by Laura Resau
I glanced up at Abuelita again. With the soil on her forehead, she seemed part of the garden. I imagined her when she was a girl, ripped away from her land, an uprooted plant in the city without a single person who cared about her.
“Abuelita.” I paused and sat on my heels. “How did you get out of the city?”
She wiped her forehead with the other hand now. It made a matching streak. She sat back on her heels, facing me. “I left alone, in the moonlight.” She laughed, tilted back her head, and looked at the sky for a moment.
Moonlight. I smiled and picked some dirt out of my fingernails and waited.
“First, Clara, you must know more about Silvia. More about doña Carmen. And most of all, you must know about a particular three-toothed woman. And then, mi amor, the moonlight…”
Helena
WINTER TO SPRING 1938
“I wish that bird would hush up!” Silvia was in a dark mood.
Loro ignored her and kept whistling his good-morning song.
“It’s not even lunchtime yet and I’m already bored.” She pushed her lips out in a pout.
“¡Ánimo, Silvia!” Loro shrieked. Lighten up!
I tried to hide my laughter. I was feeling happy, humming and washing the breakfast dishes in the yard. Breathing in the freshness of the morning. Watching light bounce off bubbles. It reminded me of the forest by my village, the way the sunlight shone through the leaves at this time of day.
Silvia stomped over to Loro and held her fist up as Uncle did when he was angry. “Hush! Up!”
Loro opened his beak wide and let out a cackle of laughter. A cackle like the shriek of a trumpet. Silvia jumped and backed away.
“Silvia, why don’t you like Loro?” I asked. “I’d be happy to have a bird like him.” I scraped my spoon at some hardened rice stuck to the bottom of the pot.
“He’s a devil bird. He makes my nerves twitch, the way he screams.” After a pause she added, “Papá gave him to me as a gift. At first I liked him. Then I found out that Papá had a new mistress—the woman who sells birds at the market. Why should I be nice to a bird that came from her?” She made a face at Loro. Curled up her lip, bugged out her eyes. How ugly she could make herself look.
“But Loro’s not to blame,” I said.
She shrugged. “I can’t wait to leave this family. Like my older brothers and sisters did. I’ll leave and never come back.” Everything about her was sharp. Her nose, her eyes, her pointy chin, her narrow lips. The words shot out of her mouth like hard bits of hail.
“You’re lucky to have a mother and father at all,” I said, putting the last of the dishes into the rack. “My parents died.”
She ignored me. “Thanks to Papá I have skin like a coat of dirt. People think I’m from the country. That I speak an Indian language. Someone thought I was a maid once. That’s why I always wear fancy dresses at the market now. And powder my face white.”
She smoothed the ruffles of her skirt. The satin sash had come undone. She turned her back to me and snapped her fingers. “Tie it, muchacha.”
I wiped my hands on my huipil and tried to even out the bow. She’d been making me tie her sashes more often lately. And braiding her hair. Why, I wondered. To be close to me? Uncle used to do something like that. He would stand by the kitchen door and criticize Aunt Teresa’s cooking. The tortillas were always too small, the meat too salty, the sauce too spicy. Really, I think he was lonely. Lonely because people kept a distance from him. But he wanted someone to listen.
Silvia kept talking. “Every time I pass a beggar child I think, That could be a half brother or sister of mine. You, muchacha, you could be one.”
“I am not,” I said quietly. My parents’ love for each other was famous in my village. Two lovebirds. One could not survive without the other.
Silvia craned her neck around to check the bow. It must have looked good enough because she didn’t make me redo it.
I turned from her and tore up a leftover tortilla for Loro. In Mixteco I whispered to him, “Don’t mind that girl’s harsh words, Loro. I could listen to you sing for all my life.”
“Don’t talk about me!” Silvia snapped. “And stop speaking that Indian language!” Into the house she stormed.
“¡Ánimo!” Loro called after her.
