12. A Ratty, Old Ruana

Stuffing the ruana into her favorite embroidered satchel, because heaven forbid that any other family members saw her walking around Casita with Tío Bruno’s ruana, Mirabel stormed out into the hallway. Her brow lowered into a flat, determined line, her lips pressed together in firm displeasure, she marched around the second-story hallway with long, powerful strides, arms pumping with each step she took.

She didn’t care who saw her. She didn’t care what people would ask or say. And so, when even Luisa, stepped out of the way to let Mirabel pass, which Luisa never did because she was the one who was normally stomping around, she let out a surprised, “Whoa there, you good, sis?”

Mirabel barely spared her a second glance. “Just peachy!” she bit out, the light words being marred by the overly aggressive delivery.

Luisa seemed to take note that Mirabel was not, in fact, doing peachy at all, but she tactfully chose to bite her tongue, sensing that her sister was on a mission that would be wise not to disrupt. So, steering clear of Mirabel’s fuming path, she retreated to the first story of the house, likely to head out and complete more tasks on her never-ending to-do list. And this was lucky for Mirabel, for once she reached the painting, she stepped in without a moment’s hesitation, not even bothering to glance over her shoulder and make sure that no one was watching.

Mirabel’s march continued back behind the corridor, forging ahead at a steady, unrelenting pace. She fished the ruana out of the satchel as she walked, clutching it into a messy bundle in her clenched fist, knuckles going white at how tightly she gripped it. She made her way past the repaired cracks, around the corner, and up to Ratón's door, barging in without so much as even a polite knock or query of greeting.

Ratón, sitting at his chair, seemed blissfully unaware of her violent, dramatic entry, for he spun around in delight, a giant smile stretching across his face when he saw that it was Mirabel who had entered unannounced.

“Oh, Mirabel! I see you finished fixing my ruana! Thank you! I was wondering when you were going to have it done, since it’s been like a week, and it’s been kind of cold without that thing, but I didn’t want to be rude and bring it up, so I’ve just been waiting very patiently. Not to mention, do you have any idea how stupid I feel just wearing my pants and shirt? Like, the shades of brown are pretty similar, but not close enough to be the same so it’s kind of this awkward, mismatched outfit that looks pretty dumb, and—”

“Ratón, where did you get this ruana from?”

He faltered, Mirabel’s interruption in his long-winded monologue throwing him off balance for a solid few seconds. “I—er—excuse me?”

“Where. Did you. Get this from.”

The choppy delivery of her lines placed deliberate emphasis on each chunk of the question, conveying a seriousness in her tone that Ratón was quick to take note of.

His eyes flickering up and down Mirabel’s imposing form, registering the aggressive stance she had adopted while looming over his seated body, he let out a visible gulp. “At the… ruana store?”

“Which ruana store?” Mirabel asked, her suspicions rising because there was no such thing as a ‘ruana store.’ At least, not that she knew of, not in the Encanto.

Ratón let out a nervous chuckle. “You know…” he began, waving his arms around as if he were plucking the words right out of the air. “The one that sells the ruanas?”

Mirabel raised an unamused eyebrow in response.

“Listen, Mirabel, I can’t remember, that was years ago!”

“Is that the case? So then, tell me this. Why did my Tía Pepa come into my room and ask me what I was doing with Tío Bruno’s ruana?” As she spoke, she thrusted the incriminating garment in his direction, emphasizing the point that that ruana, the one she was holding, the one that he had been wearing, had been accused of belonging to Bruno.

Ratón’s tired eyes went wide, wider than the dinner plates that sat at the dining room table. Wider than they would have been if he wasn’t guilty, provoking Mirabel’s skepticism further.

“I….” he began, looking between Mirabel and the ruana, before closing his mouth and swallowing. Mirabel frowned, her resolve hardening at his very unsatisfying reply, or really, lack of one.

“Where did you get this from?” she demanded.

No response.

“Why were you wearing Tío Bruno’s ruana?”

Ratón flinched at her harsh, accusatory tone and looked away, still refraining from responding.

“Did you steal it from him?”

And then, a thought occurred to her. A connection, one that had been brewing, bubbling right beneath the surface at the back of her mind, just out of reach. Implausible, but perhaps, given the trail of breadcrumbs that had been laid out in front of her, beckoning her to follow, it wasn’t.

“Or… or are you….”

