The Hummingbird's Daughter (25 page)

From that day forward, Teresita always hugged people with the left side of her chest pressed to them, and she let the good parts touch if they had to.

When it came time for them to leave him, Manuelito sat cross-legged in the dirt before his house and painted blue flowers on the face of his guitar. He handed it to her. She took it in her arms and wept.

“I told you you would cry.”

“You are a wicked man,” she said.

“True.”

He took his cross on a chain and put it around her neck.

“Remember me,” he said.

She put the guitar down and threw her arms around him and sobbed.

“I will miss you,” she cried.

He patted her hair with his great red hand. His fingers looked like big sticks to him as they moved down her hair. Her head rested in the center of his chest.

“Is this love?” she said into his shirt.

“Sí.”

“How do I know?”

“Listen to my heart,” he said.

She turned her head and put her ear against his great chest. She could hear his gut gurgling and whining. They had eaten fried beans for breakfast. She smiled.

“Thank you,” she said.

He patted her head.

“Go now,” he said.

As they got in the wagon, Huila said, “Gracias.”

He waved.

“May we pay you?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“Pray for me when you think of it,” he said.

Teófano turned the wagon away.

“And,” Manuelito said, “be kind.”

“Eh?” said Huila.

Teresita shouted, “Will I see you again?”

He did not answer.

Don Teófano said, “Andale!” and his mules surged ahead.

Twenty-seven

THE ENGINEER AGUIRRE had constructed a great white boiler-plate tank on the roof. A pipe led from a well beside the courtyard, and a brisk pumping session each morning on a long ax handle fitted to the pump-head worked a gurgling tide up to the roof. One of the kitchen girls started each day and ended each day working the handle. The only way to know the water had filled the tank was when it overflowed and ran down the roof tiles to Aguirre’s gutters, which fed the overflow back into the previously installed tanks at each corner of the house. There, water for the herbs and flowers and dishes could be set free by the turning of a simple wooden spigot. The main house of Cabora was a marvel of engineering.

Three pipes extended from the rooftop water tank and snaked into the house. Two went to the fabulous scientific toilets, and one ran down to the sink in the kitchen. When one was going to use the toilet, a simple handle was spun counterclockwise until water fell into the tank above the toilet. Afterward, the old pull-chain unleashed an astonishing flood into the bowl and down the effluent pipe and into the arroyo, where it would delight frogs and salamanders and the snakes that ate them. No one knew how, but a catfish had managed to work its way into the toilet pond, and it grew huge eating the colonic offerings of the house. Every few weeks, one unlucky worker was sent to raise a floodgate and wash the sludge downstream. Somehow, the gargantuan catfish managed to hold its ground—it knew a good thing, and it wasn’t about to let the occasional flood wash it downstream, away from such a constant and flavorful repast.

No matter how big it got, nobody ever considered eating it.

Buenaventura was caught trying to break the ax-pump handle one night, in a snit. Tomás had never forgiven him for ruining his marriage. The patrón never let him inside the big house. He was never even allowed within the gates to the courtyard, and that really made him mad, since he’d have loved to eat some of the fruit on Tomás’s plum tree. Buenaventura knew Tomás was punishing him for being born.

When they caught Buenaventura, they dragged him to the front door by his ear. Tomás glared at him for a few moments, then suddenly announced he would be banished from Cabora for a month. He pronounced his sentence like an Old Testament king: “Banished to Aquihuiquichi!” The vaqueros immediately put Buenaventura on his horse and sent him galloping away.

Segundo missed all this drama. He was in his little house, wearing a golden silk bathrobe and soft leather slippers. If anyone had seen him, he would have had to get out his pistola and shoot. But nobody saw him. He sipped blackberry brandy. Nobody saw that, either. He tried it—and he liked it—he really liked it: he held up his little finger as he sipped. “Delightful, my dear,” he said out loud. “The aperitif is perfectly lovely. May I offer you a pâté?” One of the barn cats sat on the small couch and watched him with bored yellow eyes.

