Teresa of the New World

by Sharman Apt Russell

  “Papá!” Teresa cried.

  The riders kicked the horses, who pushed past the guards. The guards, with their helmets, armor, and lances, closed the gate. The courtyard was silent except for the gardener, still scolding.

  The pulse of Teresa’s heart beat strongly in her neck. The ground under her feet softened and shuddered, and she remembered the story she had once been told: the earth was a giant turtle walking slowly through an empty sky. The earth was a giant turtle walking so slowly and so carefully that the people on its back did not fall off.

  Teresa saw the turtle pause. She saw the turtle move its long neck, looking back and lifting up awkwardly. If the turtle lifted high enough, if the turtle shook its back hard enough, the land would tilt until everyone tumbled into nothingness, until all the people, all the villages, all the men and women and children, Spanish and Indian, Christian and Moor, tumbled into that empty sky.

  Teresa stood in the silence of the Governor’s courtyard. She saw the turtle lift and shake its heavy back. She waited for the world to end.

  5

  Her father left, the world did not end, and Teresa stopped speaking. Her tongue fell back in her throat and held itself apart. For a few days, she cried all the time. Her eyelids swelled, and her face felt bruised. When she wasn’t crying, she was listening. She listened for the hooves of her father’s horse to return on the cobbled courtyard. When nothing happened, when her father didn’t return, she stopped listening, too.

  Her father had made arrangements. He had gone to Fray Tomás at the last possible moment, explaining how he had to leave his young servant behind. Her father had stressed that last word, his beloved servant, this poor, deformed, tattooed child from the north. The friar had promised to take charge of Teresa. He would teach her Spanish history and culture. He would prepare her for marriage.

  Now the Franciscan monk wanted Teresa to go to school. The Governor’s house stood on the edge of a large village with houses for the Spanish slave hunters and their families, the servants and slaves, the shopkeepers and blacksmiths and artisans. The village also had a church with a separate building for Fray Tomás and a classroom for a dozen Indian boys and girls. Although the girls worked mainly at their embroidery, they could also spend an hour each morning learning to read.

  “Unfortunately,” the monk said to the Governor’s housekeeper, his long white hands resting on Teresa’s shoulders, “the girl is mute. She cannot speak.”

  “But, no,” the housekeeper studied Teresa. “I heard her chattering myself when she first came with the gentlemen.”

  The housekeeper was stocky, with muscular arms and thick legs, an Indian whose family had worked generations for the Aztecs, the former rulers of Mexico. She worked now just the same for the Spanish. Teresa stared up at the woman’s face. The broad brown cheeks, flat nose, and wide forehead were scarred with the craters of smallpox, as though the housekeeper had been attacked by a man flicking a knife, cutting here and there bits of flesh from her skin.

  “Then is she unwilling? Teresa, are you unwilling?” Fray Tomás knelt and turned Teresa around so he could look at her directly. His pale cheeks and thin nose were oily and pimpled, his beard a wisp of blond-brown hair. “Teresa,” he said with some distress, “you must speak if you want me to help you. Do you want to learn to embroider and read like the girls in my school? Do you want to learn your catechism and the ways of Christ, Our Lord? Do you want to serve Our Lord?”

  She could not hear him.

  “I think she is also deaf.” The friar looked up at the housekeeper. “What can I do? I promised the Governor’s guest that I would watch over this child, his beloved servant. He made me swear to him the most holy of oaths. But what can I do?”

  “Leave the girl with me,” the housekeeper replied, shrugging her big shoulders. “She is how old? Seven or eight? A good age. I’ll take care of her.”

