Lyra walked into the hallway, parting a dense red cloud of perfume like Moses. The Three Marías had just gotten ready and were anxiously tidying downstairs. Busy bees with too much on their minds. Gabriel picked out an outfit in his room, grimaced at the navy polo and slacks Lyra had suggested. Too much blue. Lyra looked back into her own room—the box of AFC memos lay at the foot of her bed. It had filled her room with the sweet must of clay. Lyra debated scouring and organizing the rest of its contents. She wanted to have a good day, she really did, and she knew digesting more memos would only sour it. The stress from interpreting the evil words from gringos. The thought of Nemagon, of that doctor and those medical exams.
“Lyra, ¿where’s the broom? There are grains of rice everywhere from last night,” Asunta said, her lazy eye glaring down the stairs at Conchita, who threw empty guaro bottles noisily into the garbage.
Lyra led Asunta to a hidden closet in the kitchen and pulled out the ratty broom. “The party’s in an hour,” she said to the Three Marías. “So we’ll have to get going soon if we’re to make it.”
Visita pulled back the sheer curtain, scowling at the rain. “Who knows if any of us will make it,” she muttered.
Gabriel entered in a white button-down and green bow tie. The Three Marías applauded. He bowed and giggled at the triplets.
Lyra clapped like a preschool teacher. “All right, let’s go, kids,” she said. Gabriel ran to grab his jacket, and the Three Marías slung theirs over their shoulders, bundled up the gold trinkets they’d brought as gifts, and snapped shower caps firmly on their heads. Lyra drove them at a slow and careful pace down the dangerous slopes. Anxiety and condensation on the glass cut them off from the outside world. The windshield wipers were louder than anyone in the car.
CRISTINA FINISHED HER preparations, dressed herself in pink silk, expensive pearls, and diamond earrings, and played the best hostess she could. Whenever someone arrived, she flung open the double doors dramatically, like a bird stretching its wings in flight. She welcomed them to not only Teresa’s birthday soirée but a hurricane party (a concept she’d heard of in an American television show). Wind entered with the confidence of a plus-one. Members of Cristina’s book club filed in, as did neighbors who had decided to ride out the storm. Even the pulpería owner from down the street arrived with ten small bags of chicharrones. With every gust and guest, the yellow Chinese lanterns shivered like disturbed beehives.
Of those so far in attendance, no one knew of Teresa’s health. To Cristina, they were extras, filler. But the partygoers had no idea of their role, and by two o’clock, the party was a success. Guests buzzed around the hors d’oeuvres, chatting about the club’s assigned Agatha Christie novel and the general state of the pulpería business. Father Silvino arrived with a sleek black umbrella to match his cassock. He’d left La Iglesia in the temporary care of the Mother Superior, to mingle for a bit and surreptitiously bless the alcohol.
Despite the gaiety, the Cepeda Valverde family left a noticeable absence in the room. It was Teresa’s party after all, but she hadn’t arrived. Her absence reminded everyone how many others there were, and why. The topic of Teresa’s family, its tragedy, slithered around like an unwanted guest. Fingering sandwiches, spitting its gossip. Everyone tolerated its existence but wouldn’t look it in the eye. Acknowledging what had actually happened would only make it that much more absurd. Its reality so haunting that the only word that could be used to describe it was absurd. Absurd that a family could so easily be torn asunder. Member by member, horror by horror. And it befell a family like Teresa’s, so seemingly full of love. That was what truly devastated everyone involved and anyone else who’d learned it as a legend. If it could happen to them, what else was possible? How heavy would the sky be when it fell? How deep would the earth be when it split open? Those were the kinds of questions hidden behind their clenched teeth when José María murdered Amarga and vanished. When Teresa abandoned her girls. When Carmen threw herself out that hospital window like a stone. Questions that beg for an orderly universe.
Cristina was freshening flutes when Lyra, Gabriel, and the Three Marías arrived at twenty to three. She again flapped open the doors, but the sudden sight of Gabriel froze her in place. The full spectacle of his beauty, how he favored his father, her son, disarmed her. Lyra shot her a nervous glance, as did the Three Marías. Cristina regained herself.
“Welcome,” she said. “Old friends.” Cristina stepped back and Desiderio greeted them with an extended arm and his almost-forgotten voice.
