Summer of the Mariposas By

Guadalupe Garcia McCall

Odilia and her four sisters rival the mythical Odysseus in

cleverness and courage as they embark on a hero’s journey to return a dead man to
his family in Mexico. But returning home to Texas turns into a unique odyssey all
their own.

With the supernatural aid of the ghostly Llorona via a magical earring, Odilia and
her little sisters journey along a road of tribulation to their long-lost grandmother’s
house. Along the way, they must outsmart a witch and her Evil Trinity: a wily
warlock, a coven of vicious half-human barn owls, and a bloodthirsty livestock-
hunting chupacabras. Can these fantastic trials prepare Odilia and her sisters for
what happens when they face their final test, returning home to the real world,
where goddesses and ghosts can no longer help them?

Summer of the Mariposas is not just a magical Mexican American retelling of The
Odyssey, it is a celebration of sisterhood and maternal love.

Coming October 2012 from Tu Books,

an imprint of LEE & LOW BOOKS
$17.95 • 978-1-60060-900-8 •
Ages 12 and up • 368
pages Also available as an
e-book

Learn more at leeandlow.com/p/tu.mhtml

SU M M E R
o f th E
Mariposas
SuMMEr of thE
Mariposas
I
GUADALUPE GARCIA McCALL

Tu Books
AN IMPRINT OF
LEE & LOW BOOKS
New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either
the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any
resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments,
events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Text copyright © 2012 by Guadalupe Garcia McCall

Cover photograph of road © ilker canikligil, shutterstock.com; cover
photograph of center girl © airportrait, istockphoto.com; cover photograph
of far right girl © iñaki antoñana plaza, istockphoto.com; other silhouettes
© Tulay Over; clay adorno butterflies (reference for Aztec
butterfly in jacket art) catalog number 30.2/9231 courtesy of the
Division
of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History.

Mariposa definition on opposite page loosely based on online

information referencing the following sources: Sheena Morgan, The
Real Halloween; “Las Mariposas entre los Antiguos
Mexicanos,”(Butterflies of Ancient Mexico), Dr. Carlos
Beutelspacvher, 1988

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted,

or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without written permission from the publisher.

TU BOOKS, an imprint of LEE & LOW BOOKS Inc.

95 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016
leeandlow.com

Manufactured in the United States of America

by Worzalla Publishing Company, October
2012

Book design by Isaac Stewart

Book production by The Kids at Our
House The text is set in Minion Pro

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First Edition

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

T/K
mariposa (mah-ree-PO-sah)
from the Spanish, mariposa, the apocopate Mari- (Mary in English)
and posa (to rest or repose)

Butterflies. Mariposas are slender, delicate insects with four

wide, colorful wings. In almost every culture, butterflies are
associated with transformation. The Aztecs held the butterfly,
papalotl, in high regard and had a special celebration to
welcome the migrating monarchs in early August every year.
They believed that mariposas were the cheerful souls of their
loved ones, the angels of women and children, their fallen
warriors, their ancestors, returning home transformed to
assure them that they were well and that life, however brief,
was beautiful.

I
 TA B L
E o f
CONTENTS

Part I: THE DEPARTURE

Prologue: El Cazo/The Pot 1

Chapter 1 La Calavera/The Skull 5
Chapter 2
El Pájaro/The Bird 23
Chapter 3
La Estrella/The Star 44
Chapter 4
El Venado/The Deer 59
Chapter 5
El Mundo/The World 70
Chapter 6
La Mano/The Hand 83
Part II: THE INITIATION

Chapter 7 El Árbol/The Tree 105

Chapter 8 La Sirena/The Mermaid 118
Chapter 9 La Araña/The Spider 143
Chapter 10 La Garza/The Heron 160
Chapter 11 El Alacrán/The Scorpion 171
Chapter 12 La Muerte/The Death 184
Chapter 13 Las Jaras/The Arrows 194
Chapter 14 El Diablito/The Little Devil 212
Chapter 15 La Dama/The Lady 238

Part III: THE RETURN

Chapter 16 El Nopal/The Cactus 261
Chapter 17 La Chalupa/The Canoe 277
Chapter 18 El Corazón/The Heart 286
Chapter 19 El Músico/The Musician 299
Chapter 20 La Rosa/The Rose 312
Chapter 21 La Corona/The Crown 321
Chapter 22 La Luna/The Moon 328

Author’s Note 335

Glossary 338
Acknowledgments 355
 To my cinco hermanitas
whom I love con todo mi corazón:
Alicia, Virginia, Diamantina, Angelica, y
Roxana the Garcia girls, together forever—
no matter what!

I
 Part I
THE DEPARTURE

I ninwhich my younger sisters and I find a drowned man

the Rio Grande and how, with Llorona as our mystical
guide, we take a trip across the Eagle Pass border to return
him to his family in El Sacrifico, Coahuila, Mexico.

I
 PROLOGUE
El Cazo: “Hazme caso o te caso con un sapo.”
The Pot: “Listen to me or I will make you marry a toad.”
—a play on the multiple meanings of the word caso
(pay attention and wed/marry)

I
Almost a year after our father left the house, never to
be heard from again, the long, miserable drought
ended in Texas. The heavy summer rains had more than en-
chanted everyone; the days that followed had brought forth
a most unexpected, spectacular surprise. To our delight, an
unusually large brood of American Snout butterflies
swarmed Eagle Pass by the billions.
Indiscriminate in taste, the mariposas flittered over culti-
vated gardens as happily as they danced over thorn-ridden lots
and neglected fields. To them, nothing was safe, nothing was
sacred.
Because they were everywhere, clinging to freshly
scrubbed laundry on clothes lines, or stuck to the bottom of
well-heeled shoes, the butterflies were on everyone’s most
wanted list,

