“There’s a place near the ranch where a river is born. It comes up out of the earth, out of a cave.”
“That’s neat!”
“Wind, I don’t know. I grew up in West Texas and I guess I had my fill of it.”
“Oh, but this was a terrific wind, Abby! I had to hold onto my father. We were gasping, it was so fierce, and holding on to each other. When we got back in the car, he said he thought I had always looked like my mother, but now he could see I looked a lot like him, too.”
“Pola. You didn’t tell Adele?”
Pola shook her head and then raised her chin. “I’m not a little girl anymore. I don’t tell my mother every little thing. I have secrets.”
“From everyone, or only from Adele?”
“I’ll tell you.”
Abilene, surprised, leaned back involuntarily. Then she moved closer again to Pola. She couldn’t help herself. “What, Pola? What’s such a big secret?”
“My father is going to make a movie next year. He said he had to start looking for a star. He said to me, ‘In a year you’ll be old enough.’”
“He’s going to put you in a movie?”
“He didn’t say that. He just meant he wanted a girl my age. But he doesn’t know I’m getting breasts now. He doesn’t know I can act.”
“Can you?” How could she possibly know?
“When I’m fourteen I can live with either one I choose,” Pola said. “That’s the secret. That I know it.”
“Oh, Pola.”
“She can’t stop me. When he sees me next time, he’ll find out I can do it. He’ll put me in a movie.”
“All his movies are so—dangerous.” So Adele said.
Pola smiled, almost a girl again. “But it’s all make-believe. He explained to me. He said people like to feel that danger has just missed them. They like to think: It could have been me.”
“I think you should talk to your mother more.”
“You won’t tell!”
“No, but it’s wrong to shut your mother off.”
“It’s my mother that does the shutting. She lies in bed at night and whispers to Daniel about murder and arrests and all sorts of awful things. She doesn’t care what I do—”
“I’m sure that’s not true.”
“She doesn’t care what any of us do, only Daniel.”
“She cares a lot! She’s going all over the city asking people to tell her their stories, because she cares.”
“Oh that. It has to do with politics. All her boring friends ever talk about—except you.”
“I don’t think any of it concerns me,” Abilene said.
“And you’ve got time to talk!”
“All I have is time,” Abilene said. When Pola reached out to hug her, she kissed her cheek. She thought, how different the smell of a girl is. How different from a man.
“Don’t tell!” Pola said.
“Cross my heart.”
“Then I’ll tell you more.”
Adele was frantic. Pola was two hours late coming home from school.
“Make us some coffee. Tell me about your work,” Abilene said. What else was there to discuss?
“I went to see my friend, the artist Georgia Azuela,” Adele said. “I spent the morning in her studio, away from ‘my work.’ I thought we would talk about her painting, but she was full of talk about the movement too. Her husband owns a pottery factory. The union is talking about coming out with a statement in support of the students. Georgia is working on plans for a mural on a new government building. Little indios, waifs with big eyes. She says it’s a silly thing to paint in these circumstances.”
“If you were involved, it would be hard not to worry.”
Adele dropped a spoon to the floor and stood, staring at it, as if it had sprung from her hands to taunt her. “I should go back to my fashion assignments,” she said. “I am getting too full of student rhetoric.” She finished preparing the coffees and set them on the table. There were dark circles under her eyes. “I’m not paying enough attention to Pola, am I?”
“She thinks—I mean, she knows you are busy.”
“She thinks what?”
“That you are preoccupied, that’s all. She’s a girl. She doesn’t look at big pictures. Neither do I.”
“Where is she?”
At that moment Pola burst in, happy and full of news. “The most exciting thing!” she shouted when she saw them. “You can take my story!” she said to her mother, apparently sincere. There was color in her cheeks, a brightness to her eyes.
“Pola!” Adele said sharply. Abilene nudged Adele and interrupted.
“I’ll make cocoa for you if you want,” she said to Pola.