Like his wife, Desiderio saw his son in Gabriel’s small frame. A spitting image, an exact copy, only with Carmen’s delicate hair. Feathered, black. Again, Lyra’s nervous glance, and that of the Three Marías. A secret service of Virgin Marys.
Desiderio regained himself. “¿Shall I take your coats?” he said. “Old friends.”
He greeted Lyra with a kiss on each cheek, and, softened, she returned them. The Three Marías, too, let his cheek touch theirs, without the skin-crawling sensation they had thought it would bring. The adults performed a careful, avoidant dance. What Gabriel didn’t know was that he was the one being danced around, the lie of his life their musical accompaniment.
“Come,” Cristina said. “It’s a celebration.”
The Three Marías shoved a colony of cocktail shrimp into their mouths as they spoke to the other guests. They had the appetite of a mythical beast—Hydra’s three heads, chewing with their mouths open. Desiderio handed Gabriel a cookie, and he ran off to play with his Game Boy. Lyra caught up with a woman who was once a client. After a stillborn, she’d adopted and raised four teenagers and sent them off to university. But Lyra’s attention was divided—she studied the door for movement, tuned her ears for any knock on the varnished wood. Visita broke away from her sisters and pulled Lyra aside.
“¿Do you think she’ll come?” Visita said.
“¿Who knows? You know who my mother is.”
Why would she. This was part soirée, part firing squad. Teresa wouldn’t know where to look, how to react. Feel relieved, or leave immediately. Cristina’s attempt at an intervention was obvious. Teresa’s impending death a good enough reason to go through with it. Lyra’s psychologist brain knew this was ham-handed. But what could she do after so many years of rancor? Besides, Lyra’s priority right now was Gabriel, not her mother’s healing.
“Marinero de Luces” played on the stereo, and all the women joined in a somber, ecstatic karaoke. Isabel Pantoja sang of a sailor gone out to sea. He left her one afternoon alone on the sand. Sailor of lights, soul aflame. His look of blazing adoration. In his boat went her dreams, floating, lost to the moon and the ocean. In her song a swallow might have brought him back. And there she sang from the beach, and the women in Cristina’s house swayed and belted the chorus. And there, slipping through the doorway into the foyer, Teresa entered her own birthday party, humming along to a song she knew well.
“¡Teresita!” Cristina yelped, breaking away from the choir. “¡Come, come!” she said. “¿And who’s this?”
“Alice,” Teresa said, putting her hand on Alice’s shoulder to guide her through. “An old friend.” Alice smiled and bowed, revealed a bottle of wine from behind her back like a magician with a rabbit. Complete with black slacks and a frilly white blouse.
“Alice,” Cristina said, a green tint to her voice. “Welcome, dear. Desi,” she said. “Grab their coats, please.”
The sound of Desiderio’s voice took Teresa aback—she thought she was dreaming—but he uttered a weak “Happy birthday” and held out his arm.
Cristina kissed Teresa quickly on her lips and embraced her, put her mouth to Teresa’s ear. “Don’t worry, Teresita,” she said. “Don’t feel overwhelmed. Like I said, it’s just people from the street.”
“And Lyra.” Teresa’s voice broke. She looked around the room, scanned it like a security system. “Gabriel,” she said, and smiled. “And—”
“Teresa,” Visita said, trailed by her sisters. They stood like a statue of Hecate at a crossroads. “Let me get a good look at you.”
Cristina let Teresa go and stepped aside, her muscles tense in anticipation. The Three Marías hadn’t made a scene when they saw her, but facing Teresa, Cristina wasn’t sure if they’d make one now. The party grew quiet, the guests whispering even if they didn’t know why. Visita straightened, as if a yanked rope had pulled her spine into place.
“After all this time,” Visita said, “¿are you sorry?”
“More than you’ll ever know,” Teresa said. Conchita and Asunta eyed each other, unsure if Visita’s question was a battle cry or an olive branch. The broken smile on Teresa’s face, her remorseful posture, convinced them that what she’d said was true. More than we’ll ever know.
Conchita was the next to approach Teresa, kissed her on each cheek. Teresa kissed her back.
Asunta, not to be outdone, pushed Conchita aside and stared Teresa squarely in her face.
“Asunta, ¿have you got anything to add?” Visita said.
