Summer of the Mariposas

by Guadalupe Garcia McCall

  “What is the matter? ¿Qué pasó?” they asked.

  “We are here to see Remedios Garza,” I said, still holding on to the stretcher. “We’re her granddaughters.”

  “From los Estados Unidos?” the first man asked. He took the front of the stretcher and the other man took the back.

  “Yes, from the United States,” I confirmed as I relinquished my end of the stretcher gratefully.

  The younger of the two men hoisted the stretcher and began walking backward toward the main house. “Oh, what a great surprise,” he exclaimed. “Your abuela will be very happy to see you, but she will not be happy that one of you is hurt.”

  The older man walked forward holding his end of the stretcher before him. “This way. Follow us, please.”

  Abuelita Remedios looked exactly as I remembered her. Her white-streaked hair was perfectly coiffed into a bun, and her blue eyes were sharp and fierce, centered over a long aquiline nose. Yet her mouth was wide and generous as she turned around and smiled at us.

  “Dios Santísimo,” Abuela Remedios crossed herself and kissed her thumb before she reached out for us, welcoming us. “Is that really you? ¿Mis niñas? ¿Mis nietecitas?” she asked happily.

  “It is us,” I said, stepping forward to receive a hug. “We’re all grown up now, Abuelita.”

  “Sí. I would say so! Mira, pero what has happened to you?” Abuela Remedios asked as she took hold of Pita’s head in her hands and looked at her flushed face. “Arturo! Roberto! Take her inside, to the sala rosada. Quickly now! She has a fever!”

  The two men, who looked too alike not to be related, hurried ahead of us. “Come in, come in,” Abuelita said as we entered the house behind the men and followed them into a pink receiving room. “Have a seat. You look like the zopilotes, those nasty good-for-nothing vultures, beat you up and plucked every feather off your pretty wings.”

  Once inside, Arturo, the younger man, picked up Pita’s limp body and transferred her over onto a cushioned wooden bench. Abuelita Remedios put one arm around me and another one around Juanita and gave all of us a group hug.

  “We’re okay,” I told Abuelita. “It’s Pita we’re worried about.”

  “What happened to her?” she asked, inspecting Pita’s leg as our sister lay with her eyes closed on the rustic bench.

  “Something bit her,” I said, not sure how much to disclose — not because I didn’t trust Abuelita, but because I wasn’t sure she’d believe me.

  Abuelita’s eyebrows furrowed with worry. “But this is not an ordinary dog bite.” She knelt at Pita’s leg to examine it closely.

  “It wasn’t a dog,” I said, fighting the urge to go ahead and tell her what really happened. Having Abuelita think I was crazy would only complicate matters. “But it’s infected,” I continued, trying to provide a little more information without sounding like a lunatic.

  “I can see that,” Abuelita Remedios whispered. She turned Pita’s leg sideways to get a better look.

  Pita took in a sharp breath at Abuelita’s touch. It looked like her leg was painful to move at this point. “It happened late last night,” she said, wincing.

  “It’s not a snake bite either, is it, Roberto?” Abuelita declared, as she showed Pita’s ankle to the older of the two men. “See here? Three puncture wounds.”

  Roberto crossed himself, horrified at the sight of Pita’s leg. “¡El chupacabras!” Looking back at us, he asked, “Did you see the thing that bit her?”

  “Yes,” I said. My voice cracked as I tried my best not to cry, because for the first time on the trip I was worried about one of us not making it back to Mamá.

  “It was the chupacabras,” Velia exclaimed. “But he didn’t get away with it. We took care of him.”

  “What do you mean?” Arturo asked, his dark brown eyes penetrating as he looked at me for answers. “You saw it?”

  “Saw it? We did more than that. We blinded him. He won’t be attacking anyone anymore,” Delia said, sounding quite proud of herself.

  “You did?” Roberto asked. “That’s incredible.”

  “Odilia did it,” Juanita said, looking at me with an appreciative gleam in her eyes. “She’s fearless.” She would have proceeded to recount the whole thing if I hadn’t interrupted.

