Bless Me, Ultima(18)

Ultima’s soft hands would carefully lift the plant and examine it. She would take a pinch and taste its quality. Then she took the same pinch and put it into a little black bag tied to a sash around her waist. She told me that the dry contents of the bag contained a pinch of every plant she had ever gathered since she began her training as a curandera many years ago.

“Long ago,” she would smile, “long before you were a dream, long before the train came to Las Pasturas, before the Lunas came to their valley, before the great Coronado built his bridge—” Then her voice would trail off and my thoughts would be lost in the labyrinth of a time and history I did not know.

We wandered on and found some orégano, and we gathered plenty because this was not only a cure for coughs and fever but a spice my mother used for beans and meat. We were also lucky to find some oshá, because this plant grows better in the mountains. It is like la yerba del manso, a cure for everything. It cures coughs or colds, cuts and bruises, rheumatism and stomach troubles, and my father once said the old sheepherders used it to keep poisonous snakes away from their bedrolls by sprinkling them with oshá powder. It was with a mixture of oshá that Ultima washed my face and arms and feet the night Lupito was killed.

In the hills Ultima was happy. There was a nobility to her walk that lent a grace to the small figure. I watched her carefully and imitated her walk, and when I did I found that I was no longer lost in the enormous landscape of hills and sky. I was a very important part of the teeming life of the llano and the river.

“¡Mira! Qué suerte, tunas,” Ultima cried with joy and pointed to the ripe-red prickly pears of the nopal. “Run and gather some and we will eat them in the shade by the river.” I ran to the cactus and gathered a shovelful of the succulent, seedy pears. Then we sat in the shade of the álamos of the river and peeled the tunas very carefully because even on their skin they have fuzz spots that make your fingers and tongue itch. We sat and ate and felt refreshed.

The river was silent and brooding. The presence was watching over us. I wondered about Lupito’s soul.

“It is almost time to go to my uncles’ farms in El Puerto and gather the harvest,” I said.

“Ay,” Ultima nodded and looked to the south.

“Do you know my uncles, the Lunas?” I asked.

“Of course, child,” she replied, “your grandfather and I are old friends. I know his sons. I lived in El Puerto, many years ago—”

“Ultima,” I asked, “why are they so strange and quiet? And why are my father’s people so loud and wild?”

She answered. “It is the blood of the Lunas to be quiet, for only a quiet man can learn the secrets of the earth that are necessary for planting—They are quiet like the moon—And it is the blood of the Márez to be wild, like the ocean from which they take their name, and the spaces of the llano that have become their home.”

I waited, then said. “Now we have come to live near the river, and yet near the llano. I love them both, and yet I am of neither. I wonder which life I will choose?”

“Ay, hijito,” she chuckled, “do not trouble yourself with those thoughts. You have plenty of time to find yourself—”

“But I am growing,” I said, “every day I grow older—”

“True,” she replied softly. She understood that as I grew I would have to choose to be my mother’s priest or my father’s son.

We were silent for a long time, lost in memories that the murmur of the morning wind carried across the treetops. Cotton from the trees drifted lazily in the heavy air. The silence spoke, not with harsh sounds, but softly to the rhythm of our blood.

“What is it?” I asked, for I was still afraid.

“It is the presence of the river,” Ultima answered.

I held my breath and looked at the giant, gnarled cottonwood trees that surrounded us. Somewhere a bird cried, and up on the hill the tinkling sound of a cowbell rang. The presence was immense, lifeless, yet throbbing with its secret message.

“Can it speak?” I asked and drew closer to Ultima.

“If you listen carefully—” she whispered.

“Can you speak to it?” I asked as the whirling, haunting sound touched us.

“Ay, my child,” Ultima smiled and touched my head, “you want to know so much—”

And the presence was gone.

“Come, it is time to start homeward.” She rose and with the sack over her shoulder hobbled up the hill. I followed. I knew that if she did not answer my question that that part of life was not yet ready to reveal itself to me. But I was no longer afraid of the presence of the river.