At Donna and Arnoldo Salazar’s house, the labor was well underway, judging by the high-pitched shrieks they could hear as soon as they opened the kitchen door. Arnoldo sat at the table with a cup of coffee in front of him, his hair standing out at wild angles and a look of anguish on his face. Clearly, he wished he could be somewhere else and didn’t have a clue what to do. He pointed toward the bedroom. A female neighbor came out, carrying a damp rag, saying she wanted to refresh it with cool water.
Consuelo took charge and led Bertha into the room where the sixteen-year-old mother-to-be writhed on the bed.
“Open my kit,” Abuela said to Bertha. “Find the lavender and the malvas, then go to the kitchen. Brew the lavender tea and boil the malvas.”
The old woman turned away from Bertha and began speaking soothing words to her patient, coaching her to breathe rhythmically and helping her to a more comfortable position. Bertha put the malvas leaves into a small pan with fresh water and turned on the gas burner. Boiled, the liquid would make a soothing wash for the new mother after the birth. Meanwhile, she brewed a light tea from the lavender and carried a cup of it into the birthing room.
She held it out to her grandmother but at that moment Donna’s face contorted with another contraction.
“She’s farther along than I imagined she would be,” Consuelo said, indicating that Bertha should set the cup on a dresser that had a picture of the Virgin hanging above it. “The child will come—”
A scream ripped the air.
Bertha watched as Abuela gently stroked the swollen belly, a feeling—half awe and half terror—coming over her. She forced herself to concentrate on her grandmother’s actions rather than imagine herself in the position of her friend, going through this agony.
“It’s coming very soon now,” Consuelo said, her voice low and soothing. “You will feel an urge to push.”
Bertha stood to the side, unable to watch what was happening under Donna’s messy nightgown. Instead, she looked at her grandmother’s face. The calm and benevolent expression shifted imperceptibly.
“What is it?” She mouthed the words rather than saying them aloud.
Abuela gave a short jerk of her head and Bertha moved into place. Between Donna’s legs a dark blob of a head showed, with a spongy, greenish band around it.
“I need to get this cord away,” Abuela whispered. “Take the baby as it comes out.”
Was it a real baby? Bertha was horrified at the blue-gray color of its face. She stretched out her arms and Abuela, in nearly one move, pulled the baby free, placed it in Bertha’s hands, and began working on the ropey cord. Bertha didn’t see exactly what her grandmother did—she couldn’t take her eyes off the warm, sticky little form she was holding. She was vaguely aware of the cord coming away and then she simply hugged the tiny infant to her chest, heedless of the mess to her own clothing. She felt a peculiar energy travel through her arms and hands, flooding through to the little bundle she held. In short moments, the baby began to squirm, then to whimper. When Bertha looked again, its face had turned a vivid pink.
“That’s good!” Consuelo’s face lit up, her grave consternation gone.
From the bed, Donna lay back against her pillow, panting and trying to ask what was happening.
Consuelo turned to her patient. “You have a beautiful baby girl.”
Bertha moved automatically, washing the baby, handing it over to its mother, following Abuela’s directions. She barely remembered leaving the Salazar house, driving the wagon home or eating the enchiladas Mamá prepared for dinner.
In their bedroom that night, Abuela spoke quietly in the dark. “You have a gift, Bertita, an ability I have never seen before, even in my apprentice years with my mentor. That baby would not have lived but you made it so. I do not know how you did it, but do not relinquish that gift.”
Bertha remembered the tingle in her arms. She thought of the box stored under her bed. She knew where the gift came from. She also knew she must never speak of it.
* * *
A saucepan of chocolate bubbled over the gas flame on the stove. Bertha reached for the shelf and adjusted the volume on the radio, turning down the upbeat horns of Glenn Miller’s orchestra. It seemed a constant battle of wills—her mother wanting everything louder, Bertha longing for quiet. The jazzy notes continued, softer now, and Theresa grumbled a little as she shelled pecans at the kitchen table.
