Magnolia City (45 page)

“What did she read?” Hetty asked.
I have to know!

“It’s there, in the sketchbook,” Cora said, nodding. Hetty picked it up off the coffee table and let Pierce help her turn the pages until she found a sheet of wrinkled notebook paper that had been pasted in. Words had been hastily scribbled across it. The ink here was not black like the India ink, but had faded to the color of dying flowers. Hetty read the words out loud:

“Her reading was followed by a heavy silence,” Cora said. “Not one of the girls moved for the longest time. Only Sister Flanna. The layers of her starched black robes began to stir. Nella was dismissed with a mere nod. We all watched as she shuffled down the aisle of desks, her bandaged knees covered by her skirt. She didn’t look at anyone, just stared straight ahead. Her eyes, which had been so sparkling before, were glazed with the dull passivity of defeat.” Cora dried her tears on a tea towel.

“I can’t believe she wrote those words!” Hetty shut the album and slammed it down on the coffee table. “Anton ruined his child, sending her there. Didn’t you call home and tell them what was going on?”

“Father wouldn’t have cared. It’s what he wanted. He even kept her there after I graduated.”

“Mother was left alone at All Saints?”

Cora nodded sadly. “She was there for another year. Miss Chocha.”

“That must have killed her.”

“Wait till you hear the rest.”

“I can’t take any more.” Hetty rubbed her temples. A headache was banging its way into her forehead. “Now I’m the one who needs a drink.”

“Good idea.” Cora stood and started cleaning up the coffee table. “Mescal?”

“Yes! And I’ll have mine straight up.” Cora brought over the decanter and tipped some of the golden liquid into snifters. Hetty didn’t wait for the toast, but let it blaze like a fuse all the way down her throat until it exploded in her stomach. “Ahhhh!” She gasped and held out her snifter.

“Easy.” Cora laughed, tipping more in. “You must drink mescal for your tummy, not your head.” She put the decanter away.

“Look who’s talking!” As Hetty sipped at the second glass, the glimmering sunlight began to swim in her eyes and her rage relaxed. “I need some time,
Tía
.”

“Take all the time you need. You’ve come to the right place to heal. San Antonio is built over many springs.”

Hetty would have drowsed until noon if Pierce hadn’t woken her midmorning. She carried him into the kitchen, where Cora was already at work brewing coffee. Together, they made
huevos rancheros
and toast. She sat her baby on her lap and fed him some of the toast before she ate herself. After Hetty unpacked the Wichita truck, they talked more about the family over cups of fragrant coffee. The sun began to trespass on the house and heat it up. Cora yanked the chain on the ceiling fan, and a cool breeze swirled between them. Pierce and the cats scampered about on the carpet.

“There’s something else I wanted to ask you about,
Tía
.”

Cora nestled back into some cushions and waited.

“I have dreams.”

“About the future?”

“Yes! How did you know?”

Cora smiled. “You have the ancient eyes. It’s in your blood. You’re an Ardra.”

“Do you have dreams like that, too?”

Cora snickered. “Not since I was psychoanalyzed. That hammers it right out of you.”

“I’d like to get rid of them, too. I’ve decided they’re evil.” Hetty explained how she had come to view her gift as more of a curse than a blessing.

“Sobrina,”
Cora said, shaking her head. “You can’t get out of it that easily. Such dreams arise from an old, untamed clairvoyance in the blood. Entirely amoral.”

“So they’re not inherently evil?”

“Would you call wild animals evil? They are what they are.”

“Just pictures?”

“
Exactamente.
It’s all in how you use them.”

“I guess I used them for the wrong purposes.” Hetty reflected on what her visions of the faucet had led to, and the two pines bent together. They had afforded her glimpses of goddesses—Santa Adiva and her own magical grandmother who could turn water into wine—yet she had focused solely on tapping the secrets to gain power and wealth. “Does Mamá have the dreams?”

“Not for a long time.”

“Is that part of the story?”

Cora nodded sagely.

