Song of the Hummingbird (2 page)

“Ah! You must be the priest who has come to hear my last confession.”

Father Benito was taken by surprise and he couldn't find words with which to answer. As he was scolding himself for being so awkward, he heard himself say, “Last confession? Señora, what makes you think such a thing?”

She giggled, exposing toothless gums. Her nose hooked downward, giving her the look of an eagle. “Perhaps I should say, my only confession, because I have never told any of your priests the real sins of my life. Come, sit here by me.”

She pointed to a small chair that Father Benito had not seen before. He moved closer to her as he tried to make himself comfortable in the seat. She stared at him steadily, making him squirm and fidget with one of the thick knots on the cord that hung from his waist. Not knowing what to say, the priest mutely reached into his pocket and pulled out a purple stole. The woman looked at him with more intensity as he clumsily fixed the strip of cloth around his shoulders.

“You're very young. Where were you born?”

“In Carmona, Señora,” he stammered.

“Over there?” She pointed her nose at a spot somewhere behind him. He unthinkingly swiveled his head to look at where she had pointed, but saw only the faded stucco of the convent wall. After a few moments, however, he understood what she had asked.

“Yes, I'm from Spain. I was born in a small village outside of Seville.” He paused for a few seconds, waiting for her to speak, but she had returned to her silence. Clearing his voice, Father Benito asked, “And you, Señora, where were you born?”

“Here.”

With that, the woman returned to her silence.

Father Benito again cleared his throat. “Shall we begin?”

She ignored his question. “I was born here, where this building, this house of women has now been constructed. My father's house was built on this very place.”

Seeing that the priest was confused by what she had said, she added more. “That house—the first one— was destroyed by Captain General Cortés before he gave the land to your people. He and his captains did much of that, but I suppose it was all meant to be.”

The woman focused her eye on the monk. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-seven.”

She ran her tongue over dry lips as she wagged her head in calculation. I was born eighty-two years ago, during the Melancholy Days. In your reckoning, spring of the year 1501. What I am remembering happened many years before you were born. But perhaps you know some of the details of those times. I mean those days when your captains and your four-legged beasts came across the waters to infest our world.”

Father Benito was jolted by the sharp edge of her remark, and for an instant he felt like retorting with his own ideas, reminding her of the blessings the Spaniards had brought to her people. He decided instead to keep his words to himself. After all, he told himself, she was only an old woman and they had just met.

The woman sighed, moving her head from side to side despondently. “We were guided by a divine trinity. One brother was all-knowing, the other was a preacher and priest, but the last one thirsted for human hearts.”

“You're confused, Señora. That is not the Trinity at all.”

Father Benito's voice was urgent, rising above the soft garden sounds; it echoed in the hollows of the cloister ceilings.

She ignored the monk and spoke as if lost in the solitude of another time, another place. “With the passage of time my people grew to revere this third brother, forgetting the good one, listening to words prompting the Mexicas to wage war in this land and to gather new offerings for him, the lord of blood. So it was that my people abandoned the planting of maize and became a nation of tiger and eagle warriors.”

Father Benito's body shivered with the same revulsion he used to feel when he was a schoolboy listening to his teachers tell of what the explorers had encountered in the Indies. He remembered letters, circulated and read everywhere, even from church pulpits. He recalled vivid descriptions of bloodied temples, hearts carved out by obsidian knives, human flesh devoured by bloodencrusted warlocks who called themselves priests. His mind flashed back to the solemn requiem mass that had been dedicated to the memory of two soldiers, natives of his hometown; they had been slashed and eaten by those sorcerers. He was deep into his memories when he was startled back to the present by the woman's words.

“In the beginning, I didn't understand why the tribes surrounding us became our enemies so easily, but now that I am old, it's clear to me. It was because of that god's constant demand for human hearts that we became feared, and then detested. It had to be! Then, on top of it all, the preacher god unleashed his wrath on our faithlessness—just as he had promised. It was at that time that your people came to devastate us.”

Father Benito knew that this was not a confession, but he was intrigued by what the woman was saying. He had never heard of those events told by someone like her, someone native to that land. He moved closer to her, straining to grasp her lilting words, which had become more and more accented as she drifted back in time.

“The Mexica people were splintered by the Spaniards and we were cast out of our kingdom like scattered leaves. We had thought that we were the light of the universe and that our city was the mirror of the world. Instead we were uprooted and destroyed by your people. When it first happened, we were wracked by hunger and pestilence; all we did was weep because we saw that now we were the strangers in this land, not you. Our warriors were humiliated and died with dirt in their mouths. As for me, I was young then, and with my children I walked aimlessly among crowds of lost, drifting people. Like everyone else, I wailed, hoping that the gods would feel pity.”

She stopped abruptly as if realizing that she had revealed secrets unintentionally. After some moments she sighed, and whispered, “But that was then. It's over now.”

Father Benito felt embarrassed by what he had heard. Not knowing what to say, he waited, hoping that the right words would come to him. Nothing else occurred to him, so he decided to have the woman begin her confession.

“Señora, the morning is drawing to a close, and I must return to say mass this afternoon. Please, shall we begin? In name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Gh. . .”

She interrupted the priest. “You want to hear my sins, don't you?” Her voice was shrill and transformed from its previous soft tones. When Father Benito stared at her without answering, she added, “You don't even know my name, and you want to hear my sins.”

“It is you who have called me to come. Please! Let us begin.” This time he silently made the sign of the cross.