  That morning, Teresa began her work under the eye of an assistant cook under the eye of the cook under the eye of the housekeeper. Obediently, her feet carried her to a pile of recently plucked wild duck, ready to be cut up for soup. Her fingers learned to hold a knife and chop between the gristle and bone. Duck fat and smoke coated her skin as she breathed in the brew of the low-ceilinged room filled with two stoves, two fireplaces, three tables for preparing food, and a half-dozen women moving about—a room filled with fire and meat, vegetables and talk, blood and knives. The assistant cooks were either kind or indifferent, giving her one chore after another, one long uneventful day of cutting up duck and turkey and cow and deer, chopping potatoes and onions, grinding maize, patting tortillas, tending fires, and sweeping floors. The work never ended but began again the next morning in a perfect circle. Teresa’s hands did everything they were told to do. Her mouth did not speak or smile but only ate, for the food was plentiful. Teresa worked and ate and worked and ate. At night she slept with the other servants in an outside building near the horse stables.

  Every week, Fray Tomás made sure she went to chapel. The pale young monk came for her personally and stood waiting at the kitchen door. All the kitchen servants had to go to Mass, but they could not go at the same time since the work was so constant and the chapel not large. Fray Tomás fetched Teresa for the earliest morning service, where she sat on a wooden bench with the other females, their black heads bent, their eyes sleepy. With a tender expression, the friar gave them the body of Christ to eat and His blood to drink. Long ago, Teresa had learned the prayers and responses from her father. But she couldn’t hear them now, and she never said them out loud. She only stood and knelt as the others did, because Fray Tomás would be upset if she did not.

  Almost always, the friar touched her hair and asked, “Are you happy, child? Are you well?” Almost always, Teresa nodded. She did not feel she was lying to him. She nodded because that is what he wanted her to do.

  One morning, after three years of working in the kitchen, Teresa was told to follow the housekeeper up the wooden steps to the second floor. One of the girls who worked upstairs had died, and Teresa would now take her place. The housekeeper smiled as though conferring a great favor. They passed the door to Teresa’s father’s bedroom where he had opened the drawers inlaid in the Moorish style with ivory and tortoiseshell. They went into another room where the chairs also had vines crawling up their legs and an escritorio carved into the faces of Spanish hidalgos. Encouragingly, the housekeeper gave Teresa a dry cloth to wipe the chairs free of soot and dirt. When that was done to the housekeeper’s satisfaction, she handed Teresa a second cloth dampened with oil. Now the housekeeper showed Teresa how to move her fingers in delicate circles, rubbing the curves of walnut until they darkened to black and the chair exuded a gleaming pleasure like an animal being stroked.

  Under Teresa’s touch, the carved vines seemed to extend their leaves and unfold with new growth. The vines seemed to flow out of the chair and wrap their tendrils around her hands. The vines seemed to hum and whisper, singing the green song of the earth. The song grew louder and louder, until Teresa fainted.

  Surprised, the housekeeper had to carry the girl downstairs, put a wet rag on her face, and let her rest most of the day. Teresa was never asked to come upstairs again.

  In all those years, of course, there was magic.

  In the kitchen, they told the story of Juan Diego, an Aztec servant who had converted to Christianity after the conquest of Mexico City. One day on his way to Mass, Juan Diego heard music and saw a cloud of radiance from which the Mother Mary appeared in a mantle of blue-green, her skin as dark as his own skin. She spoke in the Aztec language, telling Juan to build a church honoring her. When the Bishop of Mexico City asked for a sign that this vision was true, Juan Diego left the Bishop’s chamber and returned with his apron full of pink and white roses gathered impossibly in the middle of December. The apron opened, the roses tumbled to the floor, and everyone could see that the cloth showed an image of The Blessed Lady, her feet resting on the moon of the old gods.

 
In the kitchen, they whispered of the dead child restored to life when his mother pressed a cross to his lips. They told how a medal of Saint Ignacio cured a woman of viruela, the smallpox. They knew of another poxed woman in labor for three days who gave birth to a healthy boy, without sores, after a priest had blessed her. They knew of a nun dressed in blue who could fly and a man who was saved from a bull by angels. They spoke of birds who talked and witches who would not drown.

  Teresa was older now, taller than the housekeeper, her muscles strong and ropy. She bled every month, which meant she was a woman who could marry and bear children. She had spent more of her life in the Governor’s kitchen, eight years chopping potatoes and wild duck, than she had traveling with her father and his friends. She still did not speak, and she often appeared not to listen. But in other ways she was obedient and—except for that time with the carved wooden chair—always completed her work.

