22. A FEVER DREAM
A FEVER DREAM
Olivia stayed home from school due to a high fever.
She locked herself in her room and listened for her mother to leave the house.
She organized a playlist of CDs and stuck them into her boombox one after another to keep constant sound in the house.
She imagined herself in dramatic music videos, falling in and out of love.
She rummaged through old tabloid magazines that her mother collected from the grocery store.
She flipped through stories about a wolf-man who ate squirrels in New York City’s Central Park, a snail-lady who impregnated herself with an angel’s spit, and a bat-girl who used her sonar to spy on U.S.
government officials and was subsequently arrested for espionage.
Time went slow. Olivia's body ached. She considered roaming through The Inflorescence, but she didn’t want to spread her illness.
The landline rang over and over as Olivia was finally falling into a sweaty sleep.
She emerged from her room, groggy and lightheaded.
Over the phone, a strange voice spoke. Who is this?
Olivia slurred as her flu medicine was kicking in.
Mija, it’s your Tía Letty! It’s so nice to hear your voice!
We have heard all about you from Alfonso.
Mijita, I have to tell you, and I am sorry that I am saying this to you under these circumstances, but your grandma wants to meet you too, but she’s fading away, mija.
She’ll be gone soon. I mean like heaven, mija, con el favor de Dios.
Otra cosa, your sisters are here too, mija.
I want you to know that we all want to meet you. We really do, mijita.
Olivia’s mind raced in neon colors, she saw spots.
She fainted with the phone in her hand. The dial tone woke her.
She woke up to a giant hole in the ceiling.
Olivia saw how vibrant blue the sky was that day.
It was bluer than she could imagine. It was almost as though the blue took over everything and she could float inside of the chroma.
She wanted nothing more than to float. She crawled to her room.
The phone rang again. Over and over. Olivia woke from a dream of chasing white rabbits and giant cerulean grasshoppers in a sunflower field.
Olivia? The voice cracked as though there should be a shared sadness between them.
Yeah. Who is this? Olivia was fighting a sleepiness that felt permanent.
We love you. So much. Even though we don’t know you like we should.
You should know that you are so loved. You are so loved.
Olivia didn’t know how to respond, so she said, Okay. I am sorry, but I have to go.
Every single thing inside of her told her that being loved was a burden.
A difficulty. Being loved was something that could only happen in her imagination.
Who was this voice to make such a claim?
Olivia curled into a ball in her room. She covered herself with a blanket and shivered underneath it.
An agonizing wail emerged from her. She didn’t understand where it came from, but she couldn’t help herself.
She cried until she couldn’t make any more sounds.
She lumbered toward The Inflorescence in her feverish state, dragging her feet, her limbs heavy.
The door opened for her. She crawled in and the ground was plush blue grass, silky and smooth, embracing her, cradling her, making her soften.
The breeze was calm and the sky was a glittering coral with wisps of pink clouds, the walls filled with lush red and purple rhododendron flowers.
A buzzing surrounded Olivia and then bells in the distance.
Olivia relaxed, soaked in sweat and tears.
Her fever diminished and she drifted to sleep.
The next morning, she was more determined than ever to find out about her lineage.
It was a hollow ache in her chest. It was a tingling at the top of her head.
She wanted nothing more than to know these parts of herself.
She pleaded with The Inflorescence to show her pieces of her family and the room filled with frigid river water, gray round stones formed under her feet, and the walls transformed into a mossy forest erupting with the scent of fresh pine.
Rounded yellow oak leaves swirled around her.
Olivia submerged herself and listened to the voices humming underneath.
They told her about two sisters born in the city of the sun.
Olivia popped her head out of the water and two figures stood in front of her.
They were both human silhouettes. One body was made of sharp pine needles that looked like hardened fringe.
Gray curly horns erupted from the sides of her head and orange marigolds bloomed and fell from the spirals.
As her body moved, it rustled and softly clinked.The other silhouette was made of rose petals.
Reds. Oranges. Yellows. The petals fluttered as the silhouette waved her arm slowly at Olivia.
Brown and beige horizontal striped wings spread out behind the rose petal body, lifting her up, hovering above ground.
A golden phosphorescence outlined both of them.
The figures turned away and followed toward the speckles of sunlight which poked through the back wall of the room.
The back wall looked like an infinite illusion of a path.
A path toward light. Olivia wanted nothing more than to see the figures up close.
She wanted to look behind their skins. She wanted to see who was behind each mask but she couldn’t move.
The river water was up to her neck. Her body was becoming numb.
Olivia watched as the bodies warped into piles of brown dead leaves.
The river water drained itself until Olivia found herself on top of slimy stones.
The sunlight struck her and warmed her. She picked herself up and ran toward the dead leaves.
In a fury, she dug into the piles with her bare hands.
Two letters were tucked away and buried underneath.
One from a Lucia. Another from an Isabel.