Tomás, after the banishment of his bastard son, sat at the table with Aguirre. Another country breakfast. Tomás was tired of eggs and steaks and beans and tortillas. He wondered what they ate for breakfast in France or that recent discovery, Japan.

“My dear Engineer,” he said.

“My beloved brother, Tomás!”

“Me caes bien, pinche Lauro.”

“And you, my friend, you too are all right by me!”

“Did you sleep well?” Tomás asked.

“Like the dead!” enthused Aguirre.

Tomás was vaguely aware that he was now as courtly with Aguirre as he had been with Loreto.

They spoke of engineering and of the political situation as the girls brought in squash blossoms fried in eggs. White goat cheese was crumbled over them, and chorizo leaked orange grease all over the plates. Fríjoles smashed and fried in lard. The obligatory mounds of tortillas.

“Lovely!” Aguirre said.

“We eat well,” Tomás agreed, taking a huge crunching bite out of a yellow chile. His eyes went red immediately, and then he started to sneeze. The chile made him sneeze over and over:
Yachú-yachú-yachú!
“Híjole!”
Yachússs!
“That’s good.” His brow was moist with chile sweat.

He crunched into the chile again.

Yaaa
-chuuusss!

Huila shuffled out, looking like hell.

“Bless you,” she muttered.

“Gracias.”

Tomás noted that she had forgotten to brush her hair as he scrubbed his whiskers with his napkin.

“My nose is running!” he reported.

“Those chiles,” Huila noted for the record, “they will do that.”

This kind of absurdity passed for conversation most days in the main house. Tomás ached for the visits of Aguirre. Everyone else around him could only offer such brilliant insights as: coffee is hot—unless it’s cold!

Somehow, after the miracle of Manuelito, Teresita had expected something better than to be exiled to her shack again. Huila had sent her away without blinking an eye. And here she was.

She wandered around the ranch, looking at weeds and comparing them to her sketches. When Teófano’s niece came down with terrible menstrual cramps, she was able to consult her notes and concoct her first potion.

Menstruación difícil:

Abrótano

2% infusion

leaves and stems

steep for 15 minutes

3 cups daily

“Abrótano, abrótano,” she repeated as she walked around, as if saying it would somehow conjure it. An old curandera in the village of Ojo del Chivo finally sold her a bag of it when Teresita rode a horse three miles through cactus forests to see her. The niece made faces when she drank it, but after the third dosage, the cramps eased. By the next morning, they were gone and her blood flowed out like water.

Teresita attended two more births. One girl had a navel sticking so far out of her belly that it looked like a brown finger. She had a dark brown line running straight up her middle, and her stomach was almost a pyramid, she bulged so terribly. The baby would not come. The poor girl writhed and cried for twenty hours, until the midwife fell asleep at her feet. Teresita moved the snoring partera aside and gazed into the painful maw of the birth canal. The girl was beyond this world in pain, making low noises. Teresita did not know what to do, so she put her hands between the girl’s legs and opened her to see what was inside. She was astounded to see a tiny white foot. She knew this was wrong. She pushed her fingers inside and felt the little leg as it retreated back into the mother’s darkness. All she could do was pray.

When the old partera awoke, the sun had come again. She found Teresita kneeling between the mother’s legs, praying for a miracle that could not come. The mother had gone to sleep at last, and she would not wake up again.

They washed her and wrapped her and prayed over her. Teresita went to her husband, one of the People from Palo Cagado, a laborer who had come all this way from Ocoroni. She hugged him and whispered the terrible news, and he sobbed with his head on her shoulder. He was ten years older than Teresita. They all buried her together, and they put two wooden crosses on the mound.

After this terrible event, Teresita stayed home. She dried plants she had collected, and she looked into the eyes of the rattlesnakes on the boulders. She thought of her mother, in those days. It seemed odd to her that her mother would come to mind. But she wondered where Cayetana might be, what she might be doing. She thought of her until, at night, she dreamed of her. Cayetana wore a great straw hat with a wide brim. She carried a parasol. And she walked down a street in a great city. Streetcars clanged as she waited to cross. The buildings rose all around her, and flocks of pigeons flew in great clattering swirls.