  One afternoon, she went to the herb garden to gather rosemary from the shrubs that grew into a low fragrant hedge. The housekeeper had noticed that Teresa was good with plants, bringing in the freshest leaves, cutting cleanly what the cook wanted, and not annoying the protective gardeners. Herbs were often needed in the kitchen and also to make sachets for the chests and wardrobes upstairs, some to keep away insects and mold, some to sweeten the air and bring back memories of Spain. The housekeeper only had to show Teresa once which plants to gather, at what time in the season, and which parts to use and why. After that, Teresa could be trusted to go to the garden alone.

  The herb garden was large, broken into squares of yarrow and mint, sage and oregano, balm and lavender, their flowers buzzing in the spring and summer with a thousand bees, the air fluttering with a thousand butterflies.

  “Teresa!” On the dirt path, Fray Tomás hurried toward her with his nervous gait, his bare feet seeming to run although he was not running. In the spring sunshine, he had pushed back his brown cowl, and moisture dampened his pale forehead and darkened the thin fringes of hair. The friar still looked young, but he was balding, which caused many jokes among the servants.

  “I have something to show you,” the monk said, stopping before Teresa and speaking loudly. His body odor threatened to overwhelm the rosemary. “In the Governor’s library, we have the published journal of Cabeza de Vaca, his report to the King of Spain! Cabeza de Vaca, your former master. Do you remember him?”

  The friar had decided that Teresa understood him best when he spoke with cheerful force and volume. He had also noticed that she heard those things that interested her. “It’s a privilege,” he shouted now. “The Governor has one of the most complete libraries in New Spain, although the Bishop may rival us in a few subjects. But we specialize in history and on matters that relate to the natives and to law. Your master’s journal was published a few years ago. It took time for the ships to bring us a copy. You know what a book is, don’t you, Teresa?”

  She stared at him, holding the herbs close to her nose.

  Fray Tomás squinted back guiltily, a guilt he kept alive for his own reasons. He had promised the Governor’s guest, that kind and serious conquistador, to educate the girl and find her a husband. “But what can I do,” he had told Teresa more than once, “when you will not speak and sometimes pretend not to hear? At least they no longer beat you for that. And you have become a good worker. The housekeeper says so! She is very fond of you.”

  Now the friar said, “I can show you this book if you want to see it. I can read you a few passages?”

  Teresa stared, not able to move. A buzz distracted her left ear. Some time ago, she had decided that her father’s ship had been lost at sea like so many others. All its passengers were drowned, tumbled to the ocean floor, where her father’s body drifted still in blue-green water, rocked back and forth in salty current, the fish not daring to nibble his flesh, his flesh still firm and miraculously preserved.

  How else could she explain why he had not come back for her?

  But how could her father have written a book if he were drowned and dead on his way to Spain? How could the friar be talking of her father who lay under the sea?

  Teresa dropped her rosemary and grabbed the monk’s robe, nodding as if to say, “Take me now.”

  Fray Tomás looked startled. “Right now?” he asked.

  Teresa nodded and pulled commandingly at his robe.

  The Governor was not in his compound today. But the Governor’s secretary, seemingly bemused, heard the friar’s request. Yes, the girl could enter the library and see her former master’s journal if the friar really wanted her to, if he had promised their guest, the brave and accomplished Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca. Why not?

  Teresa kept her eyes on the tiled floor and did not know if the secretary looked at her then, his eyebrows raised at her flattened head and tattooed cheeks. Hardly daring to breathe, she followed the monk down a strange hall she had never seen before. For the first time, she realized that there were many rooms in the Governor’s house she had never seen, that she lived in a small world with just a few paths, from the kitchen to the stables, from the kitchen to the chapel, from the kitchen to the herb garden.

