12. Chapter 12
Dolores jerked awake to the sudden clamor of the Encanto like she always did. Her room’s soundproofing always weakened when the family woke up, going from complete silence to just dampening the still apparent noise. However, she was used to the sudden awakening. She gave a soundless sigh and got ready for the day.
Everything about breakfast was weird today. Not only was everything oddly silent for the day after a gift ceremony. But there was also a feeling of unease in the air around the family. The source of which even Dolores couldn’t pinpoint. This was compounded by the town, which was quieter than usual while still loud in her ears. She could still pick up the regular breakfast discussions in the different houses. Away from her topics of focus, she noticed absently that the usual gossips were at it earlier than expected. She tuned them out. They were unreliable at the best times. There was no reason to pay them any mind when she could get the info from the source if necessary.
She focused on the family milling around the buffet-style breakfast they always had after a big party. She had just tuned out the town in time to see Mirabel show up at the tail end of everyone else. Her youngest prima silently relayed something to Antonio, who was on his new jaguar friend’s back. Dolores had tried to figure out her prima’s preferred method of communication, but it was challenging to learn without direct tuition like her Tio got. She picked up something about family and problems, but she couldn’t really pick up what they were talking about with the speed her prima was conversing.
She would ask Mirabel after breakfast. Anything to avoid whatever was causing the ominous gap in the town’s clamor today. The sound of Alma’s door opening and shutting made her back unconsciously straighten. As the exact steps approached the door to the veranda, she gave a light nudge to Luisa. The girl’s eye was still audibly twitching, but luckily, she got the memo. Dolores’s hands snapped to her ears before the heavy bang of the table on stone could deafen her for the day. She’d made that mistake enough times to learn from it. What she wasn’t ready for was the terse exclamation of “Everyone, to the table. Vaminos! Vaminos Rapidemente!” from what sounded like was next to her ear.
Dolores gave an involuntary squeak-hum and dashed to sit across from her mother at the table. Abuela took her usual place at the head of the table, trying to quickly cover a disgusted look at the Jaguar sitting on the ground across the table from her eating off of her youngest grandchild’s plate with one that resembled suppressed amusement. She knocked twice on the table for attention and stood saying:
“Family, We are all thankful for Antonio’s new gift.” A few nods and smiles towards the opposite end of the table where Antonio seemed to be fidgeting (Dolores knew better but wouldn’t say anything). “I’m sure that in the coming days, we’ll find a way to put it to good use.”
Dolores cringed a bit at that, a reaction that both her mother and prima shared. Mirabel began doing her preferred version of muttering angrily, looking to everyone else like she was just shifting uncomfortably. Antonio looked nervous, mostly at his Mami’s muttering, but also at whatever feeling that those words seemed to raise in him. The main surprise was Pepa. She seemed to gather some courage from an unknown source to say something.
“Mama,” – she began hesitantly – “he just got his gift last night… why don’t we give him some time to figure out its limits?” She seemed to notice the uncharitable visage on her mother’s face. She continued, “If he better understands it, he could help us figure out how to use it to efficiently help the community?” it sounded much more like a question than an assertion, but it was out at least. The look on Alma’s face didn’t leave, so she quickly forced out uncomfortably, “We could avoid some … lightning incidents…” ‘Lighting Incident’ was the family slang for a gift-induced … situation. It was usually when a new gift wasn’t fully understood or under control. The term had been coined after a six-year-old Pepa had accidentally learned she could control lightning by (non-fatally, thank God) striking a bully with it. A few days after that, Julietta used the term to reference a gift-related accident. She had accidentally dropped something inedible into a batch of Arepa dough. It had caused anyone who ate from the batch a bout of painful cyclic food poisoning. The term had just stuck and continued to be used to this day. Pepa tried her hardest to avoid the phrase whenever possible, cringing whenever it was used.
Alma didn’t react to her daughter’s discomfort, only replying with, “I suppose you have a point, Pepa. Fine. We’ll reassess this next month. That should be enough time for him to learn and control his new gift.” Some of the tenseness left Mirabel and Pepa.
“In other business, we have an important dinner which we must prepare for. Dolores!”
The girl jumped a bit.
“Yes, Abuela?”
“Do we have a time?”
