The Hummingbird's Daughter_ A Novel - Luis Alberto Urrea [140]
It was half past four in the morning.
After her prayers, which were painful because her knees protested being pressed to the tiles of her floor, she pushed herself up and went to her basin and washed. She did not like to take long baths anymore, for fear that the maids would still take her water away and sell it.
She carried an oil lamp and made her way to the kitchen, where she ate a light breakfast with the cooks. Lately, she had gotten weary of meats of all kinds. Even fish made her feel poisoned. She sometimes ate eggs—it was hard not to like eggs scrambled with cactus and salsa. But she mostly ate bananas and chicken fideo soup—broth and noodles, no meat. She liked rolls dipped in coffee, perhaps a few slices of goat cheese and some boiled mango in a bowl. Guayaba, prunes, papaya when it came, prickly pears, tortillas with butter.
At six she greeted Tomás and Gabriela and often helped serve them their breakfasts. Then she retreated to Tomás’s library and attended to letters, hoping for some from her dear “uncle” Aguirre. Since her awakening, she had not found time to read literature. She had wanted to read the Spanish versions of Mark Twain—picaresque boys! That would be so amusing! But the time never seemed to offer itself to her. She often opened the scriptures at random, to see what God’s message to her that day might be. His random directions to her were occasionally baffling—Leviticus 14, for example, and its orders to kill a lamb and put its blood on somebody’s earlobe and on somebody else’s thumb. What, Lord? She kept these arcane passages from Tomás.
After God had spoken to her through the Book, she went outside, offering greetings to those gathered at the door. Usually, the day began with well-wishers and pilgrims who had come to shake her hand or offer an endearment. They brought her gifts—a chicken, a basket of cookies, a small stone idol of a heathen god, a nugget of gold, a knit shawl, a writhing pink piglet (she was always partial to pigs), a donkey, five pesos wrapped in dirty cloth, locks of hair tied in ribbon and offered to her as a manda to bargain for God’s blessings, the wrapping cloth from a dead infant brought as the most valuable thing the mother owned. Teresita accepted all gifts, even the ones that were too dear. She knew that the giving was the important thing. If she turned away their presents, she would really be turning the giver away. So Segundo ate the cookies. The coins and gold went to Tomás—she did not know what he did with them. She didn’t want to know.
Father Gastélum sometimes appeared on their porch on these early mornings. She knew he was watching her for irregularities and heresies. She did not disappoint him—when she began to preach against priests, he turned crimson and scribbled in his notebooks.
“For God,” she preached from her porch, “religions are nothing, signify nothing. Because positive religions are generally nothing more than words—words without feeling. Religions are practices that focus on the surface of things, that affect only the senses, but that fail to touch the soul, and fail to come from the soul. For that reason, these words and practices fail to reach our Father. What our Father wants from us is our emotions, our feelings. He demands pure love, and that love, that sentiment, is found only in the selfless practice of love, of good, of service.
“We are nothing compared to our Father. Without doubt, the honeyed words pronounced by our lips don’t even reach our hearts. How could they reach God’s ears? How can we hope to love God if we can’t even love our neighbors? We don’t even see God! A black cloud hides Him from us!”
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