Nicté, ch. 1

“I know I’ve said it before, but that is the last time I fall in love on a dare,” Nicté’s sister cried. This was Step 1 on her heartbreak

Nicté listened, but it was hard to take her sister’s side. Aniete was unaware of how she sounded to other people. From her perspective, everything was just so unfair. It wasn’t her fault she didn’t love her fiancé. And he was just being obstinate in not understanding that she barely even slept with that minor league hockey recruit. The unfortunate geolocations pointing out their four-month streak of seedy motels was also being completely overblown. Despite Nicté’s best efforts, she found herself listening… at times.

After about an hour, Nicté tried giving gentle pushback, “do you really want to be with him? The livestream seemed to suggest you didn’t.” Nicté didn’t get a chance to speak for the next hour. Finally, Aniete’s fiancé came over and distracted her. ¹

Nicté had to overclock her empathy reserves whenever Aniete called. Afterward, Nicté just sat, drained. Soon enough, more practical concerns broke through. She wondered how she would feed her kids tonight. The rations were running low.

Oh wait, you don’t know who these people are, do you? One of them is Nicté-Ha Landin Salamanca.² Since there’s another Nicté-Ha in this story, we’ll just call her ‘Nicté.’ ³

Nicté lived in Mexico City, though she desperately wanted to leave. Although Mexico City had only a tiny fraction of the population from its historical peak of 30,000,000, it was still massively overpopulated. It contained five percent of the world’s population, a statistic only 40 other cities could claim. ⁴

Crowds were everywhere. People crowded each other in the subway, the bus, or the bathroom, as etiquette dictated. Nicté could handle the occasional robberies, earthquakes, and apocalypses, but the crowds made her unhappy.

She had wanted to leave the city since she was a small child. She remembered visiting her cousins in the Northern Mexico. Her father had sent her there so that she could learn English, Spanglish, and Gibberish.⁵ Sending his kids away had a side benefit of giving him the space to focus on his work/affairs. Nicté and Aniete had gone every year until she had her first child. Then her life changed.

When Nicté was 17, she fell in love with a local DJ, who also often told her he loved her. A rather effective memory block means nobody is quite sure of his real name. We’ll just call him DJ.⁶ DJ had several cute nicknames for Nicté, which he used to refer to her in place of her actual name. It was a whirlwind romance with a dust devil ending. He would usually stop by on weekends or after a night of heavy drinking if he happened to be nearby. She thought it was love.

About a year into their relationship, Nicté discovered she was pregnant when she delivered their first child, Orlando.⁷ Although they always used two forms of protection, no method of birth control is 100 percent effective. ⁸ At the time, giving birth was not without risk. A fifth of women in Mexico died during childbirth. ⁹ Nevertheless, due a combination of young love, DJ losing himself in the heat of the moment, and taxes, they soon had another child, Adalina. ¹⁰

DJ was always this close to getting his big break, so he was unable to provide much in those early years. Initially, they’d lived apart, but then DJ moved into Nicté’s father’s basement to be nearer to their kids and his studio. It didn’t take long for Nicté’s father, Jaime, to realize the smell of PCP was coming from inside the house. When he discovered DJ, Nicté’s father was livid. Tired of supporting multiple families, Nicté’s father demanded that DJ get a job, which he did, reluctantly.

Still, their apartment was crowded, so Jaime bought Nicté and grandchildren an apartment of their own. This was one of the few major purchases Jaime made for his legitimate family, but it turned out to be a good one. Even when the economy fell apart and Jaime was rendered destitute, at least one of his children would never have to worry about being homeless. Nicté’s mother,¹¹ Irene, argued they should buy a second apartment. After all, they had two children. Perhaps neither of them should worry about being destitute. Unfortunately, Jaime would only listen to good counsel if it happened to be coming out of his own mouth, so he rejected her suggestion.

Nicté’s sister, Aniete, fumed when she’d learned her sister had gotten an apartment. Nicté had always been the favorite, Aniete complained. Though Jaime resisted the charge, it was obvious to everyone that it was true. Their mother compensated by explicitly stating that Aniete was her favorite. “My parents had an obvious favorite. I won’t have one of my daughters feeling like she’s not at least someone’s favorite!”

But Aniete wasn’t even Aniete’s favorite. And she wanted her father’s love, not her mother’s. ¹² Jaime would sometimes speak to Nicté like a daughter or even a normal human being, whereas his tone with his other daughter ranged from chastisement to condescension. Both Jaime and Aniete were difficult people, but their toxicity was incompatible.

So, while Aniete consumed more of his time, energy, and money, she was never stable enough for him to consider buying her a place to live. Aniete never let anybody forget that Nicté was the special one. “If I’d gotten pregnant, you would have made me get an abortion!” she once told her father. That attack was unfair: Aniete used abortions as a primary method of birth control. Her father would only ever learn of Aniete’s pregnancies whenever she wanted to hurt his feelings.

Their father had wanted nothing more than to have his daughters have a career, husband, and children, preferably in that order. ¹³ Nicté and Aniete were part of the Lamb generation. Their childhood was, in retrospect, the last great gasp of humanity. When Nicté was 19 and Aniete was 17, the world learned about Day 0. Some people in her generation refrained from having kids after that, but Nicté was pregnant with her second child at the time. She cried for weeks, thinking that her daughter would not live to be as old as Nicté currently was. Had she not had children as a teenager, she doubted if she would ever have had any. But sometimes, the best mistakes are ones you are legally obligated to keep alive.