These dreams were the sort that Huila had warned her about. She knew this because she awoke with tears on her face. And she also knew this because she had never seen a city, nor a streetcar, nor a tall building. But she knew what they were as soon as she dreamed them.

When Buenaventura appeared, Teresita was delighted.

“Hey,” he said, “you’ve grown.”

“As have you.” She smiled.

He sucked at his teeth.

“Can I sleep here?”

“Is that proper?” she asked.

“Why not?” he asked, hopping off his horse. “Pinche Urrea tossed me out. Thanks, Papá!” He strode into her house.

“People will talk.”

“Why? You’re my sister, ain’t you?”

Teresita stuck her head in the door and said, “What did you say?”

“You didn’t know?”

He was lying on her bed, one hand holding his hat up behind his head.

“How dumb are you, girl? Everybody knows who your father is!”

He put his hat over his eyes.

“Just look in a mirror.”

It didn’t take long for him to start snoring.

Teresita decided it was a good time to walk down to Teófano’s shed.

He was waiting outside.

“Is there something about Cabora I don’t know?” she asked.

“Like what?” he replied.

“Some secret nobody told me, perhaps.”

Then he opened his mouth.

Then he closed it.

“Do you mean what I think you mean?” he asked.

Teresita crossed her arms.

“Ay Dios,” he said.

Twenty-eight

A SNOT-NOSED BOY of about ten rode into Cabora from the big road, yelling: “The bees! The bees!”

Tomás was standing in the road, conversing with his neighbor, Segundo, when the boy reined to a snorting halt and shouted, “The bees!”

“What bees?”

“At Cantúa’s!” the boy shouted. His horse, white-eyed and frantic, jittered in the road. “Muchas abejas!”

“What do they look like?” Tomás asked.

“Big black piles of bees! In a corner of the roof! He asks for you to come, please! Soon!”

Tomás clapped his hands.

“A swarm!” he cried. He grabbed Segundo’s arms and said, “A wild swarm at Cantúa’s!”

“Such miracles,” Segundo intoned.

“Go!” Tomás yelled to the boy. “Tell them I am coming! Oh —” He fished in his pocket, came up with a gold coin. He tossed it to the boy. “There you go.”

“Gracias!” the boy shouted as he spun his horse and tore away.

“Look at that little bastard go!” Tomás said.

He trotted into the house and changed his trousers, strapped on his double gunbelt (Gabriela might be impressed by this) and his smart Texan hat. A giant Mexican sombrero might lend a bit too much of a comic-opera aspect to the adventure.

“Aguirre!” he called. “Aguirre!”

“Eh?”

“Are you up?”

“Qué?”

“Bees!”

“What?”

“Bees! A wild swarm!”

He was out the door before Aguirre could answer. Nearby was only a burro that the gardener had loaded with trimmed branches from the plum tree and the vines. Tomás removed the load from the donkey’s back and leapt aboard. He prodded the little beast to a slow canter, and he aimed it at the far beekeeper’s hut. His long legs bounced madly in the air, held up near the donkey’s chest to keep his feet from dragging in the dirt.

The Parangarícutirimícuaro beekeeper was still asleep, having finished off a sack of marijuana buds the night before. Without disturbing him, Tomás threw an empty hive box and a smoker into his bee wagon. He added gloves and a veil, just in case. He whistled for a couple of vaqueros at the corrals to bring a nag to hitch. They put a white draft horse in the traces, and Tomás stood in the box and flogged the horse until it started to trot. Aguirre was in front of the house, rubbing his eyes, and he had to jump back as Tomás sped by.

“Bees,” Tomás called over his shoulder. “Bees!”

He rattled down the road and never slowed down until he got to Cantúa’s. There, he was delighted to discover Gabriela standing well away from the restaurant, with white towels in her hands and her wild hair tied back. She spun the towels madly around her head every time a bee came near. She was in such a frenzy that she terrorized butterflies and dragonflies as well. Her hair was a great roiling cascade that reached the top of her round bottom.