Oh, there was so much evil air inside that house. I had to give myself limpias to clean my spirit. I used leaves from hidden ruda bushes I’d planted next to the avocado tree. Really, I should have given a limpia to the house, but Silvia protested. “Mamá! Don’t let her do those devil Indian things!”
Little by little, Silvia and doña Carmen were pushing me into a corner. Something was going to happen. Just before a storm begins, the air smells of thunder. This is what I felt. The first drop of the storm was when doña Carmen started paying my wages late. The tenth month she did not pay me at all.
One afternoon in the eleventh month, I decided it was time. Time to demand my money and stand up for myself. I brought her a bowl of rice pudding she’d ordered and set it down in front of her. Politely, I said to her, “Doña Carmen, excuse me, but you haven’t paid me this month.”
“Ay, girl, leave me alone now. Can’t you see I’m eating?”
There I waited, outside the door of her bedroom. I waited and waited, until she finished every last bit of pudding. My heart beat fast as I took her empty bowl. “Now, could you please pay me?”
Her jaw dropped at my boldness. Then her lips twisted into a smirk. “Later. I’m taking a nap.” She stretched her mouth into a fake yawn.
A week passed. Every day, doña Carmen fanned the coals of my anger more and more. She fanned the anger I had tried to bury under ashes, hoping to smother it. And now the anger threatened to burst into flames. When I talked to another maid about it at the market, she said, “Be glad the señora doesn’t beat you.” I couldn’t help smiling at that. Imagine the effort doña Carmen would have to make just to haul her body out of the armchair! Then imagine the effort it would take for her to raise up her great arms and hit me. No, she would collapse in a pool of sweat, gasping for breath.
“I won’t let her treat me this way,” I said. “She’s no better than me. We all eat from the same tortilla.”
“What are you going to do?” the maid asked.
“I’ll think about it.” And I thought. The next morning, I washed the piles of clothes that never stopped coming. And as I washed, I whispered to Loro, “I could just take the money she owes me. But then I’d be fired. Or worse.”
Then, even though it made me shudder, I thought of the curses I’d heard of in my village. “I could put a sharp rock into her belly. Make her roll with pain. Or I could steal her soul so she’s left with no will. Or make a snake bite her.” All the herbs I needed were with me. If I saved chicken bones from the next meal and collected blood from the fresh-killed goats at the market, then I could do the curse.
Loro gave a shrill cry, a cry that pulled me out of the dark hole I was sinking into.
“You’re right, Loro,” I said, feeling ashamed. “I’m a healer. I harm no one.”
At that moment doña Carmen came out of the house. She was huffing like an old burro under her load of dresses and shirts. She dumped them on top of the pile. “Do these. And make them white this time.”
I took a deep breath. “Not until you give me the money you owe me.”
She looked at me as though I’d slapped her. “Never…never tell me what to do, girl. You are nothing. You are”—and she looked around the ground—“you are this ant under my shoe.” She raised her fat foot over a long line of ants. Each ant carried a piece of yellow petal ten times its size. She smashed down her foot. “That is how little you mean to me. How little you mean to this world. Now wash the clothes, girl.”
I obeyed her. But the blood rushed to my face, blood full of heat and fury. Again, I began planning the terrible curses I would put on her.
The next day, I came back from the market carrying a basket of meat. I opened the g
ate, swatting the flies away. Inside the courtyard were doña Carmen, don Manuel, and two policemen, one short and round like a hog, and the other lanky as a hungry horse.
Before I could say a word, doña Carmen snatched the basket from my hands. The policemen grabbed me by the elbows.
“You’re under arrest,” the stout one said. He forced my wrists behind my back. With a rope he tied them together.
“For what?” I had trouble finding the words in Spanish.
“You know what.”
But I’d decided not to curse her! Had my powers spun out of my control?
“For stealing,” the taller one said finally.
“Stealing what?” I thought of the leftover tortillas and meat scraps I’d brought to the prison. My pulse quickened.
“Don’t play stupid, señorita,” he said. “Stealing the señora’s ring. She found it hidden in your bag of herbs.”
