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As a rule, Dolores does not frequent the church very often. Oh, she got plenty of reprimands through the years for dragging her feet and throwing her own, uncommonly quiet brand of tantrums, but she can’t help it. She has nothing against it as a place of worship, but she has a deep dislike of it as a building, with its great bells that rattle her ears and its walls that reflect voices back at her and multiply the chaos in an infinite game of mirrors.
Even Padre Flores does a terrible job of hiding his surprise at seeing her come here of her own volition, outside of Sunday mass and without the rest of the family right behind her.
“Dolores! What brings you here?”
“It’s…”
She never finishes the sentence, not because of the noise, but because she’s not sure what he would say of her unconventional prayer. Padre Flores gives her a knowing look. He must have seen his fair share of people carrying burdens too heavy to confess even to him.
“I’ll just leave you to it.”
Dolores slides into the nearest pew, unsure where to begin. She’s not even certain she should be turning to God for this, or if it would be more expedient to stay home and beg the candle on the windowsill. Her daughter’s birthday is approaching too fast for comfort, and for better or for worse, things will never be the same again.
Not for the first time, she wonders why the miracle has seen fit to bestow their gifts upon them at five. Not four, not six, and heaven forbid, not fifteen or twenty, when perhaps they would have been a little more equipped to handle them, but precisely at five. She can’t shake the feeling that it’s too soon, damn it all.
She was never able to pinpoint that so clearly before, but it’s different when you’re on the other side of the equation, watching your daughter’s life take a new course. Dolores just wants to put it off until she’s grown a little more. Not deny her a gift entirely, just… maybe postpone it until Celeste is no longer a tiny thing that risks being swallowed whole by the enormity of it.
She stares up at the large cross at the altar. She’s not here to pray for her daughter to get a gift: she’s had enough confirmation of that already. But the nature of it… please, if there really is an intelligent mind that willed all of this, let it be something that doesn’t weigh her down. Something that can be part of her life, but not the whole of it; something that won’t extinguish her light.
Dolores’s recollection of her own ceremony is forever etched in her mind, more vivid than such a distant memory has any right to be. The excitement, the anticipation, papá smoothing down her pretty dress because her mother was raining too much to come near her without ruining it, Abuela taking her aside to tell a carefully edited version of the story of how it all began. And then the tears.
The first thing Dolores did when her gift set in was cry, and she will go to the ends of the earth to beg for a do-over if any of her children do the same.
They have tried to guess what it might be, it’s an inevitable little game played many times over the years, but somehow, the answer is never quite what they hoped or assumed.
Celeste is the sort of child who never feels things by halves. She takes after her grandmother in that respect: when she is upset, woe betide whoever is on the receiving end of it, but when she is happy, everyone she meets can’t help but smile with her. And it takes so, so little to make her happy: just give her a box of crayons and she will entertain herself for ages, art spilling out of her in that wild, unfiltered way that only a child’s imagination is capable of. She has yet to master such things as giving the people in her pictures limbs of equal length, and her rendition of a capybara was closer to a lump with paws, but she bursts with pride at each attempt, always shoving it under the nearest adult’s nose to see what they think, and far be it from her to take that away.
Please, God, let her still have time for her pictures at the end of the day. If you’re there, if you’re as good as they say, grant her a gift that won’t make her smile less and less until they all forget what it looks like. Let it be something that she can call a blessing without hesitation, without the tiny catch in her voice that wonders if it’s really a curse.
Dolores isn’t exactly sure how long she spends there, kneeling until her joints grow stiff and whispering a litany of please that may or may not have reached its heavenly destination, but when she leaves the cool interior of the church for the bright sunlight outside, the weight pressing down on her feels a little lighter. If nothing else, she can say she has truly tried everything. Time to go home, they’ll be wondering where she disappeared to.
She takes her sweet time to stare at the front door before entering. The family portrait has grown with them, changing and shuffling to make room for the new generation; how much longer, she idly wonders, before it spills onto the walls for lack of space? Even as she takes a deep, steadying breath before stepping in, she can’t help but smile. She would bet good money on the first sound she will hear as she walks in.
“Mami’s back! Mami’s back!”
Here we go. Dolores loves those boys to pieces, honestly, but she dreads to think where her sanity would be without a large family to help wrangle them. Almost as soon as they were born, Mira got busy stitching initials onto nearly everything they owned, which has helped immensely up until now; but the trouble with a poncho is that it doesn’t take a tremendous amount of skill to get your head through a hole, and so they inevitably started swapping them, just for the simple pleasure of seeing how long it took everyone else to catch on.
But the age-old game of switching places is a recent discovery, and they haven’t quite worked out which adults will fall for it: to someone like her, who associates an entirely unique collection of sounds to everyone she knows, their little ruse is immediately obvious. Pedro shuffles his feet too much to ever hope to pass for his brother.
“Oh? Did you put on the wrong clothes this morning? Let me fix that for you.”
Their jaws drop to see their clever plan so easily foiled.
“You said—”
“No, you said—”
“Boys! Do you want me to get out Abuelo’s shirt again?”
Dolores is entirely too amused by the chorus of “No!” that ensues. She can’t quite remember how that started, but it’s been surprisingly effective: whenever they turn on each other, which is an all too common occurrence, you just wrestle them both into an old shirt of her father’s, one sleeve each, and wait until their squirming and shrieking turns to laughter and they’re suddenly getting along again.
