Chapter 5

6:05pm

When it was time for supper, Mirabel cheered herself up by knocking on everyone's doors and calling, "Let's go, let's go! We don't want the food to get cold!" She wasn't surprised that Isabela didn't answer. Her call for supper complete, she ran downstairs. She was surprised so many people were already in the kitchen, and that made her feel guilty, like she'd sloughed off responsibilities she hadn't known about. "Uh, sorry everyone. I just needed some time to clear my head. I didn't mean to –"

"Don't worry about it," Luisa said, smiling.

"Okay," Mirabel said. I'll try not to.

They set up supper indoors tonight; the air was a little too crisp for comfort. Not everyone bundled themselves up in a ruana all the time like Tío Bruno, and they didn't want the food to cool off too quickly. Mirabel couldn't help noticing as everyone got settled that Isabela hadn't come downstairs yet.

Abuela looked impatient as the minutes ticked by.

Isabela entered the dining room looking extraordinarily like she had when she'd been covered in pollen and Abuela was ranting about her being out of control. Of course, Mirabel thought, she's got a point. If Abuela thought she was out of control before, what's Abuela going to think now? Isabela had cut her hair off at her shoulders and had dressed in men's clothing. The effect was definitely odd. Mirabel had never seen a woman wear men's clothing before. In the midst of her shock, she was a little jealous that not even cutting her hair and wearing men's clothing could make her oldest sister less beautiful.

Mamá gasped. Her expression was one of horror and confusion. "What is going on?"

"Y-You didn't have to do this," Agustín said, gaping. He looked as if another portent that the Encanto would be destroyed had been discovered.

Mirabel slid her gaze to Abuela. Abuela was staring as if she had never seen a creature like Isabela before.

Isabela corrected her posture, holding her back straight and her head high. "Papá, Mamá…I appreciate you talking to Thiago's parents for me. Abuela, I appreciate you and what you've done to try to discourage Thiago. And…I also needed to do something for myself. I need to protect myself. And I need to not pretend that I'm still the same princesa de las flores that all the young men in the Encanto lust after."

Luisa looked as if she would have spat out her water if she'd been drinking it.

Mirabel was shocked at her sister's tone too, but for a different reason. So it's not just Mariano you didn't like? You don't like any of the village guys?

Antonio's face crinkled with confusion. "What's lust?"

"I'll tell you when you're older," Tía Pepa said.

Mirabel knew that would mean explaining to Antonio would fall on her. He's just going to keep asking.

"How long have you been feeling this way?" Mamá asked, pressing a hand to her heart.

"A long time. For a little while, when I was younger, it was almost fun. There were things that were definitely not fun, but all the attention I received for my act made me feel good. Until…until I was about 12 years old. Something happened that year that – I didn't want to do this anymore after that."

Abuela winced with an expression of pain, and her hand went to her heart.

Mirabel didn't need magical empathy to know Isabela was in a lot of pain right now. Isa…did what happen that year have to do with me? That was right around the time of Mirabel's failed Gift ceremony.

Isabela continued, "But I wasn't sure what to do, and I didn't want anyone to talk to me about it. The first step was trying not to let people know what I was thinking." She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. "But…now I'm ready for everyone to know. I'm not...pushing them away. I'm not going to run away. You don't have to do anything to help me. It's just that I'm not a princesa." She looked at Tío Felix pointedly. "Or an angel."

Tío Felix smiled sheepishly and offered a shrug.

"I'm not an angel, I'm a woman. And that means I'm a little more…down to Earth than anyone wanted to accept. People wanted to talk about me, but not about Mirabel. Now that Mirabel is the heir, the pressure will be on us to act like we care about her. And she doesn't deserve to be taken for granted."

Mirabel's head spun at this sudden turn in the conversation. She laughed awkwardly. "No…I mean…"

Mamá frowned. "We never acted. We weren't acting. We do care about Mirabel, and we always have. We have never taken Mirabel for granted."

Tía Pepa's gaze dropped.

Mirabel wondered why. She was so confused right now. How did we get from the topic of Isa to me? She squirmed at the tension in the room.

"Please, listen," Isabela said. "I did messed up things. Everyone did messed up things to Mirabel at one time or another. We are so lucky that Mirabel is here. But we have all messed up, and we all need to stop and think about what it means to be human. How do we repair the damage that has been done? Or how do we use our Gifts to make things right? The Encanto needs a lot of help, but we haven't necessarily helped the Encanto in the way the Encanto needs help. Once we got our Gifts back, we assumed we would know how to use them, but I think we don't."

"You're right," Luisa said. She lifted her head with apparent difficulty and looked at their family. "When I went back to work today, I discovered I was supposed to help people who wouldn't help themselves." She sighed. "That's not what I thought I was doing."

Mirabel had known for a while that was exactly what Luisa's job was. Now she questioned how it was possible for Luisa to not notice. She'd assumed Luisa knew and didn't dare to upset the status quo.

