Work Text:
At the end of the day, Dolores blames it all on doña Aurelia’s kneecap.
She has been seven for two months when, one morning, Casita dawns with no magical arepas. It follows there is also no magical Tia, so the messenger didn’t lie about the urgency when he woke up the house to require Julieta’s gift the night before. The fear in his voice would normally be enough to keep Dolores awake, trying to hear what happened, but that day had been strenuous, and somewhere along the way the noise mixed with the cacophony of sounds that was always on her ears, and she had fallen asleep again.
It is why she, along with the rest of the Madrigals, crowds her Tia when she finally arrives, eager to know about doña Aurelia.
“How was it?” asks Abuela anxiously, motioning Casita to bring a chair to her daughter.
“A very close call.” Her Tia replies, eyes closing in exhaustion as she sits down. Tio Agustin puts a comforting hand on her shoulder. “She couldn’t keep anything down because the infection was making her so nauseous. It was her kneecap, can you believe it? Broken and she didn’t notice. It got infected, and it spread fast from there.”
Oh, so that’s what it was.
The family turns to her, and she realizes she said it aloud.
“I thought I heard it clicking funny these days.” Dolores explains.
She doesn’t really think about it. It’s just commentary. A silly thought. The noise had made its way to her ears a few times, and she is glad it will be gone, and that doña Aurelia will be ok.
Then she looks at Abuela.
And takes a step back.
“Dolores!” Abuela thunders, and Dolores’ hands fly over her ears. “How come you didn’t tell me anything, niña!”
It muddles her brain, this version of Abuela who raises her voice and has eyes wide in anger. Her gift pushes against her eardrums, threatening to go out of control. There are suddenly too many voices, too many heartbeats and breathings, she hears every tile that moves and turns in Casita. She pushes her hand tighter against her ears, stammering “I thought…. I thought-”
“You clearly didn’t think, niña! Look at what could have happened to Aurelia, the consequences-”
“Alma!” Papi intervenes. “Be reasonable!”
But it’s too late. The way Abuela’s face contorts in fear and concern and disappointment is already burned on the back of her eyelids.
From then on, every time she tries to keep something inside, a terrible fear crawls up her throat that bad things are going to happen.
So Marieta peed her pants again yesterday? Dolores tells, she doesn’t know if the girl is truly having and urinary infection and is going to die from it. Señor Valencio and Doña Inés have been meeting down the river every night? It’s a dangerous place and one of them could get injured, so Dolores tells. She tells, always tells, lest someone gets hurt. Like a switch has been flipped on her brain when Abuela looked at her like that.
After that, other things change.
It takes about two or three months, and a geography lesson, for Dolores to notice it. Doña Augusta wants them to form pairs, and while the girls flock to Isabela or to each other, no-one looks at Dolores. If anything, they pointedly avert their gazes, rushing to join tables before Dolores can even open her mouth. She still ends up pairing with Isa, but it’s from there she notices how no one gets close enough to show her a picture they drew, or giggle over a magazine they stole. No one writes her little notes to be passed around when the teacher is not looking. No one cares if she found the most beautifully coloured pebble down the river. No one besides Isa, who is a surprisingly good listener - but has her own friends, problems, and responsibilities as the oldest Madrigal grandchild.
Another month and one of those little notes later, it dawns on her why.
Dolores can’t really remember how it begins - it’s something so silly, about a stolen buñuelo in a bad handwriting she can’t identify - but it’s the end that is burned on her brain.
“Can you imagine if the Madrigal sapa knew? She would spill it all!”
“I hate that girl. Did you know she told doña Alma about Juan’s father?”
“No one likes that sapa."
And there is a drawing of a frog dressed in a red bow on the side.
The Madrigal sapa. The Madrigal gossiper.
In other words, Dolores.
“What is it?” asks Isa, who has already gathered her things and is ready to leave.
“Just someone’s notes from Maths.” says Dolores, crushing the paper in her hand. “Let’s go.”
If anything, she still has Isa.
That is, until the teacher announces they can choose what to do for their next school project on their own.
