The Hacienda(19)

I stood as fast as my aching head would allow and slammed the chest shut.

The room was silent.

I had not imagined it. I could not forget the expression that contorted Juana’s face as she drenched my hands, desperate to clean skin that was already bare of blood.

Juana saw what I had seen.

I needed to talk to her. If it was late morning, she must be in the fields, or tending to some other running of the hacienda beyond the house that I was not privy to. I would find her in the evening, then. First, I needed food.

The house watched me coyly as I descended the stairs. I shook the feeling off like a horse twitching flies from its hide. Houses did not watch. It simply was not true or possible.

But still my steps quickened. A faint smell of copal shrouded me, thanks to my hair; it had reeked of the incense when I brushed it out and pinned it into a knot high off my neck. I thought of the kitchen with its smoky sentries, how safe I had felt within that room.

When I reached the kitchen, the hope building in my heart dissipated. The incense had burned down; no smoke wreathed the doorway, no herbs scattered on the floor. No relief from the eerie feeling of being watched.

A bowl clattered to the ground.

I jumped, a cry in my throat, and whirled to face the sound.

It was Paloma, Ana Luisa’s reserved daughter. She dipped to the ground to collect the bowl and rose to put it on its shelf. “Do?a! I wasn’t expecting you.”

I gave her as kind a smile as I could muster with my heart racing so wildly. I willed it to slow. How silly of me, to be frightened by her presence.

“I was expecting Ana Luisa,” I said. “Isn’t she the cook?”

“When the patrón is here, yes,” Paloma said quietly. “She still could be, if you wish. She sent me to tidy and with this.” Here she pointed at eggs, tortillas, and a small jug of chocolate atole. Steam curled above the jug, visible in the crisp morning air. “For you.”

I thanked Paloma effusively and sat to eat as she swept the kitchen. The slight spice in the atole soothed my nausea, and I savored it.

I had been dreading spending the morning scrubbing dried blood from silk, and now I would not have to. That was good. I could return to the task of compiling a list of things I wanted Rodolfo to send from the capital.

I glanced over my shoulder at the doorway. It yawned before me, crowned by black glyphs. Whispers twined through the shadows beyond it.

Not whispers, I corrected myself firmly. The creak of hundred-year-old wood. The wind in the drying leaves of the oaks in the side garden beyond the kitchen. Nothing more.

“Paloma,” I began.

“Yes, Do?a Beatriz?” She turned and stood at attention, chin dipped submissively, gaze fixed on the floor somewhere near my shoes. Paloma was a mirror image of her mother, but very little like Ana Luisa in how she behaved around me.

“Are you busy this morning?” When she replied no, I asked her to accompany me as I walked the rooms of the house. “I come from a busy house with a very large family,” I said. Never mind that the very large family I referenced barely treated me as a part of it, relegating me to the scalding steam of the laundry whenever it suited Tía Fernanda’s needs or temper. “I dislike how quiet the house is and wish for company while I work.”

“Very well, Do?a Beatriz,” Paloma said. There was something in her tone that hinted this was not at all an unusual request to her.

I gestured to the doorway.

“Do you know what the meaning of those marks is?”

“I couldn’t tell you, do?a.” But as she spoke, Paloma’s eyes were still on the floor. I could not tell whether she was telling the truth or not.

I took a quick trip upstairs for paper and a charcoal pencil and a shawl. The echoes of my footsteps followed me as I returned. Aside from the kitchen, the patrón’s suite, and the parlor turned dining room where Rodolfo and I generally ate, the house was utterly empty; even the smaller rooms felt at once cavernous and stifling as I stood in them, imagining how they could be filled, thinking out loud to Paloma about how they would be scrubbed. I took notes all the while.

Green parlor. Will be green again. Fresh coat of paint. Re-brick the fireplace.

Dining room. Scrub the soot from above; add a railing to the balcony for safety. Wrought iron to match the doors. Colors: gold upholstery to match the dark wood table.

Halls: rugs. For the damn echoing.

Paloma giggled softly as I wrote this. I glanced at her. She was scanning the list over my shoulder as I placed the paper on the wall to write.

“You read and write?” I asked.

Paloma met my eyes. Now that she did not turn her face away from me, I noted how expressive it was, how the slim brows that framed her face could speak volumes before she even parted her lips.

She murmured something neither affirmative nor negative.

I raised my brows. Tía Fernanda’s servants were not literate; I did not expect this of any member of the staff besides the foreman.

“Wonderful,” I said. I meant it. I handed the paper and pencil to Paloma. “Will you write down what I say, then?”

She did not meet my gaze but took the writing instruments silently and did as instructed. We worked together until an hour to midday, when Paloma said she needed to help Ana Luisa prepare lunch for the tlachiqueros and the farm workers.

I stepped out of the last room we surveyed, then slowed near the foot of the staircase. A steep dip in temperature washed over me. Though I did not know why, my eye was drawn to the boarded-up entrance to the north wing.