The Five Acts of Diego Leon (3 page)

“Hush,” Elva said. She stood over a large copper colander, boiling goat’s milk, which steamed and foamed, the warm scent making Diego hungry. “You just concentrate on your work and stop thinking about all that nonsense.”

Elva had killed a chicken from the coop that morning. Diego watched her snap the animal’s neck then cut its head off, which she flung into the pigsty for the two sows to fight over. It was his job to pluck the feathers before taking the knife Elva kept nailed to a wall of the cookhouse and skinning the carcass. The feathers were tough, but he had managed to remove most of them. Now he placed the chicken on the wooden table, took the knife, and held it over the
dead animal’s breast. Elva stood over Diego and placed her hand on his.

“Así,” she said, guiding the point of the knife and jabbing it in until the chicken’s skin broke. “No,” Elva said when she saw Diego turn away. “You must see it. You must look. No matter how disgusting you think it is.”

He turned back around and watched as she led his hand down, the knife making a straight incision down the chicken’s belly. Now, she said, he needed to separate the skin, slowly, patiently. Diego’s hands felt moist and sticky, and his arms were smeared with blood as he took the chicken and crouched down on a straw petate to continue his work, removing the innards.

She finished boiling the goat’s milk. She took two clay mugs and filled them both and handed him one. Elva rolled hot tortillas from the griddle near the fire and sprinkled them with salt and told him to leave the chicken for now and to come and eat. Diego watched her chew; the bones beneath her thin and wrinkled skin still looked strong, he thought, and Diego wondered how it was that such an old woman as this could still rise each morning at five, carry heavy bundles of wet laundry on her crooked, spiny back, chop blocks of wood, splitting logs with much force, cook and clean and feed and look after him. She stood beside him, her white hair wrapped in a black rag, sweat glistening her face, breathing with her lips parted. She was missing all her front teeth, and he could see her gums, smooth and bright pink, and her mouth reminded him of that of a newborn.

“Elva?” he asked.

“Yes, Diego?”

“Are you my mother now?”

The old woman sat down, bunching the fabric of her woven skirt between her legs. She was barefoot, her toes knotted and coated with dust. “Well, no, but you’re my son for now. I must help you. I must teach you things.”

“Teach me what?”

She pointed to the chicken. “Well, how to skin animals, of course. When to plant. When to harvest. How to—”

He interrupted her. “Are you going to teach me more about the P’urhépecha?” He finished his milk and tortilla.

“I will,” Elva said.

Sadness filled him in the days after learning of his mother’s death, a terrible loneliness. Diego wondered why she had left him. Maybe she was with his father now. Maybe they were together, living in the mountains somewhere, waiting for the war to end before coming back for him.

But why had they abandoned him? He asked Elva this one afternoon when they were out in a wide field dotted with mesquite bushes, gathering twigs for the fire pit. He watched her, stooped over, her arms reaching down, deep between tall blades of grass and weeds and wildflowers. The gray mountains, veins of snow lacing their sides, circled them, keeping watch, cradling the whole valley. An eagle soared across the sky, and when its screech pierced the silence, Elva straightened her back and held a hand up to cover her eyes from the sun.

“No one abandoned you, Diego,” she said. “Your father’s still out there.”

“He could be dead. Like my mother.”

“You father’s not dead.”

“How do you know?”

Elva laughed. “He’s very stubborn. He always has been. Your grandfather raised him to be a farmer like him and his father before him, but Gabriel didn’t want that life. So, he went off to the city. And now he’s gone off with the revolutionaries. Always looking for one thing or another. Always being called by something. When he left for Morelia, people thought he’d never be seen again. Well, not only did he come back, but he brought your mother back with him.”

Elva said she didn’t think his mother would survive that first year. Such a fine lady, she said, living this life. She grew up with servants who took care of her. But she was stubborn, just like his father, she explained. And she was smart, quick to learn. Elva had taught her many things.

“Like what?” Diego asked.

