Page 92 of Blood from the Marrow
“That’s beautiful,” Marisol whispered around the lump in her throat. “Thank you.”
“I wish you all the very best, Marisol.” As if she didn’t know what to do with her empty hands, Clara clasped them together hard enough to turn her fingers white. “I wish that for you with my entire heart. Once this is over, I hope you will have a long, beautiful life with the family of your choosing.”
The words peeled back too many layers of Marisol’s anger at once. It exposed her heart too quickly. When Clara stood, Marisol couldn’t stop herself from whispering, “Wait.” She swallowed again, her mouth the driest it had ever been while sweat gathered at her palms. “Do you, um, want to stay? While I get ready?” She gripped the plastic container hard. “I don’t want to have a weird wave at the back of my head because I couldn’t see it.”
Clara hesitated as if waiting for Marisol to change her mind. To correct herself. When Marisol didn’t, she nodded emphatically.
Sitting in an armchair, Marisol tried to relax while Clara blowdried her hair straight. Tried to imagine she was sitting in a salon. That it was a stranger running a brush through her hair. But she couldn’t do that either. Didn’t want to do it. Stupid as it was, she wanted to know what it was like to have her mother help her get ready for something. She wanted to indulge in the illusion of having the mom she’d always wanted. Maybe just this once.
“Your hair is just like mine,” Clara said while going over the same spot at the nape of her neck to force it into compliance.“Your grandma used to say it was easier if my hair would just curl.”
“Instead of just going limp after attacking it with a curling iron?”
“Your grandmother once made me wear those horrific foam curlers for a full twenty-four hours before we went to a neighbor’s wedding.” Clara chuckled. “I went from Shirley Temple to wet Maltese between the kitchen table and the car despite a whole can of hairspray. Your grandmother was so mad.”
Marisol laughed. It was easy to imagine her normally sweet grandma getting cranky over Clara’s hair. It was her temper’s Achilles’ heel. Like she took her hair’s texture as a personal attack.
“I just wanted to iron my hair for prom. It’s so much easier, but she had her heart set on this updo she saw in a magazine.” The pleasant memory warmed Marisol’s chest. “When I didn’t want to go to her hairdresser?—”
“Rosita?”
“Yeah,” Marisol replied in open surprise. Of course Clara would know Rosita. They’d existed in the same world until Marisol was born. It was so strange to imagine Clara as the kid in her place in her memories. To imagine her tagging along to the old-lady salon Rosita ran out of her house.
“What? You didn’t want the Blue Hair Special for prom?”
“It might have been better than Abi spending an entire morning trying to make a miracle happen.” Marisol chuckled, fingers finding the edge of her T-shirt. “Long story short, I ended up with a very slicked back high ponytail.”
“Did you go with someone special? To prom?” Clara asked casually before freezing. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to?—”
“No, it’s okay,” Marisol interrupted. “You can ask. I don’t mind.” She clenched the material in her clammy hands. “I wentwith friends, but, um, only because my someone special and I broke up before.”
Clara started moving again, as if she’d gotten beyond a deadly trap. “What happened?”
Marisol shrugged. “I don’t know. An angsty teenage argument.”
“And my mom.” Clara sounded like she was stepping out onto a tightrope. “She was okay with yoursomeone special?”
Marisol smiled again, thinking of how sweet and accepting her grandmother had been. “Yep. She was a pretty cool old lady.”
Clara’s unclenching was audible, as if for the first time un-worrying that she’d left Marisol in bad hands. “Was it hard for you?” She put her hand on Marisol’s shoulder for the briefest moment. Marisol didn’t know whether she wanted it back or never wanted to have felt it at all. “Coming out?”
“No,” she replied. “Not really.” Grief was a ligature around her heart. “I wish she could be here today,” she muttered. “I think the trio of it all might be confusing at first.” She looked down at her lap. “But I think she’d really like Elena and Zuri.”
Clara didn’t immediately reply, and when she did, her voice matched the tremble in Marisol’s hands. “She would love how fiercely they protect you,” she decided with confidence. “She’d probably ask Elena a million questions about history. My mother always had such a romanticized view of the pre-Castro Cuba of her childhood,” she added with more warmth in her voice.
“Right?” Marisol grinned. “That’s exactly what I thought too. I’m pretty sure Elena would leave out the unsavory bits.”
“I think she would have liked that,” Clara muttered as if in self-comfort.
For the first time, Marisol imagined Clara alone. At least she and her grandmother had each other. Who did Clara cling to? Who’d rubbed her back and eased her to sleep on bad nights? She thought of Dutch and his gentle voice and hoped her motherhad allowed herself some comfort. A wave of regret crested at the back of Marisol’s throat. Bile burning. The urge to apologize for rejecting Clara was so strong, but she didn’t know the words to say. Didn’t know where to begin to honor her own hurt while forgiving Clara’s choices. Choices that had obviously caused her a world of self-inflicted pain.
“Did she know?” Marisol asked instead.
“My mom?” Clara ran her fingers through Marisol’s hair to comb it back before taking another segment to straighten. Marisol let the touch soothe her nervous system. “About the Aglion, you mean?”
Marisol nodded.
“No,” she replied after a beat. “I don’t think so. How we inherit power is unpredictable. We think that’s what’s helped keep us alive. It skips around sometimes for several generations and can manifest more strongly in a child than their parent, just to completely pass by the next kid .”
