by C. M. Mayo
And at night, everyone knows, the open country is the territory of La Llorona, the weeping Ghost-Woman. The nuns warned the orphans, “Stay in your beds at night or else . . .” La Llorona’s filthy, rancid shroud and long, tangled, wet hair drags behind her on the ground, though her ghost-feet do not touch it. She flies, eyes like black roses, wailing for her murdered children, searching for them, and with her long cold fingers La Llorona takes whomever she finds.
Now, hurtling through the rain-drenched night in the back of this jolting, fish-tailing wagon, Lupe’s heart is beating like a hummingbird’s, and her knees are jelly. She had been so proud. Is this why God is punishing her? Her one consolation—thanks to Holy Mary!—is that the driver of this wagon is a priest. Yes, a young, strong-looking priest with a bright gold tooth. She had asked him, “You know of San Miguel de Telapón?”
He’d given her a slow lopsided smile. “I know the whole country like the back of my hand, abuelita, little granny.”
“Father, how many days’ journey is it?”
“We will arrive when God wants us to. Go on, abuelita,” he’d said, gesturing to the back of the wagon. “Get in.”
She could not; she was too tiny. So the father lifted her by the waist and set her down among the boxes.
“What’s in these?” she’d dared to ask before he closed the canvas.
He patted the side of one of the boxes. “Statues of saints.”
He did not lie outright, but neither did he tell the whole truth. Alas, his saints, made of plaster, have no purpose but to be smashed, for they encase Yankee bullets, powder, and six dozen breech-loading carbines. This wagon driver is no priest—but El Mapache, the Raccoon, so called for the pair of black eyes, long since healed, that he been given in a brawl, right-hand man of El Tuerto (One Eye), the bandit chief who has lately joined forces with the Juáristas. Los Ciegos (the Blind Men), the bandits call themselves, because, as one of them had once joked, in the land of the blind, is not the one-eyed man king? Los Ciegos have dodged into the Sierra de Telapón, in the neighborhood of Río Frío. Word is, they’re harassing an Austrian brigade, and since Sunday, they’ve looted the stagecoach twice.
El Mapache’s mission is to drop the weapons cache at the Hacienda de los Loros, but, as he was informed by the Republican Army lieutenant back at the warehouse, after he’d loaded the last box onto the wagon, Hacienda de los Loros has been shelled and burned.
They were still standing behind the wagon. El Mapache had demanded, “When!”
“Two weeks ago.”
“Hijo de puta! Son of a bitch.” He put his fist through the side of a crate.
The lieutenant, moving his hand to the hilt of his sword, said, “You’ll show some respect.”
El Mapache rubbed his knuckles. He’d cut one of them open. “Yessir.” It came out a hiss.
“And by the way,” the lieutenant said, as with the tip of his saber he lifted the flap of the canvas off its hook, and let it fall, “the contreguérilla has hung seven of our men from the trees along the entrance road.”
A grisly parade, and El Mapache might’ve rolled right up to see it, a fly to a smear of shit! Anger boiled up inside him. This lieutenant was thin in the face, and though a head taller, El Mapache could have beaten him in any fist-fight, any knife fight, except, maybe not with that saber. (El Mapache’s speciality was the dagger, in the kidneys.) The tuft that hung from this officer’s boyish chin was a sorry excuse for a goatee. But there was something about this officer, his ramrod bearing, his level-eyed gaze, that inspired El Mapache, grudgingly, and against all habit, to respect him.
The lieutenant slipped his saber back into its scabbard. “You’ll keep your fists in your pocket.”
“Yessir.”
But now, the lieutenant explained they wanted him to haul the whole wagonload to a granary a league southeast of Orizaba—three fucking days past the city of Puebla! With the rains, the only way to get there is the stage-coach highway, patrolled by French Zouaves. A mission for a cabrón, was that what this lieutenant took him for? El Mapache answers to nobody but El Tuerto. He had decided, then and there, what he was going to do was haul the load to Río Frío, the first overnight stop for the stagecoach. There, in their camp deep in pine forest, he would meet with his chief. If El Tuerto gave it the thumbs-up, the boys could help themselves, and bury the rest. Answering to an officer who leaves his head up a donkey’s butt, carajo, was that what being a Juárista amounted to?