They take after him so very much, not just in looks, but in how their identical smiles are rarely erased from their faces and quick to come back when they are; to hear him tell it, he didn’t cause quite so much trouble when he was their age, but by his own admission, he might have, if he’d had such an excellent partner in crime.
Dolores makes short work of reassigning the clothes to their rightful owners. They won’t stay there for long, but alas, a mother’s work is never done. Abuela catches her in the middle of adjusting Javier’s poncho and raises an eyebrow in a way that is slightly too amused to be disapproving.
“I’m going out to arrange for the music for Celeste’s party, I… see that you’ve got things handled here.”
Naming a boy after the one who’d started it all, Dolores reflects as she watches her go, was inevitable, but giving the name to one of a set of twins was a stroke of genius, if she does say so herself. For all that the matriarch of the family is trying to do better, it would be a lie to say they hadn’t feared the consequences. But this Pedro, the one who is very much alive and bringing mischief wherever he goes, has a very talkative shadow that won’t let Abuela make mistakes if he can help it: every second of attention bestowed on one must be followed by equal time spent with the other on pain of a tantrum, and every scolding has a tiny protector rushing to his rescue.
“All right, boys, let’s go find Cece, shall we?”
It never takes her long to find her quarry: specifically, Celeste is laughing and having a merry chase around Mirabel’s room, snatches of “Cece, stay still!” and “Catch me if you can!” filtering down from the upper floor.
The twins are all too happy to join in, running without knowing why and shrieking at the top of their lungs. Dolores grimaces privately. Getting them to understand the concept of being quiet is… a process. Celeste learned her lesson that ‘mami doesn’t like loud noises’ remarkably quickly, catching on to every wince and sigh, but the boys are a different matter entirely, probably because they’re constantly egging each other on, and if one forgets his indoor voice, the other will promptly follow.
Mirabel looks frazzled, her curls flying in every direction and a tape measure draped around her neck like some parody of a feather boa.
“You okay?”
“You try getting her measurements when she has decided that playing tag is more fun.”
“Her measurements? For…?”
“Yeah. You can’t get it done too early, kids just grow like weeds, it would have been short if I’d made it too far in advance.”
“Thanks, by the way. Knowing you’re taking care of the dress is… it’s one less thing to worry about.”
“De nada. Keeps my hands busy, you know.”
She bounces nervously on the balls of her feet, watching the kids run amok around the room. There’s a crack in her voice that you don’t need magical ears to hear.
“Mira.” Dolores catches her eye and hopes to God her words won’t make her even worse. “I have every faith in you. For the dress and… everything else.”
Mirabel lets out an odd little whine, half in fear and half in protest, as if the concept of being trusted were still a little alien after all these years.
“Why did I say yes, Lola?”
“Because it’s impossible to say no to Abuela?”
“True. Still can’t believe it was her idea.”
“She’s not immortal, Mira. As much as we hate to think about it, she’s… she’s just being sensible. Besides, aren’t you just going to… sort of stand there and take notes for next time?”
“It’s a little more than that.” There’s no heat in her correction; she’s staring ahead, not really watching Dolores or the children at all. “For one thing, everyone will be looking at us, and for another thing—”
She leaves the sentence hanging, sounding like she might be sick with worry if she says one more word. Dolores can’t blame her: if everything goes to plan, she will be standing by Abuela’s side, not watching and clapping with the rest of them, but committing every step of the ritual to memory and perhaps preparing to step up and lead it next time, when it’s the twins’ turn to open their doors. It would be enough to keep anyone up at night.
Dolores strongly suspects she knows where her line of thought was going, based on little tidbits she’s heard from the not-so-private sanctum of Abuela’s room. On the one hand, you can’t involve Mirabel in the proceedings and expect them to stay exactly the same: if there’s one thing her cousin does well, it’s change. On the other hand, however, suggesting to Abuela that the ceremony might need a little update resembles an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object.
“Ah forget it. Let me just—Cece, I swear, if you don’t come here and let me measure you right now, you’re going to be spending your birthday stark naked!”
The empty threat seems to be effective, and she drags her feet towards them, finally resigned to being maneuvered like a life-sized doll for however long it takes Mirabel to jot down the numbers she needs.
Everyone else has been calling it ‘the gifting’, ‘the ceremony’, or ‘the party’ at best; there are days Dolores could swear that she and Mirabel are the only ones who bother to remember that it also happens to be her birthday.
The days crawl by slowly. Mamá is biting her nails to the quick, bringing near-constant rain to the surroundings of their home, and Dolores catches herself shooting glances at the narrow empty spaces between the doors, wondering which one will be it.
“Keep her close, Casita, you hear me?”
She knows it’s irrational: first, the house doesn’t listen to anyone quite as much as it does Abuela or Mirabel, and second, even if Celeste’s new room ends up being clear across the courtyard from her own, it’s hardly on the other side of the world.
With three beds, the nursery is as crowded as it’s ever been, though Celeste’s side is starting to look rather sad. Packing her things away has been a gradual process involving more tears than anyone cares to admit; today is the day Dolores tackles her toys, weighing each in her hands and wondering which ones she can go without for a few days until they’re given their new rightful place.