“Not at the moment,” she said, cupping Teresa’s face. “But when I think of it, I’ll let you know.”
“I can’t wait,” Teresa said.
LYRA COULDN’T UNDERSTAND what was happening. How was this so easy for them? Even if Teresa was dying, a part of her wanted everyone to explode, to air their grievances like dynamite. Lyra wanted them to do it so she wouldn’t have to. She considered it—saying her piece, encouraging everyone else to join in, but Teresa glanced at her and smiled weakly. She was shocked at how frail, how small, Teresa looked.
Lyra tried to avoid Teresa for the rest of the party. Evading her mother before she had a chance to get close, forgetting her drink in the kitchen when Teresa walked over. Being called by other well-timed conversations about politics, or religion, or psychological diagnoses. Anything to delay their encounter. At around five o’clock, Cristina announced they were going to cut the cake and sing. Desiderio turned the lights low, and Cristina called the birthday girl over. When Teresa didn’t answer, Asunta said she might be in the bathroom. They would resume the party until she returned. But Lyra looked around and saw that Gabriel was gone too.
THEY WERE THE only two who noticed it. The rain’s white noise was gone. Thunder no longer set off car alarms. Gabriel grabbed Teresa by the hand and sneaked her out of the party. In Cristina’s garden, sunbeams illuminated every dripping leaf, reflected in deep puddles, brought gasping orchids back to life. It was the first time in days either of them had seen shadows. A sea-blue sky spread over San José’s valley, and dozens of clouds rocked like boats in a harbor. Rare birds did somersaults in the air. Glass-winged butterflies staged lewd mating dances in the rediscovered warmth. Wrinkly orange iguanas regained their energy on drying rocks. Old women knocked noisily on closed vegetable stands, determined to beat tomorrow’s rush. The country woke up slowly but skeptically. Half-asleep, half-intrigued. Grateful that the storm had finally passed.
Teresa and Gabriel sat on lawn chairs still soaked with rain. Their butts were wet, but they were the first to see the sun. A fair trade when everything was said and done.
“Doña Teresa,” Gabriel said. “My mother told me it was your birthday. I’m not going to ask how old you are, because she says it’s rude, but I brought you a present.”
Gabriel removed a photograph folded vertically from his shirt pocket. On the back, lovely cursive handwriting read, La familia Cepeda Valverde, enero de 1966. In the photograph, a thirty-one-year-old Teresa held a six-year-old, teary-eyed Carmen on her left hip while a nine-year-old Lyra clung to her left leg. Mother and daughters awash in sunlight and something that—at a second glance—resembled joy. The glare from Liberia’s pellucid river provided a miniature sun in the picture’s bottom right-hand corner. Two of the Three Marías could be seen on the banks. Tufts of lichen coated the giant rocks. A lime-green bathing suit (with a matching lime-green belt) contrasted Teresa’s dark brown skin. The photograph’s vertical fold separated Teresa from her daughters. She on the left side, Lyra and Carmen on the right.
“¿Where did you find this?” Teresa asked.
“In my mother’s drawer, underneath a pile of papers and other stuff. That’s you, ¿isn’t it?”
Teresa didn’t remember smiling for the camera. Her teeth whiter than coconut flesh, her skin coconut husk, tanned by the sun in Liberia.
“And that’s my mom, ¿isn’t it?” he continued. Teresa, studying his face, didn’t know which girl he meant.
Behind the sliding glass door, Lyra watched as grandmother and grandson sat as though they had done so every day since he was born. As if Teresa had changed Gabriel’s diapers, and he had held her fingers as they caught fireflies. Together on nights of lightning, one telling ghost stories to the other. About headless priests and carts without oxen. La Llorona and La Cegua listening just outside the door. Lyra clasped her mouth. Cristina’s hands appeared, gripped hard onto Lyra’s shoulders. Her many rings sank into Lyra’s taut flesh. Lyra would be still for now. She would watch the outcome just like everybody else.
“Doña Teresa,” Gabriel said.
“¿What is it, dear?”
“The girl standing next to you in the picture, she looks just like my mother. They have the same nose and the same hair.” Gabriel reached his arm over Teresa’s to point.
“Yes, that’s Lyra,” she said. “She hasn’t changed much.”
“¿So you were close to her?”