"Not yet," Dolores replied, tilting her head and adding as she heard either some half-awake babble or sleep-talk, "Mariano wants five babies, though." She smirked a bit at seeing the flowers of Isabela's nervous tick.
"Oh, that's wonderful," Alma replied, plucking out the solitary white flower, leaving behind the pretty pink ones. Neither of them even notices the Symbolism there, do they? A voice in the back of Dolores’s mind asked. “So many little miracles to help the Encanto.” The matriarch mused happily.
Noting a discussion over at the Guzman residence, Dolores tilted her head, "Oh, I'm hearing something. They're debating sometime between next week and ..." she quietly sucked in a breath through her teeth, "never.” She noticed the looks people were giving her and quickly added, “Oh, He still wants five babies … though … maybe … not with her." She finished awkwardly and slightly nodded towards Isabela, causing more flowers, violent red and yellow replacing pink.
“Why?” Alma asked, dumbfounded.
Dolores shrugged, “I don’t know. They aren’t saying why just arguing over how long they can put off coming over for dinner. Signora Sophia seems to be a strong advocate of never, and Signora Guzman isn’t taking that option off the table. On the other hand, Mariano seems willing to go with whatever they decide on.” She hunched her shoulders a bit at Alma’s disappointed frown.
“I suppose that I’ll have to pay them a visit and smooth things over with Maria. So, let’s work hard today everyone. La Familia Madrigal.” Alma remarked absently.
“La Familia Madrigal.” Came the unenthused echo. Nobody seemed all that excited this morning, especially after that bomb drop. They quickly separated to their respective jobs, most unaware of the trials that this day still held. Dolores sighed as she vaguely noticed some of the rumors that were lightly drifting around town. She shook her head a bit as she followed her prima back to the kitchen. Everyone was in for something today, weren’t they?
Pepa knew that today would be difficult. Sunny days always were. One would think that the rainy days would be more difficult, but then… well, it was hard to be sunny when you woke up with a rainstorm in your heart. Those days, it took constant affection from her husband and her rusting iron will to keep the rain away. It was difficult to even get out of bed some days, knowing that even if she felt like just curling up and letting out a hurricane, she would have to bottle it up and smile. The cold rain battered, and the wind pressed out against her mien of happiness as she sat by a lake with her husband. He had been nice enough to take her out here, and she knew that he was trying to keep her calm after Antonio had declined spending the day with her.
She knew that trying to reconnect with her youngest would be difficult, but she wanted to. Pepa figured it would just take a while to get to know him and let him know that she wanted to be a more significant part of his life now that her worries about his future had been quelled. She didn’t know what that part would be necessarily, but she would take what she could get. She had long accepted, especially after the many times that Dolores had awkwardly popped the surfacing hope, that getting the title of mother was a long shot, but she could hope. That hope had even been stoked a bit when he let her tuck him in last night (they had both apparently been worried about Mirabel’s mental wellbeing after the gift ceremony). So, Antonio telling her that he would be exploring his room today with Mirabel’s help had hurt a bit, but she could accept that the girl was the more familiar face.
So, while it wasn’t perfect, the lovely little lake date with her husband was fine, good even. It was enough that the rain and wind she had woken up with today were receding a bit. Of course, then God had decided to laugh at their plans as a couple had taken position under a tree within earshot of them. Or at least the couple thought to do so until the female argued against it, “NO, don’t you see who’s over there?” She had asked her boyfriend, pointing directly at Pepa. The boyfriend had looked and shrugged, asking what was wrong with sharing the lake with Pepa and Felix.
Then the bomb had dropped, the girl’s raised voice making the declaration that much clearer, “Eliza told me that she heard that Alma Madrigal didn’t let her raise her own son because she was too emotionally volatile. If they were worried about letting her around her own child, I don’t want to be around her either. I don’t want to be here if she suddenly decides to cause a snowstorm or strike us with lightning because we talk too loudly or something.” The boyfriend had glanced over and seen the rather dark cloud that formed over Pepa’s head and had pulled his girlfriend out of there, leaving the two’s blanket there in his rush. But, of course, the damage had already been done by then.