“Soda, please,” Pola said. She pulled up another chair.
“I guess you better tell us about it,” her mother said.
“I was leaning out of the window of the school room, flirting with some boys passing by. The teacher had gone down the hall. The boys are from the voc ed school nearby. One of my classmates knew them; her brother goes to school there. They had been out begging money to make posters for Cuba Day. ‘Come and help us!’ they kept yelling. ‘We need some artists.’ Then the teacher was coming. The last thing we heard them say was, ‘We’re going to the market at Tacuba!’” Pola had been talking to them both, but now she kept her eyes from her mother and looked at Abilene. “I went to the bathroom with Cleo, and we slipped away.”
“Pola!”
“I had to!” Pola defended herself. “Don’t you know it’s going on all over the city!”
Adele said wryly, “This I know.”
“The boys were doing a play in the market. The Tacuba market is right across from the police station. In the play, some of the boys were the army, marching into a village and throwing Indian claims around—they had these little red balls they tossed in the air and then to one another—and some other boys who played the peasants sang, ‘We have no water, we have no life.’” Pola was very intense. “Do you realize that the revolution was supposed to give back land to the peasants, and yet there are still huge ranches, big landowners who have all the best land?”
Adele smiled. “I know.”
“Some of the boys played guitars and sang about workers in prison. Soon there were lots of people—a hundred! Maybe two hundred. Oh I don’t know! They were throwing pesos onto the ground in front of the students. Some people yelled out rudely. ‘You are spoiled brats who ought to be locked up!’ They were awful! But there were only a few, and everyone shoved them and made them go away. Then a man who could really play the guitar came along and began to sing songs that everyone could sing to.
“Then the police came. They shouted at all of us that we were lazy good for nothings. They had clubs.”
“Dear God,” Adele said. Abilene could see the fear on her face. She reached over to pat Adele’s hand. “Look,” she said, “here she is.”
Pola didn’t seem to notice Adele’s reaction. She was full of her story. “Now here’s the good part, you two. The bystanders picked up whatever they could find and threw it at the police. They pelted the cops with ripe tomatoes, chiles, rolls and bananas. And the police got out of there fast!”
Adele jumped up from the table and began pacing around the living room. “Don’t you ever—” she began, and stopped. She turned to face Pola. “Don’t you know I am scared? Don’t you know there are dangerous things going on?”
Pola ran to her mother and threw her arms around her. Then, stepping back, she said, “I thought you would be so pleased. Don’t you see? Now I know what you’re talking about!”
Over Pola’s shoulder Adele looked at Abilene beseechingly. What could she think Abilene could say or do?
“What did you think you were doing?” Adele said again. She began to weep, putting her face into her hands. “It’s babies
like you who’ll get trampled in the rush. Don’t you do this ever again. Never never!”
Pola’s disappointment was turning sullen. “I thought you would be pleased.”
Adele said, “You were very wrong.”
“I want to help Cleo.”
“With what!”
“Her mother works at the Red Cross station in their colonia. Cleo says they need help. They’re getting ready.”
Adele said nothing. Abilene gathered the dishes from the table and took them to the sink.
“Getting ready!” Adele’s voice skidded off into a shriek.
“The Red Cross is always ready, isn’t that what they’re for?”
“Yes! For earthquakes and volcanoes and fires and floods.”
“Cleo’s mother says they have to be ready for trouble.” Abilene thought Pola had gotten ruder, as she saw her mother’s distress.
“You’re to come home directly from school, do you hear!”
“I don’t see why I have to go at all,” Pola said, pouting.
“To embroider. To improve your French.”
“It’s summer!”
“I want to know where you are.” Adele grabbed Pola’s arm. “All the time, I want to know.”
“How can you?” Pola asked, slowing down her words, gaining the advantage. “How can you know where I am, when you’re not here? How can you know where I am, when you don’t see me? How? How?”
