As Fulgencio and Carolina stepped tentatively through the doorway into the medicinal air of the house, furnished still in ’60s greens, oranges, and yellows, Mr. Johnson piped up in a Texan drawl coated with relief: “We was stawting ta think y’all’d never show up!”
Sitting in the time capsule of a living room, Fulgencio and Carolina listened to the Johnsons, exchanging concerned glances as their story unfolded.
The life of little Holly Johnson had been as quiet and fleeting as the flight of an angel, Mrs. Johnson explained. Adopted by the couple in their fifties after they’d proven unable to conceive children on their own, Holly had filled their home with laughter and light. Her eyes had shone as green as a lush tropical rainforest. “Emeralds is how I used to describe them to my relatives back in Louisiana,” Mrs. Johnson recalled.
When her husband brought in an old photo album, the two couples huddled over the coffee table to look at the fading photographs.
A tussle of auburn curls tinged with spirals of gold had topped Holly’s tiny head, reflecting the rays of sunlight as she played in the yard with the family dog and ran around the cul-de-sac with the other neighborhood children.
“She was a precious child. She was ma life,” Mr. Johnson murmured, a tremor in his voice. “But she was taken far too soon, God bless her splendid soul.”
For at the tender age of five, little Holly Johnson had been diagnosed with leukemia. The doctors at Houston’s MD Anderson Cancer Center had done their best, but her small body would not accept the bone marrow of another human. And ravaged by the attacking cells of her own blood, she had withered away on a cold hospital bed beneath a maelstrom of tubes, wires and monitors. Her curls gone. The rosy warmth which had once marked her cheeks vanished.
There on that bed, gasping for her last breaths, little Holly Johnson readied to cross the river to the other side, El Otro Lado. Her left hand enveloped by her trembling mother’s, her right held tenderly by her father’s, she had gazed up at them a final time, her eyes transfixed on a distant point of light visible only to her. “I see them, Ma and Pa. I see them now.”
“Who?” the befuddled couple had pressed, desperately clinging to each and every word and thought remaining within her imploding body.
“A man and a woman,” her eyes fluttered shut. “They’ll come looking for me. He’ll be wearing a hat and have a mustache. And she’ll have pretty golden curls and red, red lips.” She smiled. “Like mine.”
Robert Johnson had looked across the dying child at his wife, tears welling in their eyes. They had never mentioned to Holly that she was adopted. They had always figured they would cross that bridge down the road, when she was older and could better understand.
“Tell them I forgive them. Tell them I’ll be waiting, Ma and Pa,” she whispered. “I’ll be waiting for all of you.”
The beeping rhythm of the heart monitor had collapsed into a single monotone as Robert and Patty Johnson hunched over Holly’s body, now buried in a small and equally featureless graveyard down the road from the Johnson’s subdivision.
There, after recounting the sad tale and drying their eyes, the Johnsons limped alongside Fulgencio and Carolina on that sunny but cold winter afternoon. They huddled around the tiny plaque bearing Holly’s name and the years of her life, 1962–1967. They prayed. They wept. They held each other upright. And as they prepared to walk away, Fulgencio Ramirez reached deep into his coat and withdrew a single white rose, placing it gently upon his daughter’s tomb.
After their visit to the cemetery, Carolina and Fulgencio accompanied the Johnsons back to their home.
“Thank you for letting us share the miracle of the life you created,” Mrs. Johnson, a retired English teacher, whispered amidst a series of coughs.
“Thank you for taking care of her,” Carolina cried. “We were so young . . .”
“And I was so stupid,” Fulgencio shook his head despondently.
“Just remember her message,” Mrs. Johnson urged. “She left it with us for a reason.”
Through a long afternoon together, Fulgencio and Carolina listened as the Johnsons recounted their favorite memories of their daughter, the ones that still warmed their hearts as they grew old. When Fulgencio noticed that the elderly couple was at last growing tired, he motioned to Carolina that they should leave. Thanking them profusely, Carolina accepted an envelope filled with photos of Holly.
“At last, we can rest.” The Johnsons exhaled in unison as they bid the young ones farewell. After a long and drawn-out goodbye, the elderly couple waved from their doorstep.
Fulgencio steered the red Corvette to a quiet spot along the road, pulling over and turning off the engine. There in the silence, the top pulled over their heads, Fulgencio and Carolina held each other and cried. They prayed for the daughter they never knew. They pleaded God for his pardon. And, at last, they begged for the forgiveness they could only find in each other.
“Yes, I forgive you, Fully. I love you more than ever. But do you forgive me for giving her up, for not being there with her when she fell ill?” Carolina sobbed.
“You don’t owe me any apologies, Carolina. Of course I forgive you. I left you little choice. And, more importantly, she forgave both of us. It’s a miracle simply to know that.” He held her close as the sun set, flooding the car’s gloomy interior with golden light. “We better get a move on before it’s too late.”
They drove south toward La Frontera that evening, Carolina’s head resting on his shoulder. As they burrowed through the darkness of night, their faces illuminated only by the faint, warm glow of the gauges on the dashboard, Carolina interrupted the silence, her voice tinged by melancholy, “Fulgencio, where did you pluck those roses earlier today? The red one you gave Mercedes and the white one you lay at Holly’s grave?”
He stared ahead, his eyes intent on the highway. Deer were abundant in these lands and if he did not keep a watchful eye, he feared one might leap in front of them at any moment, bringing yet more tragedy to the trip.
“We didn’t stop by any flower shops along the way,” Carolina pressed on. “You couldn’t have known about Henry and Mercedes. We hadn’t foreseen Holly’s sad fate.” She shook her head. “Were they . . . milagros?”
After a long while mulling her questions, Fulgencio answered, “To be honest, Carolina, I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“I wouldn’t call them miracles. Sometimes I feel things or I see them in my mind and suddenly they’re there. I don’t understand it. It’s just the way my life has always been. That’s how it was with the flowers. That’s how it has been with the spirits that gather around me, like my abuelo, Brother William, and El Chotay.”