The Hummingbird's Daughter_ A Novel - Luis Alberto Urrea [160]
“Anything else?”
“Yes. You are the Mexican Joan of Arc.”
This left her speechless.
She picked up her dark cherry bonbon and decided to eat it anyway.
Pilgrims came to Aguirre to offer him eyewitness accounts of Teresita’s miracles.
One day, a wagon bound for San Antonio reined in before his house. He stepped outside with a pistol tucked in the back of his pants and a cup of coffee in his hand. A skinny Mexican, almost black from the sun, sat on the bench. In the back of the wagon, his flea-bitten family peered at Aguirre. An old woman reclined on a pile of blankets and scratched the sad ears of a mongrel dog.
“Señor Lauro Aguirre?” asked the skeletal mule skinner from on high.
“Yes?” said Aguirre.
“We have come from Cabora,” the man said.
“Who was sick?” Aguirre asked.
“My mother,” the man said, gesturing with his chin at the old woman in the back.
“You were healed?” Aguirre asked.
“Sí.”
“May I ask what ailed you?”
“An issue of blood,” she said. “Out of my insides.”
He nodded.
“Down here,” she added, touching herself between the legs.
“Yes, I understand.”
The driver said, “That tall one, the man at Cabora.”
“Don Tomás.”
“That one. He said you might pay us for our story.”
“Did he.”
“We asked for money to get home on, but he said we could sell you our story for your periodical.”
“That rascal.”
The people in the wagon said nothing.
“Well,” said Aguirre. “You might as well come in.”
They came off the wagon with great rattlings and noise.
“I suppose,” Aguirre sighed, “Tomás said I would feed you, as well.”
“Oh yes. We haven’t eaten,” the old woman said. “And we’re thirsty.”
“I hope your story’s good,” he said.
“It is,” she replied. “I hope your money’s good.”
He laughed.
“It is, old woman,” he said. “It is.”
The house was small and yellow. Behind a cement-block wall, two fat dogs danced and yipped. Geraniums bloomed in old cans. One rosebush. The screen door was crooked, the wire mesh rusted dark. The stucco walls were faded, though the white trim was still bright. The gate in the block wall was hung on springs, and they made yoiiiing sounds as Aguirre pushed the gate open for them. His fingers were black with ink. The dogs nipped at the woman’s ankles. She kicked them away.
In the house, the smell of old cooking and burned coffee. Cigarettes. Coughing. Their voices were old, dry as the desert around them.
The old woman was nearly blind. She sat in an orange chair, and even though it was hot, she asked for a blanket to tuck around her knees. Her thin hair was white, pulled back tight over her skull. Her cheeks were sunken, and her teeth were gone, causing her lips to flap. Aguirre thought of the wonderful Mexican word for being toothless: molacha.
Her eyes were cataract blue, clouded and rolling. She held a rosary in her lap, and beside her, on a small tray, Aguirre had placed a cup of coffee that sat in a puddle collected in a saucer. Her family crowded into the corners like anxious sheep.
“Teresita,” the old one said.
“Yes,” said Aguirre.
The old one closed her eyes. A clock ticked. Two of the old woman’s family looked at each other and rolled their eyes.
She reached out her hand.
“Señor,” she said. “Come closer.”
He stepped forward.
“Five pesos,” she said.
Her family sucked in air, as if they’d burned their tongues.
“Tell me first.”
“Ten pesos.”
“First, your story.”
Aguirre opened his notebook.
“You were there,” he said.
“Claro. Claro que sí. I was there.”
She coughed, took a sip of coffee, set the cup down at an angle, spilling more into her saucer.
“La Santa touched me once, and I was healed.”
She smiled.
“I bled for thirteen years, señor, and she touched me, and the blood stopped. Glory to God.”
Her family muttered Gracias a Dios in their corners. Bendito sea Dios.
“She was friendly, La Santa. She touched everybody. She was walking through our camp. We all camped there. It was like a holiday. We slept under our wagon. And she came walking along, and I saw her and I went up to her and she put her hand on my face and said, ‘Hello.’”
“That’s all?”
“That is all, se