Page 41 of Lourdes & the Mafia
Doesn’t matter, I guess. I could use a hot meal.
I follow her into the house, the warm smells of arroz con gandules and platanos fritos filling my nostrils. My all-time favorite comfort meal beckoning me to eat a plate or two. Or more. I worked up quite the appetite in hell—the Underworld—whatever the fuck.
And being here right now? Even if it’s not in the home I built with my best friend, this is familiar. And even though my body still vibrates with nerves at what I just went through, I need to be here. I need a bit of normalcy.
Before I try to find out who’s trying to fucking kill me, claro.
And as I walk into the kitchen area, I’m just hoping it’s not death by poisoned food, because it smells too good to pass up right now.
My ruffian cousins run through the house, bumping into furniture on their journey to chaos. All around, my family members are sitting, watching TV and chatting over one another in Spanish. They barely wave at me to acknowledge my presence because they’re so deep in conversation.
Fine by me. I don’t want to look them in the eye right now and wonder if they sent a psycho to my house.
“Grab a plato and sírvete,” my titi says. “And sírvele a tus tios.”
I bite my lip, choking back the feminine urge to tell her that my uncles have legs and can serve themselves. I mean, it’s not like I haven’t said those words before, but it just causes too much controversy and I’m honestly not in the mood for that shit right now.
So I dutifully take plates from her and drop them off to my uncles all around the house. And they, of course, sit on their asses without mumbling a thanks. I huff, irritated completely with them and their lack of sensitivity to the women of the household.
In the end, I serve everyone, me and my titi getting our plates last once everyone else is already served. When I’m full and done, I wash my plate and flee the kitchen before my tia can put me to work again. I weave through the tight space of the living room, going to the one free spot on the couch next to my great abuelita.
I take her wrinkled hand in my own as I sit down, settling myself into the cushions. Her hand is rough and callous, pockmarked with age and adventure and hard work. She turns a blind gaze towards me and smiles. I know she can tell who I am from only the feel of my hand. She’s always been able to tell us cousins apart, and I have a greater bond with her then I do with any other family member. I wasn’t even particularly close to the abuela whose gift I inherited.
“Abuelita Flor,” I greet. “How are you feeling?”
She pauses before answering, and even though I know she can’t see, I feel like she’s looking right through me. Abuelita Flor was never the seer, but sometimes I feel like she should have been. She’s wise, wiser than I can ever hope to be. She chooses her words carefully every time we speak, and her gaze is like mine when I’m having a vision, only the whites visible and nothing else. For others, it’s eerie and almost frightens them, but for me it’s a source of comfort. I look into her eyes and sometimes I don’t feel quite so alone with my magic.
Sure, I have my Abuela Lucia’s journals, which are essentially guides on how to navigate my magic, and yet every time I pick them up, I feel disconnected from her. When she was alive, I loved her, and now that she’s gone, I feel like there’s not much of that feeling left. The ramblings in her journal don’tfeellike her. They feel like the seer. Some days it seems like they wereverydifferent people.
“Estoy bien,” she says finally. Her voice crackles like crinkled paper and just like that, the anxiety from the day washes away because I have her close. “Is something troubling you?”
She’s always one to get straight to the point.
I cast a nervous glance around, but no one is paying attention to us, their gazes riveted on the TV. At the end of the day this doesn’t really concern any of them, so they probably won’t pay much attention to us. The men of the family, their magic is different from mine. Not all of them have it, but those that do specialize in parlor tricks, smoke magic and mirrors. That kind of thing.
Not even Raquel is around, and it gives me the confidence to turn towards her and confess, “Something happened.”
She waits patiently for me to elaborate. I try to figure out how to put everything that happened into words, and I decide that honesty is the best policy. I lean forward, her wrinkled skin grazing my mouth as I whisper near her ear, telling her everything happened from the moment Naomi moved out, my search for a new roommate, to me escaping the Underworld.
I finish and she’s quiet for a long time.
“I’m worried someone from the family is trying to kill me for my magic, abuelita.”
“The family isn’t trying to kill you, mija.”
“Then, who?” I ask skeptically.
The ominous silence that follows makes the hairs along my arms stand on end. I just know that what she is about to say isn’t going to be something I want to hear. It’s going to be something dreadful or life changing, one or the other. Or both.
“Can you be so sure that the person who stabbed you really wanted you dead?”
“Abuelita,” I whisper. “She stabbed me. Stabbing usually equals dead, doesn’t it?”
“Perhaps she just wanted to incapacitate you.”
“Butwhy?”
“Lourdes, this is going to be hard for you to hear. Perhaps my daughter, your Abuela Lucia, should have prepared you for what was to come. She didn’t know who would inherit the power, but she should have given you all a heads-up because of this. But she was afraid and she never thought that you would need to know. That this would jump over your generation entirely.”
