“She was nothing but a skeleton!” Nena returned her focus to rethreading her needle. She knew exactly which theatrical gestures Abuela was making at that moment, her gnarled hands spread wide, her threadbare brows reaching for her white hairline. “Her husband was terrified and trembled in his hiding place as she rose into the air and flew away into the darkness. When she was gone, he took salt from the kitchen and spread it over her skin. The skin began to hiss!”
The group of children gasped in unison. A smile twitched at the corner of Nena’s mouth. Even now, it was difficult not to think of herself at Abuela’s feet, listening to those same stories with Néstor’s shoulder pressing into hers. He always swore he wasn’t afraid, and she always knew he was lying. The memory flitted through her with the ache of an old, familiar bruise, then was swiftly engulfed by the commotion, voices, and smells of women at work in the kitchen.
“It began to shrivel!” Abuela continued. “And then, when the skeleton returned—”
“Come here, Javiera.” Mamá’s voice layered over Abuela’s as she brought Nena’s younger sister to the patio table, her arms full of a pile of mending. “If you have questions, your sister will help you.”
Javiera settled onto the bench next to Nena, shooting the pile of mending before her a baleful look. Resigned reluctance was Javiera’s response when presented with chores. At fourteen, she was the baby of the family, and was left to play with the rancho’s children and her runt yellow dog, Pollo, for several years longer than Nena and their cousins had been. The familiar click of the dog’s claws on the tipichil patio announced his presence; soon he would be curled beneath the table at Javiera’s feet.
“Nena,” Mamá began.
“Don’t worry, Mamá, I’ll handle it.” Nena set her sewing down and selected a piece of mending from the pile: one of Félix’s shirts, ripped neatly along the seam beneath one arm from lassoing. An easy fix. “Start with this one,” she said to Javiera.
Dark eyes woeful, Javiera accepted the shirt.
“It’s not that,” Mamá said. “Would it be possible to tame your hair? Sometime in the next hour? It looks as if you were thrown from a horse.”
Nena’s needle hovered above the next stitch as her stomach dropped in dark, unwelcome surprise.
“Why,” she said flatly. It was more a statement than a question—she knew why.
“You remember Don Hortensio’s son Don Felipe,” Mamá began. “You met him at Nochebuena. The handsome one with the bay mare.”
Nena stabbed her needle into the next stitch. Don Hortensio was the patriarch of Rancho Las Palmas, situated northwest of Los Ojuelos along the curves of Río Bravo. Rancho was perhaps a misnomer for the lush acres granted to Don Hortensio’s family in a royal land grant nearly a hundred years ago—it was large enough to be considered an hacienda, with thousands of head of cattle and vaqueros aplenty. Don Hortensio was exactly the kind of person Papá would want to be allied with.
“Of course I remember,” Nena replied. “Beautiful mare. Well proportioned. Intelligent face. Why, is she for sale?”
Mamá released a long sigh, the kind she gave when she wanted anyone listening to know exactly how much she was suffering.
At twenty-two, Nena was no spinster. Her parents had only begun asking her to consider this ranchero’s son or that one two years ago. Yet here she was, being asked to make herself presentable for a stranger for the umpteenth time. Ever since she was old enough to bleed, she became something to be sent away. Something to be bartered like meat or salt in exchange for a powerful relationship, in exchange for more cattle or land or vaqueros.
Every morning, she rose early and spoke to Papá’s peones, soothing their colicky babies and upset stomachs and headaches and monthly pains. She shadowed Abuela’s visits to pregnant women and was an extra pair of blood-soaked hands at births. She mended dislocated shoulders and applied poultices to injuries caused by bull or beast in the chaparral.
Then why, after so many years, couldn’t her parents see that she benefitted the rancho already? That she was worth more than a means to an end?
Nena set her mending down with more force than was necessary. Javiera jumped.
“Thread your needle and get started,” she said sharply.
“Will you do this, for me?” Mamá’s voice was pleading. “Your papá says—”
“Yes, Mamá. I will.” Everyone on the rancho was a prisoner of Papá’s moods, especially his anger; it was not fair to punish Mamá for carrying out his will. So Nena would brush and plait her hair, made frizzy by the heat of the morning, and pin it back up off her neck. She would wash away the soil that always traveled to her cheeks and nose from her herb garden. She would transform into the wealthy ranchero’s daughter she was meant to be when she met these suitors: obliging, ornamental, obedient.
It all made her want to shed her skin like the witch in Abuela’s story, let everything that made her a woman fall to the ground to be salted and ruined as she flew into the night, her bones bare and cold in the starlight.
“But first I’m going to check on my rosemary,” she said. Mamá’s face gave no indication that she realized how pointed Nena intended this reference to the herbs she used for limpias to be. Of course she didn’t. She was relieved that Nena would oblige and meet this Don Felipe, this new addition to a yearslong string of empty-headed hidalgos who droned on about stallions and cattle and business and trouble with the Texians without any input.
“That should be finished by the time I’m back,” Nena said to Javiera, pointing at the mending in her sister’s hands.
“Yes, Nena.”
Nena stepped off the patio into the brilliant March sunshine.
After this Don Felipe had come and gone, she would have to find her brother at lunch to dissuade the suitor. Whatever excuse she could spin against the match—and there were always many—would be enough if it came to Papá’s ear in the voice of a man.
Nena and Félix could repeat the exact same sentence, yet Mamá and Papá would always listen to Félix. He was gentle, a peacekeeper always ready to do what was best for the rancho, whatever his true feelings might be. Even when he had to marry a stranger, he had done so without complaint—for after all, he told Nena, what was marriage to a woman when it was Los Ojuelos to whom he had really pledged his life?
Mamá and Papá relented to his calm demeanor and level way of speaking, even when it was blindingly obvious he was advocating for Nena because she had badgered him to. But if Nena tried to speak up for herself? She could shout until her voice was raw and it would be as if she were not even there.
Sun beat on her shoulders as she bent to examine the long sprigs of rosemary she laid out on a cloth earlier that morning. Their fragrance wafted up to her, soothing her. One word from Félix was all it would take, and all would be as it was.
There was a time when the idea of marriage was not such an affront to her. When whimsy and romantic notions about someone in particular on the rancho spun childish fantasies in her mind.
She had been young and stupid, her dreams as weak as autumn frost: as soon as morning broke, as soon as reality dawned and that person was gone, they melted away.
She thrust the thought of Néstor from her mind. She hated how memories hung around her like kitchen smoke, clinging to her hair and clothing. How witnessing the tenderness between Elena and Ignacio or the dark-haired children clustered shoulder to shoulder at Abuela’s feet stung like lime on a cut.
She straightened from examining her herbs, a bead of sweat rolling down her lower back. As she turned to la casa mayor, motion from the wall surrounding the central rancho caught the corner of her eye.
The gate was thrown open; a horse and rider thundered through, racing for the main house with the urgency of a messenger.
But even at first glance, Nena knew the rider was no ordinary messenger. Her steps back to the house quickened as she held up a hand to shield her eyes from the sun. She squinted at the broad, clean hat, the finely engraved saddle, and the silver that gleamed beneath sweaty froth on the mount’s bridle.