Please give your mother and sister my love.
I sigh. More hurdles to leap, and no, I don’t remember Mrs. Santo. Maybe she was one of my aunt’s yoga students? I grab the box off the table — it’s not as heavy as it looks — and walk down to the corner. Ring the doorbell. Let’s get this over with, I think.
A very old woman opens the door and looks at me. Her dark hair is streaked with a flash of white like lightning and it falls past her shoulders. Her face is a network of wrinkles, like riverbeds running from the corners of her eyes down over the curve of her jaw. Yes, I realize, when she pushes the screen door open and gestures for me to come inside, she was one of my aunt’s yoga students. She doesn’t smile; says nothing. I go inside and hold the box out to her.
“I’m Tina,” I say. “My aunt died and she wanted me to bring this to you.”
Mrs. Santo nods and takes the box from my hands, places it on the table. She walks away then, down a hallway, and I’m left standing in her darkened living room alone. What the actual fuck is going on?
She’s back a moment later, and hands me something. It’s the cap. The cap I took off the head of the person I thought was Tic. I hadn’t seen it since that night — it vanished, much like the ghost in the arroyo.
“Where did you get this?” I ask, incredulous, and suddenly everything goes downhill.
“So, you recognize it,” Mrs. Santo says, and pulls open the living room drapes. The room floods with light, and I turn the cap over in my hand. How does this relate to the box? To my aunt’s death? To... anything at all?
I shrug. “I mean, yeah, I do. But—”
She nods and claps her hands. “But nothing,” she snaps.
That’s when I hear it, a high-pitched whine and the crunch of plastic — a sound I recall from my childhood, when my grandfather lived with us. He used a wheelchair in his final days, and my mom put down thick plastic runners over the hallway carpeting to make it easier for him to get around. I’d know that sound anywhere.
I turn and there he is. Unmistakable. The spirit... the person... from the arroyo. His dark hair still falls past his shoulders, and in his face I see what I saw that night, but without the distortion from the acid. He looks like Tic, but not, and he’s in a fully motorized wheelchair. His limbs are Velcroed to the chair, a tube runs from the front of his throat. Only his eyes move.
And all I can do is look from him to the cap and back again.
Mrs. Santo walks over to the man in the wheelchair, and puts her hand on his. “This is my son,” she says to me, then to him she asks, “Is this her?”
The dark night after Zozobra rushes back in fragments, and I’m rooted there, staring at the man’s face, as his eyes travel the length of my body. They stop, then, on my upper arm.
He pushes his lips out, and his mother follows the gesture. Sees my arm too. Walks over and grabs it to look.
“Why do you have a tattoo of my son on your arm?” she asks.
I pull my arm away; her fingers burn. “It’s not... him,” I answer, tipping my chin at the man who clearly resembles my tat.
“It most certainly is,” she says, and looks back at her son. He blinks once, and I realize that means yes.
“You’re the one who was in the arroyo that night, aren’t you?” Mrs. Santo says. “You’re the one who pushed my son down as he tried to get away from the flash flood.”
“That’s not...” I stammer. “I didn’t mean to...”
“You didn’t mean to push my son into the flood?” Mrs. Santo says, her voice rising.
“It was an accident,” I implore. “He grabbed my arms and—”
“You didn’t report the incident.”
I stand there, my legs rooted to the spot. A rush of anger burns my face. “It wasn’t my fault! I was high... tripping... and I thought...” I gesture at the man in the chair. I’m about to say that I thought maybe he was just a hallucination... maybe even that he was La Llorona. But I stop. I can hear how ridiculous I sound.
“You thought nothing,” Mrs. Santo says. “You are the reason he’s in this chair, and worse, he was only trying to help you get away before the flood hit.”
That snapshot image comes back to me: him pulling me, then falling, then lunging for my arm.
“I was scared, I didn’t know—” I try, but Mrs. Santo cuts me off with a wave of her hand.
“Enough,” she says. She swipes the cap out of my hand, and gently places it on her son’s head. Then she walks over to the box.
“Your aunt found my son’s cap in your closet when she cleaned up the room where you lived that summer,” she explains, pulling a small key from her back pocket. “She saw his name written in it, so naturally she walked over to give it to me.”
She sticks the key in the tiny padlock. Twists.
“She didn’t know then that my son was gravely injured in that flash flood, and all because of someone who had pursued him to that arroyo, through the night, then assaulted him as he tried to avoid detection.”
The lock springs.
“And even after being assaulted, he tried to help his assailant.” Shaking her head in disgust, she lifts the box lid.
I can’t see what’s inside, but whatever it is, Mrs. Santo seems satisfied.
“Your aunt wanted you to work out your karma, as I think you know,” she says then.
“That’s, yes... what she wrote...” I have visions of being pushed in front of a flash flood wave — an eye for an eye. Absent that, a train? Truck? Bus? What’s even happening?
“Well, this should suffice.” Mrs. Santo closes the lid, walks over to her son, and places the box on his lap. “Had you only found my son’s cap on the ground while walking home, I would be handing you this box. But in light of the truth of what happened that night, your aunt wished for my son to have it. Everything she left behind.”
“Everything...?” I can’t form sentences. What’s she talking about?
“Yes. Everything. Her house, her bank accounts, her home in Hawaii. All of it.”
Rage rushes through me. “What?! It was an accident! I didn’t mean to push you into the flood!” I’m yelling, looking from Mrs. Santo to her son. “I didn’t mean for you to get hurt! I just—” I stop, try to catch my breath. What’s happening?
“You just what?” Mrs. Santo asks, stone-faced.
“I thought he was trying to attack me,” I screech.
“Nonsense,” Mrs. Santo says, “you pursued him.”
“I thought he was somebody else!” I can’t breathe. My heart is racing and my face burns with anger. “He bruised my arms when he grabbed me, and I—”
“I’ve heard enough,” she interrupts, her voice rising again. “If you need more proof of what’s to happen, here’s your aunt’s statement.”
She hands me a piece of paper in my aunt’s hand, notarized on the bottom and dated more than twenty years prior — essentially a month after I left Santa Fe. In it, each detail Mrs. Santo just explained to me.