Читать книгу Demon Dancer - Alexander Valdez - Страница 23

Chapter 18

Granny’s House

It became time to go visit my grandmother under pressure from my mother. I loved my nana, but it was a bother for a young guy like me to go see old folks. There was always something to eat, or at the very least a cup of canned apricots, and I felt guilty by not accepting whatever fare they offered. My nana was the epitome of a grandmother—always made up with rouge on the cheeks, a hint of lip color, and her hair made up in a bun just like Norman Bates’s mother in Psycho.

She was very intelligent, but she suffered from an ailment none of her daughters could put a finger on. They would whisper that she was a hypochondriac and that the pills she received from the neighborhood pharmacist were placebos. The pharmacist was in league with my mother and my two aunts; it was a shame that he took her money. She had the last laugh on her evil daughters, though, as it turned out she had a small cancer hidden among the organs that finally came of age and killed her.

My mother and my aunts never lived that down with me. I was always bringing it up when I needed some money or had done something that had a punishment attached. She eventually passed when I was twenty-seven, so I did get ahead of myself here a bit. I got enough Granny years and tapioca pudding when I visited her growing up that I didn’t feel cheated.

When the subject of my trip came up, my nana took on a whole new value, and my need to go visit her increased substantially. I had a million questions that needed answering and somehow feeling deep down that she had the answers.

I told her about the old women I met and that they were from Rayon. She perked up as I continued my story.

She told me she was born in Rayon, but her parents moved a few miles away to a town called Ures when she was about ten years old. That was when she started telling me the stories, the ones she never spoke of to other people, stories that were long forgotten. She had me now, and it was the beginning of a new relationship between us.

My mom was starting to scratch her head whenever I mentioned going to Granny’s house. The brooch that Sergio’s grandmother gave me was well concealed among my things, and nobody had seen it yet. I took it out and went to my nana’s house so I could show it to her and continue my story. My grandfather was the most peaceful old man you could ever meet, and I loved him dearly. Whenever I went over, he would bum a Lucky Strike cigarette off me and smoke it as he sat there next to me.

He would inhale each drag with such gusto that it made me love him more. I was way too young to be smoking, but it went back to the previous year when Blackie showed up with a pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes. There was no stigma against smoking back then like there is today; you just couldn’t be a kid and do it in front of your parents.

My mom knew I smoked. I guess because of the smell on my clothes. She blamed that no-account Blackie for any sinning I might have developed anyway. Guess who Blackie’s mom blamed for her son’s bad habits. My mom and his mom were friends though and spoke frequently. That was what mothers did back then.

The brooch came out of my pocket when I reached Nana’s house, and my grandfather wanted to hold it the minute he laid eyes on it. His profession was that of an assayer, and he knew everything about precious metals and stones. Tata (grandpa) told me that this piece was solid silver and that the rubies were some of the highest-quality gems he had seen in a long time. He asked how I had come by this piece and from where. My nana had yet to see it, and when she came out onto the porch, she asked to have a look.

“What on earth are you doing with this brooch?” she asked me quite nervously. “And where did you get it?” That was when life for me started a new episode in my future to come.

While giving her the whole day’s events in Mexico, about the dance hall and the image I thought I had seen of the stranger in black, she asked me if I had caught a glimpse of his feet, to which I replied that I had not.

Looking intently at the brooch, she started to explain a worn-away image on the brooch that I had not made out before. It was a family coat of arms or insignia from an ancient Castilian family from Spain.

She continued telling me that this was a family who had come to her region in the early eighteenth century and established communities that eventually became cities. The family was named Viapresi and that the brooch I held was worn by family members of this noble bloodline throughout the centuries.