8. Chapter 8

It was an odd quirk of Mirabel’s relatives that everyone was color-coded. It started with Alma, who always wore a pinkish-maroon dress and sometimes a black shawl. Each of her children had picked a color and stuck with it, Pepa and Felix were yellow, Julietta and Agustin were Blue, and Tio Bruno was always wearing green.

A younger Mirabel had found it weird that her Tio hadn’t picked red as his color cause then the triplets would be the primary colors, and her generation could lay claim to the secondary colors when they were older. But once she started her apprenticeship with Tita Ayla, it had been made painfully clear to her that red didn’t fit her Tio at all. Red was passion and danger and violence. The color was all wrong for her quiet skittish mousey uncle; Green did suit him, though. Green was connected to good and bad luck, generosity, and service. After the second round of children was born, it became a habit to dress them in their parents’ colors to show who’s child was whose. It made getting the right parent easier for the townsfolk and put everyone into context. When Isabela had started being pulled more and more under her grandmother’s wing, her clothing slowly shifted from dark purples and navies to lavender. It apparently helped the villagers settle about her being Abuela’s supposed successor. When Mirabel’s Mama had heard about that development, she had been passive-aggressive to the family for a whole month. Even the Candle had sputtered a bit like it was annoyed at something. Nevertheless, everyone’s place was represented by their colors.

However, Mirabel made the color-coding her own. It started when she had gotten into sewing. She had taken her white gifting dress and had wanted to make it worthwhile, rather than the unhelpful harbinger of sadness that it was at the time. So, she had taken old clothes that no longer fit anyone and snipped them apart into usable pieces. Then she had ordered them and sewn them into the dress. First, the white skirt of the now too small dress had given way to some yellows and oranges. Then the oranges into greens from some of her Tio’s old clothes. Then the green had given way to some purple from Bella’s blouses from when she was Mirabel’s age. And the purple had given way to blue.

She had liked her rainbow dress and wore it until it was worn out. Then she had repaired it. Then she outgrew it, and it was let out to still fit her, the bottom added to so that it was still a good length. And as she went, the dress evolved. What had started as a way to feel like she was closer to the madrigals shifted. Slowly the blue was replaced with stony tones of grey and khaki. The greens stayed but were mixed with browns. Finally, reddish-orange, the color of terracotta was faded into a small amount of lighter yellow.

What started as her family had stayed as such. The same stone color as the balconies. The shade of khaki that the outer walls were covered in. The same browns as her mama’s shutters. The terracotta which covers all her floors. And the yellow of the butterflies that always seemed to hang around the place. And slowly, the dress was covered in embroidery for the other people that touched her. Animals symbolizing loved ones racing around her hip and down the side of the skirt through the tones of her Mama Cassie. Mirabel’s everyday wear represented the only family older than her that honestly acted like such, her Mama, as well as the family she had found in town. And Antonio had followed suit.

Mirabel had been stuck making clothes for her little boy from around the same time he had become her little boy, Pepa and Felix being a bit too busy to handle clothes shopping for a toddler. And to cement that fact that he was her hijo, she had picked up a few bolts of cloth that she kept for her clothes and got to work. So whenever he was with her, he was wearing mahogany brown and clay red. It was her quiet way of staking a claim on him, even if no one really acknowledged it. Even when Pepa picked him up, he wore a brown jacket over a yellow ochre shirt that she sewed him and khaki pants. Of course, he occasionally wore yellow for as long as Pepa continued claiming motherhood. But Mirabel was silently proud that she would always supersede Pepa in the motherhood game because she was the one who raised him.

Gold, Silver, and Bronze were the colors of the Rojas-Doyle couple. The pair of wives was a little odd to some of the older villagers. Still, the two were well known for their artisanship, so the village elders silently excused the supposed eccentricity of two women being married. Carmella Rojas-Doyle was the local Blacksmith and a Jeweler that worked in silver. Basically, if it involved hot metal, she was your woman. She was built a lot like Luisa, with corded muscles, and was about as tall too. Her hair was a dark brown, unlike her sisters’ black, and tied back in a tight braid each day by her comparably tiny wife. A few fly-away strands curled like springs around the edges of her face. Her eyes were the same grassy green as her sisters, and she had the coppery tan of someone who worked in front of a blazing forge most of the day.

