Once there was a man with an insatiable thirst. He had pockets filled with coins that he clutched in his extremely tight fist. With his fist and the weight of his coins, he wielded great power in the city on the wide river where he lived. With his other hand he controlled the comings and goings of the large house where he dwelled on the outskirts of town. The man held many secrets, therefore he was prone to suspicion of others and built his large house out of glass in the shape of a horseshoe so that from nearly any vantage point he could see two things: what everyone else was doing and his beloved grapefruit tree, which sat in the center of the courtyard. The tree had been born of a cutting taken from the grapefruit tree at his father’s home, whose tree had been born from a cutting of his father’s tree before that. And so on and so forth going back to the time when this place belonged to a different country, and even, perhaps to when it belonged to no country whatsoever. The tree was the centerpiece of the courtyard, taller than most grapefruit trees, towering over the orange trees and lemon trees that surrounded it. Only the ahuehuete tree eclipsed it in size, but that majestic tree did not bear fruit, and that was what the man valued. The grapefruits of his tree were one of the few things that could quench his thirst.

Every detail of the man’s personal needs and home life were tended to by his wife and the household servants, with one exception. Each morning, upon rising, he would walk through the glass doors of his bedroom, cross the courtyard and pluck a grapefruit from his tree before tearing into its pale yellow flesh. The only time he unclenched his fists.

Most mornings he clawed off the rind and bit into the taught, thin flesh with his near perfect teeth, the skin casually discarded for someone else to dispose of. Some days though, he delivered it to the kitchen, silently setting it in front of his wife who always took her coffee at the small table there. She would rise, dutifully, and juice it. Alma, the cook, would have done this, of course, but the man enjoyed his juice more when he knew his wife had wrung out the flesh with her own hands. He couldn’t, he lamented, see her from the dining room table, where he sat and read his paper. The kitchen one of the few blind spots in the home. But he could picture her. Her delicate hands working the fruit, arm muscles contracting as she twisted the pulp around the ceramic juicer, attempting to extract every last drop. Straining the seeds with great care. For him. He could smell her before she entered the room, the grapefruit’s dirty, sharp scent wafting in like the sweat of a beautiful woman. He took great pleasure in the sight of her on these mornings, as she walked through the rounded doorway into the sunlit room. The glass full nearly to the brim, balanced on a small saucer to prevent any spills.

“Your juice my love,” she would say, smiling demurely as she set the glass down in front of him.

He would take it up with a grin, flashing the near perfect teeth whose whiteness was set off by his just tanned enough face, before examining the juice admiringly and taking his first, long, slow sip. His throat, his heart, his soul, dry like smoking brush about to spark flames. The juice dousing it all; a cleansing. Then, he would release a sigh of satisfaction he otherwise reserved for the bedroom.

“How was it, my love?”

“My tree gives the most delicious juice,” he would always say, gazing only at the glass, as if to purposefully look past Marlen and her efforts. From the corner of his eye, he could see her trying to recover herself, pick up the tiny bit of hurt feeling that dripped onto the floor, no saucer there to catch it.

“What does your day look like today?” she would ask, as she leaned over him to brush crumbs from the table. This was when he would usually look into her eyes.

“Ah, Marlen, very busy. Very busy. I won’t be home until very late.”

Just as she would cast her gaze down, sad because they both knew what he really meant, he would laugh and grab her ass, take her into his broad arms and pull her slim frame onto his lap, sending a smile to her face. And it would all be erased. For a moment.

From the kitchen they could hear her singing, their daughter Pilar. Her voice clear as a bell. Marlen jumped up- fearful to be caught being so intimate with her husband.

“Apa!” Pilar called as she bound into the room, trailed by Alma carrying a pot of fresh coffee for the man.

Pilar ran and kissed her father’s cheek. She was, he thought, a very beautiful girl: round, amber eyes, noble nose, a mouth that turned up naturally in its corners. Every good thing inherited from her mother, with the fortunate exception of Marlen’s melancholy disposition. It dragged on his wife like tiny weights on a fishing net. She had not been like that in the beginning. Certainly not on the night that they first met; both guests at a dinner party thrown by a mutual family friend. She had sat across from him at the long, narrow table and he remembered how bright her eyes looked, the light of the tall tapered candles reflecting off of them. How her long waves of her brown hair cascaded against her bare shoulders, the color of a rich crème. How she would throw her head back when she laughed, which she’d seemed to do often that night and throughout their brief courtship. How he’d leaned into her and began to whisper slightly ribald jokes to see if she could handle it- but also to glimpse the perfect pink flick of her tongue when she giggled. How it had tantalized him that night. Now, the sadness hovered around her like a cloud that chilled his bones unnecessarily. But Pilar? Pure light. Beautiful and bright with a jovial personality that reminded him of his own youngest sister, long dead, and for whom she was named. It was this tie that lived in his mind, between his small Pilar and his favorite sibling, that elevated his daughter and allowed him to see past the fact that she was not a son.

“Apa,” she said, jumping onto his lap, “Alma said there was juice today.”

“Yes,” the man replied.

“I came for a sip.”

“Just a sip, mi’ja,” he said.

The juice glass so big in her seven year old hands. With the reverence of a devout disciple, she purses her lips, taking just a few drops before throwing her head back and dramatically smacking her lips.

“Ahhhhh!” Pilar exclaimed. “There is no grapefruit tree like ours, Apa.”

“I think that’s true, mi’ja,” he said, “except, maybe Welo’s, because his tree is the father of my tree.”

“I can’t wait to grow up and have my own grapefruit tree so I can have juice every morning!”

Marlen shifted her weight and looked out into the courtyard while the man chuckled lightheartedly and tugged at his daughters’ impeccable braid. Her hair, sable-colored and thick, the one trait of his she carried.

