The Butterfly’s Daughter Read Online Free PDF

heavy rope over her shoulder. Sometimes she felt as tightly bound to her culture and its expectations for her as a woman as her grandmother’s long, traditional braid. She was proud of her Mexican heritage. Yet Luz didn’t want to be defined by it. She wanted the freedom to discover herself.
    Abuela brought her hand up to cup Luz’s cheek. Her fingers felt papery and cool and her dark eyes pulsed with meaning. “We must talk about Mariposa, your mother.”
    â€œI don’t remember her,” she said softly. “She’s been dead so long she’s becoming some vague memory, more a feeling than someone real. I’m forgetting her and it makes me sad.”
    Abuela’s brows gathered over troubled eyes. “Luz,” she said, stumbling for words. “There is much you don’t know about Mariposa.”
    â€œI know she was beautiful.”
    â€œ Sí, ” she replied, arching her brow in memory. “Very.”
    â€œAm I at all like my mother?” She heard the pleading in her own voice.
    Abuela hesitated. Luz felt the heat of her gaze on her, searching for traces of family resemblance. She knew Abuela worried about her American granddaughter who did not know her family traditions and did not speak her native language.
    â€œNot so much in looks. You have her beautiful skin. So creamy and smooth. Mariposa was taller, and so thin a gust of wind couldblow her away. And often did,” she added with a bittersweet smile. “You and I, we are made of more sturdy stock, eh?”
    Luz cringed. Sturdy in her mind meant strong bones, oxen, hardly what a young woman wanted to hear. Luz was full-bodied with rounded breasts and curvy hips. Plump, mean girls might say. Curvaceous, Sully said.
    Seeing her reaction, Abuela tsked and shook her head, frustrated with the English language. “No, maybe I use the wrong word. I mean steady, eh? We have both feet rooted on the ground. Your mother”—Abuela paused and her eyes grew sad—“she had both feet planted firmly in the air.”
    Luz’s eyes widened with surprise. Abuela had only ever spoken of her mother as a princess in some fairy tale, using superlatives and terms of praise. She’d never heard Abuela criticize her perfect daughter.
    â€œSometimes, I think that’s better,” Luz said. “You have more fun.”
    â€œNo! More trouble, that is all.” Abuela shook her head slowly, exposing a weary sadness. “My poor, foolish daughter. For all that she enjoyed life, she made it hard, too. Mariposa was a flighty creature. Like the butterfly I named her for. You could never pin her down. I used to think that was her gift.” She shrugged and regret flashed in her eyes. “But it was also her flaw.”
    Luz wiped a strand of hair from her forehead, pausing to take all of Abuela’s words in. She saw deep lines carved into Abuela’s face, more obvious today with her fatigue. A new grief seemed to weigh heavily on her, causing her shoulders to droop. Most important, these words of criticism and despair came from a dark place in her heart she’d never revealed to Luz before.
    â€œPerhaps if I had been more strict,” Abuela continued. “I never should have allowed Mariposa to go to the university.”
    â€œWhy wouldn’t you want her to go to college?” Luz asked indignantly. She’d give anything for the chance to go to college.
    â€œWhat does a beautiful woman need with school, eh? Mariposa should have stayed at home and married a good man. Her life would have been so different. She might have—” Abuela stopped herself, closing her eyes for a moment with a sigh. “But her father was an educated man and insisted.”
    Luz knew the end of this story as well. Abuela had been deeply suspicious of the idea of sending her beautiful daughter—the only child of her second marriage—away to the university. Abuela could read and