The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina

by Zoraida Córdova

Suddenly, she was too pretty, too ugly, too smart, too dim, too short, too quiet, too loud, too—everything, and not enough at the same time.

Matilde Hidalgo, an illustrious suffragette

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.”

“I couldn’t water a houseplant with the things you know, Greta.”

was good to know that all families were the same in certain ways. 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?

He was the oldest one in each of his classes filled with unkempt freshmen who smelled of marijuana and three-day-old arm pits.

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?

They disembarked and followed the crowds of crying children and tired adults, the men in canary yellow soccer jerseys, the small women in black hats and long braids, the white tourists in open-toed sandals and overstuffed backpacks with hand-sewn patches that boasted of open borders and open minds, but their money was strapped to their torsos.

“We will make our own luck, Orquídea. Mi divina. Mi vida. Will you marry me?” She should have said no. Should have known that the world never punished greedy men for their ill-gotten wishes. Instead she said, “I will.”

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.”

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.