The Hummingbird's Daughter_ A Novel - Luis Alberto Urrea [112]
“Yes,” the mother said.
The mothers loved her. She was the holy secret of the women, and many daughters were christened Teresa on the plain. Soon, Teresita was in greater demand than Huila, and the old one was astounded to find herself relegated to filling in for the child, attending to births that Teresita had no time for as her schedule grew busier.
One hundred children came through the honey in the womb.
Outside of the birthing rooms, too, the People saw that she had learned many of Huila’s tricks. Teresita would stand still, connected to the earth, and she’d challenge the men to move her. “Come on, you weaklings!” she’d taunt them. The other girls of the ranch laughed and giggled around her, and the boys, getting big now and starting to want her, would sometimes join in the fray just so they could lay hands on her. Buenaventura would sneer at them all, scoff from a distance, unimpressed and angry that she got all the attention whenever she pleased.
“Move me if you can!” she challenged.
And Segundo would grab her around the waist and tug, and she wouldn’t move. Little Antonio Cuarto, Segundo’s nephew, grown up and stocky, but still shorter than she was, would join in and grab her around the hips, and together they’d shove and pull, but her feet would not even slide in the dirt. The watching children would laugh and clap and hoot and whistle until Segundo, red in the face, stepped away and offered his place to anyone who dared.
Millán pushed in and said, “I’ll move you!”
“Big man,” she taunted, laughing along with her girlfriends.
He moved close to her and put his hands on her breasts and shoved. She moved his hands away from her breasts. He put them on her ribs, then shoved again—she felt like a wooden beam. He bounced off her. Then he put his hands on her breasts again as he leaned in.
“Stop it,” she said into his ear.
He laughed, stepped away, spit. And in turn, they laughed at him, the girls taunting, twisting their fingers at him like little knives, chanting “Lero-lero-le-ro!” He shrugged.
All the cowboys remembered these games and the tales of the women, so when mules kicked them, or they split their nails with hammers, or were shot or stabbed, they came to Teresita like little boys seeking their mothers. It was still Huila who set broken bones and packed bullet holes with herbs, but it was now Teresita who looked in their eyes and murmured to them, passed a hand over their foreheads or their hearts, and made them sleepy and calm.
“Poor boys.” She’d smile. “They don’t like pain.”
“Boys!” Huila invariably spit. “What the devil do boys know of pain!”
The men clutched her hands and kissed them, so happy were they to be relieved of their aches. One day, she removed a terrible back pain from Señor Cantúa, and he went away happy, in a wagon, off to begin his shrimp stand beside the turquoise sea.
But there were people who were not amused. In confession, when Father Gastélum came and sat in the stables to greet them, some whispered of her heathen works, of her occult powers. One of her detractors was Buenaventura. Though no religious fanatic, he was appalled at her behavior. She romped with the Indian children, then sang filthy songs and common ballads to the slavering vaqueros. She rode her horses indecently, and she consorted with Gabriela, that intruder slut. If any woman should have lived in the main house of Cabora, it was his own mother. They should have sent for her, brought her from Ocoroni. Indeed, Teresita’s specially built wing of the house should have been his. The library should have been his. The cook girls and the maids and the bed-maker girls and the wash girls should have been his.
The other was Tomás.
He had indulged her indigenous interests, and her explorations with Huila. He felt it was only fair to allow her an education in her Indian ways. It was a reasonable complement to her studies in the library. Aguirre had taught her well. She could discuss politics better than most men in the llano. Tomás was proud of her.
But this other