by Roger Bruner
I turned my attention to Elder Diaz. “Not only was Señora Valdes standing over Pedro’s body with the one crutch, Anjelita stood beside her with the other crutch in her good hand.”
“Her good hand, Señor? Has Anjelita now grown a second hand, one that is not good?”
No one laughed that time, and—if I accurately judged the severity of the resulting glare—the overly verbal Elder’s shenanigans had thoroughly disgusted Elder Diaz. He looked like he wanted to take over the questioning.
But he couldn’t. Not yet. He was the current witness. “The crutch was in her hand. Her one and only hand. Period.”
The interrogator ignored Elder Diaz’s exasperation. “Please explain further.”
Anjelita leaned over and whispered in my ear. “Momma…” I knew what she was going to say. I had given her too many lessons about honesty. I had taught her too well. She wouldn’t lie by failing to tell the truth any more than she would lie by telling an outright untruth.
We talked quietly for several minutes. But not quietly enough.
“Rosa,” the interrogating Elder said, “if we may have your attention, please. The Chief Elder has just stated that he saw Señora Valdes and Anjelita both strike the body of Pedro Valdes. That he had to stop them. Señora Valdes, however, has insisted that she alone is guilty. She says Anjelita didn’t strike Pedro until he was already dead. What do you have to say about that?”
“I beg your pardon for being distracted, sir, but I was at home when all of this occurred. I cannot tell you anything from my own firsthand knowledge.”
The Council members murmured among themselves. Not because they thought me evasive, it seemed, but because they realized I’d made a valid point.
“Rosa, only one person here can clarify this. We must ask…”
The other Council members looked at one another in apparent distress. They had allowed this inquest—this inquisition—to get out of hand. How could they correct their mistake?
“Momma?” Anjelita looked at me. Although her eyes might have belonged to a frightened little bunny rabbit, they also reflected her determination to do the right thing.
“Anjelita wishes to address the Council,” I said to the interrogator. “Señor, I ask that you not interrupt her or ask anything until she has finished.” To make my point unmistakably clear, I took a huge chance. “Your method of questioning is not appropriate for young children.” Or for anyone else.
The collective sighs of the other Council members were clearly audible. I almost laughed aloud when the reddest of blushes flooded the face of the interrogating Elder.
So the Council of Elders proceeded to learn the truth and nothing but the truth about what had taken place the night before. From Señora Valdes, they also learned about the rape and the letter Mother Chalina had written me.
The Elders learned something else that day, however. Uncovering the truth and dealing with it appropriately were two entirely different things. Never had these people faced such a dilemma.
After an hour of discussion—it seemed much longer—they pounded on the door and called for the padlock to be removed.
As the Council members exited—one by one—they faced the villagers with confidence. The crowd fell silent, ready to trust the wisdom of their Elders. The Council had evidently ascertained the truth and made the necessary decisions. Proper ones. Decisions the villagers would unanimously agree with.
“Friends and neighbors, we have spent a long time determining what happened last night,” the chief Elder said with an enviable show of dignity and patience. “The truth is that Pedro Valdes deserved to die. We tried him this morning—what’s that term again, Rosa? In absentia?—and we found him guilty of crimes deserving death.”
At that, the women smiled at one another triumphantly. Some laughed, while others whispered audibly among themselves, “I told you so, now didn’t I?”
“None of you knows what I’m about to tell you, for today’s rumors have lacked the most important nugget of truth. Pedro Valdes raped Chalina Ramírez when she was a teenager.”
The villagers gasped in unison.
“Pedro was Rosa’s father. None of us knew that. Not even Chalina. Señora Valdes was aware that her husband had done something bad—very bad—but she didn’t know what. She’s had to live with that terrible half-knowledge for twenty-nine years.”
Some of the women were crying now, and one or two of the men dabbed their eyes with their shirtsleeves. Whether they were crying, too, I couldn’t tell.
“Last night Señora Valdes learned the truth—from a letter Chalina wrote to Rosa telling her everything she wanted and needed to know about her background.”
Several women smiled at me sympathetically, and one little boy who apparently had no idea what was going on gave me a thumbs-up. I smiled cautiously back at him.
“Señora Valdes confronted her husband with the truth, telling him she would bring this matter before the Council. But before she could talk to me, Pedro went berserk—loco!—and went searching for Rosa’s girls, who had brought Señora Valdes the letter by accident.”
He spelled out exactly what had happened—detail by bloody detail.
“Rosa has reared her two daughters admirably. They know the difference between right and wrong. Anjelita wouldn’t allow us to condemn Señora Valdes wrongly for her unselfish effort to be protective.
“The Council of Elders, in due consideration of the testimony we have heard today, cannot in good conscience find Anjelita innocent of Pedro’s murder. She has stated voluntarily that she killed Pedro.”
Some of the villagers gasped. Others nodded approvingly. Most of them looked to see how I would react. I must have frustrated them by maintaining the stoniest face I could while waiting for Elder Diaz to finish.