“Pilar, only sons can take cuttings from the grapefruit tree, you know that. Besides,” he said, hugging her close to him, “you’re the youngest girl. You’re going to stay here and take care of Apa and Mama.”

A look of upset crossed Pilar’s face.

“I’m the oldest!” she cried out.

“Mi’ja,” said Alma as she cleared the man’s breakfast plate. “you are the only. Which makes you oldest and youngest.”

“Pilar!” her mother exclaimed, more tightness in her voice than she’d intended, “go get dressed, we need to go soon. Alma! My husband needs more toast.”

Alone, the man noticed his wife had pulled her cloak of sadness tighter to her; attempting to bind the wound he knew had just re-opened. The one they both knew had never truly healed. She leaned closer to him, taking the napkin from his lap, re-folding it into smoothness.

“You’re going out?” he asked.

“I need a bit of money, my love.” Marlen stated demurely.

“For what?” he’d replied, taking his eyes back to his paper. “What could you need that this house doesn’t already have?”

This was (and Marlen would concede if asked) generally true. Fresh vegetables, the best cuts of meat, newly caught fish, the freshest of bread, wines, tequilas and whiskeys were constantly delivered to the glass house. Everything the man might ever want or crave. If she had to accompany him to a business function or a gala, he almost always picked out a gown for her and had it delivered to the house. He loved her hair a shade more auburn than it’s natural brown, so a colorist came bi-monthly to keep it just so. Her lingerie; her perfume. All of it chosen by him. Everything that Marlen or Pilar could possibly need or want. At least according to the man.

“Pilar’s communion is coming up; I have to take her to the city for a dress.”

The man gladly paid for Pilar’s Catholic school, because it was the very best and was filled with the daughters of other important men whose gardens held trees sprouted from the cuttings of their ancestors. But, he shunned religion. Feared its hellfire and brimstone. Distained it’s distain for his larger thirsts. His wife knew this.

“All of the families from her school will be there,” she added flatly, pressing her lissome body into him.

The man scoffed, irritated that she knew this was the button to push. He shoved himself away from the table- away from her- and begrudgingly took his billfold from his pocket, thumbing out money onto the table before he got up and walked away.

During the day, the man looked down upon the city from his perch of power. Money delighted him, but paled against the thrill of money earned which gave him influence over another. For this reason, his interests mainly lay in the acquiring and leasing of land and, of course, the lending of capital. Through the glass of his office, the people wandering the streets were far away and invisible to him, but he knew that scores upon scores of them were in his debt. People anxious to run into him unexpectedly, people lamenting favors needing repayment. This gave him a feeling of calm satisfaction, while also presenting him with a sense of unease on this particular day. Below him was a world of chaos. Of indifference and desperation. Most days, he found a comfort in the pit of his stomach knowing that his wife, his daughter, his household, was safely ensconced from this. But today, they were out there, somewhere, down below. Shopping.

He prided himself in anticipating their every need; in knowing the intricacies of his household and in that knowledge enabling him to keep his family apart from the chaos of the city. This was an urge provoked less by fear of their harm than his desire to preserve their contamination. To know that his home- his jewel box and the contents within- were truly not a part of this filthy world. That no matter what depths of debasement he might traverse in the course of his days doing business or his nights seeking to quench his other, more carnal thirsts, that when he was home, this was a space that was pure. His lapse in memory around this communion frustrated him, not only because it took his wife and daughter out of the home, but because it exposed for him his blind spot. He had blocked the communion out of his mind because he liked to block the church from his mind. He abhorred the performative piousness of the faith and the cottage industries of superstition and sorcery that had cropped up around it. How many indulgences and blessings had he paid for while Marlen was trying to conceive another child? For forgiveness of his perceived sins, for prayers to heal her suddenly barren womb. How many ofrendas had he’d made the gardeners dismantle that she and Alma erected in little corners of the house and garden? As though he wouldn’t notice or would approve. Marlen was a faithful woman, he had known this when he met, when they married in a ceremony filled with smoke and wafers and wine- he himself had come from a faithful family- but the desperation with which she clung to God being able to give her another child repulsed him. When he came home early one day and found her under the grapefruit tree with the old woman, the stranger in his home, rolling an egg around her…An egg! As though that would be the thing that, after doctor upon doctor and specialist upon specialist had investigated his wife inside and out, an egg would help her get pregnant? Well, it was all so ridiculous, he had to put his foot down. He threw the old woman out on the street and smacked Marlen so hard she fell, but he needed to make it clear. Enough was enough. This nonsense was over.

There was a knock on the door to his office and Victor, his most trusted employee, the one he gave all of his work that required discretion to, entered.

“Sir… Gloria came by today, wanting to see you.”

The man sighed with heaviness, looked at the clock. Poured himself a drink.

“I sent her money,” he said, aggravated.

“It wasn’t for money, sir,” Victor offered. “The girl was with her.”

The man threw back the scotch and set the glass down.

“She only left after I swore I’d bring you to see them. Soon.” Victor added.

“Fine.” The man gazed back out the window, down to the street. So many people in his debt. “I’ll go tonight.”

It was well known amongst the well-heeled women of the city that Calle Princesa had the finest clothing stores- all of the latest fashions imported from Europe, the most trendsetting designers from New York. But Marlen didn’t direct their driver to Calle Princesa, but rather to a no-name, mom-and-pop store that sold children’s special occasion wear in a working class part of town, on a Calle Siete, down from the unnamed alley that Marlen had heard whisper was a red-light district. She wouldn’t know. She rarely was out of the house at night, except for the occasional social outing with her husband. Certainly never to this part of town. Indeed, Marlen could not help but notice Pilar’s exhilaration as she looked out onto the frenetic streets just past the car windows. To school and back. The poor girls’ world so very small.

