The Hummingbird's Daughter_ A Novel - Luis Alberto Urrea [4]
They still spoke a thousand languages—Spanish, too, to be sure, but also a thicket of songs and grammars. Mexico—the sound of wind in the ruins. Mexico—the waves rushing the shore. Mexico—the sand dunes, the snowfields, the steam of sleeping Popocatépetl. Mexico—across marijuana fields, tomato plants, avocado trees, the agave in the village of Tequila.
Mexico. . . .
All around them, in the small woods, in the caves, in the precipitous canyons of copper country, in the swamps and at the crossroads, the harsh Old Ones gathered. Tlaloc, the rain god, lips parched because the Mexicans no longer tortured children to feed him sweet drafts of their tears. The Flayed One, Xipe Totec, shivering cold because priests no longer skinned sacrifices alive and danced in their flesh to bring forth the harvest. Tonántzin, goddess of Tepeyac, chased from her summit by the very Mother of God, the Virgen de Guadalupe. The awesome and ferocious warrior god, Hummingbird on the Left, Huitzilopochtli. Even the Mexicans’ friend, Chac Mool, was lonely. Big eared and waiting to carry their hopes and dreams in his bowl as he transited to the land of the gods from the earth, he lay on his back watching forever in vain for the feathered priests to return. Other Old Ones hid behind statues in the cathedrals that the Spaniards had built with the stones of their shattered temples. The smell of sacrificial blood and copal seeped out from between the stones to mix with incense and candles. Death is alive, they whispered. Death lives inside life, as bones dance within the body. Yesterday is within today. Yesterday never dies.
Mexico. Mexico.
The pain in her belly kicked Cayetana Chávez over. She dropped her cup. She felt a cascade of fluids move down her bowels as the child awoke. Her belly!
It clenched. It jumped. It clenched.
At first, she thought it was the cherries. She had never eaten them before. If she had known they would give her a case of chorro . . .
“Ay,” she said, “Dios.”
She thought she was going to have to rush to the bushes.
They had come for her the day before. The Chávez girls were known by everybody. Although Santana Ranch was divided into two great lobes of territory—crops to the south and cattle to the north—there were only fifty workers’ households, and with the children and grandparents added up, it made for fewer than 150 workers. Everybody knew better than to bother Cayetana’s older sister, Tía. Good Christ: the People would rather move a rattlesnake out of their babies’ cribs with a stick than go to Tía’s door. So when they came from the northern end of the rancho with news that one of the Chávez sisters’ cousins had killed himself, they’d asked for La Semalú.
Ay, Dios. Cayetana was only fourteen, and she had already learned that life was basically a long series of troubles. So she had wrapped her rebozo around her head and put on her flat huaraches and begun her slow waddle through the darkness before the sun rose.
She wondered, as she walked, why the People called her Hummingbird. Was it because she was small? Well, they were all small. Everyone knew semalús were holy birds, carrying prayers to God. She also knew she had a bad reputation, so calling her Semalú was probably some kind of joke. They loved to make jokes. Cayetana spit: she did not think anything was funny. Especially now. Her poor cousin. He had shot himself in the head. Her mother and father were dead, shot down in an army raid in Tehueco lands. Her aunt and uncle had been hanged in a grove of mango