by Zoraida Córdova
MARIMAR MONTOYA KNEW they were almost at Rancho Divino when the air thickened with the rot of unturned earth and wilted wildflowers.
She’d returned to western Colorado twice in the last five years for funerals—days after her parents died and she went to live with Tía Parcha at thirteen, then two years later when Tía Parcha met an untimely fate, just like the rest. Five years and nothing had changed in these lands—not the unyielding sun, not the hungry earth, and not the tire-eating road that led all the way home.
“That’s as far as this piece of crap-o-la is getting,” Chuy said, putting the dusty red jeep in park behind a neat row of cars off the side of the road. Gaston’s Mustang was at a hasty angle, Enrique’s Lamborghini was covered up with a tarp (typical), and Tatinelly’s pink Beetle was sandwiched between two sedans.
“How the hell did Tati get that thing up here?” Marimar asked.
Chuy pulled out a pack of American Spirits and slapped them against the palm of his hand. His brown eyes rolled to the back of his head before turning to his cousin. “Maybe her magic isn’t completely gone after all.”
They sat in the car for a little while longer, the windows rolled down just enough that the wind whistled around them and dry leaves made their way between the cracks and onto Marimar’s lap. She’d been away from the city for sixteen hours and already green things—no matter how near death they were—found their way to her. As always, her power was stronger the closer she was to Rancho Divino and away from the smoke and iron of the city. She held the leaf to her nose and wished she had a book so she could press it.
“Do we have to go?” Chuy asked one last time. He turned the rearview mirror to make sure his thick, meticulously groomed dark hair was in place.
“You’ve asked that six times since we left New York and the answer is still yes,” Marimar answered, opening the door and taking the first of many steps toward Rancho Divino. She was barefoot, digging her toes into the dirt like worms.
Chuy side-eyed her, his full mouth smirking around a cigarette burning as quickly as his nerves. His eyes were drawn back to the mirror, back to the road where another car was jostling its way up the hill to fill the empty space behind their jeep.
“Ugh, Dirty Diego got an invite, too?” Marimar asked, slamming her door shut.
“The vultures descend even before the body is cold.” Chuy shook his head but marched on beside her, pulling out a white invitation bleeding black scrawl, his thumb tracing his grandmother’s shaky letters.
Come collect. Me muero. I’m dying.
* * *
When Marimar was little she used to run across the hills trying to wake the fairies that lived among the twisted gardens. Rosa Divina liked to tell stories of the winged creatures that protected the ranch with their otherworldly magics born right from the stars. Rosa Divina promised that if Marimar used her power, if she showed potential, she’d wake the fairies. But no matter how much she tried and tried, Marimar’s power would not spark, and she never saw any—there were too many bugs and dragonflies in the way. So Rosa Divina never had to keep her promise. Marimar always believed that her own lack of potential was the reason Rosa Divina didn’t take her in after her mom died.
As she marched down the winding road, arm in arm with Chuy, Marimar fought the urge to sprint into the tall grass fields and search for the winged beasties. But if the fairies had once protected the ranch, they were long gone by now.
At the sight of the family home Chuy lit his second cigarette.
“This is depressing,” he said. “I remember it being bigger.”
Chuy wasn’t wrong, but memories make things grander and more beautiful when you want to think fondly of them. At the end of the road, nestled at the junction of surrounding hills, the ranch resembled a toy house. Marimar imagined picking up the whole house between her index finger and thumb and shaking it against her ear to listen for the rattle inside. If she 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 glasses of candles that covered every available surface, rivers of wax melting into every crack it could find. Great open windows that let in the sweet smell of grass and hay and flowers. Fat chickens and pigs Marimar and Chuy tormented while their mothers, Peña and Parcha, tended to the gardens around back.
Back then the ranch was palatial. Their own private world among the sky and mountains, and Rosa Divina was the queen of it all.
“Do you think she’s really dying?” Marimar asked, batting her hand at a dragonfly that kept buzzing around her cheek. “Maybe it’s like the time she pretended to be sick so that my mom and me would move back home.”
Chuy puffed out his cigarette smoke, and it took on the shape of a bird, batting its wings toward the heavens. He smirked at his cousin. “Or like the time she said if my mother didn’t get married she’d wither away to dust.”
“Or like the time she caught you and the farm boy.”
“And then you and the farm boy’s brother.”
“Why is it always the end of the world with this family?”
Marimar shrugged because she didn’t have an answer. She had never thought of her grandmother as mortal. The Grand Rosa Divina couldn’t die. Could she? But then why else ask every living relative to gather in the family lands, handed down from generation to generation since 1857? And come collect what? The lands were to go to the eldest daughter—Peña Montoya. But Marimar’s mother was dead, so the next in line was Enrique.
“Why is everyone standing outside?” Chuy asked. The final stretch of the road was steep, the wind 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 equilibrium, feet dashing until they landed in front of the ranch, where two dozen of their closest and most distant relatives were standing around. Aunts and uncles and cousins they hadn’t seen in years, some only from faded photographs, watched Marimar and Chuy approach.