The car pulled up to the shabby boutique and Pilar bounded out as soon as the driver opened the door.

“Alma,” Marlen called out to the older woman as she hoisted her plump frame from the front seat. “Remember, dotted swiss, maybe a lace. Tasteful. Something my husband will like.”

Marlen peeled off four bills from the stack the man had given her, keeping one for herself.

“Afterwards,” she now whispered, “Take her for a treat or to a toy store or something. I’ll be back here in an hour.”

“Of course, Doña Marlen.”

And the two women stood, pretending to small talk and window shop until her husband’s driver pulled away.

Marlen stole away down the alley, gazing up and down at the house numbers and the piece of paper that Alma had written the woman’s address down upon. In her nervousness she tripped on an uneven piece of cobblestone and fell into a puddle, dirtying her dress, the anxiety of which made her start to perspire. She could feel the moisture gather at her temples, beads of sweat streaking her foundation, the frizzing of the roots of her smoothed out hair. The walk from the car to the woman’s house was not long, but when she arrived she was disheveled. Nervous.

“Doña Viviana?” Marlen asked, though no doubt existed that the ancient woman across the threshold was anyone but. Her brown skin wrinkled and spotted with age, her thinning white hair, pulled into a bun, showed her scalp. But her eyes, pale and grey, were still clear, and as the old woman took her in, the gaze was so penetrating, so piercing, Marlen felt tears come to her eyes.

She led Marlen to a small table in her dimly lit kitchen, thick with the scents of cooking and incense, fetched her a glass of water and, only once Marlen had calmed herself, did the woman begin to speak.

“So,” Doña Viviana said, “what is the problem with your daughter?”

Marlen startled at the woman’s sorcery, causing Viviana to laugh.

“Please,” she said, “I’m a bruja, not a mystic. I’m also very, very old. Your kind of panic can only be induced by a daughter.”

Somehow knowing her pain was so visible twisted the knife in Marlen just a bit more.

“My daughter,” Marlen said, “is perfect. She is light and song and laughter and curiosity. The problem is…

There was supposed to be a house full of children. Sons. More daughters. So that someone, by choice or chance, would stay home with my husband and I. But…. my body failed me and, because of this failure, my girl, with her enormous spirit, will be confined to this miniscule world.”

There was a moment of silence. Marlen could feel Doña Viviana looking on her as the wheels of her mind churned. She cast her own eyes down in shame.

“I’ve seen every priest and curandera in every city and town along this river,” Marlen continued. “Except for you. Can you help me?”

“And why should I help you? You insult me to my face by telling me I’m your last resort—"

Marlen had feared this might come up. That Doña Viviana would take her act of desperation as a slight when it was anything but. All the women in the area knew that her witchcraft was the most powerful. All the women knew how estranged lovers had been reunited after her interventions, how sick relatives had been brought back from the brink of death, how families on the cusp of fiscal ruin would suddenly find themselves flush after a visit to Viviana. Marlen, like all the other women in their city by the river, knew this. And she, like everyone else, knew these miracles came with a dark side. That the lovers would reunite after one had been struck dumb or blind and needed care. That the relative on the brink would come back to full physical health, but with the mind of a vegetable. That the family suddenly flush with cash would only find themselves so after compensation from a fatal accident would reverse their fortunes. The desired outcomes, yes. But always with an edge of darkness to it. The edge which Marlen had wanted to avoid, until her torment eclipsed her fears.

“Doña Viviana,” she now said with contrition, “It wasn’t a slight. Not at all. It’s just that only now did I realize I that I would give anything to give my Pilar freedom in this world.”

“And how do you want to do that?”

“By having another child.”

Doña Viviana looked at her and laughed. “And what about this child? You won’t care about them being free?”

Marlen felt punched in the gut. She had never thought about it that way. She had been so fixated on this as her solution, on castigating her body for betraying her in providing it, she had failed to see the flaw at the root of this plan. She now suddenly felt trapped.

“Don’t worry, mi’ja,” Doña Viviana cooed softly as she placed her gnarled hand over Marlen’s smooth one, “I have a way to help.”

Later that night, the man’s car dropped him by a children’s clothing store, unable to make its way down the narrow alley illuminated by the red lights of the district. He walked quickly, wishing to be done with this errand. He glanced up at the numbers on the doorways and, in his distraction, nearly tripped over a loose cobblestone, his whole foot falling into a murky puddle, further souring his mood. At the doorway, Gloria greeted him, all smiles, draping herself on him. Brushing her dimpled brown cheek against his greying five o’clock shadow. Raking her fingertips through his thick, black hair. And his annoyance and his frustration with her and the situation was overtaken by his insatiable thirst. She led him into the bedroom.

Afterwards, while he was lying there, resting his eyes, he heard Gloria walk out of the room and emerge a few minutes later, the weight of her sinking the edge of the bed. Even with his eyes closed, he knew she had the girl with him. He refused to open them, to play this game. Why? For her to point out the almond shaped eyes they shared? The similarity in their wide grins (which he never showed when the girl was before him). For Gloria to ask, sadder and sadder each time, the dimple transformed to a sad pock mark on her face, why the girl couldn’t be claimed as his own. To have a chance at the life his Pilar had. To be the one to stay and care for him as he aged. In these moments, the man felt a pity for her. She really didn’t see the difference. He could tell. The difference between a woman like Marlen- who despite all of her flaws had such polished beauty and an established family and a world class education- and poor Gloria, who he knew through little fault of her own, had been born the fatherless daughter of some kind of charlatan witch and mainly, worked private dance clubs for cash like the one where he met her. No, he would keep his eyes shut until she understood his intention.

When he made his way to leave, into the hallway of the apartment thick with the scent of cooking and incense and his recent sex, Gloria’s mother stood there, waiting for him, the dimly lit kitchen transforming her to silhouette.

