The Hummingbird's Daughter (43 page)

They came in sight of the great house, and it shimmered in the light.

The pilgrims were arrayed before the home, spread far. Smoke and dust. The Tigers wandered through the camps, looking down at the sick and twisted, the merely old and the truly lame. Blind children. Limp babies. Some of the small camps had corpses wrapped in cloth from head to foot and being loaded onto wagons. And hucksters—men selling Teresita scapulars—wandered the yards. Men sold tin pictures of the Saint and her small angels. Women sold tacos, small woven crosses made of black string, ears of corn, fermented-maize beer. A soldier stumbled into Cruz. He laid the barrel of his rifle against the man’s shoulder and said, “Leave this place.”

The man swallowed once and hurried away.

“This,” Cruz said to a salesman. “This picture?”

“It is the Saint. One peso.”

“One peso! For a picture?”

“Yes, yes, but this picture will stop a bullet.”

They walked on.

Cruz led them through the throng. He pushed his way ahead of the many who waited before her door, and when they started to protest, he looked down at them and they fell silent. When he took his place at the front of the crowd, they scooted back, made room for him. He took off his hat. He squatted on his haunches and laid his rifle across his knees. With the rest of them, the sick and the curious, the crooks and the mothers, the blind and the dying, he waited for her to appear.

Forty-seven

TERESITA CAME OUT THE DOOR, wiping her hands on a cloth.

Cruz watched her move—she was light on her feet. She flowed out the door almost before he saw it was open, her dark dress seeming to materialize from the darker space within. Yet when she stopped, her roots seemed to plunge deep into the earth, as if she were drawing water up through the crust, as if she were a slender alamo glittering in the wind. He approved.

“Pretty,” José said.

Cruz nodded. He didn’t feel it was right to show too much enthusiasm for her looks, but he noticed them. Still, he warned José: “That’s enough of that.”

Her hair was pinned up, and her face was clear. She was slender, and he could see a light fuzz of hair along the hinge of her jaw.

She smiled at the crowd and said, “Where should we begin?”

They cried her name and reached for her, they wept and sang and made the same mewling little noises beggars made to get a passerby’s attention. A woman to Cruz’s right produced a baby. It was wrapped in a rough length of cloth, and it coughed wetly and kicked its feet. The woman held the baby out toward Teresita—like a chicken, Cruz thought.

“Let me see him,” Teresita said.

She took the infant in her arms and lifted the cloth off his face. He coughed again, ragged and bloody.

“Consumption,” Cruz said to his men.

“He’s an angel, señora,” Teresita said. “Poor boy.”

“Sí, mi santa. Sí, Santa Teresa.”

“He has consumption.”

Cruz nodded at his men.

“What did I say? What did I say?” he demanded.

They patted him on the back.

Teresita passed her hand over the boy. Cruz watched her fingers, as they struck strange poses in the air over the child’s body. Then she laid her hand upon the boy’s chest. The baby stopped coughing, but what did that prove?

Teresita gestured to an assistant, and she whispered in the girl’s ear. She ran inside, and after a few moments, came out with a bundle.

“Make a cigar with these leaves,” Teresita said. “Blow the smoke in his face.”

“How often?”

“Morning and night.”

The woman kissed her hand.

“He will be well,” she said, handing the baby back to the mother.

“Gracias, Santa,” the woman cried, falling to one knee. “Gracias!”

Teresita blushed. She pulled the woman back up to her feet.

“No, no,” she said. “You mustn’t thank me. It comes from above.”

Later, Cruz would hear her explain repeatedly that she was not a saint. Her favorite line seemed to be:
I am only a woman.

This also met with his approval.

A bustling group of nuns pushed forward. She smiled at them, took all their small hands in hers, and said to the oldest, “Bless me, Mother.”

She went down on one knee as the old nun laid a hand on her head. Then she rose, and they whispered and laughed and then the nuns went on their way.

