The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina

by Zoraida Córdova

Yo quiero luz de luna para mi noche triste, para sentir divina la ilusión que me trajiste, para sentirte mía, mía tú como ninguna, pues desde que te fuiste no he tenido luz de luna. —FROM “LUZ DE LUNA” BY ÁLVARO CARRILLO

“Then I’d say you make a bewitching cup o’ joe.”

She learned New York evolved because it survived on blood. It was loud because it was a symphony of people shouting their dreams and hoping to be heard.

He returned to the docks, and that was when Orquídea learned that she was exactly like her father, untethered, belonging to nowhere and nothing and no one, like a ship lost to the seas.

“Latino families just think they’re cursed because they won’t blame God or the Virgin Mary or colonization.”

There were those who felt too much, those who felt too little, and others who knew how to deal with those feelings.

What broke your heart so completely that its splinters found their way through generations?

It was a funny thing that people warned of the dangers of pretty women, that there was power in beauty. But Orquídea thought beautiful men were even more dangerous. Men were already born with power. Why did they need more?

“You have to focus all of your energy on that connection every family has. It’s in our bones, our blood. More than that, it’s in the questions we need answered. The secrets, traumas, and legacies that we don’t know we’ve inherited, even if we don’t want them.”

“Hadn’t I done the same thing to her? Pushed her away because of my own shame? I shouldn’t have left, but I did. It’s my own fault. We don’t talk. None of us. Why don’t we ever talk? Silence is a language of its own in this family. A curse of our own making. That’s the inheritance my daughter got from me, and I am so very sorry.”

How do you fight a thing that believes it owns you? How do you fight the past? With gold leaves and salt? With silence? With new earth beneath your feet? With the bodies, the hearts of others? With hearts that are tender and bloodied but have thorns of their own. With the family that chooses you.

She basked in that feeling, that certainty that this was the perfect place to put down her roots.