Bless Me, Ultima(15)

Por la sangre de Lupito, todos debemos de rogar,

Que Dios la saque de pena y la lleve a descansar…



I was afraid to think anymore. I saw the glistening of the railroad tracks and my eyes fastened on them. If I followed the tracks I would arrive in Las Pasturas, the land of my birth. Someday I would return and see the little village where the train stopped for water, where the grass was as high and green as the waves of the ocean, where the men rode horses and they laughed and cried at births, weddings, dances, and wakes.

“Anthony! ¡Antoniooooooo!” I thought it was the voice of my dreams and jumped, but it was my mother calling. Everyone was ready for mass. My mother and Ultima dressed in black because so many women of the town had lost sons or husbands in the war and they were in mourning. Those years it seemed that the whole town was in mourning, and it was very sad on Sundays to see the rows of black-dressed women walking in procession to church.

“Ay, what a night,” my father groaned. Today two more families would be in mourning in the town of Guadalupe, and indirectly the far-off war of the Japanese and the Germans had come to claim two victims in New Mexico.

“Ven acá, Antonio,” my mother scolded. She wet my dark hair and brushed it down. In spite of her dark clothing she smelled sweet and it made me feel better to be near her. I wished that I could always be near her, but that was impossible. The war had taken my brothers away, and so the school would take me away.

“Ready, mamá,” Deborah called. She said that in school the teachers let them speak only in English. I wondered how I would be able to speak to the teachers.

“¡Gabriel!” my mother called.

“Sí, Sí,” my father groaned. I wondered how heavy last night’s sin lay on his soul.

My mother took one last cursory glance at her brood then led the way up the goat path; we called the path from our home to the bridge the goat path because when we ran to meet our father after his day’s work he said we looked like goats, cabroncitos, or cabritos. We must have made a strange procession, my mother leading the group with her swift, proud walk, Deborah and Theresa skipping around her, my father muttering and dragging behind, and finally Ultima and myself.

“Es una mujer que no ha pecado…” some would whisper of Ultima.

“La curandera,” they would exchange nervous glances.

“Hechicera, bruja,” I heard once.

“Why are you so thoughtful, Antonio?” Ultima asked. Usually I was picking up stones to have ready for stray rabbits that crossed our path, but today my thoughts kept my soul in a shroud.

“I was thinking of Lupito,” I said. “My father was on the bridge,” I added.

“That is so,” she said simply.

“But, Ultima, how can he go to communion  ? How can he take God in his mouth and swallow him? Will God forgive his sin and be with him?” For a long time Ultima did not answer.

“A man of the llano,” she said, “will not take the life of a llanero unless there is just cause. And I do not think your father fired at Lupito last night. And more important, mi hijo, you must never judge who God forgives and who He doesn’t—”

We walked together and I thought about what she had said. I knew she was right. “Ultima,” I asked, “what was it you gave me to make me sleep last night? And did you carry me to my room?”

She laughed. “I am beginning to understand why your mother calls you the inquisitor,” she said.

“But I want to know, there are so many things I want to know,” I insisted.

“A curandera cannot give away her secrets,” she said, “but if a person really wants to know, then he will listen and see and be patient. Knowledge comes slowly—”

I walked along, thinking about what she had said. When we came to the bridge my mother hurried the girls across, but my father paused to look over the railing. I looked too. What happened down there was like a dream, so far away. The brown waters of the River of the Carp wound their way southward to the orchards of my uncles.

We crossed the bridge and turned right. The dirt road followed the high cliff of the river on this side. It wound into the cluster of houses around the church then kept going, following the river to El Puerto. To our left began the houses and buildings of the town. All seemed to turn towards the Main Street of town, except one. This house, a large, rambling gray stucco with a picket fence surrounding the weedy grounds, stood away from the street, perched on a ledge that dropped fifty feet down into the river below.

A long time ago the house had belonged to a very respectable family, but they had moved into town after the waters of the river began to cut into the cliff below them. Now the house belonged to a woman named Rosie. I knew that Rosie was evil, not evil like a witch, but evil in other ways. Once the priest had preached in Spanish against the women who lived in Rosie’s house and so I knew that her place was bad. Also, my mother admonished us to bow our heads when we passed in front of the house.