Teresa nodded.
“¿And who’s the little girl on your hip?”
“Her name was Carmen.”
“She’s very pretty. ¿What was she like?”
“She was quiet. But vibrant at the same time. A tiny ray of light. And she would sing so beautifully in the evenings, and say good morning every morning, and ask how you slept, and pour your coffee for you.”
“¿What happened to her?”
“She flew away.”
Grandmother and grandson sat quietly for a while.
“Thank you for the birthday present,” Teresa said. “It’s the most thoughtful gift I’ve received in a long time.”
“You’re welcome. I felt bad at first for taking it without asking, but now I don’t. It made you happy, so my mother will have to understand, ¿right?”
Teresa rubbed the photograph with her thumb, caressing Lyra’s face. She would have to understand. She would see them and realize her error all these years.
“¿Do you want to go back to the party?” Teresa asked.
“Maybe in a minute … ¿Can we sit here a little longer?” Gabriel turned his face up like a flower. “The sun feels nice.”
“Hmm … It does, doesn’t it.”
ON THE FINAL newscasts of the evening, anchors, reporters, sports commentators, witnesses, meteorologists, priests, synchronized swimmers, congressmen, fishermen, firemen, policemen, and a comedian who wasn’t funny at all took turns describing their run-ins with the devastating storm. They spoke over one another’s tears and wails, and the comedian cracked joke after joke that didn’t land. A psychic from Liberia was invited to lighten the mood, but instead used his moment of fame to say I told you so. Jorge Gamboa, too drunk to form complete sentences, grabbed the fortune-teller by his robes and tossed him off camera as if he were loading a bag of rice onto a truck.
Juana, as the hurricane was named (just Juana, like a sister who always asks for money), had peaked somewhere around a Category 2. Her destruction claimed no fewer than fifty lives—twenty in the Central Valley, fifteen in Limón, fourteen in southern Puntarenas, and that one young man in Upala bisected at the waist. Weeping families marched to local churches through dirty water up to their thighs.
The president spent all night lamenting the dead as if he had known them intimately. He spoke through the cameras to the United States government about global warming and how small tropical countries (Costa Rica, for example) must fork up for America’s energy bills. Almost $200 million in damages were tallied, and that, he said, was the only language the gringos were able to understand uninterpreted. To his fellow Costa Ricans, he called for a nationwide canned food drive and invited other countries in Latin America to donate tins of beans, corn, and tomatoes. A bottle of alcohol, if anyone was feeling truly generous. The storm had left so many so thirsty, but not just for water, he said, because we have all had plenty of that.
The World Meteorological Organization watched the news coverage and home movies in horror, and immediately and unanimously retired Juana from its extensive Rolodex of monikers. Nevermore would a storm be christened with that infernal, calamitous name.
AFTER THE PARTY, the Three Marías decided it would be best to stay another night with Lyra. Gabriel sat between two who were drunkenly bickering with the third sitting in the front seat of Lyra’s red Peugeot 405. (¡There go one thousand and ten years in that car!) The party ended on a high note, and the triplets had found a way to argue about their favorite part. Visita still held on to her champagne flute (I hope that woman knows she’s not getting this back), and spilled bubbles on everyone but herself. Gabriel thanked creation he didn’t have any siblings. Asunta, in the front passenger’s seat, looked straight ahead with both eyes, intently watching Lyra escort Teresa back to her house. The sun’s burning body slipped into a hungry cloud. The first sunset in three days proved to be a spectacular one. Teresa and Lyra watched it together. The new moon, a black mask covering her face, hung low in the sky. Rising or setting, she didn’t care anymore.
“Mother,” Lyra said. “¿How are you feeling?”
“¿Trying to psychoanalyze me?” Teresa joked. “On my own birthday…”
“It’s your present,” Lyra said, looking down at the wet concrete and gravel. She kicked a stray pebble at La Guaria Railroad. “I usually charge a lot. But it’s your birthday, so you get a freebie.”
“I raised a kind daughter.”
“Two,” Lyra said.
“That’s right. Two.” Teresa looked beyond the eastern mountains that poked their heads over Cristina’s house. “I didn’t say anything, Lyra.”
“I wasn’t going to ask.”
Teresa ignored the obvious lie.
