Rain of Gold

by Victor Villaseñor

  “Sure! It’s beautiful!” said Pedro.

  “Excuse me,” said José, not having said a word so far, “but aren’t you the one,” he said to Lupe, “that used to . . . ”

  Lupe nodded. “Yes, milk your goat.”

  “I thought so,” said José, grinning. “But I wasn’t sure. It’s been a while, and I’d never seen you dressed up before.”

  “And you’ve grown so much,” said Lupe.

  “What are you two talking about?” asked Salvador.

  “We stop by here, Salvador,” said Lupe, “on our way to Hemet, to buy goat’s milk for my sister María’s children.”

  “No!” said Salvador. “Then you’re the one, the one that my mother has been telling me about all these years!”

  “I don’t think so,” said Lupe. “I never met her.”

  “But she told me of how you went up to our big milk goat the first time and squatted down, giving the animal string beans to calm her down.”

  “Well, I did do that,” said Lupe, smiling. “The goat was ready to charge me.”

  “But we never saw any great lady when we stopped by here,” said Carlota. “Just a fat, heavy-set woman and a . . . ” But seeing the anger that flashed across the two boys’ faces, Carlota stopped her words.

  “Well,” said Salvador, smiling, “that was probably a neighbor. Come inside and meet my sister, Luisa, and my mother.”

  Opening the back door for Lupe and Carlota, Salvador shouted, “We’re here!”

  “Good! About time!” answered a powerful woman’s voice. “We’re in the living room.”

  “The living room? What’s that?” asked Salvador, leading Lupe and Carlota through the kitchen.

  There were dirty pots and dishes piled high in the tub that they used for washing. Something was cooking on the stove that smelled so strong with chile that Lupe and Carlota almost gagged.

  “Where the boys sleep!” answered Luisa.

  “Oh,” said Salvador, leading them down the hallway.

  Walking into the front room behind Salvador, Lupe and Carlota saw Luisa sitting in a chair across the room, nursing a baby. She had her legs wide apart and she was fanning herself with the front of her dress. Her stockings were rolled down and the soft fat of her thigh bulged above her stockings like little brown inner tubes.

  “My sister, Luisa!” said Salvador proudly.

  “Not one word,” whispered Lupe to Carlota under her breath as they went across the room to meet Salvador’s sister.

  “Mucho gusto,” said Lupe, giving Luisa a small curtsy.

  But the damage was already done. Luisa was quick and she’d seen Lupe’s strained look and Carlota’s open smile of ridicule.

  “Please, sit down,” said Luisa to Lupe. “My mother will be out in a minute. I have to go to the kitchen.”

  “But, Luisa, the kitchen can wait,” said Salvador. “I want you to visit with Lupe and me.”

  “Salvador!” snapped Luisa, getting to her feet, “I’m going to the kitchen, and now!”

  Holding the baby, Benjamin, in one hand, Luisa pushed past Salvador with such determination that Salvador was sure that she would have knocked him down if he’d tried to stop her.

  “Well,” said Salvador, smiling and feeling very awkward, “please, do sit down. I’ll go get my mother.”

  Lupe sat down. Carlota brushed off her chair before sitting. Salvador went out the door and went to the little shack in back. He’d been gone no more than a second when Carlota started talking in whispers to Lupe.

  “Oh, Lupe,” she said, “you can’t have anything to do with these people! They’re peasants! They’re ranch people! I bet they don’t even know what an outhouse is for, Dios mío!”

  “Shut up, Carlota!” said Lupe, glancing around, feeling sure that Luisa was overhearing them from the kitchen.

  And Luisa was. She had the door ajar, listening to them.

  “But, Lupe, you can’t be serious! This is awful! Our mother would never approve of such people!”

  “And you seeing Archie, who’s married? That she’d approve of?” asked Lupe.

  “Oh, Lupe, you are vile! You promised to never mention that!”

  “Me? Why, Carlota! I swear I’m going to pull your tongue out by its roots if you don’t shut up!”

  “Do it!” said Luisa to herself in the next room, looking at them through the crack in the door. “Do it right now!”

