Buttercup

I live in Texas, on the border of Mexico. Our town is almost all Hispanic people. My family and I are some of the few gringos here. But that's okay. I like that better anyway.

We celebrate all their holidays and we eat all sorts of good Hispanic foods and learn about the culture in our schools. We go over to our friend's house and get hit with sandals because we didn't do our homework or clean up after ourselves. But that's okay. I like it better that way.

I like being around people who are different than me. It makes me feel less alone, in a way. It's hard to explain. Everyone's different and I like it that way.

We moved here after my mom died. She had lung cancer. By the time we caught it, it was too late and she was already gone. She fought it for a while. I think that maybe she only fought for our sake. She knew it was useless and we knew it too. But it's easy to fall into despair without hope, and I suppose she knew that. My dad couldn't raise three girls on his own, with no one to help him, and I suppose she knew that too.

In the end, he never had much choice. After she was gone, he couldn't stand our house anymore. It was too empty, it was like everything that made it home was gone. Maybe Mom was our home. That would make sense.

Everywhere he went reminded him of her. Bald and weak and pale and dying. The green of our lawn reminded him of the green paint in the hospital room, our car horn reminded him of her heart monitor and the way it slowly dropped to nothing. He hated everything. I think he might have hated us.

I have a suspicion that he still hates us. I know he loves us, and deep down somewhere he knows it too, but we are each a spitting image of our mother. I look the most like her. He hates me the most.

My sisters, Isabel and Miranda, each inherited bits of her. Pieces of who she was, her eyebrows, her lips, her forehead. I inherited her. My face looks like hers. My eyes are her eyes, my cheeks are her cheeks. My hair is her hair.

My dad doesn't talk to me much anymore. I know he is still depressed. I don't blame him. We all are. But it hurts the most for him. And I understand. I don't have to go every day seeing the ghost of my dead wife in my youngest daughter. And I don't have to go through the pain and guilt of hating my own flesh and blood because looking at her hurts me more than anything else.

If I ask him, he'll deny it. I know he will. But it doesn't matter what he says because I know he does. And I don't blame him, not for one second, even though it hurts me.

My oldest sister, Isabel, took over as a parent. My dad is almost always working and never home, and when he is, he locks himself in his bedroom. I try to stay out of his way as much as I can because every time he sees me, he is shocked. And after he is shocked, he starts to cry. I'd rather just give him what little peace of mind that my absence can provide.

Isabel comes home from school and she cooks and she cleans and she pays the bills and does everything else that Dad can't bear to do, and Mom isn't here to do. I miss her. I miss her like I would miss air if I was suffocating. I miss her with such full completeness that my heart screams her name with every beat. She used to call me buttercup. It was her nickname for me since I was born. I loved it, even though I pretended that I didn't. Being without her is so hard that it physically hurts.

But I do my best, we all do. I do my best for my dad and my sisters. I do my best because I have to.

We are nearing a year in this little farming town. Soon it will be Dia De Los Muertos, day of the dead. We are being taught about it in my history class. It's supposed to be the one day of the year where the dead can interact with the living. All of my friends swear up and down that it's true and that your ancestors actually come back to see you. I can't tell if they're bullshitting me or not but it doesn't matter. Deep down, in some part of me, I hope it's true. I hope that I can see my mother again, even just for a moment, and tell her that I am doing my best. That I am trying, for her.

My closest new friend, Delfina Carbolla, tells me that there is a huge party going on tomorrow to celebrate the holiday. She says the guy I like, Oscar Costa, is going. She asks me if I will go with her. I said maybe, but I won't.

Maybe last year's me would have taken her up on her offer. Gone out, gotten drunk, and kissed Oscar. But the me from right now, the lonely me, the sad me, says otherwise. I will stay home and cry for hours, falling asleep to the sound of my dad crying across the hall.

Our house is rank with grief. I can smell it when I walk in the front door. It's almost a tangible thing, something you could touch or taste. The house itself doesn't seem big enough to house all the emotions inside of it. Isabel is cooking dinner. It looks like baked macaroni and cheese. She knows this night will be hard, so she makes comfort food. She is a senior, and really should be out partying and having fun. But she isn't stupid and she knows our family needs her more than a party does.

Miranda won't be home for another hour. The middle school goes an hour later than Central High, and she has to walk home. Isabel asks me how my day was and how Delfina and Oscar are. I say fine, like I always do, and head to my room. There is a delicate trust between us. She doesn't pry about my day or my feelings, and I pretend not to see her puffy red eyes or the wetness on her cheeks.

My night goes slowly. I wrap myself in blankets on my bed and rock slowly back and forth. It takes a while for the sadness to really hit. Then I cry, and I cry a lot. I know that Miranda and Isabel can hear me, but that's part of the trust. We know, but we don't talk about it. Maybe it's unhealthy, but it's all we know how to do.

At dinner, Dad still isn't home. He'll be home by seven, so I make sure to be in my room and through with dinner by then. I don't want to risk running into him randomly or being out there while he makes a plate for himself. This dynamic between the four of us is fragile, and I am the very last one who wants to break it.

