What I thought then was that if I had beaten him once, I could again. In one night. I was forgetting for an instant how limited the first victory had been, as I prepared a little parable and concealed it in a snare. Speaking to the dining room in general, I said they would never guess who Amanda and I had seen out in the woods. Diego’s head shot up. He glanced down the table at Isabel. I said, though I lied, that Amanda and I had met the woodcutters, the ones from the forest fire last year, and had taken our lunch with them in the woods. A younger one had started to tell a story, but was hushed by an elder. I had, naturally, no idea why. How frustrating that had been. Something about a bridegroom’s promise to the Devil, and a wedding night that ended with an impalement on a cedar tree.
The nursing blanket halfway down her shoulder, Isabel had been staring into the baby’s little fox eyes as it grasped and sucked at its blue-veined egg, but now she looked up.
In truth, this legend was so well known to everyone in our valley that any large tree might be called a wedding tree. Diego, of course, was not from our valley. I had come prepared to do more of the work myself, but he proved all too eager to display his local knowledge now. And displayed, thereby, a good deal more. Isabel warned him that I already knew his story but he pressed on, oblivious or unable to help himself. Yes, a landowner, he said, granted enormous riches by Satan, in exchange for one small promise. I did not ask what it was, making his eagerness to tell me all the more plain. But Isabel was already watching him closely.
The promise was, he went on, that when the landowner should one day take a woman to marry, Satan was to … precede the man on their wedding night. To speed the plough, so to speak.
Saying this, he gave me a wide, slow smile. Such a promise—who could blame the poor bridegroom for not wanting to follow such an act …?
Speed the plough.
This was more than I could have hoped for, this was providential, pure gift. When his voice had quite trailed off to the stoniest silence around the table, I thanked him for the story and—fair turnabout—coldly offered the one I had prepared for him and for which he had so admirably prepared the ground. An old story. Also about a woodcutter. A man named Erysichthon, who had cut down a grove of oaks sacred to Cybele.
For this sacrilege she visited upon him a hunger, such a hunger as was in that country called the Wolf, and in other places the Ox. A hunger so great and so foul as to make him eat anything, any sort of filth. And so he did, until he had devoured all the bounty of his lands and bartered all his wealth and property for the filthiest stuff, since his desperation was obvious to all who had trade with him. And when he had lost everything to the Wolf, he reached out for his own daughter, who had a great and precious gift—to change her bodily form, like Thetis who had shifted through so many shapes and yet failed to prevent her own rape. In his sickness the man saw Fortune smiling upon him now, for thanks to this gift of hers he could offer his daughter—ever fresh and ever new—to every man for miles around.
At some point Amanda had come in to clear the plates. She was standing awkwardly by the table, hesitating over the half-eaten meals. Something in the scene kept her from interrupting to ask if we had finished. I asked Diego if it was not indeed a sad tale thus far. And here was its ending: Such was this hunger that the accursed man, panting and slavering like the diseased dog he had become … devoured himself.
Oh and there was, I remembered, just this last detail. The man’s name meant earth tearer. So what had his crime really been—did the lance-captain have an opinion? Was it in cutting down something sacred? Or in trying to speed the plough where he shouldn’t?
As I finished, I was looking at Amanda. I had meant only to glance meaningfully in her direction, but I could not look at my mother and could not trust myself to look any longer into Diego’s eyes. Amanda blushed furiously. All three of us now were looking at her….
The most perfect silence settled over the table, for what felt like an hour. I could hardly breathe. I simply could not believe it had gone better than I had dared dream. I was first to find my voice. Nodding curtly toward his plate I asked if he had quite finished. Amanda would like to clear.
Isabel whisked me out of the room. I could not help thinking she was taking me to the killing floor, which I remembered vividly as the scene of my last great correction. Instead she announced I would be going away just as my sisters had, but to live with her sister in Mexico. Mexico—just like that. I told myself I should have humiliated our gallant defender weeks ago.
But in fact everything had already been arranged by my grandfather. Isabel had only been waiting for the moment.
The next morning, dishevelled from a long cold night garrisoned on the rocking chair outside my mother’s door, Diego cast about calling for his mastiff, calling to it as he walked stiffly to the portal, calling awhile outside, coming back in and climbing the watchtower to bellow from up there like an unmilked cow. Isabel took over his chair and sat rocking while she nursed. How calmly she sat, and at an hour when she had always been out in the fields.
I went into the kitchen. Although Amanda had been mortified to have everyone at the table looking at her the night before, this morning she was all smiles to show me she understood I had been protecting her.