1
including Mamá’s. She hated sweeping their little corpses out
of her kitchen and off her porch, but she especially hated how
they followed her everywhere like a dark little cloud.
That same summer, Mamá stopped being a housewife.
After admitting to herself that Papá wasn’t going to send any
more money, she’d done the responsible thing and gone out
and found her very first job.
As for us, we tried staying indoors and playing Loteria like
Mamá instructed. It was difficult, however, because to play
Loteria we needed a caller, un cantor, and Papá had always
been ours. A good cantor can recite the traditional riddles for
all fifty-four cards in the Loteria by heart as he reveals each
card to the players. Riddles like “El caso que te hago es poco”
were all right, but to keep things interesting Papá had always
altered the riddles and personalized them to fit our family.
We’d squirm and giggle with joy and excitement every time a
new riddle featured one of us. One day, however, right before
he left, Papá made up a particu- larly ominous riddle.
“La Sirena,” he called, holding up the card for The
Mermaid. “La mujer who wants to take your Papá away! No!
We won’t let her!”
My parents were like any other parents; they bickered and
made up all the time. But that day the riddle upset Mamá so
much that the fight it stirred up between them soured the
game for Papá. From then on, we played Loteria as a family
with less and less frequency. So it was no surprise that after he
left, we lost
interest in playing the game altogether.
The summer of the mariposas, we abandoned our beloved
Loteria for good, neglected our chores, and went completely
wild. We cared for no one but each other, not even Mamá.
Because we were always unsupervised, we finally had the
freedom to do whatever we wanted, wherever we wanted,
whenever we wanted. On rainy days, I’d read a book and
watch the girls as they played in the crowded shed behind our
house. But on scorching summer days, when the pavement
was so hot you couldn’t sit on it, they made aluminum
bracelets and arm cuffs out of the bottoms of soda cans they
rubbed against hot cement sidewalks. Some- times, they even
costumed themselves with dusty curtains and old tablecloths,
scissoring through the faded fabric with Mamá’s gardening
shears or tearing them apart with their bare hands. And when
Mamá would get upset because we weren’t helping, we’d
whine and then scrub out a pan or two before we’d take off
again. Honestly, there was just too much fun to be had to pay
her any mind.
Some days, we’d hike the hills beyond El Indio Highway,
fol- lowing the swarm of mariposas. They’d become our little
shadows, our companions, as much a part of us as we were to
each other. Most days, however, we rode our bikes as far away
from home as we could get, a flighty brood of the tiny
butterflies straggling behind us. With our chubby little sister,
Pita, sitting precariously on the handlebars of my bike, we
pedaled down to the river, rode through one of the large gaps
in the eleven-foot border fence,
 and swam for hours at a time without drinking or eating
anything more than the watermelons we chilled in the bank of
our river. The waters of the Rio Grande were unruly and loud,
but we had found an alcove far off El Indio Highway, a
pebbled niche where the current swirled in peacefully and
stayed for a while, as if to rest from its long, draining journey
over boulders and through canyons all the way from
California down to our miniature bay in Eagle Pass. There it
pooled, relaxed, cleansed itself, and bubbled into laughter at
the sheer joy of having us in its midst. We splashed around in
that cold, clear water like river nymphs, born to swim and
bathe till the end of days. It was a magical time, full of
dreaminess and charm, a time to watch the mariposas emerge
out of their cocoons, gather their courage, and take flight
while we floated faceup in the water. And that’s exactly what
we were doing the morning the body of a dead man drifted
into our swimming haven.
 1
A
La Calavera: “La calavera del
muerto esta en su huerto.”
The Skull: “The skull of the dead man
is in his grove.”

I
J oldest, she didn’t usually take charge. But when she
uanita reacted first. Being fourteen and only second