  Just then, Salvador opened the front door. “And now,” he said with his whole chest filled with pride, “I’d like you to meet my mother, Doña Margarita, the love of my life!”

  Nervously, Lupe stood up, poking her sister to stand, too. And through the door came the smallest, dirtiest, dried-up wrinkled mouse-of-a-woman that Lupe and Carlota had ever seen. She was all dressed in black from head to toe, and when she smiled, both young women saw that she had no teeth.

  Carlota let out a screech. Lupe turned and saw that her sister was fainting.

  “Carlota!” said Lupe.

  “Get her out!” yelled Luisa, rushing in from the kitchen. “She’s sick! And I just cleaned the house!”

  “Help me!” said Salvador to José and Pedro.

  The two boys helped their uncle get Carlota out the door just before she began to vomit.

  Watching her gagging outside, Luisa smiled, feeling much better. She turned to Lupe. “How about a good, stiff drink?” she said.

  “A drink?” asked Lupe.

  “Yes, a stiff one!” said Luisa with gusto.

  “Luisa!” said Salvador, coming back inside. “You mean a drink of lemonade!”

  “Lemonade?”

  “Yes, Luisa, damn it, come with me to the kitchen!” said Salvador, grabbing his sister by the arm and ushering her out of the room as quickly as he could. “I told you a dozen times,” he whispered under his breath, “that Lupe and her family don’t drink.”

  “Ah, bull! Everyone drinks. Next you’ll tell me she doesn’t fart, either.”

  “Damn it, Luisa!”

  “Damn it, yourself!”

  “Well, well,” said Doña Margarita to Lupe once they were alone. “So you’re Lupe. I’ve heard so much about you. Come, sit down with me, and don’t worry about your sister. The boys will take good care of her,” she said, turning Lupe about and leading her to the table where the chairs were. “But you know, I have the strangest feeling, mi hijita, that I’ve seen you before.”

  “That’s what I was just told. Salvador mentioned that you saw me the first day I came to milk your goat.”

  “That’s it!” shouted the old lady with such power that it took Lupe by surprise. “You’re the one! You’re the angel sent by God! Here, let me look at you. Yes, it’s you! It really is. You’re the one that I’ve been praying for night and day that my son would meet!” She put her right hand over her breast, taking a few deep breaths. “Oh, I’ll never forget the first day I saw you,” continued the old woman, her eyes filling with a burning glow. “I was here, inside the house, looking out through the crack between the boards, and I watched you approach our mean old goat with such confidence and, yet . . . respect!”

  “I said to Juan, I mean Salvador, ‘This girl is an angel from God. Not only is she beautiful, but she has the cunning, the strength, the very ingredients that it takes to make a home!’ And here you are, my prayers answered!” she said, kissing the crucifix of the rosary that hung about her neck. “Oh, God Himself, I tell you, watches over my home!

  “Now, sit down; you and I must talk. And don’t pay attention to what goes on in the kitchen or outside with your sister. This is between you and me, two women of great consequence, and we don’t have much time! Because as I told Salvador the other day, now my life with him is coming to a close, and it is for you two to begin a whole new life together. And I promise you, I will not be one of these interfering mother-in-laws, mi hijita. For believe me, I know, marriage is difficult enough.”

  She smiled, looking into Lupe’s eyes. “Here, give me your hand and let
me adore you, for you are the future of our familia.”

  Lupe gave the old woman her hand and Doña Margarita took it, gazing at Lupe with so much love, so much power, such naked admiration, that Lupe was mesmerized. There was just something magical about this toothless old woman. It was here in her eyes, her person, her whole being. Lupe felt as if she were slipping, sliding back in time to a place where all women used to gaze upon each other with feelings of wonderment, a place of power, and the understanding of where life truly began.

  “Mi hijita, mi hijita, mi hijita,” said the wrinkled-up old woman, “this is the day that I’ve dreamed of, the day I’d get to see with my own two eyes the fulfillment of all my urging.” She kissed Lupe’s hand. “Oh, I tell you, life is so full of gifts given to us by God. The gift of sight, the gift of feelings, of taste and smell, of joy and sound . . . but I assure you, the greatest gift of all given to us by the Almighty Himself is the gift of love.”

