Magnolia City (46 page)

“No, no.” Lina fretted into the phone for a moment, then said in a tight voice, “Mrs. Allen, she loves you, too. She says things about you when you’re not here, good things.”

“She just never says them to my face.”

“Oh,
m’ija.
It’s over now. You have your husband and your baby. Forget what happened.”

“Sí.
I have my baby . . . but not my husband. He left me, Lina.”

“¡Ay, no! ¿Por qué?”

“I’m not sure. He said something about an anaconda.”

“He’ll be back. I know it.”

Hetty hung up the phone but kept her hand on it. For the first time, she understood the emptiness in her arms. The coldness that coated her skin, like sleeping without a cover on at night. She pulled her hand back and curled up into a ball on the sofa to find some core of warmth. But none was there. No bright nursery nestled deep in her memory, only an inglenook where the fires had long gone out. Nella hadn’t breastfed her, but neither had she held little Esther on her breast and let a baby’s warmth wash balm over those old wounds on her knees.
Postigos
everywhere. Doors locking people out. Kirb locking Nella out. Nella locking Hetty out. Shutters and clicks, and a key long lost. Charlotte Baldwin enthroned on eyelet lace.

Hetty dragged a throw over her cold arms. The crackle of her anger collapsed into the embers of sorrow. She lay there for a long time, listening to the dry rattle of the gourd in her poor baby’s hand. It reminded her of the stock ticker that used to sit on her father’s desk, the one that was always tap-tap-tapping out messages in code. Now she understood what it was trying to tell her.

She pushed herself up and looked about the living room, not knowing where to go or what to do. She lit a cigarette, took a few drags, and then snubbed it out. Pierce called for her, and she ignored him. She spotted a pile of magazines on the coffee table and reached for the
Ladies’ Home Journal
. She thumbed through, scanning the ads:

She threw the magazine down and felt close to tears, the ads making her own life feel so empty by comparison. The journal fell to the floor, and Pierce crawled over and started tearing its pages out. Then the title of an article on the front page of the
San Antonio Express
snagged her eye: BROADWAY BOOTLEGGERS. She picked the newspaper up off the coffee table and scanned it. The piece said that the most successful new rumrunners in Manhattan were members of the fairer sex. No longer just covers to distract police, these enterprising ladies had risen to positions of power, riding about in chauffeured cars and almost never getting arrested. Hetty’s eyes flew across the lines of type: They even had their own title, “ladyleggers.” She said the name out loud, “Ladyleggers,” and felt much better. With a smile, she tore the front page off, kissed it, and folded it into her purse. At last, she had a reason to use her alias, Kelly Bushings.

She withdrew to her room early that night, rocking Pierce to sleep in his cradle. She turned off all the lights and stood naked at the French doors listening to the lisp of a mimosa tree that quivered in the night wind.

The next morning, Hetty decided she’d better wear pants. She dug out one of her few pairs of trousers and pulled them on, followed by lace-up boots. Bending over Pierce’s cradle, she kissed him good-bye as he slept and tried to memorize his baby smell. She needed to remember what it was like. She might never see him again.

While she was cleaning up the breakfast dishes, Hetty asked Cora if she’d be willing to look after Pierce for a couple of days.

“Where are you going?”

“Just some loose ends from our import/export business.” Hetty kept her gaze sunk in the sink. “Irksome.”

“Be careful,
m’ija
. A woman alone . . .”

“I will.”

Hetty drove straight to the Mexican Quarter and parked on Haymarket Plaza. The minute she stepped up to the cooler in the ice house, Miguel ripped his apron off and came around with a hearty laugh. He kissed her hand, tipped his black bowler hat, and said, “
Señora,
I prayed you would come back to see Miguel.”

“I wanted to thank you for the”—Hetty glanced around—“information you gave my husband and me. It was . . . mmm . . . helpful.”

“
Bueno
. So you found
Las Ánimas?
”

Hetty nodded and rolled her eyes. “And how!” She told him about the success they’d had importing mescal until the Rangers had cracked down on bootlegging with the San Diego massacre. “Odell was put in jail. He’s still there.”

“¡No me diga!”

Hetty tried to find out if there was still trade going on down at the ranch. Miguel looked evasive and said he didn’t go there anymore.
“Los federales,”
he whispered.

“Is Seca alive?”

“
¿Quién sabe?
Why?”

Hetty looked away.

“
Señora,
you cannot go there by yourself. Where is your husband?”

