The Hummingbird's Daughter_ A Novel - Luis Alberto Urrea [132]
“Really,” Tomás said. “This is too much.”
She said, “I will see Huila now.”
Tomás had been standing on the other side of the room, watching her stare into space. When she spoke, he jumped. “She is not well,” he replied.
“I know.”
“Are you strong enough?” he asked.
“Strong?” she said, never looking at him.
He stepped across to her and took her hand in his. She slowly turned her eyes to his hand and regarded it coolly, as if it were a lizard crossing her path.
“I can see your bones,” she noted.
He let go of her icy fingers.
“Daughter,” he said.
She said, “Am I?”
He was stung. He backed away from her. Put his hands in his pockets.
“You frighten me,” he said.
“I will see Huila now.”
Gabriela took one arm, and Tomás the other. They maneuvered her downstairs and along the hallway.
“Your womb is ripe,” Teresita told Gaby.
They opened the door for her, and Teresita walked through as if struck blind. She held her hands before her chest, palms out, fingers slightly curled, as if she were feeling the air that encapsulated things, as if she were seeing the color of the world through her skin.
The room smelled old. Musk and dust and death were in the air. The others held back at the open doorway, as if they were afraid to breathe that cloud of stink. But Teresita did not seem to take notice of it at all. She stepped in and closed the door behind her.
Huila, dry as a skeleton in the bed, stirred when the door latched shut. She was asleep, her old chin sprouting thin white whiskers. Teresita laid her hand on the old one’s head, then she sat in the corner. Huila jumped and snorted. She opened her eyes, craned her head on the pillow. Her eyes squinted, then popped wide.
“Where are the chickens!”
“There are no chickens, old woman.”
“Who is cooking supper, then!”
“Supper has been taken care of.”
“Nobody cuts off a chicken head like me.”
“You are the best at handling chickens.”
Huila snorted. Jerked. Looked over.
“You,” she said.
“It is I.”
“Have I died?”
“No.”
“Is this Heaven?”
“Hardly.”
“Are you a spirit?”
“We are all spirits.”
“Have you come back to take me to Heaven?”
“No.”
“Hell?”
“No. Wherever you are going, you must go alone. No one takes you.”
“I don’t like that!”
“You and I do not make the rules.”
“Things would have been different, let me tell you.”
Teresita said: “I am alive. They did not keep me.”
Huila laid her head back down. Sighed.
“Well,” she said. “That’s good.”
“They told me I had work to do.”
Huila nodded.
“They like to keep busy,” she said.
Huila seemed to sleep for a minute.
“Get me a ladder,” she said.
Neither of them laughed.
They were quiet for a time.
“I’ve seen people come back before,” Huila said. “Once when I was a girl.”
Teresita nodded.
“Will I come back like you?”
“I don’t think so,” Teresita said.
Huila coughed.
“Can you help me?” she asked. “Spare me from death?”
Teresita scooted her chair across the floor, leaned forward in her seat, and passed her hand up and down the old woman’s body.
“No,” she said.
“Will I die now?”
“Yes.”
They were silent again.
“I don’t want to die.”
Teresita closed her eyes.
“I know,” she said.
“Does it hurt?”
“No.”
“Will I be afraid?”
“Oh no.”
Teresita could hear her father whispering to the people outside the door. All around the house, they were still shouting. She could hear that silly Fina Félix crying and carrying on.
Teresita said, “Do you know how it is when a child needs to go to sleep? How a child fights and bargains. Asks for a story, or cries, or suddenly needs water to drink because she won’t go to sleep?”
“Yes.”
“But you know it is time. For whatever reason—it is time for the child to sleep. It’s late, or she needs to get up early in the morning, or she is ill. You have to make her go to sleep, sometimes against her will.”
“Yes.”
“This is how it is with God and us. God has to put us to bed, and we don’t want to sleep yet.”
Huila swallowed. It made her feel terribly sad. “Will I like being dead?” she asked.
Teresita opened her eyes.
“Did you enjoy being alive?”