Magnolia City (49 page)

“For what? Coyotes?”

“No, no. In Tamaulipas, there are wildcats and jaguars, pumas and wolves. They eat the cattle.”

“But what’s the town like—describe it to me.”

“There is a beautiful old church, Nuestra Señora del Refugio, whose bells you can hear all through the streets. There is the Hotel Flores and the Municipal Palace and great stone benches in the plaza where the old ones go to tell stories because there is nothing else to do.”

“Tell me more about the houses.”

“They stay cool in summer because of the thick stones. They have high ceilings held up by one long beam of wood. There are no addresses.”

“How do you send a letter?”

“Every house has a stone over the entrance with a carving on it—a snail, a monkey, a sandal, different things. When you send a letter, you put the name of the person, then the Snail House, or the Jaguar House. Guess who made the carvings?”

“Giants!”

“No. Ardras.”

“Oh, that’s right! I forgot, we were stonecutters.”

“They were artists,
gringa.
Makers of beauty. That is why you must not bring yourself so low. You are an Ardra.”

“I’ll remember that.”

“Seca commands it. And I am
jefe
.”

“Sí, mi jefe. Gracias.”

They smiled at each other, their faces close. He breathed the words “
De nada”
into her mouth just as he’d done three years ago. Only this time, he followed it with his lips, kissing her gently. “
Vete con Dios,
Esther de las Ardras. Never forget who you are.”

She kissed him back eagerly, opening her mouth. It made her senses reel. “Take me back to Guerrero with you.”

“No, no.” Seca chuckled. “That is not your way. You must find your own
sendero
.”

And so he sent her off with seventeen goatskins gurgling about in the bed of her truck. They loaded them as dawn broke so she could elude the sheriff and his
mordida
. She watched the light creeping toward them on the ground and knew she had to rev up the windowless truck and retreat quickly, speeding up the risky road to San Diego, but she couldn’t tear herself away from Seca. She kept hugging him and kissing his hands and muttering
“Muchas, muchas gracias”
over and over. She was radiant with gratitude in the clear morning light, not so much for the three extra
botas
he’d thrown in as a bonus, but because he’d reminded her that she was not only descended from the founders of cities but was also a daughter of the Ardras, makers of beauty and carvers of stone.

Hetty left a plume of dust behind her as she roared through the thickets of mesquite, expecting to encounter a roadblock at any moment. But luckily, there were none. She arrived back at the ice house before lunch. When Miguel saw her bruised face and the cargo she carried in the bed of her truck, he panicked and spit out,
“¡Hijole!”
ordering her to move it immediately to the back of his shop, where he quickly transferred the
botas
into his storeroom and covered them with burlap bags—lecturing her the whole time in Spanish about what a foolish coyote she was.

“But it worked,” she protested. “Now I can pay off my debts.”

“You are just like your
madre,
” he muttered. He put her to work, emptying the tequila into a basin, then ladling it into the dusty glass bottles he had stashed on his shelves. In the lull of the afternoon, he came back and helped her. By dinner, Hetty had three hundred and forty bottles of crystal clear tequila plata that she knew she’d be able to sell to connoisseurs back in Houston for ten dollars apiece. Miguel even had labels she could glue on the bottles. She would be able to pay off Cleveland and still have enough money to live for at least a year without worry. She parked the Wichita along the dark street at the back of the ice house, and Miguel helped her wrap and load her plunder between layers of burlap bags.

Hetty gave him a long, lingering hug and kissed his hand. “Will you accept my apology, Tipo?”

“No, but I love you, my little Tipa.
¡Ándele!”
He waved her into the truck.

She glowed with triumph and pride until she returned to Cora’s for a late supper and saw the look on her aunt’s face.

“You’ve been back into the brush, haven’t you?”

“You knew about that?”

“Of course, Miguel told me.”

Hetty blushed deeply, exposed in front of the person she probably loved more than anyone else. She sat on the sofa, too stunned to know what to say.

“How did you get the bruise?” Cora came and sat beside her.