“You want a hand with that?”
It’s impossible to be startled when the words are followed by a steady drizzle. Dolores has a hunch that her mother isn’t there only to help her with the toys, but hey, if she needs an excuse to talk about whatever’s causing a cloud to hover over her head, she’s only too happy to give her one.
“Yes, please.”
It takes all of three toys packed away for her mother to crack.
“What if it’s all over?”
“What do you mean?”
“What if Antonio was… you know…” the rain starts coming down heavier, and Dolores hurries to rescue Cece’s watercolors from the incoming calamity, “the last one?”
It takes a moment for her meaning to click, but before Dolores can say anything, she’s flooding her with words and water both.
“We just can’t know for sure. It’s the first one in the new house. What if it’s just over, what if the house, or… or the candle, or whatever it is that makes the decision, thinks we just don’t deserve it anymore after everything that happened? Everyone’s been taking it for granted, but it’s almost her birthday and her door isn’t here yet, and what if it just never shows up?”
Dolores is rather wishing for an umbrella. The rain is whipping their faces sideways by now, buffeted by a private wind that sends some of Cece’s latest pictures scattering.
Most notably – something pierces her heart when she sees it – there is one that is very obviously trying to depict Celeste standing next to her door. A rectangle with some semblance of a doorknob and a mess of yellow squiggles isn’t the best rendition, but the intention is clear. Most of the doors Cece usually draws are barely large enough for her little self-portraits to fit through; this one takes up almost the entire height of the sheet of paper.
“Mamá…”
“And why aren’t you worried?”
Any reassurance she can think to give her feels five years too late. Of all the things that have been keeping her up at night, the possibility of the gifts simply running out was not one of them, but now she questions the wisdom of keeping the reason for her certainty to herself all this time.
“Remember when I was pregnant with Cece, and Tío Bruno saw her in a vision? There was… a little bit more to it than accidentally calling her a she before we met her.”
Dolores’s hands fly to her ears as her mother cracks with thunder.
“And you said nothing? We were worried sick, Dolores, we have all been disgustingly nice to each other for weeks trying to prove God knows what, and you knew since before she was born? You and your secrets. You could have told us ages ago!”
Dolores shrinks in on herself. This feels like Tío Bruno’s return all over again: they will praise her to the heavens for being so good at keeping secrets, but God help her when she decides to keep the wrong ones.
“And what would you have done if I had? What would Abuela have done?”
That seems to stun her into silence. Dolores isn’t sure what she was expecting – apologies, maybe, or that particular brand of not-yelling anger that her kids somehow find more terrifying than any shouting – but it certainly wasn’t this.
“What do you mean?”
“I wanted the family to love my daughter for who she was, not for what she would be. Yes, I knew all along that she would have a gift, but I was afraid that if I told anyone, then her childhood would be spent waiting for it, preparing for the gift she would have and never even noticing the ones she already had. The only ones who know are Tío Bruno, Mariano and I. Lo siento, I should have realized the rest of you would worry, but I can’t bring myself to regret it.”
She’s almost out of breath by the end of it. It’s rare for her to talk so much without interruption these days, between her natural tendency to listen more than she speaks and three children who love nothing more than to fill every moment of relative silence with a running commentary on the world around them.
The shower of rain peters out to a few sparse drops as her mother takes it all in, and Dolores finds herself engulfed in a very wet hug. Outside the nursery window, the skies around Casita begin to clear for the first time in days.
Still, you’re never too certain. When Dolores goes to bed that night, she looks at the thin strip of wall on her right, then on her left, and doesn’t shut the door all the way.
“You’re not closing?” Mariano notices immediately. “What’s wrong? How are you going to sleep with the noise?”
“I’ll manage, somehow. It’s just… Cece’s door should be coming in any day now, and I want to hear it when it happens.”
“Oh. Wait, does the magic even make noise?”
“Maybe it doesn’t, but the house sure will.”
The first night is silent, if by ‘silent’ you mean the symphony of slow, slumbering breaths coming from the other rooms. Something stirs at about midnight and she jumps, but it’s just her brother with his bottomless pit of a stomach tiptoeing downstairs to seek a nightly snack.
The second night starts exactly the same, with the slightest stirring right outside. Probably just the little noises of an old house, a living house that might be stretching as it settles down for the night for all she knows. But then the soft noise turns into a cacophony of groans and clacks and bumps, and she’s running barefoot out of the room without a thought.
The thing about creating a new door is that it takes work. The landing under her feet vibrates as it grows in waves and waves of tiles that weren’t there a second ago, their pattern blending in as if they’d always existed; the railing strains to replicate itself, sealing in the new expanse of floor; the painting that used to conceal the entrance to Bruno’s hideout seems to inch away from its place next to her door as more empty wall space blooms between them.
“Hmm? What’s going—you’ve got to be kidding me.”
Bleary-eyed and tousle-haired, Mariano joins her on the landing to stare in confusion at the new arrangement, like perhaps he stumbled into the wrong room earlier tonight (or is it yesterday already?).
“Sorry for waking you.”
“Worth it.”