“But I didn’t.” I looked around for help. My eyes rested on don Manuel.
He shrugged. “My wife says you did.” His gaze moved to his boots.
I looked at doña Carmen, but she, too, refused to meet my eyes. Flies buzzed around the meat basket she held. What a vulture she was, what a fat vulture.
I tried to keep my voice steady. “I don’t know how her ring appeared in my bag. But I did not hide it there.” Desperate, I searched for a kind face. Loro stayed quiet and solemn, as though he were praying at Mass.
“Doña Carmen says your actions have been suspicious for a long time,” the thin policeman said. “She says you’ve stolen pastries from her too.” With dull eyes, he watched my reaction.
I bit my lip to hold back tears. No one believed me. I was as helpless as an ant after all.
“First the pastries. Now the ring,” the short one grunted. He nodded, and the rolls of skin beneath his chin jiggled.
With that, they led me to the gate. I looked back at Loro. Beyond him, Silvia stood in the shadows of the doorway. Half hidden, she watched us, with narrowed, bitter eyes.
“You will stay here until your trial,” the guard said. He guided me down the hallway toward the cell. His face looked pale and sickly. Crescents hung, deep and purple, below his eyes. The building smelled cold, like death.
Stay calm, I told myself. Stay calm. Remember the spirits of your mother, your father, the jaguar. Remember that all the time, they are here, protecting you. “When is the trial?” I asked.
“Who knows.” He hacked up a glob of phlegm and spit it onto the floor. “Depends how fast the judge hears all the other cases. Could be a week. Could be a month. Six months.”
Six months? “And what if they find me guilty?” I asked quietly.
“For stealing a ring? Who knows. Depends if the judge is having a bad day. One year. Ten years.” He coughed and spit again. The packed-dirt floor was spotted with mucus.
Maybe this was a nightmare. I closed my eyes. Helena, I told myself, when you open your eyes you will wake up in your village. You will wake up on your petate, next to María laughing in her sleep. But when I opened my eyes we were standing in front of a door. A thick wooden door with bars set in a small window.
“You’ll have a cell mate,” the guard said. Out of a pouch at his side he pulled a large ring of keys. “We call her doña Three Teeth. She doesn’t talk.” He placed a key in the lock and turned it. The door creaked open. He nudged me inside. My legs shook like a scared goat’s.
The cell door shut behind me. Slowly my eyes grew accustomed to the dim light. There, in the corner, was the skeletal form of a woman. A woman with skin like dried leaves draped over bones. She sat with her feet tucked under her and her huipil untucked, spread around her, faded and filthy. Who knew where her huipil ended and the dirt floor began? Her hair hung in two long, thin braids. Like little brooms, they brushed the packed dirt. The only color in the room came from the orange ribbons woven into her braids.
How long until I’d turn into her? A stale old skeleton, barely alive?
“I’m Helena,” I whispered in Spanish.
Silent, she watched me from the shadows.
“What’s your name?” I ventured. I hid my hands behind my back so that she wouldn’t see them shaking.
No answer.
I took a step closer. And another. And another. Now I was close enough to see the design on her huipil. Small rows of zigzags. It was familiar.
It was almost the same pattern as mine! She must be from a nearby village.
Now I tried in Mixteco. “Na ka’an no’o ñuu savi?” Do you speak Mixteco?
A slow smile spread across her face, a smile that unveiled three crooked teeth. Speaking Mixteco, she replied, in a rusted voice, “You’re the girl who passes me tortillas through the bars.”
Yes. Her hands. I recognized them. Her hands had always stood out from the other hands stretched between the bars. The others were clutching, grasping, desperate. But her hands were graceful. Always, they had taken the tortillas with dignity.
I took a step closer. I reached out and placed my right hand against hers. Lightly, our hands touched, as is our custom.
You know, you can learn much from touching a person’s hand, if only you pay attention. As our hands touched, I heard a faint echo of music. I saw trails of sparks from nights of dancing. I felt a pulse of passion buried deep. And in her eyes I sensed a trace of playfulness. “I am pleased to finally meet you,” I said.
