You Should Have Been Nicer to My Mom, page 7
Well, that’s interesting. And out of all of them, it wouldn’t be at all surprising for Aury to start unnecessary drama. After all, she was the one who started the rumor that Josefina had been having an affair and was sick with a stubborn STD, while in fact she had been getting seen for the hernia developing in her lower back. When the truth came to light, Aury feigned innocence and claimed she was just worried since Josefina never mentioned having back pain.
Xiomara gripped her cell phone tight. If there was anyone who deserved to be damned to hell, it would be Aury. Papi Ramon should just let the demon take her.
But no, it wasn’t Aury who left the letter. In the video, she only pulled out a ring of heavy keys and unlocked the door. Marisa followed her inside. Xiomara fast-forwarded again until she saw herself, making a straight line for the door.
Xiomara put down her phone with a sigh. It didn’t look like the post office had anything to deliver that day.
Could the mystery writer have come another day? And if so, how long had the letter been sitting there? Xiomara continued watching the footage. Eventually, Manuel and his kids appeared, hardly waiting long before being let in. Fast-forwarding once more and there was Yaritza in her fur and sunglasses.
A knock at the door pulled Xiomara from her thoughts. Naomi entered the library just as Xiomara stepped away from the wall, shoving her cell phone into her cardigan pocket.
“Nothing still?” Naomi asked, closing the door behind her. Exasperated did not even begin to describe the look on her face. Xiomara imagined that Marisa was still bossing her around while the others ignored her.
“I only got through one day.” This was going to be difficult. They have to be caught on camera somewhere, she told herself. Xiomara cursed under her breath.
“Has the rain let up at all?” she asked. Xiomara was beginning to feel claustrophobic with her family in the house. Naomi shook her head.
“It’s still going strong. Marisa’s worried it’s going to take down the telephone poles.”
“She’ll be fine as long as the cell tower stays up.” Xiomara couldn’t imagine Marisa wanting to go too long without talking to her boyfriend. She hoped Mark would call soon. Maybe she wouldn’t be able to get back home tonight, but knowing the rest of them, they would rather risk death than stay a night. If she got lucky, she may be able to at least be alone.
Before Xiomara knew it, her hand was already wrapped around the doorknob.
“What are you going to do now?” Naomi asked, watching her stand at the door with such a nervous energy, Xiomara was sure she could brush shoulders with her and feel the sting of static shock.
She sent back a look of calm calculation.
“I’m going to talk to Wanda.”
The sound of clanging metal echoed down the hallway. Water ran from the sink in short bursts, and Xiomara swore she could hear the stove clicking on. Inside the kitchen, Wanda all but sprinted from one side of the counter to the other. A bowl held to her hip and a knife pointed outward, the woman seemed to be moving on autopilot. Wanda didn’t notice when Xiomara popped her head into the door, and she didn’t stop her circuit from a cutting board to a pot boiling on the stove when Xiomara cut across her path. Wanda simply rerouted, treating Xiomara as an inanimate barrier and not a person moving with intention.
“Wanda? Wanda!” Xiomara waved her hand in her cousin’s face until she was swatted away.
“What?” Wanda snapped. “I’m trying to cook.” She made a subtle frown and chopped plantains into halves.
“Do you know about the letter in the mailbox?” Xiomara asked. Wanda raised an eyebrow and clicked her tongue.
“Ah, I think Yaritza mentioned something like that. Someone wants us to confess?”
Xiomara nodded. That was the gist of it. But what she really wanted to know was if Wanda could sense the connection between that and the odd will. If anyone was capable of appreciating the obvious biblical language link, it was the literal choir kid.
“Sure, why not.” She shrugged apathetically. “You should all repent more. Maybe then your lives wouldn’t be such a mess.”
The insult hit Xiomara cold and hard. She forgot that Wanda had a poison tongue. This was why she disliked the girl. She took after her father in more ways than one.