Mirabel liked the days that she worked with Carmella (just Mel, little one), perhaps not as much as her time with her Tita, but she enjoyed working with Carmella for a different reason. The woman was mellow, not the quiet motherly silence of Daniella or contemplation of Tita Ayla’s bad days and completely contrasting the sometimes-exuberant energy of Ayla’s good ones. She just seemed happy with her lot in life and didn’t feel the need to talk if there wasn’t talking to be done. The only time the small soft smile left her face was when Mirabel was working with something dangerous, then it bent into a scowl, and she watched the girl like a hawk. She didn’t talk loudly or much, packing as much meaning into her few words as Mirabel did into her knocks. Mirabel liked the Zenlike state that the two would get into, her holding the tongs while the larger woman pounded and shaped whatever piece they were making. She similarly enjoyed the little rhythmic *tink* *tink* of a rubber mallet hitting a scribe as they cut details into silver pendants or bracelets.

Mirabel was still learning, so frequently, her pieces ended up melted down again. Regardless of her skill level, her Tita liked the little silver cardinal pendant Mirabel had made her for her birthday. Daniella also enjoyed the bracelet that she had scribed feathers and vines around the circumference. Cassie had been extra thankful for the new doorknobs that Mirabel had Carmella help her cast when the old ones started to tarnish and turn funny. Mirabel’s favorite project, though, was the first time she had been allowed to use gems. She had made a pair of tiny silver studs in the rough shape of Casita’s tallest tower with small pieces of amazonite that she had carefully cut into a square shape held near the center, like little blue-green windows. Like her dress, they became a part of her everyday outfit alongside her pocket watch and a nice brown and teal bag that Ayla had crocheted her that she embroidered her name on in her signature flowy cursive.

On the other side of the spectrum from Carmella’s mellow Zenlike energy was the woman’s wife. Elena Doyle-Rojas was a peppy, energetic woman. She had a head of wavy ginger hair and sparkly blue eyes, many times covered by round copper framed spectacles, not unlike Mirabel’s. Those spectacles barely shaded a heavy dusting of freckles from cheek to cheek. The woman was short, only a half-foot taller than thirteen-year-old Mirabel, not nearly as toned as Carmella, and slight, bringing to mind the image of a fairy from some of the books Mirabel had read when she was younger.

What the woman lacked in stature, though, she made up for in presence. She always greeted Mirabel with a big hug, asking a couple yes-no questions about the girl’s day, waiting just long enough for the nod or shake before moving to the next. Then, curiosity sated, she would flit behind the counter and start explaining whatever task she was working on that day. Elena was something of a Jane of all Trades. She, too, was a Jeweler (working the few gold requests that the shop got), as well as a Lapidarist, and her primary job of Clockmaker. When Elena was feeling pretentious, she would jokingly lift her nose to the air and huff, correcting in an affected posh European accent, “It’s Horologist, dahling, not Clockmaker.” That usually got a giggle out of Mirabel, even if the girl wasn’t talking that day.

Mirabel had no talent for the intricate mechanics of clockwork. The first time she had tried, the clock needed a new pendulum, and three new cogs created. She would know since she had helped cast the bronze the next day. There hadn’t been a second time. But even if she couldn’t help Elena with that portion, the woman still made her feel comfortable, tinkering with a clock or watch as the girl sat down with a book or some personal project and relaxed. The woman was quite scatterbrained, flipping from one thing to the next. She would get side-tracked explaining Mirabel about her project or chatting with a customer and forget what she was working on, only to drop the conversation and plow headfirst back into her work. Even then, she would give out little tips on the things Mirabel had some ability in while the clockmaker was doing other work: how a facet should be cut, what gem looked good with what skin tones, how to tell a genuine stone from imitation.

Elena also taught Mirabel English. The woman had picked up the language due mainly to her Irish grandfather. Of course, many of the first words Mirabel learned were profanity which slipped out due to her teacher unknowingly getting hair caught in a mechanism or forgetting to let the gears she was casting cool enough before handling them. But those are the first words that you learn in a new language anyway, according to her father and grandfather, so she had just followed by teaching Mirabel more socially polite words to cover her bases. That opened up the woman to babbling in English and Spanish, which caused much confusion when a customer entered the store to a wall of language they didn’t understand.

Mirabel enjoyed the times she was at the shop; it was a nice change of pace from her time helping Tita Ayla run her shop. As Mirabel had gotten better at sewing, Ayla had slowly shifted from teaching about sewing to business, explaining the running of a shop as they worked on a commission together. Mirabel mentally questioned why she would need to know this when she would probably be living with/in her Mama for her entire life, but the certainty with which her Tita exclaimed its importance made her acquiesce. Mirabel guessed that Ayla would eventually want to hand the shop over to her, especially since for all her teasing Mirabel about boyfriends, she never got one for herself. It was an exciting thought to the girl, and not one she would be opposed to in the far future, mainly because it would let her repay all the help her Tita and Tias had given her with Antonio.