“Just this once.” Isabela says, taking Dolores' hands on her own. Her squeeze is almost painful. “It’s just Felicidad likes plants a lot, like me, and we have these crazy ideas… And her mother knows the most amazing spots in the jungle! And a lot of girls offered to pair with you! Just this once.”
Dolores has listened to Felicidad tending to her mother’s garden enough to know her intentions are genuine, but she also sees that behind the interest of the other girls is just a will to get closer to Princess Isabela or be good to the Madrigals, as their parents whisper at night. Whispers she tells Abuela about, otherwise the fear will climb up her throat and choke her.
So, because of a kneecap, she thanks her cousin with all her heart, but tells her that – just this once - she would rather do it alone.
------------------------------
She has seen a lot more of Tio Bruno now that Camilo and Mirabel were born.
‘Enough is enough.’ had said Abuela one day, and the next day he was the one waiting for them at the door in the morning, already saddled with two huge baskets of healing food and the task of taking care of their routines.
The first weeks are… eventful.
In Casita, apart from the spurts of life when he is doing his telenovelas, Dolores thinks of her Tio as a standoffish version of Tia Julieta – a blend of quiet contemplation, measured words and a touch of witty humour - so the mess of awkwardness and two left feet he is in town is kind of baffling. Concentrating is nearly impossible those early days, with the sheer number of little notes passed among the kids and all the whispers among the adults. And it goes on, even when they fall into a rhythm and his presence isn’t supposed to be a novelty anymore, until finally, finally Luisa’s gift ceremony gives them something new to talk about.
It gets quieter after that.
They are eating an afternoon snack, waiting for Isa, when Dolores hears it.
“…just one thing that I ask you to do, Diego, one thing. I say ‘Diego, go buy powdered cinnamon’. Just one thing. Just one task. And you. Come home. With Cinnamon. Sticks.”
Dolores never knew the word ‘sticks’ could sound so ominous.
“Ay, mujer, it’s the same thing.”
“It’s not! Doña Inés puts something in the powder, I know she does!”
“Nonsense-”
There is the sound of a dishrag hitting a shoulder. Hard.
“And who is going to ground all these sticks? You? No! Everything falls to me, if I don’t make things happen, nobody does! Someday I’ll board a ship and be gone! Gone! Then you’ll value the wife you have!”
“Something’s the matter?” her Tio asks, bringing her back to the town square.
“It’s doña Lucia and señor Castro.” she answers promptly. Always tell. “They are fighting about whether cinnamon tastes different if it’s powdered or in sticks.”
Tio Bruno shakes his head.
“Ay, those too. Ever since I was a boy, fighting like cats and dogs. Wait, don’t tell me. Doña Lucia is saying that one day she will board a ship and disappear. Eh?”
Dolores nods.
“Forty years, and her ship has yet to sail.” he sighs dramatically, before nudging her with a half-smirk. “What do you think, chiquita? Do cinnamon sticks and powder taste different?”
“Doña Lucia seems to think so.”
“But what do you think?”
What does she think about it?
It’s such a simple question. A small, irrelevant thing, but with Isa barely home because of the engagement parties, and Mami and Papi barely awake because of Camilo, Dolores can’t recall the last time someone asked about her thoughts on a given matter. She half-expects Tio Bruno to change the subject, make a passing comment about the weather before finding an excuse to hurry away like the kids at school. But he stays silent. Watches her attentively. Almost as if he is… interested? In what she has to say? There is a weird warm fuzz on her chest that makes the words jumble on her brain, stuck to her throat. She probably looks like a fool, taking so long to formulate an answer to something so trivial as...
What was the question again?
A door opens, and Isa’s farewells float from it.
“I really like cinnamon!” she squeals, like a perfect idiot, and dashes towards Isabela, not sure what she is feeling.
------------------------------
“Here you go, kid. Careful, careful.”