felt
the corpse floating beside her, she started pulling Pita out of
the water as if she were a sopping Raggedy Ann doll.
“Holy shitake mushrooms!” the twins, Velia and Delia,
shouted in unison, frozen in place by the sight of the body
bobbing up and down and side to side only a few feet away
from us.
I shrieked the way Mamá would have if she’d been there
with us. “Get out! Get out! Get out!” Grasping only the sleeve
of Velia’s shirt, I yanked her toward me with all my might.
“Odilia!” she complained. “Let go of
me!” “Get out of the water! Now!”
 “Okay! Fine. But I thought you were yelling at him,” she
de- fended herself.
 I pushed her and Delia ahead of me. “Why would I be
yelling at him? He’s dead!” We stood, all five of us, drenched
with fear on the bank of the river, staring wildly at the first
cadaver we’d ever seen in our lives.
It was spooky, like seeing a ghost floating facedown in the
water. His dark hair was long for a man. His thick tresses
floated loosely around his head like the black tentacles of a
sea monster. “We should call someone.” Pita shivered, pushing
her wet hair out of her face and scooting over to stand behind
me as if she were afraid the man was going to suddenly get up
and come after her. “The authorities,” I said, my mind still
reeling from the shock.
The only thing I could think of was how Mamá was going to
give me one historical paliza when she found out—and she’d
find out if we called the authorities. But I had it coming to me.
After all, I got my sisters into this by bringing them here. The
waters of the Rio Grande were dangerous, and Mamá
wouldn’t care that our swimming hole seemed safe to me.
How many times had we heard of drowning victims turning
up on its banks?
The twins, Velia and Delia, chimed in. “The cops for sure.”
“No. We should call the border patrol. I bet they know
what
to do,” Pita said, sounding older than her ten years.
“Guys,” Juanita whispered, her face suddenly pale. “Do
you realize what this means?”
“What?” Velia asked, still staring at the body floating in
the river. I didn’t respond. Juanita’s brain always worked
differently from my own, so I couldn’t begin to guess what she
was about to suggest.
 Juanita’s face broke into a grin. “We’re going to be on TV!”
She sobered a little when she glanced down at the body again.
“Mamá is not going to like this. You know how she feels
about talking to strangers,” Velia reminded Juanita. She was
right. Mamá was more than paranoid about giving out
personal information. In her mind, everyone was a potential
predator, and we were under strict orders never to speak to
anyone about anything if she wasn’t around to protect us. We
weren’t allowed to use the Internet anywhere other than
school, where we were semipro- tected. No e-mails, no instant
messaging—not only couldn’t we afford a computer at home,
but Mamá worried that we didn’t understand how to
distinguish our real-life friends from dirty old men. “Besides,
we’re in no condition to be put in front of a camera. Look at
us. We look like bums.”
I looked at each of my sisters in turn. We were wearing
cut-off shorts and ripped tank tops. Pita tugged at her wet
shirt, squeez- ing out the water and pressing it down over her
round belly to smooth it out, while Velia and Delia tried in
vain to straighten out each other’s clothes. And to say nothing
of our hair, which was not only wet but thick and clumpy with
dirt residue from the river water. Pita had leaf particles
clinging to her bangs. I reached over and picked the bigger
pieces of debris out of them as I mulled over our predicament.
“Well, it’s not like we’ll have a choice. This is big,” Juanita
tucked her shirt into her shorts, as if that was going to make a
difference.
The twins nodded at each other. “This is more than big—
this
is huge,” they said in unison. They had a habit of finishing
each other’s sentences. They were even closer to each other
than all five of us were as a group. It was a game they played
—presenting themselves as the “twin front,” fooling people
who didn’t know them all that well by making them think they
really were exactly alike.
I tried to think of a way out of it as I chastised myself for
bringing the girls to swim in the river all summer long.
Calling the authorities brought with it consequences, but we
couldn’t just leave the dead man where he was in the water.
He’d pollute our swimming hole—not to mention that he
should be put to rest somewhere.
“Ginormous,” Juanita whispered beside me.
Delia pulled her ratty tennis shoes off her feet and beat
them against each other, trying to loosen the clumps of dirt
from their soles. “You think they’ll get here that quickly. Like
right away? Can’t we go home and change before we call
them? I don’t know about you, but I want to look my best for
my first-ever television appearance.”
“No, we can’t,” I said, looking at the twins. They were the
pretty ones. With their long honey-brown hair, hazel eyes, and
perfect smiles, they had nothing to worry about. They didn’t
look as pretty right now, after a day swimming in the river, but
it didn’t matter. The camera would love them, no matter what
they were wearing or how disheveled their hair had become.
Not me—like Juanita I was big boned, darkly bronzed from
being out in the
sun every day, and homely as a gingersnap.
Juanita undid her droopy ponytail and tried to comb her
wet hair with her fingers. “This isn’t a movie set, and you’re
not starlets yet,” she reminded the twins, who had aspirations
of someday making it in Hollywood. “This is about him, not
us.”
“That’s right. This is real life, and that’s a real dead man in
there.” I pointed to the river. What if bringing an investigation
here meant no more swimming? “Whoever we call is going to
want to interrogate us. The cops, the border patrol, everyone’s
going to want to know how and when and where we found
him. And that’s when the news people get involved.”
Velia looked at her twin sister for validation, not grasping
the full meaning of what I was getting at. “But we’re filthy.
My shorts are ripped. See? We can’t be seen on TV looking
like this. What will people think?”
Delia put her hand on her twin’s shoulder. “They’ll think
we’re poor, and that our father has abandoned us,” she stated
sarcasti- cally. The painful truth set off my sisters. Suddenly
everyone was talking at once.
Pita’s voice cut through us all, saying aloud the one thing
that worried us more than Mamá finding out about this. “Do
you think Papá will see us? On television?” Pita asked, biting
the inside of her lip. “I hope we don’t embarrass him.” I
couldn’t help but wonder, myself, what Papá would do if he
saw us. Would he feel sorry for us? Would it make him come
back?
“It’ll be fine,” Juanita assured her. “Here, let me fix your
hair.”
 As Juanita used her fingers to scrape back Pita’s hair and
re- secure its braid, I thought about where our father might be
now. “We don’t know if he even watches the news,” I
reminded them. “The truth is, we don’t know much about him
nowadays. Not where he’s living, where his band is
performing, or why he hasn’t called or come home in almost a
year.”
“Well if he does watch the news, he should be
embarrassed,” Juanita retorted through the ponytail holder
clenched between her teeth. “Leaving without saying good-
bye—I don’t know why I’m even surprised.” She spat out the
rubber band and bound up the bottom of Pita’s braid. “Did you
know that seventy percent of men aren’t as attached to their
female children as they are their sons? It’s true. I read that
somewhere.”
Delia let out an exaggerated sigh and rolled her eyes.
“Can’t you ever talk like a real person? I’m tired of listening to
you quote stupid stuff!”
“If you two taradas are done arguing, we need to go home
and change before going up to customs,” Velia said, taking the
focus away from Papá and back to the situation at hand. The
body was still floating gently in the same place. The way the
current worked here, once something floated into an eddy it
had to be pushed out again.
Juanita smacked Velia in the back of the head, then pushed
her away. “If you call me tarada ever again I’m gonna show
you just how ignorant I am by kicking your behind all the
way across the river.”
 “Knock it off,” I said, stepping between them. If we kept
bickering, we’d never make a decision about the dead man and
