The Spanish Daughter(53)

She wiped her tears as soon as she saw me and stood up straight. Up close, I could see that her clothes were discolored and shabby as if she’d washed them too many times. Her skirt was wrinkled and the lace of her sleeves and collar looked stained.

“Don Cristóbal!”

“Mayra, are you all right?”

She nodded, her eyes puffy.

“What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be in Guayaquil?”

She renewed her sobbing, hiccups included. I didn’t know what the proper course of action would be. Patting her back? Talking in a soothing voice? As a man, I couldn’t take the same liberties as I normally would. Touching her would be highly inappropriate. I ended up handing her the banana.

“Here, have something to eat. You look pale.”

Surprisingly, she grabbed the fruit. “Thank you. I haven’t eaten since yesterday.”

She peeled the banana and took a bite. I sat on the rock and invited her to do the same. As she ate, her crying stopped. I removed Cristóbal’s handkerchief from my back pocket and handed it to her.

“Do you want to tell me what’s wrong? Maybe I can help you.”

She took the handkerchief and blew her nose with it.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t be here. I’m so stupid.”

“What happened, Mayra?” I tried my kindest tone.

“Don Tomás fired me. And it’s all my fault.” She started crying all over again.

I dared to place my hand on her back. “Calm down, now. I can’t understand you when you cry. Can you tell me why he fired you?”

“Because . . .” She covered her eyes with the handkerchief. “Because I’m expecting a child.”

I glanced at her stomach. I’d noticed a small bulge, but I thought it was because often times women of lower strata didn’t wear corsets. I recalled the loose dress she’d been wearing the day I met her. Perhaps she’d been trying to cover her growing stomach then. Her tearful visit to the curandera made sense now.

“I’m going to burn in hell,” she said.

“No, you’re not. Women have been having babies out of wedlock since the beginning of time.”

“Yes, but not with holy men!”

Holy men? She covered her mouth with her hand.

“Mayra, what are you talking about? Who is the father of your child?”

She dropped the banana peel on the ground as if she’d lost all her strength.

“Look, I just want to help you.” Hesitantly, I reached out for her arm. “But you have to tell me the whole truth. Who is the father of your child?”

She mumbled a name, but I couldn’t understand her or maybe I couldn’t believe what she was saying.

“Who?”

“Father Alberto.”

My brother? I glanced at her stomach. She was having my brother’s son?

My nephew.

“Does he know?”

I knew the answer before she said it. Of course he knew. That was why he’d looked so disjointed yesterday in Vinces.

“Yes.”

“How long has this . . . this relationship been going on?”

She lowered her chin. “You won’t tell anyone, will you?”

“Of course not.”

“It started when I lived in Vinces, over a year ago, before I went to work for Don Tomás.”

I was stunned. My brother, The Priest, had been involved in an illicit affair with the lawyer’s maid for so long? I couldn’t say I was too surprised, though. I’d always thought it was unnatural to ask young men to be celibate for the rest of their lives, but Alberto had seemed so contented with his vocation, so motivated by intellectual pursuits rather than carnal ones. But apparently, I’d misjudged him. Or had he fallen in love with this girl?

“We knew it was wrong.” She squeezed Cristóbal’s handkerchief. “We thought that once I moved to Guayaquil, we could end it. We didn’t see each other for weeks, but one day Alberto showed up at Don Tomás’s house. He said he couldn’t help it. He missed me too much. After that, he came to see me once a month.”

“What does he say about this . . . situation?” I asked.

“He goes back and forth.” She sniffed. “He used to say he loved me, he said he would take me away from here, to another town and start a new life where nobody knew us, but that has changed. When I told him that Don Tomás fired me because he discovered I was with child, Alberto said we should go to the curandera to see if she could”—she swallowed—“if she could do something about the child.”

“And did she?”

“No. He, we, changed our minds. He wouldn’t even go inside with me, he said it would be a mortal sin.”

This also explained why he was wearing his street clothes yesterday.

She covered her face with her hands. “This is all my fault. If only I hadn’t been so sick these last few weeks, Don Tomás wouldn’t have figured it out.”

“He would have, eventually. A pregnancy is not something you can hide forever.”

“But I would’ve had more time to save money.”

I could see why my brother had been so tempted by Mayra. She had a frailty about her that must be irresistible to men. Her wet eyelashes curled up stylishly and her lips were full and moist.