Ratón seemed to sense, just by looking at Mirabel’s pensive, contorted face, that she was on the cusp of connecting the dots. The puzzle pieces were all there, and she was just beginning to join them all together.

And so, he didn’t waste a moment in frantically waving his hands in front of her, abruptly speaking to cut off her train of thought before it reached the forbidden conclusion. Before his secret that he had fought so hard to maintain was revealed, the secret that could not be discovered because if Mirabel were to unveil his true identity, he would have to leave Casita and his family for good. Because if the truth were to break free, he would be forced to confront the web of lies he had constructed and wrapped himself up in over the years.

He would have to confront his siblings.

He would have to confront his mother.

That last thought, painful as it was, was enough to send him careening over the edge. “You’re right,” he cried out abruptly, “I stole it!”

Mirabel had initially drawn back at the jarring brusqueness of his outburst, but after hearing what he had said, settled back into her foreboding posture, her eyes narrowing. “Stole it from who?”

“Bruno,” he admitted, guilty as charged (but guilty of the wrong charge, it was important to distinguish). “I stole it from Bruno Madrigal. He had already left, and when I came here, I had nothing. I was cold, without a home, without support, without a family, so I took what he had left behind. I wore his ruana because he didn’t seem to be needing it anymore, and he never returned.”

Bruno Madrigal of course, being the man with the gift to see into the future. When he had left, he had taken his gift with him, ceasing to use it and Ratón, in every sense of the word, had been the one to take his place.

Mirabel responded to his senseless babbling with a fearsome, furrowed frown. “So you’re telling me that you found this when you moved in? That he left it behind?”

Ratón steepled his fingers together, his eyes glancing toward the ceiling as he contemplated Mirabel’s very accurate summary of the story he had fabricated right on the spot. And then, after a long few seconds of pondering the details of the tale that he himself had made up, he settled on saying: “That’s… exactly what I’m telling you?”

“So you never met him? You didn’t come into contact with him, at all?”

And then the unspoken question, tacked onto the end: you’re not him?

Ratón shook his head, his mop of curls flopping about at the brisk action. “No. He was gone before I had even arrived.” And to a degree, it was true; by the time he had left his tower and settled into his little alcove in the walls, he had abandoned his gift. Bruno Madrigal, the man the Encanto knew as the oracle and harbinger of bad luck and fate, had effectively vanished, leaving only a lonely hermit in his stead.

While it concealed the connection, Ratón vehemently severing the threads and denying Mirabel the ability to see the truth that he and Bruno were the same person, that had not been the answer that Mirabel had wanted to hear.

She tossed the ruana to the side in frustrated defeat, where it landed in a heap on the coffee table. Her aim had accidentally blanketed some unfortunate rats, who wiggled their way out to escape from under the stifling fabric, little squirming lumps under the green cloth. Hot tears began to gather at the corner of her eyes, threatening to spill over as she frantically tried to blink them back.

Here she had been, thinking that she was so close to unraveling the mystery that was her uncle. The conundrum that was Bruno Madrigal. But instead, she was left with nothing, just an old, worn out article of clothing and the ghost of a man who had disappeared years ago. Vanishing into the misty mountains of the Encanto, leaving a wake of anguish in his path from his permanent absence.  

She wiped a stray tear from where it grasped desperately to her lashes, right before it could stream down her cheek in a single, poetic trail. Who was she kidding. Bruno was the uncle who had abandoned his family, and Ratón was just the weirdo that lived in the walls. What could he possibly know?

And how could she have ever begun to think that they were the same person? Even just stringing the words into a sentence in her brain felt ridiculous. Because everyone, in her limited discussions about Tío Bruno, had made it abundantly clear that he had left. Why would he have bothered staying behind, just to live in the walls? It didn’t make any sense. Not to mention, after hearing Ratón’s story, she began to feel foolish for ever jumping to such a wild conclusion.

Ratón seemed to take note of her uncharacteristic silence, gulping before he leaned forward to speak. “Mirabel,” he began tentatively. “Is everything all right? You seem to be on edge.”

Mirabel’s head whipped toward him as she pinned him with a glare, proving his point that she was, as a matter of fact, on edge. But still, she didn’t respond, knowing that her voice would betray the strong swirl of emotion, that it would tremble and crack and break and that would be so embarrassing, if she were to show such weakness over a man she had hardly ever known.

“Mirabel? Talk to me. Please.”

