The Hummingbird's Daughter (31 page)

Huila had her own rituals, her own way of doing things. Strangely, she had become less and less interested in the workings of spirit, plants, medicine. Her body hurt, and her thoughts were quiet and melancholy. She grew less patient—she was capable of taking her cane and striking the maids when they behaved foolishly. She swung her cane at Tomás when he was rude to Gabriela. She knew that the deeper secrets were ready for Teresita, even if Teresita was not entirely ready for them. On some mornings, she was certain that the world was burning, until she had sipped her cup of coffee and eaten her bread and smelled her flowers. She dreamed her dead lover from those many years before. He came to her bearing six white flowers. The hummingbird hovered before her face, fanning her with its wings, and the smell the wings gave off was burning sage, the smoke of cedar. She watched her mother pass before her, walking on the far side of a river. Huila’s time was coming. Her prayers changed in that season, and she asked to be forgiven her mistakes, to be made worthy of death.

“I never see Teresita anymore,” Tomás complained.

He was most happy at breakfast. On certain days, he had an entire family gathered at the table. He sat at the head of the table, and Gaby sat on his right hand. At the far end, the engineer Aguirre often sat. Teresita and Huila sat on one side of the table, and Cantúa and Segundo sat on the other. Fina Félix was often in attendance, jammed into a corner and crinkling her nose at Teresita. Buenaventura was never invited.

Tomás was now, finally, the Great Hacendado—and he regaled his new family with boasts and tales, gesturing wildly with his coffee mugs and folded tortillas dripping beans and eggs. The ranch was a grand success, the mines were profitable. In spite of her rage and her disgrace, back in Alamos, Loreto was not ready to fully part from him. The good fathers had assured Loreto that the damnation was his, not hers. Gaby quietly plucked food off his plate and murmured “Ay Tomás” and “Ay mi amor” while making little faces, like Fina, at Teresita.

“We are busy,” Huila said, soaking rolls in her coffee.

“Busy! Doing what!”

“Women things,” Huila said.

The great house of the ranch reflected the good times—it was built and rebuilt in sections. The main room, Aguirre’s first project after the Yaqui raid, was now a stone-walled fortress. Rising from the western corner was the new stone tower with Teresita’s room high atop it and shooting slits in the shutters and battlements on the way up for sharpshooters to take aim. Aguirre had convinced him that a government attack could come at any time. Díaz had a long memory and a longer reach.

And now the second wing of the house was almost complete, and the third wing well begun.

Even in his joy, even while he smelled his beloved on his fingers and found himself delighted by his daughter’s strange humors and graceful guitar strumming (they enjoyed duets on the veranda that set the cows lowing and the dogs howling), Tomás suffocated every day within its walls. It was inconceivable to him that Teresita should go anywhere without him, much less out into the savage landscape around them to oversee anything as grotesque as childbirth. But the old one was tireless: she raged, cajoled, begged, suggested, demanded, explained until Tomás could no longer stand her voice. She refused any guards or riders—her only concession to safety was old Teófano.

“We rarely go off the ranch,” she insisted. “And if we do, Teófano will guard us.”

“If anything happens to her . . .”

“Nothing will happen to her.”

Teresita stood beside her chair, looking at the floor. Segundo and Aguirre both thought: She certainly is getting attractive.

“And you?” Tomás said. “What do you wish?”

“I wish to go, Father,” she replied.

“And you, mi amor?” he asked Gabriela. “What is your opinion?”

“Ay, Gordo,” she said. She had taken to calling him Fat Boy, and he often called her Flaca—the skinny woman. “Let her go. It is her destiny.”

“Destiny,” he said.

He did not believe in such things as destiny. Superstition. Still, what had happened between Gabriela and him . . . it could be described as destiny. He rubbed his head. He sighed. He gestured for Teresita to step up to his chair. He kissed her on top of her head.

“Do your work.”

“Bueno.” Huila nodded. “It is done.”

