The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina

by Zoraida Córdova

It was loud because it was a symphony of people shouting their dreams and hoping to be heard.

“We’ve listened to this song a hundred times,” she shouted, sucking on the dregs of her drive-through soda. “Fifty. Don’t be so dramatic.” “You have the musical taste of a frat guy named Chad.”

“What did I tell you about staring?” Orquídea asked, her voice strong and raspy as ever. “Do it?” Rey grinned.

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

“I question it all the time. I’m just okay with not having answers. I accept our mother the way she is. You’re just a needy fuck.”

“He’s off somewhere being an anthropomorphized bag of dicks,”

“I’m personally hoping whatever is behind that door is a beautiful man with a never-ending supply of booze.” Marimar considered it. “You have to be specific. Is he holding the booze or is it coming from him?” Rey was stumped. “I actually don’t know what I’d prefer.”

There were hundreds of things Marimar wanted to know. Why is this happening? Why can’t we stop it? Why didn’t you try to tell me sooner? Who are you? Why do this? What broke your heart so completely that its splinters found their way through generations?

“You never give a straight answer,” Enrique said. “You never ask the right questions.”

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?

Some people were meant for great, lasting legacies. Others were meant for small moments of goodness, tiny but that rippled and grew in big, wide waves.

“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.”

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.

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.