The Hummingbird's Daughter (27 page)

“He said he was your son!” he cried.

Stunned silence.

Loreto’s eyes grew more slitted than they had been inside the house.

“Now everyone knows,” she proclaimed. “My shame is complete!”

Tomás thought: Oh no.

Everybody from the hacienda seemed to have gathered. Huila stood to the side, and Tomás was even more worried when he saw her mouth hanging open.

Tomás offered the scoundrel’s base response: he guffawed.

Aguirre hove into view with a look of deep mourning on his face.

“Father,” said Juan Francisco, “how could you?”

Young Juan suddenly leapt to the nearest of the two buggies and charged away. Aguirre, gallant to the end, mounted his horse and pursued.

Buenaventura pointed at Teresita.

“I’m not the only one!” he cried. “Look at her!”

Loreto turned to Teresita.

If she could have, Teresita would have crawled into a hole.

Buenaventura was taunting them all: “That’s his daughter! His daughter! His daughter! How do you like it?”

Loreto said: “I have always known!”

“Oh Christ,” said Tomás.

“You,” Loreto said. “You had no idea!”

Tomás wished he had a cigarette, that he was back at Cantúa’s, watching Gabriela. He put his hands in his pockets.

“I don’t even give a damn anymore,” he said.

Loreto gathered her chicks and hurried to her buggy. Loyalty to womanhood suddenly overcame Huila’s general delight in Yori misfortune, and she rushed to the buggy and climbed aboard as Loreto whipped her horse. Tomás watched them speed away in the wake of Juan Francisco and Aguirre. He was alone in the middle of the road.

Suddenly, Father Gastélum burst out the door crying, “What! What!” He glared at Tomás then scrambled onto the bee wagon and lashed the tired nag and headed off after Loreto. “My bees!” Tomás shouted.

Segundo, suddenly grown respectful, led the vaqueros away.

Tomás stomped into the courtyard and kicked a flowerpot, which burst in a shower of dirt and geraniums. He flew into a rage of flying arms and legs, kicking pots and benches, cursing as he broke everything he could reach. He slapped plums off the tree and they splattered on the adobe walls of the house. When he had worn himself out, he stood there panting, head hanging down, hair in his face.

He noticed Teresita sitting primly on her bench.

“You’re still here,” he said.

“Sí, señor.”

He said, “Only you remain.”

“Apparently, sir.”

He stood straight and pulled his hair out of his face.

“Are you really my daughter?” he asked.

“That is what they say.”

He shuffled over to her bench and sat heavily beside her.

“Your mother?”

“Cayetana the Hummingbird.”

He rubbed his face and groaned.

Tomás pointed at a lone bee investigating the slaughtered geraniums on the flagstones. “Better than people,” he said.

“Oh,” she replied.

They sat.

“Do you think they’re coming back?” he asked.

“Not soon.”

“No.”

After a time, he said, “Daughter.”

She turned to him.

“Yes?”

“May I call you daughter, or are you mad at me, too?”

“You may.” Then: “I’m not mad.”

“What a relief,” he said. “Everyone is mad at me.”

She patted his knee.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “These things pass, and life returns to normal.”

He sighed.

“You’re right,” he said.

She folded her hands in her lap.

“I have been very bad,” he said. “I didn’t mean to be bad, but I have misbehaved.”

“Yes,” she said. “I saw.”

They laughed.

“What do we do now?” he asked.

“I do not know . . . Father. May I call you Father?”

“Why not.” He waved his hands over his head. “Why the hell not.”

He stood.

Put out his hand.

“Since it’s just you and me,” he said, “why don’t we go inside and enjoy my little country home?”

She took his hand and he helped her up, as any gentleman would for any lady. No one had ever offered Teresita a hand before. She took it in her cool fingers and rose.

“Gracias,” she said.

“I still have your grandfather clock,” he said as they went up the steps. “And weren’t you fond of cookies?” he asked. “I seem to remember you had a fondness for cookies,” he said as the big door swung closed behind them.

Thirty

TOMáS HAD CERTAIN DEMANDS for his daughter. The course of study began on that first day.

Tomás immediately had a bath drawn for her in the big tin tub in the washroom. He pried open a couple of Loreto’s trunks that had made the journey from Ocoroni. He delivered soaps and shampoos and lotions to Teresita as she went in the steamy room with the cook. Teresita had never taken a hot bath in a deep tub, and she was shocked, yet delighted, to feel the water cover her entire body. Bath salts and flowery pink oils went in the water and created the miracle of bubbles. She watched her own legs vanish beneath a rising mountain range of foam.

The cook poured a gourd of water over Teresita’s head and worked French shampoo into her hair with long hard spidery fingers.

Outside the door, Tomás called, “A lady bathes every week!”

