The Hummingbird's Daughter_ A Novel - Luis Alberto Urrea [23]
“To go with your little pecker,” Segundo said.
The boys whistled at Tomás as he walked away.
Teresita said to the skinny kid with the hat: “Stay here.”
Fifty yards ahead of Teresita, Tomás was diminished in perspective, and he looked like a doll. She held up her hand and squinted her eye and it looked as if she held him in her grip. She smiled.
He was worried. She could see it all around him. She only caught the vaguest suggestion of color around some people, and then only as she looked askance at them. It was sometimes this way with her, but when she had asked Tía why she saw these penumbras, the response was a kick and a glare. She did not raise the topic again.
Tomás had worry leaking out from under his hat like smoke. Along with these purple clouds were some baffling vibrations that, for reasons she couldn’t explain, looked to her as if they came from a lemon. He clutched his hat and yanked it off his head, and a great polychromatic upwelling spiraled into the sky. It wobbled as he drew his sleeve across his brow, and then he was charging up the porch steps and vanishing into the shadows of the big house. The door slammed.
Teresita knew she was not allowed to follow. She knew that a field worker caught inside the house would be in real trouble. But she was not there to steal. She would simply go in the door and call for him, and when he came, she would tell him she needed to talk to Huila. Like Tía said.
She put her bare foot on the first step and tried it. It seemed solid enough. The only steps she had ever climbed were the solid stone stairs that led into the church. She stepped up, and stepped up, and was on the porch without incident. She was amazed by the technology of the doorknob. It was clearly a fine object, a thing of shining brass and an egg shape made of some white thing that could have been a stone or a giant pearl or that thing they called ivory. She grabbed the doorknob and pulled. Nothing happened. She pushed. She tried turning it, and there was a click that alarmed her, and then the door seemed to open of its own volition, and she followed it as it swung inward, its greasy hinges silent and fluid, and she was inside.
She was amazed to see that the patrón didn’t have a dirt floor, and she stood fascinated by the wood planks under her feet. In the village, the really good housekeepers sprinkled lemon juice to wet down the ground dust and make everything smell fresh. But this floor was beyond any juicy sand. It shone, too, as if there were a thin flood of creek water upon it.
And there was perfume in the air, not lemons. Teresa slid the door shut and took inventory of the many fabulous objects before her. She did not know what Yoris called the fluttering white things that hung in the windows, but they were gauzy, and she could see light through them, as if they had been made of moth wings or ashes.
The walls were white. Pale green geckos moved across them and vanished behind a series of framed paintings of burros. These were Doña Loreto’s melancholy studies, each burro endowed with huge teary eyes that bespoke a sorrow and a nostalgia for better times. Candles and oil lamps fluttered, even though it was midday. Teresita didn’t know if she should blow them out to save the patrón the cost of fresh oil and new wicks.
She reached out her foot and touched a thick carpet. Teresita had never felt anything like it. She stepped onto it and sank her toes into its plush surface. Gold and red designs twined their way around its edge, and its rich blue had roses and vines somehow woven into it.
A harried-looking woman suddenly appeared and said, “You, child, dump this and replace it!,” shoving a sloshing chamber pot into her hands and then vanishing down the hall. “Fúchi!” Teresa said, and she put it down on the nearest couch.
A muted heartbeat arrested her attention. She looked around for the source of the sound. She saw a tall wooden