“In the end,” she called out to him, “you die alone.”

Outside, a strange fog had descended upon the river valley, quickly thickening, so much so that were it not for the glow of the lights in the glass house, the man’s driver would not have been able to find their way home. And with the fog also descended upon the city a peculiar sadness. Young women cried over memories they had not yet lived, young men wept for lost lovers whom they hadn’t yet met. And the elders? The elders of the city were stricken with a sense of regret for choices not made, for roads not traveled, opportunities not pursued so severe, they were left noxious in the wake of their regret. In the glass house Alma wept in the kitchen as she prepared breakfast. Marlen’s tears fell into the juicer as she wrenched the grapefruit for her husband. Pilar suddenly could only remember the words to the most melancholy songs and found herself unable to stop singing them. And the man? In the morning, when the man stumbled his way through the courtyard in the fog to pluck his grapefruit, his body was overtaken with a physical pain. The recollection of every hurt he had ever inflicted upon others flashed before him. By the time he made his way into the kitchen and handed the grapefruit to Marlen, his body was shaking with sobs.

After three days of this, a storm descended on the river valley, cutting through the fog. There was a loud crack of thunder and it seemed, almost immediately, that the sky opened up. It came down in sheets, bouncing off the normally hard, dry earth. The sound woke Pilar up in the night and she watched the rain filling up the courtyard with fascination. She had never seen anything to rival it. Each drop seemed heavier than water, larger than she’d known a raindrop could be, each falling perfectly straight down from heaven. Over the sound of the rain, she did not hear the door to her parents room slide open. So focused on the raindrops themselves, attempting to locate one and track its descent to the ground, she did not notice her mother crossing into the courtyard. Not until she lost count and looked past the drops to the grapefruit tree.

Her mother wore her long white nightgown, the one Pilar thought made her look like an angel. A thin, voluminous cotton confection, now stuck to her thin body, soaked wet from the rain. Her auburn hair hung down, limp wet ringlets plastered to her shoulders. The sight of her filled Pilar with a strange anxiety. The little girl slid open her own glass door and called out to her mother, but the downpour drowned her voice. Pilar wanted to go to her, but her feet were stones. She could only watch as her mother lay down at the foot of the tree and melted away in the rain.

In the morning, the sun was bright and shining again. The storm had washed away the fog and with it the grip of sadness the fog had brought. The man found himself humming when he woke up, not even minding that his wife had left the door to the courtyard open. Today, he did not want juice. Today he wanted to sink his strong teeth into the thick rind, hear the ripping sound as he tore it away from fruit. To feel the bright burst of citrus as he punctured its thin, papery walls and felt the meat of the juice sac with his tongue.

With great care, he chose the grapefruit that seemed the most ripe, the most robust, the most comely and plucked it down ceremoniously. For a moment, he felt the weight, particularly heavy, in his large hands. Luscious with juice, he thought as he gazed down upon it. He took the fruit in his open mouth, biting down and releasing a howl so raw, the entire staff came running into the courtyard to see about this injured beast. There, the man stood, mouth-bloodied, hovering over the abandoned grapefruit and the scattered remnants of his perfect, beautifully white, cracked teeth on the ground.

The tree never stopped bearing fruit, but the man never touched it again.

After the fog, when everyone’s melancholy had lifted, Pilar had found herself only able to remember the sad songs. After her mother washed away, in the rain, nothing-- not even the threads of the white nightgown- left behind, she found herself, in fact, unable to make sounds unless she sang them. Try as she might to tell her father what she had witnessed of her mother’s demise, words were unable to come out of her mouth. For her father’s part, when his wife did not rush to comfort him after the grapefruit stole his teeth, he knew something was wrong, but absent her being ill- and she was nowhere to be found- he could imagine no other cause for her disappearance but infidelity. He raged. Gardeners and housekeeps were dispatched in informal search parties around the city. He had Victor interrogate every man who worked for him- at the offices, in the back alleys, at the house- and finding no one who could possibly be his wife’s lover, he concluded it must be Victor and had his other men pummel him before throwing him out into the street. With her mother melted away from her and the house turned upside down by her father’s antics, Pilar found herself increasingly frustrated. They had to dig up the tree! Her mother had melted into the tree and the only possible way to find her was to look beneath it. Unable to make the words come from her mouth and unaware of any songs which precisely suited the situation, Pilar decided to write down exactly what she had seen, explaining how the only way to save her mother was to destroy the tree, whose grapefruits were clearly no longer any good. She wrote down what she saw and ran to her father at his breakfast table with urgency, but he simply tore her note to pieces, renouncing whatever sorcery had possessed his daughter to make up such stories in the first place. He was less generous when, days later, he found her on her hands and knees, school uniform filthy with earth, knee deep in a hole she had dug at the foot of his grapefruit tree. She shrieked and cried as he yanked her by a frayed braid, pulling her away from the hole where she knew her mother was. He beat her until her nose bled and her arms were reddened with welts where his hands had been. Later, when Alma cleaned her face of dirt and tearstains, Pilar sang herself to sleep.

Vuelvo a ti madrecita

A llorar en tus brazos

Y a curar si es posible

Mi alma ya echa pedazos

II.

Over the following years, as Pilar evolved from girl to teenager, her mother’s worst fears for her daughter appeared manifest. The man, whose anger grew in conjunction with his daughter’s beauty, was at first certain his wife, once settled in her new life with this other man, would return and take his Pilar away. Then, as that possibility diminished, but his daughter began to appear less a girl and more as a woman, he grew increasingly certain that, if given the chance, a young man would steal her away. First, he stopped excursions to her friends’ houses. Then, as the months went by and her inability to do anything but sing- and the saddest of songs, at that—he decided there was no point in sending her to school, instead employing a private tutor to try and coach Pilar’s speech back and, at the very least, keep her well-read. Indeed, the only time that the girl left the house was for choir practice with the school- that she at least be able to use this gift for God, the sisters had pleaded with the man. Truthfully, they felt sorry for her and he felt their pity and resented that it implied he was not enough. The guilt (their terrible, judging gazes) proved too much, and he relented. And so, three times a week his driver took Pilar to choir practice and, other than that, for many years, she did not leave the glass house.