It starts from the very bottom, a twinkle where the wall meets the landing that you might mistake for something shiny dropped on the floor and forgotten, and then it crawls upwards ever so slowly, a beacon shimmering into existence in the night. Dolores guesses at the shape of the doorframe as it comes into being, only releasing her breath when the beam overhead completes it, and stares in renewed wonder at the added piece of their everyday miracle. The doorknob – she doesn’t touch it, nobody touches it but the person it’s meant for – is emblazoned with a C, and the rest… well, the rest is still unwritten. She is momentarily mesmerized by the shifting patterns of light, her stomach swooping in the face of this tiny slice of infinite potential that will only settle into a shape at her daughter’s touch.
And then, as it always does these days, practicality takes center stage again. They’ve got a whole day ahead of them, and the better part of the next, for Celeste to stare at it and be told not to touch it. Dios los ayude, why did the magic ever think it was a good idea to test the patience of a five-year-old?
Mirabel is the first one up and about. Usually, she would be humming a tune under her breath as she raps on everyone else’s doors to start the day, but she doesn’t seem to be in the mood. All Dolores hears is… counting?
“… eight, nine, ten… ay, it showed up.”
Mirabel takes a long, deep breath and whistles as hard as her lungs allow. It leaves her positively rattled, but she can’t find it in her heart to blame her.
“Hey! It’s here!” she shouts, stomp-stomp-stomping around the upper floor with gleeful running footsteps. “Wake up, everyone! Cece’s door showed up! Last one to see it does the dishes for a week!”
That seems to jumpstart the day faster than her usual methods. Slam, slam, slam go the doors, and Dolores drags herself out of bed, her hopes for a quiet morning shattered.
The chitchat as they all make their way downstairs is brimming with excitement.
“I forgot how beautiful it was,” says mamá, all rainbows. “It’s been so long since we had a new one.”
“Place your bets, people, last chance to guess!” says Camilo. “Except a certain someone who isn’t allowed to bet.”
“Ah, shut up, camaleón, it’s a surprise for everyone, I swear.”
“We need to talk about the decorations,” Isabela pitches in, spilling flowers in her wake half in happiness and half in practice. “What colors do you want on your banner, chiquita? I need to match.”
“‘S too hard to choose! I want all of them!”
“You have seven letters, Cece, not seven million.”
Dolores can practically see the gears turning in her little head. She looks up at the dazzling display above her grandmother’s head and concludes: “I’ll just make it a rainbow!”
They all try their best to keep it up over breakfast, but as reality sets in, there’s a quality to it like cracked glass that’s about to shatter. Celeste is pushing her food around more than eating it, her eyes on the tense looks being traded back and forth across the table rather than on her plate.
“Nervous?” Dolores asks softly.
Celeste shakes her head and makes a show of eating a large mouthful, but she’s never been the best liar.
“I was nervous too,” pipes up Antonio, whose memory of it is the freshest. He nudges one of his coatis (no amount of ‘no coatis at the table’ has ever truly worked), which promptly clambers into her lap, drawing out a smile. “It’s going to be amazing, Cece, I promise, and we’ll all be there to cheer for you.”
Mirabel puts her fork down with a gentle clink.
“Yeah, about that… it’s tomorrow night, Abuela, we really need to talk.”
Abuela sighs minutely, as if this were something they’ve been over a thousand times—which, to be fair, they probably have. They’ve both been rather cryptic about it and Dolores has only caught snatches, but her stomach twists with worry to know that they haven’t yet reached a conclusion.
“It has served us well for decades, Mirabel, I see no reason to—”
“No reason? I can’t believe you.” She doesn’t yell, but – Dolores can hardly believe herself for entertaining the thought – perhaps it would have been less terrifying if she had.
She pushes her breakfast away without finishing it and leaves in a huff, pointedly ignoring the several voices gasping and calling after her. No matter how much things have changed, nobody leaves in the middle of a conversation with Abuela like that. Celeste watches her go with wide, fearful eyes. Mirabel is always so full of smiles and cheer that she may never have seen her so angry in the entirety of her short life.
“Why is she mad, mamá?”
“Don’t worry, mi vida, you didn’t do anything wrong. She just has some grown-up things to sort out.”
Even with her ears, she’s not sure what her cousin is doing as the others try and fail to finish the meal as if nothing had happened. Usually, this is the part where she would hear rustling fabric and the rapid clatter of the sewing machine as Mirabel lets out her frustration by throwing herself into a project, but all she catches is her feet running up the stairs, her door slamming, and then the scratch of a pen on paper.
Celeste watches the dark cloud growing over her grandmother’s head, squirming in discomfort all the while, and is out of there before she’s even properly swallowed the last of her food. Dolores follows suit: she doesn’t even need to listen for her to know where to find her.
Predictably, she is sitting cross-legged in the middle of the landing, staring up at her shimmering door. From her position down on the floor, it must look about as tall as the one in her picture.
“Are you okay?”
Cece doesn’t even turn to look at her. She’s about to repeat herself a little louder, thinking she perhaps misjudged her hearing again, when her daughter finally shakes herself out of her reverie and acknowledges her existence.
“I don’t like it when people are mad.”
“I know, sweetie.”
Her heart goes out to her: she’s always been a sensitive child, perhaps too much for her own benefit, gravitating naturally towards smiles and laughter and despising nothing more than being forced to sit in a room full of people in a foul mood. She can only imagine that everyone else’s nerves are amplifying her own tenfold.
“Is Mira mad about tomorrow?”
