Disclaimer: Encanto does not belong to me. This story is not for profit.
CW: mention of death, implication of suicide
Chapter 10
October 24th
Afternoon
Bruno had been gone a long time, a couple of hours.
Several kind villagers braved the weather with umbrellas to deliver lunches to the church. The family sat on the pews to eat. Mirabel helped sort out the donated food so that everyone had their favorites. Antonio made a little pile of food to one side of his plate and wouldn't touch it. Mirabel had never seen him do this before. She nudged him gently and smiled. "Hey. What's the matter with that food?" She pointed to his food pile with her fork.
"That's the food I'm saving for Tio Bruno's rats," Antonio said.
Pepa frowned. "That food is meant for you, not for rats."
"But rats have to eat, too." Antonio turned a pitiful look on her.
Her critical expression wavered. "OK. But, if you're doing that, then I'll do it too. I don't want you to be the only one sacrificing some of your food. That's not fair."
"I'll save some," Camilo said.
"Me, too," Mirabel said.
Everyone ended up volunteering a tiny portion of their lunch and scraping it off onto a single plate. They covered the 'rat plate' with a towel that came from one of the other plates. Mirabel had already picked out a plate of food for Bruno. They set the two plates aside for when Bruno returned.
Julieta paced, wringing her hands with a kind of anxiety Mirabel had never seen before. "Bruno is going to catch a cold from going out in the rain without proper protection. And you know what he's like when he's sick." That seemed to be directed at her sister.
Pepa rolled her eyes. "He's obnoxious, I know. But he either will get a cold or he won't, and there's nothing we can do."
"What if he gives it to the children?" Julieta asked.
Antonio shrugged. "Then I'll sneeze out big boogers like last time."
Mirabel chuckled. "I remember. You went through so many handkerchiefs that I had to launder them three times the first day."
"At least if I get a cold this time, I won't involuntarily change into someone else every time I sneeze," Camilo said.
Luisa shuddered. "Please, no. I hate being sick. It makes me feel so…" She cringed. "…unproductive."
Agustín came up to her and squeezed her shoulder. "You wouldn't be any more unproductive than anyone else with a cold. If we get sick, we can all get sick together and all commiserate with one another. But there's no telling if we're going to get sick at all."
Dolores stood at one of the front-facing windows of the church and stared out at the rain.
"If I don't get news about what is going on soon, I am going to go to my parents' house," Félix said.
Pepa frowned at him and wagged a scolding finger. "You're setting a bad example for the children. Madre always said we should avoid making the villagers afraid of us."
Félix leaned toward her and gestured with both hands. "Maybe you've swung too far in the other direction. It seems to me like they've taken all of you for granted and need to be put in their places."
"Maybe there's a way to handle this that doesn't result in our family being taken for granted, and doesn't result in making the villagers afraid of us, either?" Mirabel suggested, worried at the turn this was taking. Everyone's tension got to her, making her heart thump uncomfortably. She felt a little sweaty.
"Yes, let's not get carried away," Agustín said.
"They're coming back," Dolores murmured.
Antonio ran up to her and peered out the window. "Where?"
"Tio Bruno and Abuela. See? The two people holding umbrellas and coming around the corner of the pottery workshop. You can tell because of Tio's ruana. So the only person who could be beside him is Abuela."
"I see them!" Antonio ran over to Pepa and grabbed her hand. "Tio Bruno's bringing Abuela, Mamá. Maybe Abuela will fix this." He met his mother's gaze with sudden, crushing worry. "Do you think she can fix this?" he whispered.
Pepa bent over and hugged him. "I know she'll try, Tonito."
As soon as Bruno and Abuela were inside, Mirabel and Luisa fought the door closed. The wind had picked up. Bruno and Abuela folded the umbrellas and leaned them against the wall next to the door. Both of them were pretty wet anyway.
Abuela, looking unruffled despite the wet tendrils of her hair hanging down on either side of her face, walked up to Dolores. "Tell me everything."
Dolores' lower lip quivered. "You're going to be so disappointed." Tears welled up in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. "I never wanted this to come out. Believe me, Abuela. I didn't mean to make it worse."
Her parents sandwiched her between them. Pepa kissed her cheek and Félix put his arm around her and gave Abuela a glare, jutting his chin out. "Whatever happened, it's my responsibility as a Padre. You blame anyone, you blame me. ¿Ha quedado claro?"
Abuela looked mystified. "What on earth could be so dire?"
