the biggest part of me died with you. maybe that’s why the girl in those photos doesn’t look anything like me.
mom, i’m scared and i miss you so much. i wish you were here to hold my hand and guide me through this hurt and ache and longing. you did this with a child, younger than me.
mom, i could really use some of your special brand of snarky; i never told you, but it always had a way of making me feel better. i think you knew anyways.
mom, i wish i had appreciated you more when you were here. mom, i wish i didn’t close you out and i wish i’d spent more time with you when you came into my room to annoy me; i wish i hadn’t taken it for granted.
taylor swift said “i should have asked you questions, i should have asked you how to be, should have kept every grocery store receipt because every scrap of you would be taken from me” and she was right. i can’t listen to that song without thinking of you and crying in my car.
mom, it was my brother’s seventeenth birthday recently. you should have been there. you keep missing our birthdays. you missed my 21st; you should have been there to hand me my first shot and hold my hair back when i threw up.
mom, you never helped me move into my first apartment. we didn’t go furniture shopping like you always wanted to, even if it wasn’t a college dorm like your dream. i think you’d like what i’ve done with the place, even if you pretended like you didn’t.
mommy, i don’t know how to do this without you. you always told me we would be best friends when i turned 18 and i didn’t believe you, but secretly, i hoped we could be anyway. i’m 22 now and you’ve been gone for 2 years now and it still doesn’t feel real. every part of me aches to hear your laugh again.
mom, i hope you’re proud of me. i’m living every day for you. i carry your memory with me everywhere. i’m growing up for both of us.
-a letter to my dead mother
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Luz Noceda sat by herself at the bus stop, crying and covered in bruises. She clutched her copy of “To Kill a Mockingbird” close to her chest, raging softly but fiercely at how much the cruel, indifferent bigots depicted in Harper Lee’s prose reminded her so much of all the people who laughed at and hurt her and Mami and how both Atticus and Mami had good, strong names derived from the Roman myths Papa used to read to her.
(“Don’t cry, Luz” she said to herself, “Don’t cry. You don’t want to give people any more reason to make fun of you”).
The bus seemed to take forever on that misty, moist afternoon that felt like it was about to rain but never did. The willow trees swayed softly in the wind, and the mist almost made the small town of Gravesfield, Connecticut feel as if it were a magician’s illusion ready to dissipate at the slightest touch. Luz wished the whole world would melt away and reveal something…anything…that was better than this Hell of a world where a bloated TV mogul of the kind Azura would have blasted into cinders in an instant could win huge portions of America over to his side, while Papi was gone from this world.
Luz began to cry like she had last cried during the week when she was sitting Shiva for Papi. Why was the world so unfair? Why couldn’t Papi have been there to protect and hold her like he did when he was alive? Why would G-d allow any of this to happen?
(Why did the Lord create me as I am?)
Luz’s tears were interrupted by the feeling of a hand upon her shoulder. She cringed a little, scared to see who it was who was touching her.
As it happened, when Luz looked to her side to see who it was, she saw a tall White woman with an aquiline nose sticking out of a gaunt, angular face. Her blonde hair extended down to her shoulders and smelt of the cornfields and sunflowers Luz had heard existed out in the Midwest, but Luz could tell it was dyed rather than naturally being that way, and her dark brown eyes were piercing but warm.
“Great book you have there” the stranger said, “I read it for the first time when I was your age”.
“Was it something the teacher gave you?” Luz asked.
“No” the woman chuckled, “I read it for fun. Same time I was getting really into Twain, King, McDowell, and Fitzgerald. Also Dickens”.
“I’ve heard of Dickens” Luz said, “Dad really loved this book of his called ‘Two Cities’ or something like that”.
“Tale of Two Cities” the woman responded, “Can’t blame him. It’s a really fun one, easily my second fave after the Expectations-Copperfield double team. God those two guys are so in love. Your father had good taste, Luz”.
“Huh?” Luz asked, “How’d you know my name?”
“Sorry” the tall woman said as she stumbled over her words, “I…have a bad habit of guessing people’s names too early. What’s your name?”
“Luz Isabela Noceda” Luz sighed out sadly.
“That’s a pretty name” the woman said, “Sounds Spanish”.
“Sephardic, actually” Luz chuckled, pleased at the compliment, “My dad was from Puerto Rico while Mami’s parents came here from the Dominican Republic”.
“So I’m assuming your family fled from the Spanish Inquisition in the 1400s just as my ex-boyfriend and his current flame had ancestors who fled from the Tsars and their accursed pogroms in the 1800s” the tall woman said, practically spitting out the words as if she was casting contempt upon both Pope Sixtus IV and Tsar Aleksandr III.
“Yeah, that’s true” Luz said, “Think they fled with some other families with names like Galante and Toledano and Margalit and de la Vega and Madrigal and Rivera. It’s like we’ve never belonged anywhere”.
“I sometimes feel that way about myself, to be quite honest” the tall woman responded, “The man who begat me…he was a harsh, cruel man who kept me isolated from my mother and preferred to keep me in a boarding school rather than taking care of me. It was a hard experience, but I eventually escaped from that hellish domicile and I found my true father who loved me for who I was”.
Luz tried once again to hold back tears, and was only stopped from breaking down into uncontrollable sobs when the tall woman put her hand on Luz’s shoulders once again.
