Summer of the Mariposas

After walking for two and a half hours, the sisters rest under the shade of a tree. They hear the lovely voice of a woman calling from the brush. Odilia remembers her mother saying, “Never talk to strangers” (129), but her sisters follow the voice. An enchanting blonde woman, Cecilia, invites them to her house to rest. The house is like an Eden, with a beautiful garden and carefully designed interiors. Cecilia pours them glass after glass of cold lemonade and feeds them sweet bread. The girls become very sleepy, and Cecilia encourages them to nap. The girls fall into a deep sleep. When they wake up, the woman is watching news coverage of their disappearance on TV. The news reports that Gabriel was a known drug dealer, and it is suspected that the girls were kidnapped in connection with his illegal dealings. Cecilia says that the police chief speaking is corrupt and that all will be well as long as they stay with her. Odilia asks to use the phone to call their mother, whom they have just seen on screen crying, “Please, please, if you have my daughters, please let them go. Let them come home. They’re all I’ve got” (136). Cecilia ignores Odilia and says that if she were their mother, she would never neglect them. Cecilia feeds them more sweets and ushers them to a bath and then bed. Odilia goes to bed grateful for a nice home but wakes up to a “mal aire,” which tells Odilia that the home is an illusion. She tries to get up to leave or use her ear pendant, but her hands feel like they are made of lead. She calls out to La Llorona for help.

La Llorona wakes Odilia and gives her a medicine made from the heart of a chinchontle plant, forcing her to throw up the sweet poison that Cecilia gave her. La Llorona shows Odilia to the kitchen, where Cecilia is baking more drugged cakes for the girls. She is now old and haggard. La Llorona explains that Cecilia is a witch and has been using potions to keep the girls there against their will. Odilia feeds the freshly baked pies to the pigs, then gives her sisters the same chinchontle drink. After they have purged the poison, Odilia explains what has been going on. The next morning, the girls confront the witch. Odilia uses her ear pendant to hypnotize Cecilia into helping them. Under hypnosis, Cecilia instructs them to visit a seer who lives two miles up from her house on a hill.

When the sisters turn back to look at the house, they see it as it is: run down and dilapidated. Just as the sisters are moving up the hill, Odilia’s hypnosis wears off. Cecilia rushes out and angrily shouts that the Garza sisters will pay for humiliating her. Juanita and the twins mock Cecilia, prompting her to cast a dark spell over them.

The Garza girls go to see Teresita, the seer whom Cecilia recommended. They are surprised by her unpleasant appearance, as she is hunched over and bald. Teresita pulls out a pack of cards and reads them to foresee the Garza girls’ future. Teresita tells the girls that Cecilia has set demons to terrorize them due to their conceit and arrogance. They will be visited by “The Evil Trinity,” or “Immortal children crafted by the devil himself and loosened upon this earth to aid in its destruction” (163). Teresita explains that the girls will first encounter el nagual, a disguised warlock who they must banish through song. Then they will meet evil lechuzas, or owls, whom they can defeat by tying seven knots in a silk thread. Lastly, they must defeat el chupacabras, a blood-sucking demon. Teresita’s husband informs the girls that he once blinded a chupacabras in one eye. He gives the girls a map to Hacienda Dorada, where their Abuelita Remedios lives.