The tree never bore an edible fruit again, and now, in the mornings, he did not cross the courtyard to get to breakfast, but went through the house instead. Grapefruits now came regularly with the delivery of mangos and pears and pomegranates and, as Pilar grew, she would, as her mother once did, make her father’s juice as she sang melancholy songs. His waist thickened, his hair thinned and his teeth were replaced with an equally perfect pair, but he was self-conscious where once he was confident. His thirst, unquenchable without the fruit from his grapefruit tree, had led him to seek satisfaction in darker corners of his city, causing him to spend more and more time away from home. Alma and the tutor his daughter’s sole companions. Which may have been for the best, as no vice could fill him as the fruits of his grapefruit tree once did. His frustration over this grew, his anger at the very sight of the tree, vexed him in a way that made him cross with everyone who came into his path. And it was in this mood that Alma entered the dining room one morning to say that two of the Sisters from the school were there to see him.

“Uninvited?” he asked as he cut into his breakfast, his juice glass there, untouched.

“They said it was urgent. They wanted to catch you before you left for work.”

He nodded reluctantly and motioned for Alma to take his plate away and a few moments later, two nuns from the school his daughter didn’t even really attend anymore were before him. He vaguely remembered them from when his wife disappeared. The tall one he remembered as Sister Beatrice. She was larger than him and broad, but had a face that could have been pretty had she chosen another occupation. The other, Sister Dorcas, was small with a face that looked like an armadillo.

“Señor,” Sister Dorcas said, “we’re so sorry to bother you unannounced.”

“We tried to make an appointment at your office,” Sister Beatrice said, looking down on him. “But no one has returned our calls.”

He vaguely remembered now ignoring their messages, assuming them calling to ask for more donations to this thing or that. His heart, and ego, had been shattered by Marlen’s disappearance, but one thing that had gone with it- largely- was the presence of the church. Minus Pilar’s singing in the choir, he was now free to largely ignore its existence.

“Apologies, Hermanas,” he said now, “but what could so urgent?”

“Well, it’s come to our attention that Pilar’s 15th birthday is approaching,” Sister Beatrice began.

“And?” the man asked.

“And,” Sister Dorcas picked up, “there’ve been no plans begun with the Church for her Quinceñera. And we are running out of time.”

The man let out a sigh of recognition. He did not want to have this Quinceñera at all. Not the church ceremony, not the party. But, just as the Sisters recognized his daughter’s impending milestone, he knew too would the wives of his colleagues- all of whom paid far too much attention to his daughters’ welfare than he felt was appropriate. He hated being the subject of gossip and knew ignoring the birthday would be fodder for it amongst the families of his social class, who had only just ceased whispering behind his back about Marlen.

“We understand that normally this would be something her mother would—”

“I can handle this just fine!” he said, defensively. In the river of canards that flowed through this town, the nuns, he found were always the source. He decided to use this opportunity for an out. “I just…I thought perhaps I should spare the girl. What friends does she have to invite? She’s been a mute for seven years for God’s sake!”

“Señor!” Sister Dorcas, chastised.

“Pilar is no mute!,” Beatrice exclaimed with near personal injury. “She has the voice of an angel—”
“If you like sad songs,” the man interjected.

“She sings the songs of God at church—”

“Same thing, no?” He said, chuckling at his own joke. The Sisters were not amused. “Despite her difficulties,” Sister Dorcas said firmly, “your daughter is quite popular with the other students in the choir. I’m sure you’d have no shortage of guests. Unless…well, unless finances are the issue?”

And with this her beady black eyes darted around the dining room of the glass house to the courtyard behind the man, to the custom ceilings, to the artwork.

“Fine,” the man said, resigned. “We will have a Quince.”

“Wonderful!” Sister Beatrice said with a broad smile. “And, since we’re here, we might as well get the deposit for the ceremony.”

For six months, Pilar got the taste of what she could not wait to fully savor: a life! Preparations for her Quinceñera insisted that she be out of the house. To select invitations, to choose flowers, to go shopping for her gown, for Alma’s gown (which she convinced her father to buy), to practice for the religious ceremony, to practice her waltzing and of course, to practice the songs she would sing: at the ceremony, and again at the reception. And, of course, the best part, to practice her entrance and dance with her Quinceñera Court: the fourteen friends and relations who would be her damas y chambelanes on the special day of her 15th birthday. Oh, they were miserable dancers, all of them. Chela couldn’t step without stomping on Rodrigo’s toes. José needed to be led. Carmen had no sense of rhythm at all. Rather than be upset, Pilar was delighted, because her rag tag crew meant more time out of the house. More time required to practice- because with all of these friends and family and associates at the house, watching, she knew her father needed it all- them all- her- to be perfect. And getting to perfection also meant more time with Dagoberto. Dagoberto, whose tenor was the perfect complement to her soprano in the chorus the girls catholic school and boys catholic school had formed together. Dagoberto who had shoved his tongue down her throat (to her delight) in the moments between when practice ended early and Apa’s driver showed up to retrieve her. Dagoberto, who would be going to a music program in New York that summer to which she sent an audition recording and was accepted and knew she would never be able to attend.