“So you don’t have anything to repent for?” Xiomara asked, turning just as Wanda lowered the flame on the stove. Dipping a wooden spoon into the pot, Wanda slowly stirred.
“Of course not. When have I ever disobeyed the Lord?”
Xiomara wasn’t sure why she’d asked. Instead, she changed the topic.
“What do you think of Papi Ramon’s message?”
“Message?” Wanda’s stirring paused.
“His will,” Xiomara self-corrected. “Why would he say one of us is secretly a demon?”
On some level, she felt like she was grasping at straws. Maybe it was her own misconception about demons or something, but she genuinely couldn’t imagine it taking the form of a pastor or a vigilant church member. Even if Wanda acted like she was sent from hell purely to annoy the family.
For a long while, Xiomara’s cousin was silent. A sudden bout of the cold shoulder was a bit passive-aggressive, in Xiomara’s opinion, but it wasn’t like the two were ever friends. The thick wall between them remained as permanent as it was imaginary.
“. . . don’t know.”
Xiomara thought she saw Wanda’s lips move. “Did you say—”
“I know one thing, though.” Wanda tossed a look over her shoulder. “If anyone’s the demon, it’s not me or Papi.” Her eyes blinked up and down Xiomara’s entire being, lips curling downward.
Xiomara could sense the hostility hardening with every second. She took a step back, getting as far out of range as possible, because she knew this feeling—it wasn’t the first time. No, Xiomara remembered the day she came to understand that Wanda didn’t like her. And it would not matter what Xiomara did, her cousin would still not like her. It hurt, that moment of understanding. She was young, too young to process the sting of unconditional rejection, so she carried it as a scar.
It was when Wanda finally looked away from Xiomara that she realized Wanda had never mentioned Henry. She kept the thought to herself. It was obvious Wanda had inherited her father’s air of superiority. There was no grace or mercy extended to others unless they were ready to kneel to God—in that way, the concept of unconditional love was very much conditional.
Why did I even come here in the first place? Let alone stay. Even if Mark managed to get the previous will and returned safely, she was feeling less and less interested in whatever Papi Ramon left for her. She would much rather protect her peace of mind than protect her inheritance.
Back in the dining room, Aury shook Rafael’s arm with a laugh.
“. . . and she wanted me to eat the whole pot of rice!”
Rafael couldn’t help but crack a smile. “I still don’t know how you did that.”
“I was hungry!”
Xiomara looked away from them. Henry and Yaritza were both scrolling on their phones. Manuel was at the wall-mounted TV, pressing the on button. The screen blinked to life, filling the room with background noise as it settled on a news channel. Xiomara recognized it easily: the exact same brand as the last TV from before the break-in.
Wait . . . Xiomara squinted, seeing a familiar chip on the bottom right. Once, when she was small, she tripped in the living room and fiercely launched the remote overhead. The resulting crack earned her more than a smack from Mami when she got home, yet Papi Ramon never replaced it, even though he could. This was that exact TV.
“Does anyone know where the remote control is?” Manuel scratched his head. He went on a search, looking between couch cushions and telling his son to help him look.
Marisa slipped past Xiomara, pressing a hand against her other ear as she went.
“Soy yo . . .” was all Xiomara caught before she was out of range. With the way her aunt’s voice softened, Xiomara assumed she spoke to the aforementioned boyfriend. She looked to Aury, who wore displeasure like a shawl.
“I thought this TV was stolen during the break-in.” Xiomara gestured to it.
“I don’t know, maybe it was the one upstairs.” Aury shrugged. Then she roped Yaritza into a conversation with her father. Neither of the two looked ready to acknowledge the other, so while Yaritza kept her eyes glued to Aury, Rafael’s head was turned the other way.
What happened there? She recalled they’d stood on opposite ends of the casket when Papi Ramon was being lowered into the grave. She didn’t think anything of it at the time—but now she was wondering if they’d had a recent argument and were still cooling off. Growing up, Xiomara always thought that Rafael was such a reasonable dad. Not overly protective or completely out of touch. He could read the room and know when he wasn’t needed, then make himself scarce. Yaritza was a little bit of a party girl. Her Instagram stories alone showed her bouncing from club to club, and now that she was legally old enough to drink, the habit had worsened.
