The Hummingbird's Daughter_ A Novel - Luis Alberto Urrea [179]
“Get out.”
The guard was dirty and looked as if he might be a prisoner himself. He carried a short whip, and he had a pistol in his belt. His cheeks were covered in wiry stubble. A fly alighted on his lip: he blew it away.
She crawled to the back of the wagon and fell out. Her legs were too cramped for her to stand or walk.
“Help me, please,” she said, putting out her hand.
He kicked her on the haunch.
“Does that help?” he asked.
Two jailers standing well behind him burst out laughing.
“Aren’t you a witch?” he said. “Can’t you turn into a bat and fly?”
“Watch out, Pepe!” yelled one of his friends. “She might turn you into a bat!”
“No mames, buey!” Pepe cursed.
Teresita grabbed the edge of the cart and pulled herself upright. Her knees shook.
“Do you have water?” she asked.
Pepe patted his groin.
“I have water here!” he said.
His friends laughed again.
“Let’s go,” he said. He shoved her away from the wagon. He prodded her with the handle of the whip.
“Be a good witch,” he said, “and I won’t whip you.”
She staggered forward.
Faces peered down at her from the cell windows.
“Chula!” somebody called.
“Oye, vieja! Give us a kiss!”
Pepe shoved her again.
“Hurry up,” he said.
One of the prisoners called: “Leave her alone!”
“Shut your mouth,” Pepe yelled back.
He hurried her through a stone courtyard and to a heavy set of double doors.
“We can’t stick you with the men,” Pepe said. “So you can sleep where the oxen and pigs used to sleep.” He laughed when he opened the doors and the stink hit her. She reeled for a moment.
“I have slept with pigs before,” she said. “Thank you for your help.”
She walked in.
He stood at the doors for a moment, unsure of what to say to that.
Teresita sat on the small cot shoved against the wall. “You have been very kind,” she said. “I will pray for you.” Her gaze unnerved him.
“Por nada,” he said, just to say something. Then: “There is water in the bucket.”
He slammed the doors and padlocked them. He stood there for a moment and listened. When he walked away, he walked fast.
Now, in her cell, she shivered. It was hot, but she shook. Coughed. She had eaten only dry crusts of bread on the journey, drunk a gulp of water a day. Her eyes blurred.
She took up the bucket and drank clouded water.
The guards the night before had tied her hands. When they had untied her this morning, her wrists were chafed raw and bleeding. One of them had put his hands on her bottom and squeezed when he shoved her inside her wagon.
“Take your hands off my daughter!” Tomás had shouted. He was answered by another blow to the head.
“Don’t cry for this witch,” the guard had spit. “You’ll both be dead in a few days. All your troubles will be over.” He had laughed. Everyone around her had been laughing. Teresita thought back to Millán. She wondered why the wicked were so happy.
She got up and pressed her face to the window slit.
White birds. White birds with vast wings formed great V shapes in the sky. Like angels, she thought.
She turned to her cell. It was a stone box, dank and steamy. The straw and dirt on the floor were clotted with mud and the old dung of the animals. Across the back, a stone shelf with one thin blanket heaped at its foot. She pulled off the blanket and wrapped it around her shoulders and sat on the cot.
Time slithered.
She tried to pray for her father, but she could not. She was asleep as fast as her head touched the canvas of the cot. All around her, vermin stirred.
Mosquitoes and biting flies, gnats and midges, came in the open windows. Fleas came from the