what it meant for the future of our swimming hole. After a
quick glance at Juanita, I turned my attention to Velia and
Delia. “What’s wrong with you all? A man is dead in the river
and all you can do is fight? We should be pulling him out and
going to get help.” Delia didn’t look at Juanita. Instead, she
turned to look at the drowned man. His blue shirt clung to
his back in a crumpled mess. It was still semitucked into his
belted jeans. He was wearing brown cowboy boots that were
probably made from rattlesnake skin, like the ones Papá had
on his feet the morning he walked out of our lives. “We could
push him out again and move him downstream, then cut him
loose in the water down there.” She
pointed downriver.
“Or we could just lug him back out to the deep end, have
the river carry him further away, then call someone.” Delia got
into the river and joined her twin.
“I think pushing him out there is a good idea,” I said. “So
who’s going to help me here and who’s going up to customs to
report this? Remember the rule of the five little sisters—
cinco
hermanitas, together forever, no matter what! No one’s allowed
to go off on their own, so we’ll travel in packs. Delia? Velia?
What are you two doing and who are you taking with you?”
“Now hold on,” Juanita interrupted. The twins waited in
the water a few feet from the dead man, caught between
their older sisters’ argument. “We’re not calling anyone. We
can’t turn him
in to the migra. They’ll throw him in a hole somewhere and
forget all about him.” The concerned look in Juanita’s eyes
told me she truly believed the rumors. Like Juanita, I’d heard
the horrible rumores from the comadres in our neighborhood
too. They whispered about unclaimed bodies in sacks and
shallow unmarked graves. I was sure the rumors were grossly
exaggerated, but we had no way to know one way or the
other.
“They throw them in a hole?” Pita stood behind us, away
from the riverbank as if afraid of getting too close to the
corpse. “Why?” she wailed. Her plump face twisted with
anguish and her eyes brimmed with tears.
At the sight of our baby sister in distress, I put an arm
around Pita’s shoulders, hugging her to my side. “They don’t
treat them like animals. They bury them,” I corrected, trying
not to scare her any more than she already was.
“Maybe we should just let them do that,” Velia said,
inching back toward the shore. “I’d rather not touch a dead
body if I don’t have to.” She didn’t come out of the water,
though.
I tried to signal to Juanita with widened eyes that it was
enough, but she either didn’t get the hint or decided to ignore
it. “Hello?” she burst out, arms flailing. “Those customs
agents are ruthless! To them, illegals are no better than stray
dogs. They’d shoot them before they’d help them.”
“You’re so full of it,” I said, shaking my head. “Customs
agents are government workers. They have to take care of the
bodies they find.”
 “Shows how much you know,” Juanita mumbled, looking
at the dead man floating in front of her.
“And what makes you such an expert?” I demanded, still
hugging Pita. I pulled her closer, turning her away from the
sight of the dead man. “One of those stupid books you read all
night. No, wait. You were just born knowing it all. Sorry. I
forgot.”
Pita scrunched up her face, on the verge of sobbing aloud.
“I’m scared.”
“Shut up. We don’t have time for crybabies.” Juanita
scowled at Pita. The dead man continued to float in front of us
like a giant water-logged voodoo doll—a bad omen to be sure.
Juanita paced along the bank, agitated. I let go of Pita to sit
down on a rock, the weight of the decision we needed to make
unsettling my stomach with a queasy feeling that no matter
what we decided, our lives would change.
“I’m telling Mamá!” Pita wailed, but when she started
toward the bikes, Juanita pulled her arm and forced her to face
us.
“No you’re not, you little snitch,” she said. “We’re not
telling anyone anything. We’re going to do the right thing.”
I didn’t like where this was heading. Knowing Juanita and
her quixotic ways, this could turn into one of her many hare-
brained schemes. Next she’d be starting some kind of crusade
to prevent the drowning of illegal aliens in the waters of the
Rio Grande. “And what’s that? What is the right thing,
Juanita?” I asked, exasperated. Arguing with her always had
a draining effect on me.
 “Help me pull him out,” Juanita said as she waded into the
river. “Water quickens the rate of decom—decomp—decay.
So we need to hurry up.”
“I’m not touching that,” Pita announced, stepping behind
me.
“Him. You’re not touching him,” Juanita hissed at Pita,
who pressed her face against my back. “He’s a human being,
even if he is dead. Now help me pull him out. Pita, you go sit
over there if you can’t handle it.” She directed our little sister
to a china- berry tree with giant overhanging branches a few
yards away. Obediently, Pita went to sit under the designated
tree. Delia and Velia looked at each other, shrugged, and
followed Juanita deeper into the river where the body was still
floating in the gentle water. “We should call the authorities,
Juanita,” I said, trying to control the situation like Mamá
would’ve wanted. “I don’t think
we should pull him in. No telling how long he’s been dead.”
As usual, Juanita ignored me. Although she was only a
year older than the twins, who were thirteen and full of cuss
words and spite, Juanita was much taller and more muscular.
Next to them, she looked Amazonian. Like the female
warriors in Greek mythology, she could’ve pulled in the man’s
body without help from any of us.
I stood my ground.
Delia and Velia stood waist deep in the river and stared at
me with the exact same expression on their faces, an
expression that said I should do something.
 “What?” I asked them. “I’m not helping her. She’s crazy.
Always has been.”
 “I’m not crazy. I’m compassionate. No, I’m more than
compas- sionate; I’m . . . considerate,” Juanita said, using the
word cor- rectly. Unlike the twins, who were having fun
exploring the criminal side of language, Juanita had recently
discovered the pocket-sized dictionary, and big words flew
out of her mouth every day. Most of the time, I complimented
her on her vocabu- lary, but at that moment her consideration
was making me sick to my stomach.
“He’s heavy,” Juanita huffed as she pulled the dead man
toward her by his right arm. Delia and Velia screamed when
the body made contact with their midriffs. They sprang out of
the water like sleek mojarras—two slim, delicate fish flying
out of the river. So Juanita ended up bringing in the dead man
by herself. I only helped her when she was having trouble
dragging him over to sit him up against the trunk of a
mesquite tree.
Juanita moved his arms up and down and side to side. “He
hasn’t been dead very long,” she hypothesized. “See, no riga-
morphus.”
“Rigor mortis,” I corrected. “You still have some work to
do on those dictionary skills.”
“Whatever,” she said, sounding embarrassed. “I think he
just drowned, like a few hours ago. He doesn’t smell and he’s
not swollen.” But I could tell he was definitely dead, to the
point where I was sure pumping on his chest wouldn’t have
done him any good.
“Drowned? What do you know about drowning?” I asked
her. While I wasn’t sure she knew what she was talking about,
I was relieved to hear the news. Even if she wouldn’t listen to
me, at least Juanita wasn’t exposing the other girls to some
super- decayed dead man’s germs.
“Hello. I watch Crime Dawgs. It’s like my favorite show.”
The
sight of her turning the body over and pressing and prodding
at the head and torso with her bare hands turned my stomach.
Juanita had nerves of steel. I had to give her credit for that.
“Besides, it’s obvious he drowned. There are no other signs of
trauma, no bullets, nothing. See?” She flipped the body onto
its back again.
“We should really go up to customs and get some help,”
I began.
Juanita’s brown eyes were warm and dark with the genuine
concern she was so proud of. “I wonder where he came from.
If he has a family . . . do they know where he went? Did he
tell them?”
Because I knew exactly where this was coming from, I put
my arms around her shoulder and pulled her close. “He must
have,” I assured her.
“Papá didn’t,” Delia whispered to Velia as they stared at the
drowned man. His brown hair was slicked back from his face
