The Hummingbird's Daughter_ A Novel - Luis Alberto Urrea [86]
Teresita learned to walk slowly by pacing beside Manuelito. They spent their days strolling the desert, and he told her about each plant they met, and what it was like, and what it could do, and what other plants it liked and which it hated. Which plants were its relatives. Which plants could give you crazy dreams. He taught her which plants could kill as well as heal. He was often barefoot.
“I like to be in contact with my mother,” he explained.
Teresita surprised Manuelito with a secret weapon of her own: pencils and a couple of Aguirre’s notebooks. She sketched the plants in the notebooks, and she scratched their names and their details onto the pages. Manuelito was astounded by this. He made her teach him to write his name, and she showed him the letters. He held the pencil in his fist and made wobbly letters, then beamed at his name when he was through. They put the page on the wall of his house. When she was done with her studies, she had two hundred plants listed in her books.
“Why do I pierce my ear?”
“I know! I know that one! Huila told me!”
“Well?”
“You pierce your ear to show God you are no longer deaf! You are ready to listen!”
He was surprised.
“Very good,” he said. “Now, here is another question. Why is it my left ear?”
“I do not remember.”
“Because the left side is the side of the heart.”
“If it is the side of the heart . . .”
“Then I show the Creator I am truly, deeply, listening.”
Teresita nodded.
He continued: “Christians don’t like the left side, but Indians do. Christians have forgotten their hearts. When a medicine woman hugs you, if she means it, she will move you to the side and put her heart on yours. Does Huila do this?”
Teresita laughed.
“Huila does not hug.”
“Too bad for Huila,” he said. “You should teach her.”
They walked.
“Have you noticed,” he asked, “how the Yoris hug?” He used the word from her own language. “They never put their hearts together. They lean in and barely touch the tops of their chests, and they hang their asses out in the wind so none of the good parts touch. Then they flutter their hands on each other’s backs. Pat-pat-pat! One-two-three! Then they run away!”
From that day forward, Teresita always hugged people with the left side of her chest pressed to them, and she let the good parts touch if they had to.
When it came time for them to leave him, Manuelito sat cross-legged in the dirt before his house and painted blue flowers on the face of his guitar. He handed it to her. She took it in her arms and wept.
“I told you you would cry.”
“You are a wicked man,” she said.
“True.”
He took his cross on a chain and put it around her neck.
“Remember me,” he said.
She put the guitar down and threw her arms around him and sobbed.
“I will miss you,” she cried.
He patted her hair with his great red hand. His fingers looked like big sticks to him as they moved down her hair. Her head rested in the center of his chest.
“Is this love?” she said into his shirt.
“Sí.”
“How do I know?”
“Listen to my heart,” he said.
She turned her head and put her ear against his great chest. She could hear his gut gurgling and whining. They had eaten fried beans for breakfast. She smiled.
“Thank you,” she said.
He patted her head.
“Go now,” he said.
As they got in the wagon, Huila said, “Gracias.”
He waved.
“May we pay you?” she asked.
He shook his head.
“Pray for me when you think of it,” he said.
Teófano turned the wagon away.
“And,” Manuelito said, “be kind.”
“Eh?” said Huila.
Teresita shouted, “Will I see you again?”
He did not answer.
Don Teófano said, “Andale!” and his mules surged ahead.
Twenty-seven
THE ENGINEER AGUIRRE had constructed a great white boiler-plate tank on the roof. A pipe led from a well beside the courtyard, and a brisk pumping session each morning on a long ax handle fitted to the pump-head worked a gurgling tide up to the roof.