With Love, Echo Park, page 3
“Not since the service.” The petite redhead steps closer. “Can you believe this crowd? Anyway, a few minutes ago a woman was asking about you.”
I take a quick sip. “Asking about me, how?”
“This is where it gets strange. She asked me to point you out, and I told her you were wearing a turquoise dress. But then she used the words… las fichas?”
My knees go entirely slack.
Miranda’s brows curve in. “Right. And I was supposed to say someone unexpected was looking for you, and I should include the ‘las fichas’ bit, and you would get it.”
More than just the Spanish word for domino tiles, las fichas was the neighborhood safe word Señor Montes came up with years ago. Echo Park immigrants knew this word. So did the reliable community members who maintained a network of caring adults watching out for local kids. If an adult approached a child and used the code, it meant you could trust them.
“You okay?”
“Sorry. The woman. What did she look like?” I ask, caught under a wave of apprehension. A week-old tulip wilting under too many unknowns.
Miranda cocks her head. “Hmm, wavy blond hair. Perfect tan—” Her gaze shifts over my shoulder. “Oh, there she is.”
I consider not turning and walking straight out of the park, but I won’t. Even though I don’t want to know who’s behind me, I have to know.
“Clary?”
It’s a voice I’ve never heard. My feet are faster than my head when I pivot. Wavy blond hair. The notable tan, too. And the first thing I take in all the way, exhaling it across the globe, is this woman is too young to be Vanessa Holt. This person, wearing a stack of gold bangles and a paisley slip dress, isn’t the birth mother who abandoned me seventeen years ago. But why does she look like she jumped right out of my dad’s old photo album?
The stranger wobbles her mouth into a smile. She stops a respectable distance away, hands pressed together like a praying goddess. “I’m sorry. For all this. I didn’t know how, and I think I did it all wrong.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m Jada. I’m your sister.”
Three
When I was young, my house felt like a massive space despite the actual square footage, boundless in the magic only children believe in. Santa Claus and tooth fairies, monsters under beds. The carpet under my toes rolled across state lines, and the roof hung a thousand miles high.
As I grew, my home stayed the same, but I began to feel the press of the walls and the narrowness of the hallway. Still, I’ve never wanted a huge house. I want ours—tan with a poppy-red door, and no good flowers out front even though blooms pay all the bills here.
For seventeen years, I’ve been the daughter and granddaughter who sleeps in the cozy third bedroom. An only child, a teen florist who does all right in school. I’ve got one best friend and a handful of good ones. Top it off with a miniature schnauzer named Rocco, and one aunt—Papi’s older sister, Roxanne, who lives in Brooklyn with her girlfriend.
Now barely two hours after the memorial party, I learn that a totally different life has been running parallel to the only one I’ve ever known. And the blonde sitting in Mamita’s living room club chair is my twenty-two-year-old half sister.
“All these years,” Abu says, “you did not know Clary existed?”
Jada’s barely explained anything so far, but any forthcoming details don’t matter because she cannot stay. I decided that on the way home from the park. Rocco (gullible traitor) curls into a letter C around Jada’s feet, one paw slung over her gold sandal, which will soon be an issue. Because Jada will have to leave so my world can tilt back the way it was.
She faces me. “Our mother and—”
“You mean Vanessa,” I clarify. “Your mother.” Because the only person I know as mother is the dark-haired woman on the couch who always has a puzzle going and endearingly defies the stereotype that all Cubans are fabulous cooks.
“Right,” Jada says, abashed. “Vanessa got pregnant with me at sixteen. Her mom was dead, and her dad got really pissed.” She pauses to see how that lands—ten points to her for not using the word grandfather. “He threw Vanessa out, and she became emancipated and moved in with my father. He was older. Had his own place in Atlanta.”
Papi’s head shakes in disbelief, and in the kind of numbing shock that says all these details are new to him. So far, he’s been the quietest since we left the park. But he’s likely studied every inch of Jada by now, this half mirage of the girl who broke his heart and abandoned him and their newborn daughter.