They went, and as they worked, Huila taught Teresita all the secrets that could be taught. She taught of the blood and of the blood time, of the power of it, of the surge in strength that it brought. She taught her of the strangely twinned helplessness and immense powers of the gravid mother with life teeming in her belly. She taught Teresita secret words, and she taught her dangerous prayers. They knelt together in the gravel and prayed; they rose at dawn and prayed. Huila blessed her with smoke, anointed her with oils, bathed her naked in a desert pool green with algae and alive with tiny fish the color of coins. She fed Teresita secret foods, and she took her to speak to the rattlesnakes.

“You have power,” Huila said.

Teresita, usually quiet about her secrets, confessed: “I make Fina and Gaby fly.”

“Oh?”

“I take them to cities sometimes.”

“Oh.”

“At night.”

“Be careful,” Huila told her. “You are in danger, and those around you are in danger. You have chosen a way fraught with danger. Be careful.”

Be careful of men, of dark spirits, of power, of love. Be careful of the plants, be careful with your own emotions, be careful with your pride. Devils, angels, lies, illusions, sex, God himself—be careful. Beware of your father. Beware of me. Beware of Gabriela, the People, Buenaventura, the buckaroos. Beware of yourself.

The first trembling came upon Teresita in those days.

It was a morning like any other morning. They had slept late—Tomás made love so often with Gaby that on some nights they were devastated until ten or eleven in the morning. The hacienda ran itself—Segundo knew what to do, the workers knew what to do, Millán from Rosario knew what to do, even Buenaventura knew what to do. Some of the People were offended by Tomás’s love, but most of them thought it was funny. The saying was: Love is the last thing to die. But the People changed it to: Love is the last thing to wake up in the morning.

Even Huila was asleep. She and Teresita had presided over a difficult birth that had lasted for three days. The mother was in such agony that nothing had helped. Herbs, teas, belly rubs, nothing. It was a terrible, long session with Huila and Teresita asleep on their feet. And a strange thing had occurred, so strange that it had Teresita awake early, even though Huila was still asleep. Awake in the courtyard, looking at the plum tree, and praying.

The night before, when she had thought surely that the mother would die on her back, if only from the pain, Teresita had felt the old nighttime glow in her hands. It was odd—she had not asked her hands to go to sleep. But they felt golden. Hot.

She suddenly sensed that she was intended to put her hands on the mother’s belly.

She laid her palms on the mother, and the mother gasped. Teresita could feel the heat growing in her hands. The mother sighed.

“What are you doing?” Huila asked.

“Taking away her pain,” said Teresita, but they did not seem to be her words—they seemed like words of another in her mouth.

The mother sighed again.

“Good,” she said. “Yes, so good.”

She moaned.

“Hot. Honey. It’s hot honey pouring on me!”

And then the baby had come.

Now, Teresita wondered what had happened. She looked at her hands. They looked the same. They didn’t feel strange, didn’t tingle at all. She sniffed them, rubbed them slightly, flexed her fingers.

Then God spoke.

The Voice said:

“Do you believe in me?”

“I do!”

The Voice said:

“If you believe, stand.”

She stood.

The Voice said:

“Walk around the house until I tell you to stop.”

She went to the gate, turned east, and hurried around the house.

Huila came out an hour later. She scratched herself, looked for a ripe plum, then saw Teresita go by the gate. She was sweating, her hair pasted to her forehead.

A long moment later, she passed again.

“Child?” Huila called.

She went to the gate and yelled: “Child!”

Teresita vanished around the far corner. She was hurrying around the house. She must be cutting along the narrow lip of the arroyo in back. Huila stepped out into the road. It took several minutes, but Teresita appeared and came storming toward her.

“Child!” Huila shouted.

She grabbed Teresita. They struggled.

“Let me go!”

“What are you doing, child?”

“God told me to walk around the house!”

“What?”

“God told me to walk around the house. Now let me go.”

“Are you insane?”

“Let me go!”

She tried to pull away from the old one, but Huila was too strong for her. She pulled Teresita in off the road and wrestled her to the bench in the courtyard.

“I must go, let me go!”

“Teresa! Stop!”

“God hasn’t told me to stop yet!” Teresita shouted.

Then her eyelids fluttered closed and she became rigid. She leaned back against the wall and began to shiver, as if a cold wind had suddenly hit her.

“Tomás!” Huila shouted. “Please! Someone!”

Teresita trembled.