The next day we had our meals together but barely crossed any words. He was quiet and so was I. It seemed that everything he had wanted to tell me he had let loose the night before, leaving me in a state of confusion.
His kiss had lingered in my mind like a guest you hadn’t invited but once in your home, found him valuable. It had unexplainably connected me back to warmth, movement, and life itself. It was as if my emotions weren’t dead anymore.
In the evening, after a dinner of spicy red enchiladas, I put my hand on his arm while he was preparing to go outside. “Don’t leave,” I blurted. I didn’t want him to go away. He was my husband. I was his wife. We were tied together now.
“Don’t leave,” I repeated with more feeling.
He turned to me with confusion in his eyes and opened his mouth to speak but suddenly shut it, gazing at my lips. As his face started closing in on mine, I didn’t pull back. Surprisingly, my stomach fluttered with the anticipation of another kiss. I could feel his uneven breath on my skin and I quivered, waiting for his lingering touch. But as his lips were about to join mine, he suddenly pulled away. With a face contorted in frustration, he strode outside. I ran after him.
“Come back inside the house, Leonardo.”
“I can’t,” he proclaimed.
“Why?”
“I can’t be with you. Like an idiot I agreed to marry you without you loving me,” he blurted angrily.
“Leonardo—“
“Do you at least feel anything for me?”
“Leonardo—“
“Anything?”
Suddenly, all the flowers he had ever given me, the quiet talks by the river, and his comforting presence hit my memory like a fierce wind. I pulled myself up to him, on my tip toes, and put my kiss on his. His warmth thawed me out—thawed all those months of frozen coldness. He immediately responded, taking everything he could from me until he tore himself away.
He put his forehead to mine and caressed my cheek with his index finger. “Let’s go inside?”
I nodded. “Yes.”
Leonardo took my hand and led me inside the house to the small bed I had slept on the night before. As we sat next to each other, I nervously waited for what would come next. He abruptly pulled me towards him, roughly seizing me, and we accidentally fell off the bed. Landing on the floor with a loud thud, we eyed one another, stunned at what had just happened.
“Are you okay?” he questioned.
I muffled a chuckle that intertwined with the overwhelming tension of being with a man about to enter me for the first time. “I’m fine.”
“Are you laughing?” he asked, sitting up on the floor.
I sat up too, my stomach still trembling but the laughter in my throat eating at some of it. “A little.”
“I’m sorry, Valentina. This is a disaster.”
I tried to soothe him. “Leonardo—“
“It’s a disaster,” he mumbled.
“But—“
“I should’ve never come back inside.”
“We’re married now and—“
“We’re not really married.”
“Leonardo—“
“You may have my last name, but you aren’t my wife. Your heart isn’t with me.”
“I—“
“I’m not doing this, Valentina, not anymore.”
“Doing what?” I asked confused.
“Taking leftovers,” he expressed bitterly. “I’ve been doing it all of my life—first with my cousins who gave me their castoff things and then with Lucio where I always had to do what he wanted. I’m not doing it anymore. I might’ve married you for your mother’s sake because I owe your parents so much, but I’m done with seconds,” he stated as he stood up off the ground.
“Leonardo—“
“I’ll be outside,” he asserted, not looking at me.
“Leonardo—“
“Don’t come out. I’m not coming back in,” he said as the door shut behind him.
And I was left alone with a winter’s chill replacing the warmth I had felt earlier.
Chapter 37
“So you married a man you had never even kissed?” asked Dr. O’Leary to a deeply hypnotized Valeria.
“Right,” replied Valentina.
“A man you didn’t love.”
“He wasn’t Lucio.”
“You were willing to make love to him though,” Dr. O'Leary said.
“Yes.”
“Did you want to maybe reward him for having married you when he knew you weren’t in love with him?”
“That was part of it.”
“Valentina, what was the other part? Why did you want to make love to this man?’
“I didn’t know the reason yet. In fact, I wouldn’t know it for a while.”
“But you would soon realize it?” Dr. O'Leary asked wistfully.
“Yes.”
“So Valentina, what happened next with you and Leonardo?”
Chapter 38: Valentina
When we went back to my parents’ home, Leonardo and I decided to spend our nights in the vegetable shack that had been his place for so long now. It provided us some privacy—even though we didn’t really need it since each night his body would be turned away from me with only his bruised back full of whip marks as my view. Sometimes I’d lay my fingers on those vicious scars, wishing I could make them and their ugliness disappear. He’d twitch at the feel of my fingers on his skin, but he wouldn’t say anything or move away from me. Then I’d close my eyes until the blanket over the straw we laid on grew more inviting.
As our untraditional life together progressed, each evening I started to look forward to being alone with him as he told me stories about his day or about observations. I had never known how much attention he paid to small details like the differences in a bird’s chirp or the small variations of the clouds in the sky. He also knew where the stars sat and the common noises of the night.
The flowers he still left me now included other gifts such as beautiful smooth stones on my milking stool and delicious figs or pomegranates on any windowsill I’d be near. But all was not quiet and calm in our lives. Much was going on around us.
