The Hummingbird's Daughter (23 page)

On the floor before her altar were desert skulls. She knew some crazy healers who kept human skulls in their homes, but this was a thing of demons. Let the devil come of a night and bugger them while they slept! Cabrones! That’s what they got! No, she had two coyote skulls that seemed very sacred and wily and she had a javelina skull, with its wicked tusks rising orange from its bony jaw. These little stinkpigs were perhaps the true spirits of this land, so she studied the skull often and tried to orchestrate some agreement with it. One morning she had walked out into the desert, looking for a sacred spot where she could burn her herbs and talk to Itom Achai. As she had come around a hedionda bush, a javelina had snorted and burst from its shade in a storm of twigs and squeals and dust, and Huila had jumped two feet and fallen on her rump, spitting curses as the pig ran for its life, its tail whirling behind it like a propeller. And she had risen in time for the rest of the herd of pigs, forty-eight of them, to burst out of the bushes behind her with more uproar and she had fallen over again, heart slamming her old ribs. Perhaps she kept the javelina skull for a touch of revenge.

And the girl. Huila had seen the buds rise on her flat chest. More, she had seen the buckaroos see the buds rise. Teresita had ridden on their saddles, had bounced on their bunks, had sung their songs with their guitars. She had caught Teresita retching after one of them had given her a plug of tobacco to chew. And her face was more like pinche Tomás’s every year. Huila had not known what to do with all these changes, so she’d sent Teresita to work at Aquihuiquichi, a half-morning’s ride across the northern ranch. She had sent Teófano along to keep an eye on her. He reluctantly left his new shack, and he took along a niece who agreed to cook for him.

Huila’s moon blood was long gone. But she could feel the blood coming on in the girl, the blood and all its power, coming down through the girl the way floods came down the arroyo. All the medicine people knew when the time of the moon was coming. The girls’ lights grew brighter. Their breaths carried scents like distant flowers. Blue, copper, fire colors flew above their heads, and some of them bent the world around them as they walked. It was like looking through a curved glass. Butterflies and hummingbirds, even bees, knew when a girl was coming into her holy days.

Every morning, Huila prayed about Teresita.

Everything was in place. She rubbed her eyes, she picked up her snake mummy. Something was coming.

Twenty-four

CABORA WAS RUSTIC, compared to La Capilla and Alamos. But Aquihuiquichi was prehistoric compared to Cabora. There was no great house. The land was rocky and severe. Their one windmill creaked and moaned day and night, and it sucked a brownish trickle out of the earth, and horses, steers, and workers collected it from the rusty troughs dug into the sand under three gnarled mesquites. With no Segundo to keep the vaqueros working, nobody attended to the buildings or the rudimentary barns. Goats wandered in and out of the huts. Garbage piled up between the buildings, and pigs snorted there, adding their stink to the mess.

Teresita slept in the shack of Don Teófano and his niece. She considered it an exile. The shack was up a rise from the twelve other houses. It lay between two huge pale boulders, and these kept the house shielded from the sun for much of the day, and the one good thing about it, aside from the fact that Teófano kept his plot spotlessly clean, was that the structure retained the night’s coolness long into the morning. In winter, when the desert turned cold, the rocks radiated sun heat into the night. They also diverted the wind. Teófano said they made the shack into a small fort, since he’d only have to shoot out the front and back walls in case of Indian or bandit raids. Of course, the boulders were also home to rattlesnakes, and Teresita learned to walk carefully when she exited the front door. It was common in the morning to find three or four snakes languidly taking in the sun on tall rocks at either side of the house.

Don Teófano hung an old blanket between his and his niece’s side of the shack and Teresita’s. When she disrobed, he was careful to step outside. He waited out in front at night until she had blown out her candles and gone to bed before entering and taking off his huaraches. He slept in his pants and shirt. When it was bath day, once a month or so, the niece boiled water and filled a laundry tub, and Teresita stayed outside, scandalized that Teófano was in there naked. This gave her fits of giggles.

