The Hummingbird's Daughter_ A Novel - Luis Alberto Urrea [188]
She opened her eyes. For a moment, she did not know where she was. She sat up. Her father snored in the seat behind hers. The train. Going north. To the border.
She pulled her hair back and looked out the window. The land rolled away from her in constant waves, curling from the train as if it were rotating on a great wheel. The land was orange, red, tan. It was pale blue and green and gray and slightly violet. It was white.
She turned and looked out the window on the other side, and the land was utterly still. She blinked. She could hear the locomotive chugging, could feel the sway and hear the clack. But nothing stirred. She turned back to her own window: now that landscape, too, was as still as a painting. She rose, steadied herself on the backs of the seats, and moved forward. The door at the end of the car opened easily enough. She stepped out on the platform at the front of the car. The wind whipped her hair in her face, but the train was not moving. She gazed into the distance, and there she saw a great crow in midflight, caught in the air as if in amber. His huge wings were spread, but taking him nowhere.
Teresita turned around and looked back into the car.
She cried out.
There, sitting in a seat, smiling at her, was Huila.
Teresita pushed the door back open and hurried down the length of the car.
“Huila?” she cried. “Huila? Have you come back?”
Huila turned and looked around her.
“So this is a train,” she said. “I don’t like it much.”
Teresita took her hands in her own and kissed the old knuckles, sinking to her knees.
“Huila!” she cried. “I have missed you so.”
Huila patted her head.
“Child,” she said, “have you got any beer? I miss beer.”
Teresita shook her head, and Huila stood and pulled her to her feet.
“Come,” she said.
She took a step into the aisle, and they were outside, standing on a hillside.
“Did you wear your shoes?” Huila asked.
Teresita looked down. Her feet were bare.
“My father must have taken them off,” Teresita said.
“How are you supposed to walk in the desert with no shoes?” Huila asked.
“I have walked barefoot before!”
“Your father will be mad.”
When Teresita tried to answer, she found herself walking in a blue stream, on smooth white stones.
“Isn’t that nice?” asked Huila.
Teresita’s three old men stood on a hill a mile away. She could see them like three little balls of snow. There would be snow in America, she thought.
“There are your old cabrones,” Huila noted.
Teresita waved to them.
A hummingbird circled her head. Its tiny wings whirred loudly. “You sound like a bee,” Teresita told it. It circled her again. She could feel the wind of its flapping on her skin. It chirped its funny little kissing sounds and sped away.
“Which direction?” asked Huila.
“Left,” said Teresita.
“Always flies toward the heart, that little bastard.”
They were holding hands.
Golden fish tickled Teresita’s feet.
They went up a hill covered in white flowers. The water followed them, flowing impishly against gravity.
“Have I been here?” Teresita asked.
“You were always here.”
“Huila,” she said. “Help me! Help me now! Things are terrible. Things are getting more terrible every day. Help me stop it.”
“Oh no, child,” said Huila. “I am on this side, and you are on that side. We cannot interfere with you.”
“Help me!”
“I am here, aren’t I?”
They climbed through a tissue of cloud.
Teresita started to see. Things were brighter here. The cerulean sky was full of stars.
“Look,” said Huila.
The stars formed straight lines. Then the lines expanded horizontally and vertically, creating a grid in the sky, spreading out away from her until they became invisible in every direction.
“Look,” said Huila.
The stars swelled. They looked like ice chunks melting in reverse, growing larger. They were silver. They formed small globes, a million, ten million brilliant silver globes above and around her.
“I was not a very good student,” Huila said. “I had to die for God to teach me this. But I am teaching you now. Look.