The Realm of Hungry Spirits

by Lorraine López

Genres: General Fiction; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

In Buddhism, there is a place where hungry souls gather between lives awaiting rebirth so they can finally satisfy the desires that haunt them. In the San Fernando Valley, that place is Marina Lucero's house. The Realm of Hungry Spirits For Marina Lucero, whose father transformed his life through meditation and whose mother gave hers to a Carmelite convent, spirituality should come easily. It doesn't. After a devastating relationship leaves her feeling lost and alone, she opens her home to a collection of wayward souls-- the abused woman next door and her alcoholic sister, her aimless nephew and his broken-hearted best friend. Her house now full but her heart still empty, Marina then turns to the wisdom of Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, even a Santeria priest who wants to cleanse her home. As Marina struggles to balance the disappointments and delights of daily life, she'll learn that, when it comes to inner peace and those we love, a little chaos can lead to a lot of happiness.

Release date: May 2, 2011

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 345

Sample

“A humorous, often raucous story… THE REALM OF HUNGRY SPIRITS is, first and foremost, a spiritual journey; one that leads
a good soul toward a life-changing discovery.”


—Judith Ortiz Cofer, author of Call Me Maria

“This warm comic novel is trademark Lorraine López: gritty, true, hilarious, wise, moving—all the good things.”

—Joy Castro, author of The Truth Book

“With her deft and pitch-perfect prose, Lopez has created a wickedly funny and warmly empathetic tale of life in contemporary
America. THE REALM OF HUNGRY SPIRITS is the work of one of our finest literary artists.”


—Lynn Pruett, author Ruby River

“Brilliantly written… at once profound, intelligent, deeply spiritual, and laugh-out-loud funny. It gives a unique look into
the varied and complex spiritual life of the Latino community.”


—Daniel Chacón, award-winning author of Unending Rooms

“A beautifully written, zesty family chronicle, The Gifted Gabaldón Sisters covers over a century of women’s lives, pieced together like a Southwest quilt.”


—Teresa de la Caridad Doval, author of A Girl Like Che Guevara

“Reminiscent of the novels of Cristina Garcia and Sandra Cisneros, López’s book presents a lively, loving Latino family. Highly
recommended.”


—Library Journal

“López establishes herself as an excellent storyteller with this multilayered tale of sisterhood, growing up, self-awareness,
and honoring history.”


—Publishers Weekly

“It has been a long time since I have cared for the characters of a novel as much as I care for the Gabaldón sisters. Their
individual perspectives and personalities are woven together to create a three-dimensional world full of promise in spite
of the daily obstacles familiar to us all. Lorraine López moves effortlessly between humor and heartache, opening us up to
the possibility that what seems coincidental is truly magical.”


—Blas Falconer, author of The Perfect Hour

“Enchanting.”

—Good Housekeeping

“The Gifted Gabaldón Sisters is about secrets and lies, dramas and scandals, big losses and deep resentments—the very stuff that makes life worth living.
It’s been a long time since I’ve encountered such a rambunctious and motley bunch of characters. And in López’s hands, through
her finely calibrated prose, they lift off the page with dignity and soul, and she makes you root and ache for each of them
until the very end.”


—Alex Espinoza, author of Still Water Saints

“This lyrical story is cleverly told… López folds in rich Pueblo Indian and Mexican American traditions and creates a loving,
flawed, and interesting family that will entrance readers.”


—Booklist

“Delightful… A new favorite author has been found”

—ReaderViews.com

“Magical.”

—Vanderbilt Magazine

“Charming.”

—Latina Magazine

“A master short-story writer and novelist.”

Defining Trends Magazine

“Unique… rich and believable.”


