6. A Bucket Filled With Spackle

Mirabel drummed her fingers along the counter, her stubby nails making faint clacking sounds as they struck the porcelain tiles. Next to her, Pepa busied herself by preparing a plate of food, humming something under her breath as she worked. It was a frantic tune; something that reflected her high-strung nature and the ominous cloud that sat content over her head.

“Hola, Tía Pepa,” she ventured, testing her aunt’s mood as she extended a harmless greeting. It was always wise to gauge how volatile she was feeling before engaging with her, lest one risk inducing a violent hurricane.

“Hola, Mirabel,” she responded, giving her a short glance and smile as she worked.

Mirabel gulped. Seemed pleasant enough… right?

Her fingers continued to drum out a dissonant beat, effectively betraying the casual persona she tried to portray. “So, Tía Pepa, I was wondering….” Mirabel hesitated, the question burning on her tongue, but finding herself lacking the courage to actually say it.

Gosh, family taboos were such a headache.

“Yes, Mirabel?”

Seemed pleasant enough.

“Why, um, don’t we talk about Bruno?”

The way that Pepa’s back went rigid was enough to make Mirabel regret saying anything in the first place.  Above her, the cloud that had initially been pale, puffy, and innocent darkened menacingly, growing in size. “I’m sorry,” her aunt said with a forced, strangled laugh, one that was humorless and sounded more like she was choking than anything. She continued to prepare the plate of food, but her actions were stiff and robotic. “I don’t think I heard you right.” Looking up, she noticed the change that the cloud had undergone, and quickly waved her arm through it, muttering “Shoo, shoo!” as she did her best to disperse it.

Part of Mirabel wanted to laugh and say ‘That’s all right! I actually didn’t say anything at all, what are you talking about Tía Pepa?’, but the foolish, idiotic part of her decided to press forward. After all, she had made it this far, right?

It was horrible logic. Despite this, Mirabel swallowed thickly and restated her question. “Why don’t we talk about Bruno?” This time, her voice was stronger and more confident, and noticeably missed the stutter she had toted the first time around.

The cloud that Pepa had just managed to subdue came back stronger and darker, a deep rumbling emanating from its looming form. “Mirabel,” she said tersely, “we don’t talk about Bruno.”

“But—”

“And that includes questions asking why we don’t talk about Bruno!” A miniscule strike of lightning flashed from within the cloud, accentuating her point.

“I understand—”

Realizing the cloud above her head had returned with wide-eyed dismay, Pepa reached up and tried again to wave it away with frantic hands. “Clearly you don’t!”

“But if I just knew why we didn’t talk about him, then maybe I wouldn’t have to ask any questions about him!”

Pepa opened her mouth, a hot retort about to spill out, before a heavy downpour rained from the cloud above her, drenching her hair and clothes. “Ack!” she exclaimed, before repeating “Clear skies, clear skies, clear skies…” in a steady, soothing mantra, stroking her long braid as she did so.

While she struggled to manage the storm cloud hovering above her head, Mirabel bit at her bottom lip, gathering her thoughts to try again from a new angle. Maybe instead of being direct, it may be to her benefit to try a softer, more gentle approach. “Please, Tía Pepa, I know it hurts for you to talk about Br—” at her aunt's tightly pursed lips and expression of outraged indignation, Mirabel was quick to amend herself and omit the ‘B’ word. “—him, but he’s family, isn’t he?”

“Was family,” Pepa corrected, giving Mirabel a glare of warning that sternly told her to drop the subject.

Which of course, Mirabel didn’t listen to. At this declaration, she recoiled, fiercely taken aback by the harsh fire of Pepa’s statement. “Huh? What do you mean, ‘was’?”

“He left this family behind!”

Mirabel did her best to stifle the exasperated groan that threatened to leak out. “But why did he leave? What happened?”

“We don’t talk about—”

“I know, I know we don’t talk about Bruno, but you have to tell me! Please, I need to know!”

“Mirabel…” Pepa began in warning, but Mirabel chose to ignore her.

“No!” she interrupted, deciding that screw it, she was going for it, consequences be forgotten. Which was a mistake, yes, and one that the normally-very-rational-and-not-at-all-boneheaded Mirabel would not make, but she was so tired of playing along, of adhering to the rules without having the luxury of knowing why. She was done; she needed to know. And so, the questions that had been built up over years of silence began to spill out, uncontrollable and relentless just like that cloud that still hung over Pepa’s head. “I can’t keep pretending like not talking about it is normal! Why did he leave? Was it something we did? Where did he go? And I don’t understand why can’t we just talk about—"

“Mirabel!”

The ferocity in which her name was exclaimed caused a particularly booming clap of thunder to reverberate throughout the kitchen, shadowed by an underlying crack! that Mirabel could feel shudder beneath her feet. Cringing at the sound, Mirabel looked up and past Pepa, alarm crawling across her skin as she found the source of the cracking noise; a thin spiderwebbing trail that extended up the wall, marring the normally smooth coral finish of Casita.