Adele slapped Pola’s face, and then burst into violent tears. Within the moment, she had slipped to the floor, crying. Pola screamed. “I want to go to California! I want to go to Yannis for good! I hate you! And stupid Daniel too!” She turned and fled to her room.
Abilene sat down on the floor beside Adele and put her arm awkwardly around her shoulder. She wondered at the easy anger of Adele and Pola. It seemed to Abilene to be over so little, an outing without permission. Of course it was over being a child, being a mother, Abilene could see that, too.
“Couldn’t you spend more time here?” Adele asked. “Couldn’t you do things with her? She likes you, she says so. You could go to the movies, to the museums, like you said. Couldn’t you, Abilene? Couldn’t you do this for me, for a little while?”
Abilene, surprised, said, “Yes, if Pola will.”
And she thought to herself, so I’m good for something, am I? A babysitter. She would have laughed, but Adele wouldn’t have understood.
Adele wiped her face with the backs of her hands. “I’m a mess. Daniel will be home soon.”
“Go and wash up. I’ll take Pola her soda.”
Abilene sat on Pola’s bed. Pola, at the chair by her table near the bed, drank thirstily. “Do you remember what it’s like, having people tell you what to do just because you’re thirteen? Do you?”
Abilene said yes, though she could not remember. Her mother had never kept track of her coming and going, but there hadn’t really been any, not at thirteen.
“I’ve never seen your mother so upset.”
“She’ll get over it. She’ll tell Daniel everything, and then they’ll feel better. It’ll be me in here by myself.”
“Pola, they’re married! What do you want?”
“I want to go to California. You could go with me!”
“And do what?” Abilene said, making it seem an outlandish idea, making a face to show she didn’t take it seriously.
“We could get good tans,” Pola said.
“Ahh,” Abilene answered. She thought California did sound nice. Far away. Not Texas. A fresh start. Why not California? “But I have to stay out of the sun,” she said, touching her face. “For a whole year.”
Pola tittered. “I’ll buy you sunglasses and a hat with a big brim. Everyone will think you’re someone famous and don’t want to be seen. We’ll have a lot of fun.”
Part IV
Chapter 7
ONE LONG RAINY afternoon, Pola asked Abilene about the ranch. “Is it terribly exotic, and dangerous, like Mommy says?”
“I never thought of it as dangerous.” What a funny thing to have told Pola, Abilene thought. “There are wildcats in the brush, though, and snakes and insects. And bandits on the roads.”
“What about the pits?”
So Adele had remembered what Abilene told her. Why had she never come? Was she afraid of Tonio! “Much of the land is limestone and there are places where the earth has fallen in. The Indians call them basement caves.”
“Why hasn’t Mommy taken me to see it?”
“She says she doesn’t like the country.”
“You could take me sometime.”
Abilene wasn’t sure what she should say. “I’ll tell you what it’s like to wake up there. First I hear the birds. I lie in bed and imagine the peacocks spreading their tails. Outside the walls a monkey shrieks. Campesinos in white trousers tied with string come over the river in the back of a cattle truck and swarm over the grounds. Everywhere you look one is digging or picking at the ground or the bushes or the trees. When I pass them, they freeze and wait for me to go by, their faces hidden under their big hats, their bare feet deep in grass. All day the ferry grinds with its loads of workers, calves, trucks full of bottled water, grain, and other supplies.”
“What time is it? When do you get up?”
“Let’s say it’s eight o’clock. Across the hall Tonio is taking a shower while his valet Asuncio brings his breakfast of coffee and toast. Tonio shouts at him from the bath. Asuncio moves on his feet like a boxer. I hear him shouting, ‘Si, Matador!’
“I don’t want to get up yet. Maybe I read half the night. Maybe it was three o’clock before I went to bed. I go and open the balcony door to look out across the tile, through ivy and vines, past bougainvillea and palm, across avocado and plantain plants.”
“Tell me what you see.”
