Page 12 of Daughter of Rot

We hide from each other. We criticize and we fight and we hide.

Look, I know we won’t fight our own demons. We weren’t built that way. This is not how we were raised. This crosses my mind every time I talk to Hector. He drinks and he drinks and even when he takes a break, his sweat smells like sour beer. He carries the stench for days on end. He’s a performer. He pretends he wants to quit, but you guys know this is why he will die.

Who is most like dad? Am I a liar? You would all say yes, but we all lie to ourselves. I’m a dreamer. You can’t deny it. I can’t remember what kinds of stories I have made up about myself, but I can tell you that they all feel like the truth.

Letty had the audacity to tell me that I will regret more of my life than she will of hers. We fight every year. A family tradition! I want to tell her that I hate how she acts as though she’s better than me. I want to tell her how I could never love our mother or our father and there’s something that bothers me about that because I know this would never be a problem for her. She loves them in spite of their mess. She loves you, Dad. Even in your violence and your screams. Your temper betrayed you so many times. Temper sounds so tame in comparison to you.

How can you just sit there and watch TV while all of us burn, Dad? How could you leave us behind with all of the scars? How could you leave us like this? How could you ever expect any of your children to forgive you? To repent for you? I won’t do it. I won’t. I was never supposed to be a mother. I was never supposed to continue this treacherous lineage. You forced me to. You forced yourself onto us. You were a force and now you are nothing but a lazy figure in my imagination. If I ever go to your grave, I will spit on it. I will curse you even if it means cursing my own blood.

THE WOMAN WITH WHITE HAIR

The last time Isela wandered into The Inflorescence, there was an old woman floating inside. Her graying body was made of sturdy thick vines, fibrous roots, and burgundy muscle under the ash colored flesh. When she shifted her body from side to side, the sound of bells chimed. Her long white hair threaded itself into every part of the room, reflecting bright white light as though it were sunlit snow. Uneasy by the viejita's presence, Isela made an attempt to turn back quietly and flee, but she could not move an inch when the woman spoke to her. She froze in place as though she were tethered by her feet. Through telepathy and floating words written in smoke, the old woman spoke to Isela. She grabbed Isela by the chin and proclaimed to know Isela’s future. She pushed at the center of Isela's forehead with her slender pointer and middle fingers, nudging Isela's head back, and alleged she was one of Isela’s futures. She smiled at Isela with gray teeth, dashed behind her and then covered Isela’s eyes with her white hair. The old woman shushed Isela who had not said a word since stepping into The Inflorescence. She tapped her in the center of her forehead with her gray fingers three times. Isela saw herself laid out in White Sands National Park, taking in jagged breaths, surrounded by her own blood with drag paths of her appendages in four different directions. Her body sunk under the sand and her bones pulverized into glittering granules. Isela watched herself living alone in a dark home, succumbing to time. Glowing pink wet tumors cascaded inside of her lungs and up her throat like blooming mushrooms. Isela watched herself rotting into the floorboards of the house, a liquified version of her body being consumed by hawks and owls. Isela watched herself die in multiple ways. She was not amused or surprised, as death wasn’t something that scared her. She was annoyed. She narrowed her eyes at the viejita and stopped herself from spitting on her face. She was irritated by this woman who was trying to teach her a lesson. A lesson for what? The old woman was tickled by all of it. She cackled as tendrils of her hair wrapped themselves around Isela. Her hair slithered around Isela’s body like a spider’s webbing until Isela was smothered with her lips turning blue. The hair lifted her up and then unraveled her into a quiet empty room with four muddy walls and a window that gave her a view of the backyard. The walls creeped toward the center, shrinking the size of the room slowly, but surely. Ink cap mushrooms sprouted around her feet as she walked toward the open window. Ghosts waved at Isela. They could have been ancestors or more tormentors. Shadows and orbs of light flickered and swarmed the yard. Isela ignored them all and walked out of the room without saying a word.

BIRTH AND DESTRUCTION ARE THE SAME THING

Inside of The Inflorescence, Olivia finds herself surrounded by gargantuan roses. The flowers tower over her. Their thorns gleam and drip dew. Delicate shiny grass tickles her feet. The pleasant aromatics of the roses embrace Olivia’s face in soothing waves. A gentle breeze settles on the back of Olivia's neck. Olivia closes her eyes, breathes deep and looks around to revel in the moment.

Multicolored hybrids and iridescent roses glitter under the room’s light. The dome ceiling glows as sunlight pierces through pink and red stained-glass triangles. Sap lines the walls of the room. It sparkles and emits a sweet odor. Olivia lies on her back and buzzing riddles her ears, giving her goosebumps. Bumblebees hop from rose to rose shaking delicate yellow and orange pollen onto Olivia. The pollen fizzes on her tongue. It zaps her with a savory explosion of flavors. Olivia calls it an umami tsunami and swallows it down with hot tea which she saturated with lemon and honey.

She sets her ear to the ground listening for earthworms squirming underneath. Olivia digs for the shining worms and eats one. It tastes like petrichor. She gently places the others in her pockets although she knows they will die on their way out. Nothing growing inside of The Inflorescence can ever come out. It decays and turns into green ash.

Olivia housed her trinket collection in the room, in a far off corner which glitches on and off. Her trinkets are lined up like a tiny novelty army, hidden behind wide and speckled mojito elephant ears. They are joined by piles of books that Olivia carefully placed under fully bloomed ghost ferns.

When Olivia is inside of the Inflorescence, it’s as though Isela forgets about her, or perhaps Olivia doesn’t feel the need to tiptoe around. Olivia is free to move her body how she wants, she’s free to make ugly sounds with her body, to let her body be. She can say whatever she wants. She can scream her secrets. She can howl.

