thorn forest

She loved them all. Spoke their names as if they caressed her tongue. Mesquite. Huisache. Retama. Chapotillo. Chaparro. Prieto. Zarza. She loved their tiny sensitive leaves, their spindly branches, their flowers—white, pink-white, yellow tinged with orange, yellow tinged with red. The dark sap running from them. The plentiful seed pods. Their thorns—silver, black, brown, green—made them things to be loved, not touched. But what she loved most was that they sprang up from the ground without invitation. That they could live in the monte, trees wild and free, with only nature’s measure of sun and rain.

My mother warned me, but I didn’t listen. I fell in love with a man who wouldn’t speak. One day he came into my life and became my life. Years later, he was suddenly gone. Leaving only his muteness behind. It was a reverberating sigh, gaining volume with time.

Ivan and I were together for ten years, and for ten years he lied to me. We had one child. Concepción was so quiet. More than pretty, lovely with her gold-touched soft-falling hair, her eyes a warm amber. She moved so lightly her feet never seemed to touch the ground. She had her father’s eyes, all of his features, his odd silent ways. Everything but his coloring. I raised her, but we were always strangers, always awkward around each other. We fought constantly. Watched each other with guarded eyes, speaking warily. At eighteen, she fled like a bird from drought.

Twelve years of silence. I had no reason to think I’d ever see her again. I knew she didn’t need me. Amá would bring me news of her sometimes, and I would pretend I wasn’t listening. I heard she’ d gone to the university, married and moved away, divorced and moved back. But Amá told me nothing about Concepción’s cancer. Never told me my only child was dying.

It was Concepción who called me. Her voice just the way I remembered it, high and sharp, without the rounded vowels and cadences of my tongue. Only now, so weak, so strained.

—Mom, is that you?

—Concepción…Connie?

—I’m sick. I’m—no, not like this…could you come?

—Where are you?

—At home, will you come?

—Yes.

There was nothing to gather, no one to call. No reason to delay, but I walked around my little house, thinking I needed something, finding and losing my keys, my shoes, my rebozo. The tight feeling in my chest kept me from leaving, but there was nothing else to do. I locked the door and very gently let the screen door fall back into place.

There wasn’t a bus route that passed by Connie’s street. Not that there were all that many bus routes. I was used to walking. The morning was still cool and quiet. I walked through my neighborhood with its tiny houses and tiny yards. Grassless yards with trash everywhere, weedy yards with cars up on blocks, dense yards filled to bursting with flowering plants and older women tending to them. They called out while I passed by. I waved a hand but didn’t stop to talk to anyone.

I crossed the street, passed the gas station, a small strip of fast food restaurants, the grocery store, crossed another street, passed in front of the elementary school, the golf park peopled with faceless white tourists fleeing their northern winters. Winter in the lower Rio Grande valley was not like winters elsewhere. No snow. No freezing temperatures. Misty sometimes. Almost cold in the shade. Hot in the sunlight.

Six-foot walls lined the streets. Off-white with bougainvilleas planted along them. Half a dozen subdivisions nestled against each other, with names like Sunset Villas, Las Haciendas, Las Palmas. I paused for a moment, re-oriented myself, passed through one of the entrances, followed the curving streets until I was in front of Connie’s house.

I rang the doorbell. A petite blonde woman opened it. For a moment I wondered if Connie could have changed so much in twelve years. But then she spoke, and I knew she wasn’t Connie.

She stretched out her hand and shook mine. She was wearing pale pink and green scrubs, an ID badge hanging from her neck. She greeted me with a hesitant smile as if she was waiting to see if I was going to cry. She motioned me towards the living room. The walls were very pale, the carpet a pure white, the curtains the palest of greens. Hardly any sunlight entered the room. I felt the color of my skin vibrate with tension. The room lacked comforting reds or searing blues, was harsh without burning oranges or thunderous purples. It was all too colorless, too white. I pulled my rebozo tight around me.

The nurse started speaking. I saw her lips move but heard very few of the words. I lost the names of doctors and specialists and drugs and failed treatments and the specifics of Connie’s illness. Forgot everything as soon as she said it. I caught only ‘growing weaker’ and ‘making her comfortable.’ I must have looked at her as if her words made no sense, as if I couldn’t speak English. She said it simply, ‘Breast cancer…she doesn’t have much time left.’ I nodded. Asked her no questions. She made a movement towards me as if she meant to hug me. I stepped back, out of her reach. She nodded, pointed down the hallway towards Connie’s bedroom.

The first door on the right was open. There was a faint light, enough to see the furniture, the shape she made under the sheets, the prescription bottles, the plastic cups and basins, the linens folded on the rocking chair by the bed. I could tell it had been a soft and comfortable bedroom once. Now there were too many chairs, too many things. It had the feel of a makeshift camp. It was too warm. Smelled liked disinfectant and damp sheets. I wanted to open the windows. Wanted to breathe the outside air.

I could feel her harsh breaths, the pain it cost her to turn slightly towards me. Her face was thinner. There were pain lines around her eyes, around her mouth, but the child she’ d been was still there in the round shape of her eyes, the wide forehead, the small chin. When she was little, with her blonde curls and smooth features, she might have emerged from a storybook. When she left at eighteen, she could have easily become a model, an actress.