“But we cannot find her guilty, either. We would have imposed the death sentence on Pedro for the evil he did. Anjelita carried it out prematurely while defending herself and her sister. What is done is done. We must forget about it. Punishing either Anjelita or Señora Valdes would be foolish—and wrong. Neither of them is dangerous.
“You have entrusted this matter to us as your governing Council, responsible for the welfare of this village. You have charged us with using our wisdom to determine the truth and the best course of action. That is what we have done today. This matter is closed, and we beg your harmonious acceptance of our decision.”
Although some of the women dared to cheer the Elders’ decision, I couldn’t miss seeing pockets of men with long faces. Later that day, I overheard an occasional dissatisfied murmur. Some of the villagers accused the Elders—behind their backs, of course—of being doting old fools. No longer fit to govern…if indeed they’d ever been.
But the storm that would most seriously change the face and future of Santa María was not backhanded protests over the Elders’ decision or the opposition they would face from a growing minority of villagers.
38
The Council of Elders had the best of intentions when Elder Diaz talked to the crowd after the inquest. What better way to stop the gossip than by telling everyone all of the details at the same time and turning rumors into consistent truth?
Although their plan succeeded in that regard, it had the painful side effect of undoing Anjelita’s acceptance by some of the adults and many of the children. While I admired the Elders for their wisdom in not finding Anjelita and Señora Valdes guilty or innocent, I deplored their lack of foresight in admitting that Anjelita had probably finished killing Pedro Valdes before Señora Valdes started beating him.
I couldn’t blame the children for feeling uncomfortable in the presence of someone they viewed as a confessed, pre-teenaged murderer. Even though they hadn’t seen Pedro’s body, the vivid descriptions going around would have made even the bravest of them hesitant to go out after dark, even in the company of their parents.
Although the children understood and readily accepted Alazne as the victim of an attack that fateful night, I doubt that many
of their parents bothered to explain that Anjelita was just as much a victim as her sister. I hoped the passage of time would balance their perspective. Until then, however, the children might once again start accusing Anjelita of being maldita.
Or worse still—asesina. Killer.
Preparing myself for that likelihood was impossible. So how could I hope to prepare Anjelita for the return of hideous verbal abuse, much less to help her endure it?
~*~
At mid-morning of the day after the inquest, I was working on lesson plans for that evening’s adult class. Trying to, anyhow. But I couldn’t focus on anything except the events of the day before. Perhaps I should call off class. Although I had never cancelled a class, everyone would understand.
They would think they understood, anyhow.
But they wouldn’t know I was more upset about the discovery that Pedro Valdes was my father than about the circumstances of his death. I didn’t want them to know. I couldn’t admit it even to my girls.
Only one thing made me feel better: relief—relief and joy—that Mother Chalina’s reputation had received the cleansing it deserved. She had died a fine, upstanding woman, and that’s how the villagers would remember her now. And because of her vindication, my past had gained additional legitimacy as well.
Instead of continuing my futile efforts to prepare for class, I finally accepted the fact that I was sitting on the floor in a daze, doodling in the dirt with my fingers and doing nothing more. I would have to wash my hands before I touched a book or a piece of paper.
How could I have known my hands wouldn’t touch water for many hours?
~*~
Anjelita sat on the floor beside me reading Don Quixote. After Pedro’s death, Señora Valdes had decided not to read it. An almost-visible thread connected Don Quixote to Pedro’s death, and I had lost interest in reading it, too.
But Anjelita still wanted to read it, and Alazne had gone to fetch it for her. I would never understand how she could maneuver her crutches while carrying such a humongous volume.
“Present for you,” Alazne said as she allowed the book to drop skillfully into Anjelita’s lap.
“I wanted to go with you.” Anjelita’s voice was nearly hidden in uncharacteristic timidity. “But I was scared to go out and have everyone see me.”
I choked on the words I wanted to say and reached out to her with a tight hug instead. Then I turned to Alazne. “That was thoughtful of you to go get your sister the book.” I was barely able to speak without breaking into tears.
Alazne planned to talk with the other children, but I didn’t know whether she would gather them together or speak to them individually. She wanted to tell them about Pedro’s death from her perspective before they formed an irreversibly bad opinion of her sister. She hoped her effort would minimize the damage from the Council’s foolish release of too much information.
“Alazne?” I glanced at the clipboard, tablet, and ink pen that lay in my lap and then looked into her face.
“Yes, Momma?” She looked into my eyes. Seldom had I seen such a look of purity and sincerity. Her father’s eyes had looked that way during the final moments of his life, but such memories were meaningless now.
“You are preparing to talk to the other children?”
“Yes, Momma.”
“What will you say?”
“I will explain that Anjelita and I were both victims, but she had to attack Señor Pedro to keep him from killing me. I’ll say that he would have killed us both if Anjelita hadn’t kept him from getting up again.”
I nodded. “That is accurate. But what if they don’t believe you? What will you do then?”
“I will keep explaining until they do believe.”