I can't sleep and there's no use trying. I have nightmares, bad ones, about my mom in her cold room with her cold hands and that goddamn heart monitor as it slowly stops beeping. I was there, in the room, when she died. We all were. She called us in because I think she knew it too, and tried to say something to us, but all she got out were a couple mumbled words in Dad's ear. He won't tell us what she said.

I watched while my mother stopped breathing, at thirty-eight years old. She was too young. It might not seem like it, but she was too young. I watched while they tried to resuscitate her twice, no, three times. I watched her eyes go dull and unseeing. I watched her soul flee this world. I watched her leave us here by ourselves.

There are some things that you don't come back from. I think this was one of them.

Eventually, I get tired of crying. I fall asleep.

---

I wake at midnight. Exactly, on the dot, according to my alarm clock. The phone in the kitchen is ringing. I don't know who exactly would call at this hour, but I am the first one up to go get it. I hear my siblings and Dad stirring from their beds to go answer it, but I whisper to each of their doors that I'll get it and I hear them fall softly back to sleep.

I half walk, half stumble down the hallway towards the kitchen. I intend to give whoever this is a piece of my mind for waking us at this time of the night, and I pick up the phone rather angrily. I am tired and sad, and those two things are not a fun combination.

"Hello?" I snap harshly at the phone. There is nothing for a few seconds, just a crackly static. And then there is a soft voice on the other end, one I know as well as my own.

"Hi, buttercup." It is my mother.

I think I start to cry.

---

I hiccup through my tears and answer her.

"Mm...mom?"

"Hi, sweet girl." I start to sob harder. This is a dream. A dream, and I'm going to wake up soon so I should tell her what I can while I still have time.

"Mom, I m..miss you." It's hard to talk while you cry but I can't stop it.

"Oh, I know, buttercup. I miss you too."

"How?" She laughs in that sweet tinkling bell noise that I have missed so much.

"It's day of the dead, Sofia! How else?"

I smile because she is my mother.

"Mom."

"Yes, dear?"

"You know we loved you, right? You know that we love you more than anything else."

"I know, buttercup. I love you too. I never thought you didn't, not even for a second."

I cry. "Mom. Duh..dad hates me now."

She scoffs. "Oh, Sofia. Your father does not hate you. He has never hated you. You know that."

"Yes, he does. He hates me because I remind him of you. And he misses you. None of us even know how to function without you. We aren't even a family anymore, we're just a group of people who live in the same house!"

She is very quiet for a minute and I am afraid, petrified, that she has left again.

"He does not hate you, Sofia. He is hurting. You're all hurting. And I'm sorry that I made you hurt and I'm sorry that I had to go, but this does not make you less of a family. This will make you stronger. Your father just needs a little reminder, that's all."

"Mom, what are we supposed to do? What can we do without you?"

"Don't be silly, buttercup. What you can do, is you can live. Live for me. Because what you're doing right now isn't living. And if you want to respect my memory, then you all need to get yourselves together and stop moping."

"Wha-moping? Mom, we're in grief! Our mother just died while we watched!"

She tsks me over the phone. "Grieving? Grieving, for nearly a year? No. You people need to get ourselves together and start loving each other again, or I swear I will haunt all of you."

My jaw drops. How can she be joking about this? We're all miserable!

"Sofia, buttercup, my time is running out. I can't stay on the line much longer. I love you and your dad and your sisters so, so much. And I'm at peace. Now you all need to find some peace too."

I start to sob again because she's leaving.

"Don't go!"

I feel her smile through the phone in my hand. "Oh, Sofia. This isn't goodbye, you know. We will see each other again. We will."

Her words don't help the loneliness in my heart.

"Buttercup?"

"Yeah, Mom?"

"I love you."

"I love you too, Mom."

She seems about to go when she remembers something.

"Oh. One last thing, Sofia."

-----

I woke my family. Even my dad. I haven't looked at him full in the face in a while and I realize that I've missed him. A lot. They're all pissed at being woken up, and they couldn't possibly understand what could be so important at midnight when they wanted to be asleep.

I sat them all down on the couch and told them everything that had happened, every single thing that Mom had said, down to the last detail. By the end of it, Isabel and Miranda were crying, but I thought that maybe they were happy tears instead of sad ones.

My dad didn't believe me. I could tell it by the expression on his face. He stood up and got very close to me.

"Sofia Amaris Vallende, this is not a funny joke. Never do anything like this again." He turned away and made to storm off but I called after him.

"February 21st, 2001."

He stopped dead in his tracks.

"That's the day that you fell in love with Mom."

He didn't turn. "I only ever told one person that information."

"She was wearing a white dress that brought out the blonde in her hair and the blue in her eyes. You said that you told a bad joke and she laughed with her mouth, but more importantly, she laughed with her eyes. You said that they sparkled with all the light in the world and that, in that moment, you never wanted anything more than to put a ring on her finger and call her yours."

He turned as tears ran down his cheeks. His voice broke when he replied. "She told you that?"

"She said you wouldn't listen. She knows how stubborn you are."

He looked at me through his tears and then rushed forward and wrapped me in a hug so tight that I could barely breathe through the embrace. Isabel and Miranda jumped off the couch and wrapped us both in their arms and we all let out a collective sigh that we'd been holding since Mom died.

As we started to let go, I felt another pair of arms encircle me.

"Good job, Buttercup. I'm proud of you."