The 13 Secret Cities (Omnibus) (38 page)

This new knowledge I kept to myself.

“How did it happen?” I said. My mother and father sat with me in their tiny living room, and Minerva and La Negra remained in the room. The rest of the relatives were in the back, cooking and drinking.

“It doesn’t matter how it happened,” my father said. His tone was harsh, excited.

“They think it was a drunk driver that hit him,” my mother said, “but the witnesses said it was random, very random.”

“No matter how it happens,
it
always feels random,” my father said.

My mother drew me into her arms, and her smell filled my nostrils. I wished for those tears, and they didn’t arrive. Instead, my insides were hollowing out.

“I was so angry the last time I talked to him,” I said.

“José María said he saw you the afternoon of the parade,” my mother said. “He was also very upset.”

My face flushed, and I felt shame in every inch of my skin.

“Yes, I thought I might see you guys after the parade,” I said.

“We waited for you for a while. José María texted you for a long time to meet us,” my mother said. She was not angry about this fact.

She doesn’t know. She doesn’t know what you really said to him the last time we saw each other. She doesn’t know about the anger we left between us.

La Negra came over to the sofa and sandwiched me together with my mother.

“I am sorry, Clara,” she said, and she held me for a long time. “He will be in a good place now. And remember he helped you so much to find your tonal.”

I loved my aunt, but I no longer wanted her comfort about tonales, especially since I had failed to find mine.

“I found it; I don’t know if I had mentioned it earlier.”

“Really?”

“It’s true,” I lied to forever get her off my back.

“That’s strange, I don’t
feel
a tonal around you.”

“Well, you just have to try harder,” I said.

She drew me in tighter into her bosom, and I let myself enjoy the embrace.
 

I moaned, but no tears arrived.

The rest of that day was a series of rote performances. Wash my hair, apply eyeliner, smooth out the wrinkles in my skirt.

Kiss my aunt, hug my uncle. Attend mass with Mom.

I wanted to eat, but I skipped that night’s meal.

I read back through all the text messages José María had sent me on the night of our victory at the Parade of Lights.

“Everyone’s waiting for you.”
 

“Did you see that crazy bullshit on the screens?”
 

“Tsk, tsk,
reina
. I know your secret.”

“Hey, why aren’t you answering your phone?”

“Check your texts, Clara.”

On and on they went, pestering me. I had ignored them all, but reading them now made my stomach turn, and I had to force myself to finish reading every last one. I knew by their tone that he was still angry. And then they stopped.

Then they stopped forever.

At the funeral, I chose not to look at the open casket. My father pulled me out into the parking lot to shout at me, and I shouted something back, but the exact words faded quickly from my memory.

My father escorted me back into the narrow funeral parlor, and when he asked me again to look at the body to say good-bye, I shook my head and took a seat at the opposite end of the room.

I knew too much, and I knew too little.

Returning to my everyday life was what hurt the most. I survived the wake, the funeral, and the shitty condolence cards from Hallmark.
 

José María wasn’t coming back.

Sometimes, I wished I were just dreaming it, but I wasn’t.

My parents didn’t let me go back to school right away, and I stayed in Little Village with them. I went to mass daily with my mother, and I went through all the rituals, prayed all the prayers. I did this for her, and she was happy.

My father mostly kept to himself. He talked to my aunts every day, whispering sometimes, crying at others.

“He’s lost his little best friend,” my mother said one day as she beat pancake batter in a frenzy. She didn’t even look up when she said this. She never mentioned my father’s mourning after that.

I survived the two weeks I stayed at my parents, and I even brought my grades up by the end of that semester.

But I didn’t want to go back to classes, to my part-time job, or to anything. I just wanted to hide, to lie inert on a patch of grass, stone-like.

My mother was the person who forced me to go back to my routine. She packed up my things and drove me back to school, and I am glad she did. I spent more time with Dennis and less with Mercy. In fact, Mercy and I drifted apart, and something inside me felt okay with that.
 

When I came home for the Christmas holiday that year, I managed to get through a meal without that spiky-haired runt at the table.

I went through my day staring at television shows that had no point, and noodling on Facebook, numbing my mind, and regretting my addiction at the same time. I visited my cousins down the block, and at night, I helped my dad cook dinner. I pretended like everything that had started since my birthday in 2013 had never happened at all.

It’s very easy for any of us to do this, and if we pretend hard enough, we can fool ourselves into almost anything. As humans, we like to pretend that the dead ones aren’t actually dead.

Until we are reminded by outside forces.

I spent New Year’s Eve wasted on cheap beer via a fake driver’s license at the Hideout, and I puked so hard that night that I vomited blood. I think I cursed out Mercy in the women’s bathroom, but I don’t actually remember. Dennis claims I also broke up a fight of big men, but that I also don’t recall.

I spent the next four days nursing a massive hangover, and I went back to classes on January 5
^th
. By now, I was pretty good at staying out late, slogging through a hangover, and avoiding the dreadful nights.

It wasn’t until then that my dreams about the Lords of Mictlán began in full.

The first dream was a tiny knife tearing into the darkness of my dreamless nights.

The knife plunged and then it sliced, and blood the color of snow poured out of black skin.

After the cut, the sounds started.

They were drums. They drummed and drummed, like twin heartbeats that syncopated and throbbed in the same time signature, and in the darkness of my sleep, I felt a cool rush of air on my skin.

You owe us a visit still,
said a voice that was distinctly female. It was a voice the size of a continent, deep as the ocean.

And we expect you to be here. Soon,
said another voice. This one was more shrill, yet more masculine than the first.

And then, in the dream, I had the vision that I could never have had inside Mictlán. I could see through the dark and into a deep pit that smelled of wet moss and that pulled light toward it like a magnet.

Mictlántecuhtli and Mictecacíhuatl were in the pit, and I approached within a few feet, without a body. I came close to a thin blue membrane, metallic and in movement, like the beautiful swirls on a soap bubble in summertime. And behind the blue sheath, the drumming grew bigger.

Wanderer, we are waiting.
 

The two voices said this in unison, and it occurred to me then that they could help me.

Give my brother back to me,
I said, but the membrane was already fading, and the drumming picked up speed, and before I knew it, I had fallen out of my bed and onto the floor.

Morgan shook me awake. I tore at her face and yanked her hair and kicked her in the knee.

“Give him back,” I screamed.

I dreamt a variation of this dream every single night for weeks.

In February, Mayor Amadeo resigned from his position as mayor after the scandal of his leaked documents became bigger and bigger. The Parade of Lights became a success inside OLF, and we patted ourselves on the back for a long time.

But not everything went according to plan. Our dancers, those brave people who leapt onto floats to toss banners, were eventually tried and convicted. They were all sentenced to multiple life sentences for acts of treason against the state. The police that apprehended them became heroes for the city, despite all our protests.