“You miss your own father, don’t you?” the tall woman asked, “He meant a lot to you, didn’t he?”.
“Si” Luz sobbed, “He and Mami are the only people I’ve ever met who understand me. I just feel so…alone…without him. It’s like the entire world is just…trapped in permanent eclipse”.
“Like that one kingdom in the third Azura book” the tall woman said, “I forget what it was called, though. It’s been a while since I read through those tomes and I forget a lot of how they went”.
“Grahanir” Luz said at last, “Grahanir was that kingdom’s name. It was shrouded under the vision of an eternal eclipse by a demonic lord named Roshvar because it wouldn’t give him love and tribute and worship, but Azura put a stop to that when she slew Lord Roshvar in battle and drove his ghost into the wilderness”.
“Very good, little one” the tall woman said, “You have such a great memory”.
“Only for things I’m super into, though” Luz said, “When I’m not into a subject, it all flows out of my brain like water from a leaky dam”.
“I’m a little like that” the tall woman said, “Ask me about the intricacies of child psychology or the history of the Revolutionary War or cross-dimensional mathematics and I’m practically a super-computer. Ask me to understand why Putin is the way he is and I’m totally lost at sea”.
Luz chuckled to herself, amused at the soft flippancy of the woman’s tone of voice.
“Why are you so amazing…and I am not?” Luz asked, “You seem to know so much about the world and how to deal with your problems, and I’m such a loser who can’t do anything right other than edit together clips of ‘Monster Slayer Academia’ and ‘Spirit Devourer’ to rock songs and Broadway show tunes. And you seem to have crossed dimensions in your time”.
“Like I said” the tall woman answered back, “I’m not any more special than anyone else. I’ve never travelled much further than Spain and England in my time, I certainly couldn’t explain every intricacy of modern politics or economics to you even if I tried as hard as I could, and personally, I like to think that everyone in the whole entire world is special in their own way. That includes both me and you, and it’s not just a fancy way of saying that nobody is special, Luz”.
With that, the tall woman gestured for Luz to kneel upon the ground as she herself did the same.
“Listen Luz” the tall woman said, wiping the tears out of Luz’s eyes, “I know it seems scary. I know it seems like this horror of grief and torment will never end, I know it seems like everything is so hopeless and bleak and the world is a hollow, horrible lie and that G-d has rejected you and left you to flounder, but keep your dream alive. That’s how the strong survive, little one”.
“What do you mean by that?” Luz asked.
“I mean that…” the tall woman answered, “One day, you will found people who are just like you and your parents. You’ll find people who love you as you are, people who won’t look down at you for your oddness or your neurodivergence. You’ll find that there are people who will lay down their lives for you and do anything to protect you from the people who want to hurt you. And the light that is your truest self, it will shine forth out of darkness and will melt away all of the ice that is this grief, and you, my child…will blossom into a new life and the fires of your mind and of your heart will warm and nurture others just as they warmed and nurtured you. And when you finally find true love…”
“Will we dance all night like Azura did with Prince Olivier!?” Luz asked.
“No” the tall woman chuckled, “but you will spread your wings and do a thousand things neither of you have ever done before!”.
Luz smiled again and kept holding onto the tall woman’s hand.
“What you and your true love will do together, however” the tall woman continued, “nothing will come between you, not even the powers of the earth or the stars above. For your love will burn so strong that even the most fearsome monsters of this or any other world will tremble to see it. And you will live together for many years and have strong and happy children who will make their Abuela and the spirit of their Abuelo as proud as you have. And when it is time, you and your love will fall asleep together under the most beautiful tree in the entire world and pass together into the Worlds Beyond, safe in the knowledge that you left behind a better world for those who will come after you”.
With those words having been concluded, Luz leapt into the tall woman’s arms and gave her the type of hug usually reserved solely for Mami and Papi. The tall woman was uncertain how to respond at first, until at last she gave in and wrapped her own arms around Luz’s tiny body as if she was hugging her own father back home in Indiana.
Thirty-five minutes later, the tall woman had carried Luz home in her arms before placing her down when they got home to the Noceda residence and knock knock knocking on the door. Camila had been so happy to see Luz that she and her daughter had hugged each other for five-and-a-half minutes straight before Camila and the tall woman had had a nice, long conversation about how Luz was such a great kid. The three women had tacos for dinner together that evening and discussed Mami’s veterinary work and something about old TV shows and movies before the tall woman had excused herself from the table at the end of the meal, saying that she had to be somewhere else and was just passing through Gravesfield on her way to a conference call in New York City. Luz and Mami were there to wave goodbye to her as she started to walk off into the mist and fog shrouding Gravesfield like a funerary veil.
“Wait a minute, Señora” Camila Antonia Marchena-Noceda asked the tall woman just as she was about to leave town for other places, “What exactly did you say your name was again?”.
“Hopper” the tall woman said at last, “My name is Doctor Jane Elizabeth Hopper”.
If the answers that I'm looking for
are right before my eyes, gently,
please just tell me that they are...
-Hirahara Ayaka
Keep your dream alive,
Dreaming is still how the strong survive
-Howard Ashman
A dream that will need
All the love you can give
Every day of your life
For as long as you live
Climb every mountain
Ford every stream
Follow every rainbow
'Till you find your place
-Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II
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