The cook tortured Teresita with a hairbrush for a half hour. Her hair was tied back with red silk ribbons. The cook made her raise her arms, and she puffed great clouds of perfumed powder into her armpits, then she made Teresita do the same to her privates. A toothbrush was presented to her, and a small tin of gray tooth powder made in London. Teresita was used to washing her teeth with a little charcoal and honey and mint leaves. She scrubbed her teeth and spit and was embarrassed when the cook took her foamy tooth water out in its bowl to spill it into the arroyo.

Rouge made her cheeks look as if she had joined the circus. Creams and powders made her look like a white girl. Kohl around her eyes made her look like a mesmerist.

Teresita was irritated to be presented with Loreto’s bloomers. She agreed to the ridiculous long panties, but she refused to wear a petticoat. Either one or the other. It was, after all, her own body.

Loreto’s steamer trunks delivered dresses. The house girls altered them. She chose a yellow skirt with a white blouse and light green shawl over her shoulders. She did not like the hats, however, and rejected out of hand the small pillbox-and-veil the cook set out for her.

“This looks like a spoiled cake covered in spiderwebs,” she said.

The vast straw sun hat made her laugh out loud.

“That’s a hat for a drunk mariachi!” she said.

When he saw her, Tomás whistled. “Beautiful!” he enthused. But when he saw her rugged toes poking out from her filthy huaraches, he was offended.

“No, no!” he cried. “A young lady must never show her toes!”

“What’s wrong with my toes?”

“No, no. No, I’m afraid it’s not done. And those huaraches!”

“What’s wrong with my huaraches?”

“Awful,” he said. “Just awful.”

She was marched back to the dressing room and subjected to the torment of hard shoes being hammered onto her feet.

“I do not like this,” she announced.

The hard heels on the floor sounded to her like the hooves of a mule.

Whenever Tomás wasn’t looking, Teresita kicked off her shoes and went barefoot.

She was no longer allowed to hold her fork and knife in her fists. She was not allowed to chew with her mouth open. She was dissuaded from slurping her drinks. She refused to stick out her pinkie when sipping, though.

Teresita was shown to her bedroom in the west wing of the house. It was whitewashed. The walls had apparently been planned as they were being built, for they wobbled off plumb, and there were seven of them, a chamber of corners. Some of the walls were quite small, as if the builders had thrown up a bit of adobe to connect two planes that hadn’t managed to meet in a corner. Her door and shutters were blue. She liked this.

The room had two windows, one in the south-facing wall and one in the west wall. A small table with two chairs. A freestanding cabinet would hold her new clothes; Tomás would not allow her to wear peasant garb in his house. In the corner, a washstand held a porcelain bowl with etchings of bucolic Swiss villages. A white pitcher with water. Soap.

Near the west window stood her bed. It had a wrought-iron headboard. Great piles of pillows. She had never had a good pillow before. She lay on the bed and was struck with a fit of giggles when she realized how soft the mattress was. She kicked off her shoes and slid her bare feet around on the smooth bedspread.

Cutting across the ceiling were two square vigas. Slightly lower, and at an angle, ran a charred third beam that had been rescued from the original fire. She stood on the bed and grabbed it and hung from it, swinging her legs.

She was given pink gowns and white gowns. Perhaps the Yoris were afraid they’d be naked in the dream time and the Indians would see their secrets.

Slippers!

Not even at night would Teresita be spared the torment of shoes! Yoris took off their shoes and boots, sighed and whined about their sore feet, even soaked their feet in salt water and made servants rub them. Then they put on more shoes to be “comfortable”!

Teresita was not to discuss midwifery, female problems, or medical details at the dinner table. These items, discussed with discretion, were permissible in Tomás’s study, where he took her after dinner and sipped brandy or cognac as he read her stories and newspapers. He was, after all, deeply fascinated by what went on under skirts the world over. Any small detail of female biology put a sparkle in his eye.

She was also expected to ask questions about the bizarre imaginings of Edgar Allan Poe. And Tomás enjoyed hearing her opinions about problems of the day.

On her second night in the house, he offered her a sip of brandy. It made her cough and splutter. He slapped her on the back. She declined a puff of his cigar.

“The issue this evening,” he told her, “is Buenaventura. I see him as a liability.”

“Why, Father?”

“He’s a rotten little bastard!”

“He has had a rough life.”

“Is that supposed to be my fault? Don’t answer that!”

“What would you do?”

“I’ll cast him out!”

“Really?”

“I want him off Cabora!” Tomás announced. “Measures must be taken!”

“Try showing mercy,” she suggested.

He puffed and regarded her.

“Mercy is your strongest feature, Father. Remember the Yaquis.”

He smiled. The Yaquis.

“Hmm.”