now, as if he had just gone for a swim, and his face was
expres- sionless, serene, as if he were now sleeping in the hot
sun to dry off. Except, of course, that he was still fully
clothed.
Juanita ignored the twins and crouched back down to
inspect- ing the body. “He’s soaked.”
 “Duh,” Velia said, rolling her eyes toward Delia.
“We should take off his clothes,” Juanita suggested. “Let
him dry out before he starts to grow fungus or something.”
“Gross! I’m not doing that!” Velia and Delia exclaimed in
unison.
I pushed Juanita gently away from the corpse. “We should
leave him just the way we found him.”
“We should have left him in the water, babas,” Delia said,
thumping Juanita on the shoulder with the back of her hand.
“Watch your mouth!” I warned. I was tired of the twins
calling
everyone stupid. Delia mumbled an apology under her breath.
Ignoring my command to leave the drowned man alone,
Juanita tugged at the dead man’s left boot and yanked it off his
foot, almost falling back in the process. To everyone’s
surprise, a tightly wound plastic bag fell halfway out of his
sock. Juanita
pulled it all the way out and looked at us before she opened it.
“Money,” she whispered as she pulled out a huge wad of
rolled
up American bills and laid it down beside the drowned man.
Velia snatched it up and started sorting it, divvying it up
between herself and Delia.
“Look at this. Hundreds, fifties, twenties,” Velia
announced. She and her twin unrolled the bills, laying them in
neat stacks over a flat rock a few feet away.
Their announcement piqued Pita’s interest. Like a
curious kitten, she crawled out from under the chinaberry
tree and came over to join us. She picked up a hundred
dollar bill and turned
the foreign object over in her hands. “He was rich.”
“There’s a wallet, with an address,” Juanita whispered,
pulling the man’s Mexican driver’s license out of the wallet
and staring at it. “His name is Gabriel Pérdido. He’s from El
Sacrificio, across the border.”
I stood up and stepped away, wiping my hands on my wet
shorts. My palms suddenly felt sticky and dirty, and I couldn’t
breathe right. “We have to turn it all in—the wallet, the
money, everything,” I said resolutely.
“We can’t do that to him,” Juanita said, looking up at me
with those big brown eyes.
I felt like a jerk for not caring as much, but I had to be rea-
sonable. “We don’t even know this guy, so stop acting like we
owe him anything.” There had to be something we could do
that would be right, but also not get us in trouble with Mamá.
If she realized we’d been swimming so close to the deep end
of the river all summer, she’d never let us come back here. On
the other hand, we had no other choice but to report the poor
man. Mamá would be even more upset if she found out that
we didn’t. And knowing Pita’s loose tongue, Mamá was bound
to find out sooner or later. We were doomed either way.
“He’s probably got a wife and kids, and they’re worried
about him,” Juanita insisted. “And right now they’re
wondering what he’s doing, if he made it across all right.”
“We don’t know that.” I snatched the driver’s license from
her. “Look. His driver’s license expired six years ago. He
probably
doesn’t even live there anymore. Truth is, we don’t know who
he is or what he does, or even if he has a family.”
“He has a family!” Juanita yelled. She threw his worn-out
wallet at me. Pita picked it up and looked at the picture flap
inside, which started her tears again. Velia and Delia took it
away from her and stared at it too, but they didn’t say
anything.
“He has a family and a home and a life,” Juanita said as she
took the wallet back from the twins and passed it to me.
Behind the plastic, on the right side of the beat up wallet, was
a picture of the man with his family. “We can’t just leave him
here. We’ve got to find a way to take him back to his family.”
“El Sacrificio?” I asked, the name getting caught in the
back of my throat.
“Hey, isn’t that close to . . . ,” Velia started.
“Where Papá is from?” Delia finished Velia’s thought,
looking at her twin first and then turning to me with an
expectant look. “We can’t go to El Sacrificio,” I said. The idea
of possibly encountering Papá terrified me. What if he didn’t
want to see us?
What if he walked away from us
again? “Why not?” Velia asked.
“Abuelita Remedios still lives near El Sacrificio, in
Hacienda Dorada,” Juanita said, a plan to visit Papá’s mother
forming vividly within the shine of her dark brown eyes.
“We can’t go to El Sacrificio,” I repeated firmly.
Velia and Delia clearly questioned my sanity, from the
looks on their faces. “Why not?”
 “I’d like to see Abuelita Remedios again,” Pita whimpered,
taking my hand in a silent plea. I felt sorry for her. She had
only met our grandmother once before, when she was around
three. “We can’t,” I insisted. I shook my head and let go of
Pita’s hand. I stepped away and turned my back to them. I
stared off into the woods, down the worn path that led back
into town,
wishing we’d stayed home today.
“Look. It’s been years since we last went to Hacienda
Dorada. I’d like to see Abuelita again too,” Juanita said,
plopping down between the rock with the money and the dead
man. “Experts agree children need to be close to their
grandparents. It makes them feel secure, and when they grow
up feeling loved they make better parents themselves.”
“That’s a bunch of horseradish! I’m never becoming a
parent,”
Delia interjected.
I held up my hands in a vain attempt to stop this
runaway train of thought. “We can’t go because . . . ,” I
began. Then, drop- ping the wallet on Juanita’s lap, I closed
my eyes and fought past the raw, agonizing emotions that
threatened to overwhelm me. It was painful to know that
our paternal grandmother lived less than a day’s drive away
and we had not seen her more than twice in our lifetimes. If
only Papá had been more willing to do his job and make us
a family, maybe El Sacrificio would be more than just an
exotic name printed on a dead man’s driver’s license.
 “Because why?” Juanita demanded doggedly. “Give me
one good reason.”
 “Because it’s all the way in friggin’ Mexico, that’s why!”
I growled.
Juanita waved the wallet up at me again. “Don’t you see?
There’s a reason we found him instead of the border patrol. He
came looking for us because he knew we could help him. It’s
not a coincidence that he’s from the same place as Papá.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked. “You’re not making
any sense.”
Juanita continued passionately. “Don’t you get it? We were
meant to find him, so we could go see our abuelita in Mexico
again. It was fate that brought him to us.”
“Do you even know what you’re considering?” I asked.
The man was dead. There had to be a law against what she
was proposing.
“I know it’s going to be hard,” Juanita concluded. “But if
this man’s family is ever going to see him again, we’re going
to have to be the ones to take him back. And maybe while
we’re in El Sacrificio, we can find out . . .”
“If Abuelita Remedios knows what’s happened to Papá?”
I whispered, more to myself than to them.
My comment was met with silence. I hadn’t meant to make
the connection, but it was too late. The thought was out there.
Their eyes said it all. The same question had been on
everybody’s mind, not just mine. I was about to take it back
when something caught my eye. On the other side of the Rio
Grande, on a hill, something moved . . . a woman?
 She stood still—watching us from afar. I tried to focus in
on her face, but the sun’s reflection bounced off the surface of
the water and her form wavered in the afternoon light. One
minute her long, white dress was billowing against her legs,
and the next she was gone. Disappeared. Like a ghostly
apparition, she vanished into the surreal light of the fading
sunset.
“What is it?” Juanita asked, looking across the river.
I thought of Llorona, the legendary Weeping Woman said
to have drowned her own children. Mamá says she roams the
rivers of the world in search of them. Goosebumps rose on my
skin and my body shook slightly. “Nothing,” I said, rubbing
my arms briskly and turning my attention back to the girls.
“Let’s get out of here. It’s getting dark.”
 2
2
El Pájaro: “Pájaro, pajarito, encantanos
con tu canto bonito.”
The Bird: “Bird, little birdie, enchant us
with your pretty song.”