“So, yeah, I didn’t know about any of you until recently. See, Vanessa left for California three months after I was born. Stuff was horrible between her and my father. He gave her some money and a one-way ticket out of Atlanta, motherhood, responsibility—everything. And she took it. He married a year later.” Jada’s eyes compress, darkening. “When I was three, he started drinking. Using. He turned into a monster—the definition of bad energy. Never cared to change until it was too late. He died last year.”
Sympathy. That’s what sneaks in unexpectedly. Jada can explain the rest, and then she can go back to wherever she came from. But I have feelings around this dad-shaped vacancy for her right now. I’ve grown up with the best father anyone could ask for. Never perfect, just mine.
“Where are you living now, Jada?” Mamita asks, her accent bumping slightly over the name. Jeh-tha.
“I guess you could say I live everywhere and nowhere. I’m a modern nomad,” she says, fiddling with the oversize leather hobo bag on her lap. “Although I’ve never liked that term. I prefer traveler.”
“You mean, this is your choice?” I ask.
Jada nods. “The best one I’ve ever made. After I left Van—” She cringes. “Sorry. I’m getting ahead of myself.”
Mamita rises into the cloud of blank stares hazing our living room. “I will make us some tea.” Translated from Mamita-speak: por Dios, this is going to take a while.
Although she starts her day with pan tostado and café con leche, Mamita is obsessed with tea and even orders it from England. Because Maxwell’s tea is just better, she claims. And Jada Morrison and her Mediterranean tan and nomadic secret-sister existence mean emergency teatime.
“Something herbal, please?” Jada requests.
After a nod, Mamita slips into the kitchen. “Keep going! I can hear you!”
“Right. Okay. When I was six, my home got so bad that my stepmom finally left my dad. She said she’d come back for me, but she wasn’t the one who did.” Jada pauses, face levered downward, as if she’s figuring out how to say what I already know is coming. Or maybe she’s just giving me time to open up a place to receive it—like she assumes I have one set up.
But here’s the thing: that place doesn’t exist. It never has. And so, I’m—yes, I’m—the one who says, “Vanessa came back for you.”
(But not for me. Not once, not ever.)
I don’t voice this part. I barely finish processing it. What’s the use? I’ve never wanted my life to look any other way. But now it seems that even ghostly notions can rattle the walls in homes like mine, and I tuck my hands under my thighs to keep them from shaking.
“Bingo,” Jada mumbles. “She took me away to Europe. It’s a long story, but the gist is that I grew up with her, traveling with her and her band. Staying for one or two years in different regions. For, what, eleven years?”
“Eleven? You said you’re twenty-two,” Papi notes.
“At seventeen, I had a huge falling-out with Vanessa. I took off on my own this time, moving around, making a new life in a hundred cities. That freedom grabbed on and stuck, so I never stopped.” Her eyes brighten, and for the first time I notice the dimples under her cheekbones, identical twins to mine. “I love it.”
The room quiets for an unknown span of time until Mamita enters with a tray. Her pink-tinted lips are pressed into an impenetrable vise. And if I know her, she’s stored up a hundred words with a set of exclamation points and question marks to dress them up, like the bows she used to clip into my hair.
For now, Mamita settles on passing out tea. She’s probably fixed turmeric-ginger for herself and Abu because it’s good for aching joints. Papi gets a Dodgers mug filled with the only tea he likes, Maxwell’s Earl Grey. Mint for me, and it’s likely what our visitor gets too.
Jada tests the heat level. “Last month, Vanessa tracked me down.” A wry smile breaks across her face. But it, too, runs off, leaving everything pensive behind. “She said she wanted to make amends, so she invited me to Barcelona. Her band was holed up in a rental for a solid year. I had just finished securing a renter for my dad’s old Atlanta house—now mine. So I set off for Spain.”
With that, my resolve falters. I sink into the couch, fighting the urge to actually cover my ears. So far, all her revelations were going down okay when they were slotted into past tense. But a month ago? That’s too close. And I simply don’t want to hear about what Vanessa is like now. Spare me any tidbits about what hand cream she likes or what she eats for breakfast.
