“I know, I know,” she crooned and held me until the convulsions left me. Then she went to her room, heated water, and brought me medicine to drink. “This will help you sleep,” she said. “It is the death of your young friend,” she talked as I drank the bitter potion, “perhaps it is all the things in your mind of late that cause the pesadilla—anyway, it is not good. The strengthening of a soul, the growing up of a boy is part of his destiny, but you have seen too much death. It is time for you to rest, to see growing life. Perhaps your uncles could best teach you about growth—”
She laid me back on my pillow and pulled the blanket up to my neck. “I want you to promise that you will go with them. It will be good for you.” I nodded my head in agreement. The medicine put me to sleep, a sleep without dreams.
When Florence was buried I did not go to the funeral. The bells of the church kept ringing and calling, but I did not go. The church had not given him communion with God and so he was doomed to his dream-wanderings, like Narciso and Lupito. I felt that there was nothing the church or I could give him now.
I overheard Ultima talking to my father and mother. She told them I was sick and that I needed rest. She talked about how beneficial a stay at El Puerto would be. My parents agreed. They understood that I had to be away from the places that held the memories of my friend. They hoped that the solitude of the small village and the strength of my uncles would lend me the rest I needed.
“I will be saddened at leaving you,” I told Ultima when we were alone.
“Ay,” she tried to smile, “life is filled with sadness when a boy grows to be a man. But as you grow into manhood you must not despair of life, but gather strength to sustain you—can you understand that.”
“Yes,” I said, and she smiled.
“I would not send you if I thought the visit would not be good for you, Antonio, but it will be. Your uncles are strong men, you can learn much from them, and it will be good for you to be away from here, where so much has happened. One thing—” she cautioned.
“Yes?” I asked.
“Be prepared to see things changed when you return—”
I thought awhile. “Andrew said things had changed when he returned from the army—do you mean in that way?”
She nodded. “You are growing, and growth is change. Accept the change, make it a part of your strength—”
Then my mother came to give me her blessings. I knelt and she said, “te doy esta bendición en el nombre del Padre, del Hijo, y el Espíritu Santo,” and she wished that I would prosper from the instruction of her brothers. Then she knelt by my side and Ultima blessed us both. She blessed without using the name of the Trinity like my mother, and yet her blessing was as holy. She only wished for strength and health within the person she blessed.
“Your father is waiting,” my mother said as we rose. Then I did something I had never done before. I reached up and kissed Ultima. She smiled and said, “Adiós, Antonio—”
“Adiós,” I called back. I grabbed the suitcase with my clothes and ran out to the truck where my father waited.
“¡Adiós!” they called, trailing after me, “send my love to papá!”
“I will,” I said, and the truck jerked away.
“Ay,” my father smiled, “women take an hour saying goodbyes if you let them—”
I nodded, but I had to turn and wave for the last time. Deborah and Theresa had run after the truck; my mother and Ultima stood waving by the door. I think I understood then what Ultima said about things changing, I knew that I would never see them in that beauty of early-morning, bright-sunlight again.
“It will be good for you to be on your own this summer, to be away from your mother,” my father said after we left the town and the truck settled down to chugging along the dusty road to El Puerto.
“Why?” I asked him.
“Oh, I don’t know,” he shrugged, and I could tell he was in a good mood, “I can’t tell you why, but it is so. I left my own mother, may God rest her soul, when I was seven or eight. My father contracted me to a sheep camp on the llano. I spent a whole year on my own, learning from the men in the camp. Ah, those were days of freedom I wouldn’t trade for anything—I became a man. After that I did not depend on my mother to tell me what was right or wrong, I decided on my own—”
“And that is what I must do,” I said.
“Eventually—”
I understood what he said and it made sense. I did not understand his willingness to send me to my mother’s brothers. So I asked him.