Lupe pointed. “Right down the path waiting for your answer. I told him that you didn’t allow soldiers in your house. And he said good, he wouldn’t either, if he had a home.”
“I see,” said the old grey-haired lady, quickly thinking over the situation. No, she didn’t want a soldier in her house. But, if he was married and he did have the power to command soldiers, then maybe he’d be as good as any for her to have so she could bring her daughters out of hiding. “Very well, mi hijita,” said Doña Guadalupe, once more smoothing out the apron on her lap, “bring in this soldier and I shall speak to him. But I promise nothing.”
“Oh, thank you, Mama!” shouted Lupe. “I love you with all my heart!” She leaped forward, kissing her mother, then flew out of the ramada and down the rocky path, shouting as she went, shouting with such gusto that her little voice echoed off the mighty cathedral-like cliffs. “My mother will talk to you!” she yelled. “My mother has agreed to let you speak!”
Hearing her words, Colonel Manuel Maytorena laughed, knowing that he’d chosen the right home for his young wife. This child’s mother was the power of her home.
It was late that afternoon when the Colonel brought his wife. Her name was Socorro, and she was every bit as lovely as her name. She had large, dark, almond-shaped eyes, long auburn hair and tawny-colored skin that was as smooth as porcelain. She was big with child and exhausted. Gratefully, Socorro followed Doña Guadalupe inside the lean-to to rest on her bed.
It was sundown when Lupe and her sisters came in, and they sat down on their mother’s bed and listened to Socorro tell them of the world outside of their canyon. She was shy and soft-spoken as she told them of her village and how it had been destroyed. She’d left and gone to Mazatlán along the coast, where she’d met the Colonel and began following him from battle to battle.
“Was it love at first sight?” asked María.
“Oh, it was!” said Socorro. “I was working at the hospital when the Colonel came to check on some of his men. He was so considerate and thoughtful.”
“And handsome!” said Carlota.
They all burst out laughing, except Lupe. Her perfect love wasn’t just married; his wife loved him, too.
Then the sun, the right eye of God, was going down behind the towering cliffs. Lupe and her family gathered to give their thanks to the Almighty. It had been another good day. No one in their family had been harmed, and the mother goat that had died would now be their evening meal.
Watching the sky turn pink and rose and lavender, Lupe put her hands together and prayed for God to please help her not to hate Socorro, but instead to allow her to just love her truelove. And God, in His infinite wisdom, granted her the wish. For that evening, when the miners came to eat dinner under the ramada, Lupe could see that they, too, loved her Colonel. They were all so boisterously happy.
“Doña Guadalupe,” said Manos, taking off his hat as he sat down under the ramada along with Flaco to eat, “I swear, this Colonel is a wonderful man! If he were a woman, I think I’d love him! He’s increased our wages, lessened our hours, and he’s made good on many of our complaints about safety.”
“But best of all,” added Flaco, “the Colonel is a Carrancista under the command of General Obregón and he told the Americans in front of us all that from now on they can’t blow their horn at us!”
“‘We’re not dogs,’ he told Señor Jones right to his face,” continued Flaco, tearing his tortilla in two as he took up a piece of barbecued goat that Lupe had brought them. “So they have no right to use the horn on us like cattle!”
This evening the miners under the ramada were so happy that they didn’t even tease Don Benito when he sat down to eat with them. Lupe served the men as quickly as she could, along with the help of her sister Carlota. She was filled with the excitement of all the men’s happiness. Her Colonel was, indeed, wonderful.
Then, once the miners were finished eating and gone, Lupe’s truelove walked into their ramada.
“Well, I hope you saved something for me to eat,” he said, smiling to Lupe and her family as he hugged his wife. “Señor Jones had a big feast prepared for my officers and me, but I declined. No food on earth compares to the taste of the true Mexican kitchen!”
He sat down and patted his knee, calling to Lupe. “Come, my angel, and sit on my lap.”