We couldn’t have been more different.

—I’m here, Connie.

—I wanted to talk to you while I was still strong enough.

—Do you want more light?

—No, I don’t want you to see me.

—The nurse told me—

—I wanted to be the one to tell you I’m dying. Grandma wanted to tell you, but I told her I’d do it. I wondered if it would make you cry. Are you crying? No, I didn’t think you would.

—I didn’t know.

—It’s been a long time, Mom. Did you know I went to go live with Dad and his wife when I left home?

—Amá told me.

—Rosaura has been more of a mother to me than you ever were. Even though Dad cheated on her with you for all those years… I used to think I was a bad daughter because I didn’t love you enough. But it wasn’t me. It was you.

—I loved you more than I ever loved anyone or anything. You are my only child.

—You never spent time with me, and everywhere we went, you acted like I wasn’t yours.

—I was working! After your dad left, I worked day and night so that you could grow up in your own house, so you could go to school in new clothes—so you could become educated and apply to those faraway colleges you wanted to go to! I cleaned houses, I scrubbed floors on my hands and knees, I took care of old people, I took in laundry, I sold tacos, I even worked in the fields when there wasn’t anything else!

—I just wanted you to be with me. You were always gone. And when you were home, you were always tired. I think I can count on one hand how many times you told me you loved me. And then there was all the fighting. I got so tired of all the fighting.

She closed her eyes.

—I need you to leave now. I’m getting tired.

—Connie, why did you call me? I don’t think you wanted me here so we could fight some more.

—I’m not ready to go, Mom. I’m not ready to die. I was supposed to beat this. Just a few months ago, the doctors said I was in remission. I beat the cancer. And then all of the sudden, it was back…

Connie started coughing, her thin shoulders shaking. Her head fell back. I picked up the glass of water with a straw from the nightstand and held it to her lips. She sipped it weakly, then pressed the right side of her face into her pillow, trying to hide the tears slipping from her eyes. Connie took several shallow breaths before she spoke again.

—I have a daughter, did you know? I’m not ready to leave her. I was going to watch her grow up…

—What do you need me to do, Connie? Tell me.

—Come back. Go home now but come back every day until I’m gone. I just want you to be here.

She wasn’t sure when she noticed them the first time. Some solitary night when she was looking at the stars, but found her eyes drawn to the mesquites instead. The faded green and brown and black caterpillars that loved the same trees she loved. They were the color of bark. The horizontal lines of color looked as if they’d been painted by hand on each caterpillar with infinite care. She counted their legs. Four in front, four in the middle, two in the back. She could watch their slow progress for hours. The way their bodies stretched and collected, stretched and collected, the way they ate each bite with reverence. She often fought the temptation to pick them up and stroke them, but she never did. They were as wild as the trees.

I left Connie’s house. The day outside was too bright. There were hazy circles around everything. It hurt to look at bumpers, windows, metal reflecting sunlight. The sidewalk seemed uneven beneath my feet. The concrete splintered and crumbled away at the edges. I walked, and my breath felt strange in my throat. It seemed strange to have a body, to have limbs, to have a face.

I didn’t know where I was walking. When I looked up, I’d left all the subdivisions with their flowery names and I wasn’t far from my mother’s house. I passed by the bank that always laid sandbags by its doors the two or three times a year it rained heavily. Passed St. Joseph’s with its tall steeple that was only surpassed by the county courthouse. The auto parts shop, the pharmacy, crossed the street, passed the Hot Burger Stand. The smell of burgers didn’t make me hungry, but it was impossible to resist the panadería a block later. Amá never liked empty-handed visitors. I went in to order two marranitos for her and a still-warm mollete for me. I bought us both coffee even though she probably wouldn’t drink it. She’ d find it rude if I only brought one for myself.

I walked past the little town library with five cars in the parking lot, crossed over the wide lawn of the funeral home on the corner. Found myself in another neighborhood like my own. Tiny houses with only feet between them, larkspur and firecrackers and esperanzas growing in profusion everywhere.

I came to my mother’s tiny house. Connie and I had lived here for a while after Ivan left. She’ d still been a baby.

My mother’s house—four rooms, sky-blue on the inside, sky-blue on the outside. She said it made the house part of the sky. At dusk, with the wind blowing in, it was difficult to believe you were on the ground. Amá spent most of her days in the small yard, planting and weeding and watering. She didn’t have electricity, didn’t want any. She slept and rose with the sun. Lived as if she was never going to die.

I called for her around the house, half-expecting to see her hunched down, tearing into the earth and lifting weeds victoriously to the sky.

—Lourdes, I’m behind the naranjo!

I crossed the little lawn framed with yellow cannas and came to stand beside her behind the orange tree. Her dark skin gleamed in the light of the afternoon sun. I used to measure my color against hers, happy in the summer that we were the same earth brown, sad in the winter that I had paled. Her skin always smelled of corn and sun, rock and sun, nopal and sun.

—Amá, I saw Connie. She says she’s dying.

Amá straightened her back with aching slowness, leaned on the hoe she’ d been unearthing weeds with. She said nothing at first. That hardness in her jaw meant she was biting her tongue. The sun was behind her, making deep shadows of her eyes. A hard stare.

