The Hummingbird's Daughter (10 page)

Huila made her rarest confession that day: “I don’t know.”

They walked back to the workers’ village. The People were already out of their houses. When they saw Huila coming, and Teresita—just last night lying in pig mess—now in a radiant Yori dress—and
shoes
—they stepped back into their homes and shut their doors.

“Wait,” Huila said.

She knocked at Tía’s door.

When Tía opened it and saw Huila, she fell back a few steps.

“Good morning!” Huila bellowed as she shoved her way in, then slammed the door.

It took a while. Teresita waited. The big she-pig poked her nose through the slats and whiffed Teresita’s dress. Teresita scratched her drippy snout.

When Huila came back out, she was smiling benignly. “Good day!” she called back into the hut, as if they had just taken tea. She patted Teresita on the shoulder and said, “I have chores to do.” She walked off, singing to herself. Teresita looked back at the house. Tía stood before her, white in the face. She had sweat on her lip, and her lids fluttered, as if a stiff breeze were blowing in her eye.

“Would you —” Tía began. She swallowed. “Would you like something to eat?”

“No thank you, Tía,” she said. “I had breakfast at the main house.”

She pushed past her aunt and went inside.

The People stared at Tía.

She said, “Don’t look at me!”

But she knew Huila had cursed her, and forever more, they would all stare like ghosts, and none of them would ever say a word.

Ten

THE ENGINEER DON LAURO AGUIRRE arrived in a flurry of dust and rattling. He was driving a smart cabriolet pulled by a handsome black horse. Gómez and his Rurales saw him through the gate of the ranch, then rode on, in search of wanderers to bushwhack.

Tomás greeted his old friend atop his massive palomino, El Tuerto. El Tuerto wasn’t one-eyed, even though his name implied it, but his troubling habit of going sideways was cured by giving him a single blinder, which forced him to follow just one of his badly crossed brown eyes. This solution meant that he was blind on his right side when wearing his eye patch, and Tomás had to rely on precise spur work to keep him from tumbling off hillsides or falling into bogs. But once controlled, El Tuerto was a magnificent stallion, taller than all the other horses on the ranch, with the hair of a French courtesan. Any other rancher would have made El Tuerto into a plow horse, or would have shot him, but Tomás had seen his glory right away. “If he were a woman,” he’d told Segundo, “I would marry him.”

“Sure, boss,” Segundo had replied. “Everybody likes blonds.”

Aguirre steered the little wagon toward the house, and Tomás rode beside him, regaling him with tales of the quotidian wonders of his life. “Yes, yes,” Aguirre repeated, “yes, yes.” Huila passed before him, her new shotgun under her arm. She didn’t even glance at him, but trudged into the distance.

“The curandera,” Aguirre offered.

“That’s the one.”

“She looks cranky.”

“When doesn’t she?”

“Say, Urrea, my dear cabrón. I’ve been meaning to ask you. Are there Indians hereabouts? Do you have the red man working for you?”

“Claro,” Tomás replied. “It’s their land.” He thought better of that comment and amended it: “It was their land.”

“Apaches?”

“No.”

“Yaquis?”

“A few. But we’re pretty far south for too many Yaquis.”

“Who, then?”

Tomás blew air out of his mouth.

“Quién sabe. Let’s see—Ocoronis, some wandering Pimas, I think, or Seris—far from home if they are here. I know there are Tehuecos and Guasaves in the bunch. The Guasaves come up from Culiacán looking for work. We have Mayos.”

“Mayas?” cried Aguirre. “I thought the Maya to be in the far south! A jungle people! Are these not the realms of the barbarian Chichimeca? The Dog People who laid waste to the temples and the pyramids? Are there Mayan ruins here?”

These fucking lectures.

“Not Mayas, pendejo. Mayos. O! May-
o!
”

Aguirre drew up before the main house and put his reins down on the seat and set the foot brake.

“Good Lord, man,” he sniffed, “there is no need to get huffy.”

By the time Tomás had collected his thoughts to insult Aguirre again, the Engineer was knocking at the door and calling for Loreto.

