The Hummingbird's Daughter_ A Novel - Luis Alberto Urrea [156]
“How do you think you know these things?”
“It is obvious if you only look,” she replied. “I can see more than you think.”
“Like?”
“Like your aura—it wants to be gold and white, but your rages make it turn red —”
“Hija, hija, hija,” he interrupted. “Stop that.” He shook his head. “Daughter, you worry me.”
She sat back in her chair.
“I know.” She rubbed her face. “I worry myself.”
“Who are you?” he said.
“I am the same girl I was.”
“No! No. Don’t tell me that. Whatever you have become, you are not the same girl. Not now. Not anymore.”
She took her plate to the sink.
“Perhaps not,” she said. “I don’t know.”
“It is obvious,” he said, only slightly mocking her, “if you only look. Does that make me a saint, too? My seeing the obvious?”
“I never said I was a saint.”
“But they do.”
“I try to stop them.”
“You’ve wanted to be a saint from the day you could talk,” he said.
She turned and stared at him.
“Tell me I’m wrong.”
He went to a shelf and found a small black cheroot and struck a match and took a puff.
“Sí, o no?” he said.
She sighed. If she were a vaquero, she would have taken that moment to spit.
“Perhaps,” she said. “I never thought about it.”
“Yes you did.”
“Is it a crime to want to be good?” she cried.
He took the little wicked cigar out of his mouth.
“Easy,” he said. “Easy. Don’t get excited.”
She put her hand on her head.
“Oh,” she said. “I don’t know.” She sat down. “I wanted a boyfriend. A puppy. A pink dress.”
She looked up at him and grinned.
That was when they heard the tapping on the back door. It must have been going like that for a while, but they hadn’t noticed it.
“What is that, a mouse?” he said.
She shrugged.
He got up and went to the door and threw the latch, yanked it open.
There, on the back step, was a stinking and filthy urchin. His scent of sickness and garbage wafted into the kitchen.
“Ah cabrón!” Tomás said.
He was an Indian boy. His bare feet were black, his toenails split and bloody. He wore ruined trousers and a beaten and burned jacket, no shirt. His eyes were runny, and his upper lip was caked in crystallized snot. His hair was hard and vertical, coming off his scalp in spikes.
“I saw lights,” he said.
Tomás reeled from his stench.
“Of course you saw lights,” he snapped. “We live here.”
“I waited,” the boy said. “People say I stink too bad. They won’t let me come in the day. They won’t let me come close to her. I waited for everybody to go to sleep so I could come.”
Teresita reached out for him.
“Come in,” she said.
She took his hand.
Tomás tried to block him with one knee, but Teresita nimbly steered him clear of her father.
He stepped in shyly, his cloud of odor filling the room.
“Boy,” said Tomás, “you smell like shit.”
The boy burst into hoarse sobs.
He covered his face with his hands and wailed.
Teresita put her arms around him and held her head away from his head, where the main stink seemed to be centered. His hair was hard and shiny. The back of his neck was wet.
“What’s wrong, boy?” she said.
“I’m sorry!”
“Now, now,” said Tomás. He cleared his throat. “Crying’s for girls. We are big strong men! Somos machos!”
The boy’s collar was stiff. His reek was of rotten meat and old blood. Teresita looked at his head—it was full of infected sores. Pus formed peso-sized pools on his scalp, and the pus had drooled down his back and coagulated in his hair. Dirt stuck to the mess and made the hard spikes on his head.
Tomás bent down and wrinkled his nose.
“Damn!” he said. “What is that?”
“Sores,” she said.
Tomás suddenly remembered the old man with the infected lash marks on his back. When was that? Years ago. He could not remember the day, or the year. He wanted to tell Teresita about it, but there was no time.
She gently pulled apart the boy’s hair, and she revealed dark little creatures