The Hummingbird's Daughter_ A Novel - Luis Alberto Urrea [134]
He shoved his heavy Colt revolver into his pants, and it rose across his belly at an angle, dark blue and cold, rosewood handgrip like a spurt of blood on his stomach, piratical and ready to hand. And in a scabbard, dangling at his left hipbone, a great knife with a buckhorn handle, stropped bright and sharp, close to his hand and ready.
Days had passed since they’d buried Huila. Teresita had stayed in the courtyard near the plum tree, showing no interest in the burial of the old woman. Lauro Aguirre would have been the perfect man to speak some final words over the grave, but he was in El Paso, trying to incite the Mexican revolution from the safe confines of the United States. He published broadsides and wrote incendiary tracts denouncing President Díaz, and if he had come to the funeral, he himself might have been a candidate for interment beside the old woman. So Tomás had muttered a few vaguely remembered religious platitudes, then had tossed in a rude handful of rocks and dirt. It clattered on the wood like a fist knocking on a door, and several of the People stepped back, lest Huila rise like Teresita and scold them all. But that day it was fated that the dead remain dead.
When the Urreas returned from the funeral, they found Teresita lying facedown on the flagstones. They thought she had died again, and a great wailing started to ascend, but when they hurried to her side, they found her merely asleep. Her hands were tucked under her body, and her face was turned away from the sun.
“This,” Tomás said, “I cannot bear.”
Gaby wiped his sweaty brow with a bandana.
Teresita opened her eyes.
“You are awake when you sleep,” she said. “To awaken is to slumber.”
They shook their heads, took her under the arms and lifted her. She did not resist.
“The world is cold,” she said. “Everything is ice.” She patted the stone wall. “See how it is all melting?”
“Get her out of here,” Tomás said. “I can’t hear any more of this!”
They hustled her up to her room, laid her on her bed. She rose immediately and went to her chair and sat, staring. Tomás came into the room and leaned against the wall.
“She’s gone mad,” he said.
Gabriela said nothing.
“Life is death,” Teresita announced.
They backed away from her.
“The flesh is the dream.”
“Go,” Tomás whispered.
“Father?” she said. “I am friends with God.”
They quietly closed her door and latched it so she could not roam outside and come to further harm.
Tomás sat at the breakfast table. He couldn’t eat. He sipped a glass of thick tamarind juice and spooned chunks out of a fat raft of papaya. Gabriela drank coffee and cut the top off a boiled egg in a small silver holder. He nibbled the pale fruit.
“Is she locked in her room?”
“Sí, mi amor,” Gaby replied.
“Good.”
“This can’t go on,” she said.
“No.”
“Not much longer.”
“No.”
And Teresita appeared beside him, leaning on his left shoulder.
“Father,” she said.
He jumped, spilling his juice. He watched the heavy glass float to the floor and strike, divide in six even sections and bloom, throwing the shards in all directions, the brown-orange essence of tamarind gouting in thick ropes of fluid, spattering, each spatter forming new blossoms on the floor, the entire spill a bouquet blooming within a bouquet. He could hear nothing.
“Father?” she said.
Gaby threw herself from her chair and left the kitchen as Tomás nodded, watching the juice spread between the clay tiles of the floor.
“Prepare yourself, Father,” Teresita said.
“For?” he murmured, looking at her bare feet: toes filthy, nails black with dirt.
“Riders approach.”
The cooks listened to everything, ready to report to the pilgrims what the dead girl said.
“Yes?”
He looked at her sad thin face. Black eyebrows. He thought: Gaby must teach her to pluck them before they grow together.
“Teresa,” he said, “there are no riders.”
“Riders,” she replied. “A wounded man.”
“Is this a prophecy?” he said.
“It is.”
“I see.”
He took her elbow in his hand: he could have cracked the bones like walnuts in his fist.
“How did you escape from your room?