The Butterfly’s Daughter (30 page)

“Luz is gone? I don't understand. Where is she?”

“She's on her way to San Antonio right now.”

There was a moment of shocked silence. “Luz is coming here?”

“Yes, ma'am. She's driving there. But the problem is she doesn't know your address. The phone number Abuela had is no longer in service. Luz was hoping to find it once she got into town. I know it sounds crazy, but Luz can be pretty stubborn when she wants something. So if you give me your address, then I'll pass it on to her.”

“Yes, of course. Are you ready?”

Sully wrote down the address, feeling a bit smug that Luz would be very happy to get it and grateful to him for thinking on his feet.

“Do you know when she's arriving?” the woman asked.

“Any day, I'd think. She's driving, so I can't be certain.”

“
Dios mio,
” the woman muttered. “Do you want Maria's address, too? Just in case?”

Sully was momentarily confused. “You're not Tía Maria?”

“No. I'm . . . her sister. Luz's mother. Mariposa.”

Sully squeezed his eyes shut and lowered his head. That news floored him. Luz's mother was alive? Hell, Luz sure didn't know that. He had to wonder if Abuela did. His heart began to pound as he thought about Luz, naively on her way to San Antonio. She was looking for her aunt Maria. She had no idea what was coming.

“I'm pretty sure she isn't going to see you, ma'am. She's looking for her aunt Maria's house.” He cleared his throat. “Luz thinks you're dead.”

He heard another sharp intake of breath. “Luz thinks I'm dead?” she asked, her voice ringing with shock and accusation. “That's what she told her? That I was dead?”

“Yes.”

“Please,” she said, sounding flustered. “Is my mother there?”

“You mean, Abuela?”

“Yes. My mother. Esperanza Avila. May I talk to her, please?”

Sully's mind went blank. This kept getting weirder. Shit, shit, shit, he thought to himself, hating to be the one to have to tell this woman the sad news about her mother. What was the right thing to say at a time like this?

“Hello?”

“Yeah, I'm still here. Mrs. . . .”

“Avila. Miss Avila.”

“Uh, yes, Miss Avila.” He cleared his throat again. He had no choice but to man up and tell her the truth. “I'm sorry to be the one to have to tell you this, but Abuela, that is, your mother, is dead.”

“No!” He heard rapid breathing, then she blurted out with disbelief, “When?”

“A few weeks ago. It was a heart attack. She died quickly. There was nothing anybody could do. I'm sorry. We all loved her.” He paused, hearing nothing.

“Hello? Miss Avila? Hello?”

“Thank you. Good-bye.”

Sully heard a click and once again, they were disconnected. He stared at the receiver a moment, then put it back in the cradle. His hand rested on it, stunned. He shook his head in disbelief, his mind still trying to make sense of all that he'd learned in the past few minutes, more than Luz had known most of her life. In his mind he saw her driving in that ridiculous old car, the box of Abuela's ashes in the backseat, heading straight toward shock and heartbreak. His strong-hearted girl.

Sully's jaw clenched as he grabbed the paper bearing the address and phone number of Luz's mother and raced out the door.

Mariposa stood clutching the phone to her breast. It buzzed angrily but all she heard was this young man's voice in her mind saying, over and over,
Your mother is dead.

“Mariposa? What's happened? What did she say?” asked Sam, moving quickly to her side. He took hold of her elbow and gently turned her to face him.

Mariposa looked into his eyes, seeing only the blackness of his pupils.

“Tell me what happened,” he said in that low voice of his.

It was his calm that reached her. She opened her mouth to respond but the words would not come out. She turned away from him and stared, openmouthed and eyes wide, at her neat little room. Her gaze swept the kitchen, the bed, the aquariums bustling
with life. Everything appeared to be in the same place it was a few moments ago, but nothing was the same or ever would be again.

Her mother was dead. She would never again see her face, hear her voice. It was too late. She would never be forgiven. Mariposa felt the panic erupt in her chest, sudden and violent, scorching her with blinding pain and remorse. She gasped for breath.