“Clary,” Jada says quietly, “I know. I get it. She left me, too. Twice.”
I nod, even though Jada has misunderstood my reaction. It’s not sadness, it’s absolute fullness. I have no more room for Vanessa Holt—happily. I’m tapped. She merely spans the ten months I shared her body and ten days after, seventeen years ago. Barcelona-Vanessa doesn’t fit into anything I am inside.
“What do you mean Vanessa left twice?” Papi asks.
“For a few weeks it was really nice,” Jada explains. “She did everything she could to repair the rift between us. I moved into the house and played percussion in her band. We cooked and talked on the veranda and just ate up the city. Eventually, she told me about Clary and all of you.”
Jada lowers her head. “Obviously, the news was, well, a lot. I took a train to Bilbao, just to clear my head. When I came back to the villa earlier than planned, she and her band were packing up. Basically, it was time for her group to move on, and she was happy we’d reconnected, and the place was paid through the month. If I hadn’t come back early, all I would’ve found was a note. That was three weeks ago.”
Papi leans forward. “I wish I could say I’m surprised.”
Jada rests her mug on an end table. After a quick scratch behind Rocco’s ear, she pulls an envelope from her bag. “Before she left, Vanessa asked me to take care of something. It has to do with Salvador Montes.”
“Wait, what?” I blurt. While I’d known el señor and Vanessa had crossed paths during her time in LA, I’d assumed that connection had vanished right along with her.
Jada faces me. “She kept in touch with him sporadically. For years.”
My throat goes dry. Señor Montes would never have hurt me in any way. Yet he was communicating with the one person who’d harmed my entire family?
Papi rises, and his movements toward the hall are slow and defeated. But he halts at the threshold, one hand on the frame. “Okay… God. Okay, that’s it,” he says, and volleys a strained look between his parents. “Right? We agree?”
Mamita tries to hide a rush of tears with her teacup. “Sólo dile,” she says, and Abu nods along, the pallor of his skin speckled with red.
“Tell me what?” I ask, a rush of heat raging through my body.
My dad strides over and crouches low. “What we’re about to say is going to sound really confusing and harsh. But please. Please, mija,” he says, his voice breaking. “We were only thinking of your well-being.”
I swallow hard, a sheen of sweat lacing the back of my neck. The opposite of well.
“Señor Montes told us years ago that Vanessa had been conversing with him about you,” Mamita says softly. “One time, he heard Jada call Vanessa ‘Mom’ in the background. This is when he came to us with her confession. He thought we should know.”
“This whole time? Years?” I point to Jada, who actually seems as broadsided about this revelation as I am. “You’ve all known about her?”
Papi grabs my hand. “We found out about ten years ago, but only of her existence, not even her name. And I swear to you, I had no idea Vanessa had another child the whole time we were together. She hid her past from all of us when she moved to Echo Park.”
“But then you kept hiding it from me. You hid Jada!”
Papi braces my arms. “We thought we were protecting you. We did this out of love and care.”
I pinch my eyes shut, my face tensing over so much truth spinning around the greatest lie I’ve ever known. My family loves me impenetrably and fiercely. Being theirs is like existing on the safest, most secure rock. It’s my favorite part of us. But the fact that they knew about Jada and kept silent feels like acres of quicksand pouring in, and I can’t stop it. “What else? If you kept this from me, what else don’t I know?”
“Ay, mi vida, no,” Mamita says. “We were going to tell you when you turned eighteen.”
I search Papi and Abu, find them nodding in agreement.
“So, Jada ratted you out ten months early?” I exhale a windstorm. “God. Wow.”
My dad sits beside me now, cinching his arm around my shoulders. “I’m sorry, Clary. I mean it.”
“I know,” I say, because I do. But the hurt? The confusion? I have a feeling those will outlive all the flowers at La Rosa Blanca. Still, I sink into my father’s hold, testing the space for the first time in my life. Secrets and lies poke through like briars.
He pegs Jada with a look. “Now that you’ve seen us at our worst—sorry for that, by the way—can you tell us the rest?”