Maybe he confronted her? Whatever it was that soured their relationship, it was clearly lingering in both their minds.
Confess your sins . . . Was that message specifically about them?
What even were they supposed to be confessing? That they’d gotten bags from the grocery store without paying the ten cents? Or was someone hiding a seriously heinous secret? Xiomara wasn’t sure she even wanted to know. But with those phantom eyes seeming to glare at her, she also knew she couldn’t just sit there like nothing had changed in the last hour. She didn’t have long until Mark returned, so if she was going to do something, she would have to get moving. And once she came to that conclusion, it felt like a bit of the weight of those eyes lifted, just a little.
Like they approved . . .
I’m going to go crazy if I stay here too long, she thought.
Xiomara joined Manuel in looking for the remote. At least this was an activity, something with a purpose. Besides, she needed to ask him what he thought about the letter and will. Her hands collected sweat, and she wiped them on her jeans. She wasn’t a secret agent. What the hell did she know about pumping a suspect? More, was Manuel even considered a suspect?
To calm her racing thoughts, she focused on looking for the remote. If memory served her correctly, she would find it inside the ottoman that was right under the mounted television. Papi Ramon thought it only made sense to leave it close to the television without mounting an extra shelf himself.
Xiomara opened it. The ottoman was half-filled with unsealed envelopes, old DVD cases, rogue pens, rewards cards, a little pig figurine that had probably come with a set, three long HDMI cords, an old laptop that was missing its battery, a gold bangle bracelet—and there was the remote. Tucked into the far corner, peeking out from under a stack of bills.
“I found the remote,” Xiomara announced. She passed it to Manuel, who tested it out.
“Hm. Thank you,” he said, satisfied. Xiomara braced herself. “Tío, do you know what Papi Ramon was talking about?”
The man’s face flickered between annoyance and confusion. “What? About what?”
She looked back at him in bewilderment. What the hell do you think I’m talking about? “El bacà. He said it was a demon. Do you know anything about that?”
Xiomara could feel other eyes on her. She imagined it was Aury, already bored of the tension between Rafael and Yaritza.
“Why would I know anything about demons? I’m a man of God.” Manuel settled into his seat again, attention set squarely on the television. Xiomara studied his expression. He didn’t appear to be lying. Maybe she’d overestimated his knowledge on the supernatural.
“Then why did Papi Ramon write that?” she asked. It was as good a question as any. Manuel’s expression deepened for a moment, a V forming on his forehead as he knit his brows together.
“He was . . . old,” he offered, in a voice so gruff it sounded forced. Like he was trying to bolster a confidence that just wasn’t there. “Sometimes you get old and you just start saying stuff.”
Sometimes you just start saying stuff? What a way with words this megachurch pastor had. Xiomara tried again from another angle. “It reminded me of when he was an exorcist and—”
“What?” Manuel put the remote down, shifting his attention in the flash of a blink. “What are you talking about, exorcist?”
Xiomara’s mouth fell open, stuttering through the start of a sentence three different times. Abashment found her quick. “Exorcists, you know, uh, deal with demons, and Papi Ramon was an exorcist, so I thought—”
“Papi was never an exorcist.”
It wasn’t how fast Manuel said those words that shocked her—like a reflex, an answer that didn’t need to be prepared—but rather the certainty in delivering it. It passed under her radar and she nodded like, of course, you’re right, he was never a— Wait.
“Yes, he was.” She passed a look among each of her relatives, searching for just one person to confirm. “He told a lot of stories—remember?”
“Papi and his stories!” Aury let out the kind of laugh that made her shift in her seat. “He was always exaggerating those, trying to get us to behave.”