For the first time, Celeste turns her eyes towards her rather than the door, and she hates to find them so full of sadness and doubt. Dolores folds her legs underneath her to join her on the floor.
“Well, tomorrow is a very important day, and everyone’s a little nervous—even the grown-ups.”
Celeste falls into silence, contemplating the door a little longer, making no sound other than the natural stirrings of her body that only Dolores can hear.
“Mami, does it hurt?”
Her breath falters. Please, let her be asking anything other than what she thinks she’s asking.
“Does what hurt?” she says in a last-ditch effort to convince herself that she misinterpreted the question.
“When you get your gift.”
In that single moment, Dolores hates it all, the miracle and herself. What sort of example has she been giving, that that’s what her mind immediately flies to? Despite… everything, tomorrow should be something to look forward to. Has she been dreading it, watching her struggle with her own gift and fearing the same for herself, while Dolores blithely moved on and missed the obvious signs? Dios, she is the worst mother on Earth.
“Not when you open the door,” is as honest an answer as she can give her. “That’s a little like…”
Dolores fumbles. Good luck describing that in terms a five-year-old can understand. Explaining the world to a child requires enough verbal acrobatics without throwing magic into the mix.
“Remember when your abuelita made it snow and we all went out for a snowball fight?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“And do you remember how cold your hands were, and how nice it was to get back inside and warm them in front of the fire?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, it feels a little like that.”
Celeste relaxes minutely, and Dolores counts that as a win.
“I’m scared, mami. I can’t wait for tomorrow, but I’m scared too.”
“It’s okay to be scared, Cece. It’s not just any old birthday, after all.”
“What do you think my gift will be?”
“Nobody knows. We’re just going to have to find out tomorrow. But whatever it is, it’s going to be the right one for you, and that’s all that matters.”
“But what if I don’t like it?”
“I think you will. And even if you don’t like it at first, every gift has some good and some bad in it. All you have to do is find the good parts. Come on, up you get. We’re blocking traffic, and you’ve got a banner to paint.”
Mirabel (how does she find the time?) prepared the outline, just so that the letters spelling out Celeste’s name wouldn’t be too lopsided, but the birthday girl absolutely insisted on doing her own coloring, and it’s better to do it today than to risk splashing paint all over her pristine white dress tomorrow. Although, Dolores thinks fondly as she watches her throw herself into the task, that might be a better representation of who she is.
Watching her daughter draw or paint is exactly Dolores’s definition of a win-win situation. It is without the shadow of a doubt the time when Cece is at her happiest, and she is so wholeheartedly focused on it that, more selfishly, it also happens to be the time she is the quietest.
She is on the first E (it is rather a lot of Es, isn’t it? No wonder it was the first letter she mastered), for which she chose a rather eye-watering shade of orange, when a sound from downstairs, the kind of sound that only she would notice from all the way up in the nursery, catches her attention. It’s a thwap like paper being slapped down with purpose on the kitchen table, followed by a soft gasp.
“You took notes?” Abuela sounds utterly bewildered, a rarity coming from her usual, unflappable self.
“Of course I did. You didn’t think I was serious about this, did you?” When Dolores says she can hear the eye roll in Mirabel’s words, she means it a little more literally than most people.
“It’s not that I didn’t think you were serious. I just… failed to see what you were serious about. I have given the same speech at every gift ceremony for decades, Mirabel, and I thought all I would be doing tomorrow was passing it on to you, exactly as it is. But after what happened at breakfast, I had to wonder if this was just another case of falling back into old habits. Of… assuming I knew best, and not listening.”
From two different rooms, Mirabel and Dolores let out the same exhalation, as if the force of Abuela’s words had knocked the wind out of them. This… this is big. Even if it leads to talking in circles and not changing a single comma of the speech in the end, it is a step in a new direction.
“So will you hear me out, at least? We don’t have to make all of the changes. I’m just throwing around ideas, not starting a revolution.”
“Show me.”
There’s a sound of paper being pushed along the wooden surface, then a long, breathless moment that even Dolores can’t decode. Abuela is not reading out loud; the best she gets is the occasional finger tapping on a particular point in her cousin’s apparently copious notes, but no clue of what’s in them, until…
“You didn’t change this part.”
She sounds… surprised? Relieved? Perhaps – is she imagining it? – a little bit proud? Dolores is adept enough at reading feeling in people’s voices, but she dearly wishes she were downstairs to see her face.
“Why would I? I’m okay – I’m more than okay – with remembering how it started, Abuela. I was never going to throw that away.”
“Thank you.”
They’re both more than a little choked up by this point, but they push through.
“It’s… well, it’s the rest of it that needs a little sprucing up. All that stuff about serving the community? Abuela, that’s beautiful, and I’m not even saying it isn’t true, but… ‘serve’ is a strong word.” Mirabel pauses, her heart picking up speed. “It makes it sound more like a punishment than a gift, if I’m being honest.”
Abuela sucks in a sharp breath. “I—well. What do you propose, then?”
Mirabel runs a finger along the paper, showing her something Dolores will never be privy to.
“I… have options. Like, half a dictionary’s worth of options.”
If she hadn’t heard it with her own ears, Dolores wouldn’t believe it—was that a chuckle?
“You really thought this through, didn’t you?”