  “Well, at least he’s not likely to hurt anyone else. Not without his other eye,” I said, trying to play the whole thing down a bit. Not only did I not like being the center of attention — that’s a job better suited for the twins — but I also felt bad for inflicting pain on Chencho, even though I had been suspicious of him. But more importantly, I still worried about what he did to Pita. We didn’t have time for stories right now.

  “Unfortunately, the damage has already been done,” Abuelita said as she checked Pita’s pulse. “We have to treat her immediately. Arturo, get me my bulto, my medicine bag. It’s in the hallway, in the broom closet, up high. Hurry! We don’t have much time.” Abuelita Remedios waved to the younger man, who ran out of the room in a fright.

  “You mean she’s going to turn into one of those demons?” Velia asked, her voice high like a scared little girl.

  “No, of course not,” Abuelita said, turning around and patting Velia’s hands to reassure her. “That’s not possible, not when you’re dealing with the chupacabras. His bite is very dangerous, but he’s not contagious. What I mean is that his saliva is tainted. It has contaminated her blood. She’s fighting the infection, but she’s so young, it’s hard to tell how much damage it has done.”

  “I knew it,” Delia said, tearing up at the terrible thought. “I knew it. We should have killed that rotten little mongrel.”

  I don’t know what I’d envisioned, but Abuelita Remedios’s medicine bag was nothing like what I remembered. The “bulto” was just that, a bulky remnant of thick, white cloth tied together at the top in a vagabond’s knot. And when she opened it, I wasn’t as surprised as I was curious. Inside, she had all manner of herbs, seeds, sprigs, and plant roots. The contents of Abuelita’s bulto looked like it may have belonged to El Niño Fidencio, the famous curandero of olden times, and I watched in awe as she sorted the ingredients for Pita’s treatment.

  “Shouldn’t we send for a doctor?” Juanita asked, eyeing the medicine bag suspiciously. “She needs antibiotics.”

  “What do you think these are?” Abuelita Remedios took her bulto to the coffee table and started to grind dried leaves and sprigs together in a miniature white mortar with a tiny white pestle.

  “Herbs.” I explained to Juanita. “Like the ones pharmaceutical companies use to make medicines in the United States.”

  “Sí,” Abuelita Remedios said. “But regular medicines are useless when it comes to treating a wound like this. A bite from the chupacabras is ten times deadlier than any viper’s. These, however, are the finest herbs in all of Mexico. People from all over the country come to my garden to harvest these medicines.” Abuelita picked up a desiccated brown sprig between her fingertips. “This one is for the pain. This one is an anti-inflammatory, and this” — she said proudly, as she picked up a tiny blue glass bottle and shook it in my direction — “this is stronger than any anti-venom in the world. It is my secret potion, the power and the glory of potions, made from the blood of the lamb and agua bendita, sacred water from Texcoco Lake.”

  We watched in awe as Abuelita Remedios lanced, compressed, and flushed Pita’s wounds one at a time before applying her concoction liberally to each laceration. Because she was heavily sedated, Pita slept through the lancing and compressing and didn’t come back around until Abuelita Remedios was done wrapping her leg with a pale thin gauze.

  “Am I going to die?” Pita asked when she regained consciousness.

  I caressed her forehead and pushed her hair out of her face. “No. Of course not. You’re going to be just fine. You just need to rest. Okay, mam
ita?”

  “That is a fact,” Abuelita Remedios said, feeling Pita’s forehead and pinching her cheek affectionately. “You and your sisters all need to rest. You’ll stay here with me for as long it takes you to get your strength back. It will give us an opportunity to get to know each other again. I’ll call your mother and let her know you’re okay. She will be glad to hear from us.”

  “We don’t have a phone. I mean, it’s been disconnected, so there’s no way to reach her,” I whispered. I hated myself for lying to my own grandmother, but I silently promised the virgen I would come clean soon. I just had to sit down with Abuelita tomorrow and explain why we couldn’t afford to call the café and let Mamá know where we were yet. If Mamá tried to leave the country to come get us, she could get in trouble with the police, and that’s something I couldn’t live with. I hoped Abuelita would understand.

