The Hummingbird's Daughter (33 page)

They came running, Tomás first, with Gabriela close behind. Huila could not run now. She thumped after them as fast as she could, working her crutch in the uneven earth.

They came upon Teresita kneeling over Buenaventura, shouting, “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

He seemed to be dying of lockjaw, arching farther and farther back, forming a painful bow with his spine. His eyes, wild with terror, searched their faces, and his mouth had dirt in it, his tongue was muddy. Small sticks clung to his cheeks, his lips. Straw dangled in his hair. He moaned and whinnied.

Teresita looked up at them and said, “I can’t fix him.”

Tomás yelled, “What did you do? What did you do?”

“I don’t know. I—nothing!”

Gabriela put her hand on her throat and backed away.

Huila pushed through them and dropped her crutch and groaned down to her knees. She shoved Teresita aside, saying, “Get out of my way.”

Teresita scooted back, reached for Buenaventura’s hand, but he jerked away from her, making piteous noises.

Huila turned to her with a scowl.

“I told you to be careful,” she spit.

“What did I do?” Teresita begged her. “What did I do?”

Tomás grabbed the back of her dress, took a bunch of the collar in his fist, and ripped her up from the ground. Gabriela could hear the material tearing in his grip. He was talking through clenched teeth:
“What did you do to your brother?”
He raised a fist, as if to strike her, but Gabriela jumped on his arm and held his fist back.

“Gordo!” she shouted. “Gordo, no!”

Teresita closed her eyes to receive the blow, but wrestle as he might with Gaby, Tomás could not strike her. Instead, he flung her back to the ground.

“What is wrong with you?” he yelled.

She folded over, put her head against the ground, clutched the soil. Teresita knew how to grovel. She awaited the kicks with her eyes squeezed shut.

Huila snapped, “Get a plank. We have to get him inside.”

Several ranch hands had wandered over to watch this scene, and Tomás pointed at them. Two of them trotted to the barn to find a plank that could hold the weight of Buenaventura’s body.

They ran back carrying a six-foot length of wall board. They laid it in the dirt, and Huila and the men rolled Buenaventura’s creaking stiff body onto it, tied him in place with a belt and Huila’s apron. “Hurry,” she said. “Run him to the house. The kitchen. Run—have the girls heat water. Go!” They lifted him and ran toward the house as he yipped and kicked one stiff leg. Huila struggled to her feet. Tomás gave her the crutch. She glared at Teresita for a moment, then hurried away.

Tomás pointed down at his daughter and said, “I’ve had enough of this! Do you hear me? Enough!”

She looked up at him, dirt on her face, her hair wild, and he was startled—she looked like an animal, just for an instant; she had a face like a coyote or a fox, her tears cutting strange colored lines through the dust on her cheeks.

“No more!” he said. “No more! No more tricks, no more magic, no more Indian garbage. Do you understand?”

She nodded, hid her face from his rage.

“I won’t stand for it any longer! Are you out of your
mind?
Do you know what the government could do to us? Do you know . . .” He turned away. “Pendeja!” he shouted at her, though he did not mean to be so harsh, did not mean to use such a crude term with her.

He pushed Gabriela aside and strode away, cursing, shaking his head.

Gaby stood staring at Teresita. She was afraid, suddenly.

“Do you need help?” she asked.

Teresita shook her head.

She stood and dusted herself off. She wiped the tears and dirt from her face with her palms. Then she walked, silently, through the watchers and across the long yard, to the door of the house.

They worked on Buenaventura all night on the big table in the kitchen. He let out terrible cries as he spasmed and jerked. Huila poured cool water over him, tied his limbs down, forced herbs into his mouth. Tomás and Gaby worked beside her, stroking his brow, holding his legs. No one had ever seen such a thing, except for rabid dogs going mad down the arroyos before the vaqueros shot them.

Huila burned sage over him, rubbed oils on his head. She prayed the rosary and did a full limpia ceremony, driving ills from his gut. She undid his trousers and laid a stinking brown and yellow poultice between his legs. Gabriela covered her face.

Finally, as the sun was breaking out of the east, Buenaventura stilled. His clenched hand relaxed, and he sighed. The painful bow of his back straightened until he lay flat on the table. He started to snore.

“The boy will live,” Huila said.

No one came for her all the next day. She did not eat breakfast or lunch or supper. She only drank water from her hand-washing pitcher, and she sweltered in the heat trapped behind her shutters.