Also, even when at the house, things were different in these months. Afternoon after afternoon, Pilar would gaze out of the wall of glass, down the sloped hill the edifice sat atop of, onto the long and winding drive that led to the thoroughfare below. Normally, minus her father’s car and the occasional delivery, days could go by without any movement on this road. Lately, however, on any given day there were minor traffic jams. The hustle and the bustle of the party planner’s visits. (A fop-ish man Pilar selected from the bunch she was presented with largely because she was amused by how he got under her father’s skin; his mere arrival signaling to her father that more money was about to be spent.) The florists made several visits, and of course the caterer. Then as the day itself drew closer the house was a hive of activity- the band, the people bringing the lights, the tables and chairs, the gardeners to trim back the lush greens of the courtyard. Pilar could not sleep. Not with anxiety (if anything, she was excited for her moment in the spotlight), but awake with the buzz of life. Of receiving the attention of so many people. Of eavesdropping on all the workers talking about their lives or their bosses or her father as they did their part to put this party together. Of the…joy.

When the party was over- after she had danced with her father and Dagoberto and the rest of her court under the twinkle of fairy lights, after she had sung Madre Abanonada and everyone had a slice from the grand, tiered cake and after the band had ended their second encore and her father was sleepy from too much tequila with his cousins and colleagues- Pilar stayed up. First milling in the courtyard as dirty plates were put onto racks, soiled linens were dropped into laundry bags, tables folded back and thrown onto trucks. All that had just been magic, in what felt like moments, was dissembled before her eyes. From the wall of glass she watched in the darkness as the taillights of all the cars and trucks made their way down the long drive and turned, this way and that, onto the main road, getting smaller and smaller. And, for the first time really, Pilar understood that down the empty driveway there were lives being lived in houses far shabbier than her father’s glass castle, working jobs far harder than her father probably ever had to work, but that these people had far better lives. For the first time in her short existence, she felt in herself a sense of longing to be a part of that. It was nearly three in the morning and the last of the trucks was long gone when Pilar returned to the courtyard. All was still and save a forgotten champagne flute, stained with lipstick, it was as if the whole thing had never happened.

Beneath the Grapefruit tree was the depression of the hole she had dug all those years before hoping to find where her mother had gone. It fit her body perfectly now, and with everyone else in the house asleep, she sat in it. She often felt her mother was here and now, desperate to talk to her, to ask her why she felt so lonely, how she could have a life of her own, she found herself- stripped of traditional speech- humming. Humming a tune to a song she had never heard before. One that came from her sorrow, she felt. Still in her party gown, lying on the ground, she was about to lull her own self to sleep when she heard someone else humming with her. In harmony with her voice.

She sat erect, but did not stop humming. She quietly sang a phrase of an old church song and, from above, she heard the melody repeated back to her. She hummed a new tune, a sad one she’d heard on the radio, and, from above, heard it reflected back to her. Frantically, she began looking for the source of the sound, humming and singing as softly as possible to not wake her father or anyone else in the house. She inspected the grounds near the tree, for a drunk guest who might have found sleep wherever the night took them, but found none. She began to look up to the boughs. The hum was coming from there. The life. She climbed up into the tree in a way she hadn’t since she was a girl, since before her mother slipped, like water, through her grasp. And there, as she hummed and sang, she realized the sound was coming from the fruit. Not just the fruits, but one grapefruit in particular. She was able to spot it because it vibrated when the humming came not only from it, but from her.

She plucked it from the tree.

The next morning, knowing her father would be hung over from the party, she woke early. She took the fruit into the kitchen, made coffee for Alma, and waited until the woman, now stooped with age, shuffled into the kitchen. When she did, Pilar laid the grapefruit on the counter and began to sing Itotiani to the citrus.

“Mi’ja, that isn’t a sad song.” Alma noted.

Pilar shrugged. It depends, I think, she wrote on a piece of paper.

Pilar sang to the grapefruit and Alma watched, astonished, as the flesh of the rind slowly rippled beneath the surface, undulating in time with the music. Alma let out a shriek, but Pilar put her finger to the old woman’s lips and moved into the chorus of the song, as she leaned in closer to the pomelo.

“Uiuiuiui Uiuiuiu,” Pilar sang softly, cooing to the fruit.

“Uiuiuiui Uiuiuiu,” the fruit replied back.

Alma grabbed Pilar’s wrist, stunned for a moment into silence as Pilar and the grapefruit harmonized with one another.

“Pilar!” she whispered. “What is it?”

Pilar again shrugged her shoulders. I think we need to peel it and see, she wrote.

“No!” Alma exclaimed, “What if we hurt it?”

But the grapefruit, sitting now on the counter, began to roll itself towards Pilar and both women took it as a sign.

The fruit was large in Pilar’s delicate hands. It vibrated in anticipation as she, gently as possible, dug the edge of her thumbnail into the smooth, yellow skin, cracking the oil sacks and sending the sharp fragrance into the air. When she could feel the thick albedo firmly under her nail, she quickly inserted her thumb between the pulp and the rind and the fruit moaned softly. Alma let out a cry and crossed herself, but Pilar shot her a look and went back to her midwifing. She ran her thumb now in a strong motion away from her, and as it teared the rind from the flesh of the fruit the pomelo cried out now, a true yawp of pain. Pilar moved quickly, no need to drag it out, ribbons of yellow rind dropping to the brown tile floor. The fruit now cried continuously, Alma had to look away from the pained thing, but Pilar continued with her work, undistracted, until the fruit was naked but for its thick white albedo. Its crying ceased, but it shuddered as Pilar now did the delicate work of peeling back the layers of fibers, cleaning away the last of the fruits encasement, until both she and Alma could clearly see what they had each come to suspect. That inside was no fruit at all. In her hands, curled up in the pinkish-veined sac of a grapefruit, was a man.

Pilar looked at Alma, bewildered at what to do next.

“Well, finish it!” Alma said. “You have to let him out!”