Casita had a crack in her walls.

But from Pepa’s rain cloud? Mirabel’s concerned horror shifted into mild confusion; she didn’t know her aunt’s gift was capable of such a thing.

Pepa must have misread the fear in Mirabel’s eyes as being towards her and her storm, rather than the cracks in the wall that she hadn’t yet noticed (and never would notice, because even as they formed, they were rapidly being repaired, unbeknownst to Pepa or the rest of the Madrigals), for her wrathful, exasperated expression quickly morphed into one of defeat.

“Oye,” she exclaimed, pinching the bridge of her nose in exhaustion and drawing Mirabel’s attention away from the cracks and back to her. Her eyes were squeezed shut, and Mirabel had a difficult time discerning whether the water that beaded along her eyelids and trailed in tiny rivulets down her nose were tears, or simply accumulated raindrops from her ever-present cloud. “Mirabel I…” her voice died in her throat, and she coughed, as if it would help dislodge and free them.

I didn’t mean it.

I’m sorry.

These were the silent words that Mirabel could see reflecting in her expression, and she could sense them on the tip of her tongue, however, they were never spoken. “I need to go change my clothes.”

The soiled plate of food drenched by the rain being forgotten, Pepa turned and stalked away from Mirabel, wiping at the corners of her eyes as she did so. Mirabel stood rooted to the spot, feeling an immense wave of guilt wash over her as she realized in her selfish of bout of demanding to know more about her uncle and pushing Pepa past the boundaries she had very clearly set, she had essentially ruined her aunt’s day.

Well, that certainly didn’t go as planned.

Yeah, she scoffed at herself as she turned away from Pepa’s retreating form , How was I supposed to know that asking Pepa about my mysterious, estranged uncle would lead to Casita developing cracks in the wall?! Of course that didn’t go as planned! I don’t even know what the plan was in the first place!   

Cracks. In the walls.

Ratón! she abruptly realized, I have to make sure that he is okay!

“I’m sorry Casita,” she whispered, running a hand along the tiles of her walls, “I’ll be right back to help you, I promise.”

The tiles Mirabel had just touched lifted up after her, the ceramic waving as if to say it’s okay, I understand, I’m not going anywhere.

Or maybe, Mirabel would later realize as she reflected back on the incident, she would comprehend that Casita had been reassuring her that it was already being taken care of.

Jogging up the stairs and down the hallway, Mirabel gave a hasty check over her shoulder before slipping behind the boring painting on the wall. Weaving through the tight corridor as quickly as she could, she was about halfway to Ratón’s place of residence when she came across something she had not been expecting to see.

It was Ratón, hunched over a bucket with the hood of his ruana pulled over his head, only the large length of his nose sticking out from under the hem. He was doing something to the wall, a smattering of rats crawling along his back and on the floor where there was an assortment of buckets, tools, a ladder , and a pasty substance that had spilled onto the ground.

“Ratón?” Mirabel asked, hesitantly approaching the strange scene. Every time she thought that she had caught up with his antics and acclimated to his odd, eccentric personality, he always threw her off balance with stuff like, well, this.

The man let out a startled yelp; evidently, he had not heard her approach. He straightened and turned to face Mirabel, although that really didn’t do much because the fringe of his hood was still lowered over his eyes. There was no way he could see anything in front of him.

“Ratón? No, my name is Hernando!” Mirabel began to take a step forward but Ratón, or Hernando? She wasn’t really sure—waved his arms frantically about, causing her to pause the motion. “Don’t step there! Or there.” He motioned to the cracks in the ground as he spoke, cracks that Mirabel had not realized had been there in the first place. “Or there. Actually, how about you don’t come any closer and just stay where you’re standing.”

Mirabel frowned. Huh? “Ratón, I can obviously tell that it’s you,” she said, but there was still a tinge of doubt coloring her voice. Because what if the person in front of her wasn’t Ratón, and was some different Casita-squatter entirely?

But then again, how many short, awkward strangers wearing green were living in their walls? She couldn’t imagine that there would be more than one, heck, even the fact that there was one in the first place was still kind of a shock.

Before she could oscillate any further on the matter, in front of her, Hernando lowered his hood, turning toward her with a sheepish grin alit on his face and revealing that he was, in fact, Ratón. Mirabel felt foolish for ever doubting it in the first place.

“Hey, Mirabel,” he said in greeting, a look of glee on his face. “You met Hernando?”

“I, um, I guess?” Mirabel was uncertain if ‘meet’ was the word she would use to describe it, but at this point, she had just learned to roll with the shenanigans. There weren’t enough hours in the day to even begin to attempt to decipher it all. “What were you doing?”