—Then there’s not much time, Lourdes. Here, I have to go. Turn the water off when you leave.

She moved to the side, letting the sun blind me. Gave me the hoe. While the colors bloomed behind my eyelids, she rolled her long braid into a bun and went inside. I listened as she fastened her sandals, walked down the sidewalk, and fastened the chain link fence behind her.

I leaned the hoe against the house. Sat down in the back patio and put my feet up. Sipped on my coffee. Took out the mollete and ate it, shaking the inevitable crumbs off my blouse. Afterwards, I put the hoe away in the shed and watered the laureles on the other side of the house. Connie had never liked gardens, dirt, animals, water hoses. When she was my baby, I would wake up suddenly in the middle of the night, needing to know she was well. I’d lean as close as I could without waking her and breathe in her soft milk breath. When she was older, I’d do the same and leave with the scent of her minty toothpaste filling my lungs. In those first years, I’d watch her chest rise and fall, something in me tearing itself to shreds between breaths. I was always afraid her sleep would become something else. She was always too little, too pale, too quiet.

Everywhere I went, no one believed she was my daughter. Doctors would ask me twice if I was her mother. Passers-by would stop to touch her hair. Whether they were Anglo or Mexican, they’d assume I was her nanny. I tied matching red ribbons in my hair and Connie’s to see if that would stop the suspicious looks. It changed nothing. As she grew older, I think Connie started to wonder too. Both her father and I were dark haired, dark skinned, dark eyed.

I had no pictures of her pale grandfather to show to Connie. My mother had burned every picture of my father, Eliberto, after he beat her. Amá never spoke his name, never told me the whole story. My siblings and I were forbidden to speak of him. It had been my grandmother who told me how Amá fought back, reaching for a kitchen knife and stabbing him in the side. He left that night, never to return. Amá never remarried. Never sought another compañero.

I wandered around my mother’s house. Swept the floor. Left the marranitos on her dining room table. Dumped the coffee and tossed the cup. Fell asleep on the porch.

One evening when she was twelve, Lourdes couldn’t find her five year old brother, Octavio, anywhere. Not in the house, not in the closets, not in the yard, not at the neighbors, not in the street. Night had come when she found him in the park a mile away from home. He wasn’t playing on the swings or on the slide. He was standing under a mesquite, his little arm lying along a branch. Head tucked in, he was absolutely still. As she came closer, Lourdes realized he was watching a dark caterpillar slowly climb his arm. She didn’t say a word as the caterpillar travelled up to his wrist, to his chubby fingers and then started to descend back onto the branch. They both watched as the caterpillar travelled to a small spread of leaves. When she took his hand to take him home, she saw the long bloody scratches he’ d received from the tree’s thorns. He had endured pain so that the caterpillar wouldn’t be disturbed.

My mother had seven children, but only two of us remain. Three died as infants, born with holes in their hearts.

My oldest brother, Santiago, died leaping in front of a train. His girlfriend, pregnant with another man’s child, died hemorrhaging from a botched illegal abortion. When they told him she was dead, he walked straight to the train tracks. Mute and barefoot, he was waiting for the train when it appeared at dawn.

My only sister, Leticia, died from her husband’s beatings. She explained away years of bruises as accidents, as clumsiness. Later, she said she loved him too much to leave him. But all the wounds he inflicted on her never healed. And so, she spent years slowly bleeding, slowly rotting inside. One day he struck her, and she burst like overripe fruit against a wall.

My surviving brother, Octavio, lives in the monte. The untouched land beyond the town, beyond the orange groves, beyond the plowed fields, and beyond the reach of the irrigation canals. On land that has never been plowed, land somewhere between the old cattle ranches where the cattle are half-wild. No road leads to Octavio’s shack. Horseback would be easiest, with a wary eye keeping watch for the different cacti that grow there, especially the horse-crippler. On foot, it would take days to navigate the treacherous terrain.

Five years since the last time I saw him. Our mother was ill and in the hospital. I’d driven her car until the dirt roads ended, then honked the horn for hours. I fell asleep in the car. When I woke the next morning, he was sitting on the car’s hood, watching the sun rise. He’ d looked at me, eyes wide and black, face innocent and wary. His hair was long and braided. His skin darker than I’d ever seen it. I’d been surprised by how young he looked despite the deep lines on his face from staring at the sun. He’ d already lived alone and in the monte for two decades. He lived in a hut that was only large enough for a sleeping pallet, a table and one chair. He ate seedpods, cactus, tunas or prickly pear fruit, persimmons, and the animals he caught with his hands. Every few years, he walked into town for a few supplies.

His voice had been low. His words slow and few. We didn’t speak much. I drove him into town. He stayed with me for a week. After the hospital released our mother, he packed his supplies. I drove him as far as I could. I gave him an envelope with some cash. In case he needed it for anything. He nodded at me, and walked back into the monte. I watched him until he became a tiny speck amongst the low-growing mesquite.