“I don’t know,” Hetty said, and realized how much she missed Garret.

Miguel must have seen the loneliness in her eyes because, when the noon bells rang at San Fernando, he insisted she come home with him for lunch. “
Mi casa
belongs to Cora’s niece.
Ándele,
” he said, closing his shop and pulling her along by the hand he’d kissed and couldn’t seem to let go of. As he led her down the street, he kept praising Cora, calling her
mi corazón
and saying that she was the
comadre
of his daughters. Hetty wondered why her aunt hadn’t told her that she was godmother to Miguel’s children, as that is such an important position in a Mexican family, a notch below grandmother. Hetty was beginning to realize that Miguel was something more than the source of Cora’s mescal.
Why had she wanted me to meet him?

When they entered the little wooden house off the plaza, Miguel raised the serape and said,
“Con permiso, pásele,”
and waved her through. Hetty found a sitting room that was simple but spotlessly clean. Light flashed across the wooden floor from two small windows crammed with zinnias planted in brightly painted tin cans.

Miguel called into the kitchen, and in a moment, his wife and two teenage daughters appeared, bowing and smiling. He doffed his bowler and placed it over his heart.
“Ella es Ester, la sobrina de Cora.”

Their faces lit up at the mention of her aunt’s name, and the three women welcomed Hetty and bustled about to make her comfortable. She was told to sit on the sofa to the right of Miguel’s wife, while the daughters brought her coffee and asked if she preferred milk and sugar.

“No es para tanto,”
Hetty said, but they made a fuss anyway, not content to rest until they felt she had everything she wanted. No one would sit down until Hetty sipped the coffee and smiled. Señora Delgado started inquiring into the health of Cora, then Cora’s sister, then Cora’s sister’s husband, then Hetty’s child, then Hetty’s sister, and so on. She had her daughters bring out their embroideries, crisp white cottons decorated with red and orange flowers or turquoise birds. These items were displayed with beaming pride on the part of the parents.
My mother never showed off anything I’d done to friends. It didn’t go with her decorating schemes.
Miguel went over and hugged his daughters, praising them, and the younger one wouldn’t let go of him, her arms hanging around his neck as she grinned at Hetty.

Eventually, Señora Delgado began serving customers, hoisting a huge tray in both arms. The spice of chili haunted the room. Miguel would lift the serape for her. Once he forgot and she called out, “Tipo!” to remind him.

“Tipo?” Hetty asked.

He didn’t say anything, just pulled out his guitar and launched into a Mexican folk song:
“Como naranja la granada, cuan dulce las gardenias.”
How orange the pomegranates, how sweet the gardenias.
“Ven a mí, mi amor.”
Come to me, oh my love!

Hetty’s mind flashed with the story Cora had told her about the Folksinger. Her eyes stung from more than the vapors of chili con carne. Miguel was Tipo, the
moreno
her mother had fallen in love with so many years ago—as Cora said, “Not the best looking boy in school, but the friendliest.”

Of course, now it all made sense.

That’s why Cora had sent her to him two years ago and why he’d wanted her to come back to see him alone. She thought he’d made a pass at her, but no. He wanted to meet Nella’s daughter. The girl he had hoped to adopt as his own. Hetty swooned as one golden note after another poured out of his mouth. They sifted into her soul like the pollen of cinnamon flowers.

When he finished, she said, “You knew my mother, didn’t you?”

Miguel just smiled.

“You’re the man she really wanted to marry. You’re Tipo.”

He touched his finger to his lips to signal
shhh
as the serape lifted to reveal bare brown feet.

“I’m sorry,” Hetty whispered, just before Señora Delgado stepped back into the room.

“Nella’s daughter is very beautiful.” He kissed Hetty’s hand. “You always have a home with Miguel. Come and stay with us.” He stood and went over to his two girls, embracing them. They rested their heads on his shoulders shyly.

This could have been me,
Hetty thought.
I could have had this gentle man for my father and hung on him like his daughters do. Kirb hardly ever hugs me, and when he does, it’s very stiff. Token hugs. But here you could drown in the love and never come up for air.
Hetty ached to go over and join their embrace, to be part of the warmth and happiness. But she didn’t want to be a gate-crasher; she wanted to be invited.

On the way out, the Madonna Morena caught her eye, the one she’d noticed before. A little shelf for votive candles was held up by a rawhide strap tied around nails. Miguel came up behind her. “I’ve never seen a Virgin with dark skin,” Hetty said. “Who is she?”

