The 13 Secret Cities (Omnibus) (39 page)

The city did agree to channel more money to Englewood to help rebuild the city, and Little Village, my parents’ neighborhood, received the first Spotlight Grant from the federal government to help residents buy homes first to prevent gentrification (but of course, it was only symbolic, since we know how things turned out). In the spring of 2015, the city re-inaugurated Pritzker Pavilion, and its new drone-based camera system became the first in the country to monitor all angles of public events through the use of tiny robots shaped like dragonflies. The city deployed 2,000 of them in a pilot program, and they would expand it to other public places if it was proven to be successful.

Despite several investigations, no one ever found out who recorded the footage of the Parade of Lights from the top of the Tribune Building. Tribune folded in May, after repeated bankruptcies, but the Freedom Museum remained open. The rest of the tower was sold to developers to be converted into condominiums. Englewood remained impoverished for decades, and when it burned again in 2043, its maladies seemed to loop one more time.

For me, each month that went by drew me further away from Mictlán, as if that too had been a dream, just like the dream of a blue membrane and its sound of drums. It was easier to forget, to forget deeply, and to just go back to classes, exams, and papers that kept me up late into the middle of the night.

Every night, though, I dreamed again about the Lords, and each time, I awoke terrorized, unsure of who I was or where I was.

Spring passed and summer grew hot on my skin, and both of them came through like a series of short breaths.

And before I knew it, I was back for my second year of university.

In early October, my father called me back to the house.

“I’ll pick you up tonight, and I’ll have you back tomorrow.”

He showed up promptly that night at my dorm.

“You don’t come home anymore,” he said.

“Okay, and your point?”

“What did you do for your birthday?”

"I ordered pizza with Morgan and Dennis.” It was the truth. Together, we drank PBR while watching old
X-Files
reruns on our laptops.

“I suppose that’s pretty fun,” my father said.

My father took my bags to my room. I found my mother in the hall. She was preparing an ofrenda. I had seen her build them a million times with my father, but for the first time, I paid attention to every detail.

They put it in the hallway, on a side table. My father stacked several long wooden cabinets to create a series of levels, and my mother draped each of the boxes with pristine white linens. At its skirt, she placed two of her best dishes: lasagna and mole verde, made with pumpkin seeds. Between these two dishes, she places several packages of gummy worms in bright wooden bowls. These had all been my brother’s favorite foods. On the next level, my father draped several dozen marigolds, and he handed me one of the dozens he had wrapped in butcher paper.

“You do it,” he said.

To look deeply inside the structure of a flower like the marigold can be a dizzying thing. Inside it, the petals form ridges, one laid on top of each other. So many, in fact, that when you pull the flower away from you, a pattern emerges. A pattern inspired by a circle, but not quite a circle. And there, in the center, is its sex organs, its stamens, also arranged like a spiral and the little spaces between them deep, like cuts.
 

Like slits on a shark.

Or like gills underneath a mushroom cap.

I had never really taken the time to see these structures on a marigold, but my father brought his magnifying glass and showed me.

I was grateful that he did, but seeing the petals, moving about in a spiral, made me want to vomit.

These tiny spirals, inside this place were small, smaller than me, but they made a very structured coil.

A COIL, Clara. They make a COIL.

The music wafting from the flower was too familiar, too deep, and too real.

My father could see into the flower, but he could not hear it. I moaned under my breath.

“Hold still and stop your twitching,” he told me.

I arranged the marigolds on the linens. Their colors painted the room in shades of crimson and gold.

On the third level we placed five framed photographs of José María. One as a baby, one as a toddler in his tricycle, and three from the last year he was alive. His hair extended from his brow like spikes on a porcupine, and his thin arms crossed his narrow chest. Every photo revealed his grin, his hidden smirk.

My father put the last photograph, a school portrait, at the top level of the altar, like a snow-capped peak on a mountain.

“Now, you know that in just a few weeks, your brother will return, and we put this ofrenda up to welcome him back. He’ll be here so soon, and we’ll be glad to spend some time with him.”

This was our tradition for Día de Los Muertos.

It had been almost a year, and my father still didn’t know what José María and I had done in the tunnel of butterflies and in the places that lay beyond it.

There are the secret lives of parents, but there are also the secret lives of their children.

To tell my father about Mictlán meant I would tell him about the Ocullín’s promise to find me, and that was something I would never do. I was not going to endanger anyone other than myself.

Minerva and La Negra were still convinced that I had eradicated my problem of “the stench of death” when I announced I found my tonal, but now, as my father showed me this yearly rite, I felt like the world’s biggest clown.

I could do better than this, and I knew it.

When we finished the ofrenda, I went into José María’s room and rummaged through his drawers. I took his iPod, his hoodie, and as many of his books as I could carry out in my backpack.

