He ran his fingers through my long, curly locks. “What did Benita teach you today?” he asked, trying to get our minds off the bloody battle.
“She just started teaching us the alphabet. I still have a long way to go before I learn to read.”
“Bringing knowledge into this world instead of death,” he sighed.
“She’s a good teacher.”
She’s so lucky to be able to do what she does,” he said wistfully.
At night, in our tent, we’d hold each other. His rough skin rubbed against my softness and his touch sent waves of emotion through me. Having him inside of me no longer hurt like it had the first times we had made love. I no longer bled or felt any excruciating pain. Instead, I felt at home—back in our vegetable shack instead of in the middle of a war. Leonardo’s body was my sanctuary.
“After the revolution is over, we’ll go back to Cevallos and start our family,” he mentioned once, after being inside of one another. I rested my head on his arm, and he kissed my head.
“I want many children.”
“I know,” he said, a smile in his voice.
“I hated being an only child.”
“I’m glad I was one,” he blurted, his voice suddenly icy.
“What?”
“I wouldn’t have wished my life on a brother or a sister,” he said bitterly. “Not with the uncle I had.”
“He was a terrible person,” I stated, trying to soothe him. I ran my hands over his arms as they held me.
“I’ll never do to my family what he did to me.”
“Our children will be well taken care of.”
“Even if I have to work from sunup to sundown, they’ll never know the hardships I've known.”
That husband of mine—he was special.
Chapter 46: Valentina
The day that Gregoria arrived at camp, I was both glad and unhappy at the same time. Glad to see a familiar face from the past and unhappy that Gregoria Siquieros was a link to a time I never wanted to re-visit. She was part of a whole era of mine that was dead and buried. Having been Delfina’s chaperone, she had gone with the Montenegro family to the United States. She was back in Mexico.
“Are you going to ask her?” grumbled Leonardo, his eyebrows scrunched together.
“Why do you think she’s here?” I asked, surprised at the roughness of his voice.
He let out a frustrated breath. “I’m not talking about that.”
“What are you talking about?
“You know what.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Him,” he mumbled.
“Lucio?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“I can’t believe you’re asking me if I want to know about Lucio,” I growled. Leonardo’s ever present mistrust of me, after all we had gone through together, wounded me deeply.
“Aren’t you curious to see what happened to your great love?”
“Leonardo—“
“Don’t you want to know how his marriage to Delfina is going?” he asked quietly.
“No! I already told you that I didn’t want to know anything about him.”
Leonardo eyed me carefully. I stared straight into him. After a few seconds, he turned around and walked away. I watched him until he was out of my sight.
Just as I had feared, seeing Gregoria had brought back the insecurities bubbling inside of Leonardo. It had stripped us of our present and taken us back the past. We were strangers again.
It took a good part of an hour for me to gather my nerve to go up to Gregoria to greet her. I couldn’t ignore her just because my husband didn’t trust me. My parents had shown me manners and even though I wouldn’t engage her in a conversation about her stay in the United States with Delfina and Lucio, I still needed to welcome her to the camp. That was the right thing to do.
As soon as I approached her, her eyes grew wide and her mouth dropped open. Apparently, she was as surprised to see me as I was to see her. “Gregoria,” I said, “how are you?”
“What are you doing here?“ she snapped, her light brown eyes narrowing.
“What?”
“Why are you here?” she asked, her tone with a fiery edge.
“I’m here with my husband,” I responded, puzzled.
“You should’ve never come here,” she grunted. “You should’ve stayed in Cevallos.”
“Gregoria—“
“Why don’t you go back?!” She turned her back to me and scrambled away, leaving me with an astonished expression on my face. Her caramel braids abruptly jumped up and down her back as she fled. First my husband dashes off and now her. What was going on?
After that first disastrous encounter, Gregoria would not speak to me at all. I’d give her the day’s greeting, but she would turn her face and ignore me.
“What’s gotten into you? Why are you acting this way?” I asked her.
She looked at me furiously before scampering away, leaving me with unspoken words in my mouth. I started noticing, however, that while she refused to speak to me, she had no such aversion to my husband. When he’d be returning to camp, she’d always be close to where he tied his horse.
“Why does she talk to you and not to me?” I asked Leonardo.
He shrugged his shoulders.
“What does she talk to you about?” I questioned, my arms crossed in front of me.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Yes.”
I shook my head, annoyed. “When I see her with you, she seems to be moving her mouth. She’s telling you something, isn’t she, or is she talking to your horse?”
“Of course she’s not talking to my horse.”
“Then what is she saying to you?”
“I don’t remember what she talks about. Probably nonsense.”
“But—“
“I don’t want to talk about her.”
“Leonardo—“
“Enough.”
Something odd was definitely going on. Gregoria wasn’t talking, and my husband wasn’t either. What was it?
What?
Chapter 47: Valentina
Waiting was the excruciating part—the part those of us who stayed at camp dreaded with everything we had inside of us. I busied myself by cooking the goat meat that Chencha, the wife of another soldier, had shared with all of us. A campesino had given her the meat to support the revolution.
