You Should Have Been Nicer to My Mom, page 14
“Saw what, Aury?” Marisa sat next to her.
“The thing . . . that clawed Papi’s desk.” For the first time since the initial scream, Aury’s eyes met Marisa’s. “I saw it.” She gulped.
The world shifted under Xiomara’s feet. A high-pitched ringing started in her ears.
“What did it look like?” Xiomara whispered. She pulled against Marisa’s grip. The woman let go, only to push Xiomara aside and return to Aury. She took Aury’s hands in hers, stroking her thumbs across the curves of her sister’s knuckles.
“It was big,” Aury answered between sniffles. “Bigger than me. And it had a face like a dog but nastier. And—and it was burnt.” Her face contorted into a fearful expression, eyes widened like she was seeing it again for the first time. “It had burnt skin—like concón at the bottom of a pot.”
Though Xiomara had a hard time imagining burnt rice as skin, the rest of her family didn’t seem to try.
“I don’t believe this.” Manuel shook his head. He scoffed, turning away, but wouldn’t leave the entrance.
“Manuel, shush.”
“You really want to believe this crap?” he asked. “She’s just doing what she always does—making up whatever she wants so we forget about what she did.”
“Aury, forget about him.” Marisa leaned into her sister. But Aury shrugged her off, throwing the blanket down and stepping onto the floor. She closed in on Manuel, a hardened expression on her face as she quietly glided across the floor.
“It was you, wasn’t it?” she whispered. “You called the demon.”
And there it was. Aury said it outright, and the room was frozen in consideration. The only person who didn’t share in their sympathies was her older brother.
Manuel chuckled in a way that seemed more like he was just expelling air. “You’re really going to accuse me of calling a demon?” He searched her eyes, smile falling when he realized just how serious she was. “You’re crazy. I lead a church.”
“You prey on a church,” Aury retorted. “You took their money and used it to cover up el diablo’s crimes.” She tossed a nasty look to Henry, lips pulled back in a disgusted sneer like he was no more her nephew than he was a congealed pile of shit and vomit. It wasn’t missed by Manuel, who flexed his jaw in an act of barely constrained rage. Xiomara held her breath, half expecting the two to continue their physical fight from earlier. Despite Manuel’s being about as tall as Aury, the look in his eyes said he was looking down at her. His younger sister was beneath him. In contrast, Aury was calm and certain, staring him through and through like a pin driven into an insect on display.
Manuel’s lips parted for a moment, somewhere between a scoff and a laugh.
“Your eyes are really big,” he said, so low that Xiomara almost didn’t catch it. Confused, she looked to Aury in time to see her face twitch before taking a step back from Manuel.
“What were you doing in Papi’s study? Hm?” he asked, louder. “What were you looking for?”
“Get out,” Aury said.
“You see?” Manuel looked to Marisa. “Suddenly, she doesn’t want to—”
“Get out of my room!” she shrieked, over and over again. “Get out! Get out! Leave! Get out of my room!”
Xiomara couldn’t escape the room fast enough. Most of the family clotted the doorway as they struggled to leave, but once Xiomara was out, she took in deep breaths. She had never controlled her breathing so much as to be nearly lightheaded—or was it just because the room ran warm? The cool hallway welcomed her with calming breezes, and she felt her head clearing immediately.
“Come on.” Naomi threw an arm over her shoulder. “Let’s get away from all this.” They hardly took a step toward the stairs before Yaritza cut them off.
“Hey, Xiomara? Can I talk to you real quick?” She held her phone close to her chest and completely ignored Naomi. The home aide shrugged and left.
“Okay.” Xiomara felt awkward, wanting to follow Naomi, but having the decision seemingly made for her. “What do you want to talk about?”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to stick around you-know-who.”
Xiomara furrowed her brow. She followed her cousin’s line of sight and immediately regretted it. “Leave Naomi alone. She’s going through a hard time too.”
“I bet, now that she’s out of a job,” Yaritza said, so smooth that it almost slid under Xiomara’s attention. She rolled her eyes as she changed the subject.