“Listen,” the lieutenant said, softening his tone. “It has to be done. If anyone can do it, you can.”
The lieutenant was just buttering him up . . . but damn, it worked. And the Juáristas, El Mapache reminds himself, they’re the ones getting money and Yankee arms. From San Francisco, boatloads of rifles and powder are coming into Acapulco, and then over the mountain trails through Guerrero and into the bowels of Mexico City, right under Maximilian’s nose. The French can torch every hut from here to the Pacific, they can shoot every man, woman, and child and pound all the cities to gravel, and the priests and the nuns and all their fancy mocha traitor-friends can help them do it—but the Juáristas, they’re the ones who are going to win this game! And Los Ciegos are on the winning team.
“Down with imperialism!” El Mapache shouts into the rain. “Down with the white traitors!”
The old woman in the back of the wagon, shrieks, “What?!”
He shouts back at her. “Shut up!”
That shrimp of a granny: she said her village is in the sierra, two days up a trail behind Río Frío. San Miguel de Something-or-Other, it was Cuautit-lán to him, but he told her what she wanted to hear. She said she could cook for him, so he didn’t think to ask her for anything, but she pulled out from her shawl a candelabra. Solid silver and more arms than an octopus. Who knows who she stole it from, but who gives a sow’s tit, because silver buys bullets, and any one bullet might be the one to kill Maximilian.
The thought of that so-called emperor makes El Mapache clench his jaw and want to punch somebody. That Austrian clown! Puppet of foreigners and papist lackeys! He lashes the exhausted mules, yelling into the downpour, “You sacks of shit! Git!”
But for the rain and his own shouting, he does not hear the stagecoach powering up behind him. All of a sudden, the stagecoach’s twenty mules and its great wheels thunder past, slapping out a confetti of sludge. His mules bolt right, and the wagon, careening, the boxes sliding, overturns into—he cannot see—
A ditch?
September 19, 1865
OLIVIA CANNOT UNDERSTAND
The lion man promised Atín a new ball. Well, where is it?
But Atín wants his own one. His blue one.
The new nanny, Olivia, pulls his bunny, Mimo, from the hamper. She flaps the toy in his face.
“Conejito. Little bunny,” she says. “You like your little bunny.”
Atín gives the bunny a punt, and it skids beneath the chaise.
Olivia gets down on her knees, reaches under, and brings it out by its ear. “Here, your bunny!”
Atín’s chin trembles. Where is his nanny Lupe? Mamma?
Later, he’s been dressed in a frock and new shoes. They feel stiff on his feet.
Atín needs to blow his nose again; he breathes through his mouth. He does not like it when Pepa squeezes him. Her side is hard, that thing she wears has bones in it.
His nanny Lupe, she’s the softest with her soft shoulders, her cotton white braids, and her nut-dark face. Her cheeks are like the skin of old apples. When she waggles his pinky, Lupe sings to Atín in her wavery voice, “El bonito y el chiquito . . . the little, pretty finger . . .” With her rough brown fingers, Lupe holds each of his in turn: “El que lleva los anillos, the one who wears the rings; El tontito, the silly one; Ese que lame las cazuelas, that one licks the cookpots.” And when she comes to Atín’s thumb, Lupe taps her thumbnail to his and she says in a man-like voice, “El que mata los bichitos, this one squashes the little bugs.”
W
here is Lupe? Why does he have to be all day with Olivia?
The stringy cheese again and without the tiny bacons: he screams.
Poor Olivia. And worse for her: it so happened, in her first moments inside the Imperial Residence, that she had witnessed the unlikely fate of Agustín’s blue ball. She had been following the Mistress of the Imperial Household, who had hired her only the day before, after the most informal of interviews. Some German priest, a Father Fischer, had asked her family’s parish priest to ask around, was there anyone with an unmarried daughter available to serve as nursemaid to Prince Iturbide? Olivia had applied as a lark; such a vague invitation was not the kind of leverage to hope for results, and anyway, her family knew no one who worked in the Imperial Residence, nor the Imperial Palace. When Olivia told her mother and sisters she had been hired, they could not believe their ears. You? Her mother said. A position in Chapultepec Castle?! I’ll have a stone for my breakfast! They were sure she was teasing them.