—Unadorned Book Reviews (unadorned-book.blogspot.com)


First thing this morning, the phone’s screaming its head off, and I can’t find the stupid thing anywhere, so I’m wandering
around in my empire-waist, lime nightgown, still half in a dream, like some dazed Josephine, minus her Napoleon. Has my nephew
Kiko fallen asleep with it on the couch again? I flip a small plaid blanket off his lumpish, snoring form. Nope, not there.
Kiko wrenches the flannel throw over his shoulder and flops on his side, turning his immense back to me. At least he’s cut
out the snoring. But the kid suffers from this sleep apnea thing. He ceases breathing every so often, like just now, and it’s
spooky. What if he croaks, right here? On my sectional sofa? Then he sucks in a wet, rattling breath, and I’m relieved, but
kind of let down, too, in a weird way. I mean, at twenty-three, Kiko’s only ten years younger than me. He still has a ways
to go. Does he plan to spend the next fifty or sixty years of his life sleeping on my couch?


I glance at my kid sister’s ex-boyfriend Reggie, passed out on the nearby love seat. Maybe he left the phone in the kitchen, which would be convenient. I could stand a cup of coffee. As I’m gristing the beans for a
stiff espresso, a-ha! I notice one of the blackened bananas in the bowl on top of the fridge is actually the receiver. Of course, by now it’s stopped
ringing: my goal all along. I have no more desire to find out who’s pestering me this early than I’d want to coochy-coo the
rooster next door—a one-legged veterano rescued from the cockfights—that started shrieking just before five, driving me to
wad my pillow into my ears.


I’m up for good now, and kind of enjoying the warmth of the linoleum on my bare feet. Summer mornings, this little rental
house in Sylmar almost feels like a living body, pulsing with mild heat, expanding and contracting with the sleepy breathing
of its occupants. But by afternoon, forget it, it’s hotter here than inside a casket hurtling deep into the caverns of hell.
Luckily, my backyard abuts the Angeles National Forest and corners of it, shaded by citrus trees and deep in the shadows of
the pine and fir trees covering the foothills, stay as dark and cool as it is inside a well.


I’m humming to myself, dribbling water onto the potted cactus and aloe plants, wiping the ceramic Buddhas, and straightening
a framed snapshot of Gandhi on the windowsill, when the phone starts in again. I clear my throat and snatch the receiver from
the banana bowl. “What’s up?”


“Marina? Marina, is that you?” a sort of familiar male voice says.

“Yeah, who’s this?”

“It’s Nestor, Nestor Pérez, Rudy’s friend.”

Ah, yes, Nestor, my ex-boyfriend’s old buddy, a Cubano, some kind of Santeria priest, a babalawo, who moved to Florida a few
years ago. But he must be seriously out of touch with the orishas if he thinks he can find Rudy at my house these days. “Rudy’s
not here. We broke up about five months ago, back in February.” I spoon ground coffee into the filter and fill the chamber
from the tap. “Are you in LA?”


“Nah, I’m in Miami, and I ain’t looking for Rudy. I want to talk to you.”

“Yeah?” I press the on button on the espresso machine and make my way back into the living room. The machine clamors like
a diesel engine once it gets going, making it impossible to hear a thing in the kitchen. It’s only slightly less deafening
in the living room, too, though this hardly wakes Kiko and Reggie.


No question Nestor hears the thing. He starts shouting into the phone, “I want to do you a limpieza, you know, clean the evil
spirits out of tu casa!”


Now, I’ve heard about this kind of thing before, so I’m wondering if he’s lost his mind. The ceremony involves some kind of
domesticated animal sacrifice. I picture goat blood pooling on my linty green carpet. And don’t limpiezas cost a fortune?
Nestor used to brag about what he charges, and I remember thinking it’d be cheaper (and more worthwhile) to have the house
painted professionally. “No thanks. Don’t need one,” I say. He must have fallen on real hard times, if he’s telemarketing
his buddies’ ex-girlfriends.


“Nah, man, listen, everybody needs a limpieza, or the evil spirits just keep on accumulating and bringing all kinds of harm and shit.”


