The Hummingbird's Daughter (46 page)

“Sometimes,” she murmured, “I take their pain into my body. I pull their affliction into me, and then God cures
me.
It is very hard. It leaves me very tired. It is the ultimate test of faith.”

He rested his face on her back and smelled her.

When Cruz awoke on the pew, she was gone.

It was morning, and the jangle and smash of the cooking, feeding throng filled the air. This was the day the Tigers were to return to Tomóchic. Cruz rose, genuflected and made the sign of the cross, retrieved his hat and rifle, and stepped into the day. He blinked in the harsh light and pushed through the bodies.

Teresita was already speaking to a small group on her porch. Cruz spied Rubén and Saint Joseph standing near the steps. Segundo stared at him, leaned over the railing, and spit.

“Where were you?” Cruz asked his men.

“Sleeping,” said Rubén.

Saint Joseph smiled at him.

“I had a miracle,” he said.

“Oh?”

Cruz had already forgotten the tumor on José’s neck.

“Show him,” said Rubén.

José pulled the bandana away from his neck and said, “Look.”

Cruz turned his eyes away from Teresita and stared at his neck. The oblong purple growth was gone. A long pucker of flesh remained on the back of José’s neck where the tumor had been. José laughed. Cruz gasped, laid his finger on the old man’s neck. It was hot, scaly as a lizard’s, but there was no tumor.

“Gone!” Saint Joseph laughed.

Cruz stared at Teresita. She looked up and smiled at him.

“Daughter of God,” he said.

Fifty

THE NOTE WAS LEFT on the porch swing, held down by one of the recently dislodged white rocks from the plazuela.

From: I, the Pope of México Libre, Pastor Cruz Chávez, Leader of Tomóchic, Captain of the Tigers of the Sierra

To: You, Daughter of God, Teresa Urrea, also known as Saint of Cabora, But I prefer Teresita

My dear Saint. No, you do not care to be called Saint, and God bless you for that! Does it not state in the Good Book that we who believe are all Saints in Christ! Amen!

Dear Teresa.

May I call you Teresa? Honestly, I would like to call you Teresita. All right?

Teresita! It is me, Cruz.

The Lord has directed me to inform you that you have passed the test we brought to you. Did I say that right? Forgive me my failures of orthography (I thought you might like this big word) but I do my best. Amen.

José was healed by your touch. By the Holy Spirit! Glorious is the Spirit! Amen. We must go back now. Amen.

You do not like the name, but we place you among our pantheon of saints and guardian angels. Tomóchic will be forever in your personal congregation. We await the day you come to our mountains and preach your gospel.

Until that day, we pray for you. We light candles in your honor.

And in the name of all that is Holy, we will kill anyone who comes against you. Amen and amen.

In God,                  

Cruz Chávez          

Write to me!

I SEND THIS BY COURIER!

My Dear Pope, Your Holiness:

Today, I was forced to let a man die. It was very sad. (Perhaps you recall our conversations. I do!) His sons had brought him on a pallet. He was old and frail. His insides were all hollowed out from cancer.

They cried for me to save their father. I knelt beside the old man and held his hand. “I cannot save you,” I told him. “Must I die?” he asked. “You must.” The sons started yelling, saying I was a fake, a devil. Saying I had no power. I tried to silence them. I told them, “I never had power. The only power I have is the power you yourselves have. God has the power. We are here to serve.” But they were angry at me.

Cruz! So many people are angry at me! I never liked being yelled at, you know. My auntie used to yell terrible things at me. Ay! It would be nicer if everybody liked me. Do you feel this way? Oh, you big Tiger—you don’t care if people like you or not, do you? So fierce!

I whispered to the old man. I told him what we both know. (Heaven and God.) It was he who silenced the sons. Can you believe it? He called them to him and said, “Don’t yell, boys. Don’t be angry. She has given me the best gift—better than healing. She has given me peace. She has given me a good death. I am not afraid.”

They carried him away.

My head hurts after a day like that.

I was sad to see you Tigers were gone. But I cherish your letter.

Your Friend,        

Teresita                

Not
the “Saint”   
of Cabora            

P.S. Do no violence. Kill no one.