How to grind corn for tortillas, how to milk a cow, what to do when a scorpion or snake invaded the house. Elva and the other women showed her what plants were poisonous, showed her how to make a balm out of animal fat and sprigs of mint, which rocks were the best for scrubbing the laundry, how to drape the wet clothing on the branches to prevent them from snapping. And she taught them things they never knew. She urged them to boil their water and when they asked why, she told them about small creatures, so tiny one couldn’t see them with the eye, swimming inside, carrying diseases that made people sick. She talked about wide paved avenues and trolley cars, railroads that brought the riches of the capital and, still further, the cities of the north, los Estados Unidos. She showed them magazines and newspapers advertising a hand-cranked washing machine, voyages on big ships to faraway places, women in elegant evening dresses and fancy hats.

“I thought she was a little full of herself,” Elva said now as she gathered more twigs. “But she was brave. Strong-willed. She cared for your father.” Elva gathered the large bundle of spindly mesquite twigs, wrapped them together in a burlap sack, and tied this with a strip of twine. She heaved it onto her back and held it. With her free hand, she took Diego’s. “Come. It’ll be dark soon. We have a ways to go.”

They traveled through a flat meadow and into a thicket of tall oak trees where the air cooled and dampened. Diego loved the vastness here, the shadows, the stones furry with bright jade moss, and the silence. It reminded him of a church, so still, so sacred.

“And you will teach me things, right?” he asked. “Like you taught my mother?”

“Yes,” the old woman said. “I told you already.”

Elva taught him the P’urhépecha words for everything: fish and cotton, cinnamon and water. “Kóki,” she said when they were out washing clothes and there came, from a small rivulet, the sound of frogs croaking. “Listen to the song of the kóki.” Elva pointed to the sun. “Tsánda,” she said. “Janikua.” She showed him the thin clouds skirting the sky. “Anhatapu.” She pointed to the trees around them.
She taught him to sing the pirékuas, P’urhépecha songs. His favorite was “Canel Tsïtsïki,” which he started singing now as they walked on. She hummed the tune, and he cleared his throat and raised his voice, which was high and strong:

“Very good,” she said, smiling. “What a lovely voice you have!”

Diego said, “I’m glad that you like it.” And he felt proud then, felt himself part of the words, which were ancient and wise, the tongue of his father, his ancestors. He imagined his voice lifting up and being carried off by the gentle winds that blew, reaching his father who was far, far away, guiding him back home.

That November of 1914, Elva celebrated her seventy-fifth birthday. Their neighbor, Narciso Méndez, killed a goat, and the women helped his wife, Rogelia, make birria and tortillas. Everyone in San Antonio gathered to celebrate. The men drank pulque and stood around the fire pit, and Diego remembered the revolutionaries who had passed through the year before, bringing the disease that killed his mother. He saw the church and remembered the injured man lying inside, crying out in pain all through the night as the statues of the Virgin and Christ looked on. The revolutionaries had forced the man to drink tequila. To help with the pain, they said. He got very drunk and shouted at Diego and some of the other children, many of them dead now, like his mother. Was the man still alive?

The small church, with its two rows of pews and one candelabra, was open, and some of the women went to confess to Father Solís, who traveled on horseback to the different villages in the area to hold Mass and give Communion. Some children ate sweets and played, Diego among them, and they ran around the church, chasing one another. As night fell, everyone gathered to toast Elva.

“My birthday wish is for Diego to sing to me. Flor de Canela,”
Elva told the crowd. “Canel Tsïtsïki,” she said to Diego. “Do you remember it?”

He nodded. He focused, sang the words to himself in his head:

The other children watched him move toward the old woman who sat on a bench near the fire pit, a long rebozo woven of golden yarn wrapped around her head and shoulders. Someone had placed a fresh bouquet of flowers in Elva’s hand. She sipped pulque and smoked a cigarette rolled from marijuana leaves, which she said helped ease her stiff joints. Diego removed his hat and he took Elva’s hand. He cleared his throat. He took a deep breath and began to sing:

Except for the occasional giggle from one of the children, the people were silent with appreciation. Elva listened intently, taking long, deep puffs from her cigarette, her eyes low and red, glowing warm and bright in the firelight. He continued to sing, watching the embers drift up into the darkening sky, and he imagined them to be his voice. This filled him with a warmth that was painful and lovely all at once. Everyone gathered around him, and Diego sang on and on:

When he finished, they applauded. Narciso gave Diego a sip of pulque, which he drank quickly and immediately spit out. Elva threw her head back and laughed loud, and Diego felt happy that he had brought her such joy.

