37. THE ALTAR ROOM
THE ALTAR ROOM
The walls of Olivia’s old room are robin’s-egg blue and a circular skylight illuminates sunbeams onto one of the multiple altars inside.
In her strange grief, Olivia built and dedicated altars to dead field crickets, June bugs, crows, song sparrows, skunks, and armadillos.
She lit candles for the trees which were reduced to stumps.
When death faced her, she created in honor of the deceased.
Laminated saints are taped along the wall.
Archangel Michael is framed next to the door alongside Saint Francis.
A photo collection of the dead is collaged around the arched window on the left side of the room.
A tribute to her ancestors, as each photo holds a personal letter behind it which Olivia wrote as a memento.
Photographs of dogs, cats, lizards, birds, and tarantulas surround the rectangular window on the right.
Pets that are now long gone, but belonged to someone in the family.
Olivia labeled all the pet photos with their names and respective dates of birth to their last day on earth.
The window on the back wall behind the main family altar is a deep stained-glass portrait of an angel with a plethora of eyes above its head.
On nights of the full moon, the eyes blink.
When there are no stars in the sky, the eyes cry.
Twice a year, the eyes get lined in with red rivers of veins.
Olivia calls them grieving eyes and she sprays them down with holy water and Florida water.
Numerous candles and leftover colors of wax layer the floor.
By some miracle, they haven’t caused a house fire.
Olivia knows the house will rot properly, not engulfed by flames, but by time.
The house won’t allow a fire to happen. Fresh flowers and long dead brittle flowers sit next to each other.
Letters are scattered across the floor: confessions, secrets, regrets, prayers on pieces of paper that have faded into light beige ink.
Papel picado is lined across the ceiling.
Neon orange, green, pink. Faded sun-drenched yellow, blue, red.
Figurines of La Virgen and Saint Michael are sprinkled throughout the room.
Santa Muerte has a corner to herself. Christmas lights are wrapped around the legs of the main altar.
Fresh coffee and cake sit on the altar along with three bowls of albóndigas.
Olivia refills the silver goblet beside her great grandmother’s portrait with water and she lights a baby blue candle for her.
She adds incense to a holder and whispers something incoherent into the room.
Olivia stares off and thinks about nothing.
Her thoughts have been numbed by all the advice people around her told her she should feel.
Sadness. Anger. Guilt. She feels nothing and wonders why no one told her about the caving emptiness.
Olivia adds the portrait of her mother to the main altar.
Her mother is luminous in the photo, the golden hour caught a light in her eyes, making her seem almost vulnerable, almost angelic, as though she were meant to be a ghost this entire time.
Olivia lights a white candle and apologizes to Isela.
I’m sorry I feel nothing. Olivia’s truth is her own and she won’t say it out loud.
She asks Isela to go off peacefully. Please leave.
Please. Let’s meet again on the other side. Maybe things will be different.
As the sun begins to set, Olivia walks alongside the oak trees.
She thanks them for looking over her and Isela and Alfonso.
She thanks them for keeping the secrets of the house to themselves.
As darkness takes over, the fireflies light themselves up in pops of neon yellow and desert cicadas buzz with the excitement of potential mating.
The wind screeches and shuffles through the gaps in between shaking leaves of the oaks and everything smells like hot dirt.
Olivia closes her eyes and softens. For a passing moment, there’s complete silence.
Everything stops. A transparent and floating Isela hovers behind Olivia, she opens her mouth, but before a sound can erupt from her, she goes quiet, turns, and walks toward the darkness of the forest.
In case it’s a trick, Olivia looks for her mother inside the house.
She searches the closets, under her mother’s old bed, she wanders the gardens and there’s no one.
She runs toward the river with her big fluorescent lantern looking for Isela.
She’s not there. No more traces of a ghost. No more traces of a haunting. She was gone. She was finally gone.
Olivia runs back to the altar room and gets down on her knees.
She wants to laugh like a little maniac.
She wants to pull out her hair follicle by follicle.
She wants to scratch at her chest because it all hurts.
It hurts to think about life without her mother.
There is a ravenous emptiness in her body.
A jarring rumbling of knowing that her life will never be the same.
She was free of her mother.