The knocking continued on the door as Daysy remembered how every Christmas her mother placed a single figure under the tree, a tiny, parentless glass infant in a little glass manger. For years Daysy had asked about the rest of the set, and Magda Elena had always said, “They were left in Cuba,” without further explanation, so Daysy stopped asking. And she realized now, as she sat on the toilet, the things she did not know mounting in her head, that she’d often seen her mother holding the crystal Jesus, stroking its diminutive head and touching its hard bump of a nose before setting it down, and even worse, that she’d never asked her mother why she did it.
Daysy emerged from the bathroom and received a kiss from her mother, who said, “Finally. I was afraid you’d slipped and given yourself a concussion!” She settled into her room for the night, sleeping fitfully, and when she awoke in the morning, the unsettled feeling she struggled with overnight remained, amplified by an odd silence in the house. Typically, mornings at the del Pozos’ house were chaotic, with Angel slamming the front door against its iron frame on his way out so that the whole house rattled, and Abuelo singing one thing or another, or Magda Elena shouting at Daysy to wake up. But on this morning, the house was quiet save for the sour-sounding chimes of the grandfather clock in the dining room.
The silence caused a curious sensation in Daysy, similar to the way she often felt when she had the flu, or a bout of bronchitis, and was given medicine for it. Her mother, distrustful of doctors in general, often visited the pharmacy around the corner, owned by a man known to Daysy only as Márquez, who doled out medicine and advice without prescriptions. So it was that Magda Elena treated every one of Daysy’s afflictions with thick, pink medicines, and put dropperfuls of prescription-strength appetite enhancers in Daysy’s glasses of milk. The result of all this was that, when given the drugs, Daysy often felt as if the world had slowed down. Faucets dripped at impossibly slow rates. Her limbs moved through a thickened atmosphere. Voices turned single words into operatic notes. When the effects of the medication wore off, Daysy found that the universe returned to normal, and, to Magda Elena’s satisfaction and eternal loyalty to Márquez, her cold symptoms would be much alleviated. Daysy had never described the reaction to her mother because she was convinced that the feeling of torpidness that came over her at such times was a symptom of something wrong, not with her body, but in her head. Now, the immense quiet in the house made Daysy feel leaden, though her heart thumped at a killing pace. There was nothing for it, Daysy decided at last, but to step out into the silence and ask, once and for all, about Belén.
Daysy opened her door to find her mother just outside it, her hand in the air, poised to knock. Magda Elena took a step back, her hand flying to her forehead, startled by the sudden opening of the door. She laughed a little, and rubbed her cheek. “Qué susto,” she said. Daysy had not moved at all. She felt heavy still, unable to react quickly.
“I was only coming to wake you. Would you like toast?”
“Not hungry,” Daysy said, not sure now where to begin asking about Belén.
“¿Qué pasa? Not feeling well?” Magda Elena put a damp hand on Daysy’s forehead. She’d been washing dishes, and Daysy caught the scent of lemon soap. She inhaled deeply, a sign Magda Elena took as the relief a feverish person feels when something cool touches her. “¡Ay! ¡Fiebre!” Magda Elena shouted, finally breaking the muteness of the house. As if in celebration of the return of sound, Abuelo began singing a song with a few well-placed la, la, las to fill in the spots where he’d forgotten the lyrics.
“No, Mami,” Daysy said, and peeled her mother’s hand away from her skin. She found that with the quiet gone an opportunity had been lost. Secrets might come out of hiding in a hushed place, but now, she thought, the mood for telling tales was ruined. “Come inside, please.” Daysy tugged at her mother’s arm and closed the door, dampening Abuelo’s song a bit.
Magda Elena bent low to rub the carpet as she walked in, gathering fallen strands of Daysy’s hair until a small, wooly ball lay in her hand. She was incapable of entering any room without trying to clean it in some way. “Oye, Daysy, you need to vacuum in here more often,” Magda Elena announced, and Daysy winced at the volume of her mother’s voice.
“Abuelo told me something,” Daysy whispered.
“¿Qué?”
“Abuelo said you and Papi have kept a secret from me.”
“¿Cómo? Speak up. Why are you whispering?” Magda Elena said, and began rubbing a smudge of dirt off the light switchplate with the heel of her hand.
“Why aren’t you listening?” Daysy asked, and Magda Elena stopped mid-rub. She stared down at her hand for a moment, before looking at her daughter.
“I’m listening.” She kneaded her hands for a moment. Magda Elena’s eyes went to the switchplate again, her body turning toward it, as if the little bit of dirt was enticing her to wipe it out.
Daysy felt the heaviness coming on again. It made her dizzy, so she sat on the edge of her bed. “Abuelo said I had a sister. Her name was Belén, and that she died when we came to Florida.” It seemed to Daysy, for a moment, that her mother’s face was no longer one she recognized. The sensation came and went quickly.
Magda Elena began to cough, soft at first, then so violently she hunched over and Daysy began to pound on her mother’s back.
“Mami! Are you okay? Deep breaths,” Daysy said. Galaxies of spit and dust hovered around her mother’s head, glittering in a shaft of morning light.
“Sí, sí,” she choked out, and stood erect again. “That same old cough. I can’t get rid of it,” she said. Afterward, Magda Elena’s mouth opened and closed, but she didn’t make a sound.
“It’s just in Abuelo’s crazy head, right? Belén, she’s not real?” Daysy asked.
It felt like a long time before Magda Elena answered. She polished the switchplate with her skin until it shone. Outside, Abuelo’s singing was sonorous now, pealing through the house in long, vibrating notes. “No,” Magda Elena answered at last without looking at Daysy and left the room, the door wide open behind her.
The flood of sound, not only of Abuelo, but of a lawnmower starting up outside, a car blasting salsa music a block away, and the deep barking of a neighbor’s pit bull hurt Daysy’s ears. The world sped up at once in time with the cacophony. Daysy knew her mother hadn’t answered the question. Perhaps Belén was no longer real, but that did not exclude the reality of her having existed. Had she meant to say, “No, Abuelo isn’t crazy,” or “No, Belén was not real”?
Daysy knew she should have pressed on, reworked her question to force an answer from her mother. She hadn’t been tricky enough in the attempt. Daysy had read once about genies, how wishes asked of those swarthy demons had to be worded just so or risk breath and soul in reckless wishing. Her mother had deceived her like a proper genie, and now she was gone, not in a cloud of smoke and incense, but in a flurry of rubbing and polishing, wiping grime from the walls of the house. She’d lost the moment. If she asked again, her mother would get angry, would warn her that adults weren’t to be doubted aloud, and that would be the end of it.
Never had she felt so much physical discomfort. A true fever took hold of her body by that afternoon, and by nightfall, having taken two teaspoons of one of Márquez’s potions, Daysy fell into a welcome, dreamless sleep.
Daysy felt disconnected in her own home, shapeless like a cloud. Her father’s jokes did not seem funny, and even anger, which she tried to conjure in her mother’s presence, failed her. Her thoughts were only on Belén, or what she imagined her to be. Every time her mother avoided her eyes, or coughed,