The second autumn, the dead arrived with fewer labels.
Remedios had wanted it that way. No numbers on the backs of portraits. No large ledger open in the alcove. Families who still wished to leave a photograph with her wrote their names on small envelopes they kept themselves. If they wanted to leave an account, the school had a room for that, with separate sheets, two cabinets, and don Fermín telling everyone the alphabet was not a sacrament.
Remedios’s house had returned to its original purpose: coffee was made there, tablecloths repaired, arguments held over where the candles should go. This year the altar had two tiers instead of three.
Jacinta said that was progress because she would have less wax to scrape off on November 3.
Clara said it was progress because you could cross the room again without apologizing to five generations.
Remedios said nothing. Mostly, she saw the empty spaces.
A year earlier, people had entrusted portraits to her as they might entrust a date: assuming she would know what to do with them. Since then, they had learned that knowing how to file something and having the right to keep it were not the same talent. Some families still came. Others built their altars at home and closed the door.
At dusk on November 1, 1911, there were six of them in the large room. Jacinta was cutting oranges. Clara’s fingers were sticky with honey from helping Natividad glaze rolls. Doña Eulalia was pinning up her father’s portrait and claiming the wall had softened over the year. Two children from the Vázquez family counted candles aloud, getting it wrong on purpose.
Remedios was moving a cup away from a flame when Soledad Ortega came in with her brother Martín’s photograph under her arm.
“I’m taking it back,” she said.
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