Like a fresh peach, Tomás told himself.

Señor Cantúa was standing near the corner of his building, looking up at the roof, which was only about ten feet high. A nimbus of bees circled his head, and Tomás could hear the buzz even from the road. Cantúa was bent at a sharp angle, as if his worry had cracked him in half. He wrung his hands.

“Many bees,” Gabriela said.

Tomás hopped down and, checking to see if Señor Cantúa was looking his way, quickly bowed and reached for her hand. She transferred the towel to her other hand. Elegance! he thought. He took her fingers and kissed them.

Caramel!

Cinnamon!

Dulce de leche!

“This lovely day,” he said, “has suddenly become all the more lovely now that I have seen you.”

This was what was known as a piropo. It was a specialty of the Sinaloans. Many affairs had been launched by the properly composed and delivered piropo.

She allowed her hand to linger in his grasp for a moment, then pulled it away slowly. Her fingers slid down his.

Aha!

He stood tall!

“You are,” she said, “quite charming.”

“I am a man without grace,” he demurred. “Any elegance I display is only inspired by you.”

She smiled and looked at the ground.

“I am only a cook,” she said, automatically offering up a ritual response so he could show his mettle.

All right, all right—he could rise to this challenge.

“You are the essence of springtime in a woman’s form,” he said. “I have never seen anything as pure as your gaze. If I have grace, it is a reflection of your own.”

She breathed in and blinked.

Cantúa was coming.

Time to risk it all:

“Gabriela, forgive me for being so forward. I hardly know you.” The father was getting closer! “But when I see you, I honestly believe I might finally be permitted to believe in God!”

She put her hand over her heart.

“Bless me,” he crooned.

“Don Tomás!” Señor Cantúa bellowed. “I have ten pounds of bees on my walls!”

He was frantic.

Tomás shook his hand and said, for Gabriela’s benefit: “My dear and noble Maestro Cantúa! This kind of problem is exactly why you should call on me. At any hour of the day or night, I count it as an honor to watch over you and your precious and saintly Gabriela.” He tipped his head to the furiously blushing Gaby. “I have faced armed Yaqui camps alone, my dear Señor Cantúa. I have ridden hundreds of miles from Sinaloa, braving the dangers of the road. And I raise bees! I fear not. So allow me to rescue you.”

He turned back to her.

“And you,” he purred.

They followed him to the shady corner of the building, and there, like some strange lava flow, was a bustling wedge of bees piling up on one another and sticking to the wall. The very weight of the huge mass of insects was making it slide down the wood of the wall, and those bees on the bottom scrabbled furiously to keep hold. Those that fell off circled back and piled on again.

“This is a swarm,” Tomás intoned. “At the center of this colony, we will find a queen. They are seeking a hollow tree or an empty barn to start a new hive. They have flown far, and they are thinking about bedding down on your wall for a good night’s rest.”

“He is so smart,” Gabriela whispered to her father.

“However,” Tomás continued, “they could very well choose the inside of your restaurant, and then you would have trouble. Now, the bees are your guests, and they will behave themselves. But once they go inside, then you are the bees’ guests, and they can be terrible hosts.”

“What would happen?” Señor Cantúa asked.

“You would have to burn the restaurant down, I’m afraid.”

Cantúa let out a small cry.

“Don’t despair, my good man,” Tomás said. “I am here.”

He fired up his trusty marijuana smoker, and then he opened the extra box. It had several waxed frames inside, ready for a new colony to establish itself. He threw a tarpaulin over the horse’s back to protect it from stings. He moved the wagon over to the corner of the building, where he could easily reach the swarm. He gave them a few happy puffs of smoke. It smelled good. By God! It smelled very good. He took in a lungful. What a perfect day! He pumped out great curlicues of luscious smoke!

He smiled at the Cantúas.