Pepa had begun spiraling, standing up and pacing in a circle, whipping the dark cloud over her head into a mini-tornado. She had noticed people were shying away from them when they had walked through town but didn’t think much of it. Did they believe that she would just suddenly strike them with lightning if they looked at her wrong? Did they think that she wasn’t capable of being a parent? That she would hurt a child? Her Child? That she was dangerous? She just kept swirling until she was trying to contain a full-blown monsoon. Only the cloud over her head showed it, though. The cloud was so saturated with rain that it looked more like a black poofy hat than a cloud, water running over her like she was in a waterfall, getting her and Felix soaked. It was still sunny, but the rainstorm wasn’t in her heart anymore.
In the kitchen after lunch, Julietta was in a conundrum. She ignored whoever was cleaning the kitchen and went about getting more food ready for the town. But, of course, there was something else that was causing this quandary. The rumors were getting to her. The first she had overheard was from a few ladies on the way to set up the cart. Apparently, she looked dead on her feet, and they were worried that she would just keel over. She had just brushed it off, but things had gotten worse when she got to the square. People seemed almost condescending as they offered to show her where her usual place to set up was. She knew that she was a bit forgetful nowadays, but it couldn’t be that bad. It hadn’t stopped the entire time, everyone almost seeming to be babying her or treating her like she was some senile old woman. She was the healer, darn it; she didn’t need to be taken care of! It had really gotten to her and made her think.
The cook had been thoroughly run-down by the big party last night as well as a bevy of building mishaps from the latest town restructuring, on top of the usual frequent injuries of the careless villagers. The two extra things had made her overextend herself. She knew that she had given up a few nights this week. She just hadn’t thought that it would hit her this hard. She apparently couldn’t keep up, and regular coffee wasn’t working for her. It was at the point where she was personifying explicitly inanimate objects. She had apologized to the pan she dropped this morning, even she could acknowledge that she was getting too sleep-deprived.
So, she had wracked her sleep-deprived brain for an answer, never a good idea, but it seemed like an excellent one at the time. That same sleep-deprived brain then stumbled into what it thought was a great idea that would be the solution to her problems. Perhaps if she was this run-down, then maybe that super coffee wouldn’t cause as much chaos. That maybe more of its unadulterated caffeinated power would go to combatting the lack of sleep and therefore not be directed towards whatever chaotic forces took over during the caffeine rush. Two more maybes than she would have accepted were she in her rational mind, but rational Julietta had long disowned herself of sleep-deprived Julietta’s actions. And sleep-deprived Julietta was about three naptimes past caring about what rational Julietta would think.
No matter what sleep level she was, Julietta had promised herself she wouldn’t ever perform the almost blasphemous act of making that brew again. There was practically no excuse, but she had given in. Her favorite earthenware mug sat there innocently on the sideboard, steam rising from it almost seductively with a polite little note next to it asking that people leave it alone. She wanted to believe its innocent little act, but she knew, she knew the chaos that this cup was about to unleash through her.
She exhaled deeply; she knew that she was stalling. Julietta picked up the mug and breathed in, the pure magic caffeination already getting her blood pumping harder. “Welp, best bite the bullet,” she thought and downed the scalding hot beverage in one go. It was pretty tasty; generally, everything she cooked tasted excellent. Even when she had knocked glue into arepa dough, they had still been edible enough for multiple people to ingest them before she noticed her mistake. But back to the coffee, it was much less bitter than one would expect and fruity, with notes of chocolate and generic baking spice that she didn’t usually get from coffee which she assumed were the taste of her magic. From her initial discovery of the beverage, she knew that it worked in stages, and the first took a little to kick in, so she sat down and waited.
When it did, the haze pulled back almost immediately, like someone had yanked a foggy shower curtain off of her head. Julietta knew that this clarity would last for about two hours before her inhibitions also disappeared, so she got to work. She had quickly finished up all the arepas she needed, stuffing some with a few random ingredients that she thought may taste good and rushed out the door. Hopefully, whatever hijinks she got up to in stage two before the day-long crash would be worth it. She had made up a large batch of polvorosas for tomorrow in case anyone was hurt, but they would need to be rationed rather than when she handed food out for anything. Oh well, too late to worry about consequences now, best get on with her duties while she was somewhat clear-headed. She left the house with a skip in her step, a basket of arepas on each arm, and a slightly unhinged grin plastered on her face.