Octavio had been a singer, a poet. One day the songs left him. The words left him. That was all we ever knew. Speaking seemed to bring him pain. He grew thin and quiet, eyes restless. After he went to the monte, I found a food tin buried in my garden. Inside was a hand-made book. Its cover was made of dried moth’s wings. Too delicate to open. I carried it inside, kept it safe. A huisache grew in that same spot—a huisache that paid no attention to the seasons or the weather. Each of its first three years, it grew a decade’s worth—bursting from a tiny seedling into a full-grown huisache. It bloomed year round and had the largest thorns I’d ever seen. It grew close to the ground, wide rather than tall.

When Ivan first left me and my breath grew shallow and my limbs refused to care for me, I crawled out to the garden. I slept under that huisache for three days and three nights. On the first night, the branches drew close around me, cradling me against its rough-barked trunk. Thorns scratched against my skin. Needles, scalpels, obsidian knives pierced my chest, extracting the source of my pain. I buried it, piled the earth over it, and slept above it. I felt a numb silence spread through me. My tears slowly dried. My chest bled the next day and the next night, but I slept as if my dreams were medicine. On the fourth morning, I awoke. My chest felt light, and I could breathe.

In her dreams, Lourdes has no body. She is a spirit that lives inside the trees. While she gazes at her own leaves and branches and trunks, while she gazes at the sky, she is calm and content. But the wind is insistent, the wind carries her daughter’s name. Lourdes moves faster and faster, slipping from one tree to another in the thorn forest. But the wind is always there. Lourdes can’t even begin to speak her daughter’s name without flames spilling from her lips. She sees the fire run across her branches. She jumps into another tree, a pirul, and the fire roars. She is burning. Her skin cracks, peels. She jumps into a slower burning mesquite, but the fire follows, pierces her chest, burns through the night. Morning comes, and Lourdes is a smoldering circle of hot embers, burning and burning.

The next morning, I woke in my own house. Went outside and watched the sun struggle to rise above the horizon. As a child, I had watched Amá sing the sun’s welcome, her hands filled with dark earth. I didn’t know whether to greet it or pray to it, so I watched it in silence. I walked to Connie’ s house and watched the sun, the sky, the mesquite trees gnarled against fences, walls, and roofs. I ignored the traffic, the beaming lights, the faraway sounds of coyotes running along the back roads, other people, the twenty-seven blocks between my house and Connie’ s. The odd wind, both cold and warm, sometimes soft and sometimes hard, tore at my rebozo.

Amá was in Connie’ s kitchen. The sweet and milky scent of arroz con leche filled the room. She said something about trying to tempt Connie’ s appetite. I said nothing, seeing that Amá ’ s eyes were too sharp for conversation. I left the kitchen.

Connie opened her eyes though I’d made no noise. She tried to speak. I put my fingers over her lips to stop her. Her eyes closed. She was paler than the day before. She didn’t have the strength to push away the hand I briefly touched her cheek with.

Amá came in with a shallow bowl of arroz con leche. Amá took a small spoon and fed Connie two spoonfuls. A little dribbled down one side of Connie’ s face. Amá caught it with the napkin ready in her other hand. Connie smiled briefly then sank into a sudden sleep. Amá took the rocking chair. I stood by the window, glancing at them every now and then. Remembering my earlier trips to this neighborhood.

Amá had told me that Connie had decided, after her divorce, to return here and buy a house in a new subdivision. One night, not long after, sure no one would see me, I walked down to the street where the phone book said she lived. It had taken me a while to find it, on one of those streets only two blocks long, named after a flower that would have found this climate inhospitable. A pale face had watched me from one window. I didn’t stop, didn’t betray by one movement that it was me, that I had found her house, that I had seen her, that she had seen me. I continued on my way. But I went back every now and then. One day, I saw Connie walking down the sidewalk with a little fair-haired child. Connie stopped and knelt down to tie the little girl’s shoelaces. They couldn’t see me, but I was able to see the little girl’s face—she looked just the way Connie had when she was five. I couldn’t stop the tears, then, and had to flee for fear of running towards them instead. That had been four years ago. I’d never asked Amá where Connie’ s daughter was. Had never told Amá that I knew she existed.

They were difficult to see unless the eye knew exactly what it was looking for. A little under three inches. Mottled black and brown and maroon. So close to the color of the bark and laying under the bark, they were almost invisible. And then they’d change. Lie still. Dark chocolate in color. They looked like stones. Once she found them, Lourdes would return, again and again throughout the night, to see if the caterpillars had emerged from their chrysalis. It took years for her to see it all for the first time—the first cracks appearing, darkness inside, the wet wings emerging, the whole body gradually making its way out onto the bark. Slowly, the moths’ wings dried and stretched. How she always marveled at their wingspan, five inches, sometimes seven. Their gorgeous darkness. The females with their startling single white lines. They bred year round. Lourdes watched them at night, feeding on the nectar of the flowers in her yard, any fallen fruit, and fresh sap from the mesquites. They never lived long. A few weeks at the most.

Connie slept solidly. I went back over to the bed, held her hand and stared at her face while she slept. A fluttering beat at her throat. Her chest rose and fell. Her eyes, dark and sunken, twitched restlessly under her eyelids. There were lines at the corner of her eyes, a deep frown cut into her forehead. Her blonde hair was too light. I looked closer and saw silvery white strands running through it. She had the same lines I’d had at her age, bracketing her mouth, arcs from nose to chin. Her skin looked very smooth. I wanted to touch it again. I wanted to lean in close and feel the breath flowing out of her lungs warm on my cheek. I would have if we’ d been alone.