She worried at the bottom of her lip, her incisors leaving faint dents in the soft flesh as she did so. “It’s just… for a moment, I thought that you were… could be….” The tears that she had managed to suppress returned, accumulating at the rims of her eyes, and she fought the quiver of her lower lip as she stopped herself from completing that sentence. Because it had been a ridiculous notion, that Ratón was Bruno. Outlandish. Asinine. Wishful thinking, from a girl who wanted nothing more than to help restore a family that had been shattered into pieces at his departure. “Never mind. It was dumb.”

In front of her, Ratón fidgeted uncomfortably. Almost as if he knew what she had been about to say.

And seeing this, his discomfort at her outrageous accusations and lashing words, Mirabel felt a surge of guilt at making him feel this way. Upon this realization, she buried her face in her hands in distress. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice a wispy thread through her fingers. She took a deep breath before extracting herself from her palms, looking back up. “I didn’t mean to accuse you of all these things.”

“They were… valid accusations,” Ratón conceded, awkwardly rubbing a hand along the back of his neck and not wanting to admit that his own responses to the accusations had been very, very far from valid.

Mirabel shrugged, a small, joyless smile lifting the corners of her lips. “Eh, even so, I probably could have approached it just a little better.” Her voice was still hollow, echoing flat and dull throughout the cramped quarters.

“Is everything okay? Out there?” He gestured ambiguously in the direction that the kitchen was in, loosely alluding to Mirabel’s terse and strenuous relationship with her family.

At least, that’s what she thought; his gesture had been rather vague. For all she knew, he could have been referring to the weather, or to the fact that papayas were out of season and that they were her favorite fruit. However, with a quick scan of his face, she concluded that he likely was referring to her family dynamic.  “It’s not an excuse, but…. I think I’m also just a little stressed about Antonio’s gift ceremony? Either way, I shouldn’t have taken it out on you and I’m… I’m sorry.”

Ratón tilted his head to the side. “Antonio’s gift ceremony?”

Mirabel nodded, numb. “Yeah,” she responded in a dreary, emotionless tone. “It’s tomorrow.”

“And… how do you feel about this?” Evidently not great, were the unspoken words that hung in the air, hovering between Mirabel’s despondent disposition and Ratón’s own cautious curiosity. That was something that even he could see, which really spoke volumes to the degree of Mirabel’s misery.

“Not the best,” Mirabel admitted, confirming his suspicions. “It’s just, all this preparation for his ceremony has done nothing but remind me of where I failed. How I let my family down all those years ago. Everyone is so excited, so nervous to see if he gets a gift, and all it does is reinforce that I’m the screwup. I’m the outcast. I didn’t get a gift, I’m the stain on our family’s perfect reputation.”  

Mirabel shook her head at this, as if trying to brush off the negative thoughts that clung oppressively to her mind. “But don’t get me wrong! I want him to receive a gift, both for the sake of the family and the community, and also because…” She faltered, pursing her lips to quash the strong wave of emotion that she experienced, the years of memories that had molded her into the person she was today. “…because I don’t want him to go through what I went through. Experience what I experienced. I wouldn’t wish that on anybody, especially not Antonio.”

Ratón sighed, but it was a sound of disappointment rather than one of exasperation. “Mirabel, you don’t need a gift to be special, to leave a lasting influence those around you and make the world a better place.”

Mirabel looked away with a doubtful expression, reflecting her self-deprecating disbelief at Ratón’s words. Not to mention, they were so cheesy, he very well could have fed them to his rats.

Taking note of her silent dismissal, he continued talking. “And even if he doesn’t receive a gift, you have to remind yourself that he will have you. He won’t be hurt in the same way that you were, because you will be there to help him. You have the power to alter his experience for the better, to make a permanent impact on those around you. That is your gift, Mirabel.”

Mirabel let out a hollow scoff. “Sounds like a lame gift to me,” she muttered, but despite her portrayal of unhappiness, Ratón’s words did make her feel a little better. Not that she would admit this out loud, because she didn’t want him to know that she was buying into his absurd sappiness, but it was still nice to hear his reassurance.

“Lame gift or not, it is something we all need more of. A little bit of Mirabel Magic.” To emphasize his point, he wiggled his bony fingers around, to really convey the mystic reality of the so-called ‘Mirabel Magic.”

At this, she laughed out loud, because now he was just being ridiculous. Endearing, perhaps, but ridiculous all the same. “I guess.... The problem is, I know I’m supposed to be excited and happy about the ceremony, but all I can feel is this sense of sadness weighing down on me. And I feel guilty about that, because I know I should be happy, because this is something we should want to celebrate, but I just feel empty inside. And I don’t know what to do about it.”

