The faint perfume of roses wafted from the ruins of the bushes beneath the windows. The steering wheel felt scarred but solid in his hands as the truck sputtered to life. Straightening his mustache in the rearview mirror, he saw a surprising sparkle in his eyes, a tingling in his smile. He sensed something was happening. He strained to contain the excitement. He hadn’t felt this in ages. It was called hope. He’d sensed it in his youth, and squandered it. But this time, his own greatest obstacles were out of the way.
Twenty-Eight
With her grudging permission, Fulgencio began to visit Carolina regularly. Every morning, before she went to work at the school, he stopped by for a cup of coffee on his way to the drugstore. They sat quietly at the table. Some days they talked. Others, not a word passed between them. At times she smiled. And then again, on what he called the “bad days,” she stormed out of the room and whisked up the stairs without a word.
Over time, they came to understand the extent to which they had been played against their love by the scheming Miguel. Fulgencio braced himself for a resurgence of the familiar white noise and Nahuatl chants that had long tormented him, sighing with relief as these failed to resurface. Instead, he found his emotions challenging, but manageable.
As their conversations began to flow, he cautiously attempted to broach his grand excuse, the explanation for his idiotic actions on that distant Christmas Eve. He feared that she would think him incapable of accepting his own shortcomings, transferring the blame to a supernatural third party. But when he at last disclosed the existence of the infamous maldición de Caja Pinta and the mysterious hold it had long exerted over him and his male relatives, quickly chasing it with his plea that he hoped she didn’t think he was making it all up to shirk responsibility, she simply scoffed and retorted, “Are you kidding me? Of course I believe you! This is La Frontera. I’ve heard crazier stories.”
The tension he’d restrained for years flew out the window with the rest of his reservations. The shared knowledge—about la maldición as well as Miguel’s conspiracy—cleared the lingering fog of suspicion and confusion which had long tormented them both, enabling them to cut a path through the overgrown weeds of their love’s trajectory toward a closer understanding. But still, he could tell she harbored a deeper resentment, a hidden sorrow. And while Fulgencio continued to chip away at the armor which encased her heart, he nonetheless sensed he had reached a barrier of defense she refused to lower. He knew by the way she greeted him at the kitchen door every sunrise—the distant traces of a smile prefaced upon her lips—that she still felt something for him. But was it pity or love? Was it out of respect for what they had once shared or was it out of a desire to be close once again?
Every day, he felt his love grow for her. His yearning gnawed at his innards. He felt the renewed lust of the young man he had once been as his eyes caressed her feminine body, her golden curls, her ruby lips.
Eventually, she came to confess the horror of those long and lonesome years trapped as Miguel Rodriguez Esparza’s wife. He was a brute and a ruffian, a spineless, worthless, lazy sap. She had despised him from the day they were wed. But Fulgencio was still puzzled as to why she had conceded to marry him or what had kept her at his side for so long in this era of quickie divorces and absolving annulments.
There must have been something she was not telling him. But he dared not push. He simply hoped that with time, the wall would come tumbling down. The bitterness would melt away. And the resentment he still spied within her would give way to forgiveness, acceptance, and then passionate love unbound, the love that had been dammed up within both of them for all these restless years. Lonely, sleepless nights in cold and empty beds. Staring at the same stars in the sky. Remembering the moments they once shared. Dancing beneath the lights at homecoming. Destroying Buzzy’s storage room with the fury of their lust. Cruising back from the beach with Little David asleep in the back seat. Knowing they had been meant to be together . . . forever.
At long last as the first flowers of spring sprouted, and the sun charged the air with its electric warmth, Fulgencio resolved to push their budding relationship to the next level.
One morning, as he arrived for their ritual cup of coffee, she saw him through the kitchen window, carrying a young rosebush in his hands. This he placed among the ruins of the old rosal beneath the window to her room. He dug a hole, planted it, and watered it. He was dusting his hands off as she opened the front door for him.
“What are you doing, Fulgencio?” she asked from the doorstep, her hands propped on her hips. She appeared rejuvenated in a white Spring frock.
“Be my date,” he said. “Go out with me tonight.”
“No,” she stated emphatically. “You know how I feel about this. You’ve asked me before. And the answer is still the same. If you want to come by here for coffee in the mornings, there’s little I can do to stop you. But going out with you in public is another matter altogether. It’ll take a miracle for that to happen!”
“Fine, then,” Fulgencio Ramirez snapped. “A miracle it shall be. If this rosebush is in full bloom by this evening when I arrive to pick you up, will you be my date?”
She glanced at the young plant. No buds. Nothing but tiny leaves and tender green thorns still supple and soft.
“Whatever,” she scoffed, cocking an eyebrow. “We’ll see.” She shook her head as she headed back into the house. “You’re not coming in for coffee today?” she asked, her voice betraying a tinge of disappointment as he walked back toward his truck.
“No, I’ll see you tonight,” he called out, waving his hat in the air and driving off in a cloud of dust.
That day, Fulgencio prepared a special potion with a recipe his mother had given him and some herbs El Papabote LaMarque procured at the mercado across the river.
Wheezing mechanically, El Papabote said, “Estas yerbas son muy especiales, Ramirez.”
Like a mad alchemist in his laboratory, Fulgencio mixed and boiled green leaves together with a fine brown powder. It was a rare varietal of yerba buena and a mixture of cumin with burnt bumblebee ashes. Boiled in a mixture of mezcal and olive oil. Mixed with ground rose petals. Pouring the dark, steaming potion into a flask, Fulgencio handed it to Little David.
“Go to Carolina’s and sneak beneath her window. Make sure she’s not watching. And pour this on the soil where I planted the rosebush.”
“Do I say anything?” Little David asked, scratching his head in bewilderment.
“Yes,” Fulgencio added. “Say ‘In the name of the Virgen de Guadalupe, in the spirit of her miracle in the mountains of the Valley of Mexico, I command you to bloom.’ ”
By the time sunset was at hand, the rosebush had grown so large and lush, Fulgencio could have scaled its thorns straight to her window. Loaded with red roses in full bloom, it towered like a stalwart tree over the lawn.