Tears welled in Pilar’s round amber eyes. She was afraid to hurt him.

“Pilar,” Alma said softly, “all birth hurts.”

Pilar nodded, lifted the fruit to her mouth and punctured the wall of the sac with her teeth. The juice- the most flavorful, delicious grapefruit juice she had ever tasted- came dribbling down her chin, soaking the front of her dress. But what didn’t spill Pilar drank up, sucking the papery thin sac dry until it was nothing more than a translucent blanket covering the man’s naked body. Pilar set him down on the counter, and peeled the blanket away. The women stood in awed silence, which quickly turned to anxious worry for now, after all that commotion, he did not move at all.

“I killed him,” Pilar whispered, shocked at the sound of her own voice aloud. A voice neither woman had heard in over seven years.

“Mi’ja!” Alma said, wide eyed in the presence of so many miracles, unsure which to focus on first. She looked at the small man, his light brown body covered with tiny bits of grapefruit pulp, shivered lightly in the cool of the morning. His tiny chest moved up and down lightly with breath. She would celebrate the return of Pilar’s voice later. “Mi’ja, he just needs a little help.”

Alma cradled the curled up man in the palms of her hands and carried him over to the sink, and washed him clean with warm water, just as she had done with Pilar fifteen years before. She took her pinky and cleaned out the man’s mouth, noting it full already with teeth, and cleared his airway of grapefruit pulp. With her index finger she gave his buttocks a swack and, in an instant, he began to wail like the newborn that he was. She swaddled him in a dishtowel and curled his tiny self over her the nape of her neck to calm him.

“You should sing to him,” Alma commanded.

But Pilar was too stunned to sing. At least in that moment. She reached out for him, to hold him. He was smaller than a newborn, but fully formed as a man. She rested him in the crook of her arm, close to her body for warmth, and a feeling of pure love and affection washed over the entirety of herself. She gazed on his face, which was that of a young man of maybe nineteen or twenty. His skin, a terracotta color shades darker than hers, but the turned up corners of his mouth the same. His nose, perfectly straight, noble in fact, mirrored her own. His round eyes, which opened only slowly, the same amber color of hers and her mother before her.

“He looks like me,” she said, and Alma confirmed that indeed he did.

“What should we call him?” Pilar asked.

“Well, I suspect when he is able to, he will tell us what to call him. But for now, let’s call him Pomelo.”

Because the man never went in there, and it was the one room obfuscated from view of the rest of the house, the women raised Pomelo in the kitchen. In the beginning, unsure of how to care for a baby who was a man who was born from a tree, there was much confusion, but eventually they settled into a pattern. There was the matter of what to feed Pomelo, as Pilar felt certain he was a vegetarian since he came from vegetation, but Alma didn’t believe in vegetarianism and so they settled on a diet of chicken broth and atole which they fed him with a an eye dropper. At night he slept in Alma’s room just off the kitchen in a fruit crate, nestled between Grapefruits, which Alma thought would help him feel like he was back in the womb. Because he had the proportions of a man, but smaller than even a newborn, the matter of clothing him was a challenge. Pilar remembered some old toys that had been stored away and they dressed Pomelo in the wardrobe of her abandoned Ken dolls. But Pomelo did not like clothes and constantly took them off. Besides, he was growing so rapidly, he quickly outgrew whatever Pilar or Alma managed to find for him. Within a month he was up to Pilar’s waist. After two months he was walking around, independently mobile and able to help Alma out in the kitchen, preparing meals for the house. But still he did not talk.

“Do you think I stole his voice when I drank the juice?” Pilar asked one night in Alma’s room while the two women watched Pomelo sleep.

They had determined right away that it was most certainly the juice of this enchanted fruit that had restored Pilar’s ability to speak, but it had just occurred to Pilar now that perhaps her gain had been at her dear Pomelo’s expense. If so, that would fill her with regret. For while being able to speak certainly made her day to day life of raising Pomelo with Alma easier, it brought her no real joy. Certainly no more than silence had. Indeed, she had not let on to anyone else that anything had changed and certainly not her father, who, since her Quinceñera she had barely been able to look at. Though Pomelo’s arrival had distracted her, nothing had erased from her mind the revelation that she was trapped in this glass house. Destined to live in service to her father for what she could see as no good reason. Even if she wanted to be free, she could imagine no way out. Everyone who worked for her father, Alma included, was afraid of him. She had no money, not a proper education, she had never been taught how to drive. And now, she had Pomelo, whom she had to consider. At least he brought her a certain comfort.

By his fourth month on the earth, it was clear that Pomelo had grown to his full size, though he still did not speak. In theory, he was remarkably easy to hide from the man, as Alma was able to dress him as a groundskeeper and the man, since the loss of his wife and teeth, was so often out carousing he barely kept track of the staff there anymore. But, Pomelo hated wearing clothes and undressed himself the second he was safe in the kitchen with Alma. He was a great help to her there, and had a natural ability with soups and desserts and, as he towered over her shrinking, aging body, she appreciated not having to use her step stool to reach for her better pots and pans. Still, his nudity was a distraction, as for one thing, she worried constantly about him scalding and burning all of that unprotected flesh and, for another, she was not dead yet. While she cared for him dearly, she certainly did not think of this grapefruit man being any relation to her. It was hard not to notice his statuesque physique as they maneuvered around each other in the kitchen, cooking side by side. At night, his scent, still strong of grapefruit, wafted up to her from his cot that sat on the floor beneath her bed, filling her dreams with a passion they had not had in years.

One night, in the sixth month Pomelo had come to them, Pilar found herself being shaken awake in the middle of the night by Alma.

“Mija, you have to come to my room right away,” she whispered, “it’s Pomelo.”