“Sorry, Tio.” she murmurs, a bit red around the ears for almost dropping the arroz con leche he passes her. Across the square, two of her classmates tinkle with some sort of sculpture, and it’s taking a toll on Dolores’ attention span. The thing is simple and a bit… crooked, but it looks it can and will be finished before the deadline.
Her mind flies to the haphazard idea of a painting that sits in her room (and has no colouring, and barely any outlines), and she takes a large chunk of the dessert.
When her mouth closes over the spoon, her eyes go wide.
“I asked your Tia Julieta to put a little extra cinnamon for you.” Tio Bruno says, scratching his upper arm. “I’ve noticed you’ve been a little down lately, and I thought I would make, er, a little surprise. Probably should have asked you first…”
Inexplicably, miraculously, Dolores’s gift relinquishes its grip on her for a moment.
She is looking at him, sees his mouth move, knows there are a thousand sounds she should be hearing, but all she can think is that he listened. He remembered...? She takes another bite of the dessert, just to be sure, and the flavour floods her mouth again. Tia Julieta rises with the sun, so he would have to be up extra early to request it when Dolores was still asleep, to make it a surprise. All because he listened.
The world snaps back to normal.
“.. kind of a stupid idea now, I know, so if you don’t want to-”
“Tio.” she interrupts, voice low but clear. “Thanks… Thank you.”
He smiles, and they stay in silence for a while, before Dolores tries tentatively.
“Do you like cinnamon, Tio?”
He hums on the spoon, watching the sky.
“I guess it’s hard not to like spices knowing how far some of them travelled to get here. You know. Can you imagine crossing the seas? The sheer number of people who died doing that... Oh, salty sea, how much of your salt are tears of Portugal?” his eyes become unfocused for a moment, before he turns again to look at her, his smiles apologetical. “Eh, sorry, chiquita, don’t mind your weird Tio.”
She smiles back, and marvels she doesn’t have to force it.
“I don’t mind. I like History.”
Tio Bruno’s whole face lifts.
“Really? I used to love History when I was in school. I remember this one time, when we were studying the Roman civilization, I had just returned…”
Bruno doesn’t talk much, Abuela says apologetically to almost every family the Madrigals visit, and yet a good couple of minutes have passed and he still talks. The story is a bit disjointed and clumsy, like it has been a while he has last done this, but his voice is so chirpy and his answers to her hesitant questions so enthusiastic, that it’s almost as if…
Almost as if he is enjoying her company.
Dolores bites again on the rich arroz con leche, and, well, perhaps she is enjoying his company too.
And perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to share something too, something innocuous and safe as “I liked those lessons too. Once, our teacher told us-”
Once she begins, she can’t stop.
She talks, and talks some more, and when they go uphill she is still talking, like some tight ball of yarn is finally unfurling from her chest. Everytime she fears she is tiring him, Tio Bruno asks her questions he wouldn’t be able to if he wasn’t really paying attention.
So Dolores continues.
The weeks go by, and she shows him drawings of the places she would like to visit if the mountains weren’t so tall, tells him about the boy she dislikes because he sits behind her in class and keeps tugging on her bow, and listens to Bruno spin plots for the next telenovela. He lets Dolores make suggestions for it while she braids his hair when Isa or Mami are not up to it, and talks about an old lady in his youth that lived in a blue house and made the most wonderful of sweets. They share little anecdotes, silly jokes, and one day they go to the apothecary and buy heaps of cinnamon in sticks and powder, and spend the afternoon messing up Tia Julieta’s kitchen to discover whether they agree with doña Lucia or señor Castro.
And, sometimes, they just sit in silence.
The more he talks with Abuela, the heavier the silence grows.
“She loves you, Tio Bruno.”
“I know, chiquita.” His smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “It’s just, sometimes, I wonder if doña Lucia would accept a friend in that ship of hers.”
Dolores gets an idea.
Tio Bruno likes it.
