Unable to hold it in any longer, Lumi began to speak through her sobs. “There’s this man.”
Anahilda nodded knowingly. Lumi opted to leave out the detail that he had been her boss.
“We worked together at the place I told you about, where I started after Caraluna. His smile—” She stopped abruptly. His smile had become a knife in her heart. “He cooked for me, and it did something to me that no one else’s cooking has. It has a taste I’ve never found in anyone else’s.”
The two elder women exchanged glances.
“When I got burned, he came to take care of me every day,” she sputtered, too pained to care what the ladies’ opinion would be on that.
“That’s nice,” Inés said. Anahilda shot her a burning glance.
Lumi exhaled heavily. “He asked me to marry him,” she said, her shoulders following a gravitational pull to the floor.
“And what’s the problem, m’ija?” Anahilda asked.
“I know what marriage does to people,” Lumi said in an almost whisper.
“Iluminada—” Inés began.
“No, don’t tell me it’s not that bad. It’s what you guys have been teaching me all along.”
“But, my daughter—”
“Mami, when I was young, you always said that marrying my father ruined your life. And the boyfriends, you said you would never marry any of them, even if one turned out good, which none of them did. You wouldn’t give yourself to anyone in that way. You too,” Lumi said in Anahilda’s direction.
In front of her, Anahilda elbowed Inés in the fleshy pillow of her upper arm. “Inés, are you not going to tell her?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Inés said, her gaze fixed on her hands, turning them over as if they were dry leaves in her lap.
Anahilda glared at her sister. “Even as you see how this lie is affecting her, you’re not going to tell her the truth?”
Lumi’s glance shot from her mother to her aunt and back again. “Mami,” she began in a measured tone. “What is Tía talking about? What . . . lie?”
Inés sighed wearily. “Iluminada, there’s something I need to tell you. Ehm.” She cleared her throat awkwardly, staring at the base of the salon chair. “It’s not entirely true that your father left us.”
“What?” Lumi exclaimed.
Inés nodded sorrowfully. “He did go back to Santo Domingo, and it’s true that I did not hear from him again. But it was after I left him.”
Lumi shook her head, dazed by this new information. “What? Why?”
“I was twenty-one, and in my opinion, he just didn’t want the same things out of life as I did. He was too much of a dreamer. He thought that being a line cook at the Miami Sheraton was going to get him places. After three years together, he still hadn’t been able to save the money he promised me so we could open our own business. If I stayed with him, I was never going to have the life I wanted.”
“Then why did you tell me all these years that he left us? And that men could not be trusted?” Lumi asked, her voice cracking.
“I did it to keep you safe,” Inés blurted out. “I knew you’d be going out into the world on your own one day, and I needed to know you’d be wary enough to stay away from men. You know they only want one thing. I didn’t want to see your youth and your beauty become another casualty of their wretched lust.”
“And you would rather have had me grow up distrusting every man I met?” Lumi balked.
“Did it work out so bad? You went on to your fancy cooking school with no relationships or responsibilities holding you back.”
The muscles in Lumi’s chest knotted together, threatening her breathing. She turned to Anahilda. “And you, you thought it was a good idea to keep this from me too?”
Anahilda hung her head. “It wasn’t my place to intervene.”
“I see.”
Lumi stood up, knocking over the folding chair and sending it clattering to the floor.
“Excuse me,” she said. She bounded toward the door, mustering all the energy she could to slam it behind her.
She barreled down the streets of Little Havana, practically knocking into the passersby strolling and sipping their espressos at a leisurely pace. Two blocks down, she came to a panting stop in front of a little green cottage with lush arrangements of daisies, freesia, and tiger lilies in the window. Coming around the side of the cottage with a wrinkled garden hose was an elderly woman with kindly eyes set in a face that could have been shaped from clay.
“Doña Elia!” Lumi called.
Doña Elia glanced up from her garden. Her eyes lit up when her younger friend came into her line of sight.
“Ah, Lumi,” she said, as she let the hose fall to the ground and puttered over to the picket fence. She unlatched the gate and Lumi stepped in. Doña Elia drew her close for a brief but affectionate hug. “Won’t you come in?” she asked, walking toward the cottage.
The cottage was painted a cheery yellow on the inside, and there were two chairs in front of a desk amid the tables and baskets of flowers. “Would you like a glass of lemonade?” she asked.
Lumi nodded, and Doña Elia reached into a mini-fridge under her desk and pulled out two glasses of lemonade, already poured. Lumi took a sip and inhaled deeply. She felt strengthened and warmed despite the temperature of the beverage. It was a viscerally grounding feeling, like being connected to the helix of ancestor wisdom. She was so grateful she had run into the elder woman.
“Where’s Don Emilio?” Lumi asked, remembering Doña Elia’s husband, who was usually out front building tables while she arranged the flowers.
“Emilio died two years ago, m’ija,” Doña Elia said.
“Oh. I’m so sorry,” Lumi said in a hushed tone, ashamed that she hadn’t known.
“It’s okay. He was eighty-eight years old, and we had a long and wonderful life together.”
Lumi looked up, startled, something having been awakened by the old woman’s words.
Doña Elia left her desk and came closer, letting her weight sink into the white wrought-iron chair opposite Lumi. She struck a match and lit a persimmon-colored taper sitting in the center of the matching table in between them. Delicately, she traced the scars leading from the corner of Lumi’s eye to the corner of her mouth.
“These look like they healed well,” she said. “I heard what happened from your mother.” She shook her head slowly. “It was a woman who caused this, m’ija. I’ve looked into the situation.”
Lumi’s stomach turned. “But why?” she answered.
Doña Elia sighed, settling into her chair. “I don’t know. Most likely envy. In my eighty-six years, when I have seen women direct this kind of hatred at other women, it’s almost always envy. But I will advise you one thing, m’ija—do not seek revenge. Justice is in the hands of the Creator of all that is.”
Lumi nodded, slightly dazed.
Doña Elia peered into the tiny flame. “And as for the man . . . hmm . . .” She paused, her lips curving into a smile.
She reached for Lumi’s hand and squeezed it.