The Hummingbird's Daughter Read Free Page A

A horse looked over his shoulder, more interested in the bowl than in her. Her stomach growled and her mouth watered. She hadn’t eaten in a day. She should have hidden in the bushes, but he had already seen her.
    “Buenas noches,” she called.
    “Buenas.”
    “It’s dark.”
    He looked up as if noticing the darkness for the first time.
    “It is,” he agreed. Then: “Don’t hit me with that machete.”
    “I won’t.”
    “Gracias.”
    “This is for bandidos.”
    “Ah!”
    “Son cabrones,” she explained. “And I’ll kill the first one that tries anything.”
    “Excellent,” he said.
    “And ghosts.”
    He put food in his mouth.
    “I don’t think you can kill a ghost,” he said.
    “We’ll see about that,” she said, flashing her blade.
    The small fire crackled.
    “What are you eating?” she asked.
    “Cherries.”
    “Cherries? What are cherries?”
    He held one up. In the faint fire glow, it looked like a small heart full of blood.
    “They come from trees,” he said.
    “Son malos?” she asked. “They look wicked.”
    He laughed.
    “They are very wicked,” he said.
    “I am going home,” she said.
    “So am I.”
    “Is this your horse?”
    “It is, but I like to walk.”
    “You must have good shoes.”
    “I have good feet.”
    He spit out a seed and popped another cherry in his mouth. She watched his cheeks swell as his jaw worked. Spit. Eat another cherry.
    “Are they sweet?” she asked.
    “Sí.”
    He spit a seed.
    He heard her belly growl.
    “You will bring a child to light soon,” he said.
    “Yes.”
    “A girl.”
    “I don’t know,” she replied.
    “A girl.”
    He handed her the bowl.
    “Eat,” he said.
    The cherry juice in Cayetana’s mouth was dark and red, like nothing she had ever tasted.
    She spit out the seed.
    “I have to go now,” she said, “it is late.”
    “Adios,” he said.
    Cayetana replied in the mother tongue: “Lios emak weye.” God go with you. She walked into the night. Funny man. But one thing she knew from experience—all men were funny.
    She’d gotten a restless night’s sleep with the bellyache she blamed on the stranger’s fruit. Now the morning brought increased tumult inside her. Cayetana thought she could make it to the row of outhouses that Tomás had built between the workers’ village and the great house where the masters slept. But the child within her had decided it was time to come forth, announcing the news about halfway to the outhouses when the pain dropped Cayetana to her knees and the strange water broke from her and fell into the dust.

Two
    HUILA HATED THE WAY her knees popped when she stood.
Crack! Crack!
She sounded like a bundle of kindling.
    She made the sign of the cross, fetched her apron, and took up her shotgun. Huila’s mochila of herbs and rags and knives was packed and ready, as always. She put its rope-loop handle over her left shoulder. She packed her pipe with tobacco, lit a redheaded match from one of her votive candles, and sucked in the flame. She had stolen some good rum-soaked tobacco from Don Tomás when she’d cleaned his library. He knew she stole it—on several occasions, she had smoked it right in front of him.
    The masters called her María Sonora, but the People knew she was Huila, the Skinny Woman, their midwife and healer. They called the masters Yoris—all whites were Yori, the People’s greatest insult Yoribichi, or Naked White Man. Huila worked for the Big Yoribichi. She lived in a room behind the patrón’s kitchen, from which Tomás believed she directed the domestic staff, but from which the People believed she commanded the spirits.
    She felt in her apron pockets for her medicine pouch. Everybody knew it was made of leather—man leather, they said, gathered from a rapist’s ball sack. The rumor was that she had collected it herself back in her village of El Júpare. When one of the pendejos working around her or her girls started to give her grief, she’d pull the awful little