“I guess I have to hear the rest of it,” Hetty said, scooting down to the floor to play with Pierce. “Whether I’m ready or not.”

“Let’s see. Where was I?”

“You had to leave Nella alone at All Saints. Another year in that place must have finished her off . . . dreams and all.”

“Well, if that didn’t, the next place did.”

“She was sent to another school?”

“
Exactamente.
Nella’s last year was spent at Miss Hockaday’s Finishing School for Girls in Dallas.” Cora slipped her shoes off and curled up with her feet underneath her on the couch. “I didn’t recognize her when she came home. My little
hermana linda
had somehow shape-shifted into Miss Nella Beckman. She talked without a trace of a lisp, refused to speak Spanish, and corrected our table manners. She and Lili fought bitterly, Mamá cursing
en Es-pañol,
Nella ranting back at her in English: ‘I’m not a dirty Mexican anymore, Mamá. I’m Anglo now. Talk to me in English.’

“So began my sister’s assimilation into WASP society. Since we were known in San Antonio, Anton took her to Houston for her coming out. The name Ardra was never uttered. She was Nella Beckman, daughter of the mysterious lieutenant who had rented a house at the corner of McKinney and Fannin. She danced beautifully, conversed well, and had a dazzling smile and long lustrous black hair that she wore swept up into a Gibson Girl except for a few curls, which trailed tantalizingly over her pure white complexion. Kirby was smitten right off, and in only a few months, with permission from Anton, asked Nella to be his wife.”

“When did he find out about
la familia?
”

“Not till you were born.”

“Really? How?”

“Liliana appeared in Houston for the first time, bringing a Mexican midwife, a
partera,
with her. Liliana hoped that Kirby would be so filled with the glow of fatherhood that he would accept you and her graciously. But unfortunately, there was no hiding the secret when you were born. Kirb took one look at Liliana, then at the
partera,
then at you. His white skin turned even whiter as he backed out of the room.

“He wouldn’t touch Nella for months after that, I heard, so angry was he at the way he’d been tricked. No one was allowed to see the baby or its grandmother. People were told you were ill. You were all kept locked away. Ask Lina. That was when they had to hire her—to take care of you.”

Hetty caught her breath. “You mean—Nella . . . ?”

“Talk to Lina,
please
.”

“All right . . . then. I will.”

Cora pursed her lips and veiled her eyes. “I know this for sure—the only thing that saved you was your light skin. If you’d been the least bit brown, I fear Kirby would have divorced Nella and that would have been the end of it. There was no way an Old Houstonian, especially an Allen, could have a mestiza as a wife. They could remain married only under the following conditions: Liliana had to leave immediately,
en secreto
as she’d come, and never return to their home. That’s why you never met her. She went back to Mexico. Not a word of this was to be spoken to anyone. Nella would have to join the Episcopal High Church and raise the child Esther as a Protestant and an Anglo, bereft of any Mexican heritage. Nella was allowed one secret room where she could keep the artifacts of her previous life. But no one was allowed to go in there. That was the choice she was given.”

“But what other choice did she have?”

“Return to San Antonio in the hope that Tipo would take her back and adopt you.”

“Do you think he would have?”

“Yes, I do. He waited for her for years. And he would have loved you like his own daughter. That’s how Mexicans are. Any child brought into their family is raised like their own blood.”

“She took the coward’s way.”

“Perhaps.” Cora sank deeper into the cushions and sipped at her cold coffee for a few moments. “But somehow I can’t condemn my sister. Not when I remind myself of what she went through.” Cora looked down at Hetty. “And I was hoping it would help you understand things a little more.”

Hetty sighed. “It does. Now I see why Kirby’s always preferred Charlotte. He rejected me from the beginning.”

“
¡Exactamente!
And why I wasn’t invited to her wedding.”

“That would have blown their cover completely.
Pobrecitas
—they don’t even know what love is anymore, do they?”

“Love is a language unto itself. You have to practice it every day or you forget how to speak it.”