Hetty blurted out the whole story of her kidnapping, her rescue by Seca, and the purchase of the seventeen
botas
. “I guess I didn’t learn my lesson after all. I’ve put people in danger again.”

“Yourself, most of all. You should have been honest with me,
m’ija.
I would have warned you. The trade has become bloodthirsty since the massacre. Even Miguel doesn’t go there. I wouldn’t honor those men with the name
tequileros
anymore. Now they’re just
ratones
.”

Rats.
Hetty shuddered, remembering the faces of the men who’d captured her. “I’m sorry, Aunty. What I regret most of all is taking advantage of your kindness. Do you forgive me?”

“Of course I forgive you. I’m a Guadalupana.”

“You are?” Hetty looked around, surprised. “But you don’t have her
efigie
anywhere.”

“Look closer.”

Hetty wandered through the rooms searching for some trace of the Madonna Morena, but no tins glinted on the walls. She rifled through drawers and opened cupboards. Nothing, not even a rosary. The last room she entered was the studio, and there, finally, she saw what her aunt was talking about.
How could I have missed it?
Every painting Cora had created for her new show
Quimeras
was composed in front of a deep blue sky blazing with stars. “I put the stars on with gold leaf,” Hetty remembered Cora saying. She was creating a whole suite of paintings shimmering with the radiance of the Madonna’s veil.

Cora came in behind her. “They’ve been making scientific studies of the tilma since 1751. Astronomers tell us that the stars on the mantle match exactly the constellations that would have been visible in the sky over Mexico City on the day Diego had his vision, December 12, 1531. I’ve taken it upon myself to conceal one of these constellations in each of my new paintings. There’s Libra,” she said, pointing to the painting of the flooded town, “Scorpio behind the nuns with the animal heads, and Hydra over the melting boulders—all the southern constellations. Then, from the left side of the mantle, the northern constellations in these works”—she waved toward a group of canvases stacked against a wall—“the great bear, the hunting dogs, an entire map of the cosmos on that historic night—the only appearance of the Virgin in the Western Hemisphere.”

Hetty’s eyes grew wider as she looked from one painting to another. “You’re too clever for me,
Tía
. You’ve hidden these clues right in plain sight across the background of your new work.”

“Many of the Madonna’s secrets are hidden right in plain sight. For instance—” Cora reached into a drawer of her painting cabinet and handed Hetty an actual photograph of the image on the tilma. “What body part does this remind you of?”

Hetty studied the oval aura around the Virgin, the rippling folds of her mantle. She caught her breath. “Oh my God, it’s a vulva.”

“Exactly. She’s our yoni—both sacred and profane.” Cora let Hetty contemplate this for a moment. “I hope I haven’t spoiled it for you.”

“No!” Hetty handed the photograph back. “It makes me adore her all the more. Does the tilma still exist?”

“They say it’s remained in pristine condition for four hundred years even though the fibers of the maguey should have rotted after thirty. You can view it at the temple in Mexico City. Which, by the way, sits at the exact geographic center of the Americas.”

“I find all this unbelievable,” Hetty said, as they returned to the living room and sat on the sofa. “Everything about Guadalupe is so magical.”

“Listen to this!” Cora spread her hands in the air for emphasis. “If you enlarge a photograph of her eyes twenty-five hundred times, you find a tableau of all the people present when the tilma was unfolded, reflected on her cornea. As an artist, I know how impossible that would be to paint.”

“
¡Sí! ¡Fantástico!”
Hetty said, trying to picture it. “I think I’m becoming a—what did you call it?—Guadalupana? I’ve been looking for a goddess.”

“She’s the only one we’ve got, really.”

The quiet of the evening settled around them as stars started glimmering unseen in the sky above. “Where’s Pierce?”

“I put him to bed long ago.”

“Thanks,
Tía.
” Hetty sighed. “You make me ashamed of myself. You’re so good and kind and loving and . . . regal. A true consort of the Empress.”

Cora shook her head and smiled. “I’m only her handmaiden, trying to learn to serve her.”