“Yeah. But I like ‘help’. Sometimes the simplest one works best. We’re part of the community, Abuela. And yeah, we—most of us might be able to help more because of the magic, but everyone chips in. We saw that with the rebuilding. We help, not because we have some kind of debt to pay off,” Abuela draws in a breath to object, but seems to think better of it, “but because it’s what’s best for everyone, including ourselves.”
“I… I like that. But what’s all the rest of it?”
“That’s the part I’m less sure about. I couldn’t help but notice how the speech doesn’t say a word about using your gift in a way that you like. Not just for the Encanto, but… like Isa makes plants for the sake of learning about them sometimes, not because someone needs them, or how mamá has been experimenting with new recipes because it’s fun, instead of just relying on the same two or three easy things that she can churn out tons of for the village. But I don’t know how to say it.”
She huffs in frustration, drumming her fingers on the table as Abuela takes it all in.
“Mami, do you like my rainbow?”
And just like that, Dolores’s attention whips back to Celeste, who has made quite a bit of progress on her banner, taking extra care to stay within the lines.
“It’s beautiful, Cece. You could give your abuelita a run for her money.”
The first thing that pulls her from sleep is the noise. The second is a little extra weight scrambling up onto the mattress in the soft light of the early morning. The door is open just a crack, letting in the sounds of the slowly awakening world, and Celeste is trying and failing to burrow into her side without waking either of them up. Even at five, she should know better: it’s impossible to sneak up on her.
“Feliz cumpleaños, Cece,” she whispers in the semi-darkness, just in case nobody else says it all day, consumed as they are by what’s coming tonight.
Beside her, Mariano wakes with a groan. “What time is it?”
“Early. But we have a special guest.”
“Go back to bed, Cece. Waking up early won’t make it come faster.”
“But I can’t sleep, papi.”
“Leave it be, Mariano. We were all up before the sun on our day, it’s a time-honored tradition.”
“Can’t we make a new tradition? Like sleeping in?”
“Too late. But…” Dolores clumsily maneuvers the birthday girl to be between them, “I won’t say no to an extra birthday snuggle.”
Celeste giggles as they sandwich her in a double-sided hug, and they lie there in sweet almost-silence, taking turns running their fingers through her nest of hair, until Mirabel’s round of wake-up calls officially starts the big day. Usually, the repetitive motion would send Cece right back to dreamland, but this time, she’s understandably wide awake.
The day passes in a whirlwind of preparations, and for Celeste in particular, an endless list of nos.
“No, sweetie, you can’t help me with the food, you’ll get your dress dirty.”
“No, chiquita, I don’t know where your crayons are, I think they’re already packed up.”
“No, you don’t touch the door early, you only get to do it tonight.”
By lunchtime, she’s hidden away in the half-stripped nursery in a monumental sulk.
“All of my other birthdays were more fun. And I’m not hungry.”
“Come on, Cece, you have to come down and eat something. I know it hasn’t been much of a birthday so far, but I promise you, tonight is going to be the best one ever. And if I were you, I wouldn’t go get my gift on an empty stomach.”
By the time she’s successful in persuading her, which may or may not have included bribing her with a new set of paints, the food has gone cold, and Isabela is despairing over the twins, who apparently tried to use her carefully crafted decorations to swing off the railing like little monkeys, giving half the family a heart attack and only being rescued from disaster by the swift intervention of Casita.
Between the boredom, the mounting nerves, and everyone watching her white dress like hawks in case of any spills, the real miracle is getting Celeste to eat a proper lunch. But eat she does, eventually, and the natural-born entertainers take on the task of passing her around until seven o’clock approaches, plying her with impossible faces to make her laugh and carefully edited rat telenovelas with less scandal than usual.
Then, all of a sudden, wood groans and clatters as Casita simply grows a new set of stairs, and Abuela clears her throat to interrupt the latest play right at the climax.
Like Tío Bruno with his stories, she takes care to steer around the worst of it: Dolores listens hungrily, and the tale is the same as always, the one that says it all except the word ‘death’. The infectious chatter and song of the early party-goers is closing in, Cece is peppering Abuela with questions like only a five-year-old can, and bump-clang-bump, there goes Casita and its obsession with punctuality. It’s time.
Already, there’s a heaviness to Celeste’s steps that wasn’t there before, and Dolores would give anything for the gift of turning back time. But time, unless the miracle has any surprises, only trudges forward, demanding one last hug before she goes.
“Oh, Cece, you look like an angel.”
And she does. An angel who is seconds away from throwing up, probably, but an angel nonetheless, with ribbons in her hair and hands that can’t quite stay still. Dolores is biting back the tears, knowing full well how she hates them, but she can’t help getting a little misty-eyed.
“See you at the door,” says Mariano. Celeste gives a stiff little nod, like that was exactly the right thing to say and the last one she wanted to hear.
Even Javier and Pedro are on their best behavior, squeezed tight into their Sunday clothes and content with a round of high fives, and isn’t that a little miracle in itself?
The party has well and truly started now, the crowd exchanging small talk and playful bets on the gift to come that fill Dolores’s head almost to bursting, and before she knows it, everyone’s taking their assigned places.