Lupe didn’t have to be asked twice. She flew to him. And when he took her in his great arms—as he’d done by the river—she felt her whole body melt and then grow warm with that same good feeling.
“I was glad to see the miners happy as I came down the path,” he said. “Wars aren’t won by soldiers. They’re won by you women here in the kitchens who feed the fighting men and by the miners and farmers who keep the nation going. This is the genius of my great General Obregón. He gives the common worker his due credit.”
He continued talking and bouncing Lupe on his knees. And Lupe felt safe and wonderful. When it was time to eat, Doña Guadalupe asked her children to leave the room so the Colonel and his wife could eat alone.
“Oh, no, Señora,” said the tall handsome man, “please join us. This is my pleasure, to be part of your family. And you, young Victoriano,” he said to Lupe’s brother, “come and sit beside me so we can speak man-to-man.”
Victoriano looked at the Colonel. “No, thank you,” he said, “I’m not hungry.” And he went out of the ramada.
Doña Guadalupe looked after her son. But she decided to say nothing of his rudeness and speak to him later.
When it was time to go to bed, Lupe and her mother went outside to sleep with Victoriano and the girls, so that Colonel and his wife could have the privacy of their lean-to.
“I don’t like it,” whispered Sophia to her mother as she lay down on her own straw mat. “He should get his own bedding from Don Manuel’s store.”
“Ssssh!” snapped their mother quickly. “Give our thanks to God that the Colonel has agreed to give his personal protection to our home. And you, mi hijita,” she said to Lupe, drawing her close, “you and I need to pluck a chicken.”
“But why?” asked Lupe, feeling herself wanting to hide. “I’ve done nothing wrong.” To pluck a chicken meant that you were going to get your own feathers pulled with a scolding. Lupe was suddenly very anxious.
“No, you haven’t really done anything wrong yet, mi hijita,” said her mother, stroking her, “but I know you like this man very much, and so you’re going to have to be careful and give him time alone with his wife or they’ll grow to dislike you.”
“But why, Mama?” asked Lupe. “I’m not doing anything bad. He loves me and I love him, too.”
Doña Guadalupe took a big breath, smoothing out the blanket across herself and her daughter. Her youngest child had been very young when Don Victor had left, so she could well understand her daughter’s hunger for the love this tall, handsome man was giving her. It had been a special evening for all of them, having a man at their dinner table.
“Mi hijita,” said Doña Guadalupe, “for you to like this man is fine; nothing wrong with that. But, you must also understand that when a man and a woman are married, they need special time alone so their world can grow together. You’re a child, mi hijita; you’re not a woman yet. You must accept what I say, or they are going to come to consider you an intruder and they’ll leave our home because of you.”
In the star-bright light coming in between the burnt vines of the ramada, Lupe’s eyes filled with tears. “But, Mama, he called me! He’s the one who asked me to sit on his lap tonight! I wasn’t being an intruder.”
Taking pity on her, Doña Guadalupe drew her smallest daughter closer. “Mi hijita,” she said, “you are absolutely right: the Colonel did call you. But believe me, I know if you keep going to him every time he calls, he and his wife will grow to resent you. A man is like an ill-mannered billy goat, mi hijita, he wants much more than his stomach can hold, so he must be ignored half of the time. Do you understand?”
Lupe’s eyes were ove
rflowing with tears. “No,” she said, “I don’t understand! He’s my prince, Mama!”
“Oh, mi hijita,” said Doña Guadalupe, “you’re just listening to your heart too much. Open your eyes and see: he’s already married, and you’re a child.”
Lupe felt her whole body tremble. This was just awful. How could her mother say such a terrible thing to her? Of course he was married. But she was no child when it came to love. Hadn’t she been giving love to her mother and to her family and to God, Himself, all her life?
The moon came up and the stars filled the heavens and the night began. The sun, the greatest miracle of all, had gone to rest and now was the time that all good people turned into angels in their sleep.
CHAPTER TWO
And so Saint Peter opened the flood gates of heaven and the rainy season began, washing the earth of its dust and all the people of their sins.