  She closed her eyes in concentration. “For God didn’t just give love to us like He gave us our seven other senses, or like He gave us the sun and the moon and stars above. No, in His infinite wisdom He gave love to us only in half and then left it up to us to go out into the world and find our other half.” She smiled. “Isn’t that wonderful? He had that much faith in us, to allow us to help him in the completion of this greatest of all miracles, love; and once found, the ability to unite in the most sacred of human capacities: marriage.” She glowed. “The opportunity for every young couple to join in body and mind and return complete and whole to God’s graces in His most wondrous Garden of Eden. But,” she added, raising up her right index finger and opening her eyes, “don’t you make the mistake that so many young women make and think that marriage is so perfect or easy that once they marry, they think it’s done, that they’ve completed it, and now the man will make the home for them. For this is certain death for any marriage. Men, I tell you, do not make the home, querida; it is the woman who makes it. And I do not say this because my son is bad or irresponsible, but simply because we, women, must realize that men are weak, both in body and mind, and cannot be entrusted to nurture the basic roots of life.”

  She smiled, getting a twinkle in her old eyes. “After all, wasn’t it God, in His great wisdom, who chose women over men to carry the child here inside us? Eh, wasn’t it? For just as the heavenly bodies of the sky are all female except for the sun, so is it true here on earth; we, las mujeres, are the power, mi hijita; we are the strength of our species. We are the ones who know how to endure, how to survive, especially in the darkest of times.”

  The old woman continued speaking, and Lupe listened to her as she’d never listened to anyone in all her life, except, of course, for her own mother. She felt as if she were being lifted up out of her body and transported back in time to those days of her childhood in La Lluvia de Oro when the whole world had been full of magic and mystery, and all of life had been a daily miracle.

  Tears of joy came to Lupe’s eyes, and she felt down deep inside herself so proud to be a woman and hear all these wondrous secrets of womanhood. She felt as if like she were back in that magical night with her mother and sisters and the old midwife delivering the two sons of her first truelove.

  She was back in a time of wild lilies cascading down the slopes in a waterfall of fragrance; a time of giants coming through her life in the forms of her mother and sisters and her Colonel; a time of stars and moonlight and the right eye of God—the sun, himself; a time of love, and life, and yes, miracles.

  The world fell away, and Salvador’s wrinkled-up, old mother became the most beautiful human being that Lupe had ever seen.

  Salvador came into the room and saw his mother and Lupe talking together, and he was so moved that tears came to his eyes. He was so happy, so very happy. This was, indeed, his highest dream, to have the woman that he loved talking with his mother, to have the woman that he’d searched for all his life seeing his dear old mother as he saw her . . . perfect.

  Lupe saw him watching them and she smiled, feeling all good and warm inside . . . as in a dream, holding the hand of the mother of the one she loved. Yes, she’d done the right thing; Salvador was the one that she’d been searching for all her life. She reached out for him, and he came to her, and the two of them sat together, listening in rapture to Doña Margarita, a woman of substance, as she continued speaking to them, now and then closing her eyes and lifting her right index finger to point to the treasures of her mind that she was giving freely to them with all her heart and soul, for all eternity.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Hungrily, the devil watched, hating each step that took them closer to the secret gates of Eden. Then, the devil just couldn’t stand it anymore, so he took one last lunge, tearing at their very heart.

  The first time that Doña Margarita saw Salvador slip out the back door when Archie came by to see him, she didn’t think too much about it. But the second time she saw the same thing happen, she knew that her son was in deep trouble. She waited up for him that night so they could talk, but when he came in, he said that he was too tired to talk. All day he’d been out trading whiskey for pigs and chickens, preparing for the feast that they were going to have at the wedding.

  The following morning, Doña Margarita tried to speak to her son again.

  “Later, Mama,” he said. “Don’t you see I’m busy? I have errands to run; then, this afternoon I have to drive over and get Lupe so we can go to Harry’s to try on our clothes.”

  “All right,” said his old mother, “we’ll let it go for now, but I’m telling you, we have to talk.”