Dolores looked around at everyone with wide eyes and then met Abuela's gaze, her lower lip trembling badly now. "You always told me not to let the villagers know that I could hear them. You said they wouldn't understand." She took a deep, strained breath. "They didn't understand." She squeezed her father's hand tightly.
Abuela's brow furrowed. "But…Why did you tell them?"
Mirabel was ready to leap on Abuela like a leopard and strangle her if she made Dolores feel worse. She took a calming breath, pasted on a smile, and adjusted her glasses.
"They were saying all these horrible things, and I didn't want it to get back to you," Dolores whispered. "I wanted them to stop."
Abuela's expression grew more incredulous. "Stop saying what?"
Bruno stepped in between them. "You were trying to protect your Abuela, is that right?"
Dolores nodded.
"And you said something to the villagers, and that let them know that you could hear them when they were trying to have a private conversation, is that it?" Bruno asked.
Dolores nodded again, then suddenly hid her face against her father's shoulder. "They were saying that they wanted to leave the Encanto," she mumbled.
"What? Who wants to leave the Encanto?" Pepa demanded. "Whoever they are, they're crazy!"
"They just miss their families," Mirabel said, upset on Lupita Morales' behalf and the behalf of her father and uncle. "They want to know what's been happening."
"The outside world is evil." The dark circles under Pepa's eyes seemed deeper. "Hopelessly evil. This place, this Encanto, is a paradise by comparison. Out there, it's not a world that anyone wants to live in, sobrina. Even hearing stories about it as children was enough to give all of us nightmares."
"But the Encanto is also a trap, a prison, if it means that no one can leave," Mirabel argued.
"No one is leaving!" Abuela shouted.
Mirabel whirled to face her and pointed at her accusingly. "Then you know you're keeping the villagers here against their will!"
"Everyone stop shouting," Bruno said, cringing. "Please. It's hard on the eardrums." Everyone fell silent and looked at him. All the adults had expressions of trepidation. Bruno made a nervous gesture. "We're all standing way too close together for that." He turned to his mother with a tilt of his head and a shrug. "Everyone who wants to leave should leave. It's as simple as that."
"Who knows what government exists out there?" Pepa asked softly.
Mirabel was chilled. She imagined a Colombia overrun with soldiers, with death, with violence. "This is complicated. I agree that leaving the Encanto, it's – I mean, not even Tio Bruno did that. But if people want to go, they should go."
"The mountain pass is open now," Bruno said. "But who knows about later? Now is the only time they're guaranteed to have."
A depressed-feeling silence fell over everybody.
"But…leave?" Agustín said, his mild-mannered face baffled and worried.
Bruno was solemn. "There will never stop being tension in the Encanto over this – as long as-as long as you try to keep people here. Hopefully they can come back when they see what the world is like – I don't think it could have gotten any better, I don't think people like that out there change – but if they can't come back, it's their problem. M-Make your own decisions in life and weigh your own comfort level with the risks you've got to take."
"I can't accept this," Abuela said.
"You can't keep them from going," Bruno said skeptically. "With what force? Let it go, Mamá."
Mirabel noticed everyone seemed to have forgotten about Dolores. Maybe that's a good thing. I think I'll keep quiet about that for another few minutes and see what happens. Before Dolores taught her how to listen, she would have just blurted out, 'What about Dolores?' and gotten everyone's attention focused back on her cousin, probably for the worse.
Abuela made a sweeping motion with one hand, deep lines of anger appearing on her face. "They should be grateful. Without the miracle, we would all be dead!"
"I'm sure they are grateful," Julieta said quickly.
Bruno's expression was flat. "Gratitude can only sustain people for so long, Mamá." Julieta flinched and looked at Bruno with an expression of panic. Bruno didn't seem to see his sister's reaction. He gestured with one hand. "What about the people who had to leave behind hermanas, hermanos, madres, padres, primas, primos, and neighbors? Friendships severed! Connections lost forever with the outside world. That is traumatic. No matter which way you look at it." He lowered his hand slowly and bowed his head. "It's all trauma. No matter which way you look." His voice caught slightly, and his brow furrowed. "Death, and loss, and grief, only affect the living. What if they didn't want to live through losing their former lives, their loved ones, their homes?"
He lifted his head and locked gazes with his mother, so much anger burning behind his eyes that he briefly seemed like a different person. "You didn't have their permission to make them. You decided, unilaterally, in an instant, to close them all up behind these mountains and never let them go. And you did it for you. What were you so afraid of, that you couldn't face? Death? Death is a joke! Death is a way out of here." He made a sweeping motion with one hand. "Why did you take that away from them?"
