Hunger's Brides (47 page)

“No, Ixpetz. It is something I have done….”

She seemed unsure how to begin, was worried about what Abuelo might have been willing or unwilling to tell me. There was something that happened long ago…. But I knew all
about
it, the fall from the horse when she was almost ready to have Amanda. And to have turned her hair white almost overnight it must have been unendurably painful.
Of course
she couldn't work in the fields anymore with her hip … and though I was
anxious to help, I could not help mentioning that surely she did not miss life in the fields so much, any more than I believed she regretted so very much coming to nurse me. And though my mother was sometimes harsh, I thought things would be better now, and Xochitl did not really think a life of fieldwork was for Amanda. Xochitl stopped me with something puzzling.

“But I did not work in the fields, Ixpetz.”

She had first met my grandfather in her village. He had ridden up there more than once, interested to learn more about Ocelotl. She asked me something still more puzzling, if I had ever once seen any of her people on a horse. “Spaniards ride horses. We do not.”

Then I saw it with perfect clarity. My mind recoiled from the thought.
It was Abuelo's horse
. He would never have forgiven himself—
of course…
. Though this was something that happened even to the finest horsemen.

“I always walked back down to the village alone.” She could not look at me. “But we were late. The horse was going fast. The light …” So clearly then I saw her riding behind him, at dusk, her arms at his waist trying to hold on—with her so pregnant, as Isabel had just been—reaching around that great egg between them to cling to his coat—just as the horse stepped into a
toza
burrow.

Now she was talking about her village, her high standing among the villagers as the
curandero's
daughter, the blood of Ocelotl. Whose mist had not scattered. She had been a healer herself already, and almost a midwife—it was proper that she had never married. Old for a bride, they said, but young for a midwife. The joke had been gentle, and in it their approval. A fish of gold they called her, with pride.

“Quen tehito…
. Can you understand, Ixpetz?”

“Regarded by the people.”

“They said this of Pedro. I mean your grandfather.” I had never heard her use his name, but who else could she mean? I felt a rush of pride.

“They say it also of your mother. The land is in her heart, the earth.”

This, I did not want to hear. Heart of clay, more like it.

“They respect you, Xochita. I could always tell.”

Slowly she shook her head. “They do not say fish of gold now, Ixpetz.
Tla alaui, tlapetzcaui in tlalticpac. Quen uel ximimatia in teteocuitlamichi.”

Things slip, things slide in this world. Fish of gold, what happened to you?

“Did you know Abuelo asked for my help, Xochita?—to look after you and Amanda.”

Again a moment of surprise, that I should feel better for trying to comfort her and yet that in trying to comfort, I should seem so to wound her.

Now, I thought, surely now with her face so tender. If I just asked her once more. Why else had she been telling me all this if not to convey her fears for Amanda, and how delicate a thing was destiny? But Amanda and I would be together, we would care for each other.

“For the last time, Ixpetz—No! Will you never open your eyes? Amanda will
never go to that place.”

The words hung in the air as I fled—out through the dining room and into the courtyard and up the watchtower steps. She had never spoken to me like that. It stayed in my mind all that night.

I sensed it in Xochitl's voice if not her words. The more I thought about it, the more clearly I saw it in her face. She had scratched the jade, had torn the quetzal feather.
Xochita
. Who was wise and strong and good. Whose ancestor was Ocelotl. Even she could do something terrible.

And if she could, I could.

In the quiet of my room the tears came as a relief. So much had happened in the past two days. There was so much about the world I had never found in books. I saw Isabel's face, not gloating, but as if to say she had been telling me this all along.

There began, at about this time, two dreams that have recurred many times. Two nightmares, or perhaps they are one in two parts. A black dog at the killing floor skinned and bloated and swinging from a pole, and Amanda at Ixayac, naked beside the plunge pool. As she slathered our magic cream of honey and avocado all over, her eyes never left mine, never left them as the wasps began to land, never left them until she was furred in gold and they began to sting and sting all over her face, her breasts and thighs that purpled and swelled, her eyes that ran gold….

By morning I was sure I knew what Xochita was telling me.
I had scratched the jade, too
. I had been afraid of this myself, the words had even come into my mind, though I had not truly understood what this could mean. Now it was clear. It
was
why she would not let Amanda go with me. Because Amanda had told her what had happened at Ixayac.

And if Amanda could not come to Mexico with me …?

For eleven-year-olds, things need not be complicated. All reduced to this: What was my perfect gesture to be? How would I answer hers?—all her perfect gifts to me. Isabel was sending me away. Just as she had
sent my sisters away. It was to protect them from their willingness, I saw that now. How I wanted to go, but Amanda could not come. How I wanted to stay with her but I could not stay. I did not want to go without her but she could not come. I can't stay, I can't leave.

I had only wanted to solve the riddle.

It was a game. Find the magic recipe to stop time, turn back the Nile, find a destiny in light. I was eleven now—so what would my perfect gesture be? All my great gifts were as nothing if they could not save Amanda now. Solve the riddle, dissolve the conundrum, resolve the dilemma.
Absolve my failure
. For until now it had only been a game with a marvellous prize. Solve the riddle and learn your destiny.

It was dawning on me that this was no game for children, and that failure had a price.