Hours later, Amá made me eat lunch and sit outside for a while. It was Amá ’ s habit that she always opened the kitchen window anytime she cooked. I eavesdropped on all her conversations. Learned Connie’s daughter was named Lluvia, that she was living with Ivan and his wife, Rosaura, in San Benito. My name never came up in any of those conversations.

I returned to Connie’ s bedroom as soon as my plate was empty. She woke up briefly, her limbs agitated and her breathing harsh. The nurse plucked out one of the bottles from the many colonizing the nightstand. She took a needle-less syringe and put it in Connie’ s mouth, then made some notation in her charts and left the room again. Amá smoothed back Connie’ s hair and I watched her, feeling useless. After a while, Connie sank back into that same too-still sleep.

I stayed for a while longer. The nurse glared at me from her corner. Amá was never still. I could hear her sweeping, cooking, washing linens, on the phone, returning every fifteen minutes to check on Connie.

I went home, sat on my back patio. My eyes seeking refuge in my garden: the morning glories, purple passion vines, star jasmine, and Carolina jessamine growing on trellises up to the patio, my yellow rosebushes, the magenta-blooming bougainvillea, the durantas and the asparagus ferns growing in profusion, the pink clovers and orange celosias, the ruby-flowered bottle-brushes. I watched the sun set while the sky revolved, folding itself inside out, again and again.

When she was five or six, I’d walk Connie to school every morning, watching until she was safely inside the doors. Connie was always her teachers’ favorite. When she was little she was so well-behaved. She never talked back, never got into fights, had no enemies. She was like a doll. Every afternoon, I waited for her outside the school to walk with her to Amá ’ s house.

The first time her kindergarten teacher saw me waiting for Concepción, she told her, Bye, Connie, there’ s your nanny. Connie looked at me and looked at her teacher, then looked down and said nothing. I said nothing, only waited like a rock for her to come to me. She didn’t take my hand, just walked slightly ahead of me.

Years passed. First, she didn’t want me to wait on the sidewalk. Then she didn’t want me to wait on school grounds. By the time she was in the fourth or fifth grade, I would wait three blocks down from the school. One afternoon, I waited outside her classroom. The mothers were supposed to meet the teachers. I waited but Connie never emerged. Time passed. I went to sit on the bench down the hall. Finally, I saw her. Her teacher was saying goodbye to her at the door, one hand on her shoulder, Connie, I really wanted to meet your mother. Tell her to come by and visit me someday. Connie looked at me but said nothing. I said nothing. No teacher of hers ever met me.

She came home one day and told me not to call her Concepción, her name was Connie. Sometimes my lips still shape the wrong name, but since that day her name has been Connie.

By the time she was twelve, we were fighting every day. Everything I did, everything I said seemed to be the wrong thing. I never understood her, she said. She alternated between screaming rages and locking herself in her room. She never got in trouble, never got into drugs, as far as I could tell. I was always working. We lived in the same house, but never had dinner together, never spent the weekends shopping or enjoying the day. She spent the weekends at friends’ houses or at my mother’s. Every time we spoke it was a battle, even the silence between us shifted back and forth as if we were wrestling.

A thousand times Amá told me I should try harder to reach her. But Connie’s screams and silences always left me overwhelmed, tired of being angry, tired of trying. The house seemed strangely empty at first, but I couldn’t help it, I was glad when she left. The quiet enveloped me, and the years passed.

Before I left, I went back in to say goodbye to Connie. She didn’t wake. I left her house and walked home.

Lourdes saw them all the time, but she’ d never seen one of the large dark moths inside her house. She took off her shoes, sat on the small recliner, and laid her head back. No sound but she felt a soft flutter against her hair. She opened her eyes and saw the dark wings obscuring her vision. The black witch moth was motionless, standing on her forehead. She closed her eyes and a greater darkness flitted in her mind. An eclipse of black witch moths, the males with all their tiny iridescent pink and violet dots, the females with their violet-edged white lines streaming like lightning in every direction. Light fracturing and splitting amongst their dark wings. They were moving too quickly to distinguish individual moths. Lourdes opened her eyes. It was time to open Octavio’s book.

I couldn’t sleep. Too late to go back to Connie’s house. I knew Amá would be there the whole night through. The way I was sent away in the late afternoon made me think there were others coming to see Connie in the evening. That my presence would make things awkward if Ivan and Rosaura came to visit. If they brought Connie’ s daughter with them.

I wasn’t hungry and didn’t want to watch tv. I didn’t want to work. I had cleaned houses and taken in seamstress work until Connie left home. I did more and more embroidery work until that was how I made my living. Wedding dresses, evening dresses, silk and satin, beautiful with their swirling patterns, the embroidery gleaming like frost.

But what I loved most were the brightly colored huipiles and Mexican dresses for the shops downtown that catered to the tourists. Some of them I also sold to upscale boutiques in San Antonio and Austin. Birds and butterflies, flowers and leaves, villages and people all spilling in vibrant colors from my hands. My hands would reach for one color after another, the images embroidering themselves into being.

