The Hummingbird's Daughter (9 page)

Huila put down her cuasia and put her fists on her aching hips for a moment.

“Give me your hands,” she said.

Teresita put out her hands, palm down. Huila placed her palms against Teresita’s.

“Make them hot,” Huila said.

Teresita didn’t even think about it. She told her palms to warm, and they heated immediately upon Huila’s outstretched hands.

“Mira, nomás,” Huila said.

She pulled up a chair and sat, looking up at Teresita. She fished a cigar stub out of her apron and lit it with a redheaded kitchen match.

“My hands are always hot,” Teresita said.

“I see.”

Huila smiled. One never knew where the gift would appear. God, too, has His jests.

Loreto came into the kitchen in a long white gown with a lacy frill at her chest, her voluminous hair wild around her head in a nimbus, her scents coming upon Teresita like a fog from the coast: oranges, lilacs, ginger. Teresita had never seen teeth that white.

Huila stood with her head bowed and said, “Doña.”

Although she was cruel to Tomás, she deferred to Loreto with a kind of love no man could understand. Loreto knew the rules imposed on the woman with no medicine by the light of the day, the endless despair of suspecting her man was also the man of a hundred more, none of them as kind or lovely or strict or clean, and she knew the agonies of the birthing bed too well.

“I heard voices,” Loreto said, pulling her hair back. “I thought for a moment that a ghost was in the house, or a bandit.”

Teresita smiled at this apparition.

“Hello,” said Loreto.

“Do you clean your teeth?” Teresita asked.

Loreto didn’t know what to say to that, so she simply said, “Yes.”

“We had a small problem,” Huila said.

Loreto bent to Teresita’s lacerated thighs.

“Ay Dios,” she said. “Who did this?”

“My aunt,” Teresita said.

“And why on earth would she do this?”

“I got caught in your house this morning,” Teresita said.

Huila remained quiet. She wished that the child would keep her mouth shut. But God arranged the scene and had His plans for the outcome. Huila was still learning to allow fate to flow unimpeded.

Loreto sat in Huila’s chair.

“I suppose that was very naughty of you,” she said. “Coming inside uninvited.”

“She was looking for me,” Huila said.

Loreto raised her eyebrows and leaned toward Teresita.

“Huila,” she said, “is very, very naughty! No wonder you got in trouble.”

Teresita giggled. Loreto smiled and stared up into those curious eyes. She looked at the sleepy eyelids, the slightly drooping left eye. They looked so familiar. And the pointed nose, and those lips, with their slight pout.

She turned to Huila. Her face was eloquent, though her mouth remained shut. Huila flicked some lint from her dress, looked around the kitchen, sighed. When she finally made eye contact with Loreto, she shrugged.

Loreto knew the features of the Urrea face. She was not only wife and lover to Tomás. It was a tradition on the haciendas to keep the bloodline clean, and cousins often married cousins. Wives were chosen like good mares, for bloodline and looks. Don Miguel, the great patriarch, dreamed of siring whole lines of Urreas whose lineage was all Urrea on each side. He dreamed of a baptism certificate that would read: Fulano Urrea Urrea Urrea Urrea! Loreto was cousin as well as wife. She had been looking at those lips all her life.

Terrible questions burned in her, awful doubts and heavy sorrows, and she could not voice them, and she would not think about them.

She rose. She patted Teresita on the head. She was five years older when she rose than when she’d sat down.

“Of course,” she said, “you will stay with us. I will fetch you a nightgown. And then we will all sleep. Let’s sleep late, eat a nice big breakfast, and forget all about this night.”

When she left the kitchen, her smell hung in the air and slowly faded away to nothing.

Teresita could not believe you wore a nice pink dress to bed, and she was startled by the underdrawers. Huila had made her sponge herself off, and had made her pay special attention to her nalgas and her fundillo. Huila herself had washed Teresita’s feet. Teresita was startled to see the water in the bowl looking like chocolate frothing in a cup when Huila was through. She had no idea she had been so dirty.

Her legs were still sore and shaky, so Huila carried her to bed. Teresita had never felt sheets. She ran her hands over them, slid her legs across the delightful coolness of their whiteness. Huila pulled her chamber pot out from under the bed and said, “If you have to pee, pee in here. If you have to make caca, then go outside. I don’t want to be smelling caca all night!” She blew out the candle. “What’s left of the night,” she grumbled.

Teresita thrilled to the weight of the old woman when she lay down beside her. The bed sank and squealed. Teresita waited to see if it would break, but it did not. Huila rolled on her side. Teresita rested against her back.

“Is the pillow all right?” Huila said.

“Yes,” Teresita answered. “It’s very soft.”

“I always like a good pillow,” said Huila. Immediately thereafter, she began to snore.