  “Oh, Mama,” he said, sounding like a spoiled boy. “But why?”

  “Because I said so, that’s why!” she snapped.

  “Oh, all right; but not now.”

  Salvador was going so fast, having so much fun for the first time in his adult life, that he just didn’t want his mother giving him another one of her little heart-to-heart talks.

  But then, it was two days before the wedding, and Doña Margarita saw something happen so terrible that she knew her son’s immortal soul was at stake.

  Salvador was in the backyard with his friends, drinking and listening to the mariachis that he was going to hire for the wedding, when Don Febronio stopped by with two of his sons.

  “Hi, Salvador,” said Don Febronio, smiling as he came up to him with his two big sons. All three were taller than Salvador. “I brought by a goat so you can barbecue it. Congratulations on your wedding.”

  “A goat, eh?”

  “Yes, a nice fat one so you and your bride can enjoy it,” he said, grinning.

  “A goat!” repeated Salvador, beginning to rage as he looked up into their smiling faces. “Well, you can take your goat and shove it up your ass, horns and all! You chicken-shit son-of-a-bitch!”

  Salvador drew his. 38 and shot the goat in the head. The two boys leaped back in terror. The animal screeched, blood squirting from its mouth and wound.

  “Now that I got money, you want to help me! You stupid bastard!” screamed Salvador, rushing at the three of them. “I ought to kill you!”

  Febronio’s oldest boy, sixteen years old, jumped in front of his father, wanting to protect him from the madman.

  Seeing the boy’s bravery, Salvador took pity on him and he fired over their heads. “Get out of here!” he bellowed. “Get out!”

  Looking at Salvador with murder in his eyes, Febronio grabbed his son, jerking him back. “Okay, we’re leaving; but I’m not forgetting this, Salvador,” said the big, tall dark man from Zacatecas.

  “Good! Don’t forget it! Remember it all your life, what a no-good lying piece of shit you are! ‘I got no money! I got no money!’ When I know you got a box full of money buried under the flooring of your house! And I helped you, time and again!” Salvador fired two more times at their feet, running them out of the yard. “And don’t come back, you chicken-shit son-of-a-bitches!” he screamed at Don Febronio as he and his sons got in their truck
and took off.

  From inside her house, Doña Margarita watched Salvador’s drunken friends congratulate him, telling him that he’d done the right thing, sending Don Febronio packing as Francisco Villa would have done. It disgusted the old woman. That night she cornered Salvador when he came in to go to bed.

  “Mi hijito,” said the old woman, “we need to talk, and now.”

  “Oh, Mama, can’t it wait?” he said, laying down to go to sleep. “I’m too tired.”

  “No, it can’t wait,” she said. “Now, sit up!”

  Hearing his mother’s tone of voice, Salvador sat up. He saw that she was furious, absolutely livid with rage.

  “But what is it, Mama?” he asked. “Has one of the boys gotten in trouble?”

  “Yes, you!”

  “Me? But I’m fine,” he said. “I’m preparing everything just like you want for a big wedding.”

  “Everything except yourself!” she snapped. “For over a week you’ve been going around with your friends, drinking like a fool, getting this and that ready for your wedding, but you forgot the most important thing of all-you, here inside your heart!” she said, poking him in the chest with her index finger.

  “My heart? But, Mama, I’m in love with Lupe with all my heart already.”

  “And how long do you think that love will last?” she said angrily. “Eh, how long? Just because you’re young and strong with the urge to make children and she’s beautiful, you think you’re ready? My God, that shows no virtue, mi hijito. Any burro can get excited, too, and have his rope come up hard!

  “No, mi hijito,” she said, “you got to open your eyes and heart and listen to me very carefully, or you are going to ruin your marriage before you even begin.”

  “Oh, Mama,” he said, “everything is fine, I tell you. You’ve already told me all about love and women and marriage being the return to paradise. I agree with you completely, so, please, no more.”

  “Oh, no more, eh?” she said, a hard viciousness coming into her voice. “And tell me, have you made your heart clean and prepared your soul so you can enter this Garden of Eden with Lupe? Ah, will you be able to get past the seven temptations that the devil sets in motion against every marriage?”