Afterward, Elva said, “You were wonderful. You have a gift. Like all of the P’urhépecha. From the gods. They have blessed us, you especially. Given you the ability to sing.”

“And my father?” he asked. “What was his gift?”

“I don’t know,” Elva said. “You’ll have to ask him when he returns.”

“Will he ever?” Diego barely remembered him.

Elva responded, “We can only hope.”

F
OUR YEARS
. G
ABRIEL
L
EÓN WAS GONE FOUR YEARS
. There had been a heavy rainstorm the night before, and the roads and the fields were badly flooded on the day when he and Luis Vara finally returned to San Antonio.

Luis hugged Diego and kissed Elva. He had lost much weight, and he was now thin, his round belly completely gone, his trousers and shirt loose and baggy on his body. His father frightened Diego. He was like an apparition, a spirit. His hair was tangled and matted, his fingernails and toenails thick and yellowed and curved like a dog’s. He wore tattered rags, a hat woven from strips of palm fronds, and a pair of flimsy leather sandals. His hands trembled as he ate the plate of beans and tortillas Elva served. He gulped the coffee down quickly, even though it was hot. He sat hunched in the corner of the cookhouse for most of the day, watching the puddles of rain outside. There was a new scar running across his left cheek, a deep gouge splitting his skin.

“What happened, Gabriel?” Elva asked, reaching out to touch it.

“Nothing,” his father responded, pushing her hand away.

“He was captured,” Luis said. “Tortured. He was found chained to …” He stopped now, glanced over at Diego. Luis cleared his throat before continuing: “I won’t say more in front of the boy, but I had to bring him back or he would have died.”

His father remained silent for a long time, chewing his tortillas.
Finally he spoke. “Where is Amalia?” he asked Elva. “Did she return to Morelia?”

Elva took a deep breath and reached for the clay jug on the crooked wooden shelf near the washbasin. Diego knew she kept it full of pulque and took drinks from time to time when her nerves acted up. She looked over at Diego, who fixed his eyes on his father. She took a drink from the jug then walked it over to Gabriel. He took a long drink.

“Two years after you both left, a troop of fighters came to San Antonio. Afterward, many children, including the boy, got very sick,” Elva explained. “Then some adults became ill. Amalia got it, too. The boy recovered. She didn’t.”

Luis sighed and muttered something under his breath.

“She’s dead?” his father asked.

“Yes,” Elva said. “We buried her in the cemetery. Near your parents.” She reached out and took his hand. “But the boy was spared. And you’re both alive. We thought you died. It’s a miracle.”

His father set the jug down on the table. Diego caught the scent of fermented alcohol mixing with the smell of wood smoke and toasting maize as his father charged out of the cookhouse and into the street.

“What a tragedy,” Luis said, removing his hat and looking at Elva, then Diego. “I’m sorry, son. I’m so sorry for all of this.”

He went with his father the next day to Mass, and after everyone left, they stayed. Gabriel lit a candle and said a prayer for Amalia. His hands trembled and he cried into the sleeve of his shirt.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered. “I’m so sorry.”

Diego didn’t know what to say. He wanted to reach out and pat his father on the shoulder, but something stopped him. Instead, he watched the candles flicker and burn away to nothing.

On the fifth of February of 1917—a month after Diego’s eleventh birthday—the country rejoiced but just for a brief moment. The land, Luis told him, had a new Constitution that guaranteed many rights for workers, such as paid holidays and better wages. Things
will get better, he said. The fighting will cease. But Elva knew the truth.