by Mary Alice
This next photograph was taken at Tía Maria’s house in San Antonio. Her aunt was sitting in her favorite plush red chair, smiling ecstatically with Serena poised daintily in her ample lap. Luz understood loneliness too well not to let Tía Maria keep the dog she adored. And it was never her decision, anyway. It was easy to see that Serena was in dog heaven and had chosen her forever home.
Luz finally understood how Abuela felt when she looked at the photo albums and told Luz stories about the living family members as well as the dead. They were all real personalities in her heart and mind, not meaningless names attached to faces in an album. Just as families told stories about their departed loved ones on the Day of the Dead, Abuela had kept her family close by telling and retelling stories and anecdotes, interweaving them with her stories about Mariposa and Luz to create one long, continuous thread.
Abuela had been right about so many things. Even El Toro, Luz thought with a chuckle. That little car had heart and had carried them all the way to Mexico and back. Luz had left the car with Mariposa. That little VW Bug had served her well. It had been her chrysalis on this journey and now she could leave it behind and fly home.
Home.
The truth was, Luz was eager to go home and to Sully. A month ago she couldn’t wait to leave what she’d thought was a stale and uneventful life, one that trapped her. But in the light of her journey she’d realized it wasn’t the place that had changed, but her heart.
During some of her loneliest moments on this epic journey she’d thought of the little bungalow on Milwaukee’s south side with rooms the colors of oranges and limes. In her mind it was a place of refuge. Luz could decide in the future whether to keep the house or sell it. She’d talk to Margaret and apply for scholarships and grants so she could return to school. She had plans to make. The notion of starting this next phase of her life, free from obstacles, was empowering.
Maybe not start over. Maybe just start fresh.
In the spring her mother would fly in and together they would continue Abuela’s garden. They’d plant milkweed and monarch nectar flowers. She would not spray pesticides or weed killer. Like her grandmother and her mother before her, she would raise the caterpillars to chrysalis. She would share the miracle of metamorphosis with the neighborhood children. And in the fall she would help tag the butterflies as Billy had taught her to do, and hopefully those monarchs would journey across the continent to the sanctuaries in Mexico.
Her little garden would be her own sanctuary and thus a vital cog in the butterfly’s cycle of migration. After all, she’d stood in the Sacred Circle and danced with the butterflies. She could do no less.
She brought to mind the story of the goddesses who sacrificed themselves to bring light to the world. And her recurring dream of the faceless, floating goddess who she’d thought was her mother. She no longer had that dream, but Luz understood that Abuela had wanted her to believe in goddesses.
And she did. Luz smiled, thinking of the three she’d met on this journey—Ofelia, Stacie, and Margaret. She imagined Margaret chasing monarchs with Billy in the mountain sanctuaries, diligently writing notes in her observation books. Stacie hitching a star to her next destination. And Ofelia, cradling her daughter at her breast, having found her family at last. Goddesses were everywhere, if you looked for them.
Abuela had told Luz the stories she thought a young girl should hear about her mother. But Luz preferred the real-life story of Mariposa. Her mother was a stronger, fiercer heroine than any naive fairy-tale princess for having suffered, fallen, endured the harsh realities of experience, and persevered.
And now Luz was free to begin her own story. She was no longer bogged down by missing chapters in her past. She wanted to write new pages that she hoped would include Sully and her mother. And her story would begin with the word yes!
Luz looked out the window at the landscape far, far below. She was retracing her route across the Great Plains states where she had chased butterflies and dreams. It seemed so long ago. She was no longer the uncertain young caterpillar. She felt as though she’d passed through the darkness of her chrysalis into a new world. Her spirit had been awakened. She understood that in every life there was death and rebirth and continuity. She accepted the challenge of her own transformation.
She was the butterfly. And she was flying home.
