Chapter 11 #2
According to one rather large and unwieldy tome, there used to be rumors that St. Theresa’s was haunted.
Maybe those rumors still exist, but I’m assuming they’re not as prevalent, because for all the time I’ve spent there, I’d never heard about it, not once.
But right here, in Cranberry: A Brief History through the Ages, it begins by talking about the voices people can hear through the church walls, and random thumping and banging underfoot, as though someone, or many someones, were trapped below.
It also says that the church’s construction was delayed for nearly a decade, with contracts being canceled as well as project managers just up and quitting for seemingly no good reason.
In 1902, the town’s mayor had even canceled the construction, only for it to resume the following year.
I don’t know if any of this is relevant to my investigation, but these facts are interesting enough to note in my little research scrapbook.
They might make sense later, or they may never contribute to my side project.
Either way, I’m absorbed just enough that my heart doesn’t hurt as bad when I think about my sisters.
Even if none of this comes to fruition, the effort is worth it for the distraction alone.
We need to talk.
I receive this cryptic message from Amá Sonya on my way home from work.
It definitely makes me pause, considering I haven’t heard from my grandmother in about five weeks, after I’d given up on asking her to brunch.
I know for a fact she brunches with Teal once or twice a month, and has been for the last decade or so, but naturally the embarrassing granddaughter gets left on read for such a suggestion.
I’d been thinking I should change into something better for my meeting with Adam when I get home—my top is currently wrinkled to hell after a day bending over to grab stacks of books from the way-bottom shelves—but now I’m wondering if my prayer to the old gods backfired and instead of leaving me alone for a bit, the whole family is currently intent on tracking my whereabouts.
“Fuck.” The curse comes from under my breath when I see that Amá is already parked in my normal spot at Nadia’s. She’s at the door, and thankfully Nadia is home, because Amá is already inside by the time I’ve driven by the front of the house.
I drive around the block once more, wondering what the hell I should do. Normal people, under normal circumstances, would just say I’m sorry, Amá, but I already have plans. Let’s meet up on the weekend instead. But normal people do not have intrusive, entitled bitches for grandmothers.
If I went inside that house right now, Amá Sonya would sit me down and force me to have whatever kind of talk she thinks I owe her, and if I were in a hurry, she’d make it last longer.
An hour. Hours, even. It’s too damn stressful for me to deal with right now when I’m already stupidly nervous about seeing Adam again so soon.
I decide to leave my car parked on Basque Street, the one right next to Catalina. Then, dressed in a black tweed pencil skirt, black leather kitten heels, and a very wrinkled pale turquoise button-down top, I cut through people’s side yards to get to William’s backyard.
Coffee, the fox, follows me, darting all around me like the cutest one-man security team.
“Hey, you. Where have you been? Visiting your cliffside girlfriend?” He does this growl-mew in response.
Kind of a none of your business, but also yes at the same time.
I cover my mouth as I laugh, and he’s got the biggest doglike grin on his face.
Why can’t talking with humans be this easygoing?
I’m now in William’s side yard, and I hide behind what I’m pretty sure are some elderberry bushes, trying to spy on Nadia and Sonya across the street. Another text chimes in. Where are you, nieta? You can’t be too far… It’s like I’m being taunted by a damn serial killer.
She texts again, and this time, it’s a blurry photo of me and Adam having lunch at the country club.
I roll my eyes. That’s what she wants to talk about.
She wants to interrogate me to see if I’m dating Adam, or to ask when the wedding is, probably.
Adam’s very high on the social currency in Cranberry.
My imaginary betrothal to him would make Amá Sonya basically froth at the mouth. She loves social currency.
“Sky?”
I turn and see Adam leaning over from the side of the house, a puzzled expression on his face.
He looks kind of adorable when confused—his blue eyes narrowed, his beautiful head tilted—but the problem is, he’s in full view of Nadia’s house.
“Shh,” I hiss. “Come here. Or else she’ll see you and take you away to her gingerbread house. ”
Adam’s brows furrow even more deeply.
“Come quick! Or she’ll put you in her oven and eat you for dinner!”
“Okay. Okay. I’m coming.” He jogs over and squeezes in next to me behind the elderberries. “So there’s a crazy lady loose on the street, is what you’re saying.”
“Exactly. My grandmother.” I narrow my eyes at Nadia’s. “You got any binoculars?”
“Not on my person.”
I sigh. “That’s okay.”
We sit in silence for a few minutes, just listening to a distant propeller plane, the sound of our own breaths, the crickets beginning to chirp in a humming symphony. Finally Adam turns to me and says, “Care to explain what’s going on?”
I roll my eyes. “My grandmother found out you and I went to the country club yesterday. So now she’s probably planning our wedding. If we run into her right now, we’ll be walking away with a huge-ass diamond ring on my finger and our engagement set to be announced for tomorrow’s paper.”
Adam chuckles. “Okay. Good call on the…ah. Hiding?”
“Yeah. We’re hiding.”