I
W on vacation with our father,” Juanita suggested. We
e can cross the border at dawn, pretend we’re going

walked
our bikes out of the woods and mounted them, ready to ride
the rest of the way. “Once we’re through the checkpoints, we
can drive straight to El Sacrificio.”
“Excuse me, and how are we going to do that? Are you
going to call your fairy godmother and ask her to turn a
watermelon into a chariot?” I asked. “Because I don’t know
about you, but I left my magic beans in my other shorts.”
Juanita gave me the evil eye. “Callate! I’m not stupid, so
you
can stop acting that way.”
Velia patted her shirt pocket with a flattened hand. “It’s not
like we’re broke; we have money now.”
 “You took his money?” Juanita asked, shocked. “I can’t
believe you stole from a dead man.”
 “It doesn’t belong to us. We can’t just take it,” Pita said,
looking scared.
“We can if it’s for a good cause,” Delia said. “We’re not
using it to buy ourselves stuff. It’s not like we’re really taking
a vacation. We’re using it to take him home.”
I thought of the drowned man again. We’d left him sitting
by the riverbank, drying under a mulberry tree, the tiny
mariposas clinging to his mouth and nostrils as if trying to
resuscitate him. “Well, technically, we will be using it on
ourselves, because
he’s dead,” Juanita pointed out.
“Okay,” I said, looking up at the darkening sky in
frustration. “So how are we gonna get there? Do you even
know where you’re going?”
“We can take Papá’s old car. There’s an old map of
Coahuila in the glove box,” Juanita said. She hit my arm with
the back of her hand and then grabbed the handlebars of her
bike as she pedaled off.
“That car’s a lemon,” Velia yelled after her. She smacked
her lips in disgust and then pedaled after Juanita.
“It’s worse than a lemon,” her twin elaborated. Shaking our
heads, Delia and I pushed off and rode our bikes at full speed
trying to catch up with Juanita and Velia. I had to work extra
hard because Pita was riding behind me, her arms wrapped
tightly around my shoulders and waist, like a heavy backpack.
“That car’s a pile of junk, Juanita,” Delia continued. “Not even
a dung beetle would want to push that old ball of caca
around, much
less hold on to it. Mamá should have sold it a long time ago.”
“Bought us some new school clothes or something,” Velia
added, slowing down to talk to us.
The girls were right, of course. About everything. The car
was still running, so it was sellable. Since Mamá didn’t know
how to drive, preferring to take the bus everywhere she went
in Eagle Pass, she made me start it once a week and drive it
around the block to keep the tires from going flat. But my
hermanitas were mistaken if they thought I was going to drive
them around in that death trap. It needed an oil change and the
brakes squealed— and those were just the things I knew to
watch out for. God only knew what else might be wrong with
it.
“See? You can’t even agree on how to get there,” I said,
looking at Juanita for acknowledgment.
“Well, we’re going. You can join us, like a good big sister,
cinco
hermanitas, together forever—or you can break our motto and
stay behind like a coward.”
I turned around, gritting my teeth. “That’s insane,” I
growled as I pedaled on, wondering how to fix things without
any real solutions coming to mind. Velia and Delia rode
around Juanita and flanked me.
“Listen, if you don’t take us Juanita is willing to drive,”
Velia said without looking at me as she slowed down to match
my unhurried pace.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “Juanita wouldn’t know how
to find a gas pedal if it had a rattle on its tail. At least I have a
driving
permit. Let’s just get home for now. The right thing to do will
come to us.”
We let the conversation die off and pedaled our bikes back
to the house in silence. When we got there, the sun was a
lumi- nous orange globe touching the horizon. Mamá had
already left for work. She was a waitress at Mr. Gee’s, an all-
night café off Main Street on the edge of town, so she was
always gone by eight o’clock and didn’t come back until the
next morning.
Soon after we got home from the river, the girls had
another one of their yakking sessions in the twins’ room, and
as a result, they were running around the house packing for
their trip to Mexico. I didn’t intervene or stop them from
packing. They were exhilarated by the idea of taking a long,
adventurous journey, but I knew very well how this was going
to turn out. They weren’t going anywhere. They just didn’t
know it yet.
I ignored them and went to the kitchen to fix them welfare
burgers for dinner. We called them welfare burgers because
we used regular sliced bread instead of buns. Mamá said buns
were more expensive and they were the same exact thing, so
she just didn’t see the point in wasting money on them.
As for me, I wanted a sandwich. The long, hot summer
day had made me hungry for something cold; so I took out the
bologna and cheese. Because there was no mayo, I ate my
sand- wich dry as cardboard as I stood over the kitchen sink
and looked out the window at the darkening sky. When I
looked up at the kitchen clock on the wall by the back door I
realized it was much
later than I thought, so I went to talk to the girls.
I poked my head into the twins’ room, humoring my
sisters as they sorted through a pile of unfolded laundry in the
middle of the full-size bed. “Dinner’s on the table. You need to
eat to keep your strength up for that long drive.”
“Do you think we’ll need sweaters?” Velia asked her twin,
pulling an old tattered sweater out of the cluttered closet. She
tucked it under her chin and displayed it over her flat chest.
“It’s the middle of the canicula,” I said, stepping all the way
into the room. “Why would you need a sweater during the
hottest part of the summer?”
“It gets cold in the desert,” Delia said. She sat cross-legged
on their dilapidated dresser, smug as a cat.
“We’re going to a desert?” Pita asked. “But I wanted to
wear this dress.” She had put on her best church dress, a baby
blue, short-sleeved silk dress she’d had for a long time. She
twirled around and watched the full skirt swirl around her like
an open umbrella. Then she stopped, looked at herself in the
mirror, and tugged at the snug waistband. Clearly Pita wanted
to impress Abuelita. She always had to try so much harder
than the twins to feel pretty.
“That dress doesn’t even fit you anymore.” Delia uncrossed
her legs and jumped off the dresser. She poked Pita’s baby fat
and pulled on the dress collar’s silk ribbon bow. “Too many
tamales.
You’ve got to stop eating so much, Fajita Pita. Wear something
else. You look like a chile relleno in that.”
 “I don’t care. It’s my favorite dress, and I’m wearing it,”
Pita whined as she slapped Delia’s hands away. “And don’t call
me that!”
I took Pita’s round face in my hands and squeezed her
cheeks. “You don’t have to worry. We’re not going to any
deserts.”
“Coahuila is a desert, isn’t it? It’s next to Chihuahua, and
Chihuahua is a desert,” Velia asked no one in particular.
“Think so?” Delia furrowed her eyebrows. I rolled my
eyes. “Of course not, calabazas. You’re such knuckleheads
some- times,” I said, looking around and talking to all of them
at once. “Okay, let’s get this straight. First of all, only the
western part of Coahuila is a desert. El Sacrificio isn’t, even
though it’s just as hot as Eagle Pass in the summer. But we’re
not going there any- way. So just get in there and eat your
dinner. Then go to bed. It’s almost eight, too late to worry
about the body tonight. We’ll talk
about it tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow!” Juanita complained as I turned around and
started out of the room. “What do you mean tomorrow?”
“But we have to go back tonight,” Delia whined. “To prep
him.”
“We’ll talk about it tomorrow,” I insisted. Then I turned
around and left them there, whining and fighting again.
I went to my room and entertained myself by reading a
few pages of The Great Gatsby. It was on my summer
reading list, and so far, I had not been able to get past the
third chapter. My mind was on other matters, like how to
settle the girls into bed
without causing a riot.
I played again with the idea of calling customs, to tell
them about the body, but there was something else none of us
had considered. Not even Juanita with her presumed
giftedness had realized that once our swimming hole was
discovered, we’d never be able to go back there. At the very
least, the border patrol would keep an eye on that particular
area of the river in case anyone else tried sneaking through
that gap in the fence. We were lucky they hadn’t noticed us
swimming there already. They might even close it off, making
us leave our swimming days behind.
By the time the girls burst into my room, frayed backpacks
and old bucket purses busting at the seams, I was all ready to
go. I stood up, picked up my own backpack, hiked it high up
on my shoulder, and faced them.
“I’m going to Marisol’s house. I think she’s having a
sleepover tonight.”
“What? When did this come up? You didn’t mention it
before!” Juanita’s continuous demanding tone was the most
frustrating part of her. “What about the body? We said we’d
take him back.” “I told you. We’re not going to Mexico,” I said
decisively. “Mamá would kill us. Besides, she’s already mad. I
called to tell her I won’t be here tonight to take care of you.
She was so upset, she threatened to cut her hours short and
come home. I think
she’s already working on it.”
It was a total lie—but they needed a reality check, and they
wouldn’t call Mamá to confirm my story. Besides, while I
made
dinner, I’d developed a plan to have Mamá “be home” that
night, if not in body, then in spirit.
“So you all better be in bed by the time she gets here,” I
con- tinued. “You know how she gets when she’s in a bad
mood.”
