Chương 3
She sat beside Lucía.
For several minutes, neither woman spoke.
A television mounted near the ceiling showed a cooking program with the sound off. A chef smiled while arranging peppers in a copper pan. Someone’s child rolled a toy car beneath the chairs. The car struck Elena’s boot. The boy looked up at her uniform, retrieved it, and saluted with the wrong hand.
Elena almost smiled.
Lucía watched the boy return to his mother.
“You were like that,” she said.
“I never saluted anyone.”
“You saluted the chickens.”
“I did not.”
“You lined them up behind the laundry room.”
“That was Sofía.”
Lucía shook her head. “Señorita Sofía would not go near the chickens. She said they looked dishonest.”
The memory came back with the smell of feathers and wet dirt. Elena had been seven, wearing her father’s old cap. She had named the rooster General because he attacked everyone without discrimination.
The ordinary recollection made the morning feel more unbearable.
“Why didn’t you call me sooner?” Elena asked.
Lucía folded the edge of her purse inward.
“I tried.”
“When?”
“Three weeks ago.”
“I have no missed call from you.”
“I used the house phone. Señora Sofía came in while it was ringing. She hung it up.”
“You have a mobile.”
“My son pays for it. I do not know the international numbers.”
“I’m stationed in Mexico.”
“I thought you were in Texas.”
“I was there in March.”
Lucía nodded as if that settled something.
Elena closed her eyes. Everyone at the hacienda still thought of her movements in old fragments: border exercise, flood relief, training base, deployment, leave canceled, leave restored. She had treated the confusion as proof that nobody listened. It had never occurred to her that she had made her own life difficult to follow.
“How long has Mama been like this?”
Lucía took time answering.
“She began forgetting small things two years ago. Then she forgot where the kitchen was. Then she remembered where it was but accused me of moving it.”
“Why didn’t Sofía tell me?”
“She did.”
“No. She said Mama was tired.”
“She said more than that.”
Elena’s hand went to the phone in her pocket.
There were messages she had read while walking between meetings, while waiting on runways, while lying awake in rooms where the air-conditioning made her throat ache. Sofía had written, Mama is getting worse. Elena had answered, Take her to Cárdenas. Sofía had written, She needs someone here. Elena had sent money.
She had believed money was a form of arrival.
Lucía watched her face.
“The cage appeared nine days ago,” she said.
“Nine?”
“A welder came after dark. Señora Sofía said it was for the dogs.”
“There are no dogs.”
“There was one.”
“Chispa died when I was in secondary school.”
“Yes.”
Lucía’s fingers worried the purse seam.
“Your mother fought when they put her inside. She bit one of the men. Then she fell. That is how she hurt her face.”
“You saw this.”
“Yes.”
“And you stayed.”
Lucía’s eyes hardened for the first time. “I stayed because if I left, she would be alone.”
The words landed without volume.
Elena looked at the floor.
“I’m sorry.”
“I did not ask for sorry.”
“What are you asking for?”
“I do not know yet.”
The police released Sofía that afternoon but ordered her not to return to the hacienda until officers completed their examination. She objected until Benítez explained that the house was not legally hers alone. Teresa remained its registered owner.
“That will change,” Sofía said.
Benítez looked at her. “What does that mean?”
She seemed to realize she had spoken too quickly.
“It means my mother signed documents months ago.”
“What documents?”
“Estate arrangements.”
Elena was standing near the nurses’ station. She turned.
Sofía smoothed the front of her dress. “Not everything is a conspiracy.”
“What did she sign?”
“An updated power of attorney.”
“When?”
“In February.”
“Mama couldn’t remember my birthday in February.”
“She remembered enough.”
Lucía whispered a prayer under her breath.
Benítez took out his notebook.
“Who prepared the document?”
“Our notary.”
“Name?”
Sofía’s chin lifted. “Licenciado Mateo Ríos.”
Teresa woke near sunset.
The hospital room had one narrow window facing a parking structure. Light reflected from windshields and trembled across the ceiling. Elena sat beside the bed, still in uniform, her cap and belt on the chair. She had washed her hands three times, yet whenever she closed her eyes she felt rust beneath her fingernails.
Teresa looked at her for a long moment.
“You came home.”
“Yes.”
“Your sister said you couldn’t.”
“She was wrong.”
“She is wrong loudly.”
Elena laughed before she could stop herself. Teresa smiled, then winced.
“Does your face hurt?”
“Everything has taken a vote.”
“What won?”
“My back.”
Elena poured water into a paper cup and held it while Teresa drank. Some ran down her chin. Elena wiped it with the corner of the blanket.
Teresa watched her.
“You’re angry.”
“I’m trying not to be.”
“You were never good at trying quietly.”
“Mama, why were you in that cage?”
Teresa’s expression emptied.
“The birds were eating the figs.”
“What birds?”
“The black ones.”
Elena waited.
Teresa turned toward the window. “Your father said we should put nets over the trees, but nets catch feet. Did I tell you about the woman in Mérida who broke her hip?”
“Mama.”
“People think hips are simple until they stop working.”
Elena put the cup down.
“Did Sofía lock you inside?”
Teresa’s fingers moved beneath the blanket, searching for something that was not there.
“She gets tired.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“She sleeps with her teeth tight. I can hear them.”
“Did she lock you inside?”
Teresa closed her eyes.
“You always ask questions like doors.”
“What does that mean?”
“You push until someone opens.”
“I need the truth.”
May you like
“So does everyone. It is very crowded.”
Elena leaned back. Her mother’s evasions had once been elegant. When Elena was sixteen and asked whether her father had been drinking, Teresa talked about the heat. When Sofía asked why there was no money for university in the capital, Teresa explained the cost of fertilizer. Now Elena could not tell whether Teresa was avoiding the answer or losing it.