I was bursting to tell her our news, about how hereinafter our lives in Mexico would be like a storybook—but, smiling excitedly into my eyes, she said she had a surprise. She led me out through the corn and as we walked she stayed close, lightly touching my arm, brushing my shoulder, and finally took my hand. With the mastiff already outside, I expected it to find us any moment now, here in the tall corn. We threaded our way through the field. As we reached the fence I started again to tell her about what had happened after dinner and how I had been expecting the worst thrashing of my life. Yet now we had the most glorious news, she and I. Rather than asking what it was, she was pointing out a bucket leaking drops of water where it swung from a cedar branch just beyond the fence. I was trying to tell her we had permission, we were going to my aunt’s in Mexico City at last, maybe even tomorrow—
Who was?
We were.
My first lesson on the world as storybook was long overdue, and yet so slow I still was. The pace of my classes was picking up: two questions she shot back in quick succession, the first, unthinking and innocent, the second, to cover her hurt and embarrassed pride.
Is your mother giving me away?
Am I going as your maid?
A minute ago she had been all smiles, now this bitterest sarcasm, this patient anger one has for a stupid child. Where had all this come from? What on earth had gotten into her? I’ll never be your maid, Ixpetz. But Amanda you’re not. I’ll never go there. Why, Amanda, why not? Our people only go to that city for one thing—what thing?—and always have. Who says? My mother says. What thing?
To die.
I could find nothing to say to this.
So no matter what, I’m better off here, to let him have me, just like Mother when your—
Whole worlds flashed then in her eyes—fury, sadness. Then shame. I could not ever remember her ashamed. What could Amanda ever have to be ashamed of?
What, Amanda—when my what? Come back! Finish what you said—come back! She ran up the path through the trees, her white soles lifting like the tails of deer.
I was left standing there. I was left to read her language of signs.
I lowered the pail. Over each other and up the sides, two turtles clambered on a thick wet cloth. Surely not the same two as up at Ixayac. But they were the same size….
A little water still sloshed in the bottom but their backs were already dry. I started back towards the house, the bucket banging away at my calf. I went in through the main portal thinking to get the turtles water from the well.
Xochitl stood just inside the kitchen door, wiping her hands with a kitchen rag. Her dark face seemed oddly youthful through the doorway. The sun lay like purest silver in her hair. Across the courtyard, Diego had the fiel
dhands lined up like a platoon for inspection. The scene that ensued caused an uproar that ended in Diego storming off for a day or two. The dog was still missing. Diego had roused himself to a towering fury and, until Isabel stopped him, had been bent on extracting a confession from one—any—of the bewildered men.
It was not until after supper that night, a delicious meat sauce of chilli and black chocolate, which Xochitl had served us herself, that I went, feeling strangely light, to have my talk with her. Chocolate had once been a sacred thing, and Xochitl had never cooked with it for us. It was a sign of great favour, though I did not know the reason for it tonight. And the turtles were surely a sign of Amanda’s forgiveness for before. Now I would find out what Xochita had been telling her and clear up this misunderstanding about Mexico. I would reassure them both. I would promise to protect Amanda just as I had at dinner the night before. I felt proud. I had kept a promise to Abuelo, who had asked for my help. I was at peace. And I had even solved another riddle, from a previous evening of stunning insights into elliptical and hyperbolic statements during the manzana in Amecameca. Neither elliptical nor hyperbolic, the parabolic is not so much a truth as a parallel, such as when the attentions paid to a girl are of the sort only meant for a woman. Part parable, part parody.
Everything was falling into place, as I knew it must. I felt in my bones the time had come for us to find our destinies….
“I said no, Ixpetz. That is final.”
The kitchen was a shambles of unwashed dishes. Xochitl sat close beside me at the table, which was dusted at one end with corn flour. Insects tapped blindly at the lantern glass. The pantry door was closed, the door into the yard was open. A sallow panel of lamplight fell on the beaten earth pale with starlight. A breeze agitated the blades of the corn leaves … an army of spearmen on a night march.
I was so astonished. A flat no, the third. The words clear, the tone unmistakable. I had tried everything. But how could that be? When it really mattered I had always been able to persuade her. She wouldn’t even let me go in to talk to Amanda.
“It is not just you she does not want to see. She is angrier at me.”
“You?”
“For knowing this day would come.”
“But why does it have to come, Xochita?”
Whenever I had cried before, cried hard, whether out of shame or heartache or rage, Xochita had always comforted me. Even now I could see she wanted to, but it was as if she couldn’t raise her arms. When the scene ran through my mind again later that night it seemed that all the triangles of her face had been pulled out and down, as if a baby were pulling at her cheeks.
“It was not easy at first, Ixpetz, to take you to my breast….”
She averted her face, looked into the empty dining room. Her hands on the table widened slightly—to take her weight as she rose or to keep themselves from slipping into her lap, I couldn’t tell.
Helpfully, I asked if it hurt very much to nurse, if nursing me had been as bad as Isabel said. But this only seemed to make things worse. I put an arm about her shoulders, the other hand to her dark forearm, left small, pale prints as I patted her. I asked her not to feel badly. I knew why she could not entrust Amanda to me, because of something I had done.
“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.
Hunger's Brides Page 32