“That’s what I want to become,” Hetty said, pulling out her Luckies and lighting one. “But I don’t even know where to start. What advice do you think Guadalupe would have for me?”

“Just this. Stop starving yourself.”

“Me? Starving myself?” Hetty’s cigarette froze midway to her mouth. “You’re saying this about me, of all people? I’m the one who—”

“Think about it,
m’ija.
When have you ever really allowed yourself to stop and feast upon life?”

Hetty felt the familiar coldness in her arms and saw the empty hallways that haunted her mind. “Never,” she said sadly.

H
etty wanted to get up the very next day and head back to Houston to sell the tequila plata, but Cora made her sit down on the sofa and not move for the entire morning.

“In fact, lie down,” her aunt commanded.

Hetty found this hard to do. Her feet curled around each other, bare and restless, ready to move—her blood surged with Cora’s dark, rich coffee. She tossed about like one of the cats turning and turning until it found a comfortable spot to lie in. In her mind, she saw road signs flashing by on the Sequin highway, while she rehearsed what she would say to Garret’s old clients. Her aunt was right. She simply couldn’t relax and let herself be. Some hidden place in her soul ticked away like a clock wound too tightly. Everything felt balanced on a hairspring. It took her a long time to find a comfortable position to rest in. She sank into it and took a deep breath. Thoughts swirled inside her. She remembered the message Miguel had shared from the Virgin: “Let not your heart be disturbed.” She took comfort in that. As the morning stretched on, the mechanisms of her mind began to wind down. She could feel the second hand moving slower and slower until it stopped. And she was just
there,
in her aunt’s river house, listening to the birds singing, feeling the ceiling fan brush cool morning air on her arms, catching whiffs of chocolate mole sauce bubbling in a pot on the stove.
It’s all right to lie here,
Hetty told herself.
Aunty gave me permission.

She watched the way Cora frolicked with Pierce on the carpet. She was down at his level, mirroring his moves, holding his eyes with hers, and weaving game after game out of the noisemakers in the old
baúl
. Hetty noticed for the first time how her aunt turned play into serious business: She merged her being with the baby’s, partnering him—two hands in a dance that redefined space. It was a pleasure to watch them move about the room. Pierce could only go on so long without toddling over to his toy telephone and pumping the receiver to make it chime, then listening to what it said to him.

“I’ve never gotten down on the floor and played with Pierce like that,” Hetty said.

Cora glanced up, brushing her long pigtail aside. “Have you ever listened to what his toy telephone says?”

With chagrin, Hetty admitted she hadn’t.

“You should sometime,” Cora said as she stood and wandered into the kitchen to prepare lunch. Hetty rolled herself off the sofa onto the floor. Pierce paid her no mind, engrossed in shaking a dried calabash gourd. Hetty tried recreating her aunt’s choreography across the carpet, picking up a Bolivian flute and blowing into it, then waving the flute at Pierce. She had to do this several times before he crawled over to try it himself. Then she had to show him how to blow into it before he managed to elicit a faint sound. She clapped when it happened. Slowly, she drew her son to her, forsaking that mother’s way she had of distracting him with a toy while she preoccupied herself with adult matters. She focused entirely on him and maintained a lot of eye contact. This new intimacy felt unfamiliar to Hetty. She was even surprised at how different the room looked from a child’s point of view. You noticed other things down here—the legs of chairs, the bells that had rolled under the sofa, the green eyes of cats watching from the shadows of the hallway. When she lay down and looked up, she saw sky out of windows; the dark sideboard loomed overhead, and the ceiling seemed vast.

