Chapter 7
Chapter 7
My mother's garden was my sanctuary.
I grew up in the rich, dark soil that held many of my first memories. Planting my first seed, playing with the earthworms, tasting papaya for the first time, and experiencing the painful sting of a centipede bite.
It's where I learned how to read the moon's cycles, where Mami taught me how to honor and harvest what we took from the soil, make herbal infusions and decoctions, and extract the medicinal magic in stubborn roots and tricky twigs.
I spent my days tasting, drawing, and studying the botanical language.
Mami grew over a hundred species, all growing and thriving in her yard. Aromatic herbs like verbena, anise, rosemary, mugwort, lemon balm, and basil thrived and grew side by side, perfuming the air to keep the snakes away.
Buried deep in the soil lay fresh vegetables that we cooked with every day.
Pungent, spicy ginger, beets rich for the blood, sweet yam, yucca, and cassava root.
The Banyan tree, whose deep roots and branches have stood here longer than the house itself, gave the sweetest fruits year after year.
Our island raspberries would grow in wild abundance. The medicine found in the dried leaves was a well-known potent fertility herb. It was a favorite of the chickens that roamed wildly around the island. Mami only tolerated them because they were good at keeping the pests away. It gave Chi Chi, my mother's pet rooster, something to do other than peck at people's feet for not wearing shoes outside. He was a menace, and he and Amias had a long-standing feud.
My mother even had poisonous plants hidden deep away in her garden.
Mami said that to be well-versed in the art of healing, you had to know the poisonous effects of every plant. To fight fire with fire, you needed the ammunition. She never shied away from showing me the correct and proper dosage for each herb, using the roots and seeds in her craft for their protection properties.
Despite her heavenly name, the white angel's trumpet had a diabolic nature. Each part of the plant was toxic; it could be used to induce hallucinations, paralysis, and even death.
But my favorite was the Noctis flower, which grew secretly on a tiny bush, hidden and surrounded by thick green shrubs.
The "flower of sleep," also known as "the maiden of death," only bloomed under the first full moon of fall with the equinox. Its pure white petals and yellow center are almost identical to the harmless daffodil. But to the trained eye, there was a single difference. In the center of the Noctis, the pistil was a dark maroon color, a warning of nature itself to stay away.
The Noctis was a poisonous mutation of the narcissus family.
The legendary myth was that the Noctis grew from the blood of a Taino princess who was killed after poisoning a brutal conquistador, forever staining the earth with her sorrow over the slaughter of her people.
In retaliation, the Noctis was nearly destroyed, making it one of the species of plants on the near-extinction list and extremely rare.
In many parts of the world, including Salamanca, it was illegal to possess both the flowering plant and tiny round seeds.
The Noctis had no hallucinogenic effect, but the smallest amount of her crushed dried petals was enough to put someone into a coma, never waking up again.
The toxic alkaloids of the Noctis were able to shut down the body's brain functions, hijack the nervous system, slowing the body's heart rate to the point of death.
I've never seen Mami use it.
I gazed at myself in the mirror, adorning my braided hair with white daffodils as Samara sulked and paced the room beside me.
"This is hell," Samara exasperated, her brown eyes filling with annoyed agitation. She lifted the long-layered fabric of her skirt in frustration, struggling with her temper not to rip the cream silk of her custom quadrille dress apart.
"I feel like a doll being put on display for the highest bidder," she complained, moving to look at herself in the full-length mirror. Roughly pushing up the puffed lace sleeves that draped open across her shoulders. The pretty prints of blue-green and orange flowers came together beautifully on the silk, delicate against Samara's golden skin tone. The rest of the bodice was simple and light, cutting into a modest V on her chest.
To see Samara in anything other than ripped jeans and sneakers was a rare sight. Her hair twisted into her signature long twist, freshly done, and laid around her waist elegantly. She looked beautiful.
"I forgot that we disguised the truth as tradition. I don't know when you people will realize we don't live in the seventeen hundreds anymore. The world has moved on from this," she said sarcastically, smiling at me in the mirror as I added the bright orange Azalea flowers to her hair. She mocked the dress, mimicking the twins' obnoxious motions, lifting the skirt's fluff, curtseying lowly.
My mother made her a simple necklace–a deep burgundy choker with a beautiful cowrie shell hanging from the middle—which complemented and finished her look.
It was still a miracle that she even participated in tonight's quadrille.
Between Samara's stubbornness and her mother's tendency for control, the two fought for days on the subject. Her mother was a well-known Salmancian socialite and the definition of the ideal wife who wanted Samara to follow in her "dutiful" footsteps as her only daughter.
It wasn't easy for Samara, especially when her father, Saul, was a heavy alcoholic who nearly lost the deed to the distillery in a gambling debt. Saul was Tio Franco's oldest son. After that, Tio Franco banned him from participating in the day-to-day operations of the family business.
Mami was the only one who could negotiate any semblance of peace between mother and daughter, and the sole reason Samara finally agreed to participate in the beloved traditional dance.
Samara was modern in every way, and I admired that about her. She was fierce, outspoken, and independent, fighting to be herself in a family that valued tradition and prestige above all else.
My mother and Samara connected deeply on that level - each a rebel in her own right.
"Okay, enough with the fluff. It's your turn," she said, moving, so we traded places, and I stood in front of the mirror.
"Aristeo is going to lose it when he sees you tonight." She winked.
My own dress was a dream.
The top of my ensemble was simple yet delicate in its design. The ruffled blouse trimmed in white lace exposed my brown shoulders. The soft lavender paired prettily with the spring silk green that shimmered against my skin. The lavender bandana skirt had the smooth print of white flowers, the second tier white lace, and the third hand stitched blossoms.
Mami said the dress brought out my hazel eyes.