“I’m not sure what I expected,” Lyra said. “But this wasn’t what I predicted. I thought Visita would tackle you. Maybe the other two Marías too. I’m not sure I would’ve pulled them off.”
“I know what you must think of me,” Teresa said.
“¿Do you?”
“It’s obvious.”
“¿Why did you do it, then?” Lyra asked.
“¿Which part?”
“¿How could you leave us?” Lyra said. “We needed you. We needed you and you just pawned us off.”
Teresa fidgeted with the keys in her hand, unclasped her dress’s collar to breathe.
“You left us and you came back as if nothing had happened,” Lyra said. “¿Did you really think you could forget it all? ¿Did you honestly think that just because you could, that we would be able to?”
Lyra’s voice reverberated off the tin of Barrio Ávila’s houses.
“¿Why didn’t you take Carmen with you? I could’ve handled it alone,” Lyra said. “But Carmen couldn’t. You knew that. She smiled and played it off, but it devastated her. It killed her. And you knew that. You did it anyway. ¿Why?”
“I don’t have an answer,” Teresa said. “I don’t know why.”
“¡Then make one up!” Lyra said. “Don’t cop out with that excuse. It doesn’t work anymore.”
“¡I was afraid!”
“¿Of what?” In this moment, Lyra was afraid too.
“Of losing you both too. ¿Do you know how it feels to bury your mother?”
“¿Is it anything like watching your mother leave on a plane?”
Teresa grabbed on to the gate to keep herself anchored to the ground, because if she let go, she was sure her soul would leave her body.
“I didn’t tell Gabriel about Carmen because I didn’t want to ruin him too. You’re his mother now. I don’t deserve to be his grandmother, so that’s why I kept quiet. I didn’t want to ruin your motherhood like I ruined mine.”
Gabriel walked out of the car. He’d heard his name.
Lyra had wanted Teresa to reveal the truth to Gabriel so she wouldn’t have to—she wanted Teresa to shatter his life so that Lyra could be the one to pick up the pieces. Gabriel couldn’t reproach her for all these years of lying if she was there to save him, comfort him. Lyra wanted to stay the selfless party. But her mother had taken this chance away.
“You’re selfish,” Lyra said. She repeated it.
Despite how frail and small Teresa seemed, Lyra wouldn’t let up, couldn’t. It came flooding out of her—twenty-seven years—with a force strong enough to break her mother open.
“I don’t even think Carmen would forgive you now,” she heard herself say. “Those people in there might have forgotten it all, but I haven’t. I will never forget, and I will never forgive you.” In that moment, she meant it, and said it with the incandescent fury of a teenage girl.
The pain returned and singed the edges of Teresa’s brain. Every nerve within her erupted, each a newborn volcano. Hot, sticky magma spread behind her eyes. The last thing Teresa heard was Lyra shrieking as she felt her body float.
THE FINAL ECSTASY OF TERESA
Teresa smells roses and honey on the hot noon air. The perfume glides on a low-lying breeze, skirting past the exposed parts of her shins. She watches water ripple in shallow irrigation gutters and dried fronds lifting from the dirt. The green around her vibrates with the voices of men and the hack of metal on stalks. She’s at the plantation again, and before her, hunched down in the shade of a banana tree, is José María. It’s today, Teresa thinks. It’s that day.
José María wipes sweat with a blue bandanna and chats with another worker. Older, ruddy, and fiddling with José María’s machete in the dirt. The man scrunches his red face as he grips the hilt and tries to remove it from the earth. King Arthur, he calls José María, who wiggles it free with just two fingers. Teresa calls out his name. He doesn’t hear her. Instead, he takes a swig from the man’s silver flask and goes into a story. The only story José María knows by heart.
Why, Teresa thinks, am I revisiting that day? She looks up at the sun’s placement in the sky, predicting its trajectory to count how many hours until it sets. How long until José María ends this day with his bare hands?
Teresa watches him slice bushels from their trees and spray bananas like shrapnel with his machete. He’s drenched in sweat, his shoulders visible through his tight white T-shirt. Then Teresa sees something he doesn’t—a woman dressed in green fabric, hiding half her body behind a tree and its fronds. The woman grasps the ripening fruit, and Teresa can see that her ring fingers are bent backward, so far the nails touch the back of her hand.
