6. Family Interlude – Julietta, Bruno, & Dolore...
Julietta was dead on her feet. Everything was heavy and so caught in a fog that she grasped at the only thing that was perpetually clear: Cooking. She was so tired, constantly either in the kitchen or at her cart handing out food to heal even the most minor injuries. If she had to deal with one more headache case, she would give them an iron pan migraine to deal with for a while, then cover the evidence just like they asked. The worst part of this exhaustion was the feeling that she was missing something. Not just the little things like not being home to see Isabella off on her dates or being stuck in the kitchen when she could be resting with her hubby. Instead, there was some large piece of her life slipping away from her, but she couldn’t keep a grasp of it long enough to remember what.
At times like this, she wished her cooking could return her energy, but there wasn’t a … well, there was that one time she super-charged some coffee. But she had banned herself from repeating that after she had, post caffeine/magic crash, woken up next to Agustin’s beehives with a banana and one of Bruno’s visions which showed her in that position infinitely looking at the vision. Even the thought made her dizzy. The only bright side of that had been that the bees were scared of her now. Well, there was also that upside-down dessert that she created during the caffeine high using those weird spikey yellow fruits that Isa had grown during her power’s growing pains. That had been delicious. Too bad she couldn’t find the tree anymore.
Wait. Back on topic, Juli. What was it she was missing? She knew that she had kept up with the cooking. That was the only definite thing she knew, the only thing keeping her fraying nerves together. She knew that Agustin was doing ok; their anniversary wasn’t for two more months. Isabella’s birthday wasn’t for three; Luisa’s had been last month. What was she missing? She knew that it was connected to that, but there was some sort of wall there. It was like her brain was stopping itself from coming upon the topic. Was it actually unimportant … no, it felt like she was suppressing it to keep herself from breaking down like it would get in the way of her duty to the community …? Why was that more important again? Why was the community more important than her health? In fact, why was the community’s health more important than her? It’s like everyone ignored her eye bags, her thinning frame, her grey hairs years too early. Why was even her own brain prioritizing the community over something that felt personally important?
No, NO! Back on topic, Juli. What are you forgetting? Why does it feel like something important was today? WHAT ARE YOU FORGETTING? WHO ARE YOU FORGETTING?! Wait, Wasn’t it Mir-“JULIETTA! OSVALDO GOT KICKED BY ONE OF HIS DONKEYS! GET HIM SOME FOOD QUICKLY!”
“On it, Mama!”
Bruno sighed and softly banged his table as he watched his eldest (by eight minutes) sister break out of her contemplation through the crack in the family tree. She had seemed so close to remembering her daughter’s birthday. Hopefully, Juli will be more well-rested next year. It was only four more years until Mirabel’s Quince, and she really needed to at least start mending their relationship before then, or else he would appear just to give her words. And they wouldn’t be apologies for disappearing.
Bruno was disheartened. If he could have, he would have taken in Mirabel when he disappeared, but the walls were no place for a child to grow up. It was one thing for her to visit. She could see her Tio; he could get some human interaction. It was nice. But if she lived back here with him… He could only wonder how much worse her … quirks would be. Or worse, how much worse her, he supposed you could call it a relationship, with the family, could be. Sure, she had a bad case of asociality, but that was fine. Not everyone likes the company of many. Social aversion would for sure be better than the high chance of anti-social behavior she could have developed back here with him. Tight spaces and hiding are not conducive to a healthy mind. He could attest, considering he had devolved to training rats as actors for telenovelas. Sure, he enjoyed it, but he was self-aware enough to know that staying between the walls for almost six years now had knocked a few screws loose.
That was one of the reasons that he was relieved that Mirabel had stuck to calling him Tio. If she had called him Papa, he would have felt obligated to act like one, and it would have made everything worse, especially since everything he touched shattered like his last vision as he threw it to the stone.
No, no, don’t think about that, Salt, Sugar, hold breath, knock knock knock knock on wood. Sigh, better now. Well, at any rate, Cassie was doing well. Sure, it was asinine that A HOUSE, well, a house that grew a soul, but still A HOUSE, was doing a better job of raising an average human than his entire family of extraordinary people had. However, he was sure that if Cassie hadn’t been able to step in, Mirabel would have basically raised herself. She would constantly try to prove herself, exhausting herself attempting to make an ignorant family proud of her when she only needed to be proud of herself. Thinking of that possibility made him exceedingly grateful for Cassie’s presence despite his incredulity at the situation.
While he had been a bit … peeved that Casita had directed Mirabel towards him, he was kind of glad now that she had. At least she had one grown-up human to turn to when she was younger, but he was honestly relieved when his miraposa had told him about how she had gotten an apprenticeship with one of the Rojas Sisters. He remembered them from his childhood. They had been decently close as Madam Rojas had tried to set up playdates between the two groups of youngsters. Sadly, the two groups had drifted apart the older they got, partially because two-thirds of the sisters were older than the other four. The greater partiality was because Madam Rojas had a falling out with Bruno’s Mama, and Alma had tried her damnedest to keep the two groups of children apart after that. He hadn’t seen Ayla, Daniella, or Carmella in about forty years. He had seen the late-Madam Rojas, but that had only been in a vision, and he had quickly ground that vision back into sand. It was one foretelling her inevitable death by old age, no interpretation, no wiggle room, no indication of when. No reason to share when it would just reinforce his negative reputation with the villagers for no gain on anyone’s part.