Her arms were muscular from milking and working hoes in the bean rows and she had discovered an affinity for birth when a pregnant barn cat had sought her out in her hour of distress. Teófano wanted to drown the cat, but Teresita threw a tantrum and covered the animal with her body, then took the cat into her part of the shack. Teófano was so appalled that he immediately moved himself and his niece out to a storage shed at the foot of the slope that had once held beans. When his niece fell in with a buckaroo, the man moved in with them, and Teófano had to survive the indignity of hearing their amorous scuffling in the dark.

Teresita helped the cat bring five babies into the world. Within a few months, coyotes had eaten them all, and the mother had returned to the barn to kill mice and fight with the old tabby who ruled the hayloft. But Teresita had discovered a calling. She had wondered what her work would be. Huila had trained her in all these things, then sent her off to be a peasant in the dirt. Abandoned. But not now. Not alone. Not directionless.

She attended the births of foals. She reached into cows and adjusted the gangly legs of calves in the birth canal. She helped she-goats squeeze out slick bloody babies. By the time her own body was preparing itself to begin its childbearing years, the women of Aquihuiquichi began to ask for her to sit with the midwives as they suffered through labor. Las parteras knew they could not show her the Mystery that happened between the legs, not yet. Huila would have their heads. But they saw no harm in allowing her to witness the pain, to smell the odors of birth, or to hold the shiny babies freshly risen from the womb.

Teófano finally mounted his mule and rode to Cabora. He stood before the gates of the main house, afraid to enter. He stood outside the gates for two hours, hat in hand, watching the front door. It opened. A young woman with a pan of soapy water came out. She poured the water over the roots of the plum tree. “Señorita,” he called. She shielded her eyes and looked out to him. “Huila, por favor.” The young woman went back inside. In another twenty minutes, Huila came out. She saw Teófano and scowled. This, he knew, was a warm greeting from Huila.

“Come in,” she said.

“Oh, no.”

“Come on inside, man. Have some coffee.”

“No, no,” he said. “Not me.”

She came down the steps.

She offered him a small black cigar from her apron pocket. He smiled. He put it in his mouth. She struck a red match on the wall and lit it for him.

“Gracias,” he said.

After a while, she said, “So?”

“It is the girl,” he replied. “She is attending births.”

“Already?”

“Sí.”

Huila sighed.

She said, “Shit.”

Saturday morning seemed like a good time to sleep instead of taking yet another horse ride. Tomás was far too proud to ride a wagon like an old woman or a maize-delivery man. But he had skipped last week’s visit with Loreto and the children, and were he to sleep in today he would miss another.

He stumbled through his predawn routines. A visit to the amazing Aguirre waterpot in its pleasant closet: Aguirre had arranged for water to drop from the ceiling and flush out the bowl. A call for hot water, and the blushing girl delivering a pitcher to him. Stropping the razor and shaving in the little round mirror. Down for breakfast. Coffee.

A knock at the door.

“I’ll get it!” he yelled.

It was Segundo.

“Ready to go?” Tomás said.

“Boss,” said Segundo.

“What?”

“Boss.”

“What?”

“I don’t know.”

“What the devil is wrong with you today?”

Segundo looked around. Tomás looked out into the courtyard. That little street-dog kid Buenaventura was slouching out there.

“Boss, you once told me to report everything.”

“Right. Y ese cabrón?” Tomás asked. “Qué trae?”

Segundo sighed.

“Everything, right?”

Tomás nodded to Buenaventura.

Buenaventura jerked his chin up once.

“Boss,” Segundo said, “it’s all a great mystery, right?”

Tomás looked long at him.

“Segundo?” he said. “Qué chingados dices!”

“Everything encompasses both good and bad. For the good of the ranch.”

“Good-bye,” said Tomás, tiring of this foofaraw and starting to shut the door in Segundo’s face.

He stepped up on the veranda and whispered in Tomás’s ear. “His name is Buenaventura . . . Urrea!”

“Mierda!”

“No, it’s true.”

“Goddamn it!”

“Ask him.”