But most of all, she began to see Pierce in a different way. He became more than a mouth to be fed, a diaper to be changed. He started following her every move, sitting in her lap, crawling all over her, giggling and smelling of sour milk and talcum, showing her the games he’d learned from his great-aunt. As much as her child seemed a part of her, as often as she’d looked at him, Hetty was amazed to realize that she’d never
seen
him. And here he was now, using the sofa to pull himself up, standing in front of her in his seersucker overalls, one bare arm dancing in the air, the other holding on to the sofa, eyes as blue as his father’s, watching her to see what she’d do next. She couldn’t stop looking at him, as if a nimbus surrounded his entire body. He was the perfect mixture of them all: the MacBride brawniness, her mestiza spice, Kirb’s clear English complexion. Pierce blazed with baby glamour, and Hetty found herself entranced. She kept waiting for him to go over and pick up his toy telephone. But as long as she played with him, he ignored it. Finally, she couldn’t stand it any longer. She scooted over and picked up the phone herself, pumped the receiver, then held it up to her ear to see what he’d been listening to for months. At first it rang, then the diaphragm inside bleated with a reedy little voice. It said, “Mama.”

The next morning Hetty stood holding her baby on the porch, looking out at the walkway that wound its way to the street under the giant pecan. When they left today, they would walk under the pink blossoms of the mimosa tree, through the overgrown garden, and past the sign that read,
T
HE
C
OSMOS
: W
E’RE OUT OF THIS WORLD
. Sunbeams alighted here and there in the branches like birds. You could feel the day’s heat dipping into the deep shade, haunted by the blue vapors of river water rising and making the wind chimes ring.

Cora stepped out, a hoop of cats skirting her.

“Gato,”
Hetty said, pointing at Cassandra. It was a new game she’d been playing with Pierce all morning: Tell Me What the Mexicans Call It. She hoped his first word would be Spanish. She used to resent it when he clung to her like this, but now she couldn’t get enough of him.

Hetty saw Cora watching them with an aunt’s sense of pride. “Thanks for showing me my son.”

She smiled sagely. “Now you can throw his telephone away.”

“Pues, sí.”
There was so much that could be said, but Hetty didn’t know how to phrase it in either language. “I guess it’s time for
adiós
.”

“Not before a Pierce sandwich!” Cora threw her arms around them both, engulfing mother and child in her earthy aromas.

“Do I have your blessing to leave?”

“Sí, sobrina,”
Cora said, drawing back. “I’m ready to let you go. You’ll be all right now.”

“Seca said I had to find my own
sendero
.”

“He’s right. The way will open.”

“Pretty smart for an old smuggler, eh?”

“Ah, but look at what he smuggles.”

“Mescal. Another thing you introduced me to. I owe you so much,
Tía
. How can I ever thank you?”

“
De nada
. That’s what aunts are for—don’t you know that? Our job is to knock some sense into our nieces and get them drunk.”

“Then you succeeded brilliantly. As long as I drink mescal for my tummy, not my head, right?”

Cora nodded. “Approach it tenderly. It is the heart of Mexico.”

“Speaking of heart—how can I find my husband? Any advice about that?”

“Call him to you.”

“Is it really that simple?”

“It’s really that natural. The universe is run by intention, not chance.”

“I hope you’re right,” Hetty said, stepping down onto the walkway—her lips already silently forming into the words,
Come find me, Mac. I miss you. And hurry up, dammit.

That weekend, Hetty had her first experience of being a ladylegger. She drove to Houston and, using Pearl’s telephone to call clients, spent most of Saturday and Sunday making her deliveries. She certainly looked the part, in her lace-up boots and pants, a purple bruise on her cheek, a Lucky hanging out of one corner of her mouth.
Just call me Kelly Bushings, men.
By noon Monday, she had sold her entire stock and stopped by Cleveland’s office to pay off the balance. She retrieved the wads of cash bulging in her trouser pockets, the kind of limp, wrinkled bills bartenders always pulled out of their cash registers. There were a lot of ones and fives, so it took Cleve a good twenty minutes to thumb through two thousand dollars.

“Is it all there?” she asked.

He stashed the funds in the top drawer of his massive desk. “D’y’all rob a bank?”

Hetty smiled. “Let’s just say I gambled everything and won.”