  “Well, that’s the least of our worries. We’ll find a way to get in touch with her when the time comes.” Abuelita waved her hand as if to dismiss the issue. “For now, I think we need to let your sister rest. Come. Let us go to the kitchen and get you all fed. You look like scarecrows who’ve lost their stuffing.”

  Because we hadn’t eaten since the night before, sharing the cheese and loaf of bread with the chupacabras, we ate everything Abuelita Remedios put in front of us that afternoon. First, she brought out plates of spicy tamales and borracho beans, and when that was gone, she brought down a fruit basket. There were ripe, sweet figs and fleshy pears and a fragrant papaya that Abuelita sliced through and splayed out for us on a serving tray. We drank the most delectable agua de tamarindo, sweet-tart juice made from tamarind, and ate and ate and ate.

  After dinner, Arturo pulled bucket after bucket of water out of the well in the courtyard to fill up the enormous bathing trough in the laundry room. While we bathed, Abuelita looked in on Pita and informed us that her fever was going down.

  After our baths, we sat, all five of us, on an enormous carpet around Abuelita’s bed telling her the tales of our adventures along the bank of the Rio Grande. She laughed at our jokes and teased us when we couldn’t comb through the knots in our ratted hair. But she was kind and generous and braided our hair for us before we went to bed.

  Eating, sleeping, bathing, laughing, talking, helping, and tending to Pita’s every need, that is how we spent the next few days at Abuelita’s house. In the mornings, Juanita and the twins helped Abuelita with the feeding of the animals. But when they went back in the house to take care of the household chores, I helped Abuelita in the herb garden. We watered the delicate plants and pulled weeds and Abuelita named each plant as we went along, telling me what they were good for: yerbabuena for a belly ache, manzanilla to soothe the nerves, and milenrama to heal wounds or stop hemorrhages. She described different features of each plant and explained the best way to remember them.

  In the afternoons, however, we sat in the courtyard while Pita lay out in the sun on a wrought-iron bench, recuperating among the myriad of colorful mariposas that abounded in that heavenly place.

  By the end of the week, Pita got up and hobbled about the courtyard of Hacienda Dorada, clapping and laughing at the girls as they chased mariposas around the wide, robust bougainvilleas. Abuelita Remedios walked over and took a good look at Pita’s sparkly eyes and pink cheeks. She touched her forehead and a small smile made her thin lips curl up at the edges. “Bueno,” she said. “I think you’re well enough to go home now. Girls, we leave at dawn.”

  As we sat cross-legged on the rectangular carpet in her bedroom the evening of the fifth day, Abuelita proclaimed, “It’s time you got back to your Mamá, but before you do, we have to talk.”

  “Yes!” Juanita exclaimed. “There’s so much more we want to know, so much you haven’t told us yet.”

  “Like what?” Abuelita asked, pinning Juanita’s long thick braid to the back of her head in a circular pattern.

  Pita looked at Abuelita with adoration. “What was Papá like when he was our age?”

  Her question startled me. We’d been so focused on our little sister’s recovery that we hadn’t given Papá a single thought since our arrival. The realization baffled me, since that had been primary on our minds when we left — the be-all and end-all of our journey, the reason for leaving Mamá’s side.

  “Your father hasn’t changed,” Abuelita Remedios said, pausing to look at us with much sadness. “As a child, he was exactly as he is today.”

  A long moment of silence followed. “We haven’t seen him in a while,” I said. “He’s been gone for a long time.”

  “I know,” Abuelita whispered. “He left about this time last year.”

  As far as I could tell, none of us had divulged that bit of information yet. “How do you know that?” I asked in surprise. “Who told you?”

  “He did,” Abuelita Remedios whispered, her brows furrowed worriedly over her eyes. “He told me he’d left the last time I saw him. I urged him to reconsider, but he said it was already done.”

  My chest suddenly felt tight and constricted. I pressed my hand against it and let out a long-held deep breath. “So he’s been here?” I asked, choking back the tears of relief and something else, something deeply rooted, something wounded and mad. “Well, at least we know he’s alive. We haven’t heard from him in so long, I was beginning to wonder.”