A pan of fudge would be their contribution to the gathering at the church this afternoon, a festive time when everyone in the community pitched in to decorate for the Christmas season. Bertha stirred the mixture, judging its consistency.
Jorge Espinosa had asked her to go with him, but she’d demurred on the pretext that her mother and grandmother needed her assistance. Theresa was certainly capable of driving the Ford truck to town by herself; Bertha’s real reason was that she had not yet decided whether she wanted Jorge’s interest. All these thoughts must be kept to herself, of course. Theresa and Ruben hinted constantly that it was about time Bertha find a husband. Practically every other girl over twenty was already married and most had their first child already.
Abuela alone understood. Bertha had studied with her grandmother for eight years, learning the methods of the curandera—how to consult with a patient to learn their ailments, which herbs and roots worked for which illnesses, and when it was best simply to listen. Sometimes, that in itself was a cure. Although the two women never specifically discussed the future, there was a simpatico between them, reading each other’s feelings, knowing what was in the heart.
The Glenn Miller piece transitioned into a Benny Goodman number and Theresa’s foot tapped under the table. Bertha checked the fudge again and decided it needed a few more minutes. She could step out of the overly warm kitchen for a moment and make a quick trip to the outhouse. Maybe she should marry someone and move to town where nearly everyone had indoor plumbing these days. But she hadn’t cleared the back step before a shriek from the kitchen grabbed her attention. She spun around to see what was wrong with Theresa.
“Turn it up! Turn the radio up!”
Her mother’s expression showed alarm; Bertha complied.
“. . . day that will live in infamy . . .”
Bertha felt her insides go cold. Consuelo stepped in from the living room where she had been sorting herbs.
An announcer came on, repeating what the president had said, giving statistics. There were practically tears in his voice. The three women stared at each other.
“Get your father!” Theresa cried.
Bertha glanced toward the pan on the stove, turned off the burner. She pulled her jacket from the peg by the back door and shoved her arms into the sleeves as she ran toward his workshop.
It wasn’t yet dark, and well before the planned hour for it, but everyone in the community had begun to drift toward the church. Father Pedro greeted them and led prayers for the dead sailors in Hawaii, for the country itself. The pine boughs and candles that had been gathered for decoration lay in the vestibule, untouched. After the priest finished, people gathered in clumps, some crying, most wearing stunned expressions. Jorge Espinosa approached Bertha and reached for her hand.
He pulled her to the back corner of the room and stared earnestly into her eyes.
“We’re all enlisting,” he said. “Me, Miguel, Jaime ... pretty much all the fellows in town.”
Bertha wasn’t surprised. She’d already heard the whispered conversations.
“I figure we need to, us younger guys, to keep our fathers from going. We’ll get over there, show those Japs a thing or two, and then we’ll be back.”
A sudden and terrible vision came to Bertha. It wouldn’t be over that quickly or that easily, she knew. But she didn’t say anything.
“So, anyway, I was wondering, Bertha ... while I’m gone ... will you wait for me? I mean, would you—?”
She nodded before he could finish. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t already hinted around about marriage. She had
heard the whispers around town, about herself, the oddball girl who performed cures and like to hang around with her grandmother more than her friends. She knew the words ‘old maid’ and ‘spinster’ had been thrown around. And other words, worse ones. There was a fine line between miracles and witchcraft in many peoples’ minds and she had to be careful—so careful—in her practice of healing the sick and injured. Having a husband and home of her own would add legitimacy.
“We could go tomorrow for the license,” Jorge was saying. “Have a ceremony at the town hall in Taos.”
She took his hand. “It’s all right. I’ll wait for you.”
Across the room, a giddy shriek told her that some other girl had decided to go ahead with a quick wedding. Bertha didn’t mind. The extra time would give her a chance to get used to the idea of sharing a life with Jorge. Although she didn’t love him in the way her parents loved each other, she could imagine that it would work out all right. She met his steady gaze, realizing that he was about to kiss her.