“The hacienda walls. A sliver of sky bordered by the balcony roof. I can hear the maids coming down the walk, they’re so silly. They’re only your age! I hear the secretary Sofia in her high heels, yelling at the maids to get out of the way. Every once in a while the hounds howl. Maybe it isn’t really hot yet, but I turn on the air-conditioner, for the noise, close the balcony door again, and crawl back into bed.
“I can hear Tonio stomping hard with his heels in the hall outside my room. Then he goes down the stairs. His head floats along the length of the crocodile on the wall, it’s right at its snout that he takes the last step. Under an arch of ivory he passes through the front door. Now that he is outside, the din of birds is incredible. The monkey beats its chest. The dogs lie like sphinxes along the border of the walk. As he approaches, their noses twitch. He nudges them with his sharp boot toe. They yap and tumble around. Just past the gates there’s a little wildcat on a chain. It snaps and claws at everyone, but when Tonio comes up to it, it purrs like a house cat. Animals love him!
“I put the pillow over my head so I can go back to sleep. There is nothing I have to do, nothing to get up for. I like sleeping with all those things going on. I like eating lunch for breakfast, with the foreman and the guard, I like listening to the cook Beto tell stories about the Huastecans. Many years ago he was caught stealing on the ranch; he couldn’t even speak Spanish! Tonio beat him and then gave him a place to sleep. Later, Beto went and got his twin brother, who now cooks at Tonio’s hotel, the Arcadia. Beto is big as a bear with a huge belly where he wipes his hands on the expanse of white apron. One of the maids spends the whole morning making tortillas and orange juice. When she sees me, she slides me a glass of the juice as though she is afraid of me. A gringa, who sleeps all morning: maybe I’m sick and it is catching! She keeps her eyes down and won’t look at me.”
Pola was fascinated. “If I came to visit, I’d want to go all over the ranch! I’d want to see everything—all the animals, the cowboys!”
“Yes, you’d see it, and you still wouldn’t believe i
t is real.” It was paradise, or maybe hell. “There’s no place like it. It never stops being strange. I think that’s why I love it. I think that’s why I feel at home there.”
The ranch lay hacked out of tangled low jungle along a wide muddy river. Tecoluca, it was called, a word of no particular meaning, or, like the totems of the indios there, forgotten over generations. In early summer, the river went down in places to the depth of alley puddles. When August rains fell, it could swell almost overnight, and run roiling brown. Abilene saw campesinos bathing in the river and dipping water out of jars. “What do they do when the river is low?” she asked Tonio.
“It’s never dry,” he said without bothering to look at her. He would talk an hour or more about the Tecoluca, but not about the indios. “What do you care?” he said when she asked.
The indios lived in tin or grass-roofed huts walled with branches. Trucks, jeeps and taxis passed them thousands of times, yet as each vehicle approached, they stopped to watch. Abilene wondered what they thought.
She tried to ask Tonio: “Don’t you think they wonder about the life on this side of the river? Don’t you wonder if they think you are a god?” He was golden, he came and went in a plane like a silver bird. Tonio had no patience for these questions. It was like the time she reached for a brochette of venison and asked him, “Venada or venado? Is it feminine or masculine?” Tonio blew a hair from his mouth. She was interested in the most trivial things! “Puhhh!” he said, instead of answering.
The region was called la Huasteca. Abilene said it over and over, trying different aspirations on the “h” or none at all. It was a diverse region, hot and humid, appearing rich but actually thin-soiled, a land loamed with marl and riddled with sinkholes. It was bordered by tropical hills on the north, into the arches of the Sierra de Tamaulipas that crisscrossed the Sierra Madre. To the east the flanks of the Sierra Madre Oriental were green with pine forest; where the warm trade winds struck the mountains with rain, the slopes were misty, fecund, anomalous: pale-leafed sweet gum rose from ferns and Spanish mosses, while half a mile away gnarled oaks entwined with orchids.
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