The Hummingbird's Daughter_ A Novel - Luis Alberto Urrea [98]
Item R: Huila
If Huila ever came back from tending to Loreto, Teresita would be given exclusive access to her—and whatever Huila had on her agenda for the day would supersede any chores or plans Tomás had concocted.
Item S: Marriage
Someday. Not anytime soon. And Tomás would handle the arrangements. Including the identity of the groom.
“Have I no say?” Teresita demanded.
“Certainly,” he said: “you may say ‘I do’ at the wedding.”
Item T: Cahita
Tomás requested that Teresita speak Spanish at all times.
She could not comply.
Item U: Liquor
She could drink if she wanted to, as long as she was with her father.
She did not want to.
Item V: The Library
She petitioned for the right to read whatever Tomás had in his library. Una infamia! It was unheard of! He was appalled to learn that it was Aguirre himself, that snake, who had started teaching her to read and write. It took only three days of her angry silence to force him to acquiesce to her demands. The first book she read was Bernal Díaz del Castillo’s chronicle of the Spanish conquest. She did not care for Tomás’s beloved Jules Verne. Even in translation, it seemed boring and boyish to her. They began to order books by post. Juana Austen. Las Hermanas Brontë.
Item W: School
The only schools were in Alamos or Tucson. She did not want to go to school. He did not want her to go. Tomás and Aguirre created a course of study for her that she added to her field studies and dream work. Sometimes, while she was asleep, she read books in distant libraries. In dreams, French or German was easy to read.
Item X: About the Dream Time
Tomás preferred not to hear about any of her more peculiar enthusiasms or astral adventures.
Item Y: Friends
Teresita was allowed all the friends she wanted, as long as they were (1) female and (2) of her new social class.
Girls from El Potrero were not invited into the main house. But girls from the local haciendas and villages were. An Indian princess from some imagined Sioux or Cheyenne tribe would have been welcomed with ceremonial bowing and scraping, but an Indian girl from El Potrero would not be let in the door. Josefina Félix, her first friend, was a regular visitor. She slept in Teresita’s bed with her three nights a week.
Tomás almost fell off his chair when Teresita returned from one of her horse rides with Gabriela Cantúa.
“Can she sleep over, Father?” Teresita asked.
“My God,” he replied.
“How are your bees?” Gabriela asked.
Item Z: Loreto
Teresita was asked to remain cordial and respectful at all times, and this was no problem since she, like all the People, dearly loved Loreto and thought of her as a Great Mother along the lines of the Virgin of Guadalupe.
Thirty-one
TERESITA SLEPT IN HER HUGE BED between Josefina and Gabriela.
At nineteen, Gabriela was older than the other girls. Josefina was a plump and giggly sixteen-year-old with dark skin and a small mole beside her nose. Teresita, fifteen now, was a year older than her mother had been when she’d been born.
“I am in love with your father,” Gabriela confessed.
“Me too!” blurted Josefina.
“You and everybody else,” said Teresita as they burrowed in the covers and whispered. “And Fina—you’re in love with all vaqueros.”
“Oh yes!” Josefina agreed.
“No, Teresa,” Gabriela insisted. “I mean I love him.”
“Yes. I know.”
“Love him, as in love him?” said La Fina. “Or love him, as in have his babies LOVE him?”
“Babies!”
“Ay Dios!”
“Ay!” cried Teresita.
Laughter.
“What will I do?”
“Marry him!” La Fina said.
“He is married, tonta!”
“Oh. I forgot.”
Teresita sighed, looked at Josefina, and made a face.
“Gaby will be my mother,” she said.
The three girls burst out laughing.
Teresita turned to Gaby and put out her hand.
“Hello, Mother, how do you do?”
“Hello, Daughter! Clean your room!”
They laughed louder.
Beneath them, Tomás banged on the ceiling of the library to get them to quiet down. He would have to add a nonnegotiable bedtime to Teresita’s