Inside, Loreto had already lined up her children. Aguirre had never really noticed them, except to note that there were several. He had not counted them, and he couldn’t remember their names. “Yes, yes, good to see you, how do you do,” he intoned, like a priest unloading wafers or shaking hands after Mass. Children, yes, certainly. He moved on to Loreto and clutched her hands, crying, “You remain as lovely as peach blossoms in spring!” He then baffled yet delighted Loreto by slipping into Italian for a moment, calling her a
fiore di pesca.
He lifted her hands in his and kissed them, taking the opportunity to smell her skin. Loreto! Blossom of warm sugar! Sprinkled with cinnamon and vanilla! Loreto! Angel of Ocoroni!

“My,” she said.

“Aguas,” Tomás warned, which was his way of letting them know he was watching, invoking the ancient and honorable warning offered in Iberia when Spanish maids were about to toss the chamber-pots’ contents out the windows.

“Pardon me,” Aguirre said, taking a final surreptitious sniff: garlic and bacon! “I always lose my head when confronted with your lovely bride.” Loreto felt a rush of embarrassed joy, for in claiming to be powerless over himself in the face of her beauty, he had not only absolved himself of adulterous guilt, but complimented her so deeply that she could never explain it even to herself, while equally complimenting Tomás as the most macho man in the region—the man who had landed this astounding powerhouse of beauty and grace, the delicious Loreto! Aguirre basked in this small coup as he stood straight and beamed at everyone.

Tomás slapped him on the back, which was a signal to all others to vanish into the far regions of the house. “Who can blame you, my beloved son of a whore?” Tomás said, all the while implying that he would indeed blame—forever—should lips meet anything other than back of the hand. He led Aguirre into his study and decanted brandy. Aguirre, sitting back in a red-gold chair beneath the library shelf, accepted the snifter and, silently, raised it in a toast to his friend.

“I’m glad you’re here, old friend,” Tomás said.

“I was afraid I’d miss your party,” Aguirre said. “Things are complicated on the roads.”

“Did you see bandits?”

“Only in the form of government agents.”

“That sort of talk could stretch your neck,” Tomás said.

“Oh? Are there spies even in your house?”

Tomás smiled.

“The bandits are all dead,” Aguirre informed him. “And many Indians. Americanos are buying land in Chihuahua and Sonora on deeds from Mexico City.” He waved his hand before his face. “There are
department stores.
”

“What is this?”

“Germans selling coats and underpants and pots and toys all in one great store.”

“No meat?”

“No.”

“No steaks?”

“No! No meat at all.”

“What kind of a store sells no meat?”

“Tomás! Por Dios! Pay attention! A department store.”

“What do they sell?”

“I just told you what they sell.”

“No meat.”

“Correct.”

“German underpants.”

“Well. As a figure of speech.”

“Ah.”

“Things, in other words.”

“Ah!”

“It is very North American.”

“No meat,” said Tomás. “It is the end of ranching.”

“No, no,” the Engineer said. “There will be department stores of meat!”

Tomás raised his glass.

“Let us drink a toast, then, to the future!”

A girl brought in a tray with fluted glasses filled with seviche, and a bowl of the delightful raw shellfish known as pata de mula. Tomás had ordered it sent from Los Mochis. The seafood had arrived in tunnels bored into blocks of ice that were wrapped in burlap and buried in mounds of sawdust. Beside the seviche, there was a glass bowl of toothpicks, a small plate of lime slices, a pinch bowl of crushed salts, and a cup filled with salsa borracha.

Aguirre immediately drenched a disk of pata de mula in lime, skewered it on a toothpick, and began the long wrestling match that passed for chewing when eating the recalcitrant shellfish. Tomás, not to be outdone, slurped up fish and lime juice from his glass, then spooned salsa borracha directly into his mouth. He turned bright crimson and his nose began running. Aguirre slopped salsa onto his seviche and spooned out a great burning gob. Tears came to his eyes. They were both sweating profusely.

“Chingue a su madre,” Tomás said, but he said it the way the men said it, as one Asiatic ululation: “Heeng-yasumá!”

“Yes,” Aguirre concurred, “it is tasty.”

Segundo stopped by and said, “Pata de mula!”

“Dig in,” Tomás invited.

When the chiles hit his tongue, Segundo sighed: “Hijo de su madre.”

It was so painful they had no further words for its wonder.

There was a long pause before Aguirre spoke again.

“This election will affect you, my reckless friend,” the Engineer prophesied.

