She forgot her exhaustion and her guilt. Corn snacks.
She began to prepare food beneath her umbrellas, furiously, quickly, wanting to be able to deliver it before the radio show was over, before the others decided to go to bed. She heated up her skillet, and while she waited for that to be hot, she cut fat slices of watermelon and cucumbers and orange and squeezed lime on them, wiping the sprays of lime out of the corners of her eyes, and then she dashed chili powder and salt over them all. By then the skillet was hot enough for her to place as many fresh cobs of corn as she could fit into it. While the corn roasted, she cubed a fresh pineapple and added mint and sugar and more lime juice in the gaping mouth of the blender. While the blender ran in the background, she stirred together crema and guajillo chili pepper and mayonnaise and crumbled cotija cheese to make a thin sauce. She tore cilantro into fresh-scented shreds and added it to the bowl. Then, still waiting for the corn, she rapidly began to make colorful banderillas for those who didn’t have a sweet tooth, spearing lip-puckering pickled gherkins, salty olives, and bright pickled red peppers. And finally, the corn was roasted and she transferred it to a platter and poured the crema and cheese over it.
It had been only ten minutes since she had decided to prepare refreshments and now she had some fruit with chili and some savory banderillas and some elotes and some eye-opening agua fresca to wash it all down with. It was not perfect, but it was closer than anyone else in Bicho Raro could come to it.
She piled it all up under umbrellas in her arms and walked briskly to where the others sat.
Padre Jiminez hurried over to relieve some of the platters from her arms. He licked his lips. “You’re a miracle, Marisita Lopez.”
Now the twins’ previous assumption was correct: It was a party.
Even Theldon took part. He didn’t come out of the house very far, but he at least put his chair outside the door instead of inside it. They ate Marisita’s food and sang along to the songs, and the twins danced a little, as well as they could with the snake tangled around them. Tony veered dangerously close to Tony Triumph as he told the stories behind the music Joaquin played, but the truth was that Tony had always loved to tell people the story of music.
Padre Jiminez was the one who realized Marisita had probably not heard of the message Daniel had left for her. He gestured her close, which was a mostly unselfish impulse on his part, and told her of it as her miraculous rain sprinkled across his forehead.
“‘Marisita, I’m listening,’” he repeated. “Did you know?”
Marisita’s ears rang with shock, but her voice was quite calm. “No, Padre, I didn’t.”
“I didn’t think so,” he said with satisfaction. “Your elotes are perfection, by the way.”
“Nearly,” she whispered, but only in her head. Out loud, she said, “Thank you.”
She sat with a pretty smile on her face, but inside, she was thinking about that message, and she was thinking about how Joaquin and Beatriz had asked her to be on the show again. Although none of the songs Joaquin played were particularly punitive, she nonetheless felt as if with every minute Joaquin spent trying to comfort his cousin, she was being reminded of how she was doing nothing. Yes, she was looking for Daniel, but that was what she wanted from her. What he wanted was for her to tell her story on air. She couldn’t do it. He didn’t realize that everyone would despise her. As the pilgrims warmed to one another, somehow united by Tony’s irascible presence, she felt ever cooler. If they knew her real past, they would never call her a miracle.
In a pause in the programming, Jennie blurted out, “As I walk along, I wonder what went wrong.”
All eyes landed on her. No one knew at first why the moment felt unusual, but slowly, they began to suspect that it was because no one had prompted Jennie with any words. She’d just said it. The pilgrims looked from one to another, replaying the conversation, trying to remember if any of the others had said that phrase.
Finally, Betsy asked, “Did you say that on your own?”
“Did you say that on your own?” Jennie echoed, but she nodded furiously.
After a long night of watching the other pilgrims being closer than they had ever been before, Jennie had wanted desperately to prompt Tony to talk about what had brought him here to Bicho Raro and how such a funny and loud person found himself stranded as a giant in the wilderness. Jennie had tried to string these words together from scratch, failing, as always, and then, finally, she had burst out with the rhyming couplet.
“How did you say that on your own?” Padre asked.
“How did you say that on your own?” Jennie asked. She looked helplessly to Tony, certain that he, of everyone here, would understand what had happened. Earlier in the evening, he would have merely responded to this appeal of hers with a snappy comeback of some kind, but now he looked at her hopeful expression made haunting by the porch lights, and he genuinely wanted her to have accomplished something that night.
Tony said, “Can you say it again, doll?”
“As I walk along, I wonder what went wrong,” Jennie said.
This exchange astounded all of them. Not only had she not repeated what he’d said, but she had once again said something entirely different.
Things were changing.
“God moves!” Padre Jiminez cried, but Tony waved an impatient hand in his direction.
“Lyrics,” Tony said. “It’s lyrics from ‘Runaway.’?”
“Someone else’s words,” Marisita remarked, “but not when they say them! Can you do another one?”
“Can you do another one?” Jennie echoed. But then she struggled for a long moment, frowning, trying to think, trying to conjure words where there had not been any just a moment before. Then she said, “No matter how I try, I just can’t turn the other way.”
“Connie Francis,” Tony said. “?‘My Heart Has a Mind of Its Own.’?”
“Well done, Jennie, well done! This is progress!” Padre Jiminez said, clasping her hands in his. She repeated his words, but gladly.
“I reckon you could say almost anything you need to say with lyrics,” Betsy said.
“I don’t know about that,” Robbie said.
“It’s progress!” Padre Jiminez said again.
For a minute, no one spoke. There was no music, either, because the radio programming had come to an end. But nonetheless the air was noisy with optimism and cheer, every pilgrim buoyed by just one pilgrim’s success. Then an owl hooted sleepily, woken briefly by the distant promise of Jennie’s second miracle, and they all remembered how late it was.
Jennie peered up at Tony, and he realized he was, somehow, being consulted for wisdom. He said, simply, “You’re gonna need to listen to the radio a lot more.”