Mirabel ascends the staircase a little ahead of them, a shade paler than she should be in the twinkling light of the myriad candles and sparklers that brighten up the night. She stands stock still at the door, almost managing to hide her shaking, eyes fixed on Abuela as she climbs just high enough to address the crowd from above, holding the candle aloft for all to see. The words wash over Dolores, painfully familiar, reminding them once again of how the miracle came in their darkest moment. She can see what’s left of Abuela’s generation nodding along somberly; it doesn’t have quite the same impact on those who weren’t there, but it is a story they’ve all heard a thousand times.
And then, incredibly, she falters, just enough for the murmurs to start, and straightens her regal back another fraction as she audibly changes course.
“… and the greatest honor of our family has been to use our blessings to—to help this beloved community. Tonight, we come together once more as another steps into the light... to make us proud.”
Mirabel releases the fist she’d been clenching. The crowd explodes, and it is only for her daughter’s sake that Dolores adds her own soft claps to the burst of cheering and applause instead of shielding herself from it all.
Click-click-click-click. The tiles flip over in great waves to play at being a red carpet, and in the breathless hush of the gathered audience, Dolores can hear Cece swallowing hard. One step. Two. Three.
And she’s here, and Dolores’s whole world narrows down to Mariano’s supportive hand at her waist as they both watch her wide-eyed face. She’ll breathe properly when it’s over, maybe. For now, her lungs seem to have taken a vacation.
“Will you use your gift to honor our miracle? Will you help this community and strengthen our home?”
This one comes more smoothly than the first. Any second now, she will bend down to offer Celeste the candle… except that she doesn’t, and instead turns the smallest degree to address Mirabel while still keeping a watchful eye on the townsfolk below, and her cousin’s eyes go wider than Cece’s, heart hammering in her chest in a blind panic.
She shapes a terrified “No” with her lips, and Abuela narrows her eyes in that familiar way that brooks no argument. What good is hearing everything when those two are perfectly capable of having a whole conversation with barely a sound?
Mirabel lets out a shaky breath and crouches down to Celeste’s level, a stark contrast to Abuela’s tall, stern presence. The crowd erupts into murmurs.
“And… will you use your gift to be the best version of yourself, whoever that may grow up to be?”
There’s a peculiar look in Abuela’s eyes as she rises, something soft that Dolores hasn’t seen in a while, and finally, the moment comes. She bows down in turn, just enough for Cece’s hands to reach the candle as she nods her earnest agreement to her vows, then steps back to let her bridge the last of the distance to her door.
Celeste stares at her hands the whole time, only remembering what she’s supposed to do with a sweet, unbearable moment of delay, and then grabs the doorknob like her life depends on it.
A small hiss like a lit fuse inching its way to a firework, and the door flares with blinding light. Cece’s eyes go wider than ever.
She turns to face her, and she just stares, rendered speechless by whatever magic is churning inside her for the first time. It is not her eyes she’s seeking, Dolores notes with some worry, but a point just above her head, as if seeing something she cannot.
But she isn’t crying. For a single moment of blessed relief, that’s all Dolores can think. Celeste isn’t crying, and that means she’s already doing better than she ever had.
Cece turns to face the assembled townsfolk, and her jaw drops. Dolores knows what she’s about to say as soon as her lips part, and she latches onto the familiar spot of green in the crowd that is Tío Bruno, watching him watch her, waiting for it.
“It’s beautiful.”
With a final burst of light, the image on the door settles, and it’s… unlike anything Dolores has seen before. Her first impression is that the engraved portrait of Celeste is standing wreathed in flames, not in pain, but looking serenely outward, her eyes wide open, her arms spread somewhat apart as if trying to embrace whoever happens to look.
But there was no fire, was there? If Celeste’s gift has to do with flames, they should have seen some by now. Going by the look on Abuela’s face, she is no closer to understanding, but she quickly puts on her practiced smile.
“We have a new gift!”
The crowd cheers once more, and Cece opens her door without needing to be told twice.
It’s… more than an ordinary bedroom, less than a living slice of rainforest. The ins and outs of it, Dolores is certain, will need some figuring out. The first thing that catches her attention is the cheerful spread of mismatched pillows and plush armchairs, a parlor of sorts, lit from above by bright yellow beams that all swivel as one to put Cece in a dazzling spotlight. The second is that the place smells overwhelmingly like paint. Dios, Casita really knows her little girl too well.
The sitting area is cocooned on either side by great sweeping staircases, and as her gaze follows them to the upper level, Dolores can’t help but break into a grin. Standing on a collection of uneven platforms that must be staying up half on stilts and half by magic is Celeste’s proper bedroom, though calling it a bedroom is a generous thing—it’s more of an art studio with a bed and a wardrobe thrown in as an afterthought. Everyone under the age of ten, however, has already latched onto the main attraction: a sturdy pole that pierces clean through the highest landing, in case Cece ever feels like skipping the stairs entirely as she gets out of bed.
“Mami, look, it’s so pretty!”
Celeste doesn’t seem to have figured out yet that whatever she’s pointing at, Dolores sees only empty air.
“What do you see, chiquita?”
Celeste stares at her own hand as her face falls a little in realization, seemingly admiring some change that is utterly invisible to everyone else.
“There’s colors everywhere, mami, can’t you see? Around me, you, everybody. You’re yellow, but a little bit purple too, and I just turned grey because… oh. Oh! I know! I turned grey because I was sad that you couldn’t see it, but now I’m mostly yellow again.” Celeste giggles. “We match!”