I glance from Kiko, stop-and-start snoring on one couch, to Reggie, sprawled on the love seat with his thin, hairy legs dangling
over the armrest like some lifeless insect’s appendages. My nephew Kiko moved in when my older sister and her live-in boyfriend
“tough-loved” him out of their house, and Reggie, his best friend, started staying over here after my youngest sister broke
off their engagement, and he lost his job, car, apartment, the works. At the time, I was sorry for both of them, and feeling
the sharp edge of breakup loneliness myself, I let them stay, thinking it would be at most a few days. But months have passed.
And last week my neighbor Carlotta, who has run away from her bruto of a husband and three ignoramus teenage sons, moved into
my guest room, after her baby—the thirteen-year-old—gave her a black eye.


“To be honest with you,” I tell Nestor now, thinking evil spirits are not what I need cleared out of my house, “that kind of thing’s not part of my culture, and no way do I have the money for it.”


Carlotta’s coppery curls emerge from the hallway, followed by her girlish form, clad in a yellow nightie. She’s lugging a
basket of laundry, but she sees me on the phone and freezes, her hazel eyes wide and unblinking.


“Absolutely free. You understand?” Nestor says, sounding like one of those radio announcers offering deep discounts on “pre-owned”
vehicles. “I’m not going to charge you nothing.”


I shake my head to clear my ears. Maybe I’m not hearing too well. “Let me get this straight—you want to do it for no money. I don’t pay a penny.”

“You got it.”

“Why?” Knowing Nestor as I do, or any of Rudy’s scheming friends for that matter, I have no doubt there’s a catch of some kind.


“Es que, I had this dream about you, mujer, a nightmare with fiery lizards and poison toads. I can’t tell it all. Me dió tanto
susto that I woke up with two white hairs in my moustache. I could see, in this dream, that you’re facing una tragedia, a
terrible loss and a tremendous challenge, una lucha tan larga, that I says to myself, Nestor, you got to do something. I tossed
the cowries, and you don’t even want to know what I—”


“You can do a limpieza long distance from Miami?”

“Nah, man, I’ll fly out there, and I ain’t going to charge the airfare neither ’cause I’m heading out tomorrow for my cousin’s wedding on Saturday,
plan to spend a couple weeks in LA, so it’s totally free.”


“Who is it?” Carlotta whispers.

I cup the mouthpiece as Nestor explains all he plans to do in order to perform my limpieza, punctuating every sentence with
“free of charge.” “It’s Nestor, Rudy’s friend, the babalawo,” I tell her. “He wants to do a limpieza here at the house.”


Carlotta’s face relaxes, but then she curls her upper lip. “Ugh—goat blood.” She hefts the basket into the kitchen, where I keep the washer.


“Look, Nestor,” I say when he finally pauses for breath. “I don’t want a limpieza, not even a free one. I’m good the way things
are.” In truth, I’m not too worried about evil-spirit buildup. At least these dark forces keep quiet. They don’t break up with people on Valentine’s Day or lose
their jobs and come running to my house to stay for months. They never smell like foot funk or leave deep body impressions
on my sectional cushions. I can’t accuse them of smearing hair gel on my throw pillows. They have yet to use up all the hot
water or borrow any of my major appliances, and they have not once disturbed my deep, delicious sleep. Even the wickedest
of evil spirits would be a huge improvement over the neighbors’ rooster.


Nestor assures me I will change my mind, and I tell him that I have to get ready for work.

“I thought you teachers were off in the summer.”

“Ever hear of summer school?” I say, vaguely wondering how Nestor knows I’m a teacher now. He probably called Rudy earlier,
made him the first offer of a free limpieza. To be polite, I cast about in my memory for Nestor’s wife’s name and reel up
a possibility. “Hey, how’s Dixie doing? And the kids?”


“You mean Daisy? Ah, you know women. They see someone has something, and they want it. She’s bugging to get a job now, put the baby in preschool.
She got all these gabacha ideas from her stupid friends.”


“There are worse ideas to get,” I say, thinking of my ex-boyfriend Rudy’s former wife, Dolores, whose body was found right
around Christmastime some years back, slumped on a bench in Echo Park, both arms so riddled with needle marks she looked like
she had a flesh-eating disease. “Listen, I’ve got to go, or I’ll be late.”


