The Hummingbird's Daughter_ A Novel - Luis Alberto Urrea [85]
On his bed lay a guitar. Teresita picked it up and strummed it.
He served them a tasty stew made from goat and desert tubers and sage. Don Teófano gobbled his so fast he got a bellyache. Manuelito poured them cups of mint tea.
“What do you wish to learn?” Manuelito asked.
“Plants,” said Huila. “She wishes to heal.”
He sat back, rubbed his belly.
“Plants are a big responsibility. How many plants do you know?”
“I know thirty plants,” Teresita boasted.
He sighed.
“A good herb doctor knows a hundred plants. An hechicero knows one thousand plants at the very least.”
She was stunned.
“How long does that take?” she asked.
“Not long. One and a half lifetimes could prepare you.”
“More stew?” Teófano asked.
“Help yourself.”
“But I am smart,” Teresita said.
“Being smart does not always mean anything in matters of spirit,” Manuelito said.
“You are a strong girl,” he added, “and you are also a wild boy.”
A wild boy! She was so shocked by this that she just stared and blushed. What sort of insult was this?
“Are you insulted?” he asked.
“No,” she lied.
“You are a boy. Did you not know?”
“How am I a boy?” she asked, her toes curling beneath her.
Manuelito said, “Why is my hair long?”
“I don’t know.”
“Guess.”
“You’re an Indian.”
“I am also a woman.” He took a great gulp of tea. “Why do you think we wear our hair long like this? Among my people, it is so the men might honor our sisters and the women within us. And you know we are the fiercest warriors in the world! My brothers will happily cut out an enemy’s guts while he is alive and let him watch dogs eat them!”
“Dios mío!” said Don Teófano. These damned Indians!
“And then they’ll set fire to him and laugh at his screams.”
“I hope they don’t come to visit while we’re here,” Teresita said.
Manuelito laughed.
“Still,” he said. “Still. We are both man and woman. My brothers can be tender as mothers with their infants. Women can fight like tigers. Do you see? We are all a mix of each. Power starts when you strike the proper balance. Believe me when I tell you that the woman part of you is the better part. But you are also a man.”
He put his hand on her face.
“It doesn’t mean you are not very pretty.”
Teresita loved Manuelito.
They stayed for two weeks. He told her what she could share with others, and what she couldn’t share. He told her he had a wife and two sons at a ranchería not more than three days’ ride from here, but the medicine was not to his wife’s liking, so she lived near his mother and grandmother and their husbands beside a small pond at the foot of a ridge he called La Espina del Diablo.
“Is that where you rode in from?”
“It was.”
“I thought you were off at war, or on a raiding party.”
“I was eating chocolate cake and drinking buttermilk and trying to make a third child.”
“Make a daughter.”
“I would love to make a daughter! I can’t wait to get back! I have work to do!”
“Manuelito,” she warned, becoming his teacher for a moment, “don’t let your wife hear you call that work.”
They laughed.
He told her stories as they walked. Huila and Teófano, in the meantime, lounged and smoked and lied to each other and played cards. The two riflemen spent their days hunting rabbits and sleeping. They had hidden a few bottles of tequila in their bags, and these gave them reason to sleep.
He took her out to the shade of a scraggly tree with yellow flowers on it. They sat in the gravel, and tiny leaves and small yellow petals rained down on them. The tree was alive with bees. Manuelito said nothing. Neither did Teresita. He gestured up at the bees with his eyebrows. She listened. She could hear the bodies of the bees scraping around in the flowers. After a while Manuelito began to chuckle. So did Teresita. Soon, it seemed that the muttering of bees was the funniest thing they had ever heard. They sat there laughing out loud. They occasionally nudged each other and collapsed in hilarity. They wiped their