The Hacienda(3)
Not in the family’s house? “Why?” I blurted out.
Juana’s face shifted, resettled. “The house is terribly drafty this time of year,” she said lightly. “Isn’t it, Rodolfo?”
Rodolfo’s face looked a bit strained as he agreed and returned her smile. He was embarrassed by her, I realized with a start. Why? She was unusual, to be sure, but there was a frankness to her that reminded me of Papá’s no-nonsense manner. A simple, easy kind of authority, one that drew the attention of all the servants to her.
I could almost feel the air shift around me, toward her and her undeniable gravity. Rodolfo was not the master of this house.
Juana was.
A breathless fear uncurled in my chest; in response, I adjusted my posture, drawing my shoulders back as my father used to. There was nothing to be afraid of. This hacienda was mine. I married its patrón, and Juana chose to live among the servants. I ought to be glad Juana was so embarrassing to Rodolfo that he barely spoke of her. She was no threat to me. Let her stay in this middle courtyard, in the servants’ quarters. The main house would be mine to rule. My domain.
Those thoughts quieted the unsettled lurch of my gut as we chatted with Juana for another moment longer, and then left the servants to their work and walked through the arched doorway into the innermost courtyard.
Rodolfo had asked me twice if I wanted to stay in the capital, in his family’s old Baroque apartment, but I refused. I wanted the house. I wanted to steal Mamá away from Tía Fernanda, bring her here and show it to her. I wanted to prove to Mamá that marrying Rodolfo was right. That my choice would open a door into a new life for us.
And now, as I at last faced the house, the slant of its gap-toothed roof, its dark windows and age-weathered white stucco walls, a feral feeling seized me.
Get back.
My spine stiffened. I wanted to fling myself back from the courtyard as if I had been burned.
But I refused to let myself falter. I tightened my grip on Rodolfo’s hand and banished the feeling. It was foolish. I was taken aback by Juana, but that was no reason to flee. Not when I had won so much.
Not when I had nothing to run to.
The air was thick and silent, our footsteps the only sound as we reached a set of low, broad steps leading up to the front door. I stepped onto the first, then froze, a gasp stealing the breath from my lips.
A dead rat splayed across the third step, its head tilted back at a broken angle, its stiff tongue jutting through yellowed teeth. Perhaps it had fallen from the roof, but its skull had split open as if it had been flung from a height with incredible force. Shining brains spilled onto the stone step, a splatter of rotten pink covered with crawling black flies.
Rodolfo let out a weak cry of surprise and yanked me back from the steps.
Juana’s light laugh lilted over our heads. She was directly behind us, then at once at my elbow.
“Oh, the cats here get a little carried away,” she said gaily, as if explaining away a troublesome nephew. “Do you mind cats?”
3
THE TOUR RODOLFO GAVE me of the main house was brief. The housekeeper, Ana Luisa, would give me a more thorough introduction to its inner workings later in the day, he said. Though he had spent his childhood in this house and had many fond memories of it, he came and went too infrequently during the war to understand running it as well as she.
The house’s walls were thick, stucco and whitewashed; though the sun shone bright outside, cool shadows draped the halls. The building was arranged in a U shape around a central courtyard and was two-storied only over its central, largest section. The southern branch housed the kitchen and storerooms and was Ana Luisa’s domain. At the north end of the central wing, a staircase led to an upper floor composed of bedrooms, the suite of the patrón, and several empty drawing rooms.
As Rodolfo and I returned downstairs, I noticed a narrow passage to the right of the foot of the stairs. Its doorway was boarded up, a hasty job of mismatched wood and rusting nails.
“Juana told me there was damage in the northern wing,” Rodolfo said when he noticed how I paused, my attention drawn to the doorway. He took me gently by the hand and led me away. “An earthquake, or water, I can’t remember which. I will have Mendoza look into repairs.”
I tilted my chin up as we entered a formal dining room, tracing Moorish tiles imported from the peninsula by his forebears to a high ceiling. A narrow ledge ran around the circumference of the room, nearly twelve feet off the ground.
Rodolfo followed the line of my gaze. “When my parents used to have parties here, the servants would take candelabras up there,” he said. “It was as bright as an opera house.” Then his smile at the memory faded, and a shadow passed over his face. “Never go up there. A maid fell from there once.”
His words struck the air off-key, distant and slightly dissonant.
I shivered. Contrary to what Juana said, drafty was not the term I would have chosen to describe the chill inside the house. It sank into my bones like claws. The still air tasted of the staleness of an underground storeroom. I wanted to throw open all the shuttered windows, to let in fresh air and light.
But Rodolfo escorted me swiftly onward, closing the door with a snap behind him.
“We will dine somewhere more comfortable tonight,” he said.
Tomorrow, I promised the room. Tomorrow I would throw light into all its shadowed corners, order paint to be mixed to tidy its soot-soiled stucco.