“Me? I wasn’t doing anything. But Hernando…” he turned toward the wall and gestured at it with a dramatic, dismissive wave of his arm. “Was patching this up.”

Mirabel looked to where he had motioned to, and realized with a jolt that he had been patching up the cracks in the wall. The cracks, she might add, that had formed during her conversation with Pepa about Tío Bruno.

“Wait, you were fixing Casita?”

Ratón sighed, the theatrical display punctuated by him crossing his arms to form an 'X' over his chest. “No, like I said, Hernando was fixing up Casita. And Jorge—” at the mention of a new name, Mirabel looked away from the wall and back toward Ratón, half expecting to see someone new, but instead just seeing Ratón with an upside-down bucket on his head, “—was helping by mixing up the spackle paste.”

“… I see,” she said, and there was an awkward stretch of time where she just stared at the bucket, seeing her own reflection looking perplexed back at her in the dirty, grimy surface. “Um, nice to meet you, Jorge.”

At this, Ratón took the bucket off his head, tossing it to the side where it hit the floor with a harsh clang! “Jorge doesn’t like talking to people,” he explained, as if that made any sense, because from how Mirabel saw it, Ratón, Hernando, and Jorge were all the same person. “He’s only good at mixing the spackle.”

“Uh huh….” Mirabel said, hoping that the bewilderment that she was currently feeling wasn’t nearly so obvious on her face. “So why were you, I mean, Hernando, patching up Casita?”

“Hernando thinks it’s fun,” he said, with a scoff and a shake of his head. “Can you believe it? I’m too scared to go near those cracks. Bad luck and all. And I told him that, ‘hey, Hernando, don’t touch the cracks, that’s unlucky!’ But he ignored me, because he isn’t scared of anything.”  

“I see….” Mirabel said, not really ‘seeing,’ but not really knowing what else to say. Well, she wanted to say something along the lines of I’m pretty sure you and Hernando are the same person, call it a hunch, but she didn’t have the heart to ruin his fun.

At Mirabel’s dismal answer, he rubbed the back of his neck in mild self-consciousness. “You see, the way I view it is… the least I could do is take care of the house. You know, as a way of saying ‘thanks.’ For letting me stay.”

Mirabel’s perplexed expression softened, oddly touched by the sentiment. To think, that he had been caring for Casita the entire time, one of her closest friends, and she hadn’t even known that he had existed….

It was enough to choke her up. And she had been just about to express this, but then, another, completely unrelated thought occurred to her. “Hold up. You’re telling me you had an alter ego named Hernando this entire time, and you still chose to go by the fake name Ratón?”

“What do you—” he began and then paused, pressing his knuckles to his mouth as sudden understanding dawned on his face. “Oh… yeah, that would have made more sense, huh?”

Mirabel nodded, and as she did so, a look of distress crossed Ratón’s features. “Wait, you knew that Ratón was a fake name this whole time?”

Mirabel rolled her eyes, how stupid did he think that she was? “Well yeah, what kind of sane person would ever name their kid ‘rat’?”

Ratón shrugged. “Fair point.” There was a pause. “And I thought we established that it was ‘mouse’!”

Mirabel laughed. “Mouse, rat, I told you they’re the same thing!”

Ratón gasped, leaning down to gather up the rats running over his foot and gingerly cradle them close to his body. Turning away from Mirabel, he whispered to them in a hushed voice. “Shhhh, guys, I’m sure she didn’t mean it, I’m sorry you had to hear that.”

Shaking her head in good humor, Mirabel looked away from the gross-but-strangely-endearing sight to study Ratón’s work on the cracks in the wall. The work was surprisingly competent and thorough, not that she would know much about house repair, but even so, it looked pretty decent to her novice eyes. Craning her neck back, she felt a sick sense of surprise as she beheld just how far the cracks stretched up; that was really not a good sign. And Ratón had somehow been brave enough to use the ladder braced against the wall to reach the ones grazing the ceiling, although…. “Hey, Ratón? I think you missed one, all the way up there.” She pointed up to the thick, offending crack, a deep, marring gash in Casita’s flesh.

He turned back around to follow the trajectory of her finger, setting the rats down as he did so. “Oh! On it! Or should I say….” At this, he gave her a conspiring wink and pulled his hood up over his head, concealing his face as he did so. “Hernando is on it!”

An amused expression on her face and a hand on her hip, Mirabel watched as he scaled the ladder with a surprising amount of agility for a man his age, looping the handle of the bucked so that it was dangling off of one arm, and then balancing the crack-patching-tool (Mirabel had no idea what it was called and frankly didn’t care enough to ask) in his other hand. He got to work, mending the wound with a speedy efficiency that if Mirabel had stopped to think about the implications, would have been alarmed, but instead, she simply sat below, watching in silent appreciation as he patched Casita back up.