I had never heard her sound so determined. “Ah.” I sighed with discomfort. Perhaps fear. I didn’t know which. “Do you know this William Shakespeare I sometimes read?”
“Yes, Momma. I’ve read some of his plays, too.”
“Do you recall that he said something about ‘the lady doth protest too much’?”
“Yes, Momma, we’ve discussed that before. You said a guilty person sometimes speaks long and loud of his innocence to keep others from discovering the truth about his guilt.”
“You remember well. What else?”
“We should be cautious about anyone who tries too hard to make himself sound innocent.”
I grinned at her. “And why am I bringing up the long-deceased Señor Shakespeare and his famous saying right now?”
She paused for the briefest of moments. “If I try too hard to make the other children accept Anjelita’s innocence, they will mistake it for a certain sign of guilt.”
“So how will that affect your discussion with the other children?”
“I will state the truth simply and plainly and hope they believe it.”
“You are wise for your years. Go now with my blessing.”
If I had known beforehand the events of the next half hour, I would have hugged her and held on for dear life.
~*~
Alazne had only been gone a few seconds when I heard her scream. I had never heard her yell that way before. In spite of my twelve years’ experience as a mother, I couldn’t tell whether she was screaming from terror or pain.
I scrambled up from the floor as fast as I could and flew toward the door.
“Momma, out here! What…? No! It can’t be.” She didn’t need to call me again. I was halfway through the open doorway.
When I reached her, she trembled as I wrapped my arms around her. “Has a snake or wild beast wandered into the village?”
She didn’t respond. Fear of someone or something seemed to have paralyzed her. I looked this way and that along the dusty street, but I didn’t see any signs of danger. If I had shared the villagers’ superstitions, I might have wondered whether Pedro Valdes had returned from the dead to make a second attempt at killing my firstborn.
When she came to life again several seconds later, she pointed toward an area miles away. An enormous, black, funnel-shaped object appeared to be heading steadily and unhesitatingly toward the village. It moved within itself in dizzying circles.
I estimated that it would reach the village in twenty minutes. Perhaps a little sooner. Of course I couldn’t be sure.
Although I’d heard the villagers talk about this type of windstorm when I was small, I thought someone had made those stories up to scare children into being good. According to the traditions passed by word of mouth from generation to generation, a storm of this type came through Santa María once every hundred years.
Sometimes more frequently. Sometimes less often.
It was the single most powerful force of nature to affect Santa María, and storms like this had nearly sucked the village out of existence at least twice over the centuries. None of the present-day villagers had been born yet when the last one passed through, and none of them had expected to live long enough to see the next one.
So no one had prepared for the black wind to come. As if one could plan for such an event.
Alazne’s screams brought other people outside as well, and they stared at the black object as it moved leisurely in our direction. Sometimes it appeared to stop and stand still. As if it were waiting for us to notice it. Then it would bob up and down as it laughed at our terror.
People froze in place like statues I had seen photographs of in art books. But the faces on the picture book statues had never appeared so horror-stricken.
I never learned whether Alazne had read about tornados previously or simply let her survival instinct take over, but she slid out of my arms and shouted even louder than before—to thaw those frozen statues to life again and lead them to safety.
“Villagers, listen. You must go…now…to the caves. Take your loved ones and go to the caves behind the church. Do not waste time. Your lives are more precious than your possessions.”
Although the appearance of the legendary black wind had momentarily stunned them, Alazne’
s warnings woke them to reality. They scurried this way and that in a disorderly manner. If they’d heard Alazne’s advice, they didn’t take it seriously.
“To the caves…now,” Alazne repeated insistently and even louder than before. “You’ll be safer there than anywhere else. There is time, but none to waste.”
This time people listened. They gathered their families together and started running toward the backyard of the church, the area Alazne had been referring to. I was more familiar with it than anyone else, for I had lived in one of those caves after my keepers quit letting me sleep in their shacks.
The underground caves were so numerous that each family could have one and a number of caves would remain vacant. Children of medium height could stand up in them, but their parents would have to bend over or kneel. Although the villagers had always considered them useless, the caves were probably the sturdiest part of Santa María.
I don’t recall taking Anjelita’s hand, but I must have. As sweaty and slippery as our hands were, we could barely hold on to one another.
“Come, Alazne!” I shouted to be heard over the approaching storm. “We are going to the cave where you found Mother Chalina’s necklace.”
Anjelita pointed toward Alazne’s neck, and I saw she was wearing it that day. The clear stone prism looked particularly dull and foreboding in the pending darkness.
“Do you remember which cave that is?”
I will never forget Alazne’s response. “I remember it well. But I can’t come yet. People still need my help. I’ll meet you there after I help the older people. They will die if I don’t. You must go on and get Anjelita to safety.”
Before I could protest, she headed toward the other end of the village, flying on her crutches more rapidly than I had ever seen her move, routing older people from their homes and directing them to the caves.
I couldn’t hear myself saying aloud for the second time that morning, “Go now with my blessing.” But I heard my heart screaming, “Be careful, and please hurry!”