We, the campesinos, were so sick and tired of being slaves, of being used by the higher classes who justified their mistreatment of us. One thing I’ve learned is that whatever position in life you’re in, that’s the side you take. The rich hacendados believed in their divine right to abuse the peasants, that we were put on this earth to proclaim their superiority of European decentness, to make them wealthier, and to serve them. Power was concentrated in their hands—money, education, politics.
We weren’t going to take it anymore. The revolution was here and outbreaks with leaders such as Villa and Zapata. My country was in the throes of a necessary chaos.
“Finally,” my father stated.
“Yes, finally,” agreed Leonardo.
One very moonlit night as the beams of the full round moon came through the tiny glass-free window in the vegetable shack, Leonardo turned to me. We had just gone to bed, exhausted from a hard day’s work. As usual, he had turned away from me, but then he changed his mind and turned towards me. His face was only a few centimeters away from mine, and I could feel his light breath on my cheek.
“The war is going to change everything,” he said quietly.
“Yes, everything.”
“Those greedy elites will finally understand who we are.”
“The bulls are definitely out of the bull pen, and they’re about to let their masters know who really rules.”
“We’ll knock those aristocrats off their high ground.”
I nodded. “They’ll know we weren’t put on this earth to worship them,” I declared.
“They’ll know we aren’t just their playthings to be moved around as they please,” he retorted.
“They’ll finally know who we are. They’ll live the bitter moments we’ve had to live un
der them.”
He breathed out a long breath. “Who knows how long the revolution will last.”
I nodded. “Hopefully not long.”
“One day it’ll be over though.”
“Hopefully soon.”
“He’ll be free to come back,” Leonardo stated nonchalantly but his eyes betrayed the frustration hidden in them.
I knew perfectly well who he was referring to. “What if he is?” I questioned.
“He could come back to you,” he declared, wincing.
“He’s married.” I took Leonardo's lead and avoided saying Lucio's name.
“He could leave her.”
“I’m married to you,” I affirmed, no hesitation in my voice.
“I’d let you go if that’s what you’d want. If that’s what would make you happy.”
My heart tore itself open, oozing out all kinds of emotions. “No,” I declared firmly.
“I know it would be hard with the gossip, but both of you could start another life somewhere else. No one would know your past.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“You sure about that?” he asked, his soft tone suddenly turning rough.
“Yes, I’m sure.”
“But if he was actually here—“
“I’d tell him that I’m married to you.”
“You’re not sorry that you married me?”
“Why would you ask me something like that?”
“What do you mean why?” he retorted.
“Leonardo—“
“You don’t know how hard it is for me to know that you love someone else. My pride eats at me all the time as if I don’t have any dignity as a man,” he stated bitterly. “I want to take you because you are my wife and not his. But I can’t. I can’t have you that way. I can’t make love to you when you’re thinking of someone else.”
“Lucio is the past,” I asserted. “He’s gone, Leonardo. Bury him and be done with it.”
“Have you buried him?”
“As surely as I bury a bird when it dies.”
Leonardo went deep into himself as if contemplating what I had just said. “You never answered my question,” he finally said.
“What question?”
“Are you sorry you married me?”
“Of course not. . . Are you?”
“No,” he said, taking a hold of my hand and caressing it.
For the first time we fell asleep facing each other and with his hand holding mine.
Chapter 39: Valentina
I laughed so hard that I nearly tore my stomach open. How could I not? One of the pigs had escaped the pen when I had opened it to straighten out the trough. Leonardo had run after him, unable to catch the sly animal. The pig darted in and out of the path. A frustrated Leonardo tried to catch him, even throwing himself on top of him, but the pig managed to escape.
Finally, I had an idea. I grabbed the slop bucket and waived it towards the animal. “Look what I’ve got here,” I taunted him. “It’s your food. M-M-M.”
The pig eyed the bucket, gave a loud grunt, and started running after it. All I had to do was empty the slop in the trough and the pig rushed back into the pen where I promptly closed the latch.
Standing up from the muddied ground, Leonardo shook his head. “That pig is the pure devil.”
I couldn’t help myself and let out a loud chuckle.
“I’m so glad I amuse you,” he said, irritated as he tried to shove the dark mud off himself.
“If you could’ve seen yourself with the pig, you’d be laughing too.”
He eyed me with scrunched eyebrows. Then he glanced at the pig happily eating the slop as if nothing had just happened. Leonardo’s eyes shifted over to his filthy clothes, and he chuckled and shook his head.
That evening, I cooked his favorite dish of spicy enchiladas. I had to make up for having laughed at him. He smiled as soon as he went to the wood stove and saw what I was making.
His long arms suddenly encircled me, hugging me from the back. The black hair on his deeply muscled skin shone darker next to the lightness of my beige dress as the arm across my stomach firmly squeezed me to him while the other one tightened its grip under my bosoms. Breathing became difficult, not only because of his physical hold on me.
His face landed on the crook of my neck, his steady breath on my goose pimpled skin. “Thank you for making my favorite,” he expressed just before kissing the part of my shoulder not covered with the fabric of my dress, the part that was exposed and vulnerable. “Thanks,” he repeated, letting me go.