Tomás glared at Buenaventura.

“Who is your mother?” he snapped.

“Quelita.”

“Quelita who?”

“Angelita the tortilla girl of Ocoroni.”

Tomás blinked.

“Ah cabrón!” he said.

“You courted her sixteen years ago.”

“Ay chingado,” Tomás noted.

He knew perfectly well when he had dated Quelita.

“She lived in a blue house,” Buenaventura said.

Tomás gave his most poisonous stare to Segundo as a memorable gift.

Then he said to Buenaventura: “I remember the blasted house.”

Segundo said, “Sorry, boss.”

They stood there staring off at the land, each one’s eyes cast in a different direction.

After a few minutes, Tomás sighed, rubbed his face. “I suppose,” he said, “you caballeros should come in for some coffee.”

Twenty-five

“LOOK AT YOU,” Huila said when she entered the shack.

Teresita jumped up from her table. A candle flickered there, and a sheet of paper and a fat pencil lay in its glow. Huila went to the paper and looked at it. Printed neatly, several times, were letters:
T E R E S I T A.

T E R E S I T A.

“I am learning,” Teresita said.

Huila touched the page and sat down.

“Do you have water?” she asked. “I am thirsty.”

Teresita brought her a clay cup of water, and the old one sipped at it and looked for Teresita’s altar. There was none. There were no santos. Only a bare cross made of two ironwood twigs.

Sage hung from the vigas of the roof. Other weeds.

“What is that?” Huila asked.

“Lavender.”

“What does lavender accomplish?”

“It smells good.”

Huila’s eyebrows went up. She sipped more water.

“Stand,” she said.

Teresita stood.

“You are big now.”

“I am.”

Teresita took up her pencil and bent back down over the paper. She put more Yori letters on the sheet. She turned the sheet around on the table and showed it to Huila. The old one bent down and squinted. It said:
H U I L A.

“What is this?”

“It is your name,” Teresita said.

At first, Huila wanted to snatch it up and crumple it. But she looked at it a moment longer. Put her finger on it.

“What is this one?” she asked, touching the H. “The one that looks like a ladder?”

“That is the H,” Teresita explained.

“Get me a ladder,” Huila muttered.

They laughed.

“Very interesting,” Huila said. “May I keep it?”

Teresita nodded. The old one folded the page and put it in her apron, nestled among her buffalo teeth and small bones and bullets.

“You have visited births,” Huila said.

“Sí.”

“With the parteras.”

“Sí.”

“What did you think?”

Teresita closed her eyes and smiled.

“It is . . . wonderful, and it is terrible. I love the mothers, their terrible bellies, their strength. I love the infants.”

“You don’t fear it?”

“Oh sí, Huila. Claro que sí.”

“Blood.”

“Terrible.”

“Suffering.”

“Terrible.”

Huila nodded.

“This is what you want to do, then,” she said. “Bring young ones into the world?”

“No,” Teresita said. “I don’t think so.”

“What, then?”

“I want to ease suffering.”

Huila put her hands flat on the table.

They looked at each other for a long while, and they smiled for no reason. The candle burned low. Orange light filled part of the room, and brown shadows filled the corners.

“Very well,” Huila finally said. “We must go to the teacher.”

“You are my teacher.”

“This is a different land, child. A different angel watches these deserts. We must find the teacher of these lands. We will go in the morning.”

“Good,” said Teresita.

“Do you have a bed for me?”

“Take mine.”

“And you?”

“I was raised on the floor, Huila.”

They knelt together and prayed as the candle quietly died, and Teresita helped Huila into her small bed.

Loreto slapped Tomás.

He had decided to bring Buenaventura along with him. He’d had some foolish idea that a clean slate was best for everyone. A reckoning. The scene of understanding and forgiveness in his mind was abruptly shattered.

“How
could
you!” she sobbed, then fled to her room. Juan Francisco II, his oldest boy, stared at him with a look of outraged betrayal. He turned his back on his father and strode from the room.

“Boy!” Tomás bellowed. “Come back here now!”