Jada’s holding Rocco on her lap, which strikes me right between my ribs. So many times, he’s been my emotional support schnauzer. “Vanessa said Señor Montes was her only link to Clary and Echo Park. Back then, he seemed to be everywhere in the neighborhood. She liked him, and it was mutual.”
“Salvador always believed in her as an artist and encouraged her,” Papi says. “One of his greatest traits was his biggest fault. He was too trusting.”
Jada shakes her head. “It’s more than that. He knew of her past—all except for me at that point—and he wanted to sponsor her way into art school. Late into her pregnancy, he offered a ten-thousand-dollar loan so she could enroll the next year.”
Too much becomes entirely too clear and all at once. I finally know how Vanessa was able to leave my dad and me the way she did. “She used the money to escape. She stole it.”
“Ay, Dios mío,” Mamita says. All the turmeric-ginger tea in her kitchen can’t ease the ache marring her features.
“Vanessa worked for years to save enough to pay Salvador back. But he refused to accept it. And he wouldn’t report any news beyond the basics, like you were safe, healthy, and loved. Any more, she’d have to learn on her own.”
Which would happen the day after never.
Jada holds up the envelope. “This money.”
Abu gapes. “You are sitting here with ten thousand dollars?”
“Almost. This is a statement from her account. Vanessa never understood why Montes wouldn’t take back the cash. The longer she kept it, the more it began to eat away at her.” Jada waves her hand aimlessly. “I’d call it guilt, but it seemed like something bigger was at work. She said she was experiencing a personal black hole. She tried everything—saging, meditation. She consulted a spiritual advisor who claimed she was holding a ring of darkness around her soul. While I was there, I sensed it myself. I knew it was the money.”
Abu glares, pointing his finger. “And this paper, you thought it was okay to bring even a part of this mal de brujería into our home?”
Jada holds out both hands. “No. No—first of all, Vanessa thought I could get through to Señor Montes, and he might accept the funds from me.”
“To rid herself of all the bad juju? To ease her so-called guilt?” Mamita says.
“I tried to reach Señor Montes, and that’s when I learned he’d passed. I told my mother before I left for Bilbao,” Jada adds, facing me again. “With her link to information gone, so is her peace of mind. Clary, she wants you to have the ten thousand. Doing one right thing for you will shine some light into the darkness she created. She’d like to give it to you herself, and she hopes it can be a point of closure for both of you.”
It takes me a few moments to realize this isn’t a joke. Closure? For Vanessa, maybe. But I am already whole and closed. “Not gonna happen,” I say.
Mamita’s eyes spit fire. “After all this time, she would even think to ask our Clarita to face her?”
“She feels it could maybe help Clary, too.”
I let out a caustic laugh.
Abu’s drawn silent, but his frame remains upright and solid as he crosses the room to sit by my side. During stressful times, Mamita is the voice. And he is the rock.
“Forgive me if I get real basic now,” Papi says. “Vanessa has a ten-thousand-dollar check ready to make out to my daughter. In exchange for a meeting?”
Jada holds her arms up. “Exchange is a sticky word. She wants it to be a gift. And Clary doesn’t have to actually see her. It can be a phone call.”
Papi’s eyes narrow. “It sounds like a transaction. But since this scheme has Vanessa Holt written all over it, I actually believe you’re not making it up.”
“I promise that’s not what’s going on here. This money wants to be good and true,” Jada says. “I feel it—the pull of its energy. When I agreed to help put this plan into the world, my entire being loosened, and so did Vanessa’s. I found the courage to reach out and meet my sister and her family. The money will never make up for what Vanessa did to all of you. But it could help?”
“You mean help her, right?” I note. “To get rid of this so-called ring of darkness.” It feels weird even voicing this stuff. While I know there’s more to this world than what we see right in front of us, I’m not down with using random metaphysical excuses to explain away bad behavior. Maybe Jada got into all these beliefs and practices because of Vanessa. Fine for them. But it’s feeling a little too convenient for me.