I didn’t want to be released.
At dinner, my emotions were still loose, and I had to work on putting my full concentration on the story my mother was telling. With tears in her eyes, she told us about the serious illness of one of the children at the hacienda.
“Of course, Don Clemencio won’t do anything to help a poor worker’s daughter,” my mother retorted. “Juanita is going to die of an infection if her family can’t pay the greedy doctor.” Tears gushed out.
My father hugged her. “Don’t worry, Ofelia. It’s been taken care of.”
“What—“
“Leonardo already made arrangements with Doctor Mireles.”
“He did?” my mother asked, glancing at Leonardo who looked away in embarrassment.
“Doctor Mireles is with Juanita right now, treating her,” announced my father.
“Leonardo,” my mother gushed. “You are such a good person! Such a blessing from God! Such a—“
“Doña Ofelia,” Leonardo interrupted, a reddish tone on his face, “I heard that you found a coyote in the chicken coupe and tried shooting it with Don Clemencio’s rifle.”
“You tried to shoot a coyote?” my father exclaimed, upset.
“It was eating the chickens,” explained my mother. “I had to stop the coyote.”
“Those animals are dangerous. You have no business anywhere near them,” my father chided. “What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking that I didn’t want the coyote devouring my best chickens. Unfortunately, he escaped,” my mother said forlornly. “I almost had him.”
“Don’t feel bad,” Leonardo stated, looking at me with a smile. “I had an animal escape too.”
Leonardo started telling the story of what had happened with the pig. He was so animated, so unlike the quiet boy who had first come here. His dark eyes sparkled, his face an open book. He was so handsome—that husband of mine. So kind. So generous. So amazing.
All I could do was gaze at him.
Chapter 40: Valentina
I tried to make the vegetable shack as livable as possible. The way I saw it, it was home to Leonardo and me. My Aunt Eduviges had given me what she could spare and so had my mother. We still slept on a blanket over some straw on the ground but now we had a rickety old chair, a chipped wash basin over a wood table Leonardo had made, and a small, chipped dresser where I put our clothes.
One day, as Leonardo pulled out a shirt of his, the fabric intertwined with a little box where I kept my few pieces of jewelry. The box crashed to the ground. I quickly rammed what had fallen out back in it but not before Leonardo saw the heart necklace.
“What’s this?” he demanded, pulling it brusquely out of the box.
“It’s nothing,” I answered nervously.
“Why do you still have this?” he questioned as his hand made a claw over the pendant.
“What do you mean?”
“Valentina, I was with Lucio when he bought it for you,” Leonardo explained furiously.
“I . . . I—“
“Why didn’t you get rid of it?!”
“I . . . I . . . I don’t know,” I finally finished the sentence.
“I know the reason,” he declared, his voice a mixture of anger and frustration. “Why should it surprise me that you kept something of his even when he left you, even when he married someone else?” he said, stalk
ing away so fast that I couldn’t catch up to him. Swiftly yanking the door open, he was soon out of my sight.
That night, he didn't come home. I waited and waited, not sleeping at all. It was until the next day, late in the afternoon, that he showed up unnervingly calm and not meeting my eyes. A rush of relief swept over me that he was home.
“Leonardo—“
“I’m joining General Villa,” he stated as he started collecting his few possessions in a burlap bag.
“What?”
“I can’t be here doing nothing when my country needs me,” he stated, not looking at me even once. “I should’ve already done this.”
“But—“
“I can’t watch the war from far away like a coward.”
“But—“
“I can’t sit here and wait for you to love me.”
“Leonardo—“
“There’s nothing to say, Valentina.”
He left after bidding farewell to my parents. They were as much in a state of shock as I was at how fast it had happened.
“May God keep him in His hands,” my mama murmured.
Chapter 41: Valentina
My parents started worrying about me because I would hardly eat or sleep. I tried to assure them that I was fine. They, in turn, lightly scolded me by saying that I was going to make myself sick.
“We know what you must be going through,” my father stated. “But Leonardo is very smart and strong. He’ll be fine.”
My mother nodded. “It’s hard to see the man you love go to war, but you have to pull it together, mija.”
The man you love.
Love? Could it be love? I wondered. But what I felt for Leonardo was so different from what I had felt for Lucio. Nonetheless, I’m worried about Leonardo because no matter what—he’s my husband, I reasoned. He’s a good person, and I don’t want him to get hurt.
I’ve already hurt him enough for one lifetime.
Meanwhile, life in the village turned upside down. Don Clemencio, terrified of the violence escalating in the revolution, decided to abandon his hacienda and join his family in the United States. We got news of what happened to him soon after his leaving.
Rumor had it that he was killed by a stray bullet from a battle nearby as he was about to cross the border from Juarez to El Paso, Texas. When Villa’s soldiers searched his wagon, they found his fortune under his hallowed-out seat. Confiscating his wealth for the revolution, the soldiers took no considerations for his family left with hardly any money in El Paso. As Don Clemencio had never shown any empathy for others below his class those same others showed no mercy for him or his family at his death.
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