  The library smelled of leather and lemon oil. Teresa stared at all the books on the shelves. They reminded her of clay pots, each holding some new food, perhaps a spice or unknown herb. Which one spoke in her father’s voice? She watched the monk take down a bound manuscript and lay it precisely on an escritorio. With the tips of his fingers, he turned the pages and began to translate what the black lines and blotches meant. He started with the long introduction to the King, Charles the Fifth:

  O Sacred, Holy, Imperial, Catholic Majesty! Among all the princes in the world, none approach your magnificence, the bright light of your wisdom and compassionate soul shining like a star in the early evening . . .

  Immediately Teresa recognized her father in the words. There was no doubt. Her father was speaking to her again. When the friar stopped, she signaled him to read on. He looked at her with a crafty expression. “Will you speak to me now, Teresa?” the monk coaxed.

  She signaled again, and he sighed and read.

  Like the Italians with their feuds and labyrinthine strategies for war . . .

  The Capoques are also a generous people.

  We must meet them with kindness, as they have so often met me wandering lost in the wilderness . . .

  At this passage, Fray Tomás looked up earnestly. “Your master agrees with the Franciscans, my order. He urges the King and all the Spanish kingdom to treat the Indians as if they have souls, to meet them with the love of Christ. This book has been very influential, Teresa. The King has decreed that some Indians can no longer be taken as slaves but should be given the rights of free men or, at least, of servants like yourself. Your master is a great man, Teresa. You should be proud to have traveled with him.”

  Teresa signaled again: read on. Her veins were on fire. Her head buzzed. Her father had written his report to the King of Spain in conversations with her. She had been the page on which he had inscribed himself, setting his life to memory as he lived it, always thinking of what he would say to Charles the Fifth and the royal court, always planning for the time when the Royal Treasurer of the Pánfilo de Narváez expedition would return to Seville.

  Read on! She signaled to the friar.

  The Mariames sometimes kill their female children at birth. The tribes inland can be cruel but often have great love for each other. It is noteworthy that these people take only one wife, except for medicine men, who may have more.

  Where does he talk about me? Teresa wondered. Where am I in his book?

  The women in the kitchen sang: Sarampión toca la puerta. Viruela dice: ¿Quién es? Y Escarlatina contesta: ¡Aquí estamos los tres! The cook would sometimes shout a little madly, “Sing it again!” And the women would sing again: Measles knocks at the door. Smallpox asks, Who’s there? And Scarlet Fever replies: All three of us are here!

  Everyone—the cook, the assistant cooks, the
assistants to the assistants—felt it in the air. A bad time was coming. Every few years, New Spain seemed to experience such an epidemic. Sometimes it was measles, deadly to many adults and almost all babies. Sometimes it was smallpox, dreaded for the horrible days of pain with sores that began in the mouth and throat. Sometimes it was scarlet fever with its alternating chills and heat, or typhus, tabardillo, whose small red spots covered a woman like a tabardo or sleeveless cloak, growing closer and closer together over her chest and shoulders. Everyone in the kitchen had a story of a mother or sister or brother or daughter or son who had died of one disease or another, of entire families dying and villages left empty.

  Teresa was not afraid. Teresa did not care. She was too angry. She was angry all the time now, and this anger filled her with unexpected power. Anger was a food better than bread, richer than chocolate. She had never known how good anger was, how it scalded and purified, tempered and strengthened. Every morning, she woke in a rage.

  It began with Fray Tomás reading her father’s journal on the beautifully decorated escritorio. He did not, of course, read about Teresa. In her father’s story, in the story, Teresa did not exist. It began, perhaps, much earlier, on the beach in the hazy whiteness of the sea and sand and her father’s words surrounding her before she could walk, before she could speak.

  Fray Tomás noticed it right away. “Something is wrong with your heart, Teresa. It is growing hard.”

  She glared at him, refusing to go into the chapel, to sit meekly through one more sermon. The monk shook his head and pointed to the twisted heart carved into the wood of the chapel door. “Remember the bleeding heart of Christ, Teresa. It is a symbol of His fifth bleeding wound. He bleeds for you.”

  Teresa snorted.

  The friar looked shocked. “Oh, yes!” Fray Tomás put a hand on his chest, on the rough brown cloth of his robe. “He loves you, and He cares for you.” The friar hardly knew what to do, how to help this angry young woman.