Fifty-one

TOMáS COULDN’T SLEEP. Even on the nights when his delightful Gabriela took him into the tender fragrance of her sexuality and they made love late, he lay awake afterward. He could feel the press of the bodies through the walls. The weird gurgle of the crowd. Coughs and scuffles and cries and hiccups. Bellies and noses made endless ugly noises, but they were so faint, especially as the crowds slept, that it almost became a lulling chant, like the sound of the river on that long-distant day that they had begun their journey from Ocoroni and had ridden the leaky ferry raft. One thought led to another. The sound of the wind somehow took him back to the apocalyptic graves of the two Indian lovers in the desert, and he imagined them writhing there still, trying to dig through the unyielding earth with the crowns of their heads.

Gabriela was asleep beside him in her usual cloud of deliciousness. He put his face to her hair and smelled her. Then he put his mouth on her bare belly and lipped the edges of her navel. He pulled the sheet up over her, kicked his legs over the edge of the bed, and leaned his elbows on his knees.

“Oh hell,” he muttered.

He rose, pulled on his trousers and let the suspenders hang down in back. He wore a white undershirt. He washed his face and ran his fingers through his still-thick hair. Not going bald yet! He fixed his mustache.

Might as well go down to the kitchen and see if there was anything to eat.

Tomás snuck out barefoot and made his way down the stairs. He checked the front door, to make sure it was locked. Went down the hall by touch, running his left hand along the wall. He turned the corner into the kitchen and found Teresita sitting at the table.

“Ay!” he said.

“Ay!” she cried.

She had lit a pair of candles. She had a plate before her with a large slice of calabaza. A glass of milk she had strained through a cheesecloth clotted with curds and cow hair.

“Father,” she said. “You startled me.”

“I couldn’t sleep.”

She nodded.

“I thought a snack,” he added, “might help.”

She gestured at her calabaza.

“Me too.”

He stood for a moment, unsure of how to proceed. He finally stepped to her and put his hand on the back of her head. He caught a whiff of roses. Yes, that. The legendary scent. He was almost surprised to feel her hair was sleek, and her skull hard beneath it and curving. He almost blurted:
You’re real!

“Well!” he said. “Let’s see what we have!”

He marched to the pantry with great manly strides.

“A can of peaches,” he called.

“Sounds good.”

“What is this?” he said, holding up a can.

“Plum pudding.”

“What’s that?”

“I don’t know. It’s from England.”

He studied the can.

“It says here there’s rum in it.”

“You like rum,” she said.

“I certainly do!”

He took the can to the big metal table and went after it with a can opener. The rich aroma of plum-and-rum pudding filled the kitchen.

“Do you think the coffee is still warm?” he asked.

“I doubt it. Besides, Father, you don’t want to drink coffee at midnight.”

“Perhaps not.”

“Have milk.”

“Gack!”

“Milk is good for you!”

“Milk,” he informed her, “is disgusting!”

The milk in her glass was watery and nearly blue in the candlelight. “I don’t see anything wrong with it,” she said.

“It
squirts,
” he said, “out of a
cow.
”

She laughed. He plopped the pudding into a glass bowl and sniffed it. He took a canister of cream and poured some of it on the pudding. He sat.

“That squirted out of a cow, too,” Teresita pointed out.

“I’m not drinking it, I’m eating it. And the rum improves it. Look”—he held a spoon up to point at her —“drinking milk is like drinking blood.”

She took a big gulp of milk to wash down a sweet wad of chewed calabaza.

“You have gone insane,” she noted.

“You should know.”

They laughed.

He took a small spoonful of the pudding and worked it in his mouth.

“Oh yes,” he said. “Tasty.”

“Father,” she said, “I didn’t know you had things that bothered you.”

He waved his spoon.

“A million things!”

“Like?”

He shrugged.

“Like, let me see. If I am eating a fish, and I bite a bone, it makes me ill.”

“Really!”

“Or a pebble in my beans. In fact, any unexpected thing in my food makes me want to vomit!”

She laughed.

“You are so delicate!”

“Oh really! And I suppose you have nothing that you hate to eat?”

“I don’t like beer.”

“Beer! Beer is life itself.”