Now I sat down at the old long worktable where I kept all of my needles and spools of thread. I ran my fingers over them but didn’t pick any of them out. I had a metal model dress form with a wedding dress waiting. The bride wanted a thousand seed pearls on the bodice. And there was a shawl I was working on. I touched the soft fabric. It spilled to the floor. When I stooped to pick it up, I saw a tin container I’d kept under the worktable.

I pulled it out. Sat down. Opened it and took out the book.

I’d always been too afraid to open it. Had feared that the moths’ wings that formed the cover would disintegrate. But they were strong when I took hold of them. I opened it.

For Amado, it read on the first page.

I kept on reading. And I learned why he went to the monte, why he spoke so hesitantly, why the little brother who had been growing up into a such a beautiful young man became the solitary stranger he was now.

Once I started crying, I couldn’t stop. I cried for Octavio. I cried for Connie. I cried for Amá. I cried for myself. It was as if every tear I hadn’t cried since the nights I slept under the huisache welled up in me and demanded out.

There were love poems and remembering poems. Story poems. Impromptu letters written in the empty spaces. How Octavio had met Amado. How Amado had loved all the trees of the thorn forest. He’ d never seen them before. How they’d fallen in love and decided it was safest to keep it hidden. How they’d dreamed of going away together. They were young, had met as eighteen-year-old students at the local community college. Neither of them had much money, but they were both working full time jobs and putting money aside for their future. Both of them deathly afraid to tell their families.

Octavio wrote about how careful they were, never kissing or holding hands in public. Never touching where they could be seen. How they were performers in front of other people, trying to appear as nothing more than two friends. But that hadn’t been enough. One day walking back to Amado’s apartment from the convenience store, they were intercepted by four young men. Octavio knew each one by name. They were in three of his classes. The four tossed them in to the back of a pickup truck and took them out to one of their family farms.

Two of them held Octavio back while the other two beat Amado, who was much more petite than Octavio. They blackened his eyes, they broke his nose, they smashed his jaw. They knocked him to the ground and kicked him. And when Amado lay still, they poured gasoline on him and set him on fire.

There was a poem towards the end of the book where Octavio begged Amado for forgiveness. Octavio couldn’t save him. While Amado burned, the four men beat Octavio, raped him, pulled out his tongue and cut off part of it. Told him they would come back for him and his family if he ever told anyone. They left him unconscious, in an irrigation ditch outside of town. No one ever found Amado’s remains.

In the last poem, Octavio vowed to go to the monte and live there, among the thorn forest, where he would always feel Amado’s presence.

I cried and it was not enough. For everyone who had died. For everyone who was dying. For Octavio who had never told anyone. For this book he had buried in my garden. I couldn’t go to him now. Not when Connie was slipping away. But I vowed to myself I would after—after the waiting was over.

Lourdes wakes. It is still night. She must go. She hears Connie calling. She dresses quickly, rebraiding her hair as she walks. The night air is cool and smells of ash, the ground somehow soft beneath her steps. The night sky is filled with wind and clouds without roundness, pulled and stretched to opposite horizons. The slightly dented moon says nothing, only lights the path, makes her white blouse glow a strange blue. She believes she is dreaming. The ache in her right knee feels real. Connie’ s house is not far in the dark, the trees rush into each other, individual steps blurring.

The door is unlocked. Amá is asleep in the living room. The nurse is curled up on the recliner. Lourdes walks into the bedroom. Connie is awake. Holds out a hand to her. Lourdes walks in, gently sits on the side of the bed and draws Connie into her arms, her hands smoothing down the golden hair, her chest humming with the dry monotonous humming she’ d lulled Connie to sleep with when she was a baby. Connie sobs. Lourdes draws back so that she can see Connie’ s face. Smiles softly and wipes away Connie’ s tears. Kisses Connie’ s furrowed brow. Connie makes a sound, raises a hand to her own throat. Lourdes can see how she’s struggling to try to speak. Lourdes puts a finger on Connie’ s lips. Shakes her head slightly. Connie turns her face into Lourdes’ neck, suddenly reaching to grasp her as tightly as she can. Lourdes holds her tight, trembling and shaking. Years without one another. Both trembling and shaking.

Connie’ s grasp weakens before long. Lourdes feels the long exhale and inhale of Connie’ s breath. Lourdes holds her while she sleeps. Hours pass before Lourdes releases Connie and gets up to leave. Connie opens her eyes and Lourdes touches her face. Says nothing. Words are blades and wounds and scars. Silence is not always emptiness.

—Lourdes, wake up, come quickly.

I woke, the hand on my shoulder urgent. Amá was standing by my bed, her eyes bloodshot. She left the room, the braided knot of her hair unrolling from its place at her nape.

Morning. Silver dew beneath my feet, the sharp scent of night burned away by the dawning sun. Colors ran across the sky, threatening to overflow its limits. I wondered with every step if I would fall through the grass and into the sky. Stars like mosquitoes flitted around me.

Amá pulled on my arm. She said something. I didn’t ask her to repeat herself. Amá had left Connie’ s car running in the street. She drove quickly, houses and lights and cars all becoming a blur of bright and dark.

