I cleared my throat, aware that Do?a Catalina still watched me, and began to read.
Paloma took her place next to Mariana and picked up her needlework. Dark, wispy hairs flew free of her plait; she worried her bottom lip as she stitched, like Titi did when she had something on her mind. There was a heaviness in the room that wasn’t from the warmth of the fire; a tenseness that I could not place. And when Paloma insisted on walking with me to the small rooms that adjoined the capilla, a pile of blankets in her arms, I did not protest.
The room was humble: a fireplace, a table, a bed. Packed-dirt-and-gravel floor, polished smooth with varnish and generations of footsteps. One shelf for books and an austere wooden cross on the wall. Paloma shut the door and put the blankets on the table. She lit a few candles, then hovered as I crouched before the hearth and began a fire. Once or twice I glanced at her out of the corner of my eye. She was worrying her bottom lip again; now that her hands were not occupied with needlework, they toyed with the tassels at the end of her shawl.
I knew the look of someone who had much to say but was afraid to speak. I lowered my voice to make sure it was soft, and would not frighten her away, the way I spoke to birds.
“Something is worrying you,” I said. “Maybe I can help.”
“Help is exactly what I want,” she blurted out, lifting her head. She pulled a chair out from the table and sat on it, then drew her knees to her chest protectively. “Your help, specifically. You see . . .” She trailed off, her gaze on the fire. “My friend is too afraid to ask you directly, even though I told her you were harmless. She . . . Mariana, the one sitting with us tonight. She’s shy.” I nodded. Shy was not the word I would have chosen. Mariana had flinched whenever I shifted my weight, her shoulders coiled tight. She pricked herself while sewing at least twice from the sudden movement.
That was the way my mother had moved, when she was still alive.
“Titi must have taught you,” Paloma said. “She must have. You have to help her.”
Our grandmother taught me many things. I didn’t immediately follow her meaning. “I don’t understand.”
Paloma searched for words, clearly flustered. Her eyes shone with tears of frustration, and when she spoke, her voice trembled: “When he was here, the patrón forced himself on Mariana.”
I stared at her, grasping for words, shock stinging like a slap to the face. I found none. My God, why do You forsake Your people? Why do You not protect them from the gilded monsters that prowl the earth?
I thought of bright-haired Solórzano smiling at Padre Guillermo, his lissome wife at his side; my stomach turned to stone, and sank deep, deep underwater. I was wrong to think old Solórzano’s son was any better than his father. The pulque dons were poisoned men.
“Don’t look so stupid. You know exactly what I mean.” The women of my family sheathed their fears and sorrows in knives and claws; the sharpness of her voice did not offend me, but drove home how distressed she was. “She’s with child now. She’s meant to marry Tomás Revilla from Hacienda Ometusco, but if he finds out, if anyone finds out . . .” Her wavering voice broke off, as if she were simply unable to continue.
My heart turned over in my chest. I rocked back on my heels.
“When is the wedding?” I asked softly. “Perhaps there is a way for Mariana to hide the pregnancy, until . . .”
“You’re not listening,” Paloma snapped. “She doesn’t want it. Isn’t that reason enough?”
Her words fell like an enormous pine in the forest, leaving a long silence in their wake. The fire smoked; a soft crackle indicated the kindling was taking the flame. I did not turn away from Paloma.
“You need to help her. You know what I mean.” Paloma’s voice was still frail but grew steadier as she struck her final blow: “Titi would.”
Titi was not a priest, I wanted to cry, but bit my tongue. Could Paloma understand how fear had been my only bedfellow since leaving for Guadalajara? She did not live cheek to jowl with Padre Vicente; though the Inquisition had left for Spain amid the upheaval of the insurgency, it still beat in the veins of many clergy, flooding them with the vigor of the righteous.
I had to continue to hide myself. That was how I had survived, and how I would continue to survive. There was no question about that.
I dropped her gaze and turned to the smoking kindling.
“I need to pray about this,” I said to the fire.
“Prayers are empty talk.” I flinched at the acidity in Paloma’s voice. She stood sharply, her jaw set fiercely as she tightened her shawl around her shoulders. “She needs help.”
She left and let the door slam behind her.
* * *
*
AFTER CELEBRATING MASS IN the capilla the next morning, I left the chapel, taking a shortcut through the graveyard of generations of dead Solórzanos. My feet followed the path with the habit of many years; hopping over the low wall, I was a boy of eight again, or twelve, or fifteen, visiting my grandmother on an escape from town with its endless days of school and chores and endless nights of dodging my drunken father’s outbursts.
The house watched me out of the corner of its eye. Rather than toying with me, plying me with centuries-old gossip and whispers in singsong voices as it had when I was a child, it kept a cautious distance. Perhaps it could smell the change in me. Perhaps it knew how deeply I had buried the parts of me it found the most interesting.
A hush fell around me as I wove between the graves and the aged, humble headstones. Paloma was the seventh generation of our family to live on this land; one day, she, too, would be buried here, and her children would continue living beside the house, her daughters working under its roof, her sons taking up the machetes of tlachiqueros or herding sheep. Another generation would make its living in the shadow of the golden Solórzano family and their maguey.
I walked down the hill to where the villagers buried their dead. I had spent the better part of the night staring at the ceiling in the dark, wondering what I should do. It was time to stop wondering and ask Titi directly.
I followed Ana Luisa’s direction to where my grandmother was buried, my shoes leaving deep impressions in rain-saturated earth. I felt it before I read her name on the grave: Alejandra Flores Pérez, d. Julio 1820.
July. I was ordained that month. I left Guadalajara in the fall; I was slow on the road, deterred by moving armies and the threat of bandits, but I had returned as soon as I could.
Yet it was not soon enough.