Talia stood up and went to the stream, shallow and clear unlike the curdled arteries of the Río Bogotá. She squatted by the downed reeds, running her fingers through the waterline, skimming pebbles settled into the embankment. Her father once told her that river stones are good luck for journeys because waterways are peopled with spirits traveling between worlds, grazing those stones, leaving them as talismans for the living.
TWENTY-TWO
A flock of buses brought pilgrims to the basilica the next morning. Talia and Aguja watched the crowd thicken. He asked Talia one last time if she was sure she didn’t want to come instead of waiting on a bench. She was sure, she said, and watched him make his way to join the faithful. Perla had never been to the basilica but always lit candles and went to Mass on the Virgin’s feast days. She kept a statue of the blue-caped Santa María in her white veil on a table next to her bed. When she was small, Talia pretended it was a statue of Elena and her even if the baby in her ceramic arms was a boy. After Perla died, when Mauro sold the house and they prepared to move into an apartment, he packed the statue in newspaper, but the movers lost it and they never saw it again. Talia cried because she felt the statue, despite the Virgin’s chipped hand and missing nose, carried a piece of her grandmother, and without the house or the dust of her remains, which they’d sent to Elena, there was nothing of Perla left.
It was as if she’d never existed. As if Talia had imagined her entire childhood in her abuela’s care. No proof of her voice, and now Talia could only hear it in memory. They’d given away her clothes and even the repaired crucifix in the foyer she’d loved as if it were another husband was donated to a church near Paloquemao. When Talia left, she would be able to take even less with her. Just a suitcase of clothes and a few things to remind her of home. Her father said the death of a loved one was like a house on fire. Even with everything intact, it still felt like mere ashes.
Soon he’d be left in their small apartment without Talia sleeping in the next room. She wondered if for him his daughter’s absence would be another house on fire.
When he returned from the basilica, Aguja handed Talia a paper pouch. She opened it and pulled out a mess of string attached to a plastic scapular with the face of the Virgin on it.
“For protection.” He pulled down the collar of his shirt to show an identical string around his neck. “I lit a candle for you too. So you’ll make it back to your mother with no problems.”
She thanked him and slipped the scapular over her head, felt it dangle against her chest.
“I should get back to Barichara. My girlfriend must be having a heart attack. I haven’t even called her. What’s your plan for the rest of the way?”
“I’m going to try to get on one of those buses.”
“They’re charters. They’ll never let you on. It’s only two or three hours’ drive from here to the city. Why don’t you just ask your father to pick you up?”
“He doesn’t have a car.”
“You don’t have any other friend to do you the favor?”
“I’m afraid anyone I call would turn me in.”
After a moment he said, “I guess I could take you. I’ll feel better if I know you made it back safe. I don’t want to wonder about you, you know?”
“Your girlfriend is going to think you got kidnapped.”
“I kind of did.”
Before leaving Chiquinquirá for the capital, Aguja called home. He stepped away for privacy, but Talia could hear him tell his girl he got caught up visiting a friend in another town and would be back soon, assuring her, no, he wasn’t with another girl, that she was the only one for him and didn’t he prove it every day when he asked her to marry him and she was the one who insisted they were still too young and should wait? He told her he loved her. Called her sweet names. Preciosa, mu?equita, mi angelito de la guarda. His voice was liquid, a different register from the one he used with Talia. Even his posture changed, holding the phone against his cheek as if it were his girl’s hand. Talia tried to picture her, considering how some girls became special to boys while others were forgettable.
Before they went on their way again, Talia asked if she could use his phone. She thought it was time to call her father, let him know she’d made it this far and that she’d be home in a matter of hours. Aguja’s phone was down to its last drops of charge, but he handed it over. She dialed and let it ring and ring, but there was no answer.