We pulled into Connie’ s driveway. Walked in through a door that had been left ajar. I heard Concepción before I saw her. The door to the bedroom had been left open. Her breaths were like sobbing. Amá held her face, praying loudly. There was a scream in my throat, but I made no sound.

Connie trembled. Her breathing slowed. I waited by her bedside, counted her last ten breaths backwards. Then nothing. No more. She fell away, a wordless husk. Amá made those harsh sounds old women make when they cannot cry, her chest an empty oil drum. I was only eyes.

Lourdes sleeps but does not rest. Her feet are cold. Her face is hot, burning. She rocks. Back and forth, she rocks. Dry eyed red eyed black eyed empty eyed. She rocks, rocking sorrow in her arms as if it were her flesh. Softly, she rocks sorrow and sings lullabies to the sorrow of her arms. Rocking sorrow, her body is the center of an out-flowing circle, a ripple of grief. No night or day or cold or hot for her. Sorrow dry like a husk. Rocking sorrow because still sorrow burns a hole in her and screams through the night.

Later, I return to Connie’ s house. The funeral home wasn’t going to be ready for the wake until the evening. Only Amá and I were at the house, cleaning and packing. Amá was so silent an electricity surrounded her, a prickling on the skin like the air before thunder and lightning. I wandered around the empty house, waiting for Amá to speak first. It seemed as if we were waiting for Concepción’ s resurrection, waiting for her to come through the door, waiting for her to call from the bedroom. Connie was gone. The day was a black shriveled thing to my eyes, and I needed to take the prints with their pale colors off the wall.

I took down three and propped them against the wall, but the fourth slipped out of my hands. The glass shattered, splintering and skittering along the floor in a dozen different directions. None of it cut me though my legs and arms were exposed. Amá came running to see what I’d done. I waved her away and picked my way carefully over the glass. I went to the kitchen to find a broom. I didn’t know Amá had followed me into the kitchen.

—What’s wrong with you—breaking her things—what kind of mother are you?

—Connie’ s dead, Amá. What do these things matter now?

—Grosera, she’ s not even in the ground yet! You are an unnatural mother, Lourdes. All of those years, you left her alone.

—She was the one that left, Amá. She didn’t want anything to do with me. I’ve been here—all this time—in case she ever needed me again.

—And I kept my silence all these years, Lourdes, because the two of you were more stubborn than mules. But you could have tried harder. She was your only child! It’s your own fault that Connie left the way she did. It was making her crazy to grow up with you. And Ivan too, you drove him away—

—He lied to me, Amá, you know that. He had another family, other children. For ten years, he made me believe he loved me.

—You were the one too busy lying to yourself. You can’t tell me that in ten years, you never realized he had another family. And once you knew, you should have kept your mouth shut so that Connie could have grown up with a father—

—Think what you want Amá, none of that matters now. What matters now is Lluvia. I want to see her.

—Connie died, Lourdes, and you never begged forgiveness, never reconciled… If she had wanted you to meet her daughter, she would have told me.

—You don’t know what happened between us, Amá, you don’t know anything—

—You didn’t even cry when she—

—I didn’t cry! You think I didn’t cry…she was mine—she was all I had in this life after Ivan left. You’re the one who’s never cried! Your face was stone when your babies died. You said nothing when Leticia died! You wouldn’t even go see her when she called for you, nothing until the funeral, and then there was Octavio. You said nothing when he left, never helped us look for him.

—He chose the monte. It was out of my hands.

—What do you mean, it was out of your hands? Válgame Dios, you knew. You’ve always known what happened to Octavio and you never said anything!

—Mejor muerto que joto. He was dead to me when he started seeing that boy. Everybody knew what he was…

—I hope Octavio’ s forgiven you, Amá, because I never will. Don’t ever speak to me about being a bad mother. You…

Without warning, Amá raised her right arm and backhanded me. She slapped me so hard my head went as far as it could before rebounding. She swung the same arm back to strike my other cheek, but I caught her wrist with my left hand.

—No, Amá, you don’t get to punish me any more.

Amá was stone again. There was nothing to read in her eyes or on her face. She stood there, arms at her sides. She was the mother she’ d always been. I’d never seen her cry. I couldn’t remember ever being held by her. But she must have. Once.

I walked away from the house, leaving the shattered glass on the floor and the door open.

The wind was blowing cold again. I stayed in the sunlight as I walked home.

The coffin is made of white oak, a trailing pattern of vines and leaves carved around its edges. Solid white. Lourdes would have painted it turquoise blue with purple and red and gold, would have painted the silhouettes of trees, dark-leafed mesquites, silver-thorned huisaches, yellow-red blooming retamas, the light glancing off their leaves.

The coffin was lowered slowly into the ground, the plastic and green turf failing to disguise the earth. Trails of moist earth everywhere, around its edges, around the gravesite, everywhere under the canopy. Mutely, they sat listening to the priest. All she heard was the sigh of the earth as the coffin came to rest in its place.

I stayed by the grave until the men with shovels finished tamping down the earth, until they piled the flowers over the mound. I couldn’t bear to walk away while the coffin was still open to the sky.

Everyone gathered around the vehicles. Eyes on me all morning, but no one came up to me. I saw Rosaura. Grey haired and softly plump, her eyes crinkling at the corners. I was looking directly at her when she started to make her way to me. Ivan stopped her, pulled her away. She tried twice more. Each time he stopped her, raising his voice the last time.