“Hey, do you know why Manuel said that about Aury? That her eyes looked big,” she clarified. “And she got this weird look on her face, so I was wondering—”
“Ooh. The pills.” Yaritza’s eyes widened. “Wow, I can’t believe she’s still doing that. I thought she quit after rehab.”
Xiomara’s head spun. “Wait, rehab? Pills?”
He said eyes when he meant pupils.
“But that does make sense, now that I think about it.” Yaritza looked down at her phone. She tapped the screen a few times, holding it up to Xiomara as she spoke. “It says here that el bacà—”
“Slow down.” Xiomara pushed Yaritza’s phone aside. “What do you mean about Aury doing pills and going to rehab?” All of this was news to her, and it painted a new picture of Aury that she hadn’t seen before.
Yaritza’s mouth fell open. “You mean you don’t know?”
“How am I going to know if no one tells me anything?!” Xiomara said, exasperated. “Are you going to tell me or not?”
“I mean, it’s kind of an open secret in the family. At some point—probably around the time Aury started Alluria—she got addicted to some kind of pills. Benzos or whatever it is rich people do.”
Xiomara suppressed the urge to point out that they were all rich people, and almost none of them did drugs. She waited patiently for Yaritza to explain.
“Papi Ramon made her go to rehab after your mom died,” Yaritza said. Xiomara raised both eyebrows, expectant, but Yaritza shook her head. “That’s it. That’s the whole story.”
“So Manuel thinks Aury was popping pills in the study?”
Yaritza cheesed. “More like popping his pills in the study,” and Xiomara realized she was saying Aury was taking Papi Ramon’s medication. Yaritza continued, “I wouldn’t be surprised if Naomi didn’t finish packing up all of his medication. Oh, right! Look at this.”
Yaritza turned her phone over. At first glance, Xiomara thought she was looking at a dog—maybe even a wolf. But the thing on Yaritza’s phone had no fur. Instead, it looked like a mass of twisted bones and meat standing on all fours. Sunken eyes that attempted to bury pinpricks of fire and a snarling mouth revealed overgrown piercing teeth. They were like overbites, shaved into piercing tusks. And the claws were more like serrated knives, barely softened by black grime. Just one swipe, and a person would be walking away with more than a few scratches.
Yaritza quickly scrolled down her phone and read, “‘El bacà is believed to be a Haitian spirit, one that only Haitians can summon and dismiss.’” She looked up with an eager smile, pride in being the first to come to a solution.
A solution that filled Xiomara with dread and a grim realization. This was what looking for the demon eventually meant—a witch hunt. Family against family until they all united against one common enemy. And Naomi wasn’t even family. What a convenient choice. Papi Ramon sent a message in the will, knowing that Naomi would be in the house when it was read. He didn’t just say “the demon”—he called it el bacà. All signs pointed to Naomi.
Papi Ramon wouldn’t have wanted this. Yet, did that matter? Papi Ramon was not around. Just his kids were. Family that rarely united for something as often as they did against it, and in this situation, where everyone’s dirty laundry was in danger of being aired, the unification could only be swift and deadly.
They wouldn’t dare . . . Xiomara wanted to believe her family had their limits. And maybe before this night, believing that would’ve been easy. But with one cousin being exposed as a sexual abuser, his father a thieving enabler, and an aunt being responsible for chemical burns, the limit for bad decisions appeared nonexistent.
And even more than that, more than the idea of a demon in the house, more than the knowledge that Naomi already held the short end of the stick, was a simple question that made Xiomara sweat: And then what? A witch hunt rarely claimed just one victim.
Xiomara swallowed.
“So we already know what to do,” Yaritza said, words coming out faster than Xiomara could process. “We have to tie up Naomi and force her to dismiss the demon. And obviously, I’m not, like, pro-torture or anything . . .”
“Whoa!” Xiomara’s eyes widened. “Stop before you say something you can’t take back.”
“I just said I’m not pro-torture!” Yaritza huffed. “I’m just stating facts, okay? El bacà is a Haitian spirit. One that can only be controlled by Haitians. They use it to protect their property. Naomi is Haitian, literally from Haiti, so obviously—”
“Julia was literally from Haiti. Naomi was born and raised in New Jersey,” Xiomara corrected her. “Jesus Christ, how can you hate someone this much and not even know basic facts about them?” She had to stomp this out at the source. Yaritza was a firecracker—once she got started, it was hard to stop her. “Do me a favor and keep all of this to yourself, okay? Otherwise you’re going to get someone killed.”