It was an accident that she didn’t even understand, and they all acted as if she’d planned it. She had been betrayed before, had been betrayed by her mother and by Tía and by her cousins. But this—to be betrayed by her brother, and by Huila, and by her father and Gaby. She felt her face—it was ugly. Ugly and lumpy. Her body was bony and pale and hideous. Her belly hung out, her ribs showed, and her bottom was wobbly and ugly as Huila’s. They had all seen her for the freak she was. All along, they’d seen that she was a monster. The only one who had not seen it was she herself.

This was the day her worst fear was realized. No matter what she did, no matter who she helped or what pain she helped to ease, she would not be rewarded. No matter how much good she tried to do in the world, Teresita suddenly saw that she was always going to be alone.

She arose before dawn. She listened to everyone snoring, then walked down the hall. She was out on the plain before anyone awoke. She avoided Huila’s sacred grove of cottonwoods, and found a small holy spot of her own. She prayed, though she was unworthy of God’s ear. She waited until hummingbirds began their rounds, and she told them of her sorrows. They buzzed and rang around her head, hummed and sang their songs, songs too fast for any human ear to hear, songs that came to her like sharp kisses in the wind. Bees hovered at her eyes, her lips. Crickets clung to her rebozo and tinkled like small bells. Cicadas rose from the earth and cracked their shells and screamed around her as she walked. Coyotes followed her. Jackrabbits hid in the creosote bushes and watched her pass. Roadrunners trotted in front of her and behind, like an honor guard, waggling their tails, the leaders often looking back at her as they ran through the brush. The desert was alive at her feet. She crossed the shell-like prints of the javelinas’ hooves, the long swirls of the sidewinder’s passing. Rattlesnakes lifted their heads and flicked their tongues at her as she passed, but they did not rattle. Clover blossomed. And she walked on, walked alone, for hours—walked weeping over her brother, praying for forgiveness, praying to be found worthy. She walked until the sun burned her dizzy, and she had to lie beneath a mesquite tree or a paloverde, gulping hot air like water, sometimes falling into fretful sleep, jagged dreams.

Buenaventura mended slowly. Although his arm had come down from over his head, it was weak, and his hands shook. His left leg was painful, and he limped. He would limp for years to come.

He was quiet, polite. He addressed Tomás as “sir” and Gaby as “doña.” He didn’t speak at all to Huila. When he saw Teresita, he hung his head or left the room.

One day, Tomás sent for Teresita.

A kitchen girl knocked on her door and called, “Teresita? The patrón? He wants you in the library. Por favor?”

When Teresita opened her door, the girl flinched and hurried away.

She came down the stairs. Gaby smiled up at her. Reached out and touched Teresita’s hand. Teresita drifted by as if in a dream. She no longer invited Gaby to her room. She had not seen Fina Félix since that bad day. They would never again sleep beside her. There would be no more flying trips.

She went down the cool stone hall and entered the library. Huila drowsed on the small leather couch, her crutch propped against her knee starting to slip. Tomás sat in his great chair, smoking a thin cigar. Standing before him was Buenaventura. He was dressed in his best brown suit, and he clutched his hat before him in both hands. The hat was shaking.

Tomás said, “Please repeat what you were saying.”

Buenaventura cleared his throat.

“Sir,” he said. “I would like permission to move to Aquihuiquichi. I . . . I would like to leave the ranch.”

“Oh, Buenaventura,” Teresita said. “Please don’t leave.”

He stepped away from her.

“My, my condition,” he said, “makes it hard for me to ride or to do my, my work. And,” he looked at the floor, “I think it would be better, sir, for me to be gone from here.”

“I love you,” Teresita said.

Her brother dropped his hat and held both shaking hands up before him.

“Please!” he said.

“All right, all right,” Tomás said. “Enough.”

He pointed at Teresita.

“Never again,” he said.

He pointed at Buenaventura.

“Go,” he said.

She took her food to her room. Sometimes, she crept out at night, after they were asleep, and she ran through the moonlit fields. Coyotes paced her, ran invisible all around her, calling to her. And the dead, too, ran beside her. They cried out to her, the lost elders and the murdered children, the massacred grandmothers and the slaughtered warriors. They called to her, sang with the coyotes, raised hymns that sounded, in the forgiving dark, like far wind in leaves, like water rippling in a still cove, like the calls of some nearly forgotten migrating birds. When she thought God could hear her, she asked Him, “Why have you left me here alone?” The only answer she received was the parched midnight wind.