Adam turns to me. “Is your family always like this?”
I shake my head. “Planning someone else’s whole life for them, you mean? Only her, really, and only when she feels like it’s going to make her look better, you know?”
Adam nods and frowns. “Yeah. I know all about that, actually.”
I turn to him and for some reason, it only just now hits me how close we are.
How there are flecks of warm silver in the blue of his eyes that I’d never noticed before.
The caramel-colored freckles on his nose are almost in the shape of a seven-pointed star, to thematically match the crescent of freckles on his cheek.
I blink when I realize he’s watching me, too. But his focus is on my lips.
He clears his throat and tears his gaze away. “When is it safe to go inside?”
“I’d give it a few more minutes, honestly.” The old bat is nothing if not persistent.
“Okay. Well. Why don’t we start, then, since I had planned on asking you a few questions while we were out this evening.” He pulls out his phone and pulls up a recorder app. “You don’t mind?”
I shake my head. This whole thing with Amá Sonya has distracted me enough that I barely feel any of the nerves that were bothering me so badly earlier.
Plus, there’s something easier about being outside, curled up against elderberry bushes, instead of sitting at the kitchen table, Adam asking questions like I’m at a job interview or something.
“Why don’t we start at the beginning?” Adam suggests.
I nod. “Okay.” I take a deep breath. The beginning. I can do this. “In the beginning, there were nothing but gods. Gods and this earth.”
Adam blinks. “Okay. I was thinking more like…when were you born, what was your childhood like…”
I frown. “You didn’t specify, though. How was I supposed to know what beginning you meant if you didn’t specify?” I shake my head. “Let me finish this beginning first.”
Adam holds up a hand to indicate surrender. “Okay. I’m listening.”
All around us, the earth settles into some kind of deep, almost-twilight golden peace.
The sun is setting, lighting us up in goldenrod and marigold and native multibloom sunflowers.
The pollinators feasting on elderberry blooms buzz all around us, making me feel like I’m about to shiver or something.
I take another deep breath. “In the beginning, there were nothing but gods. Gods and this earth. This is the oldest world, by the way. The World of the Gods. Then the gods decided—I’m not sure why, maybe they were bored just hanging out by themselves, being mighty and powerful all the time—but the gods decided to make all kinds of worlds.
Each of these worlds required a counterpart.
So they made the World of the Living—our world—and then they also had to make the World of the Dead.
They made the World of Spirits, so they had to make a world of ghosts.
A world of shadows required a world of light.
“A long time ago, one of our ancestors—I mean my ancestors, not the universal ‘our’—made a deal with a god. She wanted to travel the worlds freely, but in return, she had to give an offering to the gods. The offering was a tiny sliver of community.”
“A sliver of community. So what did that look like?” Adam asks.
He is riveted, and to be honest, so am I.
I’ve never heard this tale like this before.
Yes, I have heard it in bits and pieces from Nadia my whole life, save eight years.
But I am certain the ancestors are telling it through me now, with the fullness and details coming upon me as though they were being uploaded into my brain The Matrix–style.
I shrug. “I’m not sure. Because we only know about the offering through its counterpart—what she got in return.”
“And what was that?”
I turned to Adam. “She was given a gift. We don’t know what the first gift of this Flores woman looked like, but each female descendant has a gift.
” I swallow. “I haven’t gotten permission to share anyone’s gifts with you.
But my gift is animals. Which you have already seen.
” I turn away from the intensity of his gaze.
It’s also making me want to shiver, as though his attention has become one thousand bumblebees, giving me goose bumps without touching me at all.
“In exchange for our gifts, we give up community. Because we cannot tell anyone about the gifts. This is the rule elders have imposed on Flores women for generations. For us, it was Nadia who hammered that into us. We can’t tell.
I realize I am breaking that agreement now, but… ”
“I appreciate you sharing this with me,” Adam says.
It’s a formal response but there is awe in his voice.
I have a feeling like we are both surrounded by ancestors now, like maybe his have arrived to listen to mine.
It’s making the words I’m saying weave a kind of magic around us, through us, as though each letter has become an iridescent spider, weaving connections neither of us can see but both of us can feel.
“My great-aunt Nadia says that white people always want to do bad things to brown girls with gifts, thus them needing to be hidden away. But because our gifts are an innate part of us, we also have to hide this essential part of who we are from everyone else. And so we can only truly trust each other to be our true selves.” I shake my head, looking at the distant sunset.
The clouds are now a strange mix of red and gray, feeling almost foreboding.
“And if we can’t trust each other, then we have no one. ”
Adam lays his hand out, palm up. It’s an offering. Though I cannot understand why I would want to, I take it. His calluses are rough against my soft skin, his hand warm and big and enveloping mine completely.
“What made you decide to tell me about the gifts, Sky?” he asks, staring at our hands.
I turn toward him, looking at his star-freckled nose. I am as honest as I can be. “I don’t know.”
I don’t tell him this, but if I had to take a guess, it would be that I’m so fucking tired of being lonely all the time.