Yaritza was silent. Her shoulders formed a straight line, and she gave Xiomara a look that sent chills down her spine.
“Why are you defending her so much? You know we have to stick together, otherwise all of us are damned,” Yaritza said. “You really want to risk damning all of us for her?”
If it were up to Xiomara, she truly wouldn’t care. But as she thought about Papi Ramon, about all the things he did for the Abreus, from immigrating to a new country and bankrolling all of their futures, to his very last message to her—Xiomara curled her hands into fists.
She looked down but said, “I think our family did a lot of the damning on their own.”
“Hm. Maybe.” Yaritza coldly sidestepped Xiomara as she made her way to the stairs. “By the way, Wanda’s in your mom’s room. She asked to pray in there while we were all dealing with Aury. I think she’s still there, so don’t bother her for a bit.”
“Thanks for the heads-up,” Xiomara said.
“Of course,” Yaritza responded. “What are family for?”
* * *
Sitting on the floor beside her mother’s closed door, Xiomara’s ass grew numb waiting for Wanda to emerge. She thought it would only take five or ten minutes, tops, but the young woman seemed to have much to discuss with the Lord. Eventually, she took out her cell phone and scrolled absentmindedly through social media. She wondered if Marcus was doing the same, waiting for her to reach out, out of desperation or maybe sheer boredom. Once or twice, she opened his text messages, thumb hovering over the touch-screen keyboard before swiping away to another app. Her battery had gone down to 62 percent.
Yaritza wasn’t lying about the hashtags. A number of posts decried her family’s wrongdoings, going so far as to speculate what else the Abreus might have been hiding. After all, three scandals in one afternoon? That was a record. And the people were out for blood. Posts about her family ranged from mild disappointment to outright xenophobia.
It was probably a good idea she kept all of her online profiles private, only allowing close friends to follow and DM her.
Eventually, Xiomara needed to stretch. She stood in front of the door with a budding curiosity as a hushed voice spoke fervently inside.
“. . . Perdóname, Señor . . .” Wanda’s voice rose just enough for Xiomara to hear short breaks between sentences, a slight wheeze as she pushed through in prayer.
Is she crying? Xiomara pressed her ear against the door. Wanda sounded too muffled to parse, easily drowned out by the desperate downpour and crackling thunder.
And then there was air where the door should have been.
“What?” Wanda snapped, hand still on the doorknob, a subtle message that she would be closing it again once Xiomara was done there.
“Sorry to bother you . . .” Xiomara cleared her throat. “Just wanted to check in and see how you were doing.”
A piss-poor attempt to explain away her eavesdropping, Xiomara knew, but it was the only idea she had. Wanda hastily wiped her nose before she answered.
“I’m fine,” she said.
“Oh. Okay.” Xiomara nodded. As much as she wanted to leave, her body wouldn’t move. She felt stuck in front of Wanda, like a reflection of her. The door frame was the mirror. Unless Wanda closed the door, Xiomara wouldn’t be able to go.
“. . . Did you want your room back?” Wanda asked.
“What? Oh. No, that’s okay. You can finish up.”
And the door was shut again, freeing Xiomara from her position. She exhaled and made a beeline downstairs.
The kitchen appeared lively with conversation. Rafael, Manuel, and Henry carried on, their shadows merging in the light of the doorway. Xiomara backed into a bathroom, peeking out just enough to see the men go from the kitchen to the dining room. Rafael seemed to have grabbed an extra mug of coffee while Henry chugged a Modelo. The TV clicked on and the sound of a sports game filtered down the hall.
Fuck it. This was her best chance. Xiomara ducked into Papi Ramon’s study while the men were still distracted. She closed the door quietly, wrinkling her nose at the acrid smell of burnt wood lightly washed in blood. It didn’t mesh with Papi Ramon’s cologne at all, instead overpowering it something fierce. It caught in the back of Xiomara’s throat, teasing her gag reflex. She pressed her sleeve to her face and crossed the room.