Tomás absorbed this quietly.

The great dictator of Mexico, the President for Life, General Díaz, the Grand Don Porfirio, onetime hero of Liberation, ally of the great Benito Juárez, pinche Indio general to boot, had been seduced by power, Aguirre said. The People said he’d been whitened once ensconced in the presidential palace of far Tenochtitlán, transformed into a wicked scorpion. Díaz had sent his troops forth to kill Indians and rebels as he sold away the nation for bags of European and Yanqui gold; now he was closing his fist over the states around Sinaloa. His reign was so complete that it went by his own first name: El Porfiriato.

Díaz had sent his men into the land to run in elections for control of every state. But this governor of Sinaloa, with the help of Tomás and the Masons, had won the election. The general in his palace in the Aztec capital had sent the army to Culiacán for a recount. And when they got the ballots, the count reversed itself as if by magic.

“Díaz has taken Sinaloa!” Aguirre announced.

“Are you sure?” Tomás asked.

“I am.”

“Is it trouble for us?”

“It is.”

Segundo looked to them and shrugged.

“Watch,” Aguirre warned, “for punitive actions. For revenge. See if lands are seized for obscure reasons. See if opposition politicians vanish between Ocoroni and Guaymas—it will be a quiet thing. A trip that seems to evaporate into thin air. Tragic accidents, or mysterious bandit attacks that suddenly wipe out certain homes on the outskirts.”

Tomás rubbed his face.

“Well,” he said. He nodded. He had always been afraid of ruining the ranch, and now, in the one gesture he had been sure would preserve it forever, he might have annihilated everything.

Tomás leaned in and, in a conspiratorial tone of voice, inquired, “Do your department stores sell honey?”

“Honey?”

“Claro que sí! Honey! Have I told you of my experiments with the honeybee and the golden honey?”

Tomás rushed to his desk and produced a candle that was decorated along its entire length with small hexagons.

“Honeycomb!” Tomás cried.

“Rolled like a small burrito,” noted the Engineer.

“Honey is the grand industry,” Tomás sighed, sitting back.

After a while, they began sketching designs for new, scientific beehives, the brandy making all lines curved and crooked and possible.

Eleven

IF THERE WAS EVER UPROAR on the ranch, Teresita seemed to be in the middle of it. She ran in a pack of little ruffians, and they bedeviled the bulls in their paddocks, climbed trees, hid in bushes and pelted Rurales with rocks. Teresita already rode horses—albeit on the saddles of the buckaroos. All the wranglers seemed to enjoy her scrappy company, and they taught her naughty corridos on their guitars. She could strum—badly—and sing ditties about lonesome cows and bandits and wicked city women who left their sweethearts broken and drunk in countless cantinas from Yucatán to Nogales. Lately, Teresita’s favorite game was piling six children on the back of a long-suffering donkey and sliding down its backside before scrambling aboard to do it again. In this way, they passed many minutes of hilarity, while the burro idly imagined the pleasure of kicking them over the fence.

That morning, when Huila made her move on Teresita, the sun was not yet risen. Huila carried her new double-barreled shotgun, and she had her objects in her apron pockets: tobacco, a folding knife, her apocalyptic man pouch, red matches, a bundle of sage, a bone, and her three buffalo teeth. She puffed a pipe Don Tomás had given her—its tobacco, cured in liquor, was as tasty to her as a cake.

She stepped up to Tía’s door and rapped on it three times.

“Quién es?” Tía called.

“Huila.”

Silence.

“What do you want?”

“The girl.”

More silence.

The door scraped open, and Teresita came out.

“It is time,” Huila said.

Teresita took her hand, and they walked away.

They passed the swampy pool of donkey pee in the road. They walked quietly through the scattering of workers’ shacks. Huila’s shotgun cut back and forth before her like some queen bee’s antennae, seeking evildoers. Around them, the muffled sounds of women rising in dark homes, unfolding their envelopes of wax paper and butcher paper and, for the poorest, their banana leaves. They took green coffee beans and threw them on heated skillets with a handful of sugar if they had it, so the sugar would burn and char the beans brown. The tinkle and dark scent filled the air, both sweet and bitter.

