As Marquita step onto the bus the buzz of voices surround her again, but this time they are muffled by the repeating memory of her father not turning around. In her mind a constant refrain of her father’s agitated steps accompanied by a breezy wave plays again and again as she walks down the bus aisle.
As she passes the man with white hair she quickly glances at his luggage tag and reads: 1290 E 14th St, Midwood-Brooklyn, NY. Marquita and Mechteld take their seats in the back. Mechteld scans the passengers as Marquita’s eyes are drawn to the Chinese woman. She stares for a moment hoping to once again see a change in her aura before her thoughts go again to her father. As the bus drives away she thinks back to the origin of her family’s dysfunction.
Marquita turns to Mechteld and asks, “You said we both inherited a curse?”
“Yeah.”
Marquita feels a pressure growing in her belly as her mind searches for a long hidden memory.
“My grandfather was like me. He could hear thoughts. I never met him, but my father knew what he could do.”
Marquita stops herself from proceeding with the story. She had always stopped herself from revealing what she knew.
“My grandfather and his brothers did something bad. It happened before I was born, before my father was born. Everyone says we’re cursed because of what they did.”
For years, the story has lived only in her mind. It was a story she has never told anyone. A story that no one knows she knew.
“My grandfather and his brothers were in the army. They were sent to a coffee plantation and they…”
As Marquita trails off Mechteld interrupts by saying, “You don’t have to say it.”
Ignoring Mechteld, Marquita continues as fixates on the heinous images in her mind, “I saw it in my great-uncle Rodrigo‘s mind….the horrible things they did….”
Mechteld interjects again, “I know what they did. You don’t have to say it.”
For years, knowledge of the story has been eating away at Marquita, but finally she feels it’s now her chance to admit her secret stigma.
“Since then, my family has suffered from so many tragedies. God hates us. The Bible says it, The Lord is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression….”
Marquita struggles to remember the verse, but Mechteld effortlessly finishes it by reciting, “….but he will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, to the third and the fourth generation.”
“Yes….” Marquita hoarsely adds, the word caught in her throat. Tears begin to line her eyes as her mind fills with her darkest memory.
“My father thought I had the Moreno curse. Six years ago he took me to the plantation in Cibao where the curse began. They found a Haitian priest to do an exorcism. They made me drink this strange liquid and it made me sick and hallucinate. But, the exorcism didn’t work. It didn’t change me. It only made me tell the truth. I had learned so many secrets and they all came out.”
Mecteld grips the seat as she stares forward. She knows the story in Marquita head. She knows how long she’s carried the shame. Marquita breathes deep as her anxiety rises up to her chest.
“I told my father’s secret. I told what he did when he was young. After that…after he knew that I knew… he stopped being my father. Since I was seven I have known what my father had done. He thinks about Juan Acosta so much. I knew his secret, but I decided to still love him. But, when he learned what I could do he ran away. I was something to be feared instead of loved.”
Marquita’s eye begins to burn as tears run down her face. She tries to hide her face from Mechteld and quickly wipes her face. She can feel the anxiety spreading in her body as her joints stiffen. Marquita takes a labor gulp of air and then feels the familiar stab of panic.
“Oh god, not again.” She thinks as she tries to hide her developing symptoms. She closes her eyes, but her mind is met with a flood of memories from the coffee plantation. Relentless images attack her thoughts as she sees flashes of the unrepentant look on her grandfather’s then young face as he holds a machete meld seamlessly the Haitians priest’s prayers and her screams of “Juan Acosta”. Marquita feels herself beginning to break as her body reflexively curls into itself. She puts her head between her knees and struggles to breath. Desperately she tries to fill her lungs, but is only met with her body’s refusal.
Marquita feels a burning pain shoot through her clenched arm and opens her eyes to realize that it’s Mechteld’s hand. Once again she hears the beat of an ocean, but her vision is clear. She listens as her muscles gradually loosen and her chest expands once more. Marquita’s feels her body sitting upright again. She turns her face and finds Mechteld staring her with eyes that have developed into a stormy blue ringed with the slightest hint of wetness. Her forehead is once again knotted in the middle, but not from anger or annoyance. This time, Marquita sees that Mechteld’s face is weighed by trepidation. Mechteld waits for Marquita’s breath to steady before she speaks.
“My family did something horrible too. It also happened long before I was born.” Marquita sees static grow in her vision before Mechteld lifts her hand away from her. Marquita knows Mechteld is protecting her thoughts from potential prying. She keeps her eyes on Marquita and says, “My family destroyed a city in the name of God.”
ns 15.158.61.20da2