He took a step toward Abuela, his hand curling into a fist. "Between you refusing to unseal those mountains and Julieta's cooking 'fixing' everything and extending everyone's lives by dozens of years, there is no way out!" Despite his earlier observation about yelling, by this point his voice echoed off the vaulted ceiling.
Then he turned and ran, flinging open the church door and darting out into the storm without the umbrella he'd borrowed, moving with the same eerie swiftness Mirabel had witnessed inside the secret passages of Casita.
Antonio burst into tears.
"One of those times," Isabela murmured.
Mirabel unstuck her feet from the floor, her legs feeling wooden, and came to Antonio's side quickly, crouching and pulling a handkerchief out of her knitted bag. "It's OK. It's OK…I'm sure he'll be back." She dried Antonio's tears and hugged him. "Adults just yell sometimes. It's complicated."
Abuela looked like a bronze statue. Her expression was so completely blank that it was devoid of her habitual stoicism. She looked as if she had no comprehension of where she was or when she was. Then, suddenly, her gaze snapped to Dolores, and a tired awareness came rushing in. "Dolita. This is my fault. You couldn't have known. You are so sweet to try to protect me. And look, now you are hurt."
Dolores clung to her father tightly, face still buried against his shoulder. She was shaking.
Abuela slowly crossed over to her, Félix, and Papa. She laid a gentle hand on Dolores' back. "Do not protect me anymore, niña. I will ask you for such things again when I feel I have earned it. You did not need to become caught up in all of these politics. I have been foolish."
Dolores' shaking stopped, and she lifted her head enough to look at Abuela. "You're not angry?" she whispered.
"The only anger I feel is at what a hard time the people of the village gave you. They should have realized that you were a child who believed their Abuelita needed protecting. Their conflict with me had nothing to do with you." Abuela rubbed Dolores' back slowly. "I placed you in the middle by asking you to listen."
Mirabel barely even dared to breathe. She was afraid of something upsetting this moment of reason from their Abuela. She also took note of how it came after Bruno ruthlessly yelling at her and then leaving.
No one else said anything, either.
After a few minutes, Abuela sighed and took a step back from Dolores. "All right. I will do what must be done. I will meet with the village elders and Padre Agudelo, and we will decide what to do about the Encanto. And I will make it expressly clear that attacking my children and grandchildren is off limits. Whatever grievances they have against me are about me. Not you."
She walked to the door and took up an umbrella.
"Madre, are you sure you should be going out in this weather? Again?" Pepa asked.
Abuela looked at Pepa sadly. "It is only a little rain, Pepita. It was never worth being anxious about." She stepped out of the church, opened the umbrella, and walked down the street slowly.
They watched her from the church windows.
"Do you think she is really going to change?" Félix asked.
"I'm worried about her," Julieta said. "What Bruno said was too harsh. And he should never have said it in front of the children." She sighed. "And now he is out there somewhere catching a cold, and Mamá thinks she has to fix the whole world."
"The Encanto is not the whole world," Agustín said. "And maybe we never should have acted like it was." Everyone else looked at him with surprise. He looked tired, his hair a little mussed. "I've never seen the outside world, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. The Encanto is not all of Colombia. And we need to know what is happening out there."
Mirabel hugged on Antonio again. Like if the Conservatives and the Liberals are still at war. "No matter what, we're all going to find a way to live safe and happy lives," she told him. "As long as have each other, we'll be OK."
"What about Tio Bruno?"
"He's coming back. He just needs some time alone." Mirabel prayed she wasn't lying to him.
"This is what he always does," Isabela said, coming up to Antonio. "The pattern is always the same. Tio Bruno finally ends up yelling–"
Julieta interrupted, "He wasn't yelling, he was discussing loudly, Antonio. Yelling is–"
Isabela shot her mother a look. "–exactly what Tio Bruno was doing." She turned her attention back to Antonio. "Then, after Tio Bruno yells, he goes somewhere to be alone. He might come back today, or it might be three or four days, or it might be a week or more. But my point is, he does come back. And he will seem like himself again. So, don't worry."
Mirabel was impressed that Isabela would show such caring toward Antonio's confusion about Bruno. "See? My big sis knows exactly what she's talking about."
Antonio sighed and rested his chin in his hand. "OK. But it's sad that he didn't get to feed his rats. And he didn't eat his lunch."
"We'll save it for him, and he can have it for dinner," Mirabel said. "The rats, too."
Camilo saved the day by distracting everyone with the telenovela he was writing. He even convinced his mother and Julieta and Agustín to join him, Mirabel, and Antonio in acting out parts.
