Page 59 of Morena
when the rain comes down,
it makes her fall…”
2. “Little little spider,
weaves her web,
when the shadow comes,
she can’t be seen…”
3. I… I… you what?
V.
MORENA
IsteppedintoCarmen’shouse. Lucia sat at the kitchen table with a steaming cup in her hands. That damn tea, I thought. It smelled of chamomile, but something else was in it. Carmen stood by her side, her fingers on Lucia’s shoulder.
Maybe she was dosing her, making her believe she was the same woman she had always been, the woman someone could love. That was one of the things I didn’t regret: I never loved before, never fell in love.
Maybe that’s why I became the worst story whispered about me. My heart had burned and turned to ash the night I died.
I knocked at the door and let the sound fall into the kitchen like a coin. “Oh, Doña Carmen,” I said.
She moved to Lucia as if seeking proof that this moment was real. She looked at me the way people look at accidents, trying to guess which parts they will be okay to solve.
“Morena,” she breathed. “How?”
“Surprise,” I said, and let a laugh push the edges of the word. “I am all alive.” My laugh scraped. “Well, as alive as I can be,” I added with a tilt of my head.
I crossed the kitchen and closed the distance.
“Strange thing,” I said, stepping closer, “I’ve started to remember. You are not nearly as kind as you pretend to be.”
“Morena, mi vida,” she whispered. Her voice trembled. “If you spare me and Lucia, I will tell you where Maria is.”
“You want to trade,” I said, and something like appetite quickened in my chest. I came even closer, close enough to see the inside edge of her eye. “Fine. But one condition.”
She nodded.
“I will come back,” I said. “But first I want to visit Maria.”
“She’s at your father’s place,” Carmen answered, and the words fell out with a small stumble.
It didn’t take me long to find the mirror. I touched its cold frame, and the world shifted.
One breath and I was standing in the hallway of my family’s house. The light was the same as I remembered. Maria moved through it in scrubs, shoulders bowed with the weight of a night shift, skin pale under fluorescent bulbs. She had made it, I told myself; she had become a nurse, the thing I had always wanted to be.
She stepped into the bathroom, turned on the tap, and steam began to climb and blur the glass. I watched from the mirror as she undressed, towel at her waist. She glanced at her reflection, rubbed at her eyes, and for a moment she looked alone and raw and entirely human.
Something shifted behind the glass, but she blamed it on the night shift and rubbed her eyes again.
The faucet hissed, water spilling steadily over the rim of the porcelain sink. Something was choking the drain. At first, shethought it was just a strand of hair, a black one. Then more appeared, twisting together into a thick braid.
She leaned closer. The smell rising from the water was sweet and rotten. The braid trembled, and she reached for it. When her fingers closed, the hair was warm. She pulled, expecting it to come loose, but the braid only kept rising from the darkness below, pulsing.
Then it pulled back.
