Dile Hola a Tu Hermana

When Nuria and Erea buried their parents, they buried their relationship. Perhaps it had been an unspoken agreement that being apart might keep the ghosts away. Nuria doesn’t know if she believes in ghosts or not. The rest of her family does. Their home in Mexico is connected to the pueblo’s cemetery. The adobe living room shares a wall with the first catacombs in the town. Outside, a fence long overrun with vines is all that separates their backyard from the graves. Her mother used to tell her not to fear ghosts; they were only trying to provide guidance. Eventually, she learned that the ghosts she thought she had seen had never been ghosts at all. They’d been shadows and figures of people in mourning, people making or looking for trouble. They were just people.

At the sound of the car’s horn, Nuria looks up from her phone. In front of her taxi, a man struggles with his cart of fresh fish. He holds his hand up apologetically. One of the wheels had gotten stuck on the dirt of the unpaved road. Nuria holds in a frustrated sigh. She had forgotten about the lack of infrastructure there is the further away you moved from Mexico City. Once they can move again, the driver continues, going under 20 miles an hour. The roads aren’t made for speeding - or cars at all. Nuria shakes her head at the sight of a loose cow. Clearly, the cow belongs to someone (it has a collar), but it is peacefully munching on the grass, without a care in the world. Her driver carefully moves around it.

By the time they get to her family’s home, it’s nearly dark. The driver barely acknowledges her after she pays him before speeding away. No one wants to get stuck on this path after dark. It’s not even dirt. The path leading to her family's house is made up of uneven stones in size and distance. The car rocked like a boat in a storm the whole time and, on top of that, there are no lights until one reaches the main road, thirty minutes from her family’s home.

Her suitcase topples over. One of the wheels had gotten stuck in between two stones. She looks at it and then up at the sky. Rays of oranges, pinks, blues, and purples cast their colors over the countryside, an endless field of wildflowers and grass—a real-life Monet painting. Nuria remembers standing at the museum, looking deeply into one of his paintings and thinking he had gotten it just right. Seeing it now, after being away for five years—he had missed so much.

Nuria peels her eyes from the setting sun and looks to her family’s home. Like much of the old homes in Pátzcuaro, it is built from adobe painted white with a brown tiled roof. The brown windows have rusted metal bars on them that hold pots for the flowers her mother had once tended to as if they were another extension of herself. The flowers seemed as alive as they had when her mother had been alive.

She picks up her suitcase, struggling to keep it off the ground. The thick wooden door does little to keep the sounds of life from spilling through it. Growing up, she loved the fact that she rarely ever found quiet. Silence was not an option, with eight people living in a four-bedroom home. Her sister Erea longed for quiet. Sometimes, she would disappear for hours, deep in the field of flowers. Nuria couldn’t understand why at the time. Standing outside the house now, listening to the noise, she begins to understand.

“Como es que todavía no ha llegado?” Tía Soledad is pacing around the kitchen table, wondering why Nuria is taking so long to arrive. She and the others look up at the sound of the door opening.

“El trafico nos demoro,” Nuria smiles at her family. Tía Soledad is the only one standing. Her three other aunts sit at the kitchen table with tazas de barro, probably containing coffee or tea. Her older sister, Erea, sits at their mom’s old sowing station. She stops working on whatever she’s mending to look up at her.

“Nuria,” Tía Blanca reacts first, rising from her seat to hug and kiss her on the cheek. “Mi querida, mira te no mas que chula te ves.”

Nuria lets her aunt guide her the rest of the way in. They shut the front door and leaving her suite case by the stove. The rest of her aunts gather around her. They compliment her just like Tía Blanca had done, saying that the American air really made her brown skin glow.

“Erea,” Tía Soledad frowns at her older sister. “Que haces? Ven y dile hola tu hermana.”

Erea stands and hovers in front of the chair. Nuria looks at her. Their aunts don’t know that she and Erea hadn’t spoken since she left five years ago. The only time she had heard her sister’s voice over the years was when she called her aunts, and they would call Erea to say hi. Erea would always have some reason she couldn’t come to the phone.

Nuria steps out of the circle of aunts and walks over to hug her sister. She lets her arms hover around her sister, trying to avoid touching her as much as possible. Erea is stiff as she puts her own arms around her younger sister. Nuria clears her throat and forces a smile as she pulls back.

If her aunts notice anything, they don’t say anything. They immediately get to work on reheating food for her. Tía Soledad starts heating up tortillas on the comal. Tía Anna is reheating the rice and two chiles rellenos. Tía Carmen wipes off the table and guides her to a chair before walking over to help Tía Anna. Tía Blanca places a glass of agua fresca in her hand and sits directly in front of her.

“Cuantos como hace estado,” Tía Blanca says, and the others nod in encouragement. They want to hear all about her adventures on “the other side.” Erea turns off the sowing machine and disappears down the hall where the bedrooms are. Nuria forces her attention to her aunts and tells them details or stories she hadn’t already mentioned over the phone, not that they would have minded reruns. Her aunts listened eagerly, interjecting here and there to comment on how American something was or tell her they are proud of her.