He took another sip. Puffed and blew smoke in the air. The grandfather clock started to chime.

“All right,” Tomás said. “But he doesn’t come in my house. To me, he is just another vaquero. He is nothing to me!”

Teresita knew this was bluster, but Huila had taught her to let men babble.

He picked up a leather volume and said, “Tonight, Poe’s tale of Arthur Gordon Pym.”

She crossed her legs under her, partly to hide her bare feet.

“Is it ghastly?” she asked.

“Oh yes! Quite.”

No more pulling up her skirts and straddling a horse! Tomás almost fainted in shock when she opened her legs and mounted. It was absolutely
indecent.
Teresita was instructed in the absurd and insulting method of sidesaddle riding, where her abysmal petticoats and velvet skirts and knee boots dangled like atrophied limbs off the side of a boring little striding horse.

When Tomás wasn’t looking, she pulled up her skirts and raced Segundo all the way down the Alamos road to the Cantúa turnoff.

After she was discovered with a baby pig in her bedroom, followed by the barn cat and three dogs, she was prohibited from having pets in the house. The pig, loyal and in love, waited on the front steps for Teresita to come out every morning. Tomás started out by kicking at the little beast, but ended up feeling fond of him. He often took bits of his breakfast out to him. It was Tomás who named the pig General Urrea.

Although Tomás recognized her deep connection to the workers and the vaqueros, she was urged to refrain from hanging out in the bunkhouse or in El Potrero, the workers’ village. It was unseemly for the daughter of the patrón to be seen in these huts. This was an order she ignored.

Secretly, it pleased him.

Absolutely not!

No matter how much he cursed at her, Tomás could not break Teresita of the habit of making her own meals and even, shocking as it was to everyone, serving the maids and cooks. She even washed the dishes.

She was allowed her collecting of noxious weeds as long as she hung them to dry in her own room and not in the kitchen.

“Mass?” Tomás cried. “Goddamn it!”

He arranged for one of Gastélum’s troublesome circuit-riding priests to deliver Mass in his barn every Sunday. Teresita ordered him to attend, but Tomás spent every Sunday morning out with the bees. She wasn’t going to make him kneel in a barn! Not to a celibate freak!

Still, he did concede to the occasional Bible reading to be added to their postsupper literary sessions. Aguirre came in quite handy on his visits, since he seemed to know the infernal volume the way he knew his engineering texts, and he and Teresita could spend boring hours debating Elijah and Elisha and any number of other Hebrew pendejos while Tomás guzzled brandy and thought about Gabriela.

If Huila ever came back from tending to Loreto, Teresita would be given exclusive access to her—and whatever Huila had on her agenda for the day would supersede any chores or plans Tomás had concocted.

Someday. Not anytime soon. And Tomás would handle the arrangements. Including the identity of the groom.

“Have I no say?” Teresita demanded.

“Certainly,” he said: “you may say ‘I do’ at the wedding.”

Tomás requested that Teresita speak Spanish at all times.

She could not comply.

She could drink if she wanted to, as long as she was with her father.

She did not want to.

She petitioned for the right to read whatever Tomás had in his library. Una infamia! It was unheard of! He was appalled to learn that it was Aguirre himself, that snake, who had started teaching her to read and write. It took only three days of her angry silence to force him to acquiesce to her demands. The first book she read was Bernal Díaz del Castillo’s chronicle of the Spanish conquest. She did not care for Tomás’s beloved Jules Verne. Even in translation, it seemed boring and boyish to her. They began to order books by post. Juana Austen. Las Hermanas Brontë.

The only schools were in Alamos or Tucson. She did not want to go to school. He did not want her to go. Tomás and Aguirre created a course of study for her that she added to her field studies and dream work. Sometimes, while she was asleep, she read books in distant libraries. In dreams, French or German was easy to read.

Tomás preferred not to hear about any of her more peculiar enthusiasms or astral adventures.

Teresita was allowed all the friends she wanted, as long as they were (1) female and (2) of her new social class.

Girls from El Potrero were not invited into the main house. But girls from the local haciendas and villages were. An Indian princess from some imagined Sioux or Cheyenne tribe would have been welcomed with ceremonial bowing and scraping, but an Indian girl from El Potrero would not be let in the door. Josefina Félix, her first friend, was a regular visitor. She slept in Teresita’s bed with her three nights a week.

Tomás almost fell off his chair when Teresita returned from one of her horse rides with Gabriela Cantúa.

“Can she sleep over, Father?” Teresita asked.

“My God,” he replied.

“How are your bees?” Gabriela asked.

Teresita was asked to remain cordial and respectful at all times, and this was no problem since she, like all the People, dearly loved Loreto and thought of her as a Great Mother along the lines of the Virgin of Guadalupe.