But I was also someone who turned a blind eye to the susurration of rumors circling his widowerhood, and Rodolfo wanted a bride who did not ask too many questions. I chose to gamble on his secrets. Our relationship was founded on one thing and one thing only: my world was a dark, windowless room, and he was a door.
I turned back to the mirror and continued braiding my hair. An ache built slowly in my chest, a heavy, sweet ache edged with sharpness like broken glass. I missed Mamá. I missed Papá. I missed who I was before we lost everything: someone who saw her parents tease each other and laugh, who watched them hold hands while reading beside the fire at night or while whispering conspiratorially behind a door they thought was fully shut.
I used to be someone who wanted that. Who yearned for it. I wanted what it was Mamá had when Papá kissed her forehead and ran his thumb over her cheek before he left for battle. Whatever it was that made Mamá watch the window, restless and unable to be comforted, whenever he was due to return. Whatever it was that made them see each other for who they were, not their class or their casta.
My parents fought to be married despite their differences, despite the prejudice of Mamá’s family, because they had that to fight for. That was what I wanted. Someone who saw me not as darker than someone else, nor not quite as lovely as someone else. Not the daughter of someone. Not a piece to be played in a larger game. Someone who saw me for who I was and treasured me for it.
And what did I have?
A stranger whose lips left me cold, whose heavy touch in the darkness inspired no desire in me. Questions swirling unanswered through my mind. Letters to my mother sent and unanswered. A house bare of family. An emptiness in my own rib cage, yawning and clawing and growing as much as I tried to repress it.
I bit my lip as it began to tremble. Yes, I had seized the name Solórzano despite barely knowing the man who bore it. Yes, I had married a man who came between me and Mamá, a man whom I did not love.
I sacrificed that dream because survival was more important than being lonely.
And now I had a roof over my head. An hacienda in my name. An income rooted in the land, firm and sheltered from the twin tempests of war and plague.
A future.
I was grateful to Rodolfo for lifting me from obscurity. For saving me from poverty. Perhaps, on my warmer days, I even felt fond of him for transforming my life. Perhaps one day I could even learn to love him for it.
A wink of color caught my attention in the mirror. Two red lights stared at me from a darkened corner beneath the window.
I blinked, and they were gone.
The hair on the back of my neck stood on end. An oily feeling slipped over my shoulders.
I was being watched.
I whirled to face the corner, eyes wide and desperate, searching the dark.
The light cast by the dying candle barely reached the foot of the bed. Black shadows shrouded the room, deepening near the walls.
The room was empty but for sleeping Rodolfo. There was nothing there.
I took a deep breath and exhaled, brusque and hard, to clear my head. I was exhausted from the trip into town and meeting so many new people. I was overwhelmed by the mountainous task fixing the house presented me. I had imagined the winks of red. I had imagined the feeling of being watched. That, or it was one of the cats Juana mentioned when I first arrived at San Isidro.
Yes, it had to be one of the cats.
Mind settled on this explanation, I turned back to my vanity and blew out the candle. I felt my way through the clammy dark to the bed, and slid under the blankets, letting myself be drawn to Rodolfo’s warmth like a moth to flame. He flinched once at the cold brush of my feet, then shifted sleepily into me. The peace of his own sleep, of his solidness, settled over me. I closed my eyes.
His weight on the mattress was so different from when I had shared a bed with Mamá in Tía Fernanda’s house. As grateful as I was for it, I fantasized idly about when he left for the capital and, for the first time in many, many months, I would have a bed to myself. And more. My own house. My own world. I slowed my mind with choosing paint colors for the different rooms downstairs, tempting dreaming to take me.
It was not until much later, as I swayed on the dark cusp of sleep, that I realized that since arriving at Hacienda San Isidro, I had not seen a single cat.
5
ANDRéS
Apan
Diciembre 1820
Three years earlier
AS I RODE ACROSS the countryside of the district of Tulancingo, the valley of Apan claimed me like a summer twilight: the bittersweet realization that I was nearly home was soft at first, teasing at the fringes of my senses, then took me all at once, swift and complete. Some kilometers outside the town, I told my traveling companions my mule had a stone in her shoe, and that they should ride on. I would rejoin them momentarily.
I dismounted.
For seven years at the seminary in Guadalajara, the Inquisition hovered over my shoulder like the shroud of death, ever watchful, its clammy breath foul on the back of my neck. From the age of sixteen until my ordination, I smothered my senses, drowning them in Latin and philosophy and penance. I prayed until my voice was hoarse. I wore a hair shirt when instructed it would purify me. I folded up the darkest parts of myself and shoved my contorted spirit into a box that remained locked.
But when my feet touched the earth of the valley, the axis of the world shifted beneath them. The windswept winter countryside and low gray skies turned their sleepy gaze toward me. They saw me, recognized me, and nodded in the slow, satisfied way of the ancient giants. I scanned the low, dark hills that curled around the valley like knuckles: for the first time in seven years, I sensed the spirits who hummed through this small corner of creation even when their names were forgotten.
The valley’s awareness of me overtook me in a roar, in a wave, and I trembled beneath my too-big sarape. For years I had buried myself behind thick walls, alone—my secret severed me from the other students at the seminary. Fear of discovery governed my every thought and step; I hid myself so completely that I lived a hair’s breadth from suffocation.
Now I was seen.
Now, the thing I feared most spread like a shadow in my breast: here, far from the eyes of the Inquisition, the parts of myself that I had shoved into a box began to unfurl, soft and curious as plumes of smoke, testing lock and hinge.
I forced them down.
Tell him I pray for his return to San Isidro. The birds pray for his return to San Isidro.
My grandmother’s prayer was answered. I was nearly home. But what would become of me, now that I was?
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