Olivia talks to the room as it shifts. There’s a moment when everything goes black between the changes. Silence in the void. Then, a darkness so deep in the trenches, Olivia questions her existence every time. Then, transformation. A hum. When The Inflorescence transforms from garden to forest to ocean water, Olivia holds conversations and spouts out secrets. She requests to speak to the spirits of the land. She demands warmth. The room responds through flowers or shrubbery or silhouettes of high-rise buildings made of neon flower petals and lanky moss. It brings in different species of butterflies and moths. Western tiger swallowtails. Comet moths. Malachite butterflies. Lime hawk-moths. Monarch butterflies.

It gives what Olivia interprets as gifts. She leaves pieces of herself behind as reciprocation. She cuts her hair and sprinkles it on the floor or she buries it in the earth. She cuts her nails and sticks the remnants of her hands into cracks in the walls. When she menstruates, she offers blood and the clots that drip down her legs. At one point, she found all of her baby teeth and left them in the rounded hollow of a twisting beech tree that sprouted in the room one morning. She leaves as much as she can offer of herself in the room.

When she leaves The Inflorescence, she loves to describe the ever-changing environment to the oak trees. The oak trees shake their leaves and explain that they can hear everything. The squirming and morphing of roots and matter. The crackling of a new ecosystem. It sounds like birth and destruction. Olivia argues that both are the same thing.

Inside of The Inflorescence, Olivia spins and dances and climbs impossible trees. She free falls from cliffs brimming with trilobite fossils. She digs into the earth and buries herself. She sleeps underneath and watches as her nails grow from keratin into spiraling translucent shells. Her hair turns to stringy white mycelium. Her muscles hollow out and melt into the soil. Her bones explode into a fine dust. When she reemerges from below the mossy floorboards of The Inflorescence, she’s slimy and shining and slick. In the fetal position on the ground, a neon yellow goo spews from her mouth. Olivia coughs until everything is out of her system.

A rebirth.

She stretches her limbs. She gathers some of the goo into her palms and buries it. A poppy bursts out. She understands. She will be able to escape soon. Her mother will stay behind and The Inflorescence will stay behind and the oaks will stay behind, but she can move forward. She can move forward without them.

LINEAGE IS NOT LINEAR

Olivia and Yvette drove down to El Paso to help Lucia move up to Santa Fe. They made plans over the phone. Olivia and Lucia agreed to live together as Lucia was going through a rough breakup and Olivia felt trapped with Isela. The move was drama-free minus Lucia’s ex, Ramona, showing up at Lucia’s apartment to beg for forgiveness. Ramona insisted she never cheated, it was only an emotional connection with a woman in her book club.

Olivia felt it was her sisterly duty to stand up for Lucia, so she threatened Ramona with a curse. If you ever come near my sister again, your hair will fall out until your scalp bleeds, the scabs on your head will turn to maggots, your teeth will fall out and your gums will rot, your blood will go sour and death will follow you, you will decay painfully and slow, and you will never find love again. Don’t show up uninvited. You aren’t welcome here.

Ramona apologized and promised to steer clear. Olivia smiled big and admitted she didn’t mean any of it, but it felt good to tell her off on behalf of her older sister. Lucia and Yvette applauded her thespian performance and then three seconds later, Lucia cried her eyes out. She cried because her heart was broken and she cried because she’d finally met her baby sister in person. They spoke on the phone all the time, but Olivia took a few years to muster the courage to finally leave her mother behind.

Lucia grabbed Olivia and hugged her tight. I love you so much. Olivia wept too and then Yvette continued the cycle. Their faces shimmered with tears. They bawled until they realized they were all very hungry. They ate flautas together and toasted each other with bottles of beer. Olivia admitted that she felt like a fledgling. Yvette assured her she was running past The Devil and The Tower toward The Sun.

Enjoy your beginning as a fool. Yvette held up a shot glass filled with tequila.

To becoming The Magician and then The Empress. Lucia held up her beer.

To a new beginning. Olivia kissed the tip of her beer bottle and they clinked their glasses to each other.

In Santa Fe, they lived in an adobe three-bedroom rental with Lucia’s black cat, Scully, and her little white fluffy dog, Gandalf. Scully was Lucia’s familiar and Gandalf was deemed the crusty king of the house. The sisters filled the house with framed art, scented candles, books, altars, and movie posters. All of Olivia’s animal trinkets were scattered on bookshelves and windowsills. It was a household meant to nurture creative hearts. Olivia imagined bright golden light surrounding the house and guarding it like a glittering forcefield. She spoke to the house spirits and the plant spirits and any animals that crossed her path around the house.

Lucia and Olivia hosted themed dance parties on Saturdays and went to flea markets on Sundays. They called Isabel on Tuesdays and Thursdays. For these sisterly phone calls, Olivia recorded what she called “character templates” on her digital camera. She asked strangers if she could film them and then politely asked them to tell her a secret. Some did, others sat in silence. Olivia concocted quirky and idyllic life stories for every person she interviewed and saved the most interesting ones for the conversations with Isabel.

Olivia and Lucia ate together every evening. They took turns cooking meals for one another. They took turns interrogating each other. The who, why, where, what about their lives. The living they did without each other. If Isela came up, usually on accident, the conversation turned quiet quick. Olivia would say oh my god I am so sorry and Lucia assured her not to feel the need to apologize for someone she wasn’t responsible for. Lucia looked like Isela the most of the three, but Olivia kept that thought to herself and never uttered a word about it. She saw her sister’s face as a reflection, a resplendence, a glimmer. In Lucia’s face, Olivia saw the potential for all of the light that Isela could have held.