That night, Mami lifts a suspicious eyebrow when she sees they arrive at Casita with arms full of sticks and loose wood from the forest uphill. Tio Bruno says he is no good at building and patching things, but Fernando (from La Desgracia de Madalena, a favourite of Dolores) is a master carpenter, so he is the one who teaches her how to sand and bend the wood, securing it with nails so it holds the shape of a hull. It’s no easy job, and it gets harder as they move to shape the sticks to form masts and knot threads to make shrouds, but Dolores looks forward to it the moment she arrives at Casita. The days pass. The air gets warmer and the deadline, closer. Fernando bids her goodbye as they pin the miniature helm to the deck, and Tio Bruno takes his place to paint the wood in shades of red and green with Dolores. The first formal wedding invitations arrive at the Madrigal house. The circles under her Tio’s eyes become darker, and his smile rarer, but he still finds time to go with Dolores one afternoon (with little Luisa, for some reason) to the seamstress shop, where they buy a simple square of cotton and cut white sails from it.
From the other side of the street, she sees two kids from her school hunched over their own project, but she finds it doesn’t hurt so bad anymore.
--
“More guanabana juice, Bruno?”
Lucia Castro is never one for simple dinners and casual affairs, and the banquet she prepared in commemoration of her eldest’s wedding next week is but a step away from decadent. The woman has talent. If this wasn’t the wedding season and the seventh elaborate meal they have away from Casita, perhaps it would be even enjoyable - despite señor Castro (who apparently survived the whole cinnamon sticks vs powder fiasco unscathed) lame attempts at humour. The oblea y arequipe is especially distasteful, considering how it will be followed by a casual comment of doña Lucia on how one of her daughters has learned a new piano piece, and inviting them to stay and hear it.
Dolores would know. Even out of the season, they have been invited to the Castro residence often enough.
It would take more than a town’s unfavourable opinion and some (many) personality oddities to dampen doña Lucia’s dream of ensnaring Abuela’s only son for one of her daughters.
She has seven of them. All in marriageable age.
Dolores thinks it helps her not to be picky.
Gabriela, the second oldest and current victim, shoots daggers from her eyes as her mother continues to cast meaningful glances between her and Tio Bruno.
“Bruno loves the guanabana juice, right, right?” doña Lucia continues, immune to her daughter’s glare. “Gabriela does it herself!”
The virtues of Gabriela where guanabana juice is concerned are seemingly many, and doña Lucia exalts them all while serving Tio Bruno a tall glass of the thing. He nods, a hand over his mouth, eyes trained at matron as the tales about Gabriela’s accomplishments get taller by the minute. Dolores can’t really tell if he is listening or if in a week or so there will be a new character on Corazón Fugitivo that has her exact mannerisms. Doña Lucia is in the middle of telling them how her daughter has apparently planted the guanabana trees herself (despite them being older than Gabriela, that is) when Tio Bruno’s eyes catch Dolores’ across the table.
Dolores wonders if she has imagined his eyeroll, but then he murmurs behind his hand, so low only she would hear him.
“I hate guanabana juice.”
And he winks at her.
Winks at her. In the way the kids in school do when they trust each other to keep a secret.
Her chest feels funny. She knows the gesture, of course she does, but no one ever did it to Dolores, not to her, never to her. The sound of her heartbeat threatens to drown everything out, and she feels like giggling like the girls at school at the same time something prickles on the corner of her eyes. Tio trusts her with his secret. He looked at Dolores, the Madrigal sapa, and he gave her a secret to keep. It’s small and irrelevant and she fights the urge to signal Abuela, because Tio Bruno trusts her - and if he trusts she can keep it, then she can.
When they leave the Castro’s house a good 3 hours later, the Madrigals take enough leftovers to last them the week (“You can have it, Alma, they don’t value my cooking in this house. Someday I’ll board a ship and sail away, mark my words, and then they will miss me.”). Tio Bruno carries a jar filled to the brim with guanabana juice, doña Lucia (and Gabriela) none the wiser.
If they notice that Dolores walks by her Tio with her head a bit higher, they don’t say anything.
------------------------------
A week later, in the morning, the Doña Lucia (Y un Amigo) sails for the first time.