Marimar walked up to the house, a swarm of dragonflies now trailing around her. With every step her heart descended into the pit of her stomach. Her childhood home was nothing like she remembered it, and even though she was expecting some wear and tear, she was not ready for this.
Dark green ivy and vines crept between the wood panels, through shattered windows, all consuming, as if devouring the house back into the ground. Roots broke through the porch like tentacles, wrapping around the door handle to shut the way in.
And if Rosa Divina was still inside, it shut her way out.
* * *
“Grandma?” Marimar beat her fist against the door, and a splinter lodged itself into the tender side of her palm. “Gran—”
“We’ve tried that,” Enrique said, stuffing his fat hands into his trouser pockets. He was Rosa Divina’s only son, which made him Marimar’s uncle. But he was a mere ten years older than her, and hated being called anything that made him feel like he was aging. “But please, tell us what the City Dwellers would do that we haven’t tried for hours.”
Ever since she was little, he’d found a way to silence her, remind her that she was just as ordinary as he was. Maybe it was distance and time, but she wasn’t afraid of him anymore.
“Shut up, Enrique,” Marimar growled, trying to grab the root that kept the door from opening. Meanwhile, the dragonfly pests attempted to land along her arms, her wrists, the baby hairs that stuck out of her ponytail.
Enrique chuckled. “Praise the saints, you finally have a backbone.”
Marimar tried to look through the windows, but they were clouded with layers of dust. The vines shook, as if shivering in the chill of the setting sun.
“What should we do?” Tatinelly asked, her voice like the susurration of leaves on the breeze. “This little one’s starting to get hungry.”
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The years had been good to cousin Tati. She placed her hands on her pregnant belly and found a smooth boulder to sit on while they waited. Her husband—a small, thin man with sunburnt patches all over his arms—tried not to stare at the growing gathering.
“Didn’t she hide keys inside the apple tree?” Chuy asked.
“The orchard is withered,” Enrique said dismissively, but stuck out his chest, asserting command of the situation. He seemed to grow taller as the rest of the family turned to him and only him for a way into the ranch.
Marimar couldn’t even keep track of the people who kept coming down the hill and settling around the front steps like human debris. She made a mental note of the Montoyas from California, the Montoyas from Spain and the Montoyas from Mexico City. All of them checking their watches, tapping their feet, sucking their teeth. All of them ready to collect whatever prize was allocated to them and run.
Only Chuy and Marimar stood off to the side, forever and always slightly too different from the rest of their clan, just like their mothers.
“Isn’t it weird,” Chuy told her, “to think that we’re all related?”
“Cats are related to lions.”
Chuy lit up another cigarette, his hands trembling now. “Which ones are we in this scenario?”
Marimar wasn’t sure which one she’d pick, but it didn’t matter because Enrique was walking away from the group and marching around back. She nudged Chuy, and they followed him.
Lion, Marimar thought. We’re the lions.
* * *
Enrique was in the small shed behind the house. The shed was in better condition than the ranch since it wasn’t covered in vines. But when he opened the door, it came right off the hinges. He threw it off to the side, sweat making his light-brown skin shiny.
“Puta de su madre, I can’t wait to sell this slice of hell,” he said between expletives as his hand closed around what he was looking for.
“I thought your mom washed the curses out your mouth,” Chuy said, and when Enrique jumped, he smiled.
“What are you doing?” Marimar stood her ground as Enrique slung a rusted axe over his shoulder.
“I’m tired of waiting. That old witch has made my life miserable since the day she realized I’d never carry any of her godforsaken superstitions.”
“They’re not superstitions,” Marimar said, anger licking at her skin right down to her bare toes.
Enrique barked a bitter laugh. “Keep telling yourself that. There’s an evil here. That’s what got my sisters. I’m sure as hell not letting it get near me or mine.”
Chuy flicked his cigarette butt on the ground and whispered in her ear, “For the sake of the world I hope he’s sterile.”
“Come,” Marimar said, and pulled her cousin along after their uncle.
The crowd of Montoyas parted to make way for The Grand Rosa Divina’s heir. He wielded the axe high over his head as he marched upon the door. The sun was a bloody red thing sinking behind the clouds, streaks of furious pinks and oranges creating the illusion of fire.
“Stop!” Marimar shouted, but Enrique did not listen, and he brought the axe down on the roots that kept the door shut. The vines ripped, the roots twisted, but the axe was like a fist against solid brick. Enrique couldn’t stop now, so he kept hacking away at a root that petrified with every strike.
“It’d be easier to burn it to the ground,” Chuy said, looking down at his lighter. The cherry of his cigarette lit up the angles of his face.
When she was a little girl, Marimar wanted magic to be real. She wanted to conjure spirits from the ether like Rosa Divina. She wanted to pull gold right out of the earth, meld it with her bare hands just as her great-grandfather had once done. She wanted to speak to the stars like her mother, before the stars stopped speaking back and she wasn’t strong enough to bear the silence. The magic left all of them, little by little. When it was gone, there was nothing that could fill that void, and the fate of the Montoyas always ended in early graves. So, instead of grabbing hold of the last threads of that magic, they forgot it. Those who could outrun the curse left. Those who couldn’t never got far.