As I put the pan over the open fire I had created with a few twigs and branches, I tried to shut all thoughts of the battle out of my head. But I kept envisioning my Leonardo with bullets flying all around him, the chaos of bombs exploding, and people dying.
Yes, waiting was excruciating. Waiting for our hearts to stop frantically beating, waiting for the battle to end, and waiting to see who had been killed.
When the first of the troops finally arrived from a battle in which our soldiers were outnumbered by a large margin, I stood very still—hardly breathing at all. They got off their horses and were met by excited loved ones. As soon as I saw Leonardo riding into camp, I unclenched my fist over my heart and felt the blood rush through my body. I started running to him as he tied his horse to a makeshift post but then Gregoria, who was much closer to him than I was, got to him first.
“Thank goodness you’re alive,” I heard her gush as she wrapped her arms around him. I stopped in my tracks, and his startled eyes went straight to me. He abruptly took her arms off him, but I turned around anyway and went back to where I had come from. Fuming, I tried not to let my feelings show. It’s not that I didn’t want to punch her, but Leonardo would probably stop me before I did and keeping my tempestuous tongue in check had always been a priority for me.
That evening, while celebrating the victory of the battle, I sat with Chencha. Her husband, Fulgencio, played his guitar with unbridled passion and was much better than the other musicians. He sang one corrido after another, making those ballads come alive
as they told the stories of the revolution. Fulgencio might’ve been a soldier by profession but was a musician by heart. Chencha gazed proudly at her husband.
My own spouse had sat with other men since I had refused to sit with him. It wasn’t long that the hateful Gregoria squeezed herself into the space next to my husband. Even in the dark of the night with only a bonfire to light us, I could still see her flirtatious posturing.
Enough was enough! She was making a fool out of me. As I started striding up to them, the camp became silent and the music stopped. My eyes, the evil ones the Sevilla daughters were terrified of, dug into her. Before I was able to arrive where she and Leonardo were, she swiftly scrambled up and scampered away. People guffawed while Leonardo looked embarrassed. I shook my head while returning to my place. The lively music started again as I sat back down.
“She’s a worm,” Chencha blurted, her voice slightly slurred from the alcohol she was drinking. “I know how you must feel with her trying to worm herself into your man.”
“Why doesn’t she get together with someone who isn’t taken?” I snapped. “There are a lot of single men who want to be with her.”
“That’s what I told her before—“ But Chencha had cut herself off with a horrified expression on her face.
“Before what?”
“Nothing,” she said nervously.
“You were about to say something,” I insisted, my attention fully piqued.
“Don’t pay attention to me. I’m drunk and don’t know what I’m saying.”
“Tell me what you were about to say, Chencha,” I demanded. “I need to know.”
“But—“
“Tell me!”
She stared glumly at me for a few seconds and then finally spoke. “Okay, I’ll tell you—only because you’re forcing me to. I really didn’t want to cause any trouble for you and Leonardo, and I didn’t want to get in your business.”
“I understand, but you have to tell me.”
“I told that slippery woman she shouldn’t be after Leonardo. I told her this a long time ago.”
“A long time ago? When?”
Chencha cleared her throat. “She was with us before.”
“Before?”
“Before you came. Then she left when her sister’s husband died in Torreon. We thought she’d stay with her sister, but she came back.”
“I can imagine why she came back,” I snapped. Gregoria had sat so close to my husband that she had been practically on his lap. “Chencha,” I mumbled.
“Yes?”
“I need to ask you something, and you need to answer me honestly.”
“What is it?”
“Don’t you dare lie to me,” I demanded.
“What do you need to know?”
“Did you ever see Leonardo and Gregoria . . . together?”
“Together?”
“Having an affair,” I blurted.
“No, Valentina. No.”
“Tell me the truth.”
She sighed. “Look, I can tell you that they did spend a lot of time together. Gregoria was always sniffing around where he was at.”
“So they did have an affair,” I ascertained, the words poison in my mouth.
“No, I don’t think so.”
“You don’t?”
“To be honest with you, Leonardo never seemed really into her,” Chencha assured.
“No?”
“No. Sometimes I could’ve sworn he was avoiding her.”
“He was?” I asked.
“As far as I could tell. I really don’t think your husband’s been unfaithful to you.”
“You never saw them kissing?”
“No.”
“You never saw anything intimate between them? Anything at all?”
“No. Like I said, I don’t think your husband cheated on you.”
But there was a lot Chencha didn’t know about us. She didn’t know about Lucio or about Leonardo’s obsession with the past. He could’ve slept with Gregoria out of spite or loneliness.
GR-R-R-R!
Chapter 48: Valentina
It might’ve been unbelievable that with so much tragedy going on around me, I’d let petty jealousy enter my heart but I did. I couldn’t help having such twisted feelings. It was inevitable with Gregoria always watching us or to be more accurate—watching Leonardo. Wherever he went, there she was like Delfina had once done with Lucio. She had picked up the annoying puppy-dog habit without considering that she had once criticized her employer for it. When I finally confronted Leonardo about it, he chuckled.