“A’ight, that’s cool. I’m going to give you my cell number, so call me when you change your mind. Just remember, this offer expires in a few days.”

“I doubt I’ll change my mind.”

“Write it down anyway, okay? And I’m going to give you my website, too. You should check it out.”

Amazed that Nestor has a website, I pretend to write everything down and finally hang up, replacing the phone, for once, in
its cradle, which sits on a wooden bookcase near the love seat. The books are dust-furred, and the plum-colored love seat
looks faded under a fine sifting of grit. Carlotta rattles the dishes piled in the sink, no doubt searching for a coffee cup
to rinse out. Far be it from her to fill the basin with hot water, squirt in some dish soap, and actually wash a few plates.
If Nestor could do a true limpieza in this house—one that involved pine-scented disinfectant, scouring powder, and furniture
polish—then, no problem, I’d certainly be down for that. I would even pay.


At Olive Branch Middle School, I teach English as a Second Language to eighth graders on an emergency teaching credential,
which means I finished my bachelor of arts degree, but not the certification program yet. Since the district is so hard up
for Chicana teachers, they went ahead and hired me anyway. Before last year, I worked in an insurance office, processing claims
by day and taking courses at night to finish my degree. I was the bona fide vieja in all of my classes, the one-and-only over
thirty. I’d hunch over my desk in the back, sweating pupusas, trying to write down everything the professor said, and pretending
not to notice the cutting looks from stringy nineteen-year-old girls in low-rise skinny jeans and the snickering of bullet-headed punks with their ’chones hanging halfway out their
pants. It was all worth it, more than worth it, not to face another day in my fluorescent tomb of a cubicle, not to deal with
the liars, lunatics, hypochondriacs, and assorted nitwit opportunists who view a crumpled fender as a winning lottery ticket.
People are not at their best, usually, just after car theft or collision. They can be pretty frazzled, irritated, shocked,
or depressed. But more and more these days, they’re gleeful, nearly smacking their lips with greed. And seeing this kind of
thing daily creates a low-down and guilty feeling in a person, just by association.


At Olive Branch, these people, my students, are at their best, likely the best they’ll ever be. They’re fresh-faced, strong, healthy, hopeful, and eager—even the overweight
and pimply kids have such promise. I want to take each one aside and say, Stop a minute and enjoy this before it’s too late. You will never feel so good in your lives. It is total bullshit about life
experience and wisdom making up for what you will lose from here on out. Of course, they’d never buy it. No one wants to believe that kind of thing. So I have to content myself with enjoying their
great good fortune, however brief it is, in a secondhand way, while I’m at the middle school.


This summer, I’m teaching two reading classes—one beginning and the other advanced—on weekday mornings. For the beginners,
I basically teach these fairy tales that are written in very simple English. For the advanced class, I picked out a book I
thought would appeal to the students, a slender novel called The Incredible Journey. It has a picture of two dogs with a cat on the cover, and how could I resist? I figured, hey, kids like animals, especially dogs, so I
ordered a set, not realizing how tough the thing would be. The vocabulary is what’s really incredible about this book. I’m lunging for the dictionary at least half a dozen times with each chapter. Words like sybaritic, somnolent, and hermetic are all over the place. I guess my vocabulary’s improving, and that’s something, but in the meantime, I’m sweating all over again, just like in college, trying to rewrite the book, so I can crack
the code for the middle schoolers and translate the words into plain English.


Today, after wrestling the high diction all morning and getting my butt whipped, I slink over to the office to pick up my
mail and messages before heading home. I’m planning to cruise by Stop & Shop for a six-pack of beer. I’m craving some Kirin
or Asahi, one of those clean, potent Japanese beers, with my nice solitary lunch of leftover grilled salmon out in the backyard.
But there’s a yellow slip in my cubby hole—until now I hadn’t even noticed that I must have left my cell phone at home or
else it’s been swallowed up into the recesses of my trickster of a purse—a phone message from Leticia, my ex-boyfriend’s daughter.
Come to the hospital right away, someone, likely a student assistant, has scrawled in the message box. Oh, shit, I say, but silently because I’m in the office, and now that I’m a teacher, I have to cut back on the audible cursing while
on school grounds. Wish I could moan it out loud though.


