The Hummingbird's Daughter_ A Novel - Luis Alberto Urrea [81]
T E R E S I T A.
“I am learning,” Teresita said.
Huila touched the page and sat down.
“Do you have water?” she asked. “I am thirsty.”
Teresita brought her a clay cup of water, and the old one sipped at it and looked for Teresita’s altar. There was none. There were no santos. Only a bare cross made of two ironwood twigs.
Sage hung from the vigas of the roof. Other weeds.
“What is that?” Huila asked.
“Lavender.”
“What does lavender accomplish?”
“It smells good.”
Huila’s eyebrows went up. She sipped more water.
“Stand,” she said.
Teresita stood.
“You are big now.”
“I am.”
Teresita took up her pencil and bent back down over the paper. She put more Yori letters on the sheet. She turned the sheet around on the table and showed it to Huila. The old one bent down and squinted. It said: H U I L A.
“What is this?”
“It is your name,” Teresita said.
At first, Huila wanted to snatch it up and crumple it. But she looked at it a moment longer. Put her finger on it.
“What is this one?” she asked, touching the H. “The one that looks like a ladder?”
“That is the H,” Teresita explained.
“Get me a ladder,” Huila muttered.
They laughed.
“Very interesting,” Huila said. “May I keep it?”
Teresita nodded. The old one folded the page and put it in her apron, nestled among her buffalo teeth and small bones and bullets.
“You have visited births,” Huila said.
“Sí.”
“With the parteras.”
“Sí.”
“What did you think?”
Teresita closed her eyes and smiled.
“It is . . . wonderful, and it is terrible. I love the mothers, their terrible bellies, their strength. I love the infants.”
“You don’t fear it?”
“Oh sí, Huila. Claro que sí.”
“Blood.”
“Terrible.”
“Suffering.”
“Terrible.”
Huila nodded.
“This is what you want to do, then,” she said. “Bring young ones into the world?”
“No,” Teresita said. “I don’t think so.”
“What, then?”
“I want to ease suffering.”
Huila put her hands flat on the table.
They looked at each other for a long while, and they smiled for no reason. The candle burned low. Orange light filled part of the room, and brown shadows filled the corners.
“Very well,” Huila finally said. “We must go to the teacher.”
“You are my teacher.”
“This is a different land, child. A different angel watches these deserts. We must find the teacher of these lands. We will go in the morning.”
“Good,” said Teresita.
“Do you have a bed for me?”
“Take mine.”
“And you?”
“I was raised on the floor, Huila.”
They knelt together and prayed as the candle quietly died, and Teresita helped Huila into her small bed.
Loreto slapped Tomás.
He had decided to bring Buenaventura along with him. He’d had some foolish idea that a clean slate was best for everyone. A reckoning. The scene of understanding and forgiveness in his mind was abruptly shattered.
“How could you!” she sobbed, then fled to her room. Juan Francisco II, his oldest boy, stared at him with a look of outraged betrayal. He turned his back on his father and strode from the room.
“Boy!” Tomás bellowed. “Come back here now!”
But, of course, Juan was out the door and stomping down the street.
Loreto came back out and threw ten of Tomás’s books on the floor.
“Mi amor,” Tomás said. “It was an indiscretion!”
“Bastard!”
“I don’t know what came over me.”
“Animal!”
“It meant nothing —”
“How dare you say it meant nothing! You betrayed me for nothing?”
“I suppose it meant something at the time, but —”
“Oh! So it did mean something to you? Did you love her? Did you love your little Indian whore?”
A teacup flew at great speed and hit the wall, distributing shards of china in a wide starburst.
“Don’t think I didn’t know!” she snarled.
“Know what?”
“Don’t. Think. I. Didn’t. Know. About your whores! About your endless adventures with every filthy peasant who opened her legs!”
“Loreto, really. Such talk!”
“Did you molest the cows and pigs, too, you cabrón?”
“Loreto—you