All these women, Huila thought: Mothers of God. These skinny, these dirty and toothless, these pregnant and shoeless. These with an issue of blood, and these with unsuckled breasts and children cold in the grave. These old forgotten ones too weak to work. These fat ones who milked all day. These twisted ones tied to their pallets, these barren ones, these married ones, these abandoned ones, these whores, these hungry ones, these thieves, these drunks, these mestizas, these lovers of other women, these Indians, and these littlest ones who faced unknowable tomorrows. Mothers of God. If it was a sin to think so, she would face God and ask Him why.

“The Virgin came to your people,” Huila said.

“My people?”

“Oh yes. The Mayos saw La Virgencita before the priests came.”

Teresita stopped and stared up at her teacher in the dark.

“What happened?”

Huila puffed her pipe. It was good. It was very, very good.

“It was before. Before you, and before me.”

Teresita was astonished by this revelation: there had been a time before Huila.

“The Mother of God appeared to a group of warriors who were out in the desert, hunting. And they looked up, and there she was, descending from the sky.”

Teresita gasped.

“She was, I imagine, all in purple. The Mother of God likes purple! So she came down to them from Heaven, and they were stunned and shaking with fear.”

“What did they do?”

“They ran away and hid behind bushes.”

“What did she do?”

“Well, she had an accident.”

“What happened?”

“She landed on top of a cactus.”

“Oh no!”

“Oh yes. The Mother of God was stuck on top of a huge cactus, and the warriors started throwing rocks at her and shooting arrows at her, but they could not hit her. You see, they had never seen a Yori before, and they had never seen a flying Yori, or a magnificent creature like her! So they tried to kill her. Pendejos, los hombres!”

Teresita put her hands over her face.

“And then what?” she cried.

“Then the Mother of God spoke to the warriors from atop her cactus.”

“What did she say? What did she say?”

“She said—‘Get me a ladder!’”

Teresita said, “What!”

“Get me a ladder, that’s what she said. Holy be her name.”

Teresita burst out laughing. So did Huila.

“It’s true,” Huila said.

They walked on.

“What did they do?” Teresita asked.

“I imagine they fetched her a ladder!”

The sun was coming up.

“You see,” Huila explained, “this is how Heaven works. They’re practical. We are always looking for rays of light. For lightning bolts or burning bushes. But God is a worker, like us. He made the world—He didn’t hire poor Indios to build it for him! God has worker’s hands. Just remember—angels carry no harps. Angels carry hammers.”

Teresita sat on a rock in the morning light and watched Huila go from plant to plant, muttering to them. She actually said “Good morning” to a miserable little quince tree. Teresita giggled. Huila shot her a stern glance before turning back to the tree. “May I borrow your fruit? I promise to eat it with gratitude, and then the child and I will scatter your seeds for you over by the creek bank. Your children will live long after you!” She unfolded her knife and cut off a plump quince and sliced it and handed Teresita some of the fruit. “Me gusta el membrillo,” she said as she ate the pungent fruit and it puckered her lips. “Save the seeds. I reached an agreement—we have to honor it.” This very well might have been theater on Huila’s part, but it worked.

“Do the plants talk back?” Teresita asked.

Huila stretched her back, grimaced. The orange sun was igniting the hilltops with thin etchings of hot copper. Quail rushed through the brush, leading lines of babies that looked like beads on a rosary.

“Everything,” Huila said, “talks.”

“I never heard it.”

“You never listened.”

Huila pointed around herself with her pipe.

“Life. Life. Life,” she said. She was pointing at everything: tree, hill, rock.

“Life in rocks?” Teresita said.

“All is light, child. Rocks are made of light. Angels pass through rocks the way your hand passes through water.”

Teresita wondered if angels were passing through the rock on which she sat.

“Every rock comes from God, and God is in every rock if you look for Him.”

This was pretty strange talk, in Teresita’s opinion.

“In a rock.”

“Yes.”

“In a . . . in a bee?”

“Certainly.”

“In a taco?”

“You think you’re funny.”

Huila was irked. A tortilla, made of holy corn, corn made of rain and soil and sun, that tortilla, round as the sun itself! Was God not in the rain? Did the corn not come from God? What of the sun? Was the sun simply some meaningless accident in the sky? Some ball of light meaning nothing, signifying nothing? No! Only a heretic would fail to see God in the sun!