“Tu si estas haciendo algo de tu vida,” they tell her that she, unlike her sister, is making something out of herself. Nuria smiles at them and holds in a wince. Had they been saying that to Erea? Making her feel bad for refusing to leave Mexico? Erea stayed because she couldn’t leave their parent’s side. Their graves are just on the other side of their living room wall. They weren’t that exact catacomb, but they were in that soil. Nuria left because she couldn’t live with the possibility that their ghosts might be roaming, might even come to the house. She never knew what she would do if she saw her parents’ ghosts, so she simply left to avoid the possibility. Nuria even avoided coming home for Día de Los Muertos celebrations, always telling her family she had things keeping her in the U.S. Sometimes that was true.

They would still call her during the festivities, telling her that her parents were there with them. Her aunts would point at stale-looking pan dulce and say, “Mira mija les gusto.” Nuria didn’t know whether or not her parents crossed over during Día de Los Muertos, Nuria didn’t know, and she didn’t want to. Why would she want a ghost when what she needed was her parents alive?

Once she’s done answering her aunt’s questions, Nuria is allowed to head to her room. Growing up, she shared with Erea. Tía Blanca and Soledad shared a room as the oldest sisters. Then it was Tía Anna and Carmen, the middle sisters, and then her mom, the youngest. Her parents’ room was at the very end of the hall. No one has gone inside since they passed. It remains untouched, like a historical relic too fragile to handle. Tía Anna and Carmen had moved out of the family home two years ago, finding a smaller apartment closer to the town’s center. That left their room open, and Erea had moved into it, which meant that their old room was now just Nuria’s.

No taxi or anyone with common sense would try to travel back into town this late, so all her aunts squeeze into one room, wanting to give both their nieces their own space. Nuria grabs her suitcase and heads to her room. She gently pushes the door open and steps inside.

Erea’s side of the room is barren. The imprints of where her bed had been, dresser, and desk remain on the walls and floors. The only thing on her side of the room that remains is the alter to La Virgen Guadalupe their mom made them keep. Each night they would light a candle and change the flowers in the vase. The vase is empty, and the candles have no more wax inside—something her mother would have never allowed.

Without much thought to her actions, Nuria quietly walks out of the house. When she passed her aunt’s room, she heard them whispering; they had noticed something wrong between their nieces.

Outside, the moon shines brightly over the lone house and field. Even with the moon’s brightness, it is still too dark to see more than a few feet in front of herself. A test to see if the path still lives within her memories. Each step forward is careful as she keeps from tripping on the cobblestone. Her feet step on the solid, flat earth, flattened by Nuria’s and Erea’s footsteps throughout the years. Arriving at the path unharmed releases some of the tension in her chest. By the time she reaches the section of the field with an endless amount of begonia flowers, she feels comfortable in her surroundings. She reaches down and gathers a handful of flowers. Once satisfied with the amount, she heads back to the house. Inside she sets the flowers on the dinner table to look for two new candles. Thankfully they are kept in the same cabinet under the kitchen counter. Candles, lighter, and flowers in hand, Nuria returns to her room.

She stops. Erea, in her nightgown, stands facing the bedroom door. Her sister is deep in thought and doesn’t notice her standing in the hallway. Nuria clears her throat. Erea looks up at her and then at what’s in her arms. Without a word, she steps forward, takes the candles from her, and opens the bedroom door. They step inside and shut the door behind them. Erea removes the old candles and sets them on the floor, then places the new ones at the side of La Virgen Guadalupe’s feet. Nuria hands her sister the lighter and carefully places the flowers into the vase. Erea waits for her to finish arranging them before lighting the candles.

The dark room is illuminated now by two light sources, the moonlight coming through the window and the candles. It’s enough that she can now see her sister’s face is stained with tears.

Nuria takes a deep breath before asking her sister why she stopped answering her phone calls, and her texts. Nuria had even sent a few letters that remained unanswered.

Erea directs her answer to La Virgen. “Te pareces tanto a mama.”

Nuria takes her sister in. Growing up, they weren’t allowed to cut their hair even though they both wanted to. Like their mother, both of them had thick black hair that, when untouched, was a tangle of waves. It was neither straight nor curly but rather an impossible thickness that was hard to manage on its own. Neither one of them had known how to do their own hair after their mother passed. Tía Blanca had to braid each of their hair for the funeral. Erea’s hair is down now, but it had been in two long braids down her back earlier. Her sister chose to keep it long and had learned to braid it and tame it. Nuria crossed the border and almost immediately cut it to her chin and regularly straightened it.

It’s true that, between them, Nuria shares more of their mom’s features. Erea, on the other hand, looks more like their dad. They hadn’t been able to stand looking at each other. Their parents were reflected in the other sisters’ face and it was hard to stomach those first months. It just became easier to stay away.

Erea looks away from La Virgen and then quietly walks out of the room. Nuria looks at the altar. Her mom used to have all four of them kneel in front of this altar and pray together. She can’t remember the last time she prayed, let alone the last time she knelt down before a greater power. Being in the U.S allowed her to remove herself from this bedroom, this home, this land. The distance allowed her to exist without thinking about her parents too often. The city she lived in smelt of urine, cigarettes, weed, and sweaty people—nothing to do with the smells here. Her childhood home smells of chile and smoke mixed with the scents from outside of flowers, grass, and manure. Unlike the city, the night is quiet. She can hear her own heart beating.

In the stillness of her room, she searches the shadows for her parents. Her aunts would say her parents would only come if she really believed, if she was willing to let them in. Nothing comes from the shadows. Nuria looks away from the darkness to the burning candle. Why would they come now when she had avoided them so long?

Nuria kneels before the altar and bows her head. “Perdona mi madre.”