  “You were?” Juanita asked. “You never told me that.”

  I covered my face for a moment to stop the tears from coming, and when I uncovered it, Abuelita was leaning forward, looking into my eyes. She took my hands, kissed my knuckles, and then squeezed my fingers tightly between hers. “Oh yes. He’s alive,” she said, nodding. “At least he was a few months ago.”

  “A few months ago?” I asked, the anger within me growing as it devoured the hurt and the pain the knowledge was causing.

  “Did he tell you why he left?” Juanita asked, her eyes narrowing intently.

  “He did,” Abuelita said. “But that is not for me to discuss. That is for your parents to explain.”

  “But why?” Pita whined. “Why can’t you tell us? We told you everything. We even told you about the dead man’s body and about La Llorona and the nagual. Why can’t you tell us what’s going on with Papá?” Pita started to sob softly.

  “Ay, mi niña. Please don’t cry,” Abuelita Remedios said, wiping a runaway tear off Pita’s cheek with her right thumb. “Listen. I’m not trying to keep secrets from you, and I’m glad you’ve been so honest with me. I needed to know those things. So I am going to tell you one thing. Your Papá left because he is selfish. It’s our fault really, mine and your abuelito Reynaldo’s, God rest his soul. You see, we spoiled him. We made him think that because he was so talented, because he could sing so well, he was more important than everyone else in the world, and for that, I am deeply sorry.”

  “You spoiled him?” Juanita asked, confused.

  “And yet, he never spoiled us,” Velia said.

  Juanita reached over and smacked Velia’s arm. “Yes, he did. He spoiled us all the time.”

  “When?” Delia asked indignantly.

  “I don’t remember that,” Velia agreed.

  “Spoken like a couple of spoiled brats,” Juanita said, giving them the evil eye. “When we were younger, he wasn’t performing, so he had a regular job in Houston and used to come home on weekends with his arms loaded with presents. It was like Christmas in April, or July, or August, or whatever month it happened to be. He always brought us presents when he came home.”

  “I remember!” Delia exclaimed. “He brought us dolls and board games, and those little plastic jewelry sets with the giant rings and matching tiaras. Don’t you remember, Velia? He even brought you a special present once because you saw a game on TV and called him begging for a basketball.”

  “Oh yeah, the basketball incident. You all hated me for that,
” Velia said, twisting her face with the effort of recollection.

  “We had so many toys, we didn’t even play with most of them,” Juanita said, remembering how good life used to be before Papá stopped coming home regularly and only showed up every now and then.

  “And now we have to make our own bracelets out of used aluminum cans. Way to go Papá!” Velia drew her knees up to her chin and stared off into space, pouting.

  “I like our bracelets better. Besides, I’m not so sure Papá was spoiling us. I think he felt guilty, for being gone so much,” I said. The picture of Mamá crying on the television because of us came to my mind, and my throat tightened. “And there are worse things than not having him around anymore.”

  “Like not knowing where your daughters are?” Abuelita asked as if she’d read my mind. “Or if you’ll ever see them again?”

  Velia sat up on her knees to face us. “I’m sorry, but am I the only one who thinks maybe Mamá deserves it a little? I mean, think about it. After Papá left us, Mamá literally stopped taking care of us. She didn’t listen to us anymore. She didn’t even know where we were half the time.”

  “Velia!” I exclaimed. “Nobody deserves this.” I thought of what terrible daughters we’d been, how the cries of the lechuzas were not far off. We’d been bad too, and Mamá still loved us.

  “I think Velia has a point.” Delia intervened in a strangled voice. “The truth is Mamá was just as bad as Papá, muy descuidada, very neglectful of us.”

  “That’s not fair!” Abuelita Remedios exclaimed. “I know your Mamá. She’s a decent woman, with good morals and values. She’s always been a good mother and wife. I want you to understand one thing. Your mother didn’t do anything wrong. Your father left because he’s a louse, a good-for-nothing who cares more about himself than his own wife and daughters. He’s up to no good. Otherwise, why would he be trying to divorce your mamá?”

  “Divorce Mamá?” Juanita asked, her eyes wide with sudden understanding.