Coco

By Kristy Webster

"Coco" is a novella that tells the story of two families; the Trozcos and the Fabos and the two children that set the destiny of both families in motion.
Sammy Fabo and Maribel Trozco are born on the same night, at the exact same hour and minute. However, the two children couldn't have less in common. Sammy is born with an exceptional beauty, both hypnotic and devastating, yet Sammy has also entered the world with an already broken heart. Maribel is a child full of joy, a heart redder and more loving than most, but she has also been "cursed" with a birth defect: a third arm, that Maribel later names "Coco."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kristy Webster
• Release date: Aug 19, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301374366

Kristy Webster

Kristy Webster is often ridiculed by her teenage son for her habit of mispronouncing common English words. Her stories have appeared in several online journals such as, “The Ginger Piglet,” “The Stone Hobo”, “Connotations”, “Abacot Journal”, “A Word With You Press”, “A Fly in Amber” and in two anthologies by GirlChildPress.

Book preview

COCO

Kristy Webster

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2013 Kristy Webster

License Notes: This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this ebook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Cover Art by Diana Gua

Edited by Magdalen Powers

Ebook formatting by www.ebooklaunch.com

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 - The Funeral

Chapter 2 - The Doctor and the Seamstress

Chapter 3 - Daniel's Deception

Chapter 4 - La Curandera

Chapter 5 - La Tristeza de Beatriz

Chapter 6 - Child in the Mirror

Chapter 7 - Coco

Chapter 8 - The Sullen Boy

Chapter 9 - Daniel and Beatriz

Chapter 10 - Beatriz and Carmen

Chapter 11 - The Paper Girl

Chapter 12 - The Writing on the Wall

Chapter 13 - Elena's Sleepless Night

Chapter 14 - Deanna's Reckoning

Chapter 15 - The Confession

Chapter 16 - The Healing

Chapter 17 - The Wedding

Chapter 18 - Elena Sleeps

Acknowledgements

About the Author

For the seekers and dreamers.

k.w.

Chapter 1

The Funeral

Too bad for Maribel, God gave her an extra arm, and too bad that her beautiful, olive-skinned mother went into such shock at the sight of her that her heart shattered and she died. Not that the arm itself was malformed or grotesque, but the fact that the arm protruded from the left side of Maribel's upper back and trembled with afterbirth proved more than Carmen's heart could take.

Daniel wrapped his wife in their wedding quilt, after his mother Elena had gently sponged clean Carmen's cold skin and dressed her in her quinceañera dress. Meanwhile, a slight, quiet Maribel slept nestled in a warm nest of fleece blankets Grandma Elena had prepared for her, inside a wicker basket at the foot of the bed.

Daniel and Elena saved their tears, deep inside their pockets. The ceremony, taking place only twenty-four hours after Carmen's death—for neither Daniel nor Elena could bear to let death's ugliness ravage their darling girl—was their greatest priority. The grief, the insurmountable loss of Carmen, as well as the ungodly, terrifying sight of Maribel's dysfunction, would have to wait.

Carmen's funeral took place in the back yard, near a bed of daisies. It had been the place where, on bended knee, Daniel had proposed to her. At the time, he had no ring to offer her. Instead he picked one of the daisies and tied it around her ring finger. This seemed to delight Carmen more than silver, or gold, or any gem ever would.

Though Carmen's parents had passed away years earlier, Carmen did not want for love. She was the gold-hearted beauty of the community, and it was her kindness that had stamped invisible tattoos upon every person who had ever become acquainted with her. Neighbors and friends of neighbors, and relatives of those friends and neighbors, attended Carmen's funeral, and somehow the Trozcos' little yard stretched to accommodate all of them. The heavy-hearted guests let their tears loose while Daniel and Elena nearly suffocated in their grief.

Only one guest arrived unwanted: Beatriz Fabo, who arrived carrying her healthy, two-armed and devastatingly beautiful baby boy. Beatriz had given birth to her son, Sammy, not only on the same day, but the same hour and same minute as Maribel also entered the world. That is when Elena believed without a doubt that Beatriz had given her beloved Carmen, mal de ojo, the Evil Eye.

Elena had desperately tried to warn Carmen during her pregnancy that she was much too beautiful. It was true: Carmen's beauty was both admired and coveted. But Elena was sure that Beatriz desired Carmen's beauty to the extent of committing great malice. For Beatriz Fabo was truly the homeliest woman Elena and the entire neighborhood, and maybe even the whole world, had ever laid eyes on.

Some women are tall and slender, others are petite and charming, some are round and glowing, some women slice the air with their sharp curves. But what could be said about poor Beatriz Fabo? She was a shadow of a shape in motion. Her face had the right parts but a jarring effect on onlookers. Her close-spaced, hooded eyes suggested a color, but never decided on one; her skin was sallow down to her very lips, and her nose was a long, wavy line with no decipherable end. As an adult, Beatriz kept her thin brown hair cropped at chin length. In her youth, she had worn it very long while her mother and aunts decorated her locks with silk flowers and rhinestone-studded hair clips. They pulled and braided and brushed her hair into exquisite braids, into hairdos fit for a princess. They subjected her to permanent waves that smelled of sulfur and made her eyes sting. They bleached the dull brown from her hair, coloring it with dynamic reds, rich blue-blacks, or golden highlights. But what happens when you take a dilapidated house, rotting from the foundation up and only give it a coat of paint? Eventually, the damage on the inside comes through the façade. No amount of painting and primping can cure the state of wooden beams infested with termites; paint and new hardware cannot undo years of neglect, years of