Bless Me, Ultima(22)

“Ay! And whose fault is it that we bought a worthless hill! No, you couldn’t buy fertile land along the river, you had to buy this piece of, of—”

“Of the llano,” my father finished.

“Yes!”

“It is beautiful,” he said with satisfaction.

“It is worthless! Look how hard we worked on the garden all summer, and for what? Two baskets of chile and one of corn! Bah!”

“There is freedom here.”

“Try putting that in the lunch pails of your children!”

“Tony goes to school today, huh?” he said.

“Yes. And you must talk to him.”

“He will be all right.”

“He must know the value of his education,” she insisted. “He must know what he can become.”

“A priest.”

“Yes.”

“For your brothers.” His voice was cold.

“You leave my brothers out of this! They are honorable men. They have always treated you with respect. They were the first colonizers of the Llano Estacado. It was the Lunas who carried the charter from the Mexican government to settle the valley. That took courage—”

“Led by the priest,” my father interrupted. I listened intently. I did not yet know the full story of the first Luna priest.

“What? What did you say? Do not dare to mention blasphemy where the children can hear, Gabriel Márez!” She scolded him and chased him out of the kitchen. “Go feed the animals! Give Tony a few minutes extra sleep!” I heard him laugh as he went out.

“My poor baby,” she whispered, and then I heard her praying. I heard Deborah and Theresa getting up. They were excited about school because they had already been there. They dressed and ran downstairs to wash.

I heard Ultima enter the kitchen. She said good morning to my mother and turned to help prepare breakfast. Her sound in the kitchen gave me the courage I needed to leap out of bed and into the freshly pressed clothes my mother had readied for me. The new shoes felt strange to feet that had run bare for almost seven years.

“Ay! My man of learning!” my mother smiled when I entered the kitchen. She swept me in her arms and before I knew it she was crying on my shoulder. “My baby will be gone today,” she sobbed.

“He will be all right,” Ultima said. “The sons must leave the sides of their mothers,” she said almost sternly and pulled my mother gently.

“Yes, Grande,” my mother nodded, “it’s just that he is so small—the last one to leave me—” I thought she would cry all over again. “Go and wash, and comb,” she said simply.

I scrubbed my face until it was red. I wet my black hair and combed it. I looked at my dark face in the mirror.

Jasón had said there were secrets in the letters. What did he mean?

“Antoniooooo! Come and eat.”

“Tony goes to school, Tony goes to school!” Theresa cried.

“Hush! He shall be a scholar,” my mother smiled and served me first. I tried to eat but the food stuck to the roof of my mouth.

“Remember you are a Luna—”

“And a Márez,” my father interrupted her. He came in from feeding the animals.

Deborah and Theresa sat aside and divided the school supplies they had bought in town the day before. Each got a Red Chief tablet, crayons, and pencils. I got nothing. “We are ready, mamá!” they cried.

Jasón had said look at the letter carefully, draw it on the tablet, or on the sand of the playground. You will see, it has magic.

“You are to bring honor to your family,” my mother cautioned. “Do nothing that will bring disrespect on our good name.”

I looked at Ultima. Her magic. The magic of Jasón’s Indian. They could not save me now.

“Go immediately to Miss Maestas. Tell her you are my boy. She knows my family. Hasn’t she taught them all? Deborah, take him to Miss Maestas.”

“Gosh, okay, let’s go!”

“Ay! What good does an education do them,” my father filled his coffee cup, “they only learn to speak like Indians. Gosh, okay, what kind of words are those?”

“An education will make him a scholar, like—like the old Luna priest.”

“A scholar already, on his first day of school!”

“Yes!” my mother retorted. “You know the signs at his birth were good. You remember, Grande, you offered him all the objects of life when he was just a baby, and what did he choose, the pen and the paper—”

“True,” Ultima agreed.

“¡Bueno! ¡Bueno!” my father gave in to them. “If that is what he is to be then it is so. A man cannot struggle against his own fate. In my own day we were given no schooling. Only the ricos could afford school. Me, my father gave me a saddle blanket and a wild pony when I was ten. There is your life, he said, and he pointed to the llano. So the llano was my school, it was my teacher, it was my first love—”