Pilar felt a sinking in her stomach as she threw on clothes and made her way across the courtyard, into the kitchen and then to Alma’s small room beyond that.

Pomelo was curled up in the fetal position, whimpering sharp cries.

“It’s his back!” Alma said, her voice full or urgency, “It’s burning up. His entire back is blistering!”

Pilar walked closer to examine him in the dimly lit room. His back was swollen into two large mounds which indeed, were covered in raised flesh, clearly filled with liquid, but something about the skin encasing them struck Pilar as odd.

“I’m sorry if this hurts you,” she whispered to Pomelo as she pricked one with the tip of her nail, rubbing her finger in the puss that oozed. Before she even put her finger to her mouth the fragrance of grapefruit juice hit the air, and indeed, when she touched her tongue to her fingertip, it was the same electric bright sensation that she had experienced the day Pomelo was born. Tears formed in her eyes.

“Alma,” she said, her heart breaking, “I think he’s turning back to a fruit.”

All through the night the women kept watch as Pomelo writhed on the bed in pain, beads of sweat forming against his terracotta skin as the mounds on his back grew. At dawn, Pomelo began to scream and Alma stuffed a rag in his mouth to muffle the sound. The mounds- massive now, blistered with juice sacs- were ripping themselves up and away from the flesh of his back, slowly expanding themselves further and further from his body until the mounds were fully unfurled and it was plain that Pomelo was not turning back into a fruit at all.

He had simply sprouted wings.

They were massive things when he expanded them fully, so large his wingspan could barely fit inside Alma’s room. They were covered in the papery flesh of a wedge of grapefruit, veined with the white fibers like those that had once nestled Pomelo in his fruit womb. They were beautiful.

The sun had long been risen and they could hear the man making his way through the house to the dining room for his breakfast.

“Your father!” Alma startled. She had completely forgotten about the world that existed outside of her bedroom and Pomelo and his wings. “I haven’t even started his breakfast!”

Pomelo started to follow her into the kitchen, but Pilar held him back.

“Pomelo, stay here. I’ll help Alma. I…I don’t know that we can hide you in the kitchen now.”

Pilar fretted as she picked a grapefruit for her father’s morning juice over how she and Alma could keep Pomelo a secret now. A man is easy to hide. A man with wings is a different story. She had just sliced the fruit in half and was about to bring it down on the ceramic juicer when Pomelo gripped her wrist and pulled it away.

“Sister,” he said, his voice rich like marzipan, “no more.”

Alma, who had been plating the man’s breakfast, let the scrambled eggs drop to the floor, such was her shock at the voice.

“Sister?” Pilar said.

“Pomelo!” Alma cried with joy, “You’ve found your voice.”

He smiled at her warmly.
“Yes, Alma, I’m fully formed now. And thank you for helping to raise me. And yes, Pilar, you are my sister. My half-sister. We share the same mother, which is why we share the same face.”

“And my father’s tree is your father?”

“I have no father, Pilar. I was born of your mother and my other mother is earth. Your mother impregnated my mother when she washed herself away and was absorbed into the ground. My other mother placed me and the rest of our siblings in the nearest living thing she could find, the grapefruit tree.”

Pilar and Alma were both crying now. In the dining room, the man was calling out for his food and juice and Alma went to placate him, picking the eggs off the floor, wiping her tears as she ran out of the kitchen. Pilar had so many questions but shock had almost made her mute again.

“When she was alive, our mother wished to have another child, so that you wouldn’t be the youngest anymore, tied to this house and your father. But she couldn’t conceive. She went to see a bruja who told our mother that the only way for you to be free was for her to vanish herself into the earth. She gave her a potion—”

“But you are older than me.” Pilar said. “How can you free me? The youngest is the one who must stay.”

“Why do you think my mothers gave me wings?”

From the kitchen they could hear her father calling out her name, bellowing for his juice.

“But what about my father?” Pilar asked.

“One day Alma will die and return to my other mother, and the unacknowledged daughters of your father will by then have dispersed and then the fog will return and your father will be here, left with his own thoughts and the consequences of his choices and he will die alone. It was the witches’ prophecy.”

“Pilar!” the man cried out again from the dining room. “What is happening in there?”

But the siblings had already made their way into the courtyard, each kissing Alma goodbye as they ran out the door.

“How do you know you can fly? Pilar asked.

“I just do.”

“Wait,” she said, running to the grapefruit tree, pulling of a stem, and stuffing as many grapefruits as she could into her dress pockets. “So we won’t be alone!”

And with that, her brother took her into his arms, began to flap his marvelous wings and leapt into the air, the long absent scent of the grapefruits from the ancestral tree lingering behind, one final torment for the man. As they rose through the air, Pilar looked down, at the sloped drive that led to the main road, at the city around that, at the river just beyond and, for the first time, the girl who had seen so little in her life now could see so very much. Pomelo did as his mothers told him to do and flew them southward, back to where they had come from, back to a place untouched by man.

Xochitl Gonzalez is a novelist, essayist and screenwriter. She holds an MFA from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop where she was an Iowa Arts Fellow and recipient of the Michener-Copernicus Prize in Fiction. She was the winner of the 2019 Disquiet Literary Prize and her work has been published in Ninth Letter, Joyland Magazine, Bustle, Vogue, and The Cut. She is a contributor to The Atlantic, where her weekly newsletter, "Brooklyn, Everywhere" explores gentrification of people and places. Her debut novel Olga Dies Dreaming will be published in January ’22 by Flatiron Books. Prior to beginning her MFA, Xochitl was an entrepreneur and strategic consultant for nearly 15 years. She serves on the Board of the Lower East Side Girls Club. A native Brooklynite and proud public school graduate, she received her B.A. in Fine Art from Brown University. She lives in her hometown of Brooklyn with her dog, Hectah Lavoe.