Ratón nodded emphatically. “I understand how you feel. Well, maybe I don’t actually understand, but I also feel a great deal of sorrow about this ceremony. Even though, like you said, it is supposed to be an exciting, happy moment.”

Mirabel’s face scrunched in confusion; now it was her turn to be the one asking the questions. “Why do you feel that way?”

Ratón let out a heavy exhale, running a hand through his hair as he looked away. “Sometimes it is so difficult. To be so close, and yet so far from everyone. I’m disappointed that I will miss this ceremony because, well….” He stumbled, the words catching in his throat before he regained the ability to move forward. “…. I miss this community. The people. I mean, yeah, the mice are great and all, and I love them, but sometimes, I… I get lonely.”

“Do you miss your family?” Mirabel asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

Ratón nodded, his throat bobbing as he swallowed thickly. “Very much,” he responded hoarsely.

After a pause, Mirabel leaned forward, lifting him up and out of his chair with a gentle tug on his forearms. He followed her lead with hesitation, the question written plainly in his large, vulnerable eyes as he straightened to his full height, something Mirabel noticed was nearly the exact same as her own (although she would argue that she had a few inches on him, at least). "You know what, Ratón?" There was a beat before she stepped toward him, pulling him into an embrace. “I’ll be your family,” she whispered as she wrapped her arms around his thin, scrawny frame.

Ratón hesitated, his body freezing at the unexpected contact, but after a long, floating moment, he returned the gesture, extending his arms around Mirabel to reciprocate the hug.

“Thank you, Mirabel,” he replied, his voice choked up and heavy with emotion. “I… I can be your family, too.”

The hug lasted for a few elongated seconds more, before they withdrew, Mirabel with a soft smile on her face and Ratón with glassy eyes that crinkled at the edges as he smiled back. There was a moment where they simply looked at each other, simply happy to be in one another’s presence, to have found solace in each other’s company. Happy to be understood. Happy to belong.

And then Mirabel, unable to withstand the cloying sweetness of their mutual silence any longer, took it upon herself to kill the mood. “Can you please put the ruana back on? I’m tired of seeing you without it, you just look plain weird.”

The moment shattered, but in a humorous way that helped relieve some of the heavy tension that hung in the tight space, Ratón’s face fell flat, his amusement betrayed by the twinkling in his eyes. “Gee, thanks, Mirabel” he deadpanned.

Turning to the table where it had been discarded (and now thankfully rat-free, after they had all successfully managed to extract themselves), he picked it up after a moment of hesitation, the trepidation written plain on his face. “Are you sure you’re okay with me wearing this? Since you know, it technically belongs to, er, Bruno?”

Mirabel sniffled as she grinned, placing a hand on her hip in a sassy response. “I didn’t spend a few precious hours of my day hand-repairing that stupid ruana, just for it not to be worn by anybody!” she quipped. “But don’t worry, you won’t have to wear that hideous thing for much longer.”

Ratón looked between Mirabel and the bundle of fabric he held quizzically. “That’s an oddly cryptic, not-at-all-ominous statement. Should I be worried?”

Mirabel let out a short laugh. “Only if you genuinely like wearing that thing!”

Ratón smiled back softly in return, pulling the ruana over his head with a great deal of care, fluffing out the folds of fabric and rubbing a light finger over the seam that Mirabel had repaired in subdued admiration.

After a few more short exchanges, and a healthy dosage of apologies on Mirabel’s part for barging in unannounced (and Ratón repeatedly telling her not to worry about it and that she was always welcome, even if she chose to come in waving a ruana around while frothing at the mouth), Mirabel excused herself. She was tired, and wanted to retreat to her room to be alone, to reflect about the day and mentally prepare for the next one.

At the door, she had been just about to exit when Ratón had reached down, wrapping a hand around her wrist and prompting her to turn back around in question.

“Mirabel. Whatever happens tomorrow, just remember. I’ll always be here for you.”

Mirabel felt the corners of her lips quirk down in emotion for a brief second as she swallowed thickly, bobbing her head in silent response as the words she wanted to speak sat heavily on her tongue. “I know. Thank you,” she finally managed to say after a long, stretched out moment.

And then, Ratón released his delicate grip and she walked out the door, this time much more at peace than when she had first arrived, but still filled with sadness all the same.