by J. L. Jarvis
Ana had never been poor, but she had been looked down upon by people whom, had she been Anglo, would have embraced her in friendship. Instead they had viewed her with tolerance, pity, or sometimes open disdain.
She once stood in a shop and waited while the shopkeeper attended to everyone else in the store, as though she were not there. When the last customer left, he told her the shop was now closed.
This was nothing, however, to what she might have endured had she not worn fine clothing and carried herself with the ways of the wealthy. Thus, only some of life’s cruelty seeped into her own life. But a taste was enough to learn of the wrongs people do to each other. Now, here, it was she who was now of a privileged class, while Carlos lived in a small, rustic room with two others. But his dignity was free of the space that confined him. His mind and his heart would never be stifled.
Even so, she had known him for such a short time. How could she rely upon feelings she could not control. Should she let her life change because her heart pounded in his presence? “It’s too late,” she whispered.
Night fell and the world opened to Ana. After hours of thought she had made up her mind to defy her aunt’s edict. Dressed in her usual black dress for mourning, she covered her head and shoulders with a rebozo and walked tentatively down the hall to a servant’s stairwell. Everyone in the house was busy serving or being served dinner, so sneaking out a side door was easy enough. She made her way along the covered perimeter of the courtyard, but seeing guards posted, she backed into the shadows. She looked back toward the kitchen. Her eyes fell upon some empty baskets. Ana went back and took one. “How do they do this?” she wondered, as she struggled to balance it on her head. As she passed, a guard stopped her and asked where she was going.
“To the stable,” she answered.
The guard looked doubtful.
Ana pleaded, “Oh, please, señor. If I take too long, the doña will not like it. She is already angry with me.”
The guard gave her a look tinged with pity. She looked harmless enough. He waved her on. “Go on. Hurry.”
Ana tried to walk quickly, but the jug teetered precariously on her head. She shifted her weight every time the jug tipped out of balance. All the while her chest pounded with fear. She heard the guards chuckle and knew they were laughing at her. What a poor excuse for a servant she was. The guards rode off. Ana heard them and sighed.
The night air was warm and laced with the gentle perfume of the garden. Another time she might have lingered to savor the fragrance, but now she could not get far enough from the house or from Aunt Graciela. Ana clung to the shadows and was watchful. The fewer men of the White Guard she encountered the easier it would be to repeat this small act of rebellion. It did not help that the moon was full, but she made her way past the area surrounding the grand house and arrived at the buildings that housed the permanent workers. Once here, she set down her basket and clutched the rebozo close to her face, and she hoped that here, in this darkness, no one would discern the fine quality of her garments. She began once more to walk, hoping she looked like any other peasant woman who lived here.
Two armed guards on horseback rode by. Ana clung to a shadowy doorway until they had passed to continue their rounds of the hacienda. From there, she headed toward the long adobe building with perhaps two dozen doors in succession, each the home of a resident worker. They all looked the same, all adobe with wood beams extended from the roof. But she remembered young Jaime, and how earlier in the day he had counted his way to the fourteenth.
Ana knocked on the door. The old woman answered.
“I’m so sorry to bother you. I was looking for señor Barragan.”
The woman looked at Ana and her face softened with recognition. She opened the door wider. “Señorita, I am sorry. Carlos is not here.”
Ana’s heart sank. Then she remembered herself and felt suddenly awkward.
Seeing Ana’s disappointment, the woman said, “Please come in.”
“Oh, no. I’ve disturbed you. Please forgive me.”
“It is not trouble. It is a visit, and you are welcome here.” The old woman quickly closed the door.
“You are very kind, señora.”
“Please, call me Abuelita. Everyone does,” she said, smiling.
“But, I—”
“When you grow this old, you become everyone’s grandmother.” She took Ana’s hands in her small wrinkled hands, and she smiled with old eyes that remembered what it was to be young. Ana began to feel welcome and at ease, feelings strange to her since she had arrived at the House Martínez. A rustle in the corner drew Ana’s attention. Only then did she notice the child asleep on a crudely constructed bed.
“Oh—I didn’t think—but of course Jaime is sleeping. I ought to go before I wake him.” Ana stepped toward the door.
“Sit down,” said Abuelita. “That child sleeps soundly. He needs much rest for much mischief.” Her face was well lined from smiles such as this, and with wisdom from a long life of hardship.
Ana looked about the small room, at the corner fireplace, the adobe walls, the square wooden table filling the center, and the two empty cots. There was barely room to walk between the few pieces of furniture.
“So,” said Abuelita, “you come to see Carlos?”
“Yes, I—” She began to form an excuse, but the old woman seemed to see through her. “I have.” Ana thought she might change the subject, but could think of nothing to say.
“Because you love him?”
A nervous exhalation of air betrayed both Ana’s surprise and her embarrassment. “No,” she protested, but one look at the old woman and she saw it was pointless to deny it. “Am I so obvious?”
“No, but I know Carlos.”
Ana wanted to bombard the woman with questions about what he had said, or had done, but she did not dare.