Sam had his arms around her and held her to his chest. She felt the coarseness of the fabric against her cheek as she swallowed gulps of air. Nothing erupted, no tears, no cries, just this tremendous ache. “Sam,” she choked out, pulling back to take refuge in his gaze. She took a shuddering breath and spoke as if in shock. “My mother is dead.”

His arms tightened around her. “I'm sorry.”

Gasping, she pushed from his arms and fled through the door. She heard the rushing of blood in her ears as she ran, ignoring the couples sitting on the patio, around the building to her garden. She ran directly to the patch of tilled soil she had been working on, and dropping to her knees, she pushed her hands into the black, crumbling soil. She gathered great handfuls of earth and squeezed as tight as she could, breathing hard. Then, throwing back her head, she opened her mouth and a cry ripped from her soul out to the heavens.

“Mami . . .”

When she's finished growing, the caterpillar stops eating and leaves its host plant to wander in search of a safe place, protected from the weather and enemies, where she can pupate. Once she finds a suitable spot she spins a silk mat and a small white knot and rests. Her time as a caterpillar is almost over.

T
he landscape markedly changed as they moved farther south into the Texas Hill Country. More and more Luz saw the trees that Stacie had reminisced about—in tight clusters on a vast plain or standing alone and dramatic, like a silent sentry. Everywhere she looked she saw signs of fall, more subtle and more varied than in the north. It was as if the scorching heat of the Texas summer had leached the bright summer colors from the earth. For as far as she could see, the hills rolled in an intricate tapestry of muted greens, browns, rusty purples, and pinks.

There were so many wildflowers and native plants along the highway that to Luz they became a blur of color. But Margaret jumped up in her seat whenever she spied a new variety, excitedly pointed it out, then hurriedly scribbled the name down on her list or checked it in the volume in her lap. The Latin names rolled off her tongue:
Gaillardia, Liatris, Rudbeckia, Solidago.
Luz had long since stopped asking what the common names were.
Margaret had told her it made more sense for her to learn the scientific names in Latin.

“Common names of a plant often change with location,” she told her. “It can get confusing. The scientific names are always correct.”

Luz nodded politely, but in her heart she wondered why Margaret would want to stumble over those long names that didn't make a whit of sense when they could just call the flower by a name picked for what the flower looked like: Indian blanket, gayfeather, black-eyed Susan, goldenrod. Most of all, why would she prefer to twist her tongue around
Asclepias
when
milkweed
did the job?

Margaret was in seventh heaven at seeing the native wildflowers along the highway. “We have Lady Bird Johnson to thank for all this,” Margaret told her. “She's the patron saint of native plants and wildflowers, in my opinion. Look at all that goldenrod blooming out there. Did you ever see anything so beautiful? I'd be happy to accomplish a fraction of what she did in her lifetime. I just have to figure out how. Maybe I'll find out on this trip. Do you think?”

“Absolutely. A wise woman once told me that we're supposed to find out where we're supposed to be.”

Margaret tossed her head back and laughed heartily, from her belly. Luz glanced from the road to look at her. Margaret was blooming. She had a new look of determination in her eyes, a new perked-ear alertness, like Serena had when she caught a scent.

“Hey, slow down and pull off to the side a minute,” Margaret exclaimed. “I want to make a stop.”

“What for? Is something wrong?”

“No, just do it!”

Luz slowed El Toro and came to a stop on the shoulder. She held on to Serena as Margaret hopped out and walked into a
roadside field brilliantly lit by countless vivid orange flowers. She walked through the stalks with the carefree joy of a child playing in the field. When she bent to pick a handful of blooms, her hand rose to idly chase away a bug, and when she stood up she was beaming. The sun shone on her face and she seemed to absorb the brilliant colors that surrounded her. She's in her element, Luz thought as she watched her walk back to the car with her flowers.

“What's that for?”

“Well, I know they're cosmos, not marigolds. But I thought it could be a contribution to Abuela's
ofrenda,
” Margaret exclaimed, her flush almost as bright as the flowers.