One of the cats hissed at Pierce, making him cry. It was almost time for his nap. After lunch, Hetty put him in his stroller and bumped it down the terraces by the river. She rocked him until he fell asleep, then she sat down on a mossy stone bench and gazed into the glistening water. She wasn’t sure how long she sat there, watching the San Antonio river flow by and thinking about their
familia
’s past. At one point, she shivered. Pierce woke up, but still she didn’t move.

That night, she ignored the cradle and carried her baby straight into bed with her. She nestled him amid pillows and fell asleep snuggling close to Pierce’s warmth. She dreamed in Spanish.

The next morning, Hetty sat staring at the black telephone beside the sofa. In the corner of her eye, Pierce reached into the wooden trunk and pulled out a gourd. The seeds inside swished as he dragged it across the floor. Cora had gone to the market down in the Quarter. Hetty took another swig of coffee and reached for the receiver, then withdrew her hand. She took a deep breath and forced her fingers to curl around the cold black enamel. She dialed the Warwick number.

Hetty could hear the phone jangle, calling the maid in from the kitchen. “Allen residence,” Lina answered.

“It’s Hetty.”

“¿Donde está?”
Lina’s startled voice came lisping out of the receiver.

“I’m at Cora’s,” Hetty said. “Tell Mother not to worry.
Estoy bien
.” Hetty couldn’t talk for a moment. Silence stretched across miles and miles of telephone line, and seeds rattled in the gourd Pierce raised into the air. “Actually I’m not fine. Cora told me the story of my birth.”

Lina whimpered at the other end of the line. “That was so long ago.
Ya no está importante.
”

“If it’s not important, then why is everybody hiding it from me. What happened?”

“
M’ija
—ask your mother.”

“You know she won’t talk about it. Why did they hire you, Lina? You’re the one who has to tell me.”

“No, no.”

“Do you love me?

“¡Por supuesto que sí! Siempre.”

“Then you’ll tell me.”

There was no response. Hetty wondered if Lina had hung up. Then she began talking in a voice shaken with old shame. “I did what I could,
m’ija,
but I was not your
madre
. Mr. Allen, he wouldn’t go near Mrs. Allen. Nobody spoke to nobody. The worst thing was, she wouldn’t pick you up. When they brought me to that house, you were in a cradle yellow with jaundice, screaming, and she was sitting in a chair, rocking, rocking, just rocking. I tried to hand you to her, but she wouldn’t take you. I wanted to place you on her breast, but she always wore these high-necked dresses with long sleeves. There was no way you could crawl your way through all those layers of fabric to find her breasts. The lace scratched your skin. I’ve never heard a child howl like that. I had to make bottles for you. And she had so much milk. She was sick with it. Her breasts grew hard as rocks.”

“What did you do?”

“I had to call Doña Serafina back to nurse Mrs. Allen through the breast sickness. The
partera
gave her willow for the pain and sage tea to dry up her milk. She went into a fever and grew delirious. They packed her breasts with ice. All her love,
el amor de madre,
was frozen there. She wouldn’t give it to you, her child, the one it belonged to. ‘The baby is dead,’ she would tell me when I took her temperature, even though she’d heard you crying. ‘My baby died,’ she kept saying.”

“She wanted me dead. She always has.”

“No, no. Mr. Allen wanted
her
dead. He made her crazy. He said she belonged in the kitchen with me, not in bed as his wife. He was so cold to her, poor thing, and she fell into
una depresión.
”

“But she had tricked him first—”

“Sí.
She sold herself as a white girl in order to marry him.”

“I know. Anton put her up to it. Cora told me.”

“
¡Qué barbaridad!
Look what it led to. So much suffering. As we say in Mexico,
A la fuerza, ni los zapatos entran
.”

“You can’t force . . . a shoe to fit?”

“Sí.
There was nothing any of us could do to make it fit. I could only comfort the baby who cried, cried, cried. I tried to be a mother to you,
m’ija
.”

“You
were
my mother, Lina. The only one I ever had.”