Twice her truelove came home with wounded men who’d been shot by the Villistas as they forged their way through the jungle. But her Colonel was never shot, so Lupe took heart, figuring that God was on their side.
On the evenings when he came home, they’d warm water for him and he’d bathe inside the room that they’d added to the lean-to. Sometimes his wife would join him, and he’d pull down the Indian blanket which covered their doorway.
On these occasions, Lupe and her family would take a walk, and María and Carlota would giggle, and Sophia would reprimand them. It seemed that everyone was thinking of love. It was said that even their sister María had been making eyes at a boy lately.
Then the rainy season began with a mighty roar from the heavens, and a sudden, terrifying explosion of water came down, filling the canyon with a crashing sound. It rained for three days and three nights. The two main waterfalls of their canyon gushed forth with the roar of water, crashing over the rim of the towering wall of mighty rock. The canyon echoed with the water’s thunderous sound, and it continued raining steadily, every afternoon for fourteen days. Finally, neither beast nor human could leave its shelter, the water was gushing down so powerfully between the three cathedral peaks. The force of the two main waterfalls grew to such magnitude that it deafened the ears and numbed the brain.
The boulder behind Lupe’s home divided the waters that came down the steep slope, keeping it away from their lean-to, and sent it down the rock-laid pathways toward the plaza. There it formed small rivers, shooting through the village toward the creek below which had swollen and overflowed into a mighty torrent of white water as it roared out of the box canyon, all the way to the Río Urique six miles below.
The Colonel’s young soldiers got restless, not being able to work on the new road through the jungle, and so two of them, who were from the lowlands and didn’t know the way of the mountains, got on their horses and tried to cross the creek. They were young, spirited men, and they thought that no little creek could stop them and their great horses of the Revolution. They whipped their frightened mounts into the creek, yelling defiantly, and the gushing waters took them off the embankment of great ferns like toy soldiers and sent them cascading with their horses down through the boulders and roaring white water.
One horse managed to climb up on the side of the creek farther downstream, but the other poor animal went kicking and whinnying with his rider over the series of short waterfalls below the town, and then off the mighty three-hundred foot waterfall at the end of the box canyon. Neither the bodies of the two young men were ever found, nor the body of the horse.
The rainy season abated, raining only two or three hours every afternoon, and the canyon filled with new green growth. Then it was time for school to start. Lupe became very apprehensive. The schoolhouse was inside the American enfencement and Lupe had never been away from home before, much less inside the American compound. That evening, Colonel Maytorena noticed that Lupe was very quiet, so he called her to his lap after they’d eaten.
“What is it, querida?” he said to Lupe, bouncing her on his knee. “You have nothing to worry about. I won’t be going out for several days.”
“It’s not that,” said Lupe. “It’s that school is about to begin . . . and, well, when my sisters went they used to go together, and I’ll be going all alone.”
He laughed. “But, my love, the schoolhouse is just across the canyon.”
Lupe tensed, realizing that he didn’t understand. Across the canyon was as far away as the moon to her. Why, she’d never been away from her mother or sisters before. This was, indeed, one of the most frightening moments of her entire life.
“Listen, querida, I’ll tell you a story,” said the great man, and he held Lupe to his chest and he told her of having grown up in a large white house on a hill, surrounded by patios and tall palm trees and sisters and brothers and many servants.
Lupe closed her eyes, listening in rapture as she felt the buttons of his shirt press against her ear and felt his chest go up and down.
“And I remember well the first day I had to go to school, and my mother had the coachman take me in our great carriage drawn by two grey horses, and how I wanted to cry when he left me there. Oh, I was so frightened, looking at the nuns dressed in black, that I broke from the classroom, climbed over the fence and ran home so fast that I beat our coachman to the gates.”
“Really? You did that?” asked Lupe, sitting up attentively.
“Oh, yes,” he said, laughing, “and when my mother took me back there, I ran home again. It wasn’t until my mother threatened to tell my father that I finally stayed at school. So you see, querida, going to school isn’t just a frightening experience for you. It’s going to be the same for most of the new children, too.”