For a few years, Nicté’s partner DJ put his career on hold and held a day job. He didn’t raise his kids, mind you. His job required him stay in a motel most weekends or when his favorite bands were playing. Still, he helped provide takeout for his family some of the rest of the time. Nicté’s father, Jaime, provided furniture, utilities, and everything else the family needed. Nicté held a few jobs, but there was no urgency to provide in those early years. Her father was rich and she thought that her partner was for life.

Until Nicté experienced a good relationship, this was her idea of happiness. Still, a day job was not a good fit for DJ. When Orlando and Adalina were four and two, respectively, DJ resigned as Mexico’s Secretary of Treasury and fled the country. He left Nicté, the two children we know about, and a lot of bad debt.¹⁴ Thankfully, they had never gotten married and so his creditors could not legally repossess their children.

The debt was not merely personal. Mexico had based their economic and foreign policy on his “Check is in the Mail” program, which, it turned out, was underfunded and over leveraged. Soon, the economy spiraled. The country suffered and even high earners like Jaime were rendered near destitution.

Nicté had to self assess and began working on anything that could put food on the table and, secondarily, keep the power on. She was able to do this for a few years, but not today. Today, the power failed. It happened at around hour four of Aniete yelling at her fiancé while Nicté kept the phone nearby. Nicté noticed Aniete’s silence well before she noticed that the lights had gone out. Aniete was conversational tinnitus. Respite was unexpected, but cherished.

Nicté’s two children came out of their rooms, looking for answers. They’d hidden in their room to avoid being talked at by their aunt, but now everything was quiet. As they emerged, six-year-old Orlando was curious, four-year-old Adalina was scared.

This week had been tough. Nicté had lost her most permanent job in marketing and promotions. Her mother had tried to console her by yelling, “they probably just fired you because you got too fat.” Nicté learned to tolerate this. Her mother had a distorted view of beauty. By most standards, Nicté wasn’t fat at all. In fact, she had only recently risen to the “Underweight” category.

These thoughts raced through her mind, as Nicté worried about how to pay her bills. She had cried when she learned she lost her job, as they owed her a month of work that they would never pay. She needed the money desperately. Just the day before, Orlando had asked for a chocolate on the way to their grandparent’s house. It was a small chocolate, sold by a merchant selling candy out of his van. Nicté wanted to oblige, but she literally didn’t have two extra bits. She explained that she couldn’t. She held back tears as well as they’d passed the stand. Adalina held her mom’s hand, knowing something was wrong but unable to understand what. Orlando tried to comfort her, “Those looked old and mulched up, anyway. I wouldn’t want to get a tummy ache.” Nicté’s heart swelled as she saw how her son instantly made light of the situation.

Nicté was only 23, but she had lived a lot in those short years. She had been raised by an narcissistic father, an exacting mother, and with a histrionic sister. She’d dated a scoundrel, but still managed to raise a precocious, funny, self-aware son and a tender, adventurous, and independent daughter. Nicté had walked on eggshells for two decades by that point. She probably could have handled hostage negotiations in the Middle East. ¹⁵

Nicté’s first instinct when the power had gone out was to cry at the unfairness of it all. Her father had been a millionaire, but he’d lost so much of it on a magic bean that Aniete had really wanted. ¹⁶ She’d worked every day her kids had been alive and she still couldn’t keep the lights on. In the twilight, Nicté looked at her son’s tan skin and combed his long, black hair with her fingers. She held her daughter’s light, soft hand and looked into her bright, green eyes. “Do you guys want to have an adventure?” Her face turned into a soft, mischievous smile.

Suddenly, the children’s concerns seemed to evaporate. “What kind of an adventure?” Orlando asked. He hated going up and down the five flights of stairs. His favorite adventures were the kind that he could have in his room or online.

“Stay right here,” Nicté instructed, as she went into the kitchen. Orlando held his sister’s hand.

Nicté returned with a small box and set it down. She pulled out two objects and held them closely.

“Did I ever tell you I knew magic?”

“Eye roll,” Orlando said, knowing this required a bit of a call-and-response.
“Really?” Adalina chimed in, at the same time.

“I do! I read the tarot. And I even gave birth to the both of you, which is maybe the biggest magic of them all!”

“Oh,” Adalina’s expectations dropped. This was a gimmick.
“Uf,” Orlando, who hadn’t started with high expectations, but he’d still thought this was too corny, even for a six-year-old.

“The magic of discovery and creation is real magic,” Nicté stated matter-of-factly. “In most religions, that’s all that’s needed to go from darkness to light! Now watch, as I use my magical powers to… Let. There. Be. Light!”

With a flourish, Nicté lit a match. She reached into her box and pulled out a tea candle. She lit it, then lit two more.

“I can teach you the magic! You merely take one of these candles and you can pass it along from candle to candle.” With that, the children eagerly began lighting candles. They debated where to place them to better light their evening. And then, as Nicté came in with cinnamon-flavored oatmeal, they pretended they were in olden times, huddling for warmth.

That was one of Orlando and Adalina’s favorite memories of their mother. She tucked them into bed, kissed them, and told them she loved them. They never knew that afterward, she went to her room and cried all night, vowing to do whatever it took to give her children a brighter future. ¹⁷

That night, she vowed that they would survive the apocalypse. It was a vow she very nearly kept, too.