The Hacienda(57)

“I thought you would be like the other one, when you arrived,” Paloma ventured in a small voice.

The other one. María Catalina.

I waited for her to elaborate, but she did not. One by one she put the tomatoes in the pot, salted them generously, and remained silent as she stirred.

“What was she like?” I prompted.

Her face changed again at this question. It lost its open look and shuttered. She stirred a few moments longer. “Like the patrón,” she said at last.

“How so?”

She worried her bottom lip as she withdrew the spoon from the pot. “I wouldn’t say this to most people, but you seem to have a level head about the world.” I glanced at the censers in the doorway. Levelheaded was not how I would describe myself after living inside these walls. “I think you see the world more clearly than the hacendados,” she continued. “We don’t have a choice when it comes to our patróns. We tolerate them. We survive them. Some have a harder time of it than others. Our patrón makes life difficult for young women who work in the house. Do you understand?”

My face must have betrayed my confusion, for with a small, frustrated noise, Paloma pivoted to blunter language. “Girls feared working in the house, near the patrón, because some of those who did became pregnant. Against their will. When the se?ora found out, she was furious. She said that she didn’t want him leaving a trail of bastards across the countryside.” Paloma set the heavy lid on the pot with a resounding clang. “She got her wish. She made sure of it.”

My heartbeat echoed in my ears. I was swept back to my first day at San Isidro, when Rodolfo led me on a tour through the cold, dark house. In the dining room, he forbade me from going up to the ledge that ringed the room.

A maid fell from there once, he said.

I could not speak for shock. Not only had Paloma accused my husband of raping servants, but he and his first wife of murdering them.

She folded her arms across her chest, her flint-hard eyes challenging me to defy her. To lose my temper, to tell her to stop lying.

I couldn’t.

For I believed her.

I sank into one of the small chairs by the kitchen table and put my head in my hands.

Mamá hated Rodolfo because of his politics. But perhaps that had cloaked something else, an instinct, an intuition. Rodolfo was not who I thought he was.

And his first wife?

Red eyes, flesh-colored claws . . .

“I’ve overheard the patrón talk about the Republic,” Paloma said. “About abolishing the casta system. About equality.” She snorted. “I don’t think he knows what that word means. Not when he and his treat their dogs better than us.”

From the moment I had woken to Paloma pounding on Andrés’s door, the morning had dealt me blow after blow. Ana Luisa dead. Rodolfo returning. The voice. Andrés’s loss of memory.

Now this.

“Why are you telling me this?” I asked weakly.

Paloma did not look up when she answered. “You said your family doesn’t want you. That means you’re one of us, now.” Her voice grew distant, cold, as if it were coming from the mouth of a much older woman. “That means you’re trapped in San Isidro, just like the rest of us. And you’ll die here like the rest of us.”





19





THE SHADOWS AROUND THE house grew long. The afternoon rain Andrés predicted came and filled the small central plaza of the hacienda village with mud.

I adjusted my wool shawl around my shoulders, making sure its longer end covered the basket I carried. It was still heavy with copal, though Andrés and I were now halfway through our task.

He walked a step ahead of me to the next small house and rapped on the door. It opened; warm light from inside slicked his rain-soaked shoulders, caught on the drops that fell from the rim of his hat as he dipped his chin.

He greeted the young woman at the door cordially, smiling at the baby on her hip as he introduced her to me as Belén Rodríguez. Briefly, he explained that he thought it best that all the villagers stay inside once the sun set. Belén followed Andrés’s movements as he turned to me and took copal from the basket. Assessment flickered behind her eyes when they lingered on me, even as she accepted the incense Andrés offered.

I thought you would be like the other one, Paloma said. Was this woman also wondering why the wife of the patrón stood next to the witch priest in the mud and the pouring rain?

The answer to that was simple: Andrés was still injured, and I had not let him out of my sight since finally bringing him out of the green parlor at midday. There were moments he swayed on his feet; memory recall seemed to cause him intense physical pain. His frustration with himself was palpable. It simmered beneath his calm exterior, turning ever inward. I had watched over him as he napped on the terrace, and now we were preparing for nightfall.

There was something about battle that changed the way a man felt about his comrades, Papá said. Andrés and I had seen a fierce battle together and barely made it out alive. I had known him for such a short time, yet I felt bound to him. I called it loyalty. Perhaps it was something deeper.

But the villagers did not know that. As far as they knew, he was still their invincible son; the blow to his head had not touched Andrés’s air of quiet authority.