But Marimar didn’t want to forget. She wasn’t sure if magic was a curse or a blessing, but it was part of her. As twisted as Rosa Divina was, she survived in a world that didn’t want her and she survived the magic that claimed the lives of her family. Come collect. Me muero. That’s what Rosa Divina sent to every family member standing outside this house. Marimar was sure that not one of them had announced themselves. It was all by brute force and shouting and banging that they tried to get inside.
“Stop!” Marimar shouted, and this time, even the mountains trembled with the sound of her cry.
She made her way through the dark, and pushed Enrique aside. She stood in front of the door. She heard the night, an incandescent whisper that only happened when she was home. She heard the stars.
“I’ve come to collect.”
At her words, the roots gave way, relinquishing their hold on the door. The house released a deep sigh that shook the entire structure. Dragonflies and lightning bugs flitted in the dark open hall, their hazy glow illuminating the foyer. Floorboards peeked beneath layers of dirt, which must’ve come in with the roots and vines that broke through like stitches.
Marimar didn’t wait for the others. She knew Chuy was right behind her, and he was all she needed. They went right for the living room, where The Grand Rosa Divina liked to sit and drink mezcal by the fireplace and watch the sun set behind the mountains.
The old witch was right where she always was. Her warm brown skin cracked like the parched earth around the house, and her hair was braided into a crown around her head, still regal. Those bright brown eyes crinkled with a knowing smile. Marimar felt her own heart spike with relief and terror combined.
“Gran,” she gasped.
“Oh my saints,” Chuy said.
“It’s not polite to stare,” Rosa Divina told them, her voice strong and raspy as ever. It was the rest of her that needed some getting used to.
The Grand Rosa Divina was covered in vines—they grew straight out of her flesh like extensions of her veins, they wrapped around the high-backed upholstered chair that faced the fireplace. Rosebuds the size of pearls bloomed from the branches sprouting out of her skin. And her feet had turned into thick brown roots that tore through every part of the house and dug straight back into the earth.
* * *
For a long time all Marimar wanted was to get away from the ranch. Away from the constant reminder of her mother. Of the whispers of the night. Of the magic that teased like flint on steel but never ignited. Now all she wanted was to pick up a broomstick and sweep away the layers of dust and decay that gathered in every corner of the house. Snakes nestled around the fire, having found their way through the holes Rosa Divina’s roots were driving through the walls. Silvery spiderwebs glistened, stretching entire arachnid cities along the banister, up the stairs, and across the ceiling. Chickens and pigs still ran around the house, but they were slower than Marimar and Chuy remembered.
“How long do you think it’s been like this?” Chuy whispered as they carried brooms and trash bags down the hall.
“I’m not sure I want to know,” Marimar said.
As the rest of the family filled the house with their overnight bags, Marimar and Chuy cleaned up the living room as best they could. Three of the younger Montoyas brought every table and chair they could find. If Rosa Divina couldn’t move, then they would build a dining room around her.
For people who didn’t want to be there hours ago, they moved quickly. Tatinelly brought flowers from the yard by the bushels, making centerpieces that masked the smell of dirt clinging to the wallpaper. The Mexico City Montoyas started in on dinner, and the Spanish Montoyas claimed dessert. The California Montoyas made their way to the basement to find anything t
o drink themselves through the dinner.
“You could lend a hand,” Marimar told Enrique.
He took a seat across from his mother, where her bottle of Oaxaca mezcal and a single glass were just out of reach. He poured himself a drink without offering it to his mother first, and sat back. “You’re looking well, Mother.”
“And you look positively mundane,” she said, then turned her head to Chuy. All it took was a look from her ancient eyes and Chuy ran off somewhere, only to return moments later with a glass he was polishing with the hem of his shirt. He filled half the glass and handed his grandmother the smoky drink.
“Come on, Mother,” Enrique said, his hands dirty from holding the axe. “Do we have to sit through this? The place is a mess. We all know I’m next in line for the land. Just—where is the paperwork?”
The Grand Rosa Divina looked at her son. She knew he’d slithered out between her legs, but even then she could not recognize him. He was untouched by the stars. When she looked into his eyes she saw no love—only hunger and greed.
“Upstairs. Second drawer on my nightstand.”
He took his drink with him, bypassing two Montoyas who clutched chickens by their necks in each hand, feathers leaving a trail toward the kitchens.
“Tatinelly,” Rosa Divina said.
“Yes?” Tatinelly and her husband were wide-eyed, their fear acrid sweat from their pores. They approached, both resting a hand on the pregnant belly as if their fragile bones could protect that child from the world.
Rosa Divina held her hand out. “Puedo?” May I.
“Of course,” the couple said. “We’d be honored.”
Rosa Divina placed her free hand on the top of the belly and closed her eyes. Marimar wondered what those old ears picked up. Could she hear the stars? Were they whispering now? Why couldn’t Marimar hear them inside the house? Rosa Divina’s hand grew a single white rosebud in the thin flesh where her index finger met her thumb. The old woman took a deep breath and a bigger drink of mezcal.
“A girl. Excellent. Be good to her,” Rosa Divina said. “Let her run free.”
Toil & Trouble Page 18