“This isn’t fair!” Juanita screamed, her arms rigid and her
face reddened with rage. She was actually crying. Juanita
never cried. Her stubbornness usually led to yelling or
bullying. It was un- nerving. I don’t think I’d seen her cry
since she found out Santa Claus wasn’t real. Suddenly I felt
like the wicked stepmother in Snow White.
Juanita, probably embarrassed at her tears, stormed out of
the room. She didn’t go very far though—I could hear her
mum- bling under her breath in the hallway.
Delia threw her backpack on the floor and kicked it to the
corner of the room. “You’re an ignorant, goody-goody, wanna-
be saint! Una santurrona!” she declared.
“And a sissy-face!” Velia added spitefully. Their remarks
didn’t
bother me. I was used to the twins’ stylized brand of cursing
by now. They’d been doing it all summer, pretending they
were old enough or even brave enough to curse like sailors,
but never quite getting the words out. I was more worried that
Juanita, who was glaring at me from the door, would do
something drastic like storm out of the house and go back to
the river.
“I bet Marisol kicks her big fat behind out and she has to
sneak back in here like a sewer rat,” Delia told Velia, flopping
down next to her twin on the bed. They both looked at me like
they were about to spit in my face, eyes glistening with wrath
and frustration.
Juanita came back into the room, looking more like herself
again. “You’re a lousy sister!” she yelled.
“Enough!” I finally raised my voice the way Mamá does
when she’s done putting up with them. “Now go to bed before
I call Mamá back and tell her what’s really going on. And you,
stop cursing, or I’ll wash your mouths out with Clorox.”
To my surprise, the twins flounced off the bed. All four of
my sisters marched out and down the hall to the kitchen
without another word. I went out the front door, locked it, and
put the spare key to the deadbolt in my pocket. There was no
other set of keys in the house to that door, so if they wanted to
open it again, they’d have to wait until Mamá came home or
jump out a window.
The thought had barely entered my mind when I heard the
unmistakable sound of a window being slid open. I turned
around to look at the darkened house. The only light was in
Pita’s room, which faced the front.
“You can’t back out of this! We out-vote you four to one!”
Juanita screamed, her body halfway out the window.
I lifted my hand in the air, my index finger extended. “Rule
Number One of the code of the cinco hermanitas: The eldest
sister has the final word. Always. Good night.”
I left the yard, closing the gate behind me noisily, so they
could hear me leaving even in the moonless night. Then I
walked
resolutely up the sidewalk toward Brazos Street. The thought
of them escaping through a window made me cringe. I froze
mo- mentarily before I reached the corner, but then I realized
they wouldn’t do that. They might be wild, but they depended
on me for everything. If I wasn’t in on it, it usually didn’t fly.
That was the beauty of following the code of the five little
sisters. We really did do everything together.
I walked around the corner, past the Aguileras’ house, and
cut across two empty lots, where I got the left leg of my jeans
tangled up on some bramble weeds. I had to stop to pull the
brambles off, and then I turned up Zamora Street toward Mr.
Gee’s. Peering in through the glass door, I saw that Mamá was
standing at the counter, slicing pie with a heavy knife. Her
black hair was twisted up in a haphazard knot and the dark
circles under her eyes were more pronounced tonight. She’d
been working so hard lately. Guilt stabbed at me, but I pushed
it away. Even though I knew it would make Mamá mad, I
needed to talk to her. As if she had ESP, Mamá froze in
midslice and looked up, making immediate eye contact with
me. The sight of me stand- ing there with my nose pressed
against the glass made Mamá clench her mouth, and she cut
through the crust of that pie like she wanted to kill it. She
finished plating the slice of pie before she left the counter. I
opened the door and started to go inside, but she hurried to
meet me. Taking my arm in a vicelike grip,
she turned me around and marched me back outside.
“What are you doing here?” She massaged her forehead
with
her fingertips, rubbing at the worry line between her eyebrows
as if she wanted to erase it.
“It’s important,” I started, noticing the deep-set lines on her
ring finger where her wedding band used to sit. It had been
months since she’d stopped wearing it, but apparently wearing
it over the years even after gaining a lot of weight had left her
finger scarred.
Mamá used to be skinny before she got married, then she
got really fat. I mean really fat, like almost three hundred
pounds fat. But she lost it all in the eleven months since Papá
left, so she was back to being thin again. Not skinny thin like
she used to be when she was a girl, the way the twins are now,
but definitely thinner. So thin, in fact, she didn’t look like our
Mamá anymore. But I wasn’t worried about her anymore,
because she wasn’t as sad as she used to be and she was eating
again. She looked more like me and Juanita now, strong and
voluptuous, but tired from working so hard.
“We talked about this, Odilia,” Mamá warned in Spanish.
“Unless it’s an emergency, you can’t come here. One more
incident like the last one, and I’m out of here. Is that what you
want? To get me fired?”
Last time I was here, I was trying to get Pita to come back
home. She’d made such a scene, bursting into the café to
whine to Mamá that the girls were picking on her again. “No,
but . . . the girls—” I started again.
“I don’t want to hear it, Odilia,” Mamá warned, her upper lip
getting thinner and tighter as she spoke. “I’ve told you before,
if nobody’s dying and the house isn’t on fire, it’s not an
emergency.” How could I convince her without giving
anything away? “But they’re being ridiculous,” I continued,
blinking nervously now, because we had caught the attention
of Mr. Moore, the
restaurant manager.
Mamá tried to control her temper by closing her eyes and
taking a deep breath. “I mean it, Odilia. Take care of your
sisters. I can’t be in two places at once.” This wasn’t working.
I was only bothering Mamá, and she couldn’t help me anyway.
I wanted to scream at Mamá and tell her that everything
wasn’t going to be okay, that I couldn’t take care of it, but then
Mr. Moore busted out through the door, almost knocking us
both down.
“Is there a problem?” Mr. Moore asked, standing halfway
out of the restaurant and holding the door open. His bald pink
head was covered in sweat. It glistened like a Christmas
ornament under the fluorescent lighting spilling out from the
café. I felt like taking the cleaning rag from his apron pocket
and wiping it down for him, but that wouldn’t have been nice,
no matter how good it would have made me feel to do it.
“Oh no. Odilia just came over to pick up some money for
eggs,” Mamá assured her boss, quickly switching to English.
Reaching into the front pocket of her apron, she made a show
of pulling out a couple of dollar bills and handing them to me.
Mr. Moore shook his head. “And this is more important
than keeping your job?”
 “No. It’s not. And Odilia knows better. It won’t happen
again,” Mamá whispered. Normally, Mamá doesn’t let people
mistreat her. She knows how to defend herself, but she had to
act all meek and mild because Mr. Moore was a big fat slop-
eating hog and she needed this job. After all, it wasn’t like she
had many career options without a high school diploma. She
spoke English well enough despite the fact that she only went
as far as the third grade in Mexico—which was all her parents
had money for—and she hadn’t come to the States until she
met and married Papá when she was just seventeen years old.
Up to now he’d always taken care of her.
When she first started working, the only jobs she qualified
for were janitor, maid, and waitress. After a few trial runs, she
decided she hated the other two, so she was doing her best to
keep this job. She couldn’t stand Mr. Moore, but she got along
with the customers and they tipped her well.
“Then let’s get back to work, shall we?” Mr. Moore raised
his eyebrows. When we didn’t move, he cleared his throat.
With his lips clamped shut and his eyes bulging out of their
sockets, he looked like a toad on steroids, but Mamá knew he
was about to explode, so she nudged me aside.
“I’ll be in in a minute,” Mamá said, taking me by the
shoulders and turning me around so that I was facing the
parking lot.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered as soon as Mr. Moore was inside
the restaurant again. “I didn’t mean to . . .”
“Whatever it is, deal with it, Odilia,” Mamá insisted. “You
are
the eldest. It’s your responsibility to take care of your
hermanitas. I can’t do it all. Now, go home before I lose my
job.”
Because I’d known how going to see Mamá would turn
out, I left Mr. Gee’s without feeling one bit of remorse over
not telling her what was going on. At least I’d tried. There was
nothing more I could do when she wouldn’t give me the time
of day. I couldn’t help but think she wouldn’t get in so much
trouble at work if she and I had cell phones. Money was just
too tight, and calling the restaurant would only get her in
more trouble. Mr. Moore didn’t approve of personal phone
calls. But then, a cell phone would probably be yet another
reason for Mr. Moore to accuse Mamá of neglecting her work.
Last week I saw him chew out Mamá’s younger coworker for
texting instead of finding something “useful” to do on her
break, like tidying up the break room.
Feeling less than thrilled at having to once again “take care
of it,” I walked back down Zamora Street the same way I’d
walked up. The truth is, I needed to stall for a while if my plan