It was completed just the night before, so it’s a bit wobbly and wonky as it braves the waters of the river, but the kids run after it, cheering as the wind gathers on its little sails, and moaning when it hits a rock or gets stuck on the banks. They make paper boats to compete with it, and ask Dolores afterwards how she made it, how she got the idea, and if they can play with the ship, if just for a while.
She doesn’t see Tio Bruno, but she hears the foliage moving, recognizes the pattern of his steps, and knows he watches them from afar.
“You should keep it.” Dolores says later, after the tale of the Doña Lucia’s triumph has been recounted time and again at dinner.
“Oh, chiquita, I couldn’t-”
“You should keep it, Tio. And someday…” her mind fills with a vast dark sea, and a foreign land full of mysteries. “Someday we’ll give it a real voyage.”
And it’s worth parting with her ship if it makes Tio Bruno smile like that.
------------------------------
One day, Alberto Morales climbs the hill of Casita and asks for a word with Alma about her son.
------------------------------
The new dress is a wonder of elegance and ruffles, and she feels oh so mature in it.
While Mami frets over Camilo, Dolores twirls the afternoon away in front of Casita’s mirrors, making faces and striking demure poses not unlike the ones she sees the ladies in town do. The house plays along with a row of red tiles and windows that open just as she strolls them by, head held high and hands folded like a grown woman, so it seems she brings light to the very paths she walks. Ay, Casita, por Dios - her father throws his hands in the air when he sees how it brought one of Mami’s fans so she can hide her laugh behind it - you spoil them too much.
But Dolores is old enough to know.
Old enough to know it’s not spoiling, old enough to hear between the lines, old enough to understand the anxiousness of the house as it struggles to keep her distracted. Sheltered. Away from the courtyard until it can’t really be avoided.
She can see the tendons straining under the skin of Abuela’s jaw, and Tio Bruno hasn’t said a word for a good three days now. The air is charged under the purple twilight, even if Mami’s keeps mouthing an endless stream of clear skies, clear skies. There isn’t a single cloud in the firmament, but there are shadows in la Casa Madrigal. The clock ticks the seconds away, and nobody speaks. They barely breathe. It’s never really silent in Dolores head, but this distinct quiet, the stiffness, the lack of words as the Madrigals stand each on a corner as they wait for Tia Julieta to pick Mira from the nursery – it makes her throat feel tight.
So she walks around just to focus on the sound of her shoes clacking on the tiles, letting her steps take her to where Tio Bruno lets sand fall through his fingers. Chh. Chh. Chh.
She sits beside him, letting it comfort her.
“Tio?” she murmurs just above the sand. “You don’t think going to this wedding is a good idea, do you?”
“Going is important for the family.” Chh. Chh. Chh.
“But what do you think, Tio?” she repeats, extending her hand to him.
Chh. Chh. C-
He blinks at her, then at Abuela, and his Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows. Dolores can hear the air filling his lungs as he breathes in to speak-
“Ay, Julieta, what took you so long? Vamos, vamos.” Abuela’s eyes zero at Tio Bruno. “Todos.”
Dolores can’t blame him for shrinking into his ruana again, not really.
Still, his hand closes over hers and squeezes it tight. It’s all she needs to have for an answer.
The Madrigals begin their procession. Dolores covers her ears.
Down the hill, the bells ring for Carmen de León e Santiago Morales.
------------------------------
There is a hole in the wall, hidden behind a painting.
And he already has one leg over it, down in the darkness.
“Tio.” she tries.
He is a mess of clothes, cutlery, and an assortment of his favourite mugs. There are blankets over his shoulders. A couple of pictures on his hands.
The Doña Lucia nests neatly against his chest.
“Dolores.” He says simply. He doesn’t quite meet her eyes when his other foot touches the other side of the gap.
With the gust that forms between the warmth of Casita and the sea of darkness within the gap, the tiny white sails unfurl, like the Doña Lucia is finally bound to its first, and perhaps last, real voyage.
When the portrait is about to close on him, he looks up. Dolores meets his eyes for a fraction of a second.
There is no smile on his face when he winks.