Hunger's Brides (45 page)

Now that I had startled myself by asking it, I expected him to be angry. He was staring into the ember glow. Drafts played in shadows over the coals. The tip of his traveller's staff lay among them, smoking, motionless.

“Some things are better left unsaid, Juanita. It does not mean we were not friends.”

After another moment or two he looked up and turned stiffly to face me. He did not look angry at all. “But it is good you ask about this. I have need of your help.”

“With what Abuelo?—anything.”

“Her.”

“Xochi?”

“And Amanda, yes. Your mother is pregnant…. You knew.”

“Josefa said.”

“From now on, it will be harder for Amanda and her mother.”

“De acuerdo, Abuelito
. We'll watch over them
together.”

At that, his frown eased. He scratched at the ruff under his chin.

“Yes we will. Now do you want to hear about our Ocelotl and his Bishop or not? Good. Well, you remember I once told you Ocelotl had a twin….”

When I awoke, he had one arm still under me and was bending to pull back the sheets. He had not carried me to bed for years and I wouldn't have thought he still could. Moonlight flooded into the room through the doorway. Moonlight spilled under the eaves and in through the window. Pure white now … the tint of amethyst was gone, as if a trick of light from the fire. In that milky light his face was rinsed clear and clean of lines, as if the blankness had spread from his sausage finger to an eye, a cheek, finally to fill the room, the moon …

My arms were still around his neck. So close above me, the eyes in that big fine head were like opals, black yet clear, like smoke through lantern glass. Reluctantly I let go of him, regretted it. Over my forehead a big hand hovered ever so lightly now as if cupped to shield a candle. He smoothed my hair and kissed it.

His mouth was firm, resolute, an old lion's. The smile was only in his voice.

“Has it not been the finest of days, Angelina?”

Ah, sí, Abuelito
. The very finest.

We had the most wonderful time.

A
manda was the one who brushed the damp earth from my knees and walked me back from the plot in the shady spot where she and I used to read. It was Amanda who sat close beside me at the table in the kitchen as Xochitl did her best to console me without ever quite speaking of him. It was Amanda who, for weeks, waited just inside my room each morning for me to rise, and waited near the library for me to come out again, just to walk me back to my room. Every day she brought each meal there. Was there anything else I needed, was there anything special Xochitl could make for me? Anxious, almost anguished, she wore an expression I saw often during that time but would not recognise, because she was the mirror I did not want to look into.

Diego moved in. My sisters went to live with my aunt in Chalco. I did not think to wonder if they'd asked to go. Yet even with Diego around, there came a time when I could no longer spend all my days alone in the library.

I had been sitting at the desk, a book open before me, staring out the window at the mountains, just as I had sometimes surprised him doing. When caught, he gave such a sheepish little smile. And at last, there it was in my mind, that little smile.

Abuelito, I'll put your books away now. And clear off your desk …? If that will be all right
.

The ones jumbled on the right were easier; these he had read. But four, he had not finished. It took a moment to touch them, a little longer to shelve. The last one dropped. Cursing my clumsy hands I bent to pick it up where it lay face down in the aisle, awkwardly folded. A little roof unevenly pitched. A small hawk covering a kill. It was like finding him all over again, turning that book face up. On the stone floor underneath lay a scrap of paper, a crude map. Mountains, sea, two stick figures dressed as tars with oars and banners. A girl and an old man with a sunflower face, waving grandly from Tierra del Fuego.

When I came out that day Amanda was there. It was early evening, the air already cool, the sun behind the hills. Her eyes looked searchingly into mine, her eyes big and full, colt's eyes of softest brown. She came to
a decision, drew a little bundle wrapped in sacking from the folds of her
rebozo
.

She had made a doll. Body of hemp, arms of braided wool bound tight with cotton thread. Corncob head, cut cross-wise to make a round sun face. Cornsilk hair, faintly red. I was without a thought in my head but could not stop staring at the doll.

Numbly I asked what this was. She was afraid I did not like it. She said I could take him with me now, wherever I went. I could feel my face working as I tried to find the words. I should have hugged her, held her and never let go.

Just then, Isabel came in from the fields.

She looked so tired and dusty, and so pregnant, a giant egg lumped under her dress, a camel's hump come uncinched and slipped round to her stomach. Huge—hatted booted skirted—she grimaced, wrenching her chin back and forth as she tugged at a knot in the cord of her riding cloak. Hands high, chin high, head cocked to one side, a dangerous exasperation in her black eyes. Seeing us malingering at the library door she barked at Amanda to go help her mother.

Amanda's face went wooden. As she turned for the kitchen I clutched at her arm. Isabel brushed past. I remember shouting back, something about Isabel's touching concern for Xochita all of a sudden. For an instant her gait faltered, but her physical distress must have been such that she could not turn back. I led Amanda into the kitchen by the hand, showed the doll to Xochitl, railed against all my mother's injustices. After a few minutes of this, Xochitl broke in brusquely to tell me not to make such a stew of my chameleons, by which I took her to mean that I made too much of my travails, dressing them up in colours not their own. Even Xochita, now.

Once the baby was born we started seeing a great deal of Diego, and of Diego's black mastiff. No matter how far up the river we walked or how deep into the woods, the dog found us. It clambered over us excitedly—panting, lolling, trembling—insolent snout, yellow eyes dead, corrupt, breath foul like an animal rotting in the brush. Though the mastiff smirched and pawed and slavered over both of us it took special interest in Amanda. This was the breed so efficient against the Mexicans during the Conquest—to this in peacetime come the war dogs and warmongers. It could smell a difference between us.

I had never felt a hatred so intense for any living thing, and fury and disgust. It was not a difference of race it smelled, but that Amanda was a woman and I was not. Yet it was not only that it found difference where I wanted there to be none. And it was not that I was shocked. We had lived on ranches all our lives. These things were natural with animals. And this was not natural at all. It followed us with its nose, it followed us as Diego's eyes followed us at home—all of us, my sisters, Amanda, me, even Xochitl. And lo, after a while, on his big pied gelding, handsome Diego would come riding along to liberate us and let himself be gazed upon … the glossy hair kinked in the manner we call
chino
and drawn tight into a short pigtail of briars … the wide, full lips such as any woman might wish for herself, the thick gleaming brows, the fine pale forehead under the splendid sombrero, the eyes deep-set, a turbulent dark brown, and yet in their darkness a little dull. Dullish knots twisting in smooth white pine.

It was Amanda they watched. Each time he caught up with his dog he waited a little longer before calling him away: Bad dog. But once he had, the thing came instantly, and we knew it had not wandered off. It had been sent, like a message. How I detested that animal. Amanda was afraid of it, I was not. And I was not afraid of its master either. Such a striking figure he cut—of the soldier clown, preening varlet in battle dress. Was there nowhere an uprising to put down, did he never go anymore in to the garrison?