“Clara, are you ready to drive back?” my father shouted.

“Yes, gimme a minute.”

On my way out the back door, a hand tugged at my sleeve.

“Mom, you scared me!”

“Clara,” my mother said. “You don’t want to forget this one.”

She placed a copy of
The Popol Vuh
— José María’s copy of the book of Maya creation stories — in my hands.

“I am not sure what you’re up to, but I want you to succeed.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

“And your tonal?”

“We’ll need to discuss, but much later.”

“If you need more of his books, you tell me. I’ll get them to you.”

“Mom, do you think we can really atone for things we have done? You know, after we die?”

My mother smiled to herself and reconfigured her shawl. She pulled out a fresh laminated card of the Virgin of Guadalupe and tucked it into the book. She kissed me on the forehead and ushered me out the door.

I met my father in the car, which was idling in the garage. His hands wiped the dashboard with even strokes. Not a single speck of dust escaped his movements.

“How long have you been wiping down the car, Dad?” I said.

“It’s just a touch-up. Your mother’s mad at me, Clarita. Do you know why?”

“There’s very little I actually know anymore,” I said.

My mother walked into the garage a few seconds later to say goodbye.

“Juliana, are you staying?” he said.

“Yes, I am. You two have a good drive back. I’ll see you at Thanksgiving, Clara.”

My mother winked.

On the morning of November 1, 2014, I was alert, in case José María indeed came back the way I expected — and the way our family expected him to return. That’s what our traditions told us would happen.

That day I felt energetic and full of health. Otherwise, I didn’t get a single sign of José María’s return.

After everything I knew about Mictlán and the beings from that place, I had expected my brother to return, even just for that day. But instead, nothing.

I did want him to come back. He
had to
come back.

I was going to make sure it happened.

November 3, 2015, turned out to be much too cold for the outdoors. Arctic winds arrived early, and the wind chill factor was ten degrees below as ice pelted Randolph Street. I kept my steps short and firm to prevent myself from slipping on the ice, but I skidded more than a few times.

I cut through Millennium Park on Monroe Street. I kept my eyes lowered as I passed through the security scanner that read my driver’s license. The uniformed cop nodded and I passed on to the park. I stayed on the sidewalk, walking east until I reached Columbus Drive. From this point, I turned around to make sure I wasn’t being followed. At 4 pm on a Monday during an ice storm, I had most of the park to myself.

Drones swept the perimeter of the park like toy UFOs. The whined as they soared in the sky about every ten minutes or so. And then they were gone again.
 

I walked up the pathway that ran parallel to Columbus Drive on my right, and as I moved north, the tinfoil wings of Pritzker Pavilion unfurled, as they always did when tourists walked toward the structure.

I was no longer scared of the memories of the dome or its grass.

I had come here to find the bridge. The pavilion was besides the point, but I still felt proud of myself as I glimpsed it from the corner of my eye.

Off to my right, behind a set of trees, I found the gate I was looking for. The BP Bridge was made of sheet metal was so smoothly made that it seemed to melt right into the ground. I took the bridge step by step, careful not to fall on the ice, and I stuffed my hands in my coat pockets.

I was sweating inside my coat, but I didn’t care. I had layered myself with silk long underwear, ski pants, jeans, and two wool sweaters. I had covered myself with a thin down coat, followed by a heavy wool pea coat.

This time, my return to Mictlán would be far more comfortable than before.

At the end of the BP Bridge, six metal poles marked the gate of the eastern end of the snaking structure. I turned around and caught the first threads of red and orange as the sun began to set.

From this angle, I could see the Chicago skyline and the wings of Pritzker Pavilion, like jagged teeth on the lower jaw of an animal whose head was a ravenous, gaping blue sky.

I put the headphones over my head and I smoked a joint, breaking the rule my father and his sisters had made about these rituals. In fact, I made my own ritual, the way José María would have wanted.

I put his playlist on repeat. When I finished the joint, I tasted licorice and antifreeze on my tongue, and I heard the music of my brother’s playlist in my body.

I couldn’t make this trip alone, so I decided to call out for help.

Once, a long time ago, my brother and I had felt the essence of a creature that lived beyond time through the walls of a green tunnel underwater. That creature had allowed us safe passage through her walls. This time, I listened, and I hoped that I could hear the throbbing music of Blue Hummingbird embedded in the Pritzker Pavilion.

But the bridge made not a single noise.

I looked behind me at the water, and I felt foolish for a moment, standing alone in a backpack during an ice storm.

Next, I tried listening for the Xolotl. If there was someone who could get me in, it would be him.

I spoke his name, and when I did, I felt the sheet metal of the BP bridge vibrate to the point of almost shattering. A murder of crows flew off into the air and left me even more alone than I had been before.