“Spoken like a true drunkard.”

“Show some respect, you.”

The rum was making his nose run.

“I always thought,” Teresita continued, “that beer would taste sweet. But it was bitter. I thought tobacco would taste like chocolate.”

He scraped the last of the pudding out of the bowl with his spoon. “It seems to me your problem lies with your expectations.”

She ate some more calabaza.

“I was never realistic.”

“Idealism will kill you,” he said. “I’m still hungry.”

“There is ham in the wall.”

Aguirre’s last act at Cabora had been to create a cooler deep in the wall farthest from the fireplace. A water cistern sunk in the adobe enclosed the cooler slot and kept the clay from getting warm. Tomás dug out the ham and found some crusty bread and a big knife.

“Wine?” he said.

“I don’t really like wine, thank you.”

“Another revelation.”

He poured himself a stout glass of burgundy.

“All right,” he said. “I have something bothering me.”

“What?”

“Why must you smell like roses?”

Teresa looked at him blankly.

“I smell the roses,” he said. “On you.”

She sniffed herself.

“I can’t smell it anymore. Is it strong?”

“No.”

“That’s a relief.”

“I have always wondered—why roses?” he insisted.

She smiled at him as he sat.

“I suppose,” she said, “all saints smell that way.”

“I have looked in my books,” he said. “A few have smelled like you.”

“The Holy Mother likes roses.”

“Ah! Well! That explains everything. The Holy Mother.”

“The Virgin of Guadalupe brought roses to Juan Diego.”

“Yes, yes,” he said. “I know who the Holy Mother is.”

“But, of course, you don’t believe.”

He spread his palms at her.

“Read history, my dear. That hill where she appeared, Tepeyac. Aztecs had been ‘seeing’ their own goddess there for years. Tonántzin, wasn’t it? A virgin? The priests just laid one fairy tale over another, and they used the same spot for the same kind of fairy.”

She squinted at him.

“The world of reason must be a lonely place,” she said.

This startled him.

“Father,” she said, leaning forward, “do you not think the Mother of God is older than the Aztecs? Do you not think that, if she were to appear right here, right now, the People would think her a Yaqui or a mestiza? That the Aztecs could only understand her as an Aztec figure? How would they know anything other than Aztec religion?”

“Touché,”
he said.

Each of them felt a warm glow in their chests. They secretly loved arguing with each other. They were both grinning.

“But these roses,” he continued, as if she hadn’t spoken at all.

“Roses denote grace,” she said.

“To whom?”

“To God. To Our Lady.”

“What did I tell you? Fairy tales!”

“Is this smell a fairy tale?” she said, raising her arm. “Explain it.”

“Why not honeysuckle? Lavender?”

She shrugged.

“I thought you liked the smell of roses.”

“Who told you that?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I thought everybody did.”

“Not me.”

“You never liked the smell of roses?”

“No.”

“Not even now?”

“Hell no!”

She clapped her hands. Laughed.

“This is marvelous!” she cried.

“Sorry,” he said.

She put her hands on her cheeks.

“Wonderful.”

They laughed and ate.

“Did you see the Apaches?” she asked.

“Today?”

She nodded. “Apaches come to see me sometimes.”

“How do you tell them from all the other Indians?”

“They say, ‘We are Apaches.’”

He smiled.

“Very funny.”

“They wanted to ask me why the Yaquis and the People at Cabora were interested in Jesus.”

“And what did you tell them?”

“I told them that Jesus rose from the dead and walked again.”

“And what did they say?”

“They said, ‘That’s all? Medicine men do that all the time!’”

“The sinners did not accept your savior, eh?”

“My error, I’m afraid.”

“You will have to go to confession,” he said.

“Yes, I seem to have lost a chance to evangelize.”

“Dangerous doctrines!” he bellowed. “Indigenous heresies!”

“Shhh! Not everybody is awake, you know.”

He shrugged. Sipped more wine.

“Aren’t you tired of it?” he asked.

“What?”

“You know what.”

“All this?” She gestured with her spoon.

“Sí. Esto. Todo esto. Este desmadre de santos y pecadores. Todo esto, hija.”