Teresa is startled out of her trance by the foreman, who shouts to José María. When she looks back to the fronds, the broken-fingered woman is gone.
“You’re wanted in the gringo doctor’s office,” the foreman says. José María wanders to the dirt road. Teresa shadows him. He follows it, and so does she. Then he stops. He lifts his boot: a toad sticks into the rubber grooves, tongue and fat intestines spilling out of its mouth. From here, Teresa can smell sulfur. José María scrapes it from his boot and starts running, but instead of following him, Teresa shuts her eyes.
WHEN SHE OPENS them again, Teresa is in the darkened hull of the guesthouse. Amarga returns and slams the door shut. If it’s that day, Teresa thinks, my mother doesn’t have much time left. Amarga looks into the foyer mirror and plucks out a gray eyebrow hair with her nails. It unfurls like a fern’s tendril, and Amarga blows it into the air as if making a wish. Amarga lights a candle, and Teresa looks down at the floor. In the reflection of the lagoon of green wax, her mother looks almost beautiful.
Amarga sits on the tacky velour love seat and talks to herself. She addresses Tácito, finishing her sentences with a moody kiss. She laughs, and Teresa remembers that her mother had indeed been capable of smiling. Amarga pulls out a folded letter, and Teresa hears her ask, “¿Were you angry? ¿When you wrote this, were you angry at me?” It drops to the wax, but Teresa doesn’t go over to read it. It’s not hers. It is the one thing in the world Amarga truly possesses, and even in this state, Teresa won’t take it from her.
Teresa hears a commotion at the front of the property, and she remembers: the girls, they’re home. They’ve come home from their outing. Teresa checks her watch and realizes there’s less than two hours until Cristina will arrive to take her to the play. Teresa runs out of the guesthouse and up the back staircase to her room—maybe she can warn herself. Maybe she can stop this all from happening. This gentle day could stay just that.
But Teresa reaches an empty bedroom. It’s bright, and on the sill are squeaking parakeets. Teresa looks in the mirror, and she’s young again. Her purple velvet dress is stunning.
“You look like a guaria, Mamá,” Carmen says. Teresa turns around to see if her other self has entered the room.
“¿What’s wrong?” Lyra says. She hurls her shoes across the room like boomerangs. She climbs onto the bed, next to Carmen. “She’s not lying, you do look like an orchid.”
Her girls are addressing her. Teresa trembles. She’s back. It’s that day, and her daughters are right here in front of her. She opens her mouth to warn them but Carmen speaks.
“Mamá, ¿how much do you love us?”
This moment, Teresa remembers it clearly. She never answered directly—she mumbled something affectionate and kissed Carmen to quiet her prying. ¿How much? As if a mother could quantify that. But right now, Teresa knows. She’s somehow been given the chance to finally tell them.
“This much,” Teresa says, holding both arms high above her head, stretching her body until she can’t anymore. “From my feet to the tips of my fingers.”
Her little girls grin at her ridiculous pose.
“That’s a lot,” Lyra says.
“I knew it,” Carmen answers.
Teresa dives onto her bed between them, and her two girls begin to tickle her. Lyra goes for Teresa’s ribs, while Carmen homes in on her armpits. After the laughter and squirming, Teresa lies faceup, studying the ceiling fan, the gnats it spins into a fragile cyclone. She estimates that they still have an hour left together. She doesn’t have to spoil this moment. Not yet.
“Mamá,” Lyra says.
“¿What is it, my love?”
“Carmen and I were thinking you shouldn’t go to the play.”
“¿Any particular reason?” Teresa asks.
“Lyra and I thought we could go get ice cream,” Carmen blurts out.
Ice cream, Teresa thinks. Her little girls want ice cream.
“¿And miss the play?” she says.
“Ice cream is better than any stupid old play.”
“That’s not such a bad idea,” Teresa says. “It’s awfully hot today.”
“¿So you will?” Carmen asks.
Before, Teresa had considered canceling, missing the play for another date, because nights like these had been chances to keep her daughters close. In Teresa’s heart, she’d known there would be other nights when her daughters were too tired to love her, or when they might push her away to live their own lives.
Teresa rubs Carmen’s hands.
She knew there would come a moment when they rejected her. A night as hot and dense as tonight, or one of rain and wind and bolts that struck the earth with purpose.
