Page 42 of The Hacienda
And now every time I closed my eyes, I saw glyphs carved on the insides of my eyelids. Every time my thoughts wandered, they were drawn with unholy, inescapable attraction to that locked box.
When I was a youth, Titi heard of witches in the north who had been tortured and jailed, accused of an epidemic of demonic possessions. Those who starved in prison or died of torture-inflicted wounds were most often mestizos like me, mestizos or criollos, for Indios did not fall within the jurisdiction of the Inquisition.
“There are some things I cannot protect you from,” she told me sadly.
It was true. I was her heir, always had been, but her blood and her gifts were only half of that which flowed in my veins. The rest was a darkness neither she nor I could name.
So Titi sent me to the seminary, where she believed I could hide in plain sight from conscription and inquisitor alike.
Hide I did. And, as much as I initially doubted Titi’s conviction that I should join the Church, theological instruction became the structure I hadn’t known I craved. It gave me a map with clear markings, explicit indications of correct paths and the wrong, a beginning and an end. Clarity gave me the strength to put my faith in the Christian God—though timidly at first, fearful of being scorned for both my birthright and Titi’s teachings. To my eternal surprise, I found myself accepted. Welcomed, even. Trusted.
So long as the sinful parts of my pocked, split soul were crushed into submission, I was given a place to belong. So long as that part of myself was bound with chains, I had His love.
Even since returning to Apan, I had not touched that part of myself. In order to serve as my grandmother’s heir, I leaned on what she taught me and that alone. I told myself it was because I did not need that darkness. I had what Titi taught me. I had earned the guidance and trust of the Lord through penance and devotion.
Now I knew it was because I was afraid.
I acted in fear last night. I had earned still more fear for my trouble: would I ever again be at peace, without that heavy, aching awareness of the locked box in my breast? But would I be able to cure San Isidro without it? What if I could not?
Hacienda San Isidro—myhome—was poisoned. It was hurting. Rot like this would spread beyond the house’s walls, leeching life from the earth, blighting the fields, lacing the homes of the village with affliction. It was a sickness. It must be contained, then eradicated.
My thoughts knelt softly before the locked box.
When I opened it last night, when I set a curl of my own darkness free to protect myself and Beatriz from the malice of the house, she did not flinch from me, nor look at me in revulsion. She did not tell me I shouldburn, as my father had when he learned of the darkness that his bloodline had manifested in me. Even in the candlelight, I could see her eyes filled with trust.
Something in my chest fluttered pleasantly at the memory.
If I were to crack open the box for only a moment, if I were to release only a sliver of what simmered within... If I were to control it so completely it had no choice but to return to the locked chamber in which I kept it, then perhaps I could use it to cure the house.
Perhaps it could work.
The mule tossed his head; then, rolling the bit against his teeth in gentle annoyance, he lowered his head and rubbed his forelock against my shoulder.Walk on, that said, ornery and impatient—the sooner we began walking again, the sooner he could be rid of bridle and bit and me alike, and rest in the shade.
I obeyed, still lost in thought. My gentle prying with the villagers about the house had mostly been fruitless. They were far more intent on telling me all that had happened to them in my absence, the sicknesses they had suffered. Unfortunately, there was much to discuss. Cholera, from infected drinking water. A rash of measles killing children one spring. Then typhus struck the village. My heart contracted hearing the damage my absence had wrought. Typhus! I shook my head mournfully as the mule and I walked toward the western road. Even at thirteen, I could have rid the village of typhus-spreading parasites with an hour of work.
But I had been banished.
The only mercy was that the plague had taken Doña María Catalina with it.
Paloma had told me how quickly the disease seemed to strike the house. One day, Doña Catalina was her usual barbed self, energetically quarreling about finances with Juana over dinner. The next, the patrón’s wife was confined to her room; Ana Luisa said she was too ill to move or be seen. For three weeks she remained in her room in convalescence, onlytended by Ana Luisa. Then she abruptly died. Paloma watched her quiet funeral from a distant perch on the graveyard wall: she waited, hands clenched in anticipation, until the casket that held the hateful woman was firmly covered with earth.
And even after Doña Catalina’s death, I remained banished from the land my family lived on. For two years, I lived in Apan alone, a stalk hacked away from the heart of the maguey, anger and resentment toward the Solórzanos weeping from my wound. Rumors of Rodolfo’s remarriage and return to San Isidro with a new bride had licked through the town weeks before they actually set foot on its dust; when they finally appeared in the church, they were like salt flung on an unhealed wound. I scarcely spared the new wife a glance. Whatever fate she had sealed for herself by marrying that monster was no concern of mine, I told myself.
Until shemadeit my concern.
It was because Paloma was present that I lingered after Mass the day Beatriz sought Padre Guillermo’s blessing for the house. Juana and Ana Luisa had forbidden Paloma from coming to town to seek me out; I had not seen her in two years and was desperate to speak with her.
The first words Paloma spoke to me were a desperate hiss. “Doña Juana is hiding something. Mamá too. Something terrible.” There was a wildness in her eyes that stopped my heart: that was the feral fear of hunted things. “La señora is going to ask priests to bless the house, but it needs so much more than that. Youmustcome help.”
She was in danger. I knew then I would fight to return to San Isidro, banishment or no. I had let her be harmed in that house once before. I would not allow it to happen again.
At that moment, I looked up and met the new Doña Solórzano’s eyes.
She had dark hair, was small but proud shouldered. Her maguey green eyes were a shock of color against the black lace of her mantilla. These met my gaze and held it fast: she measured me with a frankness that snatched my spirit from my body and set it on the scales of justice.
A thought unspooled in my quiet mind, unbidden, swift and certain as the click of a lock:this one is different.
She was. She asked me to come to San Isidro. She opened the gates of the hacienda and ended my banishment.