And the meat of the goat, and the flowers the goat ate, and the chiles in the salsa, and the guacamole, and the hands of the fine woman who slapped the tortilla into shape then laid the sizzling meat into it, and the fire, and the fire ring, and the house in which the fire ring burned, and the ancestors who raised the generation that led to the woman making the taco. Only an idiot would fail to see God in a meal!

“If you are too blind to see God in a Goddamned taco,” she exclaimed, “then you are
truly
blind!”

Teresita said, “Then everything is God?”

“Don’t be a heathen,” Huila said. “God is everything. Learn the difference.”

“I have dreams, Huila.”

“We all have dreams, child.”

“I dreamed of a hummingbird made of sky.”

“Ah.”

“He was too small to see, but I could see him.”

“Yes?”

“And he landed.”

“But of course.”

“And he turned to me and he had a feather in his mouth.”

“A feather.”

“Yes, Huila. A white feather.”

“You’re sure it was white. It is very important, child.”

“White.”

“And which way did he turn, right or left?”

“Left.”

“Oh!”

“Is that good, Huila?”

“Left is the direction of the heart. Did you know that? The heart is on the left.”

“I thought the heart was in the middle.”

“On the left. That’s why wedding rings are on the left hand, you see. The heart side.”

“Well, the hummingbird turned to the left.”

“And what did he do with the white feather?”

“He put it in my hand.”

“Yes. Good. Excellent.”

“What does it mean, Huila?”

“Well—the hummingbird is the messenger of God.”

“He is?”

“You didn’t know that?”

“No.”

“Has no one taught you anything?”

“Only you, Huila.”

“Oh, child. Well, he is the messenger. He brings messages from Heaven to us on earth. And he carries our requests to the ear of God. Do you see? So he came from Heaven.”

“And the feather?”

“Feathers are sacred. A white feather—I would say that was a key.”

“A key to what?”

“Why, child, a key to whatever. Spirit. Heaven. I don’t know what. It was your dream, not mine.”

That was enough education for one day.

Huila walked her back home.

The next morning, Teresita watched Huila collect leaves and stems and put them in a cloth bag slung over her shoulder. More muttering. Asking a clavo plant to forgive her for being greedy.

When this was over, she set her bag on the ground and said, “Now, your lesson.”

“I am ready, Huila.”

“You must learn to feel the life in things.”

“Feel it?”

“Correct. To work with plants, you must know plants. But what if you don’t already know a plant? Then you must know how to feel its life force. It will tell you who it is, or at least who it is related to.”

“Why?”

“What if it is poison? What if, for example, that bastard Segundo gets the chorro?”

Teresita laughed. Huila had used the country word for diarrhea: the gushing stream.

“So poor Segundo has crap in his pants —”

“Huila!”

“—and he comes to you for a healing. You must rush out to find plants to make him a tea to plug his culo —”

“Ay, Huila!”

“—but you are in some new place, and you don’t know which plants are which. Do you see? There is no one to ask, and Segundo is farting like a sick cow —”

“Ay Dios, Huila!”

“—so it’s urgent that you find a plant. You must go out and feel their life. You can tell which might be soothing and which might make him sicker.”

“Do I feel it in my heart?”

Teresita was trying to sound religious.

“I am not the priest,” Huila sniffed. “Don’t try to sound like a nun. I mean feel it,
feel
it.” She grabbed Teresita’s wrist and ran her finger across her palm. “Feel it with your hands.”

“How?”

“I will show you.”

They walked out across the stubbly field where old cotton plants had been chopped down and plowed under. They reached a creosote bush, one of the heralds of the deserts not far to their north. The bush the People called Stinky—Hedionda.

“Stinky is best for training,” Huila said. “It has a strong life in it. Anybody can feel it. Even Yoris.”

“Really?”

Huila nodded. “Never teach a Yori all the things I am going to teach you. They have stolen enough from us. Don’t give them our souls. But you may teach Yoris to do this. Everybody should do this.”

She took Teresita’s wrists and positioned her hands above the bush. Teresita touched the leaves. Huila pulled her hands back.

“Don’t touch,” she said.

Teresita stayed quiet. Sometimes, asking Huila questions was a bad idea. The old one repositioned her hands above the bush about four inches from the leaves.

“Now what?” Teresita said.

“Wait.”

A few minutes passed.

“How long do I wait?”