Just over six months ago, Letty and her husband, Miguel, had a baby boy, but he was born with a congenital disease, hypoparathyroidism, the doctors at Manzanita Vista Hospital said, after weeks of poking and prodding and testing. I
know what this is now because I wrote the word down in a spiral-bound tablet I carry with me, so I could look it up on one
of the school computers in the media center. But back then, when the baby was born, nobody knew a thing. We all thought he
was fine. Rudy and I were together at the time, and I was even in the delivery room with Letty and Miguel when the baby popped
out, though I hate the sight of blood and gore, slimy placentas and whatnot. It was a long, gross labor and delivery, but
the baby seemed fine when he finally slithered out, a wet, rubbery thing with two lungs full of attitude. All of us sobbed.
Even the midwife and nurse got a little damp eyed. Then I had to rush out and find Rudy, who was puffing Marlboros in the
parking lot, to give him the good news. The baby looked to be in great shape: eight pounds, twenty-two inches long, red-faced,
strong, and vocal. Rudy was especially proud because Letty and Miguel decided—after some heavy-duty campaigning on Rudy’s
part—to name their boy Rodolfo, after his abuelo.


But after six weeks, the little guy wasn’t gaining much weight. It’s shitty to say, but I secretly questioned Letty’s decision
to return to work, managing the food counter at Kmart, too soon and leaving him with Rosaura, Miguel’s cranky old mother,
without a second thought. Failure to thrive, the doctor said at the twelve-week visit. The bruja probably kept him locked in a closet all day, I thought, but I was also
noticing his crooked crying, the left side of his lip dipping down, like it was being yanked by some unseen hook, and he cried
all the time. Back and forth to the clinic and then to the hospital they went—usually hauling me along to talk to the doctors, translate the medical jargon
into words they could understand. Again, I was sweating, papayas this time, and trying to copy everything down. Cystic fibrosis, they first said, then, after the salt test, no, not cystic fibrosis, but hypocalcemia, diabetes mellitus, renal insufficiency, neurodegeneration. In the media center, I looked each word up twice—Google and then Yahoo, though they led to the same websites. Despite this,
I kept hoping to come up with different explanations or newer articles with groundbreaking discoveries. Nothing I found changed
what I’ve known for weeks, which is what the doctors know and what Letty, Miguel, and even Rudy—wherever he is now—don’t want
to face at all.


At the hospital, I find Letty at the nurses’ station, tapping her car keys on the counter. She keeps saying, “Can’t you do something?” The nurses shuffle about uneasily, shifting file sleeves around and trading glances. It’s impossible to find
my bright and beautiful Letty, the eager-faced little girl I helped raise from the time she was nine years old, in this thin,
tense young woman, tapping at the counter. With her unwashed hair and dark-ringed eyes, she looks more like an escapee from
an institution for the criminally insane than the warm, funny girl I like to pretend is my own daughter. “He’s all bloated,”
she says now to the nurses, her voice high and strained. “He can’t even move his head. There’s got to be something you can
do to drain him out.”


I call her name, and she rushes at me, nearly knocking me over.

Her thin arms encircle my ribcage, squeezing me so tightly it’s hard to breathe. “He looks awful, Marina,” she says in my
ear, her breath hot and stale. “I can’t stand to see him like this.” Letty pulls away and searches my face, her fingers now
digging painfully into my upper arms. “You have to help me!”


With these words, I remember the time I had to drive to the courthouse in San Fernando to pay Letty’s bail after she was caught
shoplifting a silk blouse from Neiman Marcus. She’d just turned seventeen and she was terrified her father would find out,
so I was the one she called. “You have to help me!” I thought it was one of the worst things we’d ever face. Until now, I had no idea how easy it was to stroll
into the courtroom, slap a serious look on my face, listen to the judge, and afterward, calmly write out a check. I actually
could help my girl. But that was nothing compared to this.