When she got back to the boardinghouse, she found out that Pearl had taken a job cleaning up the lunch dishes for a part-time wage of fifty cents a day. While her friend was downstairs working, Hetty decided it was time to balance
all
her accounts. She took out her passbook and opened to the entries she’d made. She crossed off Dolorosa Street and scribbled her initials there like the tellers used to do:
HMB
. She drew a line through Miguel’s name and replaced the question marks with a heart. She struck out “Lamar’s love” and wrote “Account closed” with the date and
HMB
. That left the other three she’d made under
Withdrawals: My father’s love; My place in society; Nella’s knees
. How could she balance those out? She began by writing a letter:

She folded the letter up and slid it inside one of the bank envelopes she’d been saving, then tucked the envelope in the top drawer of Pearl’s dresser, the one that fit crookedly on its track. When Pierce woke up from his afternoon nap, she dressed him in a sailor suit and headed south on Main Street to the Warwick.

Hetty parked the Wichita in the circular driveway of the hotel and carried Pierce into the solarium. As she walked down the long stretch of the lobby, the black walnut pillars gleamed as darkly as ever but, when she reached the elevator lobby at the back, only one of the three lifts was working. After a long wait, she finally arrived on the eighth floor and knocked on the family suite. Lina answered the door, throwing her hands up and exclaiming, “
¡Mi chiquito!
Come to your Lina.
Que grande estás, m’ijo.
” She gathered Pierce into her arms and said, “I’m going to give you
besos!
” She kissed him several times, then carried him into the drawing room. “Look who’s here—your grandson.”

Hetty followed her, catching the scent of Darjeeling tea in the air.
Damn, I forgot, it’s Mah-jongg Monday. That means Lockett will be here.

“Ah-ha! Aren’t you the natty little boy,” Nella said, reaching for the child and balancing him on her lap so Lockett could see him in his sailor suit. Nella was dressed in one of her mah-jongg–themed outfits, a lampshade tunic and turban designed by Paul Poiret.

“Oh, my,” Lockett said from her armchair, “he does look like his father.”

“You’re a sailor boy. Yes, you are!” Nella rocked him on her knee for a few minutes, making him laugh. Lina withdrew to the kitchen. “Don’t rock the boat. Don’t rock the boat.” She held his little hands and beamed with a pride that rarely irradiated her cool and detached manner.

“La barca,”
Hetty said, making a boat with her hands.

Lockett watched her wide-eyed.

“Come ride in a boat with grandmamá!” Nella swayed with the child.

“La abuela,”
Hetty said, pointing at Nella, who frowned up at her.

“Why is she speaking Spanish to that child?” Lockett said with indignation.

“I want him to grow up bilingual, Lockett. How are you?”

“I didn’t even know you spoke Spanish—”

“Oh, yes, we always—”

“And is that a bruise on your cheek—”

“La contusión,”
Hetty said, pointing at her face.

Nella looked alarmed and quickly bundled the child up. “Guess what granny has for you? Strawberry ice cream. Let’s see if Lina will feed you some.”

As Nella carried the confused child through the swinging door into the kitchen, Hetty waved and said,
“Disfruta de tu nieve, mi carino. Mamá está aquí.”

“Be quiet!” Lockett shrieked. “Y’all sound like the maids.”

“Maybe that’s ’cause I was raised by one.” Lockett looked at her, speechless.

“How about some
English
tea, dear?” Nella cut in with a reproving glance at her daughter as she strode back through the swinging door.

“Por favor,”
Hetty answered, returning the dirty look. She retreated to her favorite sofa, the one always smothered in silk cushions. When Nella brought the tea service over, she scowled down at Hetty and placed a finger on her lips.

“Thanks, Mamá.” Hetty nodded. “How’s life in the old bankrupt hotel? I notice only one elevator is working.”

“It’s becoming intolerable,” Nella said, sitting back down wearily. “Everything takes an eternity.”

“Next thing,” Lockett said, “we’ll be walking up the stairs.” She had obviously decked herself out for the mah-jongg tournament, too, as her pink crepe de chine actually ended in ruffles. “And you don’t dare go out after dark.”

“The electric company has turned off the streetlamps,” Nella said.

“And have you heard
this?
” Lockett turned to Hetty and paused dramatically.