The Hummingbird's Daughter_ A Novel - Luis Alberto Urrea [88]
“My nose is running!” he reported.
“Those chiles,” Huila noted for the record, “they will do that.”
This kind of absurdity passed for conversation most days in the main house. Tomás ached for the visits of Aguirre. Everyone else around him could only offer such brilliant insights as: coffee is hot—unless it’s cold!
Somehow, after the miracle of Manuelito, Teresita had expected something better than to be exiled to her shack again. Huila had sent her away without blinking an eye. And here she was.
She wandered around the ranch, looking at weeds and comparing them to her sketches. When Teófano’s niece came down with terrible menstrual cramps, she was able to consult her notes and concoct her first potion.
Menstruación difícil:
Abrótano
2% infusion
leaves and stems
steep for 15 minutes
3 cups daily
“Abrótano, abrótano,” she repeated as she walked around, as if saying it would somehow conjure it. An old curandera in the village of Ojo del Chivo finally sold her a bag of it when Teresita rode a horse three miles through cactus forests to see her. The niece made faces when she drank it, but after the third dosage, the cramps eased. By the next morning, they were gone and her blood flowed out like water.
Teresita attended two more births. One girl had a navel sticking so far out of her belly that it looked like a brown finger. She had a dark brown line running straight up her middle, and her stomach was almost a pyramid, she bulged so terribly. The baby would not come. The poor girl writhed and cried for twenty hours, until the midwife fell asleep at her feet. Teresita moved the snoring partera aside and gazed into the painful maw of the birth canal. The girl was beyond this world in pain, making low noises. Teresita did not know what to do, so she put her hands between the girl’s legs and opened her to see what was inside. She was astounded to see a tiny white foot. She knew this was wrong. She pushed her fingers inside and felt the little leg as it retreated back into the mother’s darkness. All she could do was pray.
When the old partera awoke, the sun had come again. She found Teresita kneeling between the mother’s legs, praying for a miracle that could not come. The mother had gone to sleep at last, and she would not wake up again.
They washed her and wrapped her and prayed over her. Teresita went to her husband, one of the People from Palo Cagado, a laborer who had come all this way from Ocoroni. She hugged him and whispered the terrible news, and he sobbed with his head on her shoulder. He was ten years older than Teresita. They all buried her together, and they put two wooden crosses on the mound.
After this terrible event, Teresita stayed home. She dried plants she had collected, and she looked into the eyes of the rattlesnakes on the boulders. She thought of her mother, in those days. It seemed odd to her that her mother would come to mind. But she wondered where Cayetana might be, what she might be doing. She thought of her until, at night, she dreamed of her. Cayetana wore a great straw hat with a wide brim. She carried a parasol. And she walked down a street in a great city. Streetcars clanged as she waited to cross. The buildings rose all around her, and flocks of pigeons flew in great clattering swirls.
These dreams were the sort that Huila had warned her about. She knew this because she awoke with tears on her face. And she also knew this because she had never seen a city, nor a streetcar, nor a tall building. But she knew what they were as soon as she dreamed them.
When Buenaventura appeared, Teresita was delighted.
“Hey,” he said, “you’ve grown.”
“As have you.” She smiled.
He sucked at his teeth.
“Can I sleep here?”
“Is that proper?” she asked.
“Why not?” he asked, hopping off his horse. “Pinche Urrea tossed me out. Thanks, Papá!” He strode into her house.
“People will talk.”
“Why? You’re my sister, ain’t you?”
Teresita stuck her head in the door and said, “What did you say?”
“You didn’t know?”
He was lying on her bed, one hand holding his hat up behind