9

My grandfather Cosme didn’t talk to me again after I told him that this was my path, that the path of God is mine. I healed the people who came to see me and they began to talk about how I healed them, more and more people came when word began to spread that I healed illnesses of the body and the soul and they began to come from the next towns over and people who spoke Spanish began to come, and then people came who spoke other tongues, foreigners began to come to San Felipe asking for me, they came on horseback and on mules, they cut paths with machetes to come, the foreigners came however they could, with people from town as their guides. Back then there were no highways or even paved roads, the mayor put those in when he saw all the foreigners coming, he wanted to make a good impression on the foreigners, the mayor heard that a gringo banker came because he saw the film they made about me and he said that’s a powerful man and he even invited the banker to his house. Back then, to get to my house by the milpas you had to travel four or five hours on horseback or mule, and on foot sometimes, and cut your way through with a machete if branches had come down with the last hailstorm, and even so people came, so many came that I had to say to them, Come back tomorrow, my child, come back another day, and you, come back later, but of all the people who came to see me, the one I most wanted to hear say that what I was doing was good was my grandfather Cosme, he was the one who told me I was doing men’s work.

One day, my grandfather Cosme showed up at my door and he said, Feliciana, I hear you’re a famous curandera, I hear that you have the Language and I’ve come to give you my blessing. That’s how he was, he was slow to say things but then when he did say them, his door was wide open and it was a very big door. My grandfather Cosme opened his door to me just two times and that was the second, the first was when I married Nicanor. I was around fourteen when I married Nicanor, I don’t know the exact number, they don’t make papers when people are born here in San Felipe or in San Juan de los Lagos. When I had my first daughter, Aniceta, that was when my grandfather opened his door to me the first time, because he held his spites in until they came out. My grandfather Cosme showed up at my door with the rag doll I’d made when I was a little girl, the one I’d named María and he’d called Tola, and he said to me, Feliciana, this belongs to your daughter Aniceta now, but take it from her when she plays so she can find her way, just like I taught you how to work. And I knew that my grandfather Cosme was opening his door to me, when I married Nicanor and had my daughter Aniceta. I knew that he loved me even though he never said it, and that he respected me as a curandera, I knew those things the second time he opened his door to me. My grandfather Cosme never loved Paloma, he spoke to her with words like machetes, people loved Paloma but my grandfather Cosme was hard on her. He never said thank you when Paloma who was still Gaspar raised my grandmother Paz from her sickness because he’d seen the feathers on him, and if he ever heard someone say something about Paloma he’d say that he walked like he had feathers.

Before Nicanor’s family, three other families came to see if my grandfather Cosme would give me to them, but the families didn’t bring the boys, you weren’t allowed to see the boy before the wedding, no, no I never met them, but I met their families. Nicanor’s family was the biggest and kindest, they had goats, hens, a few pigs, and my grandfather gave his approval and I met Nicanor later, a few days before our wedding in the town church. I thought he was very serious. He came with a bride price of a few pigs and goats that my grandmother Paz looked after. My grandfather Cosme slaughtered a goat and my mother made atole for everyone, and Nicanor’s big family brought liquor and turkey in mole. On the day of the wedding, Nicanor told me that he could read and write because they’d sent him to the community school. Nicanor’s family also gave the music at our wedding, the Montes Band was the sound of inns and parties in San Felipe and travelled to other towns in the region, you know the kind with dancers and all and, well, the Montes Band brought music to our wedding because one of them was a relative of Nicanor’s and his family was all there. Paloma didn’t have men yet, she didn’t go with men she loved at night or with men she didn’t love, she was still the boy Gaspar, still a curandero, and that night Gaspar danced with all the women in Nicanor’s family, and they all liked him, he was good to be around and great at parties, and all the women in Nicanor’s family liked him, he got them all to laugh and to dance while my grandfather Cosme went around saying that Gaspar wasn’t part of his family, that he was from my father Felisberto’s side and what a shame it was that he was the last of the long line of curanderos. At the dance, my sister Francisca came to me and said, Feliciana, I don’t want them to marry me off, and she spent the whole wedding silent like an owl, her eyes wide and watching, caring for the children in Nicanor’s family, who were many.