Teresita lay there as if resting in a cloud.

She thought she was awake, but she was not.

This time she dreamed of a great field of blue flowers. She was barefoot. Three old men watched her from a distance. They were of the People. She recognized their nut-brown skin and their white clothes, their straw hats. One old man raised a hand and waved to her once. His voice was small—she could barely hear him. He called out a mysterious word to her: “Huitziltepec.”

He pointed.

She turned and saw a hill covered in blossoms.

She walked up the hill. Her feet hurt from the pebbles in the ground, and the path turned to a clear stream of water, and the water cooled her feet and the rocks were yellow and purple and round as eggs. She thanked the ground for its mercy.

At the summit, she discovered a white rock.

She sat.

She heard a hum above her head. She looked up: a hummingbird made of sky came down from the heavens. It was too small to be seen, yet she could see it. Its blue breast reflected the world as it descended. Its wings were white, made of writing. Although she did not have words, she recognized them. The hummingbird’s wings had been written with a quill pen.

It landed on her knee. It had its back to her. It turned to the left. When it faced her, it had a small white feather in its mouth. She knew to reach out to it. The semalú dropped the feather into her hand.

Soon, the roosters were crowing.

Teresita opened her eyes.

Huila was kneeling in prayer before a low altar built against the wall. A picture of the Virgen de Guadalupe stood on the altar, and a tall wooden crucifix. Stones, shells, a few bundles of sage and incense grass, and a paper-wasps’ nest. Small figures of Huila’s saints stood on either side of the cross. Teresita recognized Saint Francis, because he had doves on his shoulders and head. To one side of the altar stood a lone glass of water.

“Huila?” she said.

The old one held up a finger.

Teresita waited.

When Huila was through praying, she braced herself on the altar and rose.

“Yes, child?”

“What is the water for?”

“It is the soul,” Huila said. “It is the soul, cleansed of sins.”

“Is it your soul?” Teresita asked.

“I wish it were, child.” Huila stretched. “I wish it were.”

She picked up Teresita’s mud-stained smock. It looked, in this morning light, terrible and ratty and filthy. Teresita was suddenly ashamed.

“This won’t do,” said Huila.

She went out into the house. Teresita slipped from bed and looked at Jesus on the cross. She shyly touched Guadalupe’s dress. She picked up the water glass and turned it, looking through it at the sun. There were little flecks of dirt in it, floating back and forth as she turned the glass.

When Huila came back, Teresita said, “I think you missed some sins.”

Huila had brought her a dress from Loreto’s daughter. She pulled it over Teresita’s head.

“Qué bonita,” she said.

Teresita posed.

Huila took up her brush, and in spite of many complaints, dragged the knots out of Teresita’s hair.

She then made Teresita put on a pair of huaraches. Teresita hated them. But Huila insisted.

“Ladies,” she said, “wear shoes.”

“Then I don’t ever want to be a lady.”

Huila nodded.

“What you don’t want, child, is to be an old lady like Huila.”

Teresita tried the sandals, scuffing her feet on the clay tile floor.

“Huila?” she said. “How old are you?”

Huila thought.

“I must be . . . I must be fifty years old now.”

Teresita was astounded at this great tower of years, but she remained still and followed the old one into the kitchen.

Huila poured her a cup of coffee and stirred in five spoons of sugar and some boiled milk. She served herself the same. They ate bolillo rolls that they dipped in the coffee cups. The coffee turned the rolls into mushy bread pudding, and Huila slurped hers like a mule at a trough. Then they ate bananas and stale bits of sweet rolls.

Huila tucked a bolillo in her pocket and said, “Let’s go pray.”

“You already prayed.”

“Oh,” said Huila. “You never finish praying.”

She opened the back door and stood there.

After a moment, she yelled: “Who the hell took my shotgun!”

At the sacred spot, Huila showed Teresita how to light the sage and the incense grass in her old seashell, and which way to turn when she offered up the smoke to the four directions. “It’s easy to pray in the morning,” she said. “That way you can always start with the east, then all you do is turn to your left every time you pray.”

Itom Achai received Huila’s smoke and seemed to be in a good mood that day.

They broke the bolillo into halves and left it on a rock.

“Should we have brought God coffee?” Teresita asked.

This caught Huila up short. Did God take coffee? And if He did, would He want it black, or did He enjoy sugar and milk—all items He, in His own wisdom, had made in the first place? It was obvious that God enjoyed wine—only red wine—but coffee, that was altogether a mystery. And everyone knew God accepted tequila—God loved magueys, after all—and tequila was made with prayers to the Virgin Mary, when the juices were still milky and being strained through white sacramental cloths—and tequila was clear and everybody knew God loved a good clear liquid for all its symbolic power—but coffee would require study.