Miguel snorted. “Nella never told you?”

“There’s a lot Mamá never told me.”

“¡Qué desgracia!”
He gazed at Hetty in amazement. “
Ay, mi amiga,
you must know about Guadalupe. You will only find her in Mexico. She is ours—yours and mine. Sit—
aquí.
” He pulled out a bench. “Tipo will teach you.”

He told her breathlessly how a simple peasant was walking on Tepeyac Hill outside Mexico City when he heard the tremulous sound of birdsong. He looked up the hill and at its summit she stood, the Virgin of Guadalupe, shining like the sun, standing on the moon and cloaked in the stars. He fell to his knees in ecstasy. The Virgin was appearing
here
—on Mexican soil—not to a Spanish nobleman but to
him,
Juan Diego, a common Indian. She commanded him to go to the bishop of Mexico and have him build her a temple on the site. Juan did so immediately, but the Spanish bishop doubted him and demanded proof. He returned to Tepeyac Hill and humbly asked the lady for a sign. Even though it was December, she filled his tilma—his rough maguey cloak—with roses of a heavenly fragrance that sparkled, not with dewdrops, but with pearls.

“When he dropped the corners of his tilma in front of the bishop,” Miguel said, “the roses spilled out and there, on the cloak, appeared this”—he pointed at the tin painting
—
“
efigie.
”

“She’s beautiful,” Hetty said.

“As fresh today as four hundred years ago. Her message to all Mexicans is, ‘Let not your heart be disturbed.’ She brings us peace. And a mother’s love.”

Hetty noticed again the golden stars on her midnight blue mantle. “It’s like she’s clothed in the heavens.”

“Sí.”
He crossed himself. “She performs miracles.”

“She does? I could sure use one of those.”

“Then you must visit the Chapel of Miracles on Ruiz.” He told her all about it and gave her directions. “It is run by an old woman named Madame Candelaria. You will be welcome there.”

She hung about in the doorway. There was something she had to have before she left, but it wasn’t something she could ask for. Miguel would have to give it of his own free will or it would mean nothing. Hetty smiled sheepishly at him and waited. He smiled back at her, his deep black eyes swimming with sweet affection. Hetty could see why her mother would fall in love with this man. What woman wouldn’t?

They gazed into each other’s eyes for a few moments, then Miguel gave her what she’d been longing for. A long, long hug. He held her close to his body, her heart beating right next to his. Hetty let her arms slide around him and held on as tight as she could, murmuring in his ear, “How I wish you’d been
mi padre
.”

Hetty followed the directions Miguel had given her and parked on Ruiz Street at the corner of Medina. There sat the tiny adobe chapel she was seeking, the shrine of
El Señor de los Milagros
. The door was open so all could enter, just as Miguel said it would be. Hetty stepped into the dim interior, lit only by two tall candles burning on either side of the altar. Above them loomed the Lord of the Miracles himself, the life-sized Christ sculpted so long ago out of copper. Even now, in early afternoon, the chapel was stirring with worshippers. An old man crept forward on crutches. A blind woman dressed in elegant black silks was led away by a nurse after kneeling at the altar. A young couple, the woman looking like she could give birth any moment, added a bouquet of flowers to the heap on the altar. Hetty stood to one side, wondering if any of the old women shuffling about was Madame Candelaria.

Amid the wilting flowers, she could see various body parts crudely carved out of wood: hands, feet, and hearts, signaling the miraculous cures the faithful had experienced after praying here. Hetty wondered why Miguel had sent her here. It all struck her as the usual Catholic superstition. Then she turned and noticed another altar to the side. Every inch of wall space above it was covered with
retablos,
crude paintings on tin showing worshippers being saved from dire illness and death. In place of the
señor
stood the Madonna Morena in her inky blue cloak. The stars had been crudely painted with white dots, but she was clearly Our Lady of Guadalupe. Hetty walked over and strained to make out the details through the dim light. In one scene, a child was about to be run over by a train, but the Madonna stood in the tracks and stopped it. In another, a rattlesnake was poised to strike a field-worker, but the Madonna caught its fangs in her cloak. In a third, a blindfolded man was about to be executed by a firing squad, but Our Lady of Guadalupe held up her hand and stopped the bullets in midair. In a vase on the altar, someone had left a single white lily with a love note tied to it.
Empress of the Americas,
it read. Hetty’s heart lit like a votive candle.