Abuela looked like she was going to cry. "Since the founding of the Encanto, I was telling people to help themselves. Help the town, help the Encanto, help each other. But what I practiced was very different. In practice, I put it all on your shoulders. Lo siento, mi familia."

Silence descended upon the dining room. Isabela hesitated, and finally took her seat at the table. The scraping of her chair was grating in the silence. Casita reshuffled the chairs so that Mirabel sat next to Isabela. Mirabel hugged Isabela tightly. "You look great," Mirabel whispered.

For a few minutes, everyone ate in silence.

"I...was afraid today," Tío Bruno said. "I never wanted the magic to come back." He cringed a little. No one said anything. Slowly, his shoulders relaxed. "And as happy as I was last night that I got to choose my own Gift, I still didn't want it to come back. You know that feeling. It's like making the best of a bad situation, and you're so relieved that it wasn't worse, and you hope you can cope, you know? You hope... that you can stay happy and not feel like you're the bearer of bad news."

Even though Mirabel knew that, she had somehow assumed that getting a new Gift would make things better. She'd told herself that as long as he didn't get stuck with seeing the future, that he could be happy. Now I feel like an idiot.

"Tomorrow, you are coming to town with us, and we will make sure that everyone knows you aren't bad news," Dolores said.

Bruno smiled a painful little smile. "I hope so. I don't wish harm on anyone. But if I can't get anyone else to believe that, then…" He shook his head and picked at his sleeve, suddenly avoiding everyone's gazes. "I know, I know that no one will ever see me as a saint like Juli –"

"I am not a saint," Mamá said. "Far from it. I have never been perfect. I've had my fears and my failures, too. I was just a baby at the time we got our Gifts, just like you, and just like you, I was allowed to grow up so fast that I had no idea what was real and what was not. We did what was best for the Encanto, or what we thought was best, and sometimes we were wrong. But I don't want to be called a saint." She looked to Tía Pepa. Just like you don't want to be called a bruja." She gestured to Tío Bruno. "And just like you don't want to be called maldito."

The ugly word hung over the table. Agustín's mouth hung open, but everyone looked shocked. They just weren't as dramatic about it. The way everyone reacted told Mirabel that Bruno had been called maldito a lot. Bruno looked at his hermana with something like dazed respect.

Finally, Mirabel understood that the name-calling had never been personal to her. She hadn't been singled out after all. "Like I never wanted to be called un-special," she blurted.

"And I never wanted to be called a donkey or an ox," Luisa said.

Mirabel scowled at the reminder of what Señor Rodriguez had said.

Camilo's gaze darted around the table, and his body tensed, as if some inner pressure was building. Although he looked guilty, he said, "Like I never wanted to be called stupid."

"Who calls you stupid?" Tía Pepa demanded.

Camilo wouldn't meet her gaze. "You know, like, 'You stupid boy and your stupid pranks! Get out of here before I catch you and beat you with this broom!'" He crossed his arms over his chest. "I get it. I get that I shouldn't have been bothering people. But some people said 'stupid' in a mean way, not just an angry way. They said I was stupid, and why? Just because I didn't like school? Or because I made it my job to make people laugh?"

"I don't think you're stupid," Antonio said, trying to catch his hermano's gaze.

"I think we've all been called words that can hurt us," Papá said. "I know I grew up hearing that I was useless. And until yesterday, I really felt like I was. Until my youngest hija gave me a Gift so that I could be part of this family in a way I never was before, I felt as if I had only one purpose: to cheerlead others as moral support. And I was even failing at doing that. Now no one can call me clumsy anymore. But you know what? How quickly my feelings changed shows that it was all in my head in the first place."

"I got told I loved hurting others," Dolores whispered. "I was always being called insensitive. Insensitive, nosy, backstabbing."

"You're not any of those things," Camilo snapped.

"But being called that made you afraid to get involved, and the more afraid you got, the more you retreated from people in trouble, and the more insensitive you must have seemed," Pá said. "That's my point. We all became self-fulfilling prophecies. Bruno didn't need to look into our futures. And I think that everyone did the same thing about Bruno's visions. They weren't necessarily true because they were unchangeable. They were unchangeable because people wouldn't change them."

"Until I accidentally changed it," Isabela said. "When it came down to the moment Mariano proposed, I freaked out. I couldn't hold in my feelings any longer."

"Which is a good thing, because Dolores wants him," Mirabel said, grinning.

"Or, I just didn't look long enough, and I made a mistake, and my visions really can't be changed," Bruno said.

Pá gave him a look. "Fine. That's not my point. My point is that we need to take control of our lives, and if we do, our reputations will change accordingly. We need to stop listening to what others have to say and focus on being who we want to be." He gestured to Isabela. "And you're leading the way. You finally took matters into your own hands."

"Although I will be evening up your hair after supper," Má said, gazing at Isabela's hair with a critical eye.

Isabela had to laugh at that. "Okay."