She was quiet for a moment. Toyed with her spoon. Dabbed at her lips with her napkin.

“Every day,” she said.

“What would you do if you could?” he asked. He patted the table loud enough to get her attention. “And don’t tell me ‘Nothing’!”

She thought, looked at her hands.

“I don’t know. . . .”

“Come, come. Tell me. I am your poor old Papá.”

“Oh,” she looked at him. “I would be quiet.”

“Quiet? That’s not exactly clear to me, Teresita. Quiet how?”

“Quiet. I would live in a small cool house under trees. Where no one would look at me. I would grow mint and corn and some tomatoes. I would grow cilantro and find a little humble man and have a baby and I . . . I would be forgotten.”

They stared at each other for a long time. Her eyes became wet. He reached across the table and took her hand.

“Teresita,” he whispered.

She shook her head.

“We could send them all home.”

“No.”

“We could stop all this,” he said. “We could start again. We could move to Alamos, and you could have a little house there. Or —”

“It is not my destiny.”

“You make your own destiny.”

“God makes our destinies.”

“God is a fairy tale!”

She shook her head.

“You forget,” she replied. “I have seen God. His hand touched my palm.”

Tomás let go of her hand, just in case there was some kind of jolt, some mysterious tingle. He wasn’t ready for heavenly gestures at the moment.

“It was a hallucination,” he said, not unkindly.

She turned pitying eyes to him.

“You cannot win your argument with God,” she said. “You are angry—you were orphaned. Your parents died when you were just a boy. You shake your fist at God, and you cry and curse Him every night in your bed. But you cannot win. In the morning, He is still there, waiting for you. All unbelievers are the same.”

He rested his chin on his fist.

“And?” he prodded.

“And you always thought it made you different. You always felt unique. Above all the fools who followed God. But everyone who stops believing thinks he is the smartest one. You all compete with each other, not with God. Do you know how a child says ‘I’m not afraid’ when she’s afraid? How a child will tell you how innocent he is, no matter if there is a broken window and he stands before you holding rocks? You unbelievers are like that. Sad little boys.”

“How do you think you know these things?”

“It is obvious if you only look,” she replied. “I can see more than you think.”

“Like?”

“Like your aura—it wants to be gold and white, but your rages make it turn red —”

“Hija, hija, hija,” he interrupted. “Stop that.” He shook his head. “Daughter, you worry me.”

She sat back in her chair.

“I know.” She rubbed her face. “I worry myself.”

“Who are you?” he said.

“I am the same girl I was.”

“No! No. Don’t tell me that. Whatever you have become, you are not the same girl. Not now. Not anymore.”

She took her plate to the sink.

“Perhaps not,” she said. “I don’t know.”

“It is obvious,” he said, only slightly mocking her, “if you only look. Does that make me a saint, too? My seeing the obvious?”

“I never said I was a saint.”

“But they do.”

“I try to stop them.”

“You’ve wanted to be a saint from the day you could talk,” he said.

She turned and stared at him.

“Tell me I’m wrong.”

He went to a shelf and found a small black cheroot and struck a match and took a puff.

“Sí, o no?” he said.

She sighed. If she were a vaquero, she would have taken that moment to spit.

“Perhaps,” she said. “I never thought about it.”

“Yes you did.”

“Is it a crime to want to be good?” she cried.

He took the little wicked cigar out of his mouth.

“Easy,” he said. “Easy. Don’t get excited.”

She put her hand on her head.

“Oh,” she said. “I don’t know.” She sat down. “I wanted a boyfriend. A puppy. A pink dress.”

She looked up at him and grinned.

That was when they heard the tapping on the back door. It must have been going like that for a while, but they hadn’t noticed it.

“What is that, a mouse?” he said.

She shrugged.

He got up and went to the door and threw the latch, yanked it open.

There, on the back step, was a stinking and filthy urchin. His scent of sickness and garbage wafted into the kitchen.

“Ah cabrón!” Tomás said.

He was an Indian boy. His bare feet were black, his toenails split and bloody. He wore ruined trousers and a beaten and burned jacket, no shirt. His eyes were runny, and his upper lip was caked in crystallized snot. His hair was hard and vertical, coming off his scalp in spikes.