly. “After all those years?”
“To ask . . . no, to beg for your forgiveness.”
Luz wrapped her arms around her chest and looked away. Her jaw was locked in fury. There was no way she could forgive her. How dare she ask her to? Did she think it would be so easy? Luz refused to feel sorry for this woman—Mariposa. She would never call her mother again. A part of her wanted her to suffer even a fraction of the pain she’d caused her and Abuela.
Abuela . . . A new thought came to Luz, sudden and piercing. “Did Abuela know you were alive?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why would she tell me you were dead?” Luz cried. The possibility of Abuela’s betrayal ravaged her more than anything else and sent her emotions skyrocketing. “Why would she lie to me?”
“She didn’t lie!” Mariposa cried in defense of her mother. Color flooded her face. “She didn’t know! That was the hell I put her in. All those years, she didn’t know if I was alive or dead. I’m sure, knowing her, she didn’t want to put you in that same hell of not knowing. You were just a little girl when I left. She needed something to tell you. And later, as the years went by, she must have believed it to be true.”
Luz turned her head to fix her gaze on some point in the distance. She could believe that about Abuela. It would be like her to protect her. Abuela’s strange behavior before she died, her determination to come to San Antonio, her cryptic words—There is much you do not know about Mariposa—came back to Luz now.
“Did she ever know the truth?” she asked, not looking at Mariposa. “That you were alive?”
“I think, just before she died, she did. I asked Maria to call her for me. To tell her that I wanted to see her. I thought it might come easier that way, but it was more that I was afraid. While she was on the phone with
Maria, you came into the room. Mami—Abuela—didn’t want you to hear the truth on the phone like that so she took Maria’s number and told her she’d call her back. But she never did. I thought it was because she didn’t want to talk to me. But now, I think she died soon after that call.”
Luz saw in her mind’s eye the scribbled phone number in the back of the book and it all made sense now. Abuela had to have written the number down in haste when she’d walked into the room. The sequence of events was falling into place. “Abuela never told me Tía Maria called.”
“None of that matters now,” Mariposa said in a broken voice. “I should’ve called. If I’d had the courage, I might have had the chance to hear her voice. Once before . . . I could have asked her forgiveness.”
Luz turned her head to see Mariposa standing with her head bent, her face twisted in unspeakable agony. In all her dreams and imaginings, she’d never wondered what her mother would look like crying. She couldn’t bear it.
“Mariposa,” she said, using her name for the first time. “Abuela would’ve forgiven you. I know she loved you. She spoke of you with such tenderness. She was your mother. And there’s nothing stronger than a mother’s love.” She felt a sudden stab of hurt and couldn’t help herself from adding, “Or, that’s what I hear anyway.”
Mariposa wiped her eyes. “I deserve that.”
Luz looked at her feet as the seconds ticked by, feeling bad for the dig. She didn’t like kicking someone when she was already down. “What I meant was I know she would have forgiven you. Or already did. Abuela was coming to see you.”
Mariposa’s head shot up and the eagerness in her wet eyes was painful to behold. “She was?”
Luz nodded. “She was the one who wanted to come on this trip. Not me. You should’ve seen her. Right after the phone call from Tía Maria she was like a woman possessed, making all these plans, getting maps. I’d never seen her so hell-bent on doing something. She even bought the car! Spent every dime she had on it.” She snorted. “She’d saved money under her mattress.”
A laugh burst from Mariposa’s lips. She shot her hand up to cover her mouth and from behind her fingers Luz saw the first real smile blossom across her tear-streaked face.