“He is different. I knew something had happened. And then when I saw you together, I knew what it was.” Abuelita smiled. “Light finds a way out, no matter how hard we try to hide it.”
“Or hide from it,” Ana said softly.
“And yet, you are here.”
“Yes,” Ana admitted.
“Did he tell you to come here?”
“No. I just thought—I didn’t really think at all.”
The old woman eyed Ana with understanding, and yet she was cautious. “You could put him in danger.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize.”
Abuelita patted Ana’s hand. “Talk to Carlos. You must be more careful.”
Ana said, “I’m so sorry. I will.” Ana stood to leave.
The woman shook her head gently. “One learns to accept things that cannot be changed. It’s like hearing a corrido you’ve heard many times. With each singer, it sounds a bit different, but the end is the same.”
“I don’t quite know what you mean.”
“Once the song is begun, we cannot blame the singer for how it turns out.” She studied Ana’s face for a moment, and then waved her hand dismissively. “Ah! Just an old woman’s words. Please, sit down.”
A far away sadness flickered in Abuelita’s eyes.
“If only life were so simple.”
“No, it never is that,” said the woman. “But you do what you must, and whatever is left undone was not meant to be.”
Ana did not believe her, but held her argument out of respect. She forced a weak smile.
Feet scuffled outside and the thick door swung open. Carlos closed the door and turned to see Ana. “Señorita Martin?” He seemed poised to rush to her side, but remained where he was. Abruptly, he turned to his grandmother. “So, you’ve met?”
Abuelita’s face showed approval and worry. “We’ve had a nice chat, but it’s late, and I’m tired. Please excuse an old woman.”
Carlos nodded and smiled as Abuelita walked to the corner and pulled a coarse cotton curtain. It nearly was closed when she stopped and peeked out to say, “Perhaps the señorita could use some fresh air.”
/> Carlos smiled knowingly. Before he could speak, she had pulled the curtain closed.
Carlos grinned, first at the closed curtain, then at Ana. The curtain rustled as Abuelita moved quietly behind it. He extended his hand and drew her toward the door, where he paused and tenderly arranged the rebozo about her head. “Just a moment,” he said.
She watched through the doorway as he knelt by Jaime’s bed and stroked his forehead. He whispered a few words, perhaps a prayer, hushed and private. Soft humming drifted out from a window nearby. Ana smiled and turned to look up at the sky while he tucked the boy in. Carlos held the door open for Ana. She slipped by and he closed the door gently behind him.
For a moment, he took in the sight of her standing before him. He glanced about. With a touch of his hand on the small of her back, they began walking. Ana took a breath to speak, but he silenced her with a gesture. A few men sat around a small fire. They were too far away to recognize who she was, Ana thought.
Carlos said, “Something in his shoe?”
“His shoe?” Ana had no idea what he was talking about. Whose shoe?
“Yes.” Carlos squeezed her elbow a little too hard. “I will go take a look, Señorita.”
Ana felt like a fool as it dawned on her what he was doing. “A horseshoe—yes. His hoof or his leg…I was riding and…” She was awful at this. Of course, he was explaining her presence to anyone who might see her pass by.
The moonlight cast faint light on his face. He was grinning. They rounded a corner and then another, until they were hidden in shadows away from the windows. His hands clasped hers as they faced one another and leaned close.
Ana whispered, “I’m sorry. I’m not very good at this.”
“Shh…” His lips brushed her forehead on the way to her mouth, and he held her against him. She pressed closer as she buried her face in his neck and felt faint in his arms. He slid his hands to her face, touched her cheek, and drew his fingers through her hair.
Ana knew she was his. They were lost in the bliss of each other, breathing in mingled scents and desire.
Hoof beats grew louder. Carlos straightened his back and looked up. The guards were approaching. Ana looked back toward the sound. Carlos pulled her against him and waited. The guards rode past. They were safe.
Carlos whispered, “I’m forbidden to see you.”
“Tía Graciela has forbidden me, too. I don’t care what she says.”
Carlos put his fingers on her lips. “We must be quiet. Someone might hear.”
Ana whispered, “She has no power over me.”
“But she does over me, and she may have informers. Around here, you must keep your head covered and your voice low.”
Ana whispered, “Informers?”
“Oh yes. It is common.”
“But what can she do?”
Carlos answered her question with a grim look. Until now, the idea that her actions could put him in actual danger had not occurred to her. She had so much to learn. His world was so different from hers.
Carlos took her hands in his. “Do you think I am free? If I stay here, I must obey the patron. When don Felipe is gone, my fate lies in the hands of the doña and the administrator, don Jesús.”
Ana lowered her head. “She said as much to me. If I want to stay, I must obey her. I have no place else to go.”
Carlos said, “I don’t fear for myself, but that boy back there has lost his mother. He cannot lose a father.” Memories darkened his face, but he said no more.
“He’s not going to lose you.”
“And I don’t want to lose you,” he said, searching her eyes.