She runs her fingers through Lyra’s hair.
She wonders why she didn’t spend more time with them. Why she didn’t skip the play and take them out to get ice cream. She could have savored their laughs, stolen licks from their cones, and even slyly asked what they thought of her. Teresa had always been curious.
She feels her eyes close. She always wondered if her daughters would ever have been frank enough to tell her how she had done. If they noticed every now and then how much she loved them. How she would die for them, and die without them. Teresa knew that there are things children can perceive, and others they can’t. But she can’t gather the strength to ask.
The world again goes dark.
TERESA IS NO longer anywhere she recognizes. She is in a jungle, and there are animal sounds in all directions. A jaguar’s roar, cicadas, howling. A river babbles. She is barefoot in the cool mud, and her dress is muddy. The purple velvet half-brown, half spotted with dirt. The smell of honey drifts down from the canopy and sulfur up from the underbrush. Nothing moves, but all is in motion. Life is abundant, yet this place is void of it. It is a fragrant, vibrant graveyard, every marble angel and stone tablet replaced by kapok and guanacaste trees.
Teresa walks past poisonous vines and poisonous vipers wrapped around them. Coiling, fleshy creatures with slits in their skulls following Teresa’s every step. Eyes of every color wonder where she is heading. She herself doesn’t know. Instinct has escaped her, but something much deeper, much older drives her farther into the jungle.
Teresa reaches a turquoise river. Vain Queens of the Night observe themselves in its reflection, dropping trumpets into the languid current. The river is shallow in some parts, immeasurably deep in others. Across the water, a crocodile the length of a city bus can’t move, because the sky is cloudy. Its teeth jut out like stalactites and stalagmites in a cave. They are sharper than anything else in the forest. As serrated as a logger’s saw. Teresa stands at the bank and dips her foot in. It is warm. The river laps at her toes, flirtatiously asks her to join, because it is lonely. With only reptilian suitors, it has grown bored of cold-blooded conversation. Endless discussions of the taste of blood. The consistency of it. Its bounty.
In the river, she rests tranquilly on a bed of stones. The waters wash over her. She is so relaxed, she urinates. It is warmer than the water for a moment. The flowing river accepts the offering and its level rises. Teresa rises, too, floating.
The deeper the river becomes, the less turquoise it gets, its color darkening to a royal blue. The water is halfway up to the tallest trees’ trunks when Teresa notices. But she doesn’t panic. Instead, she is entranced by millions of birds, bats, butterflies, beetles, and every other winged being escaping into the sky. They vanish by the time the last canopy leaf drowns. The animals that can’t swim have disappeared from sight, clinging to branches, weighing down their stomachs with stones, or suddenly evolving stringy, undulating gills. There is no land anywhere around Teresa now. The clouds break, drift apart, and dissipate into the atmosphere. It is dusk, and the star-studded, nectarine sky glows a cherry color. The sun has already receded past the horizon, and in its place a full moon rises. Gigantic, luminous. Occupying more than her fair share of the sky.
The water is salty; this helps Teresa stay afloat. Below her, millions of kilometers of depth eye her, alone in the middle of an ocean. Buoyant, calm. Calmer than she has ever been.
Teresa can’t remember anything. Not even the creatures at the bottom of the ocean. Not even the birds and flying animals that vanished no more than a second ago. Or a century. She is unsure. The voice in her head speaks unintelligibly, muffled by the water in her ears. Teresa connects the dots in the sky, the tiny, innumerable sparkling stones shifting as if dancing to the same song. She draws forms that she quickly forgets. She is not troubled by it, though. It all feels strangely natural. This state, her floating.
But Teresa begins to tire. An exhaustion radiates from her bones’ marrow, the lining of her heart, her intestines. It is a sensual burning that singes away her nerves and their endings. The electricity in every part of her slows its firing, the lightning storm within her calm. A wildfire that has taken its rightful place is warm and soothing. It doesn’t cause any of the pain she had expected.
Teresa is a body of fire in a body of water, with endless air above her and the expansive, breathing earth not too far below. She is so tired, but continues to float.
The moon watches, intrigued to see how long Teresa will hold on. But then the moon wipes something unexpected from her eye.
A moon man.
A diamond.
“A little longer,” Teresa whispers. “Just a little longer.”