“But I’ve never been inside the American place before, and the noise from the crushing plant sounds like the devil himself.”
“Look, querida,” said her Colonel, “do you still have the card I gave you?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Good,” he said. “Because I’m going to ask you to be very brave and do a very big favor for me. Will you do it?”
“Yes, of course,” she said, her heart pounding with anticipation.
“Well, I’ll be going out again in a few days and, while I’m gone, I want you to be very brave. Very brave. And on your first day of school I want you to take my card to your teacher and ask her to teach you how to read it. Please, this is important. For if you are brave and true, then the other new children will take heart from you and all will go well. Will you do this?”
Lupe could feel her little heart pounding. She was so frightened. But finally, she nodded yes.
The morning that school was to begin, Lupe was as frightened as a hen that’d just found the scent of the coyote near her nest. Her Colonel was gone, and she really didn’t want to go to school, but she’d promised her truelove that she would, so she had to do it.
Milking the goats and doing her chores, Lupe quickly helped feed the miners and then she brushed her hair again and again, trying to look her very best.
The sun was a full three fists off the distant horizon when Doña Guadalupe walked her youngest daughter out to the front of the ramada to go to school. Lupe was wearing the new flour-sack dress that Sophia had embroidered with red and pink flowers around the collar and over her heart.
“Here,” said Doña Guadalupe, handing her daughter a little basket full of flowers that she’d picked from her potted plants, “take these to your teacher, Señora Muñoz, and remember, mi hijita, wherever you go in life, flowers aren’t just beautiful; they also have thorns to protect themselves. So always be proud, my love, and strong like a well-thorned flower.”
“Oh, Mama,” said Lupe, beginning to cry.
“None of that; Doña Manza’s daughters are waiting for you. Now go with God, mi hijita.”
They kissed and Lupe turned and started down the pathway, stopping to turn and wave to her mother several times before she disappeared.
Arriving at Doña Manza’s house, Lupe saw that Cuca and Uva were ready an
d their older sister Manuelita was telling their mother goodbye. Lupe could see that all three girls wore dresses made from material that had been purchased at the store.
Walking down to the plaza, Lupe and the three girls were met by Don Manuel’s youngest daughter, Rose-Mary, and a half a dozen other children. Lupe couldn’t imagine why, but she thought that Don Manuel’s finely dressed daughter gave her a nasty look. But then Lupe quickly forgot about it as they all went out of the plaza, on the path down to the creek, and they started jumping from rock to rock alongside the rapidly running water. The children laughed, and Lupe joined their laughter, truly enjoying herself so much that she forgot all about her shyness.
But then, getting to the steep path which twisted up through boulders alongside the chalk-like molds of waste from the mine, all the children formed a single file when Rose-Mary bumped Lupe, almost knocking her into the molten waste. Now Lupe fully realized that Don Manuel’s daughter was, indeed, angry with her, but she had no idea why. Continuing up the pathway, Lupe was careful to stay away from Rose-Mary.
Then, high up on the slope, Lupe glanced down the steep hillside and her heart stopped. Below them the whole village was bathed in bright golden sunlight. It looked so toy-like that Lupe didn’t recognize it. And the part of the village where she lived looked almost nonexistent, as it lay hidden among the big boulders and huge oak trees. In fact, she couldn’t even see her home; it was so well-hidden by the wild peach tree that grew beside their boulder.
“Hurry,” said Manuelita. “We have to walk through the gates all together and go straight to the schoolhouse. The Americans don’t want us being around the gates.”
Quickly, Lupe followed the older girl and her sisters. And once inside, Lupe could see why the Americans didn’t want them staying by the gates; wagons and mules were going every which way. The whole place was a beehive of activity. Up ahead, Cuca took Lupe’s hand as they walked behind Manuelita and Uva across a huge barren field. It was also Cuca’s first day of school, so she, too, was frightened.
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