After a few hours of watching her, Cruz stood. His knees cracked.

“You, Saint,” he called.

“Did that hurt?” she asked, glancing at his legs. His men giggled. He shot them a look.

“You,” he repeated, for he did not know what else to say. “Saint.”

She looked him up and down. She looked at his rifle, at his dusty huaraches.

“You, Warrior,” she said.

“We have come from Tomóchic to see you,” he said.

She smiled.

“Tomóchic? Really? All this way?”

“You know of us?” he said.

“Everyone knows of Tomóchic,” she replied.

This made him stand taller.

“I did not know that,” he said.

She came close and looked at them.

“The Tigers of the Sierra have come to see me.”

She grinned. She made a muscle. “Great fighters. Great lovers of God.” Teresita laughed as she flexed her arm.

Cruz was tongue-tied. She burned into his eyes with her own. Was she making fun of him?

“I have come to test you,” he managed to say.

She put her fists on her hips and stared at him quite frankly. He did not appreciate the boldness of her stare. “How will you test me, Tiger? Shall we shoot at cans? Race horses?” She put up her dukes. “Fistfight?”

Cruz opened his mouth and said, “Uh.”

“If you try to wrestle me,” she warned, “I can beat you.”

“Wrestle?”

José stepped forward. He clutched his soft straw hat off his head.

“What he means to say, Miss Saint, Miss Teresita, señorita, is that our village hopes to make you our saint, our
patron saint,
you see, and he must see if you are real . . . miss.” His nerves were getting the better of him. He suddenly shouted, “I am José!”

She put her hand out to him. He took it. She squeezed his hand slightly. He squeezed back and blushed.

“Look at that, Don José,” she said. “My hand is flesh and bone. I am real.”

“Sí, señorita,” he said.

“But I am not a saint.”

“No, señorita,” he said.

She let go of his hand.

“They say I am a saint. But you see, dear José . . . like you, I am only a servant.”

“A servant, yes.”

He was suddenly scared out of his wits. The Saint of Cabora was talking to him!

“Of the Creator,” she said.

This stirred up a babble of religious chatter from the crowd.

“And the People,” she said.

Teresita stepped up on the porch.

“But I am tired. You will have to test me tomorrow, señores.”

“José,” cried José. “Please. Just call me José.”

Cruz was watching this exchange with raised eyebrows.

Teresita smiled.

“Joseph, like the father of Jesus,” she said.

José hung his head and blushed some more.

“Why,” she exclaimed, “you look exactly like Saint Joseph.”

“I do?”

“Without a doubt.”

She gestured for him to come closer.

“We must fix that growth on your neck.”

He covered it with his hand.

“Tomorrow,” she promised.

She turned away, but before she went in the door, she looked back at Cruz.

“And you, Tiger? What is your name?”

“Cruz Chávez!” he bellowed, a little too loud. Caught himself snapping to attention. He cleared his throat and slouched a little. Then he informed her: “I am the Pope of Mexico.”

“Oh my!” she said.

She glanced at José.

“He is a little crazy, no?” she said.

José laughed, though Cruz glared at him.

“That’s all right,” she said. “People say I am crazy, too.”

She stretched and sighed and opened the door, and before she slipped inside, she said, “I am glad to meet you, Cruz Chávez. It’s about time we had a Mexican pope!”

The door slammed.

The three warriors stood there.

“Is she laughing at me?” Cruz said.

Both of his men replied, “Yes.”

The next morning, they were waiting for her. She came forth at eight o’clock, eating an apple.

“Saint Joseph,” she said, holding her free hand out to José.

He hurried up to the porch, and she gestured toward the door. He took his hat off and peeked inside. He hung his head, glanced back at Cruz and Rubén, giggled, and stepped in.

“Your Holiness,” she said to Cruz. “You may sit here.”

She gestured to a swing, hung from the porch rafters on chains.

“I —” he said, but before he could finish she had gone through the door and closed it.