“No, no, he said he was a full-time exorcist.” Xiomara insisted on what she knew, and what she knew was that when Papi Ramon said he was an exorcist, he fully meant it. Doubt trickled in, eroding certainty until its sharp edges were all smoothed down.
Oh my God, was he exaggerating the whole time?
Manuel had already turned from Xiomara, plugging away at the TV. She followed his line of sight, settling on the news cycle. The report lingered on the topic of the storm outside, urging everyone to stay in their homes. Certain areas closest to the Bronx River were in danger of flooding. It was estimated that the weather wouldn’t subside until morning, and Xiomara once more cringed at the thought of spending the night with her family.
If it came to that, she would likely stay in the library rather than her mother’s old room. Nobody would want to stay in the library, guaranteeing her privacy. And there were other benefits to staying on the first floor . . . namely that the floorboards didn’t creak as much, so Xiomara would be able to sneak around, gathering information and clues without anyone getting in her way.
What she would gather, she didn’t know. If nothing else, maybe she could figure out if her grandfather was crazy or if they were in actual danger—and if that danger was a greedy human or a hungry demon.
She almost laughed at that last thought, but something held it in. Belief in it or not, she decided she was done tempting any kind of fate until this all got sorted out.
She checked the time—it was about 3:30 p.m. Wanda would be busy cooking for at least another two hours, and if everyone had their fill and Mark still wasn’t back, they would likely retire upstairs, the older generation reclaiming their old rooms while everyone else considered who they would rather double up with. The process would be quick, with the heaviness of the stew lulling them to sleep. Maybe she’d have time to sneak around at 7 or 8 p.m.?
Manuel flipped to a sports channel, the roar of a crowd catching Rafael’s attention.
“Wait, turn that up!” he said. Rafael twisted his seat around to face the TV, already enthralled by the soccer players.
Well, at least it’ll be easy keeping these two busy. Xiomara sat down next to Yaritza. The young woman was absentmindedly scrolling on her phone, hardly passing a glance to her cousin.
“What’s up, cuz?” Yaritza murmured. Ninety percent of her attention was definitely on her phone.
“Nothing,” Xiomara answered quietly. She waited until the sports announcers were sufficiently loud enough to distract her uncle. “What’s up with you and Tío Rafael?”
Yaritza’s thumb paused mid-scroll. Her mouth twitched, and she pressed her tongue against the inside of her cheek.
“Nothing,” she answered, smacking her lips. “What’s up with you and Naomi?”
Xiomara’s heart jumped.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, why is she here? Why did you bring her?”
Xiomara blinked. “I didn’t. She was already here when I got here.”
Yaritza’s eyes finally met hers. She narrowed her eyes, searching Xiomara’s face for a long time.
Does she not believe me? It wasn’t like Xiomara didn’t have the video evidence to prove it. Suddenly, Yaritza’s face relaxed and she smiled. That was when a realization struck Xiomara.
“You knew she was here already,” she remembered. “It was the first thing you asked me when you got here.”
“Of course I did. Marisa sent a picture to the family group chat,” Yaritza said.
There’s a family group chat? Xiomara thought, surprised.
As if in response, Yaritza showed her the photo. Marisa and Aury sat with an arm around each other, smiling at the camera. Rafael leaned into the camera frame with a half smirk. Yaritza zoomed into the back corner—there, she saw Naomi, completely oblivious to the camera and carrying a box out of frame. “Still, I assumed you’d brought her. Why else would she be here?”
“To . . . help clean things up?” Xiomara lied. For as long as she’d known, her cousin held a strange animosity toward Naomi—it wouldn’t be beneath Yaritza to try blocking her from receiving anything from the will. Or worse—force her to leave. And if Xiomara was going to have to share the house with a family like this, she would prefer to keep Naomi around. Just because they look down on her, doesn’t mean that Papi Ramon did. For all she knew, the two had probably had a close friendship like he’d had with Julia.
Xiomara frowned. That made it seem like Papi Ramon had a habit of treating children like the stand-ins of their mothers. Or replacing them . . .
