The Five Acts of Diego Leon Read Free Page B

was carved into the wood. What would become of him now that there was nothing and no one to root his spirit to the earth? he wondered. Elva said not to worry, that he would see his mother again, in one form or another, and he tried very hard to believe her.
    She would be his caretaker, Elva explained to Diego. Until his father returned. When she spoke of him, of his coming back, Elva would point vaguely toward the distant mountains. And Diego imagined his father there, just beyond the craggy ridges, down below, in a wide valley where wildflowers and grass grew, sheep and oxen grazing freely and uninterrupted.
    “What if he never comes back?” he asked Elva. “What will become of me then?”
    “Hush,” Elva said. She stood over a large copper colander, boiling goat’s milk, which steamed and foamed, the warm scent making Diego hungry. “You just concentrate on your work and stop thinking about all that nonsense.”
    Elva had killed a chicken from the coop that morning. Diego watched her snap the animal’s neck then cut its head off, which she flung into the pigsty for the two sows to fight over. It was his job to pluck the feathers before taking the knife Elva kept nailed to a wall of the cookhouse and skinning the carcass. The feathers were tough, but he had managed to remove most of them. Now he placed the chicken on the wooden table, took the knife, and held it over thedead animal’s breast. Elva stood over Diego and placed her hand on his.
    “Así,” she said, guiding the point of the knife and jabbing it in until the chicken’s skin broke. “No,” Elva said when she saw Diego turn away. “You must see it. You must look. No matter how disgusting you think it is.”
    He turned back around and watched as she led his hand down, the knife making a straight incision down the chicken’s belly. Now, she said, he needed to separate the skin, slowly, patiently. Diego’s hands felt moist and sticky, and his arms were smeared with blood as he took the chicken and crouched down on a straw petate to continue his work, removing the innards.
    She finished boiling the goat’s milk. She took two clay mugs and filled them both and handed him one. Elva rolled hot tortillas from the griddle near the fire and sprinkled them with salt and told him to leave the chicken for now and to come and eat. Diego watched her chew; the bones beneath her thin and wrinkled skin still looked strong, he thought, and Diego wondered how it was that such an old woman as this could still rise each morning at five, carry heavy bundles of wet laundry on her crooked, spiny back, chop blocks of wood, splitting logs with much force, cook and clean and feed and look after him. She stood beside him, her white hair wrapped in a black rag, sweat glistening her face, breathing with her lips parted. She was missing all her front teeth, and he could see her gums, smooth and bright pink, and her mouth reminded him of that of a newborn.
    “Elva?” he asked.
    “Yes, Diego?”
    “Are you my mother now?”
    The old woman sat down, bunching the fabric of her woven skirt between her legs. She was barefoot, her toes knotted and coated with dust. “Well, no, but you’re my son for now. I must help you. I must teach you things.”
    “Teach me what?”
    She pointed to the chicken. “Well, how to skin animals, of course. When to plant. When to harvest. How to—”
    He interrupted her. “Are you going to teach me more about the P’urhépecha?” He finished his milk and tortilla.
    “I will,” Elva said.
    Sadness filled him in the days after learning of his mother’s death, a terrible loneliness. Diego wondered why she had left him. Maybe she was with his father now. Maybe they were together, living in the mountains somewhere, waiting for the war to end before coming back for him.
    But why had they abandoned him? He asked Elva this one afternoon when they were out in a wide field dotted with mesquite bushes, gathering twigs for the fire pit. He watched her,