An hour later, just as the sun was setting, Luz caught her first glimpse of the outline of the city of San Antonio. Looking out, Luz understood why so much fuss was made about the Texas sky. Poets, writers, painters, grandfathers telling stories—they all struggled to put words or color to what they couldn't fully capture. Seeing a Texas sunset stretch out to infinity in reds and oranges so surreal they defied description made Luz believe that there had to be a higher power. Only God could paint like that.

She felt a shiver of nervousness, wondering what awaited her in this city that had been the first American home of her great-grandparents. She was the fourth generation passing through, her lineage as tied to this city as it was to the small mountain village in Michoacán. Yet, as she approached the vista of tall buildings on the horizon, she felt as if she were nothing more than a tourist seeing it for the first time. She'd been on the road for a week and knew nothing more about the family that had settled here generations ago.

They chose a modest motel on the outskirts of the city. There were a few to choose from but their budgets were tight, so they selected the cheapest clean one with a room available. As they stepped in, the air felt close, and the multicolored polyester fabrics on the beds and drapes looked like they were put up in the 1970s.

“Even then, they should've shot the decorator,” Margaret declared. Everything was minuscule—a mini white refrigerator, a mini Mr. Coffee machine, a minidresser that served as a stand for the small television, and in the bathroom, teeny-tiny bottles of shampoo and conditioner.

After camping, however, it felt like a five-star hotel. Luz grinned as she washed her hair with the shampoo. The hot water sluicing down her body had never felt so luxurious. She took her time applying lotion to her dry skin, careful to leave some in the teensy bottle for Margaret.

The mirror was fogged when she was through. She took a washcloth and wiped the condensation from the mirror. As she swiped, her reflection gradually appeared in the filmy glass. Her hand slowed, then dropped to her side as she stared at her own reflection.

Her body was still full at the breasts and rounded at the hips, but now she saw the definition of strong bones and sharper curves. When did she get such a pronounced waist? She turned to the side. How much weight had she lost? she wondered. She'd noticed over the past week that her jeans were looser, but she'd been too preoccupied to give it much thought. Even after years with Sully, she still felt self-conscious about her full hips. She often strategically braced half her weight against the chair armrest when she sat on his lap so he wouldn't think she was too heavy. Or snapped at him when he pinched the soft rolls on her side or lay his hand on her belly. The rolls were gone now.

Her grandmother's death had shocked her with its suddenness. The funeral and grief had taken its toll on her and the trip had its unscheduled stops. Luz realized she'd missed a lot of meals. She leaned forward and with her fingertips gently traced the sharper contours of her cheeks, the bridge of her nose, down to her lips. Her eyes seemed larger in her face. The youthful pudginess of her cheeks, the girlishness in her expression, had given way to a new maturity that wasn't there before. She marveled at how the changes she felt occurring inside herself were reflected outside as well.

She was curious to see her aunt Maria. Did she have Abuela's nose, her cheekbones, her laugh? Would Maria look at all like her mother? What new stories could Maria tell about Mariposa and Abuela?

Luz emerged from the bathroom eager to find her aunt's address. Margaret was sitting at the desk in front of her computer, thrilled to be back online and reading up on the sanctuaries. She sat with one leg curled beneath her and dipping french fries in ketchup. The smell of the fast food in the greasy bag made her mouth water. Serena was curled up on the bed, her pointed nose resting delicately on her forepaws. The moment Luz grabbed the bag of food, Serena leaped up and began whining. Luz fed Serena part of her hamburger and ate the rest as she began flipping through the address book.

As she had before, Luz methodically went through all of the entries written in the well-worn pages. The penmanship was old-school, taught by the nuns. Every letter was well formed in her feather script. Luz's index finger scrolled down each page. Her grandmother had been neat. Several entries had been crossed out and new ones added over the years as her aunt moved. Luz took a breath, then picked up the phone and dialed the last number listed
for Maria Avila. It was the same number that she'd dialed before the funeral. The phone rang twice. Luz heard the same announcement that the number had been disconnected.

“Any luck?” Margaret asked.