So many faces everywhere. Relatives. Neighbors. Connie’ s friends. None of them there at my request. They greeted and hugged and consoled Amá. I waved them away. They looked awkward in their black clothing. Awkward with their weeping. They scurried every which way into cars that opened along their sides, like the carapaces of dead insects.

All day, I had avoided looking at Amá, but when I felt her sudden intake of breath my eyes flew to her face. I pivoted on one foot to see what had caught her attention. My brother Octavio was climbing over the eight-foot wall separating the graveyard from the monte. He looked just as he had five years before. Bone thin and tall, nostrils flaring, eyes solemn, body balanced lightly on the balls of his feet. He walked up to us. Everyone was silent. He went to Amá, kissed her forehead. She stood still and silent before him.

Then his black eyes turned to me.

Sister, come, she hears though he says no words. She follows. Climb. She climbs. They climb. They stop. They rest on a slight hilltop, created to hold the resaca, long cattails growing at the edge of the water reserve. The town sprawled wide and strange through the huisaches and mesquites and nopales. Lourdes can see the long trail of cars leading away from the walled cemetery. Follow. She follows. Already early evening, they walk until they leave town. When the houses fade away, they start running. Like him, she is suddenly running barefoot. Like him, she is sensing branches and rocks and thorns with her body and not her eyes. The day passes. Night comes.

Then they return to the town. To her house. To her garden. They both fall to their knees under the huisache. Dig. Lourdes had left several trowels laying on the patio steps. They each take one and start digging. The light from the patio makes the shadows rounded and deep. She rests back on her feet, tastes the earth on her hands, finding it curiously sweet. She’ d forgotten the earth. Forgotten the night and the shadows.

Lourdes. She looks up to see her brother holding out what looks like a dark clod of earth. He works it with his hands until the earth crusting it flakes away. Reveals a dark shriveled thing. He massages it as if it were a tortilla tostal. Gives it to her. It’s so small she can almost hold it in her closed hand. It squirms as if it recognizes her. She hadn’t known it was a live thing. She wants to drop it but there’ s a thrumming emptiness in her chest that calls out for this piece of itself. She closes her eyes, lies back on the ground, lays it on her chest. Feels it sinking through her.

Thunder. Thunder and streaks of lightning burning inside her. Her entire body convulses, shakes, shivers. She gasps for air.

Octavio is there to take her hand. Tightens his grasp on it for a bare second and then lets go. He rises.

Octavio. Don’t go. I read the book. Lourdes didn’t know what she had expected, but it wasn’t his calm, his silence.

He touches Lourdes’ face. His profile is illuminated for a moment before he turns away. His eyes are black pools of tears. She doesn’t try to stop him when he slips away into the darkness.

He lived in the monte. She lived in town. But they were both dwellers of the thorn forest. How not to love those stubborn trees that clung to life, that lived off of sunlight and infrequent rain and hard earth. That refused to die. That would come back to life and re-create the forest as long as one limb survived. They survived everything.

Lourdes walks slowly back to her house. The sun is already rising when she finishes refilling the hole under the huisache tree.

My favorite place to work was out on the back patio. In the winter, I’d sit in my favorite rocking chair, cover my legs with a blanket when it was cool, stop to drink hot tea. I liked that at the end of the day I could lay everything down and watch the sun set.

The hours, the days, passed quickly, colors blooming across the fabric. My thoughts turned to Connie, as they always did. The years of silence and the years of fighting were fading. Thank you for calling me, Connie, even if all the words we spoke aloud were edged with anger. I’m glad I was there to hold you. Ay, what a waste—all the years we spent apart. I missed you every day you were gone but was too stubborn to admit it.

I remembered her as a child, the sound of her laughing, her hand in mine. When she was a baby. How it had felt when they first placed her in my arms. I fell asleep remembering.

—Lourdes.

I opened my eyes and found Rosaura standing in my backyard, holding the hand of a little girl. She was tiny, seven or eight years old. Her hair, her eyes, her skin all honey-colored.

—Rosaura?

—Ay, Lourdes, I’m so sorry for your loss. Forgive me for not telling you so earlier. Ivan didn’t want me talking to you at the funeral, but the last thing Connie asked me to do was to let you be in Lluvia’ s life. She’s coming to live with us. Ivan doesn’t know I’m here. I’ll bring her whenever I can.

Rosaura knelt down and held both of Lluvia’ s hands.

—Lluvia, this is your other grandma.

I stood, letting the cloth in my lap fall to the ground. Hardly able to breathe. I walked down the steps and kneeled in front of her.

—Hi, Lluvia. I’m your grandma. I’m so happy to meet you.

Lluvia looked at me. The house behind me. The backyard. Her eyes drifted from the mesquites to the tallow tree to the dark-leafed mora and settled on the huisache.

—I like your tree. It smells pretty. I like that they have thorns.

—Wanna come with me? Let me show you the moths and the sleeping caterpillars.

She took my hand when I held it out to her. There were tears in my eyes and a tightness in my voice. Lluvia tightened her hold on my hand.

I looked back briefly.

—Thank you, Rosaura.