The Hummingbird's Daughter_ A Novel - Luis Alberto Urrea [117]
was paralyzed and she had not walked for a year. I placed
my hands on the paralyzed part and told her to walk. Poor
woman! She was afraid to try. She cowered and cried, but
I insisted. She took one step tremblingly, then another and
another. When she found she could walk, she ran back,
raised her hands to heaven and cried “Santa Teresa!”
It was thus that I was named.
—TERESITA,
New York Journal
Thirty-six
THE WORLD ROLLED FORWARD, for People and patrón, Indian and Yori, dizzy in the night and about to change forever.
The cavalry of Mexico chased a small army of Mayos loyal to Moroyoqui that had united with a larger group of Yaquis inspired by the teachings of Cajemé. The hunt took the mounted forces through the hills around Navojoa, and the plains around Cabora. Dark riders thundered through the ranch late in the night, and the army sent spies to see if Tomás was aiding the enemy. He was observed feeding bands of Indians, but it was never proven that Moroyoqui’s raiders had visited Cabora.
The People passed on rumors. The cavalry had caught seven riders and had tortured them mercilessly on the llano. Buckaroos told terrible stories of the riders held down by soldiers, and the soldiers using their great knives to cut off the Indians’ feet and then forcing them to walk for miles on the stumps until they fell. Mercifully, the soldiers shot them when they could walk no more.
In this cloud of dread and legends, Teresita recuperated. After Buenaventura left the ranch, she busied herself with her studies. After her prayers and offerings in Huila’s sacred site, she spent mornings visiting the sick. She took a light lunch in the early afternoon, at which time she bantered with Tomás and Gaby. She did not seem morose or withdrawn. She did not always even seem particularly serious to them. Still, they noted that she no longer went on wild horse rides, and she never touched her guitar with blue flowers painted on it. After lunch, she retreated to her high room to take a siesta.
No one knew her thoughts in her white room. No one saw her stare in her mirror at her face—a face she regretted. At her hair—hair she wished she could trade for Gaby’s waterfalls of curls. No one saw her pluck dried blossoms and leaves off her hanging herbs and crush them between her fingers, eyes closed, going into the scent.
She had never been kissed.
She lay on her bed in the crushing temperatures and tried to still her heart, her body, tried to let the roller of heat pass over her without flattening her. She locked her door and lay naked on the bed, with wet towels on her belly and chest. She fanned herself and tried to dream. But the afternoon naps didn’t come. When her month blossomed, she felt deep knots of pain in her belly, and she folded cloths and hid lavender among the folds, but this did not help the pain. She looked away from herself during those days. Her eyes were sore and tired on many days. The light tormented her, and she took to placing a wet towel over them, too—folded to keep out the sun. When her headaches came, she could see strange webs of light. Sounds set off waves of color in her head. She sometimes smelled strange scents, and if she moved, the headache clamped over her skull and made her sick to her stomach and made her tired eyes feel as if they were going to pop out of her head and weep down her cheeks.
Teresita had never seen a train. But she had now delivered 107 children. She had never seen a city outside of her dreams, but she had buried five mothers and three stillborn infants. She had never seen a black man, or a Chinese man, though she heard that they existed, and she had once seen a photogravure of an African in one of Tomás’s American magazines, the Overland Monthly. She had still never seen the sea.
Teresita had never stepped on a paved street. Even the streets of Ocoroni had been cobbles or dirt. She had never heard any music except for corridos and folk ballads and once, from a distance, a brass band playing in the old ranch house. She delighted Tomás one