* * *
Jorge Espinosa was among the first reported casualties. Four letters—it was all she had to remember him by, those and the photograph he’d sent of himself in a crisp white uniform and cocky sailor hat. One week after completing basic training, his ship had sailed out of San Diego and been bombed. So much for showing the Japanese a thing or two.
The day she received the news, Bertha went to the bedroom, pulled the carved box from under her bed, and held it on her lap for a long time, absorbing warmth from it, healing the scraps of pain even though they had never coalesced into full-fledged grief. Then she put the box away and went on a cleaning binge through the house, moving furniture and scrubbing the floors for three days, until her mother took her by the shoulders and insisted that she go to bed.
Bertha accepted the condolences of friends. Most of them wore a wary expression, as if by acknowledging that her fiancé could die so quickly, their own loved ones might meet a similar fate. Her parents seemed resigned—they’d come so close to seeing their odd daughter married, and now that hope was dashed. Fewer men would be available after the war and the prettier girls already seemed to have snatched up the best choices.
Ruben sold another parcel of land and they spent the money to install a bathroom indoors and to fit the kitchen with a real refrigerator to replace the old icebox and to place new linoleum tile on the floor and countertop. Bertha told no one that the convenience of the refrigerator meant more to her than marriage. Only Abuela understood her detached attitude. Curing—that was her life now.
Two years went by and news of the war only got worse. Her father talked of enlisting—most of the men from town had done so, but the farmers were encouraged to stay behind, to keep producing food. The government paid well for his crops of corn and potatoes, and Ruben commented more than once that perhaps he shouldn’t have sold that last parcel. It was a moot point; the land was not theirs now, plus he had no hired men to help with the work. Bertha and Theresa took turns working in the fields with him and watching over Abuela, whose health declined week by week.
“I’m old, hija. I will die. It is the natural way of things,” Consuelo said from her bed, staring into Bertha’s face with eyes that were nearly sightless now. “People die.”
Like Jorge? Like the men whose names showed up on lists of New Mexicans who were killed or missing every week? Was that the natural way of things? Bertha suppressed the questions for which she would never have answers.
“Go now,” Consuelo insisted, “take Margarita Vasquez some of that sore throat remedy, and young Johnny Rodriguez can use some añil del muerto for his injury.”
Bertha smiled. Goldweed could be a wonder for sores and cuts, but Johnny’s wounds from the war were far more serious. Still, she would offer whatever help she could. As always, before she left to visit a patient, Bertha handled the wooden box and allowed it to suffuse warmth into her hands.
“Cada remedio tiene su virtud,” said Abuela as Bertha put the box away.
Each remedy has its virtue. Bertha wondered if Consuelo was referring to the box. Although she’d never told her grandmother about her experience with it, the old woman was very perceptive. She opened her mouth, the story wanting to come out.
“I will rest while you are gone,” Consuelo said. “We can talk more when you return.”
“All right, Abuela. You rest.”
She climbed into the old Ford truck after telling her mother she would be back in an hour or two. Down the road two miles, she dropped off the throat remedy she’d made from mallow. And in town, Johnny Rodriguez did indeed seem better than the last time she’d visited with him. Touching his wounded arm, the warmth from her hands seemed to provide some relief. His was a shattered bone and the surgeons performed a minor miracle with repairs, rather than amputating, but a lot of the surrounding muscle was gone now and no amount of exposure to the powers of the wooden box would replace it. They had told him he would never have full use of that arm.
Cora, his wife, a girl Bertha had known in school, came into the room and cleared her throat noisily.
“I can do that for him,” she said, pushing past Bertha and laying a proprietary hand on her husband’s shoulder.
“Certainly.” Bertha stood up. The attitude was one she encountered often—from women who no longer turned to the old ways of curing, who would rather have their babies in the modern hospital in Taos than to call upon herself and her abuela as midwives. Times were changing.
