Hunger's Brides (46 page)

He sat at the head of the table, the man of the household now, to whom all its appurtenances and comforts fell. I was not afraid, but then, it was not me he looked upon as property. Protecting her or hating the sight of him in that chair—what played the larger role in what I did next? It occurs to me that I may have hated him for something I had discovered in myself.

What I thought then was that if I had beaten him once, I could again. In one night. I was forgetting for an instant how limited the first victory had been, as I prepared a little parable and concealed it in a snare. Speaking to the dining room in general, I said they would never guess who Amanda and I had seen out in the woods. Diego's head shot up. He glanced down the table at Isabel. I said, though I lied, that Amanda and I had met the woodcutters, the ones from the forest fire last year, and had taken our lunch with them in the woods. A younger one had started to tell a story, but was hushed by an elder. I had, naturally, no idea why.
How frustrating that had been. Something about a bridegroom's promise to the Devil, and a wedding night that ended with an impalement on a cedar tree.

The nursing blanket halfway down her shoulder, Isabel had been staring into the baby's little fox eyes as it grasped and sucked at its blue-veined egg, but now she looked up.

In truth, this legend was so well known to everyone in our valley that any large tree might be called a
wedding tree
. Diego, of course, was not from our valley. I had come prepared to do more of the work myself, but he proved all too eager to display his local knowledge now. And displayed, thereby, a good deal more. Isabel warned him that I already knew his story but he pressed on, oblivious or unable to help himself. Yes, a landowner, he said, granted enormous riches by Satan, in exchange for one small promise. I did not ask what it was, making his eagerness to tell me all the more plain. But Isabel was already watching him closely.

The promise was, he went on, that when the landowner should one day take a woman to marry, Satan was to …
precede
the man on their wedding night.
To speed the plough, so to speak
.

Saying this, he gave me a wide, slow smile. Such a promise—who could blame the poor bridegroom for not wanting to follow such an act …?

Speed the plough.

This was more than I could have hoped for, this was providential, pure gift. When his voice had quite trailed off to the stoniest silence around the table, I thanked him for the story and—fair turnabout—coldly offered the one I had prepared for him and for which he had so admirably prepared the ground. An old story. Also about a woodcutter. A man named Erysichthon, who had cut down a grove of oaks sacred to Cybele.

For this sacrilege she visited upon him a hunger, such a hunger as was in that country called the Wolf, and in other places the Ox. A hunger so great and so foul as to make him eat anything, any sort of filth. And so he did, until he had devoured all the bounty of his lands and bartered all his wealth and property for the filthiest stuff, since his desperation was obvious to all who had trade with him. And when he had lost everything to the Wolf, he reached out for his own daughter, who had a great and precious gift—to change her bodily form, like Thetis who had shifted through so many shapes and yet failed to prevent her own rape. In his
sickness the man saw Fortune smiling upon him now, for thanks to this gift of hers he could offer his daughter—ever fresh and ever new—to every man for miles around.

At some point Amanda had come in to clear the plates. She was standing awkwardly by the table, hesitating over the half-eaten meals. Something in the scene kept her from interrupting to ask if we had finished. I asked Diego if it was not indeed a sad tale thus far. And here was its ending: Such was this hunger that the accursed man, panting and slavering like the diseased dog he had become … devoured
himself
.

Oh and there was, I remembered, just this last detail. The man's name meant
earth tearer
. So what had his crime really been—did the lance-captain have an opinion? Was it in cutting down something sacred? Or in trying to speed the plough where he shouldn't?

As I finished, I was looking at Amanda. I had meant only to glance meaningfully in her direction, but I could not look at my mother and could not trust myself to look any longer into Diego's eyes. Amanda blushed furiously. All three of us now were looking at her….

The most perfect silence settled over the table, for what felt like an hour. I could hardly breathe. I simply could not believe it had gone better than I had dared dream. I was first to find my voice. Nodding curtly toward his plate I asked if he had quite finished. Amanda would like to clear.

Isabel whisked me out of the room. I could not help thinking she was taking me to the killing floor, which I remembered vividly as the scene of my last great correction. Instead she announced I would be going away just as my sisters had, but to live with her sister in Mexico.
Mexico
—just like that. I told myself I should have humiliated our gallant defender weeks ago.

But in fact everything had already been arranged by my grandfather. Isabel had only been waiting for the moment.

The next morning, dishevelled from a long cold night garrisoned on the rocking chair outside my mother's door, Diego cast about calling for his mastiff, calling to it as he walked stiffly to the portal, calling awhile outside, coming back in and climbing the watchtower to bellow from up there like an unmilked cow. Isabel took over his chair and sat rocking while she nursed. How calmly she sat, and at an hour when she had always been out in the fields.

I went into the kitchen. Although Amanda had been mortified to have everyone at the table looking at her the night before, this morning she was all smiles to show me she understood I had been protecting her.