“My name is Huitzitzilin, but because I know the difficulty my language causes your tongue, you may call me Hummingbird, since that is what the word means.” She smoothed the folds of the shawl that outlined the sharp angles of her shoulders.

“Although I am now destitute, I am of noble birth, a descendent of Mexica kings. My life has been a path which has taken unforeseen turns. The first of those unexpected twists happened long before the arrival of your captains, when I was still a girl. On that day Zintle and I went swimming.”

“Swimming is not a sin.”

“Is fornication a sin?”

Father Benito blushed so intensely that the skin around his eyebrows took on a purplish hue. He was again without words, so he averted his face from her questioning gaze.

“Zintle was my cousin. He, too, was noble and like me, he paid a high price for that happenstance. You'll hear more about him later on. On the day I am speaking of, he and I ran toward the river. We romped and jumped. We skipped and lunged. We ran in a straight path, then we snaked back and forth, all the while letting out whoops and squeals of joy. We ran, unconscious of our young vigor, taking the gift of energy lightly. We ran until we lost our breath. Then we flopped on the watercress that covered the river embankment. I can still smell its sweetness, its damp, green matting.”

Huitzitzilin stopped speaking and turned to look at the monk. She saw that even though his head was lowered, he seemed to be listening to her.

“We laughed, snorting through our noses and then giggling even more at the sounds we were making. What made us laugh so much? I don't know.”

“Señora, forgive me, but this is really not. . .”

Huitzitzilin held up her hand stiffly, sticking it in front of the monk's face as she countered his complaint. “It's coming!”

“What?”

“The sin. That's what you want to hear, isn't it?”

This time Father Benito's face reflected irritation, but he kept it to himself.

“It was Zintle's idea. He said that we should take off our clothes. I did. When I looked at him I saw that we were different. At the time, I had not yet reached my first bleeding.”

The woman stopped speaking and looked at Father Benito. He was self-consciously staring at the tiled floor, so she returned to her confession.

“We jumped into the water, splashing each other, screaming shrilly, as if the drops burned our skin. We pretended fear when one would push the other into the water, and we scooped gulps of water into our mouths, spitting it out, spraying each other.

“Then Zintle did something that both of us thought very funny. He waded out to the edge, plucked a large green leaf from an overhanging tree, poked a hole through its center with his finger, and then hooked the leaf onto his penis. We were both astounded that the leaf looked exactly like a green and gold stemmed flower clinging to his body. At first we stared at it, then we burst out laughing. Then he dared me to do the same thing, but all I could do was stick my finger through a leaf and hold it tightly to my body.

“When we tired of so much laughing, we left the water to lie on the grass to dry ourselves. Without saying anything, Zintle rolled over onto his side, his face just above mine. We had never done this before, and even though we knew that it was wrong for a maiden to do such a thing before marriage, we did nothing to stop it. There was something different in his eyes, and I think he saw the same look in my eyes. Soon I felt his breath on my cheeks and his lips brushing my eyes, my chin, my lips. Then he got on top of me and I could feel his masculine part hovering in the area between my legs.”

“Señora, please! You can be sure that I understand clearly that you fornicated with that boy. You need not describe it any further.” Father Benito got to his feet and stood in front of Huitzitzilin. He looked down at her uplifted face; his eyes were stern. “Besides, I cannot believe that you have not confessed this sin before. A woman of your age. . .”

“No! I have never said this to anyone because I have never told anyone about my life.”

The priest seemed perplexed. “Why are you telling me these things?”

“Because I will soon die, and someone must know how it was that I and my people came to what we are now. Please, young priest, sit here and listen to me.”

Father Benito obeyed her despite his evident desire to leave. “I absolve you of your sins.” With one hand held flat against his chest he lifted the other in preparation to utter the prayer of absolution.

But Huitzitzilin interrupted him. She spoke rapidly. “Wait a minute! There's more.”

“There's more?”

The priest, hand frozen in midair, quizzically echoed the woman's words. He gaped at the woman for a long time before he realized that his mouth was hanging open. Knowing that he looked foolish, he clamped it shut; the clashing sound caused by his teeth startled him. He looked down at his feet for some time before he decided what to do.

“I must leave now. I'll return tomorrow at this time.”

Chapter

II

Early next morning, Father Benito walked hurriedly, slipping now and then on the rough cobblestones as he made his way to the convent. He was still thinking of the old woman who was waiting for him in the dark cloister. He absentmindedly shook his head, realizing that he had been unable to forget her or her words, even while saying mass or eating with his brother friars. She had fascinated him, and he wanted to know more about her because she was different from what his teachers in Spain had taught him about the natives of this land.

He muttered under his breath, asking himself why it had not occurred to him before that the people of this new mission might be like his own people. The old woman had unexpectedly injected this thought into his mind, and the newness of it made him uncomfortable. She had even spoken of a father, a home, a family. The writings and instructions given him in preparation for his work of evangelization had not spoken of such things, and he chided himself for his ignorance.

Huitzitzilin had confessed a sin of the flesh, something that had happened even to him when he was a boy. This transgression of her youth captivated him; it told him that she was like him, and like everyone else. More important, as with his own people, she admitted that the act was wrong, and that she had known that it was wrong. How, Benito asked himself, did she understand that it was evil at a time when she was not yet a Christian? As he stopped at the entrance to the convent, he paused momentarily, wondering what other sins the woman had to confess.