I was frightened during the first days of my marriage with Nicanor, partly because I had always slept on the same mat with my sister Francisca, partly because Nicanor liked to eat a big breakfast and we weren’t used to that, and partly because I didn’t understand what was happening when he climbed onto me on our wedding night. I accepted it, I thought this is the life of a married woman, but I didn’t understand why people like to climb onto each other, that was something it took me time to understand in my marriage with Nicanor. I thought, this is the custom between men and women, people like this, I thought, so I should just follow the custom. My sister Francisca asked me what I meant that Nicanor climbed onto me, she was frightened that her own wedding day would arrive and said she didn’t want my grandfather Cosme to marry her off, because he was already talking about it, in the plaza he would talk about his granddaughter Francisca with people who already knew her as tall and a beauty. It took me time, but then later I understood why some people climb onto others and enjoy it, it took me time to realise it was nice. Nicanor was a boy then and he didn’t drink, but he had to drink the liquor his family brought on our wedding day, we both drank the liquor because they made us, but what we both really liked was working. Back then I didn’t know and had no way of knowing that Nicanor would give himself over to alcohol the way he did after being a soldier, he gave himself over to it until they hacked him to death with a machete when my son Aparicio was taking his first steps.

At the beginning of our marriage, I saw that it was nice to be married with Nicanor, I married him before I knew him, I met his family first so we started knowing each other and later we saw that it was nice to be married. When I told him I was pregnant, he was neither happy or sad, it was like I’d told him storms follow mornings that the sun clears, Nicanor said nothing when I told him I was pregnant, it was like I’d told him it was morning and he said to me, Feliciana, make me some sweet coffee like I take it, and that day I told him I was pregnant he took the news like he took the coffee I made him before the sun came out of its mountain.

When I birthed Aniceta my grandfather Cosme came and opened his door to me, and Gaspar came to me also and said, Feliciana, I’m not clean, I can’t heal people anymore. And so people started going to One-eyed Tadeo who read kernels of corn and took advantage, telling people what they wanted to hear, he tossed his seven kernels and told the future, he took advantage of people who believed he could see the future because he had one eye, and Gaspar came to tell me that he’d gone at night with a man who had a family, a politician from the city who had children and a wife and who came to work with the mayor, he’d gone to the pulquería somewhere no one he knew would see him to pick up a boy, and there was Gaspar, who was still a boy, and I saw death lay its egg in Gaspar for the first time, before he was Paloma, death laid its egg in Gaspar not because the politician had children and a wife, but because he went from town to town going with boys and he carried a disease that he gave to Gaspar. Gaspar came to see me then and said pus was coming out of him instead of urine, how could he get rid of it, he said, Feliciana, help me with the herbs you bless. We went to the hillside to bless herbs and over time they cured Gaspar’s sickness from the time he went with that politician at night. I was carrying Aniceta in my shawl and Gaspar said to me, Feliciana, dear, that little girl and that smile of hers will put everything right. He loved Aniceta ever since she was born, later he got along well with Apolonia but he loved Aniceta, he came to see me because of her, and that’s how we came to see each other so much, Gaspar came to our house and worked alongside us. Apolonia was born quickly, and Aparicio was born quickly when I was in my marriage with Nicanor.

In those days, Nicanor went off with revolutionaries to ride horseback and carry a rifle, first they put lead in his arm with a rifle, then in his horse, then they put lead in his belly. He sent me messages through different people and sent me coins so I could take care of things. In those days my grandmother Paz died, and not long after my grandfather Cosme followed her. He couldn’t bear the sadness without her, I saw it that day we had a hail storm. My grandfather Cosme died because my grandmother Paz had gone, he was healthy, death laid its egg in his soul, not in his body, because death is like that, my grandfather Cosme went not long after my grandmother Paz. And not long after that, my mother joined them, too, the three of them went like fire spreads in a hard wind, the three of them went in the rainy season, in one rainy season the three of them were gone. My sister Francisca was relieved that my grandfather Cosme hadn’t married her off.

And so there are deaths of companionship, there are people who die so they can follow the one who went before them, then death lays its egg in a person’s soul because they ask it to and if it doesn’t they try to take its egg the way people snatch things in the market, but death is always there to trill its song. Because death listens to people, just how life listens. My grandfather Cosme stopped talking when my grandmother Paz died, he went mute, his mouth sank in because his words were gone, he didn’t want to use his mouth, not even to eat with, it sank in the way your arm falls asleep if you don’t use it, my grandfather Cosme stopped talking as if that was his way of leaving the earth and then one day it was morning and his body was cold. I can’t say my grandfather Cosme died, he stopped talking because God stopped giving him words, he stopped talking after my grandmother Paz died and then my sister Francisca came to tell me grandpa Cosme was with God. And she looked relieved because she didn’t want my grandfather Cosme to marry her off, he had already received one family interested in my sister Francisca, but they didn’t have cattle for the bride price, and the other week, after my grandfather died, another family was supposed to go see him with the bride price but then they didn’t appear.