Whipping out her phone, she cast a light onto the claw marks. The blood had all dried, nearly blending in with the splinted dark wood. Where did it come from? Aury didn’t appear to be injured, and she also didn’t seem like the kind of person to hurt herself, all to garner sympathy. Xiomara carefully traced the marks with a finger, from end to end, imagining each one to be like a toiled field the way they were equally distanced apart.
It’s rough, she noted. Like whatever had cut into the wood was mildly blunt, forced into the desk with sheer strength. Xiomara pressed a nail against it, just beside the claw mark. Pressure spiked through her thumb, and she shook her hand when she pulled it away. She didn’t even leave a dent.
Not that it mattered. Aury could have spent an entire hour filing a path through the wood, and it still wouldn’t have looked like an authentic claw mark. Xiomara doubted Aury could make a single line, let alone three. The desk was made out of an extremely tough wood—that much, she knew. Once her family was calm enough to reason with, she would point this out.
Xiomara’s phone buzzed in her hand, screen lighting up with a message from Marcus. She clicked ignore and focused on the scene around the study. Many of the awards and plaques were still face down on the floor, undone and taken apart in search of a clue from her grandfather. But many of them seemed to have been cleared away. Shoved to the side, as if clearing a path for someone to easily walk through. Xiomara followed the path to the other side of the desk. She hadn’t gotten a chance to look through it last time, with Aury suddenly intruding for a phone call.
The first drawer opened to a handful of pens, scattered to the side and above a notepad. Several pages were already torn out, and when Xiomara flipped through the rest, she was disappointed to see nothing but notes written to himself and a collection of phone numbers to call about certain bills.
The next drawer below that was largely empty, save for an old glasses case and the cleaning cloth it came with. Xiomara held the hollow vessel in her hand, suddenly overcome with a sense of longing for the glasses. She knew they had buried them with Papi Ramon—it seemed too weird for him not to wear them in his coffin—but she wished she had something of his to hold on to.
Xiomara’s phone buzzed again. She ignored it.
In the last drawer, Xiomara found several white caps staring up at her. Pill bottles, each at least half-full, with Papi Ramon’s name printed on all of the labels. Some were weekly vitamins to make up for some kind of deficiency—D3, magnesium, iron, omega-3, it went on. Others were medications prescribed to deal largely with Papi Ramon’s known heart issues—lisinopril, simvastatin, and something Xiomara had trouble pronouncing but was blue and round and was supposed to be taken at meals. She shook the bottle and listened to the pills smack against plastic. She almost put it away when she noticed one bottle appeared to be open. The cap hadn’t locked all the way, and when she picked it up, she could instantly see why.
It was cracked. The rim of the bottle missed a piece, and a line cut down behind the label.
Oh, Aury . . . Was this what she’d taken before the attack? Xiomara scanned the label for a name. Tramadol. Xiomara googled the medication, ignoring the growing number of notifications on her phone from Marcus.
Tramadol—a strong narcotic for moderate to severe pain. Xiomara let out a shuddering breath and fell into the desk seat. Right, now she remembered. It was the medication that Mami was prescribed right after her surgery. She couldn’t move very much without it, and even with it, she made sure not to twist, bend, lift, or do much of anything while her lower back healed. It was almost impressive how much a person relied on their lower back functioning painlessly in order to do any amount of movement. If Mami was in a car that hit a bump in the road, it was all she could do not to cry out.
Xiomara closed the bottle and put it back. Her phone vibrated again, an irritating sensation that continued much longer, and Xiomara saw that instead of taking the hint, Marcus was now calling. Her head was on the verge of imploding.
She took a deep breath as she answered.
“What!” she whispered angrily. “What? What is it? I’m in the middle of something, and you are—”
“Sorry, sorry, I just . . . Have you seen the news?” Marcus asked.
“I know all about my family, Marcus!” Xiomara hissed into the phone. At the sight of a shadow crossing the light of the door, she ducked down and pressed the phone against her chest. Marcus’s voice was muffled as the footsteps faded in the direction of the bathroom.
