Montego Women
It’s weird to feel like you’ll succumb at any moment to a perverted monster that has seven arms and the head of a goat. But when you find yourself in that situation, you have to push your general disgust and fascination aside. Otherwise, the Last Call Sorority won’t let you be their sister.
Okay … Maybe this isn’t a universal experience? Who am I kidding? It definitely isn’t. Three days ago, I wouldn’t have expected this face-off with a demon. Three days ago, I was lying in bed with a pink fleece blanket thrown over my head, streaming romantic Korean TV shows on my phone from 9 AM to 2 PM. That was when my dad came knocking on my bedroom door.
Hey – I know what you’re thinking. What 25 year-old woman still lives with her parents? Well, to answer your question: this wasn’t always the case. For four years, from age 18 to 21, I went to college and worked my ass off to earn a general degree in English. Then I lived alone in a cheap apartment until I was 23, paying for rent, laundry, and food with money I earned working long hours at a pharmacy and editing part-time online. I started dating my manager, and I lived with him for six months, until we broke it off – it was a mutual thing – and my parents asked me to move in with them, to help take care of my sick abuela.
It was an all-expenses paid type stay these last few months. Like when I was a kid, my parents fed me and housed me. But this time, I served as a nurse for my abuela, helping her to and from the bathroom, giving her a hand in the shower, making her smoothies because she couldn’t eat solid foods, massaging her feet and her shoulders, helping her dress, put on makeup, do her hair, brush her teeth …
Until she passed away. An eighty-six year-old woman who loved me more than her own daughter – Mom resented the fact that Abuela had given me more jewelry in her lifetime than she gave her daughter – died in her sleep on a cold January night. I had spoken to her that same night, before kissing her forehead and sending her off to bed – unknowingly, to eternity.
“Bless you, Rebecca,” Abuela said as she lay in bed, ready to sleep in her white nightgown, under an ornate, earth-toned quilt that her own mother made for her back when she was alive. “You make my life so much easier than it could have been. Thank you.”
“You’re sweet, Abuela.” I sat on the edge of the bed, my hip against her frail, bony side. I had watched her wither away. Her heart would fail that night, but at this moment, I only knew her tranquility and love.
She took my hand with her shaky, wrinkled hand and held it on her chest. Her hair used to be long and black – now it was white and balding. Her dark eyes still sparkled with life, at least. Her smile may have lost some teeth, but I still loved seeing it. “Did you have the dream again?” she asked curiously.
I nodded. “That same ogre chased me into a river. Remember how the water was shallow? This time, it got deeper and deeper, until I was neck-deep in water.”
She yawned, eyelids fluttering as she grew tired. “The ogre symbolizes great obstacles, and for the water to get larger … You feel like your obstacles will overwhelm you.”
“That’s now all, Abuela,” I had added, brushes some of her wispy hair back with my free hand. “A hand grabbed me by the ankle and dragged me under. It was a girl who looked just like me, but her eyes were red. She had fangs.”
A startled look came over my abuela, and she held my hand tighter. “I knew you would have it, Rebecca – the dream of your other self.”
“What are you talking about, Abuela?”
She pressed her lips together. A moment passed. Then, she spoke. “Your world will collide with the Alternate. Go, go see your cousin, Regan. She had the dream at thirteen. She’ll tell you what will happen.”
“Huh?”
“Go to church every day, Rebecca. It’s the only way to keep the Alternate away.”
At that moment, I felt uncomfortable, so I bid my sweet grandmother goodnight, told her I would pray for her and my safety, and went to sleep.
The next morning, I woke up. She didn’t.
Two days later, my dad knocked on my bedroom door and interrupted the shows I had been watching, to distract me from the grief eating at my heart, to remind me that we had a funeral to attend.
So, I threw on a black dress and tights, pulled my thick, dark chocolate hair into a loose ponytail, and I wore the pearl necklace Abuela had given me last month.
I didn’t put mascara or eyeliner on. Tears were already welling in my eyes.
I’m sorry, Abuela, I thought, staring at myself in the bathroom mirror. I didn’t pray like I said I would. That didn’t kill you, did it?
At the funeral, when Abuela’s casket was lowered into the dirt, I stepped back to look at the frost on a tree near her grave. There sat an empty bird nest, probably from this last spring. A cold breeze made its small twigs shiver, but the nest stayed in place, firm on its naked branch.
“Rebecca.”
I spun around, startled by the voice that sounds so similar to mine. A pair of pale green eyes met me – my cousin Regan inherited our abuela’s eyes, while I got my father’s dark brown gaze. Regan’s skin is a shade lighter than mine, just like her brown hair, which is cut in a bob. She’s three years younger, five inches shorter, and her fashion sense hasn’t changed since high school – she wears T’s featuring superheroes and villains, round white prescription glasses, and bell bottom jeans under a black, unbuttoned coat.
“I felt it when she died.”
“What do you mean by that, Regan?”
We spoke at a quiet level, so as not to interrupt the funeral. I couldn’t listen to the priest any longer. Shit is depressing.
“Us Montego women are linked.” She crossed her fingers, smiling. Last time I saw her, she had these hideous purple braces. Now her teeth were straight and white.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said straightly.
Regan crossed her arms as another breeze assaulted our large family of mostly males between the ages of five and seventy-five. “Me, you, Abuela, and my mom. Abuela visited my dreams the night she died. She visited Mom’s, too.”
“She didn’t visit mine.”
“She didn’t have to – she told me to talk to you for her.”
“Would Tia Josefina say the same?”
Regan smirked. Her tan cheeks turned red from the cold. “No, Mom’s a puritan compared to Abuela and me. Abuela just told her she loves her and that she’ll see her in heaven.”
I shivered. This winter weather was freezing my bones.
“What did she tell you?” I asked, skeptically squinting at her.
“She told me to help show you your fated path.”
“Sounds loco.” I stared at her for a moment, before adding, “What would that path be?”
“The path of the Sisterhood,” she answered. “It’s time I show you how the Montego women roll … or how my mom and our abuela used to roll.”
Hard as it was to get out of bed that day, I figured Regan’s mysterious offer might be valuable. I hadn’t had a paying job, non-family friends, or nights out in many months. This could be an opportunity to live out the rest of my twenties like the good looking, young woman I am, and not the achy stay-at-home nurse my family obligations made me become.
A couple days after the funeral, I met with Regan at the apartment she’s been living at for the last year. Ever since she graduated with a degree in accounting, she’s been on her own, making good money. She meets me outside. Before I even get out of my used green Beetle, Regan goes up to my car and gets in on the passenger’s side. She’s dressed in a blue sweater with silver robot heads and white bell bottoms.
“Hi, sista,” she said, buckling herself in. “It’s time you meet the Sorority.”
“Sorority? I didn’t join one in college.”
“This is different from college sororities.”
Regan wasn’t lying. The fact that this goat-headed monster has caught me in its seven arms proves it.