Antonio loved his Mami. She was his favorite person in the world. If you forced him to choose someone else, he would say his Abuelita Cassie was his second favorite. However, if you twisted his arm and forced him to choose someone other than Mami and Abuelita, he would say that his third favorite person was Tita Daniella. Antonio knew that, of their Tias, his Mami silently preferred Tia Ayla, but he liked Daniella because she watched him while his Mami was doing things he couldn’t help with. He sometimes saw his Tita’s Husband Angelo, a quiet, reedy man with curly brunette hair and kind brown eyes. The cobbler was nice enough, but Antonio and his Mami didn’t see the man enough to really have more than a cordial acquaintanceship. His cousins were an entirely different story.

Manuel, his primo, was two and a half years older than Antonio and Miranda (dubbed Andi because Mira was taken). He had curly black hair and brown eyes. Manny was lanky for his age, not nearly as pudgy as one would expect of a 5- to 6-year-old, though not for his mother’s lack of trying. He was also just as animal obsessed as Antonio was. Any time that the two boys could cajole Daniella into taking them out of the house, they would end up searching for any and all critters that they could get their hands on. Manny had showed Antonio how to catch frogs with crickets and showed him all the birdwatching spots on the outskirts of town that Mirabel didn’t know about. The two always returned to the Morenos’ house covered in mud and desperate need of a bath. Antonio almost felt bad at the exasperated sighs that his appearance always drew from his Tita. However, the smiles on her and his Mami’s faces when they saw the two boy’s exuberant expressions as they informed their parents of some new creature made it clear that they didn’t mind.

Antonio thought that Andi was kind of like his Mami: quiet, but also really nice and smart. She had long straight brunette hair the color of Angelo’s and her mother’s eyes. Most of the time, Andi would be sitting reading a book when they played inside, maybe sharing something from them that she thought He or her brother would find interesting. She would explore with them when they were outside, trailing slightly behind. But often enough, she was the reluctant tag-along of their three-man band. She tended to be the voice of reason too, convincing them to leave the more dangerous creatures she saw in her picture books were left well enough alone. If one considered the trio to only have a single brain cell, she was the one who laid almost perpetual claim to it.

The two of them were his best friends. They made him feel as normal as a Madrigal being raised by a teenager and her sapient house mother could. And many times, he was on the edge of breaking the one stipulation that his Mami had put on him being watched by his Tita: Don’t tell anyone our last name.

He hadn’t asked why he needed to keep it a secret until he was about three and a half. It had taken a bit of gentle pestering, but eventually, his Mami had gotten a somewhat dejected, tired look on her face and told him: (“The villagers don’t really like me, and I don’t think that some of our relatives do either. Our Tias wouldn’t be mean to me, but they would go to Alma to complain about how our relatives treat us. And that wouldn’t end well. At best, our relatives would make it so that we never see our Tias again. At worst, our relatives may take you from me and kick me out of the house. I would never want that to happen, Mijo. Losing you and Mama would just about kill me.”) She had hugged him tightly as Abuelita Cassie shook her tiles in a mixture of calming and warning (though he didn’t feel like the latter was aimed at him). He had understood the severity, if not necessarily the actual situation, and promised to not tell, even if he really wanted to. She smiled, gave the crown of his head a kiss, and went back to the chores they had been in the middle of with a nod.

It was frustrating sometimes. When Andi would gush about how pretty the flowers Isabella would create, he just wanted to tell her how mean and ugly she acted towards his Mami. When Manny told him about the cool show that Camillo had put on, he just wanted to say how Camillo had isolated his Mami instead of staying friends with her. Antonio heard about infrequent tasks Luisa was doing for one of his Tias. He resisted sharing the times he overheard his Mami rhythmically fretting when she thought he couldn’t see/hear her about her estranged sister’s mental stamina flagging. When he was scrapped up from his adventures with the two of them, he either got his Tita to bring the healing snacks from Julietta or, rarely, waited until Mami picked him up. She was sad and angry but also a bit proud when he asked her to help his boo-boos that he went to those lengths to keep his promise. After the first time he had covered up his scrapes until they were back to Casita, she had told him sternly that if he was ever injured worse than a skinned knee, he was to go to Julietta anyway, promise or not. (“She would be too tired to recognize you anyway,” she mentally added somewhat bitterly but didn’t tell him.)

Keeping the promise was even more challenging when he was just hanging around his Tias’ shops, though. Every praise towards his relatives stung because he knew he could squelch it by just letting them know that he knew better. Every passing by happenstance made him hunch a bit and tap his heel from nerves. But he had promised, so he held it in. And every time it almost got to be too much, he just reminded himself what his Mami had told him could happen if he did tell. He made sure to keep his promise because he didn’t want to lose his Tias, or worse, his Mami.