The Hummingbird's Daughter_ A Novel - Luis Alberto Urrea [102]
After a week, it seemed to Tomás as if Gabriela had always been there. They finally, secretly, made love. It seemed that her smell had always been on his fingers, her tart berry smell, and her long hairs had always been on his pillowcase, and her flavor on his lips.
They all knew something had to happen, but they didn’t know what it would be. No one knew the hour, or the nature, of Loreto’s wrath, though they all suspected that, sooner or later, she would explode. They had all felt it building over the months since her catastrophic raid on the ranch, and now, with this final outrage, Tomás had lit a fatal fuse.
Huila was first to see the buggy coming down the road.
The servants, not wanting to observe this development, rushed into the house. Aguirre was gone again, on some journey into the north, or he would have affixed his spectacles to his nose and studied the scene. Dogs slunk under the benches in the courtyard, though she was still a mile away.
They watched the black carriage come across the plain. It was speeding like a mad crow, coming at them in a wedge of dust. All of them knew, without knowing, that Loreto was holding the reins. Her rage flew high above the carriage like a great wind.
Tomás, with his arm around Gabriela’s shoulders, stood before the great house and stared. Segundo moseyed away, back to the rendering plant. He preferred the stench of melting cattle to the wrath of Loreto. And Huila, older now than she had ever dreamed, leaning on a cane that would in a year become a crutch, sat in the shade of the plum tree on a yellow bench festooned with blue hummingbirds—a gift from Señor Cantúa.
“Ay, ay, ay,” she mourned, digging in the dirt between flagstones with her cane. Though she couldn’t keep a grin from her face, she lamented. “Mira qué cosas.”
She shook her head.
She had always, of course, assumed that men were idiots. Tomás was chief among the pendejos. Their foolishness had amused her since the beginning of time. But suddenly she understood that women were idiots, too. That all people under the sun were fools. Wasting lives. Sniffing up each other’s legs like dogs, scurrying around in circles while their days bled away. All life, she had been taught, was a dream—the flesh is the sleep of the soul. She liked Tomás, and she liked Loreto, and the new one, Gabriela, was sweet as honey on the tongue. But, if this was the dream, she couldn’t wait to awaken.
Teresita, a little afraid of Loreto’s coming, hung back, away from them all, and watched the small black vehicle bounce and shimmy as it came forward. She saw the dark rainbows in the air above it. She thought she caught Huila’s eye from a distance. It looked as if Huila was laughing. It was a new laugh, bitter as burned coffee.
Gabriela was ashamed, but strong. She loved Tomás, and he loved her, and there was nothing one could do when love came. It was fast, and it was strong, and if it were not good, then surely God would not have allowed it such power. The power of her love made her giddy—Tomás spoke things to her that would make any woman swoon. “You talk so pretty,” she had gasped one night, and for some reason, this had delighted him. He suckled at her like an infant, crooning poems, songs, speeches to her. Anything, anything, she would hear anything from his lips. Book chapters or newspaper reports, Bible passages—it was all music to her. His refined accent, his big words, words she did not even know. His awe when she dropped her dress—the way he studied her belly, the down near her navel, and the way he held her breasts to his lips, and the way he traced her spine, sighing as he did it, as if he had never been in the presence of something so holy. It made her laugh, and it made her weep. And the burning sensations he brought to her body, the clenching in her stomach and the explosion of lightning in her flesh, as if the darkness within her were laughing and screaming, her skin and organs yelling, this too made her weep. “Oh my