That… made very little sense, but Cece has already gone on to chatter a mile a minute, describing a world of colors that exist only in her eyes and completely forgetting that it’s rude to point. She only stops when her mad rush through the swelling crowd has her bumping headfirst into Señor Rendon, the donkey farmer, and staring with wide, sad eyes at something that isn’t quite his face.
“What’s wrong, Señor?”
“Nothing, niña. Why would anything be wrong? It’s your party! Go… go do your thing!”
“You’re so grey it’s almost black, Señor. That’s not nothing.”
By now, everybody within earshot – she always has trouble estimating how far that is – has turned to stare at the unlikely pair. Abuela, in particular, is watching Celeste hungrily, her eyes full of pride and her head full of a thousand imagined consequences.
“I—what—vaya, you’re another one of those that know everything, aren’t you?”
There’s no anger in it, just an odd sort of resignation, like that’s as much a part of life as his donkeys regularly making a bid for freedom.
“Fine. One of my donkeys gave birth this morning and—and the foal didn’t make it. I have no idea how you knew, but there you have it.”
He is swarmed by ‘I’m so sorry’ and ‘why didn’t you say anything?’ in seconds, and Celeste walks away as if she had done nothing more extraordinary than give the man a sympathetic pat on the back.
Something clicks. Dolores might have figured it out, and it’s fitting in the strangest, most beautiful way she could possibly imagine.
“Cece, over here!”
She comes running, deviating from her beeline only to give a wide berth to a man who is apparently too red for her liking.
“Celeste, I think… Dios mío, that’s not a sentence I thought I’d ever say, but… I think you can see feelings.”
“Mm-hmm.” She’s almost smug, like she’s ready to clap back with a ‘took you long enough’.
“And I couldn’t think of anything that suits you better than that,” says Abuela, her face a picture of wonder and relief and pride and something else she can’t quite put her finger on. She wonders what a mess of colors her daughter would describe.
“Can you draw what you see, Cece?”
“That’s an excellent idea, Dolores, but she can do that after the picture,” Abuela decrees.
And if she visibly does a mental head count before the photo is snapped, if she pulls and pushes and maneuvers people into place with gentle touches to make sure everybody fits into the increasingly crowded frame, well, they know better than to say anything.
“Well, I have only one thing left to say. An occasion such as this deserves a fitting celebration. ¡A bailar!”
The proclamation is met with whoops and cheers, and Dolores tries, really, she does, especially with papá and Mariano making it their mission in life to pull her into another round and another and another until her feet start protesting, but there comes a point – it always comes – when the music becomes less a pleasant background and more a steady hammer in her head, and her steps falter, and she’s piling up excuses and looking for a socially acceptable way out.
“Is it too loud, mami? Your colors look really nasty.”
“Guess there’s no way to hide it from you now, huh?”
“Come upstairs with me, I’ll show you what I see.”
They make their way to the upper level hand in hand, and Dolores frankly cannot tell if the gesture is meant for Celeste’s safety or for her own comfort.
As they pick their slow way through the increasingly tipsy crowd, Dolores notices a curious thing: while the lights in the parlor are still bathing the dancers in bright oranges and yellows, shifting the spotlight almost as if they knew who wants to be seen, a single beam makes a paltry attempt at chasing her with a cool, soothing shade of blue that she hadn’t even known it was capable of, stopping only when it senses her discomfort with being stared at.
“Huh. That was a new one. I think you’ll have a lot of fun figuring out your room.”
This part of the room is perhaps a fraction quieter, if only because of the distance, with the most noise coming from the endless cycle of children running up the stairs and shrieking their way down the pole and back again, and Cece is only now starting to realize the extent of her new place and just how much she can do in it.
It’s a little unusual, Dolores supposes, to steal away the birthday girl in the midst of her own party, but Cece looks more animated up here with her new art supplies than down there being gawked at by a crowd of townspeople more than three times her age.
She sets to work immediately, and the picture, at least, solves the mystery of what the apparent flames etched on her door really are: the shapeless strokes of color she adds around her lopsided human figures look almost exactly like her attempts to draw fire, but they come in greys and greens and purples and just about every color in the box of crayons.
It isn’t long before someone comes up, but to her relief, that someone happens to be Mirabel, who’s more likely to join them than to drag them back downstairs by their ears (not literally).
“Oh? Is that… Cece, is that how you see people now?”
“Yeah.”
Mirabel tilts her head curiously, taking a long moment to examine the drawing, her imagination working a mile a minute.
“Like mother, like daughter. How do you translate that into stitches?”
“Planning her outfits already? You’ll figure it out tomorrow, Mira, you deserve a break. Especially after… that.”
No need to specify what she’s talking about. Dolores gets the sense that what happened at the door was not supposed to play out quite the way it did, and the little tells of Mirabel’s body kick in just thinking about it.
“¡Ni que lo digas! She almost gave me a heart attack! I don’t know what she was thinking, Lola, I—”
“You did amazing, Mira. We wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. Right, Cece?”
Before she can throw her very enthusiastic opinion into the mix, Celeste yawns. It’s probably long past her bedtime, and she’s asking for nothing better than for Dolores to tuck her into her new bed. Any considerations about her gift, or the true miracle of Abuela going off script, can wait until tomorrow.