“Are you a healer?” she asked.
“Yes!” I said, surprised. “How did you know?”
“From the way you look into me. Not at me, but into me. You see who I used to be, not just who I am now. Don’t you?”
I sat down next to her and leaned against the cold wall. “I hope so.” I paused and looked at her closely. Old laugh lines ran like riverbeds over the hills and valleys of her face. “You don’t belong here,” I said. “No more than I do. Why are you here?”
Doña Three Teeth’s story lasted from noon until nightfall. The words that she had kept inside her for so long flowed out. They drifted around the room like spirals of incense smoke. As she spoke, the square of light from the window grew orange with the sunset. Then the cool purple of dusk. And finally, darkness. I closed my eyes and let her words wrap around me.
As a child, she said, she had been like a firework, always on the brink of exploding with joy. She threw herself into everything she did: embroidering otherworldly animals on huipiles, climbing up guava trees like a squirrel, searching for healing herbs with her grandmother. One night at a village fiesta, she fell in love with a man named Pedro Victor, a violinist who played music from his soul, music so rich it brought tears to your eyes. No one was surprised that she let his music carry her away on bird wings. No one was surprised at how sudden and deep her love for him ran. But no one was surprised, either, that her parents refused to let her marry him. In her parents’ eyes he was just a poor wandering musician from a far-off village, a stranger who was not to be trusted.
So she ran off with him. She ran off with him even though her parents warned she would never again be welcome in their house. She and Pedro Victor moved to the Mixteco neighborhood of Oaxaca City, and there they thrived. “Oh, Helena!” she said. “We loved everyone! We loved everything! And everyone loved us! Everything loved us!” How good that they loved so much, so deeply, because it did not last long. Seven years. They lived seven years of a poor but enchanted life, with three healthy children and one in the belly. And then, one day, a runaway horse galloped down the street and crashed into Pedro Victor. His head hit a rock and he died at once.
“At that moment, Helena, at that very moment, all the joy inside me left. All the music. All the sparks.” She miscarried her baby from grief. Still, she had to feed her other children—a one-year-old, a three-year-old, and a six-year-old. A friend found her a job as a maid for an elderly woman. She washed clothes and mopped floors with her baby playing at her side. Her two older children wandered around the market, scrounging for food like dogs. There by the fruit stan
ds they ate black bananas and half-rotten mangoes that had fallen on the ground. Imagine how much it hurt her heart to know that her children were eating like dogs. She could count every rib on their tiny bodies.
That winter her youngest child fell ill. He could keep no milk or food down. “Oh, Helena! If only I’d been in my village! So many herbs growing wild in the hills. So many herbs that could have cured my son!” Her child grew weaker and weaker. She could not ask her friends for money; no, they barely scraped together enough for their own children. Finally, she asked her employer for a loan of five pesos to bring the child to a doctor. But even after she showed the señora how pale and thin the boy had become, the señora said no. “If I give you five pesos,” the old woman snapped, “soon every beggar in this neighborhood will be at my door.”
The next morning the child never woke up. That was when doña Three Teeth decided to lower her head and take her other two children back to her village. She would have to ask her parents for help. But first, she needed money for the passage back. As she was dusting the old lady’s bedroom one afternoon, she opened a shiny silver jewelry box and took a pair of earrings.
“Listen, Helena,” she told me, her face dark with shame.
“You must understand this. I had no other hope! I imagined all the people I loved dying. One by one. And nothing, I tell you, nothing is worse than seeing your child die.”
But the old lady was sharper than she had thought. Eyes sharp as a hawk’s. She noticed the missing jewelry the next morning. Soon, the police were pounding on the door of doña Three Teeth’s shack. They found the earrings hidden underneath her straw pillow and carted her off to jail. The big green stones in the earrings were emeralds, worth far more than she’d thought. The crime was much graver. And so was the punishment.