You see, the problem with Hernando being the one to fix the cracks in the wall is that, in order for Ratón to be Hernando, he had to have the hood of his ruana covering his face. Which was great when it came to distinguishing between all his alter egos, but unfortunately didn’t make much sense when it was used to denote the alter ego responsible for climbing ladders and sealing up cracks in the wall. You would think that the ability to see would be important for repair jobs about ten feet off the ground, but then again, that would simply be too logical for Ratón or this situation.

Therefore, it really should not have come as a surprise to either Mirabel or Ratón when on the way down, Hernando slipped on one of the steps and came tumbling down, the fringe of his ruana catching on the ladder as he did so. With a loud ripping sound of fabric and a yelp from the man in question, his limbs flailed about as he scrambled to regain purchase on the steps. He failed, and instead fell onto the cold, hard ground on his side with a loud thud and what sounded like something cracking, but Mirabel, in shock of the whole spectacle, couldn’t be entirely sure.

“Ratón!” she exclaimed, rushing forward to help him off the ground. “Are you okay?”

That had been a stupid question. Obviously, falling halfway off a ladder would not leave many people ‘okay.’ Even so, Ratón bounced back up without her help, turning to give the ladder an affronted, offended glare, as if it had been the sole cause of him falling, and not because he had been dismounting it blind with his hood up. Yep, that was definitely not the reason at all.

He waved her off. “I’m fine.” His voice sounded slightly strained, and Mirabel had been just about to call him out on it, and accuse him that he didn’t sound fine at all, you literally just fell off a ladder, how on earth could you be fine?!, but then she noticed something else, something that caused her mind to rapidly switch tracks.  

“Your ruana!” she exclaimed, pointing at the torn spot in accusation. “It’s ripped!”

He paused, holding up the fringe of the fabric covering his right arm. There was a large gash in the cloth, one that was very noticeable and rendered the ruana practically ruined. “Great,” he grumbled, sounding only mildly inconvenienced by the only thing that Mirabel had ever seen him wear being wrecked. “I’ll have to have a word with Hernando, and tell him to stop being so careless!” He shook his head in dismay.

“I could sew it back up for you,” Mirabel offered, the words released before she could hold them back and think over her proposition. It had been instinctual, spoken in reflex.

Ratón’s head turned sharply away from scrutinizing the sleeve of his ruana, pinning her with a look of surprise. “Really?” he asked in disbelief. “You would do that? For me?”

“Well, of course,” Mirabel replied, her response flowing easily this time. “But I can’t do it here,” she explained. “I’m going to have to take it to my room to fix it up, that’s where all my sewing supplies are.”  

Ratón shrugged with a quiet “hm!” of agreement; something that reminded Mirabel acutely of Dolores. He slid the garment off over his head, revealing a burgundy, long-sleeved button up (thank goodness) that was the exact same color as the pants he wore. Mirabel found herself having barely any time to react as he tossed the ruana to her, clumsily catching it to prevent it from falling onto the filthy ground.

Although as she felt it in her hands, she figured that letting it fall onto the floor would have been inconsequential. She held it out away from her body, her arm straight as her nose wrinkled. “When’s the last time you washed this thing?”

Ratón blinked. “Wait, I’m supposed to wash it?”

Mirabel grimaced, and tried to mask it as a smile as a last ditch effort. She must have failed, because Ratón was quick to interject.

“Kidding, kidding!”

(Mirabel wasn’t sure if he was kidding).

Making a mental note to wash the garment, because even if it was true that he did laundry, she was scared to ask him when the last time it had been washed, and besides, it was always good etiquette for her to clean clothes before making repairs. She would just slip it in the next load of laundry and hope that no one would notice it.

Yep. There were definitely no flaws with that plan.

Folding it up neatly, Mirabel tucked it under her arm. “I should have it done within a week,” she said, patting the cloth as she spoke. “I’ll take good care of it, I promise.”

Ratón nodded emphatically. “I would hope so, that’s my favorite ruana you’re holding there!”

Mirabel arched a sassy eyebrow. “Your only ruana?”

Ratón laughed, but didn’t correct her. Of course he would only have one ruana; Mirabel wouldn’t expect anything less from him.

She shifted her grip on the fabric, feeling it begin to slip from her grasp. “Thanks,” she said, speaking in a soft, genuine tone. “For fixing the cracks. I, Casita, really appreciate it.”

“Oh, don’t thank me, thank—”

“Hernando,” Mirabel finished, a smile on her face. “Yep, got it.”

Ratón’s smile matched hers. Inclining her head and giving a short wave in farewell, Mirabel began to leave, determined to fix the ruana she held just as he had fixed the cracks in Casita’s walls. And as she turned away, she missed the way that Ratón limped away, clutching his side with one hand and bracing his arm against the wall as he stumbled back to his room.