However, what really ground his gears was what had happened in just the last year. Antonio. Now, don’t get him wrong, he loved the little guy, loved watching him just beginning to grow. But and this was a humongous, Casita-sized, BUT, if letting a house raise your daughter was a bad idea, then forcing that house-raised child to raise another child without constant supervision was even worse. That wasn’t to say that he thought that Mirabel was doing a lousy job of it; sure, she struggled, but she was doing better than his Mama, so that had to count for something.
No, what he was worried about was what would happen when Antonio turned five. When he had the chance to get his gift. Funnily, Bruno was hoping that Antonio turned out like Mirabel because at least then he wouldn’t be ripped away from his self-proclaimed mother and grandmother. But what would happen if he got his gift and suddenly, he was absorbed back into the family? What would that do to Mirabel, who was quickly making the title of Mami a part of her being? What would happen to Antonio, who was showing signs of unease even in his infancy around everyone in the House except him, Mirabel, and Cassie? How would Casita react to the separation of her child and grandchild? There were just too many unknowns, too many scenarios that led to … NO, stop, don’t think about that. Mirabel would never, especially after being raised by Cassie. He knew that his sobrina would make the right choice, but that didn’t stop him from worrying about extenuating circumstances … Maybe a Telenovela would calm him down. Yeah, a new episode would do wonders for his frazzled nerves. He knocked a specific rhythm on the wall to make everyone in the know aware that he would be doing a new episode soon and got to collecting his actors…
Dolores gave a small smile as she heard her Tio rap out the faint shave-and-a-haircut rhythm on the inner wall of the kitchen. His little performances were some of the only bright spots in her life right now.
Dolores heard everything; that wasn’t hyperbole. She wasn’t lying to make everyone nervous. It was just the truth. Every inch of the Encanto was subject to her eavesdropping, even if she didn’t want to. That wasn’t to say she couldn’t focus; she would be in constant sensory overload if she couldn’t. Dolores just heard everything. And there were times she was happy to hear so much. When Mirabel had snuck off to get herself something from the village, Dolores was grateful to listen to her steady heartbeat and know she was safe. Her favorite (supposedly one-sided) eavesdropped conversations occurred when her cousin was off at her Apprenticeships. And if there was one thing Dolores was sure of, it was that she needed to stay on Signora Rojas’ good side because she didn’t want to die before giving Mariano the five babies that Isabella would never want to give him.
Of course, the happy things didn’t stop her from hearing things she didn’t want to hear. Dolores heard EVERYTHING after all.
She heard every time Abue … no, Alma yelled at Mirabel, before the girl finally managed to be quiet enough to slip even Dolores’ ears should she not be focusing on her quiet prima.
She heard every time her Parents, Tios, and the villagers did things that she really didn’t want nor need to hear at 5, 10, even now that she was almost 20. So she definitely hadn’t needed to know about the Ortega Couple’s bedroom perversions, even if it was terrific blackmail material.
She heard every poem Mariano had ever composed for Isabela, since he read them aloud as he tried to sort through his verses. He had spent an hour trying to find a rhyme for “rose,” and yet that just made him cuter in her eyes and his betrothal even harder.
She heard Luisa’s tears and groans of frustration. Every salty drop. Every dejected exhale.
She heard Isabella’s breakdowns, even through the walls of the girl’s room. Every rip and tear of her pretty pink dress. A dress that would reappear mended and looking brand new each laundry cycle. She hoped that Isabella appreciated her littlest sister’s efforts, but Dolores was pretty sure that her oldest prima was too caught up in her own issues to look around herself.
Dolores HEARD everything, but she wished she could SAY everything.
Dolores was quiet, it was an established fact, but she was silent because she could never get herself to release all the information she needed to. She always felt like it wasn’t the right time. There weren’t the right words, the right emotions. So there was always an excuse. And when she finally did release something, it was always the wrong thing. The things that she needed to keep a secret. Hidden notions that swished around at the forefront of her mind by the nature of keeping it a secret.
She wished she could have told her-Alma about how every time the old crone yelled at Mirabel, the girl would cry in the nursery for hours while the House itself comforted her like her mother was supposed to. But then, silence had reigned, and the emotional wall had gone up before she stilled her nerves.
She wished she could have brought herself to remind her Tia Julietta that her youngest daughter was in desperate need of her. But then Casita became more alive than ever before and slipped into the slot Julietta had been pulled from by her duty.
She wished that she could tell Mariano and her family how she really felt about him. The vision had said BETROTHED, not WED. She knew subconsciously that her Tio’s visions were warnings, meant to steer around unhappiness rather than edicts about what will happen. But despite that, she always felt herself clamming up whenever she had the chance to express her feelings about the man.
She wished she could comfort Luisa’s self-doubt. Could help Luisa divorce her self-worth from the villager’s needs. But Luisa never stood still long enough for a breath, let alone Dolores’ quiet, internal freakouts to fade.
But most of all, Dolores wished she could tell her youngest prima how she felt about her. She wished she could just hug Mirabel and promise that she would be the best Prima she could be from now on. Dolores wished she could bring herself to help Mirabel raise her brother. She wished she could tell Mirabel how much she loved her, how much she missed spending time with her little prima. How every night she fell asleep to the click-clack of knitting needles or the swishing of embroidery thread through fabric and wished she had been the one to teach her the basics. How Dolores wished she could have planted the seeds of a closer relationship so that she didn’t feel like she was on the other side of the wall, Mirabel had put up between herself and the rest of the family. She didn’t want to be just a person in the overwhelming crowd; she wanted to be Mirabel’s prima again.
Dolores could hear everything, so she could definitely hear the quiet crumble of cracks, quickly followed by the swoosh of magic patching. She knew that things could only get worse; she was just waiting for the clatter of a shoe dropping.