What is our punishment for failures such as these? And is it for failing to solve the mysteries or for shredding the fabric that veils them? What is a golden age, how does its end begin? What does it mean to lose a friend? The best part of myself.

There came into my mind images of that day up at Ixayac, of squatting in the smoke and the steam, of symbols and magic signs traced in mud, of black hens and turtle shells. Amanda never understood what I wanted. But she trusted me. And I saw then Sister Paula's face the day my grandfather came to take me home from school. Abuelo promised me I had not polluted the other girls. That I was not infected. That this hunger to know—
everything
—was not a disease. But now I knew differently, and he was no longer here.

We had climbed to the Heart of the Earth, we had walked in halls of jade. If I had not done something terrible at Ixayac, even had I not hurt her then, I could not deny I was hurting her now. What difference did it make whether I had scratched the jade or had done something that only
felt
like that? She is not safe with me, she is not safe if I go. What will my perfect gesture be?

And then I knew. I could not solve it. I knew I would fail, I knew I would leave.

During the next two days I could hardly bear to be near her. Each time came the shock of a horrified recognition:
this is your life
, I thought, over and over.
This will be your life
. There is a prize, there is a price. Solve the riddle, to save and keep her. I saw Amanda's face each day more drawn and gaunt.

The prize is to learn my destiny and join the great revival in Europe, a new golden age. The price is to end the race of gold, and stop the running to Ixayac.

The price is an age of iron when children are born already old.

The price was Amanda.

F
our years later, after my ride through the Sunday streets with Magda and María, I wanted to go home. The price had been too high, though I would not quite see how high until I had made the journey. Uncle Juan had offered to send me by carriage, a different carriage, but understood when I declined. With a porter close behind us with my little
lío
,
†
he walked me himself all the way from the house. The bundle contained only a change of travelling clothes, but slung over my shoulder I carried for luck the green rabbit satchel Amanda had made for me, and in it some keepsakes. As we approached the canal there was just room to go two abreast alongside the file of wagons advancing still more slowly than we were.

“You were wise to want to walk, Juanita.”

The wharf on the canal was a pandemonium. Landing here four years earlier from Panoayan, I'd thought it like an anthill. The anthill had been kicked over now. With
la Virgen de Guadalupe's
festival in just two days' time, the waterway was as choked with canoes as the street and landing were with heavy carts. Jostling to land, the dugouts were backed all the way down the canal like a string of stewards serving at a cardinal's table. In one canoe, bunches of bananas each as big as a man. In the next, their feathers dusty from the trip, a half-dozen
black guajalotes
squabbling like curates with scarlet wattles and smoke-blue heads. Every third canoe all but overflowed with fresh-cut flowers and—out of season in our valley—roses rushed in relays of express post horses up from the south. I'd have no trouble finding passage to the eastern shore. An unbroken file of empty dugouts was heading there.

Something stirred in the air like a scent, faintly exhilarating. What I had taken for shouts of confusion I now heard as a kind of workmanly raillery. Near me a tall African took an armload of flowers from a snowy-haired Indian, who had the wildly bowed legs of some ancient cavalryman. I caught a snatch of something in a decent Nahuatl. The African was asking him if he hadn't maybe kept a few for a sweetheart. The old man laughed outright, then—glancing toward us—stopped. It occurred to me that all these men might in fact work for Uncle Juan.

“The northern canal, Juana, will be even worse, and the basilica itself—
olvídalo
. Ten times as many as at the poetry tourney on Saturday.”

“A hundred thousand people?”

“You should go. I would take you,” he said, still taking in the scene. “What your aunt and Magda did … it would never happen again.”

“I have to go back, Uncle.”

He glanced down at me. “I just wanted you to hear it.”

“I know…. Thank you.”

He went to find a boatman to take me. As he walked down I noticed a pink bald patch the size of my palm on the crown of his head. He found a boat in less than a minute. I met him halfway down. It was difficult to hear, to talk. To say good-bye to him.

“Say hello to your mother. Tell her it's been too long.”

Afraid I might cry I said nothing in answer. The boatman shoved off with a paddle blade. Uncle Juan called out. “If you do decide on just a short visit, consider being back for the audience with the Viceroy. Royalty can be a bit particular about their invitations….” He began this with a shrug, but hearing him raise his voice awkwardly to bridge the distance gave me an inkling of what was at stake for him. First prize. Our first prize. I had forgotten it entirely. Before I could make an answer we were too far off with so much noise on the dock. I met his eyes, held them and nodded. He nodded back. The boatman manoeuvred us into a throng of dugouts bumping hollowly and angling towards open water.

With the mountains dead ahead I did have a little cry—the surfeit of an emotion I couldn't identify quite. Sorrow, regret … and something like relief. Foot traffic on the eastern causeway went at a crawl. Halfway along, a herd of cattle was broken into smaller clusters by pilgrims struggling to get past. Seven smaller herds, perhaps fifty cows in each, with five or six horsemen strung among them like sea serpents rearing above a flood. After a while I reached into my
lío
for a little lunch of dried figs tied up in a handkerchief. When I turned back to offer the boatman some, he smiled and shook his head. Sweat stood out on his brow; he was paddling smoothly but hard. Each stroke sent little whirlpools spinning away behind us.