Pulling himself up as tall as possible, Cruz stepped onto the porch and sat on the swing. It rocked back, and he leapt to his feet. He had never seen a swing. He ordered Rubén onto it, and he watched Rubén sway. Cruz stopped it with his foot and he joined his rifleman. He used the butt of his rifle to push them back and forth. Rubén turned to him and smiled. Cruz remained stoic. He had slept little. His mind jumped and sparked with Teresita. Her eyes, her voice. Those roving hands. When he finally fell asleep, he dreamed that they fished trout in the rivers of Tomóchic. He caught very big fish, and she admired him.

Presently, Tomás appeared on the porch. He stared out at the mob and shook his head. He turned to the two on his swing and said, “Who are you?”

Cruz stood and gripped his upright rifle in two fists.

“I am the Pope of Mexico,” he said.

Tomás gawked at him.

“Jesus Christ!” he said. “Another maniac!”

He jumped off the porch and stormed away, pushing pilgrims aside as he went.

Cruz sat back down, resumed swinging.

“What’s his problem?” he said.

The door regularly opened, and her assistants came forth to gather a child or two, but she did not reappear.

Cruz opened his Bible and read silently, while Rubén snored. Flies came, wandered their faces, then flew away. It was another day. Hot. Dry. Full of invisible motion. The windmill barely stirred, and it squealed, squealed, squealed. The pilgrims slumbered. Squeal. Squeal. A horse shifted, its hoof clopping once. Bees moved above them all, sniffing their breath as it rose.

Cruz drifted into sleep. In his dream, Teresita was covered in blood. “Help me!” she cried. When he awoke, he jerked to his feet. José stood before him, clutching his rifle.

“What happened?” Cruz asked.

“She touched me.” José looked down at him kindly—now that he was to be the new Saint Joseph, he was sure his countenance must reflect a certain holy glow. “After she touched me, she healed a deaf boy. It was the most remarkable scene, Hermano Cruz. She took him in her arms and whispered to him. It seemed odd, I admit, to whisper into a closed ear. But the boy suddenly smiled, and they laughed at some small joke.” He shrugged. “I don’t know what she said. But the boy’s father fell to his knees and praised God. He knew right away that the boy could hear.”

“Amen,” said Rubén, just to add something.

“And then?” Cruz demanded.

“Cookies.”

“Cookies!”

“Cookies and coffee.”

José smiled in a saintly fashion.

“The boy had milk. We had coffee—with honey!”

Cruz pondered this report for a moment.

José had a blue bandana tied around his neck.

“Show me your tumor,” Cruz said.

But before the cloth could be removed, Teresita was standing before them. She curtsied to Cruz.

“Your Holiness,” she said.

Rubén snickered.

Cruz spun on him and fixed him with a stormy glare.

Teresita looked at Rubén and said, “You. What is your name?”

“Rubén.”

“You are a warrior.”

“Sí.”

“Are you a killer?”

“Perdón?” he said.

“Do you kill, Rubén? Do you kill men?”

Rubén grabbed his rifle and hopped off the porch and ran away.

“You are unnerving my men,” Cruz told her.

Teresita sat on the swing.

“Cruz Chávez,” she said. “I am ready for my test now. Shall I fetch a pencil and paper?”

José grinned at him.

“José,” he said. “Go away.”

“I will find Rubén,” Saint Joseph said.

They were alone, if being watched through the windows by family and servants could be considered alone, if ten thousand eyes in front of them watching their every move were a form of privacy.

He looked at her out of the corner of his eye. The way the light caught Teresita illuminated her hair like small lightning bolts. She smelled like roses. She patted the seat beside her, and he sat down. They swayed slightly. The tumult of the beggars and lame had faded into a steady rumble, almost beyond his hearing. He cleared his throat, but he had nothing to say. A small boy ran up to her and gave her a bouquet of clover blossoms. She embraced him. The boy ran back into the crowd.