And so, that golden morning, here she really was: her heart pounding and palms of her hands sweating so much she’d had to keep wiping them on her frock—her best jet-black bombazine. Tied around her waist she wore the purse embroidered with marigolds that her mamá had made for her, especially for this day, and she wore her granny’s silver-and-jade earrings. Her granny had pressed this treasure into Olivia hands saying, These were for you to wear on your wedding day, but how could I wait? We are so proud of you. When Olivia went out the door, every member of her family had lined up to give her an embrace, including her little brother who, on other occasions, pulled her hair until she had to slap him.
For Olivia, to be here, inside Chapultepec Castle, was to have stepped into some fantastic dream. Never in all her seventeen years had she imagined that she, Olivia Pérez, daughter of an apothecary (her grandpa a mere herbvendor in the market), could be the nursemaid of the grandson of the Liberator! Nor that Chapultepec Castle, which she had seen sitting atop its rock, every day of her life, could be so grand inside. María Santísima, this was waking up into a fairy tale, these urns as tall as a man, and masses of draperies, emerald green malachite dripping with gold, apple green velvet chairs from the emperor of the French, chandeliers of such staggering size! The chandeliers were Venetian, the Mistress of the Household said (whatever “venetian” was). It made Olivia feel faint to look up into them. The diamond-shaped droplets of glass tinkled slightly. And, por dios santo, what if they were to crash down in an earthquake?
Señora von Kuhacsevich was the name of the Mistress of the Household, and as it was a foreign name, Olivia did not dare attempt to pronounce it. Señora von Kuhacsevich had a mass of dyed curls beneath her lace cap, which squashed the coiffure like a pot lid on so much licorice. She minced along lugubriously; it appeared that Señora von Kuhacsevich’s shoes pinched her as much as her corset. On a velvet cord around her belly (it could not be said she had a waist), she wore a bristling ring of keys; this swung alongside the pleats of her crinolines like a pendulum. She stopped often to catch her breath, or to right a lampshade that had been left askew, or with her toe, to nudge a small carpet back into place—all the while giving Olivia rapid-fire instructions in gutturally accented Spanish peppered with the strangest words.
“Here we have a carpet, of course,” Señora von Kuhacsevich said, “but it has been sent out for riparazione.”
They were in the entrance hall, a black-and-white checkerboard marble expanse. Señora von Kuhacsevich had stopped at the foot of a staircase. It was the grandest staircase Olivia had ever seen in her life. The entrance hall was bathed in a chilly gloom, but this staircase, brightened by the skylight, almost hurt her eyes. Olivia, squinting, swallowed. Gooseflesh prickled her arms.
“Riparazione.” Señora von Kuhacsevich said that word again. “Do you understand me?”
Olivia lied, “Yes.”
Señora von Kuhacsevich shot her an irritated look. “Yes, what.”
“Excuse me?” Olivia was afraid her teeth would start chattering; she hugged herself.
“You should say, ‘Yes, ma’am.’”
“Ma’am. I mean, yes, ma’am.”
Señora von Kuhacsevich pursed her lips. “And quit rubbing your arms. It is unbecoming.”
Olivia would have liked to answer, Unbecoming? And what do you know about it, you sausages-for-arms tub of lard? Instead, Olivia fixed Señora von Kuhacsevich with an insolent mask of politeness, a barely-there smile. She’d had practice. As her grandfather, the herbalist in the market, often said, it did not pay the rent to allow rude customers to provoke you. Sometimes they were rude because they were in pain, or else God, in His Infinite wisdom, had made them soft-headed enough to not know how to treat other Christians, and the older they were, the less probable they would learn and better to pity such creatures and remember to praise God.
Olivia uncrossed her arms and murmured, “Yes, ma’am.”
“Voilà!” said Señora von Kuhacsevich.
