Bonds of Summer [Yani/Haizea flashback]
Jan 29, 2023 13:58:44 GMT -5
Post by marguerite harvard d2a (zori) on Jan 29, 2023 13:58:44 GMT -5
Yani took another dish to the sink and placed her hands through the warm soapy water for a sponge. She hummed as she scraped off the last of enmolada from dinner. She slid the white plates onto the drying rack while the radio sang out boleros. Her great-grandmother Marisol dozed across the plaid loveseat in her living room, swallowed up by a patchwork quilt they’d stitched together the previous summer.
Through the hum of the warm yellow lights that hung from overhead, Yani listened to Estoy Enamorada and as the glasses clinked under warm soapy water, she imagined her bisabuela dancing through the kitchen, hair tucked behind her ears, wrinkles gone, not much older than Yani was then.
Born before the dark days, Marisol came of age not long after the world had fallen apart. She had become one of the last remaining links back to a world forgotten. Preserved now only with yellowed photos and whispered stories of names now etched across the Izar cemetary, she was all that remained of a century gone by. So it was with every generation, a vanishing of what had been to the last drips of wax and flickering smoke.
And yet watching the rise and fall of Marisol’s chest felt so much more worrying than it ever had, even when her bisabuela had caught that cold last winter and there’d been a whole Izar vigil to nurse her back to health.
Yani stretched her imagination to understand what their world would be without the old stories, of days when Marisol or Vasco would speak on decades she’d never see. What was their history if she didn’t know it, hadn’t heard the last story, couldn’t share it with her daughters or sons, or cousins?
Pride in their history was worth more than any crown or seat of gold. Their story was bred out of a space that so many others could never reach.
‘You need to go home, mija,’ Marisol had opened one eye and caught Yani glancing back over her shoulder. ‘It’s a summer’s night. You ought to be out, eh?’
“It’s better seeing you,” Yani moved to help Marisol from her seat when she shifted, and the two headed down the hall so that Marisol could settle into her bed and the cool of her sheets.
‘Come back tomorrow and I’ll have something for your father. He’s getting too skinny again,’ Marisol noted, and Yani nodded her head in agreement. She’d rather he have a belly than how his jeans would hang off him now, his belt clipped a few notches too tight. ‘You know, your father used to get into so much trouble out in those fields during the summer…’
Marisol yawned and gave a smile. Yani pulled up the covers and kissed her forehead.
The lights clicked on in the kitchen again, and Yani started to tuck away the dish Marisol had wanted her to bring back to Emma. She fiddled with the strings on her knapsack and clicked her tongue when she couldn’t get the knot to loop. As she set her backpack on the butcherblock, she eyed the liquor cabinet that had been long collecting dust.
When had been the last time she’d seen Marisol take a drink? From the sight of the bottles of wine and brandy that sat atop the cabinet, she’d guess that it had been some time. Her uncles seemed the ones to pack away the moonshine and whiskey – a favorite of her father – and her aunts and cousins kept the beer flowing. But Marisol? Maybe that’s why she had kept her wits about her so long, Yani thought as she held a bottle of red wine by its neck.
Nestled in the basket of her bicycle, Yani’s knapsack shifted left and right with every move of the handlebars. The wine bottle clanked against the dish as she pressed against the pedals. She fell into the sticky heat of august and cut through the black of night as she barreled down the old road from Marisol’s to the west. Now and again her face would be drenched in the light of a solitary streetlamp before being swallowed up in darkness again.
She crossed right past the fork that would’ve led her south back to her parents’ farm and instead headed further east. In another twenty minutes Haizea’s house came into view and Yani slipped off her bike to walk across the gravel road to her front door.
It always amazed her that she’d spent twelve years of her life without knowing her cousin (less so when she had heard Elias was involved) but would never stop being thankful for Haze having come into her life. Sure – she could throw a rock in district eleven and hit one of her cousins at this point, but they weren’t Haizea.
Yani had made it a point to introduce her to all things Izar to her, and tonight would be no exception. A rite of passage for kids their age, especially on a night with clear skies and a moon so full.
“Haizea, eh, venga!” Yani gave a knock at the girl’s door with a grin, “Vale, I have something important I need to show you.”