My natural, curly hair was let down, the tight coils loose, dropping below my shoulders.
"You're loving every second of this," Samara accused me, narrowing her eyes in the mirror in fake outrage as she placed the bright red hibiscus in my hair.
"Of course I am," I replied, laughing guiltily.
I smiled at the thought of Aristeo, liking the soft tickle of butterflies brushing my belly when I thought of his kind smile and warm green eyes.
"Mhmm," Samara teased knowingly."Dove and Aristeo," she sang the childhood rhyme, "k-i-s-s-i-n-g," grinning playfully."I know you're giving him your ribbon tonight. The two of you have had moon eyes for each other since we were kids. It's about time you both admit it." She teased, rolling her eyes in disgust.
"I am." Unfazed by her playful judgment.I was excited about the old sweetheart tradition. Tying a simple string or a ribbon on the person you would want to marry was seen as a declaration of love and promise. It started back in the time when the legal marriage of slaves was not permitted or acknowledged by common law. It evolved in a way to confess to your crush.
My mind unwillingly wandered to the white ribbon Meroveo took from me. The sudden twist in my stomach at the thought of him was nothing like the gentle flutter I felt when I thought of Aristeo.
"By the way, what was wrong with you last night?" Samara raised her eyebrows in question, suspicion in her eyes.
"What do you mean?" I asked, leveling my voice, hiding my slight panic at her question.
"I don't know," she said, looking at me suspiciously.
"You looked scared after coming out of the church last night. Anthea said you were in the cathedral for a while. Did anything happen?" she questioned, helping me fix the buttons on the back of my dress.
I didn't dare to tell anyone about my encounter with Meroveo.
I couldn't understand why, but it felt like I was supposed to keep it a secret, something private only between us.
Samara was more than a cousin, more than just my best friend. She was my sister in every way that counted. The two of us had been inseparable since childhood. She knew me better than anyone, so it was so hard to lie to her.
"Dove?" Samara called to me, frowning, noticing my absent stare.
"I'm just a little nervous about the dance. You know how I am with presentations," I joked, hoping to steer the conversation to a different topic.
But Samara was shrewd, quickly sensing my lie.
"Girls, are you ready?" It was Mami who came through my room door.
She looked beautiful. Her head was intricately wrapped in a blue scarf that matched her flowy white dress. The colorful royal beads on her neck and dangling gold earrings accentuated her elegant frame.
Samara looked at me, confused, her mouth open and ready to demand more, but she quickly stopped. She wouldn't push it in front of my mother, but her eyes promised me this wasn't over.
We never kept secrets from one another.
"Samara, nena." Mami smiled gently. "Your mother is calling for you."
Samara nodded, taking a deep breath. She grabbed her sneakers off the floor and reluctantly moved towards the door, not caring if her dress was wrinkled.
"You look beautiful," Mami said lovingly, blessing her before encouragingly kissing her on the forehead.
"Don't take too long, Dove. I won't be a part of this spectacle alone."
I laughed, nodding. "I'll be there soon. I promise."
My mother smiled, shaking her head at Samara's theatrics before standing behind me in the mirror. "Look at you," she beamed proudly, smoothing out my hair tenderly."My little Caribbean blossom is all grown up." She kissed my head, and her eyes were full of unshed, happy tears.
I met her smile in the mirror, silently praying in panic, hoping that maybe her sharp eyes wouldn't notice.
Maybe this one time, my mother would miss something.
But her light brown eyes went dark, and her infamous eyebrow rose.
"Where's your necklace?" she asked me softly, but I could hear the sternness in her question.
"It broke," I admitted quietly.
"What do you mean?" Her eyes widened in disbelief, and she turned me around to face her. "And why didn't you tell me?" she demanded to know. A slight panic of disbelief was beginning to rise in her eyes.
I felt incredibly guilty not telling her about my encounter with Meroveo last night. If I told her, she would never let me leave the house again.
"I woke up this morning, and it just fell off my neck."
I tried my best to quickly explain as she searched my eyes for the truth. My mother could always tell a lie from miles away.
"I didn't want to worry you," I answered truthfully.
Superstition was rooted deep into the heart of our culture.
I paid little attention to the superstitions I heard growing up. Silly myths, like leaving your shoes upside down the wrong way, meant wishing death on a family member. To never walk backward because it meant walking with the dead, giant moths meant the coming of death, or wearing red to bed was forbidden.
I'd always accepted these sayings as a way of life. It was fun sometimes to rile up my mother and our aunts. They were just silly old stories. Anything could have a meaning or be a sign of the good or bad to come.
But the horrified look on my mother's face told me this time was different. Something was very wrong.
If your necklace or rosary suddenly " popped " or broke, it was considered a bad omen.
Meroveo had touched my pearl pendant.
The white pearl I'd had since I was a little girl. The pearl my mother found on the beach one morning, carrying me in her arms a few days after I was born.
It was a gift of protection from Our Lady of the Sea.
A quiet confirmation was shared between us.
"I didn't want to worry you," I whispered truthfully.
"Give it here," she commanded somberly, with a silent panic in her eyes as she opened her palm.
I rushed to my jewelry box, giving her the necklace.
"No te preocupes. I will handle this." She smiled, gently cupping my cheek. I wasn't sure who she was trying to reassure more – me or herself.
I wanted to come clean at that moment, confess my encounter with Meroveo, and tell her I disobeyed her, frightened by the trepidation in her eyes.
Her words were cryptic, as always, revealing nothing of her true thoughts. I wanted to understand what she meant. I knew enough of my mother's craft to know what she was thinking.
This went beyond our realm.
"Focus on tonight."
She kissed my forehead, blessing me, before leaving me alone in my room.
Only the cold breeze was a witness to her promise.