The Hummingbird's Daughter_ A Novel - Luis Alberto Urrea [30]
The door banged open, and Huila emerged, hair a wild tangle, lamp in one hand and shotgun in the other, veering in every direction.
“Show yourself, desgraciado!”
Teresita called out.
“Huila!”
The shotgun aimed in her direction. Huila raised the lamp and squinted out.
“Who is that?”
“Over here,” Teresita said.
“Quién es?”
“It is I, old woman,” Teresita called. “The Hummingbird’s daughter.”
Huila let the twin hammers down on her shotgun, and she set it against the wall. She stepped down from the small porch and said, “Child?”
“Here.”
Huila held out the lamp and walked to her.
“Oh, no,” she said. “What have they done to you?”
“I got spanked.”
“Yes,” said Huila. “Yes, you surely did.”
She pulled Teresita up and lifted her in one arm. Teresita wrapped her legs around the old woman, and she rode her hip back to the house. Buenaventura, watching from the bushes, nodded when the door slammed and the light was extinguished. Then he ran to the porch and stole the shotgun Huila had left behind.
“Apparently,” the old woman said, “I can’t escape you.”
She set Teresita on the white metal table in the kitchen. It was cold to the touch, but it felt good against the welts and bruises.
“Did you pee on yourself?”
“Sí, Huila.”
“Ay, niña,” Huila said, shaking her head. “No matter what happens to you, don’t ever pee on yourself. They always know they’ve won when you pee on yourself. I’ve seen grown men, when they’re tied to the post, pee down their legs in fear. I’ve seen them, when the noose is on their necks, letting water escape. Fear kills you twice, and it gives your enemy pleasure.” She lifted lids on clay pots and sniffed at their openings. “That’s why I don’t like pinches dogs! They fall over and wag their tails and pee all over themselves to let you know you’re the master. Pah! We have no masters!” She pointed at Teresita. “So no peeing!”
“I promise.”
“Good.”
Huila dipped some water from a bucket and went to the fire, which was a pulse of banked coals. She put the water in a pot and hung the pot on a black iron hook, then built a small pyramid of sticks beneath it. The fire sprang up when she blew on it.
“Nobody can build a fire like old Huila!” she said.
Doña Loreto had ordered some cherry pies from Guaymas. They had arrived in flat wooden cases, and only one of them had spoiled—it was alive in its slim shelf with maggots, and Loreto had sent it to the pigpen. But the other six pies were in fine shape, and Huila now took a long knife and cut a drooling wedge and put it on a plate and set the plate on the table beside Teresita. She handed the girl a fork.
Teresita sniffed the pie. It was red. For some reason she did not
understand, it made her nostalgic for her mother.
“Eat.”
“Sí, Huila.”
Teresita grabbed the fork in her fist and ripped a glob of pie loose and stuffed it in her mouth.
“God,” Huila sighed.
“What?”
The old one took the fork away from Teresita and opened her fist and turned her wrist and put the fork back in her hand, balanced on her fingers.
“This is how you hold a fork,” she said.
And: “You don’t have to eat the whole pie in one bite! Nobody’s going to take it away from you.”
And: “Chew with your mouth shut. If you want to live with donkeys, eat like a donkey. If you want to live among human beings, eat like a human being. You chew like a churn making butter.”
“Sí, Huila.”
“Milk?”
“Yes, please.”
“More pie?”
“Yes, please.”
“Well, I might have a small bite of pie myself.”
Together, they scraped the whole pie tin clean.
“It hurts,” Teresita said.
“Yes.”
Huila cleaned the black pig mud out of the wounds. She had wrapped crushed cuasia in a cheesecloth, then soaked it in the hot water from the hanging pot.
“Don’t squirm.”
“Ay.”
Huila felt—what? What was it she felt in her fingertips? A flash of the golden sparks, perhaps. A sudden onrush of heat through the skin.
“Do that