But, of course, Juan was out the door and stomping down the street.

Loreto came back out and threw ten of Tomás’s books on the floor.

“Mi amor,” Tomás said. “It was an indiscretion!”

“Bastard!”

“I don’t know what came over me.”

“Animal!”

“It meant nothing —”

“How dare you say
it meant nothing!
You betrayed me for
nothing?
”

“I suppose it meant something at the time, but —”

“Oh! So it
did
mean something to you? Did you love her? Did you love your little Indian whore?”

A teacup flew at great speed and hit the wall, distributing shards of china in a wide starburst.

“Don’t think I didn’t know!” she snarled.

“Know what?”

“
Don’t. Think. I. Didn’t. Know.
About your whores! About your endless adventures with every filthy peasant who opened her legs!”

“Loreto, really. Such talk!”

“Did you molest the cows and pigs, too, you cabrón?”

“Loreto—you must watch your tongue!”

“My tongue! Where was your tongue? In some peasant culo?”

“Loreto, Loreto, what has come over you?”

“Hypocrite!”

He put out his arms in a badly timed attempt to collect a hug.

She smacked him again.

“The shame!” she shrieked. “You shamed me every day of my life!”

“Shame!” he suddenly amazed himself by roaring. “Who bought you everything you ever wanted?”

“Uncle Miguel,” she replied, archly. “Urrea,” she added, as if he didn’t know who she meant.

Stunned, he sat down.

“That was unfair,” he said.

“Prove me wrong, Tomás.”

She folded her arms and looked at him with the satisfaction of a hunter who has just shot a lion.

“I worked my fingers,” he complained, “to the bone.”

“Yes, and your knees got bloody from begging for loans all day, too.”

“God.”

He put his head in his hands.

“You used me,” Loreto said. “And you used my womb, you failure.”

“God, God.”

“The big patrón! The master of the hacienda! What a pretty wife. What lovely children. By the way, did you hear he has been
fucking every lice-ridden whore on the ranch?
”

“That will be enough!” he announced.

“Oh no.” She shook her head. “Oh no, my love. I am only beginning.”

“What do you intend to do?” he cried.

“From now on,” she replied, nostrils flaring magnificently as her cheeks burned a deep carmine, “you may sleep on the couch. Do you see my legs?” She lifted her skirt. “Do you see them?” He looked around to catch out anybody who might be spying on this dreadful scene. But the domestics were all gathered on the other side of the kitchen door, giggling into their fists. “These legs,” Loreto whispered, “will never open for you again.”

He hung his head.

“I could have lied,” he said. “I could have kept the boy a secret.”

Loreto bent down to him and looked in his eyes.

“Your mistake,” she said.

The three riders headed out of town. Tomás was sullen. Buenaventura said, “Nice day, eh, Dad?” And Tomás whirled in his saddle and shouted: “Shut your hole, you little bastard!” Buenaventura turned to Segundo and made a hurt and baffled face. Segundo knew enough to keep silent. He only shook his head once and kept his eyes forward.

The horses soon sensed the glum mood, and their heads drooped and they shuffled along at a pathetic pace. They gave out long sorrowful sighs and only vaguely turned their heads toward roadside flowers. They were too depressed to bite off any tasty blooms.

“When you try to be good,” Tomás said, “you are punished.”

His horse sadly agreed with a long blubbery blowing of the lips.

“Women!” he said.

“Goddamned women!” Buenaventura offered.

Tomás pulled out his revolver and pointed it at him.

“Say one more thing,” he said.

He stuck his gun back in its holster and kept going.

It took most of the morning to reach the Alamos turnoff. Tomás stared at the big cottonwoods that shaded Cantúa’s restaurant.

“Let’s eat,” he said. “Life goes on.”

Segundo, whose timing was always excellent, repeated this bit of wisdom: “Life goes on, boss.”

“Yes . . . yes . . . I suppose it does.”

Buenaventura rode up to them and smiled and Tomás held up one finger and said: “Shhh.”