Olivia did not know that word either, but she followed the Señora’s gaze to a little blue ball that was bouncing toward them, down the steps. Benk, b-benk—the ball gathered speed as it fell, bouncing high enough to skip two, three, six steps, until on the next to last, it shot slightly to the side, so that it hit Señora von Kuhacsevich on the exact middle of her bosom.
“Uf!” Señora von Kuhacsevich had caught it. She dropped it into her jacket pocket.
From above the landing, a child began to whimper.
Olivia’s hand flew to her throat. “Is that Prince Iturbide?” Of course you stupid girl, Olivia scolded herself, but to her relief, Señora von Kuhacsevich had not heard her; she was mincing up the next hallway.
At the door to the Iturbides’ apartments, Señora von Kuhacsevich, breathing heavily, set her plump hand on the doorknob and paused.
“Do you have a cigarette?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Olivia fished her silver cigarette case from the purse on her belt. To her surprise, Señora von Kuhacsevich took not a cigarette, but the case, snapped it shut, and handed it to a footman! With his white gloves, the footman turned it over, and over again; it seemed a mystery to him what he was supposed to do with it. “Ma’am?” he said to Señora von Kuhacsevich.
Señora von Kuhacsevich turned her back on him. To Olivia, she said: “Ladies do not smoke, and they would not dream of smoking in the presence of any member of this court.”
The blood burned to Olivia’s cheeks, but she managed to stammer, “Yes, ma’am.”
“I see,” said Señora von Kuhacsevich, “that we need to review some basics.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“When addressed by a superior, you are to keep your eyes on the floor.”
Olivia looked at the floor. “Yes, ma’am.”
“You are not to speak to anyone, most especially to Their Highnesses, unless spoken to.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“That includes Princess Iturbide.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“No nosy questions.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“No silly questions.”
“Yes, ma’am, but what if—”
Señora von Kuhacsevich cut her off. “No questions!”
“Yes, ma’am.” Olivia could feel Señora von Kuhacsevich’s gaze boring into her skull.
“Unless for some reason you are summoned into their presence, you are to evitare, evitare” Señora von Kuhacsevich said, sweeping her hands for emphasis, “encountering Their Majesties. If, despite your supreme efforts, you were to find yourself alone in the hallway when the emperor or the empress approaches, you must duck into the next corridor, and if that is not handy, then a closet—and indeed, any open door will do. If this were to happen in the garden, hide yourself behind a bush. You must be neat and you must be clean, and this means,” she shook a finger at Olivia, “every morning, not just when it occurs to you, wash your teeth with a spazzolino da dente, and scrub behind your neck and below your jawline. You
r hair must be without adornment, combed and pinned, up out of the way, no excuses. Jewelry must not be vulgar, no dangling earrings, such as you are wearing, do take them off.”
“These?” Olivia brought a finger to her granny’s silver-and-jade beads.
“Ho fretta. I do not have all day.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Olivia took them off quickly, for she feared they might be confiscated as was the cigarette case, and she tucked them in her purse.
And then, Olivia was presented to the Princess Iturbide—or was it acceptable for her, as did Señora von Kuhacsevich, to address the princess by her Christian name, “Doña Josefa”? Or, without exception, must it be “Your Imperial Highness”? Just, “Your Highness?” (Or was “Ma’am” alright?) And was Olivia supposed to curtsey to Princess Iturbide every time? This was worse than school lessons, too many names and rules to stuff into her rattled head! And nobody here wanted questions!
The prince, a red-faced brat, took one look at Olivia, and lay down on the floor and yelled louder than her pet parrot—what lungs! He needed his nose wiped, but he wouldn’t let her get near him; he went on kicking his legs.
“Lupe,” he screamed over and over, “I want Lupe!”
The day went by in a blur of frustrations. All through it, Olivia’s stomach felt like it was going to somersault. She should have stayed at home, in her family’s shop, helping measure out the powders and ointments, tinctures of laudinum and such. Her sisters were right, these were peculiar people, these aristocrats and nose-in-the-air foreigners. The likes of Olivia Pérez had no business being in Chapultepec Castle. But she was afraid to go home, for her family had been so proud of her. And they needed the money. On the other hand, she was afraid to stay, because she was certain—she could feel it coming, like cold water on the face—she was going to get fired. The question was, how soon?