Woman Hollering Creek (17 page)

When the
federales
captured Nicolás and took him to Tepaltzingo, you arrived with him asleep in your arms after your brother and Chico Franco rescued him. If anything happens to this child, you said, if anything … and started to cry. I didn’t say anything, Miliano, but you can’t imagine how in that instant, I wanted to be small and fit inside your heart, I wanted to belong to you like the boy, and know you loved me.

If I am a witch, then so be it, I said. And I took to eating black things—
huitlacoche
the corn mushroom, coffee, dark chiles, the bruised part of fruit, the darkest, blackest things to make me hard and strong.

You rarely talk. Your voice, Miliano, thin and light as a woman’s, almost delicate. Your way of talking is sudden, quick, like water leaping. And yet I know what that voice of yours is capable of.

I remember after the massacre of Tlatizapán, 286 men and women and children slaughtered by the Carrancistas. Your thin figure, haggard and drawn, your face small and dark under your wide sombrero. I remember even your horse looked half-starved and wild that dusty, hot June day.

It was as if misery laughed at us. Even the sky was sad, the light leaden and dull, the air sticky and everything covered with flies. Women filled the streets searching among the corpses for their dead.

Everyone was tired, exhausted from running from the Carrancistas. The government had chased us almost as far as Jojutla. But you spoke in
mexicano
, you spoke to us in our language, with your heart in your hand, Miliano, which is why we listened to you. The people were tired, but they listened. Tired of surviving, of living,
of enduring. Many were deserting and going back to their villages.
If you don’t want to fight anymore
, you said,
we’ll all go to the devil. What do you mean you are tired? When you elected me, I said I would represent you if you backed me. But now you must back me, I’ve kept my word. You wanted a man who wore pants, and I’ve been that man. And now, if you don’t mean to fight, well then, there’s nothing I can do
.

We were filthy, exhausted, hungry, but we followed you.

Under the little avocado tree behind my father’s house is where you first kissed me. A crooked kiss, all wrong, on the side of the mouth.
You belong to me now
, you said, and I did.

The way you rode in the morning of the San Lázaro fair on a pretty horse as dark as your eyes. The sky was sorrel-colored, remember? Everything swelled and smelled of rain. A cool shadow fell across the village. You were dressed all in black as is your custom. A graceful, elegant man, thin and tall.

You wore a short black linen
charro
jacket, black trousers of cashmere adorned with silver buttons, and a lavender shirt knotted at the collar with a blue silk neckerchief. Your sombrero had a horsehair braid and tassel and a border of carnations embroidered along the wide brim in gold and silver threads. You wore the sombrero set forward—not at the back of the head as others do—so it would shade those eyes of yours, those eyes that watched and waited. Even then I knew it was an animal to match mine.

Suppose my father won’t let me?

We’ll run off, he can’t be angry for always
.

Wait until the end of the harvest
.

You pulled me toward you under the little avocado tree and kissed me. A kiss tasting of warm beer and whiskers.
You belong to me now
.

It was during the plum season we met. I saw you at the country fair at San Lázaro. I wore my braids up away from the neck with bright ribbons. My hair freshly washed and combed with oil prepared with the ground bone of the mamey. And the neckline of my
huipil
, a white one, I remember, showed off my neck and collarbones.

You were riding a fine horse, silver-saddled with a fringe of red and black silk tassels, and your hands, beautiful hands, long and sensitive, rested lightly on the reins. I was afraid of you at first, but I didn’t show it. How pretty you made your horse prance.

You circled when I tried to cross the
zócalo
, I remember. I pretended not to see you until you rode your horse in my path, and I tried to dodge one way, then the other, like a calf in a
jaripeo
. I could hear the laughter of your friends from under the shadows of the arcades. And when it was clear there was no avoiding you, I looked up at you and said,
With your permission
. You did not insist, you touched the brim of your hat, and let me go, and I heard your friend Francisco Franco, the one I would later know as Chico, say,
Small, but bigger than you, Miliano
.

So is it yes?
I didn’t know what to say, I was still so little, just laughed, and you kissed me like that, on my teeth.

Yes?
and pressed me against the avocado tree.
No, is it?
And I said yes, then I said no, and yes, your kisses arriving in between.

Love? We don’t say that word. For you it has to do with stroking with your eyes what catches your fancy, then lassoing and harnessing and corraling. Yanking home what is easy to take.

But not for me. Not from the start. You were handsome, yes, but I didn’t like handsome men, thinking they could have whomever they wanted. I wanted to be, then, the one you could not have. I didn’t lower my eyes like the other girls when I felt you looking at me.

I’ll set up a house for us. We can live together, and later we’ll see
.

But suppose one day you leave me
.

Never
.

Wait at least until the end of the harvest
.