They tied off their horses and entered. The little restaurant was empty, except for the green flies. Señor Cantúa drowsed in a wooden chair, but when they walked in, he snorted awake and jumped to his feet.

“Don Tomás!” he exulted. “You grace us with your presence!”

“One cannot pass by Cantúa’s,” intoned Tomás, “without stopping to sample the wares.”

“Very good, very good,” Cantúa babbled, as he wiped off a table. “You are too kind.”

They sat.

Tomás heard a sound behind him, and he turned to see the kitchen door cracked open wide enough for one stunning eye to peek out. Those lashes! A strand of curling hair passed over the eye. It blinked. The lashes were like a garden! The door slammed.

Segundo nudged his foot under the table.

“Yes?” he said.

“The señor was saying something,” Segundo said.

“Yes?”

“I was merely mentioning how curious it was to me that just this morning a wagon from your ranch stopped here for a quick meal.”

“A wagon,” said Tomás. “From my ranch? What wagon?”

Cantúa shrugged.

“A wagon. That crazy old woman. The witch.”

“Huila? On a wagon?”

“Oh yes, that very one. Huila.”

Tomás glanced at Segundo.

“How odd,” he said.

“They took the Alamos turnoff,” Cantúa said.

“You must be mistaken, maestro,” said Tomás. “We came that way and saw no one.”

“Oh, forgive me. I meant to say they went north.”

“What!”

“Toward Arizona.”

“Ah cabrón,” said Segundo.

“Who was with Huila?”

“An old man driving.”

“Teófano,” Segundo guessed.

“No sé,” said Cantúa. “I did not know him. And a girl. And two vaqueros.”

“She took two vaqueros to Arizona?” said Tomás. He rubbed his face and threw his hands in the air. “Yes, well. Who knows why Huila does what she does. I cannot worry about it right now.”

Cantúa waited.

“What have you got?” Segundo said.

“We have a tasty cosido.”

“Good,” said Tomás. “And bring plenty of tortillas.”

“Claro.”

Cantúa gave them a small bow and hurried to the kitchen. Tomás craned around and caught a quick glimpse of the young woman’s bottom before the door slammed.

“What’s a cosido?” Buenaventura asked.

“Soup, buey,” said Segundo.

“Don’t call me buey!”

“Pinche buey!” Segundo said.

Tomás added, “Pinche buey pendejo.”

Buenaventura fumed.

“I don’t like soup,” he said.

“It has meat and potatoes,” said Tomás. “You’ll like it.”

“I don’t like soup.”

“Carrots! Onions! Corn on the cob!”

“I hate it.”

“Oye, baboso,” Segundo said. “Stop being ignorant.”

“I like being ignorant!” Buenaventura proclaimed.

Tomás drummed his fingers.

“Huila took a wagon,” he muttered.

“Women,” said Segundo.

Cantúa came out with a clay pot of coffee.

“Say, Maestro,” said Tomás. “Who is that in the kitchen?”

Cantúa smiled.

“In the kitchen, señor?” he said.

“Come now. You know who I mean.”

“In my kitchen?”

“The girl, yes. In your kitchen.”

“Oh . . .” A nervous smile.

“Ay, Señor Cantúa. I was only asking her name! I intend no disrespect.”

“Old man,” blurted Buenaventura, “you don’t think Tomás Urrea knows how to talk to ladies?”

“Open your mouth again,” Tomás said, “and I will horsewhip you.”

Señor Cantúa wiped his brow with his little white towel.

“That girl in the kitchen would be my daughter, Gabriela.”

“Gabriela!” Tomás enthused. Then he called her: “Gabriela! Could you come out for a moment?”

Señor Cantúa sighed. Don Tomás was very famous in love. He pasted a smile on his face. It was in the hands of God now.

She pushed open the door and said, “Papá?”

“It is all right, Gaby,” Cantúa said. “Come out for a moment.”

She stepped into the room, wiping her hands on a towel tied around her slim waist. Buenaventura whistled, and Segundo nudged him with an elbow and shook his head.