was going to work tonight. So, instead of turning right on
Brazos, I just kept going until I hit our old elementary school.
The campus fence wasn’t locked, so I was able to walk
right up to the classrooms. I dusted the powdery corpses of
half a dozen dead butterflies off a cement bench and lay down
on the quad under the moonlight for a while, contemplating
my sisters and our rebelliousness. We were taking it too far,
this rowdiness. Maybe I needed to tone down my part in it,
become more re- sponsible, listen to Mamá—wash some
dishes or do some laundry
for a change.
At that exact moment, a star shot across the sky. Its
sparkling life faded into the horizon as it died away, unsung,
unwept. Immediately following behind it, another star fell
from the sky. It went down in the same direction. Then
another one, and another, and another. On and on they all
went, one right after the other, all five descending in the same
direction.
Something told me I should hurry up and make a wish
before the magical moment passed me by, so I closed my eyes
and thought about the one thing I truly wanted—Papá.
Yes. If I could have anything, I’d have Papá come back into
our lives and take care of us. I wanted him to stop touring, get
a real job, and be home every day like he used to be when we
were young. I wanted Mamá to stop working and worrying all
the time. It’s not like I wanted her to tuck us in at night and
sing us a lullaby in Spanish like she used to. We were too old
for that now. No. I just wanted to be a family again. With that
longing in my heart, I closed my eyes and actually fell asleep
right there on the school bench.
When I woke up, I lit up the face of my thrift store watch
and couldn’t believe how long I had napped. It was ten past
midnight. Two hours had just flown by! I jumped up and
trotted past the empty lots, but instead of going straight down
the street toward home, I took a detour. I turned into the alley
behind our house. Hiding behind the Olivarez family’s
dumpster, I opened my backpack.
 Hastily, I took one of Mamá’s blue dress uniforms out and
slid it over my own clothes. I unzipped my jean shorts and
slipped out of them, shedding them like a snakeskin and
stuffing them into my backpack. Then I changed into an old
pair of Mamá’s work shoes and twisted my hair around and
pinned it up into a half French twist, an easy, well-rehearsed
styling technique I’d learned from Mamá, who always wore
her hair that way. I com- pleted the outfit by tying a white
apron around my waist.
By the time I got to the house, the lights were all out. I
could see that in Juanita’s bedroom a nightlight was shining,
but, when I jiggled the latch on the chain link fence, it went
out. I kept my head down as I walked into the yard. Just as
Mamá would, I struggled with the doorknob, pretended to
look in Mamá’s apron pockets for her keys, and finally opened
the door. I didn’t turn on any lights or make any noise. Like
Mamá, I chose to walk in darkness. Quickly and quietly, I
slipped into her bedroom.
I didn’t undress, but instead lay on Mamá’s bed fully
clothed with my back to the door. Soon, I covered up with her
blanket and pretended to snore, congratulating myself the
whole time. I was bien aguila, the queen of ruse.
Not even ten minutes went by before the bedroom door
clicked open, and I heard someone enter Mamá’s bedroom.
But I didn’t stir. Instead, I continued to fake snore.
“Mami?” Pita said quietly, sweetly, reaching the bed and
touching my shoulder. She tried to shake me a bit, whining
softly under her breath, but I snored again, loudly this time,
like Mamá
does when she’s really tired.
I heard another noise, more like a rap, then another—a
knock, then two, three, four more. I shifted in bed and
halfway turned. In the mirror, I saw the dark silhouettes of at
least three of my sisters locked in a muted struggle. In the
darkness, I could hear their muffled grunts, and then the
intake of a sharp, deep breath before they knocked each other
to the floor, taking Mamá’s ironing board with them.
I clicked the table lamp on and saw Velia, Delia, and Pita
all tangled up on the floor. “What’s going on?” I yelled.
Pita wailed, “They’re trying to kill me!” She took a sharp
breath, struggling to free herself.
“We are not!” Delia and Velia exclaimed even as they held
her down.
“They had their hands over my nose and mouth. I couldn’t
breathe!” Pita whined, wiping at her eyes with the heel of her
hand when they finally freed her.
Juanita entered the room and looked from the girls on the
floor to me on the bed. “What are you doing in Mamá’s
clothes?” “Stop biting me, you little traitor!” Velia spat out.
She was so
mad, she kicked at Pita’s leg.
“Aw!” Pita scooted away from them and stood up. “I
wasn’t gonna tell, I just wanted to give Mamá a good-bye
hug.”
“Sure you were! Chismosa!” Delia scolded. “You’re the biggest
gossip there ever was.” She turned around to give me a dirty
look. “Don’t kick her.” I helped Pita up and let her sit on
the bed
with me. “You should be ashamed of yourselves, treating her
like that. She’s a little girl, not a spy on Mission Impossible.”
“And you’re not Cinderella, so why the stupid get-up?”
Juanita threw back at me.
I undid the knot on Mamá’s apron, slipped it off, and laid it
on the bed beside me. Then I pulled the pins out of my hair
and let my hair loose. It felt good to let my scalp breathe
again. “Never mind me,” I said. “Didn’t I tell you all to go to
bed?”
“You were bluffing, weren’t you?” Juanita’s dark brown
eyes narrowed in disgust. “There was no sleepover, and you
never called Mamá. It was all a trick—to stall us.”
Delia got up and dusted her rump. “Well, it didn’t work;
we’re going anyway,” she announced.
“That’s what this little snitch was doing in here. She was
going to tell Mamá we’re leaving,” Velia said, kicking at Pita
again before she stood up too.
“I said, don’t kick her,” I warned Velia. Then, looking at
Juanita, I asked, “Oh yeah, well, how’re you going to get
there?”
I started to unzip Mama’s uniform down the back. I felt
ridiculous sitting there dressed up like a waitress even as I
tried to sound like the voice of reason.Delia went to the door
and blocked it, her feet apart and arms crossed like some kind
of mobster. “If you won’t drive us there, Juanita will. She’s
been watching you. She knows how to do it.”
“She has the keys,” Velia said, as she went to stand next to
her twin.
 “You don’t know what you’re doing,” I said, pulling my
clothes out of my backpack. I peeled the waitress’s uniform
off, put on my T-shirt, and pulled my jean shorts back on
quickly.
“Well, we’re going anyway,” Velia concluded.
They walked out of the room, leaving me and Pita to stare
at each other.
I heard a commotion in the living room, the girls arguing
again, but the front was locked and I had the only key.
“They’re not going anywhere,” I assured Pita. No sooner had I
said that than I heard the front door slam shut.
“What the heck!” I walked out into the hall just in time to
hear my father’s old Chevy Nova sputter loudly to life. I
pulled off Mama’s frumpy shoes and pushed on my own
sneakers. Dang it! There was obviously another set of keys, to
the house and the
vehicle! I had no idea where they’d found them, but they had,
and now my sisters were trying to drive away in a
compromised vehicle without a clue as to how to handle it.
“Ah, you cussed!” Pita followed me down the hall. From
the living room window, I saw Juanita, Velia, and Delia
jumping into the car. I ran out onto the porch.
“Hey! Get out of the car! What do you think you’re
doing?” I hollered. Juanita put her arm out the window and
waved my old canvas bag at me, taunting me from inside the
car, daring me to stay behind. Then she revved the engine like
a professional race driver and stared me down.
“Wait for me,” Pita called, leaving my side and running out
after them. She jumped into the backseat. Seeing that I wasn’t
leaving the porch, Juanita shrugged, put the car in reverse, and
backed out of the driveway. The left corner of the Nova’s rear
bumper clipped the chain-link post, taking the gate with it and
knocking down a good part of the fence. Juanita didn’t even
look back at the fence damage as she put the car in drive.
I ran into the darkened street as Juanita peeled out. “Come
back here!” I yelled, but they were driving off so fast, I had to
cut across the neighbors’ lawns and through their backyards to
keep up with them. Pumping my arms and legs as fast as I
could, I followed the car all the way down to the corner. My
breath was coming in ragged gasps, and I could barely hear
the knocking engine of Papá’s old car for the pulse pounding
against my ear- drums.
“Okay!” I screamed. “Okay! I’m coming with you! Stop!
Stop!” They paused long enough to let me jump into the front
seat while Velia made room for me by quickly crawling into
the back
with Delia and Pita.
“Can you at least let me drive?” I asked.
“You can drive us into Mexico, but not before that,” Juanita
said, gripping the wheel resolutely.
“Then turn on the lights!” I demanded as we made our
way down Main Street in the dark. If they didn’t want to get
stopped by the police, we should at least look like we knew
that much about driving. The idea made me think that perhaps
I shouldn’t have pointed that out to her—getting a cop’s
attention would
 definitely bring their harebrained trip into Mexico to a
standstill. But police involvement was more of a last resort.
There had to be a better way. “Use the wipers,” I continued.
“Get these dead butterflies off the windshield so we can see
where we’re going.” It wasn’t at all how I had planned our
night to end, but I figured all hope wasn’t lost. It was just
easier to let my sisters think they’d won. However, the instant I
buckled up I promised myself I’d surrender the body when we
got to the international
bridge—no matter what.