“Why would you be jealous of her?” he guffawed.
“This isn’t funny,” I fumed.
He rolled his dark eyes. “She’s just lonely, that’s all. She thinks she likes me because of it.”
“Leonardo—“
“You’re making too much out of it.”
“But—“
“Don’t be silly.”
I was losing patience. “Leonardo, are you or are you not having an affair with her?”
His smile fell off his face and he eyed me with knit eyebrows that had abruptly come together. “Would it matter?”
“What?”
“You’ve got no moral ground to stand on when you were unfaithful to me by keeping that heart necklace for so long.”
“I was never physically unfaithful to you, Leonardo,” I said with gritted teeth, “like maybe you were with me.”
“What do I care if you never betrayed me with your body when your heart did it so completely?!”
Words died inside of me with the frustration I was feeling. As much as I tried to open my mouth and respond to him, nothing came out.
After a few silent moments, with the shrieking of the quiet hanging over us, I finally spoke. “I’m sorry that I hurt you, I’m sorry that it took me so long to get beyond the past, and I’m sorry that you’ll never be able to forgive me about the necklace. I know what you said is true—I don’t have a moral ground to stand on but still, I’m not going to share you with Gregoria. I’m not going to stand for this.”
Leonardo gazed at me solemnly as if trying to figure out what to do with the situation.
“You need to pick between us,” I informed him, fuming. “Decide what you want—our marriage or a life with her. You can’t have us both, and you can’t be cheating on me! I won’t stand for it!”
He gently put his hands on my shoulders and sat his dark eyes on mine. “Valentina, I’m not having an affair with her. When would I do it? I’m either at the battlefield or with you. Think about it.”
Relieved, I nodded. He was right. I had let my twisted jealously block reason.
“Are you sure you don’t want to be with her?” I mumbled, the words tasted like acid on my tongue. “That you want to stay with me?”
He rolled his dark eyes. “I hate that you’re asking me that,” he blurted. “How long have I loved you?”
“What?”
“How long have I been in love with you?” he asked, a frustrated tinge in his tone.
“I don’t know. I guess—“
“Sure you know! Since we were children. Didn’t I stay with my uncle just to be close to you? Didn’t I pick all those flowers for you?”
“You knew you loved me even then?”
“I’ve never been a frivolous person. I’ve never not known who I am or what I want from life, and I’ve always wanted you. Gregoria is just another person in the camp. You—you are my wife and the love of my life.”
That night, when we had made explosive love that could’ve ignited the whole state of Chihuahua, I ran my fingers over my husband’s skin, trying to feel how we belonged to each other—not like slaves but like two sides of the same coin. I stayed up long after he was sound asleep, breathing him in, when a rebel thought yanked me fully awake.
He told me he wasn’t having an affair with Gregoria but . . . but . . .
Had he done it al
ready and ended it?
My head started drowning with malignant ideas fighting each other in the most vulnerable part of me. I started to put my hand on his shoulder to wake Leonardo up but abruptly snatched it back. I was too emotional to ask him, too outside any reasoning. I’d wait until he time was right to talk to him. In the meantime, I’d comfort myself with the overwhelming love I was now very certain he felt for me.
Chapter 49: Valentina
In preparing meals over an open fire, I’d try to emulate my mother when she would make the greatest food out of practically nothing. The cooking techniques she had taught me were now more valuable than ever before. Grateful that she had shown me the value of the different uses of spices and herbs, I would be picking bits of plants everywhere we went. With aromatic oregano growing here, leaves of parsley growing there, and many more findings, I was able to locate delicious seasonings for my creations even if all we had that day was cactus.
Gregoria would try to seduce my husband with her dishes when she managed to procure meat, but he always bypassed her and came straight to me. One day, her blatant disrespect for my position as Leonardo’s wife bothered me so much that without meaning to, I let it show when I handed a corn tortilla to my husband much too roughly.
“Why do you let her bother you?” Leonardo asked, guessing where my ill mood was coming from.
“I don’t know how to not let her bother me,” I growled, trying to keep my voice intact. “I’m so tired of this.”
He didn’t know that a few days ago I had cornered her at the river where Gregoria was doing her wash.
“Stay away from my husband,” I had snapped. “Or I promise you, I’ll beat the man-stealing whore out of you!”
“You don’t love him,” she had stated matter-of-factly.
“What stupidities are you saying?”
“I know a lot of things about you, Valentina,” she had assured. “I know your secrets.”
More women arrived to wash dirty clothes, and I was forced to clamp my mouth shut. What secrets did this woman know about me? Why did she say that I didn’t love Leonardo with such conviction?
Since that day I hadn’t been able to catch a moment alone with her. She’d scurry away when she saw me near. But even if I managed to catch up to her, would she tell me what she had meant?
Leonardo’s dark eyes looked into me. “Stop letting her bother you,” he repeated.
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