Carefully, as if working the bloomers off a schoolmarm, Tomás inserted his hands into the swarm.

“Dios!” Gabriela cried.

Cantúa crossed himself.

“I have never seen such a thing!” he said.

Tomás moved a huge load of narcotized bees to the frame and slid them into the opening. He did it again, only this time he held out the double handful and offered it to Gaby, who yelped in delighted terror and skipped behind her father. Tomás smiled now, in charge of the world—that smoke was certainly pleasant!—and put the new bees in with the rest. He used his hat to brush stragglers off the wall and they dropped and lazily flew until they found their sisters in the maw of the open box.

“He is so competent,” Gabriela said.

“They smell their queen,” Tomás noted. “Now they will go to her.”

He fit the lid on the top and slid open the entry door at the bottom so the confused bees still circling could enter.

“They should all be inside in an hour,” he said.

Cantúa regarded him with a kind of awe.

“May I feed you?” he asked.

“Perhaps some coffee,” Tomás said.

As they went in the door, Gaby said, “That is the bravest thing I have ever seen.”

“I would do anything,” he responded, “to keep you safe from harm.”

“Ay, Don Tomás,” she said. “You say the nicest things.”

“Was that not test enough? You must believe me. Put me to any test, Gaby.” He stood with hat in hand, so tall his head almost brushed the ceiling. “Anything,” he said, “in honor of you.”

Señor Cantúa brought out the coffee. It was too late to scowl. All he could do now was to sit there with them and keep them apart.

Tomás brushed his whiskers and smiled blandly. That marijuana, he thought, it adds something to the day!

“Say, do you know what?” he blurted. “I am hungry after all. Do you have any sweet rolls?”

Gaby jumped up.

“I’ll go, Papá.”

She flicked a look at Tomás as she went, and she managed to swirl her skirt as she passed through the door.

“My God, Cantúa,” Tomás said.

Cantúa raised his hands.

“Please,” he pleaded, “be a gentleman.”

By the time Aguirre pulled up to the restaurant, Tomás had eaten all the sweet rolls, and was now tearing into a platter of machaca. Gaby had fried the shredded beef with eggs and beside the mound of machaca she had piled fried nopalitos.

When Aguirre rushed in, Tomás cried, “Engineer! Have a flour tortilla!”

“Didn’t you eat breakfast?” Aguirre said.

“Suddenly, I was hungry.”

Somehow, Tomás had found two violinists and a bajo player, and they plucked and fiddled folk songs as an old woman in the corner held up her skirt and danced barefoot. Señor Cantúa conducted the music with a blue and white serving spoon. Gaby shooed a chicken out the front door.

“Besides,” Tomás said, “if my Gabriela’s hand has prepared it, how could I not eat it?”

“Ay, Tomás,” she said.

Aguirre thought: My Gabriela? And he thought: Ay, Tomás?

“What of the bees?” he asked.

Tomás waved his hand.

“The bees are safely in their hive, Aguirre! The bees are ancient history! Now we are having a party. My treat!”

The snot-nosed boy from that morning came out of the kitchen carrying a bowl of beans.

“Eat, cabrón,” said Tomás. “Life is wonderful.”

Aguirre sat.

Five travelers came in and immediately fell on the food that Tomás paid for in this burst of magnanimity.

Aguirre smiled at Gabriela.

“Water, please,” he said.

She scrunched her nose at him and went to the kitchen.

“What a nose, eh, Engineer?” said Tomás.

“Her nose is,” Aguirre replied, searching for the proper phrase, “eloquent.”

The old woman asked Aguirre to dance. He waved his hands in a frenzy of dread, but Tomás pushed him to his feet. The hilarity that erupted in the room when Aguirre shuffled in a circle with his hands caught in the old woman’s claws did not make him feel very happy at all. His obvious discomfort made all the travelers laugh even louder.

There was so much uproar inside Cantúa’s that nobody heard the rumble of the wheels as Doña Loreto Urrea’s buggies bearing all the children and the priest and herself rolled past on their way to Cabora.