Hunger's Brides (208 page)

Yes. You seem to understand each other.

He is beautiful in this light. Full lips, the oriental eyes
.

How was she, Beulah? With you.

Not so harsh.

I am glad. Have you decided, about Bacalar? Or we could go to the village of the Chan Santa Cruz. I think that would interest you. It is a place the tourists cannot reach.

So different the nightroad. Bump bank stumble and swerve over the blond dirt. Shapes flit across the windshield. Green eyes blink in the dark-ahead. Washouts, potholes, seasick swells. The pale headlamps falter at each easing of the throttle. Creak of springs, torn tailpipe's tracheal hiss. No talk radio, no talk. Low sawtooth scrub … branches claw at the roof.

We enter the little city, shoals of light in the tropic dark. Patricia drops us off at the nearest street, returns the car to the Centro Cultural. In the barrio no lights at all. No streets. I follow Jacinto, paleshadow … warren of wattle. Mutter of hens. Meek and mild I follow into the hut, out in the yard of Soledad. Light a candle.
Will he fuck me now?
He pulls from his shoulderbag a little packet in butcherpaper.
My heart? Have you brought me my heart, Jacinto?

My mother gave me this. For you.

What is it?

She did not say.

Wait, don't go.

It is for you to see, not me.

I'd like you to stay …
un momento
.

You know what this is?

A
huipil
.

But, it is not … complete. It is without embroidering. Does she want you to finish it?

Why did you take me there?

You came.

I don't belong.

You were expecting to?

Why I came … you asked. To San Andrés. My father's name was Andrés. My real father.

I did not know mine.

I can just remember him.

It is something, at least.

I'll come with you to Bacalar. If you still want me to.

R
EQUIEM
        

I
T SHOULD HAVE COME
rising up, like the foul earth splitting, groaning chaos and ruin. Instead your death came quietly. To me.

Before the day was out, before the eyes had dried, the Archbishop came in person, to confiscate her savings from the convent accounts. I pitied the Prioress, then. She fought him like a lion.

I have asked to wash her body in the fountain. I have asked their permission, and they have not yet denied me.

I have asked your sisters leave to come down among them, though I have done nothing to earn their friendship, I know. I will take you to where the survivors are gathered murmuring down below. Let me be your Camilla once more.

Ahh, Juanita, how easily you lift.

See, see how light. I am not so strong. Will they give me leave to carry you down? Though I know it is dangerous … though the chapel is stacked with these like cordwood, who once floated in the cellars. Who once breathed with us.

And if the answer is yes, I will take you to the fountain's edge, under the trees and the black wedges wheeling in the smoke. And beneath the sun's dull glare, I will ask them if this is the woman they remember. Remember her—remember you? In the orchards and the classrooms, in the chapel and the choir. Do they remember you that day, striding through a pouring waterspout—just to make us laugh? Do you remember her, as I do? I will ask.

Then I will make our sisters listen.

Will you all give me leave to speak, to ask something difficult of you?
¹⁶

You all have pity, I will say to them, if you but look for it. This, no one can take away, it must be relinquished willingly.

You loved her too.

But the fathers and the doctors will tell us she was impudent. They must be right, it must be true. Seventeen centuries must make it so. She defied an imperium of light.

I may say her death was unjust. But then, there was her
impudence …
and their cause was such a noble one: to build a kingdom for a second
sun. But I will confess before you that I wanted a saint too, if of a different kind, and I lied to make her one.

I killed her too.

And now that I have bathed her body and shown it to you, confessed to you my capital crime, I ask you finally: how then do you find her?
How do you find?

These are only words, and lack the power to stir your hearts. But our souls—may they only speak when spoken to? For Grace, must we only stand and wait?

Carlos arrives after nightfall. He has found Amanda's village, on the other side of the pass. But she had left the mountain thirty years ago. “The same year Juana came to the capital—she
must
have known. Even now she makes a fool of me!”

I know he does not mean this.

“She asked, Carlos, if you would deliver the eulogy.”

His lean, weary face is stricken. I am sorry to have taken his anger from him. We cling to each other like children.

After a while he goes on. “The mother is dead now. She returned to the village a few years ago. Amanda, no one is sure about. Some say people have seen her in the South. Oaxaca or San Cristóbal, or even farther…. It's all I have. And this.”

From a cloth bag, he takes a bundle of leather, sodden and stained, and begins to unwrap its layers of canvas and oilcloth, as though peeling a fruit, or unwrapping a jewel. And it is like a jewel, that which he holds up to me, luminous and bright, the size of an avocado pit.

He has brought down ice.

“Yesterday,” he says, his face still streaked with road dust, “I could barely carry it.”

I turn it in my hand. He sits quietly watching.

For an hour after he is gone, I run this cold jewel over her forehead, along her temples, across her lips. I know it cannot help, I know I cannot help it. So slowly now it melts.

You would have made Him speak
. In the silence of the night at the bottom of the sea, drowning in the suffocating sufficiency of His grace, you dreamed of calling to the sun … calling him to answer!

And you called this dream cowardice.

Do not leave me with this work, Juana. He will not answer.

Do not leave me. He will not answer for his work.

Don't leave
.

18th day of April, 1695

There is a vault where the flowered crowns are kept. It is entered only for a death. Inside, it is cool and dry. In the months of rain the walls are lined with sacks of rice to absorb whatever humidity they can. Two hundred bridal crowns from the day of vows. Once … Forty now. The scent of ancient wildflowers is indescribable. I did not want to come, I never want to leave.

The Prioress has walked me here. She lets me walk back alone now with the crown.

As for the fountain, it is too dangerous. But I may have as much water brought up as I need.

Carlos tells me I am exhausted. I do not feel it. I ask him about the bookbinder. Yes, he will ask him, he will try. But even the sacrilegious, he says, have little appetite for sacrilege these days.

He tells me to rest a while and take some food. Tomorrow will be the most difficult, the funeral in the morning, the interment that afternoon. But there is one thing left to do, one last duty to perform, and when it's done—
wither this heart of mine filled with rancour and mutiny
. Blast these eyes that have watched you die. Void these lungs that breathed on after your last breath, burst this belly fired with bile and gall, that hungers on though I would make it stop, though I would stop it up.

Let bile and gall dissolve these stones now, bring down these walls that held you in. But oh, even then, that this black ink could raise the radiant dead….

I have cleared the room to do this work. And into the middle of this empty cell I have dragged the desk where once you wrote and I have laid you out upon it.

I will return your body to you. I defy them to deny me this. I will restore you to your beauty.

How much water do I need for this?

I cloak your shoulders, replace your veil, fold your fingers against your empty palms. Cradle out these cool entrails with my own hard hands, pack your cavities with balm. And lift up your vitals in my hands and spread them through the sky, like ribbons.