The next morning brought even more rain. Bored of weather reports, Lyra flipped to the channel that broadcast prayers throughout the day. Lyra wasn’t at all religious, but she enjoyed the woman’s voice and the steady, comforting drone of verses and avemarías. Lyra wanted to take her out for a drink. Not to pray or anything, but just to sit next to her at a bar and listen to her order every cocktail on the menu.
It was as if Gabriel had forgotten yesterday completely. He didn’t mention Golondrina or what happened at Teresa’s. It was some sort of voluntary amnesia or an impressive consideration of Lyra’s feelings. But it had to be left for another day. Her own feelings around seeing her mother had to be left for another day too. Lyra studied the directions the man Osvaldo had given her. Today she would venture to his home to scour the documents that had cursed him all these years.
Lyra rummaged through her overstuffed closet for rain boots. She unearthed a poncho, a windbreaker, and a bucket hat to protect her from the storm. Lyra looked as ridiculous as an American tourist. As she prepared Gabriel’s breakfast, he, too, poked fun at her, said all she was missing was a fanny pack. A disposable camera, Lyra added. A map, Gabriel said. And one of those little plastic tubes for loose coins.
¿Where are you going?” he asked.
“To work,” Lyra lied. She was in a rush.
“¿Am I going back to Doña Teresa’s?” Gabriel asked.
“No, she’s busy today.” Another lie. “La Iglesia’s not too far, so I’ll be back in a few hours. I left some tapes by the VCR. Your favorites.”
Lyra drove slowly at first, her head pressed close to the steering wheel to see through the condensation and sheets of rain. It would be about an hour and a half to the man Osvaldo’s house.
LYRA COULDN’T COUNT how many days she’d spent at the American Fruit Company plantation as a girl, watching her father hew banana bushels with all types of blades. Despite her grandmother Amarga’s protests, Lyra and Carmen bathed in the fiery sun until their skin resembled that of the laborers—the sinewy men hacking, washing, spraying, lugging, panting, hollering, loading, and wiping their faces of acrid sweat. Lyra and Carmen would watch the workers, cheeks full of the delicious fruit that had ripened too quickly.
When his daughters didn’t have school, José María would pat their heads softly until they were awake, brush their teeth for them, and take them to the plantation. He often spoke of his childhood, but never his family. Lyra and Carmen were under the impression that he’d grown up alone; not an orphan per se, but from the way he described it, it was as if he had appeared out of thin air one day and begun working at another plantation in a part of the country they’d never heard of. His weren’t happy memories, nor, admittedly, particularly interesting ones, but the way he told them—the tamales he ate, the creeks he dived into, the tree from which he swung and broke his arm—Lyra and Carmen couldn’t help but be hypnotized.
The girls grew to love the other laborers, though they showed it in their own ways. Lyra challenged grown men to tournaments: who could hack fastest, how long they could balance bushels on their backs as Atlas balanced the world, and, to Teresa’s horror, spitting contests. At first the men went easy on Lyra, said to one another, She’s just a girl, she couldn’t win if she tried. But Lyra did try, and succeeded so often they became serious and were secretly vexed when they lost fair and square.
Carmen, for her part, showed the other laborers affection normally reserved for a father, which made José María jealous and resentful. She presented them with canteens of cold water, handkerchiefs to wipe away stench, and cigarettes to suck before the violent overseer arrived to dock pays. And while the men treated Lyra like one of them, they curtsied and stretched out their giant hands to lead Carmen over trenches of mosquito-packed water. Eventually, though, Carmen unnerved the men. Her gifts became too specific. Men would crave a sandwich, and there Carmen was with one in her clean palm, or they’d think of their wives, and there Carmen was holding the photograph of their sweetheart from stashed-away wallets. The workers began gossiping about witchcraft, how the little girl could read their minds. They guarded their thoughts and avoided Lyra and Carmen, and eventually José María, completely.
And José María, too, grew suspicious and unnerved. He would bring it up to Teresa as she washed dishes, their girls out of earshot. Teresa believed they were merely coincidences. My grandmother was a witch, Teresa said, but even she couldn’t read minds.
Upstairs, Carmen admitted to Lyra that she could feel others’ emotions. Their cravings, their worries that appeared in her mind as muffled colors. Carmen couldn’t control it, she confessed to her older sister. But her generosity was what got her into trouble, not her newfound ability. As she was listening, Lyra didn’t judge her little sister; instead she celebrated her blessing. But Lyra knew, so deep down it troubled her to think about, that it would be a curse.
A few weeks later, Carmen accompanied her father to the plantation alone because Lyra was running errands with Teresa in San José. Carmen rested quietly with her haunches in the dirt, watching her father sharpen his machete with a special stone. She knew that he would start harvesting only once he could see his face reflected in the blade. But instead of the love songs she normally heard, that day a rhythmic croaking played beneath his thoughts. He was trying to keep it hidden, perhaps from her, and possibly from himself. Carmen asked about the woman she saw in his head, with her two ring fingers bent so far back, they touched the knuckles. She saw the woman clearly in his mind, her green robes disguising something hideous and haunting. His eyes flashed, and José María crouched down to Carmen’s level, a tight grip around the hilt of his machete, and said, You’re not allowed to do that, girl. Stay out of things you don’t understand.
She stopped going to the plantation after that, and in solidarity, Lyra stopped going too.
LYRA’S CHERRY-RED PEUGEOT 405 darted through mountain roads like light from a laser pointer. She tried her best to drive quickly without actually dying, but more than once found herself in slalom matches with trucks—she beat one packed with chicken cages, but lost to another hauling goats. Osvaldo’s neighborhood might as well have been a water park; shrieking children slid down the sloped, ancillary road in inner tubes. As Lyra’s car floated along, searching for the house, smiling mothers in housedresses waved ¡Adios!, as they mistook Lyra’s wiping the windshield of fog for a greeting.
The gate to Osvaldo’s property was wide open, so Lyra pulled into the tiled driveway. The front lawn was so verdant it looked synthetic, like an ad torn from one of those American home magazines she kept in her waiting room. Lyra was admittedly impressed, entranced by the lime trees and hibiscus bushes. Then she noticed there was no car in the garage, and no lights smiling from within the house. Osvaldo and his wife, Patricia, had likely abandoned their home to weather the storm in a plush hotel room in the capital.
Lyra looked around and saw the bodega. The tin walls slapped by a curtain of water, its lock and chain hanging in a bow from the aluminum door handles. It rattled and creaked in the rain, but there was something else sounding as Lyra approached. Something familiar. A steady, musical tap, like the Devil’s impatient nails. Croaking. That’s what it was. Lyra heard croaking. She grabbed a crowbar from her trunk, slid it between two weak points, and cracked the chain. Lyra ran her flashlight across the dark room, hoping to scare off whatever was croaking inside. But she saw no amphibian. No terrifying, inflating thing. Just a worn cardboard box with hundreds of American Fruit Company memos. Eaten away by water, but thankfully, not by fire.