“Okay, m’ija. It’s okay. I’m here,” I say, knowing full well there’s little, if anything, I can do to help her now. “Let’s
go see the baby, all right?”


Before we leave the nurses’ station, I give them a look, draw out my tablet, and say, “Please call the doctor.” I’m gratified
when the pudgy one at the desk lifts a receiver. I wish I’d known about the power of the writing pad when I had my miscarriages,
that horrible time not two years ago.


Manzanita Vista Hospital is kind of a dump since the last earthquake. Overhead, you can see aluminum ducts, wires, and pink
tufts of fiberglass insulation where the plaster has fallen out in chunks, but at least the children’s wing is repaired and
freshly painted with bright murals of circus scenes. Dancing elephants, balloon-bearing clowns, and flying trapeze artists scroll past as we make our way to little
Rudy. The baby shares an aquamarine room with a six-year-old girl who has leukemia and a big family of mustachioed men and
plump women who crowd around her bed, talking quietly whenever I come to visit. I imagine they are always there, eternally
ringed around that bald kid, speaking in hushed tones like they’re in church.


Poor baby Rudy has to take what he can get, visitor-wise, as Letty continues to work, though she’s cut back on her hours.
Miguel has a full-time job laying and repairing pipe for the city, and he’s doubled up on his Narcotics Anonymous meetings
in his free time. And my ex—the namesake—forget about it. That useless fool can’t be bothered with anything the slightest bit difficult or unpleasant. He hopped a
plane to Santo Domingo as soon as we knew the baby’s condition was serious. No one knows when or even if he’ll be back.


“Buenos dias,” I say to the quiet folks and the dying girl.

“Buenos,” they murmur in unison without lifting their eyes to meet mine.

“Look at him.” Letty points to the baby flat on his back in the hospital crib. “He can’t even move.”

Edema, I remember this from my previous notes, fluid retention. His stunted body looks inflated, like some grotesque balloon, the hospital band biting into his swollen wrist, but he’s
not crying. His face is calm, his puffy eyelids fluttering, as though he’s lofting about in some gentle dream. “He looks peaceful.”
I touch his bunched and mottled fist, silky and warm as a puppy’s belly.


“Don’t say that.” Letty wheels on me, her sour-smelling hair whipping her cheeks. “That’s what they say at funerals.”

The door swings open, and I’m impressed with the power of my writing tablet, but it’s just Rudy, deeply tanned from the island,
even wearing new sunglasses. I haven’t seen him for months. My heart pitches against my ribs like some trapped, panicky bird.
Arrhythmia? Immediately, I regret the loose blue blouse I threw on over black slacks that morning and bunching my long hair into a plastic
clip. Rudy used to complain that baggy clothes made me look too skinny, and he liked me to wear my long hair down, so he could
comb fingers through the soft brown tresses. But what does that matter now? I fold and then refold the extra crib blankets,
not daring to look up.


“Where the hell have you been?” Letty asks him.

“How is he?” Rudy says. His husky, accented voice whooshes me back, over a decade ago, when he first told me, deep in the
shaded dell of my backyard, that he couldn’t stop thinking about me, and he asked me, real quietly, if he could kiss me. Con permiso, he’d said, and my eyes traveled to his lips, ripe as persimmons—full and sweet and sun-warmed. I lifted my face to his for
a taste.


“Look, look at him,” Letty says, now, hands on her hips. “What do you think?”


He stoops over the crib. “Hi, buddy,” he says in that high, reedy voice people use when they have no idea how to talk to babies.
“You get big and strong, so we can play some baseball, a’ight?”


Letty cuts me a look. “Like he ever played anything with me.”


“Why don’t you take a break, honey,” I tell her. “Now that we’re here, you can go downstairs, grab something to eat or freshen
up, if you have to.” The toilet in . . .