“Cora, look—my arm is much better,” Johnny said. The skin around the wound which had been an angry, infected red when Bertha arrived, indeed looked nearly normal.
Cora stared at Bertha, challenging her.
“I’m glad to hear it,” Bertha said. She handed the woman a vial of the goldweed ointment and wished them well.
As the Ford truck rattled along the dirt roads, taking her home, she decided to dismiss the incident at the Rodriguez house. Why women like Cora should feel jealousy toward Bertha was a mystery to her. These were the girls from school who were pretty and they had attracted husbands, men in whom Bertha had no interest apart from her curiosity about how the body worked to heal itself with only the simple aid of the curandera. She supposed the occasional antagonism came from lack of knowledge. People who did not understand the old ways could not appreciate them. Words like spells, witchcraft, and conjuring were sometimes thrown about. Bertha and her abuela knew differently. That was the important thing.
She steered the truck along the dirt track that over the years had become their driveway, pulling to the back of the house. It wasn’t until she walked into the kitchen and heard voices from the other room that she realized the priest was here.
Abuela! Bertha ran into the bedroom and knew at a glance that she would never have the chance to finish their earlier conversation.
* * *
First Abuela and now Papá. Bertha stared at the freshly filled grave, beside the older one. Theresa knelt, the knees of her heavy stockings getting dirty as she placed a small clutch of flowers at Ruben’s headstone. A month ago, neither of them could have imagined this.
The new tractor he had purchased after the war, the slicing blades of the discs, a freak fall at the wrong moment—Ruben Martinez had bled to death before anyone knew he was in trouble. Bertha, coming home from treating a child’s skin rash, had spotted the stalled machine—first with curiosity, then with horror. If only she had been home, if only she had seen the accident. Guilt and regret wracked her each time she thought of it, each time she saw her mother’s ravaged face and Theresa’s slumped posture in the all-black clothing she now insisted upon wearing.
They would get through it, somehow. Money—the lack of it—was the big concern now. Bertha’s income from performing cures was nothing. Five dollars was a typical fee, more often a chicken or some fruit or vegetables from the patient’s garden. The nation might be in an economic boom right now, but this was a poor county in a poor state. People had nothing with which to pay. As a
farmer, Ruben had not paid into the new Social Security plan. They were two women alone, and they would have to make do. Bertha needed to talk with Theresa about it, to have an earnest conversation, but her mother could not yet speak of the future.
The closest she had come to making a plan had been to insist that Bertha move into the front bedroom. Theresa could not sleep in the big bed in the room she had shared for more than thirty years with Ruben. They switched bedrooms, Bertha finding it strange to leave the one where she and Abuela had lain in the two narrow beds, talking often into the night. But that was gone now too, and maybe it was better to assume new roles.
She sensed movement and offered a hand as her mother got to her feet at the graveside.
“Come, Mamá, we can go home and I’ll make you a nice lunch.”
“There are beans. I cooked beans yesterday.”
It was all she did anymore—cook traditional dishes as if there were still four people in the house. Bertha often took the extra food to her patients, but they scarcely had the money to feed the county. This was another subject for discussion.
“Mamá,” she said as she ladled beans from the steaming pot to their plates. “We have to talk about money.”
She looked at the hunched form of her mother—barely fifty years old and already her spine was curving. Arthritis, too, was taking a toll and Theresa could hardly lift a cooking pot, much less hoe a garden or drive the tractor.
“Neither of us can do the work of the farm now. Without a crop to sell, we cannot feed ourselves. I think we should sell the land.”
Theresa stared at her food. No words. But a tear plopped onto the paper napkin that Bertha had tucked into the neck of her dress.
“This land came to my family thirteen generations ago. My grandfather told me the stories, made me promise to keep it always.”
The Woodcarver's Secret (Samantha Sweet Mysteries) Page 31