I was bursting to tell her our news, about how hereinafter our lives in Mexico would be like a storybook—but, smiling excitedly into my eyes, she said
she
had a surprise. She led me out through the corn and as we walked she stayed close, lightly touching my arm, brushing my shoulder, and finally took my hand. With the mastiff already outside, I expected it to find us any moment now, here in the tall corn. We threaded our way through the field. As we reached the fence I started again to tell her about what had happened after dinner and how I had been expecting the worst thrashing of my life. Yet now we had the most glorious news, she and I. Rather than asking what it was, she was pointing out a bucket leaking drops of water where it swung from a cedar branch just beyond the fence. I was trying to tell her we had
permission
, we were going to my aunt's in Mexico City at last, maybe even tomorrow—

Who
was?

We
were.

My first lesson on the world as storybook was long overdue, and yet so slow I still was. The pace of my classes was picking up: two questions she shot back in quick succession, the first, unthinking and innocent, the second, to cover her hurt and embarrassed pride.

Is your mother giving me away?

Am I going as your maid?

A minute ago she had been all smiles, now this bitterest sarcasm, this patient anger one has for a stupid child. Where had all this come from? What on earth had gotten into her? I'll never be your maid, Ixpetz. But Amanda you're
not
. I'll never go there. Why, Amanda, why
not?
Our people only go to that city for one thing—what thing?—and always have. Who says? My mother says. What
thing?

To die
.

I could find nothing to say to this.

So no matter what, I'm better off here, to let him have me, just like Mother when your—

Whole worlds flashed then in her eyes—fury, sadness. Then shame. I could not ever remember her ashamed. What could Amanda ever have to be ashamed of?

What, Amanda—when my
what?
Come back! Finish what you said—come back! She ran up the path through the trees, her white soles lifting like the tails of deer.

I was left standing there. I was left to read her language of signs.

I lowered the pail. Over each other and up the sides, two turtles clambered on a thick wet cloth. Surely not the same two as up at Ixayac. But they were the same size….

A little water still sloshed in the bottom but their backs were already dry. I started back towards the house, the bucket banging away at my calf. I went in through the main portal thinking to get the turtles water from the well.

Xochitl stood just inside the kitchen door, wiping her hands with a kitchen rag. Her dark face seemed oddly youthful through the doorway. The sun lay like purest silver in her hair. Across the courtyard, Diego had the fieldhands lined up like a platoon for inspection. The scene that ensued caused an uproar that ended in Diego storming off for a day or two. The dog was still missing. Diego had roused himself to a towering fury and, until Isabel stopped him, had been bent on extracting a confession from one—any—of the bewildered men.

It was not until after supper that night, a delicious meat sauce of chilli and black chocolate, which Xochitl had served us herself, that I went, feeling strangely light, to have my talk with her. Chocolate had once been a sacred thing, and Xochitl had never cooked with it for us. It was a sign of great favour, though I did not know the reason for it tonight. And the turtles were surely a sign of Amanda's forgiveness for before. Now I would find out what Xochita had been telling her and clear up this misunderstanding about Mexico. I would reassure them both. I would promise to protect Amanda just as I had at dinner the night before. I felt proud. I had kept a promise to Abuelo, who had asked for my help. I was at peace. And I had even solved another riddle, from a previous evening of stunning insights into elliptical and hyperbolic statements during the
manzana
in Amecameca. Neither elliptical nor hyperbolic, the parabolic is not so much a truth as a parallel, such as when the attentions paid to a girl are of the sort only meant for a woman. Part parable, part parody.

Everything was falling into place, as I knew it must. I felt in my bones the time had come for us to find our destinies….

“I said
no
, Ixpetz. That is final.”

The kitchen was a shambles of unwashed dishes. Xochitl sat close beside me at the table, which was dusted at one end with corn flour. Insects tapped blindly at the lantern glass. The pantry door was closed, the door into the yard was open. A sallow panel of lamplight fell on the beaten earth pale with starlight. A breeze agitated the blades of the corn leaves … an army of spearmen on a night march.

I was so astonished. A flat no, the third. The words clear, the tone unmistakable. I had tried everything. But how could that be? When it really mattered I had always been able to persuade her. She wouldn't even let me go in to talk to Amanda.

“It is not just you she does not want to see. She is angrier at me.”

“You?”

“For knowing this day would come.”

“But
why
does it have to come, Xochita?”

Whenever I had cried before, cried hard, whether out of shame or heartache or rage, Xochita had always comforted me. Even now I could see she wanted to, but it was as if she couldn't raise her arms. When the scene ran through my mind again later that night it seemed that all the triangles of her face had been pulled out and down, as if a baby were pulling at her cheeks.

“It was not easy at first, Ixpetz, to take you to my breast….”

She averted her face, looked into the empty dining room. Her hands on the table widened slightly—to take her weight as she rose or to keep themselves from slipping into her lap, I couldn't tell.

Helpfully, I asked if it hurt very much to nurse, if nursing me had been as bad as Isabel said. But this only seemed to make things worse. I put an arm about her shoulders, the other hand to her dark forearm, left small, pale prints as I patted her. I asked her not to feel badly. I knew why she could not entrust Amanda to me, because of something I had done.