“You won’t.” When she looked at him, she could not be afraid. They kissed and, with the brash power of new love, Ana knew their love would be stronger than all who opposed them.
“Your aunt threatened to send me to the cepo de campaña.”
Ana said, “I’m sorry, my Spanish—the cepo…?”
“The cepo de campaña. I doubt you ever saw it when you were here as a child. It is the hacienda jail—a cage, really. They use it to punish troublemakers. I cannot go there again.”
“You’ve been there?”
“Yes. Not here, but another hacienda. Ah—” He saw her reaction. “Now, you see? I am that dangerous bandit you saw on the train, after all.”
“Don’t make fun of me.”
“I’m not making fun of you…much. But you must realize that I am not the sort of man you grew up dreaming about.”
“I can see what sort of man you are.”
“Oh, Ana, you are so sweet and so trusting.”
He touched her face, but she turned away. “You think I’m a foolish young girl.”
“I don’t think that at all. But I think you have not seen the world. There are things… I have done things.”
“Are you trying to make me afraid of you?”
“No. I just want you to know.”
“Know what? You have not told me a thing.”
Carlos took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Some things that are not easy to talk about.”
He was scaring her now. “What is it? What did you do?”
“Nothing here. Before Jaime was born—at my home, where I grew up—my father owned land. We were ranchers. He worked hard. He was proud. He wanted to pass on a legacy to his children.” Carlos paused. “But the hacendado—” His face was hidden in shadows too dark to discern his expression, but his breathing halted a moment. “The hacendado wanted the land—my father’s land. He did not need it, but he wanted to have it. He was determined. I was young, and very sure of myself, as all young men are until they know better. I had gone to buy horses. I was gone for a few days. I had found the most beautiful Andalusian—white like untouched mountain snow. I was eager to show it to my father.”
Carlos paused to look at Ana, then continued. “It was to be a gift.” The words caught in his throat. “It was a gift for Jaime’s mother. We were to be married.”
Muscles tightened in his jaw as he stared at the stars. “When I rode up to our home, the land behind it—my father’s land—was fenced off. My father was slumped against the house. He was battered and weeping. I had never seen him like that. He cried for what had been taken from him. It was more than the land. Oh—they left him his house, but they stole what made it his home, his legacy, and worst of all, his dignity. They stole the pride a man feels at the end of the day when he comes home to rest under the roof he has built, and watches his wife putting food on the table he’d made with his hands, and sits down with the family that looks to him as their father and husband, and leans back in his chair and looks about him and knows that he has done well for his family.
“There was my father, on the ground, beaten and bloodied. I helped him get up. He pulled himself tall as he could and he hobbled on one foot, then the next, until he was inside. He looked at me and I saw in his eyes that his spirit was already gone. He lay down on the bed and he never got up. He was gone by the morning.”
Ana touched his shoulder. Carlos seemed not to feel it.
“I rode up to the grand house. They would not let me in, so I kicked open the door and I found the patron and I beat him and beat him. I enjoyed breaking his skin open and making him bleed. But the White Guard arrived and pulled me off. However much I beat the hacendado, the guards beat me more. They locked me in the cepo de campaña. I could not open my eyes; they were so swollen. But I could hear. I could hear the guards talking. They assumed I would die. So, to spite them—to spite the patron—I lived.
“When I woke it was daylight. They tied me to the back of a wagon and took me to jail. I was not there for long. They took all the young and the strong and they forced us into military service. For one year I served. And for every minute of that year I thought of my Rosa, Jaime’s mother, and how I would come home and take her away.”
“She stayed there?” asked Ana.
“Where would she go?”
Ana realized then that she understood so lit
tle.
“When I came home, my mother—” Carlos stopped. The words caught in his throat. “She had not been well. She loved my father all her life and did not know how to live without him, and so she did not. A few weeks earlier and I might have seen her to say goodbye. But now she was gone. When I asked about Rosa, no one would say. I ran to her home. It was not far. She was there. She was with child.”
Carlos spoke with unusual calm, but his expression was taut. “I’d been gone for a year. For a year I had dreamed about coming to her. I would take her away and our life would be better. And here she was now—with child. I went mad. I grabbed her and shook her and called her a whore, and I flung her onto the bed and turned from her before… I couldn’t stop it—the anger. I think I went mad, slamming chairs—anything I could reach—at the wall, again and again until there was nothing but splinters around me, then I pounded my fists at the wall till they bled. She had betrayed me. I loved her. And hated her now. My God, the hate! Then I heard Abuelita. I suppose she had been in the house all the while. She ordered me to go outside.”
“Abuelita? She’s—?”
“Rosa’s grandmother.” Carlos nodded. “She may not reach five feet tall, but when she tells you to do something, you do not argue. She took me outside and sat me down, and she waited—a long time—until I would listen, and she talked.”
Ana looked at the anguished red rims of his eyes.
“The year before, after they took me to prison, the hacendado came calling on Rosa. He had always had his eye on her. She was so pretty, so sweet. We had struggled to keep ourselves pure for our wedding, to honor God and the love that he gave us.”