My mother had a sickness of the heart that put her out like a candle that burns down in the night while everyone is asleep. Only my sister Francisca and I were left, me and my three children Aniceta, Apolonia and Aparicio, and Nicanor who was with the revolutionaries in their war. Gaspar, who wasn’t yet Paloma, came to help us with our work.

In those days, there were soldiers who would go to the houses of other soldiers to leave the coins they made in the army, and soldiers sent spoken messages for their women at home and the children waiting for them there, and the few who could read and write sent letters. Nicanor sent me letters because he knew how to read and write, but I don’t know how to read so I would ask the soldier who brought me the letter to read it to me, and then later I’d ask someone else to read it again, and again, just for the pleasure of hearing what Nicanor said to me. He said for me not to worry because all the soldiers were going to come back fine and real soon, but soon after that a soldier knocked on my door to say Nicanor had died in battle. I cried, I took in the idea that Nicanor had died and I worked up the courage to tell my children, We’re going to say goodbye to your father Nicanor, we’re going to make him an empty grave so we have somewhere to mourn him even if we’re only crying to his name because that doesn’t die, names don’t have hours or times because the name we use when the person is alive is the name we use when they are dead because the Language lives always. I said to my children Aniceta, Apolonia, and Aparicio, I said, Your father Nicanor will always be alive like his name which is alive in the Language and I told them all that on the same night another soldier arrived to give me money that Nicanor had sent from the war and I thought it must be a message from before, arriving after Nicanor died, and I went with my three children to find a place to set a wood cross next to an agave plant and put his name there on an empty grave. But then another day a different soldier came and told me, Nicanor is fine and sends you a message, and I asked, What happened, I didn’t understand if it was truth or lies that Nicanor was dead or alive, but I went with my three children to make the wood cross with Nicanor’s name on it next to the agave, to set it there with his name so we could go there to pray for him and for buds to sprout up there with his memory in them, but I didn’t know if we had to put him in there dead or if it was just his name that would go there, so I went for some wood and made the cross with a nail and that’s how we set his name in the earth. Then more money arrived and I cried because I didn’t know if Nicanor was alive or dead, I didn’t understand, I told my sister Francisca and I told Gaspar that I didn’t understand, but I told my three children that their father died in the war, it was better if they believed that death had laid its egg in their father than if they believed me saying he was alive, how could my children believe me if I said that Nicanor was resurrected like Jesus Christ, but Aniceta understood I was crying because I didn’t know what was truth and what was lies, Aniceta saw how confused I was about the wood I used to make the cross with Nicanor’s name on it to set in the earth, not knowing if we were going to dig a hole to bury his body there where his name was already waiting and I told my three children, Nicanor’s name on that cross is all we need, because there are no times or dates, the Language lives always. One day, another soldier came with money and told me that Nicanor had been killed in the war, and we went to cry for him at the wood I made into a cross with Nicanor’s name on it and set in the earth, and that time I cried like a newborn cries, with relief, I cried for the hope he was alive but not long after that Nicanor showed up at our door, drunk. I didn’t recognise him at first, with his ammunition belts and his rifle, his beard and clothing made him look like someone else and his sweat was sour with liquor.

When Nicanor came back from the war, his taste for liquor rotted our marriage the way a fruit rots if no one collects it from the ground. He lost his temper with me and our three children, my sister Francisca couldn’t look him in the eye, she couldn’t talk to him, and Gaspar who wasn’t yet Paloma stopped coming to the house because Nicanor was a beast. He began to beat Aniceta, Apolonia, and Aparicio if they said something he didn’t like and the next day he would feel guilty and ask for their forgiveness, he hit me a few times and he smashed one of Francisca’s pots because he didn’t like the atole she made that day, he said it tasted like dirt. He beat Aparicio with whatever he had on hand. Once, a young buck made Aparicio cry, Aparicio’s lips were blue and his face was blue from so much crying, and Nicanor went to beat him because his son, his male son, was crying because of some kid and Men don’t cry, he said, and he left Aparicio’s lips bleeding and he knocked one of his teeth out, and I had to hold the tooth in place all night until it stuck back in its pod, when the sun came out from its mountain the tooth was back in its pod, the boy was crying from the pain and I packed some herbs around the hollow to soften the pain and held his tooth in its pod until it took root.

I realised that Nicanor had his eye on a girl and that he had started going with her at night. I realised it right away. Nicanor didn’t die in the war, the messages the soldiers brought me killed him and resurrected him many times, he and his rifle fought with the revolutionaries and he came back drunk to San Felipe to go with that girl at night. Nicanor didn’t die with those other men in the war, even though Aparicio says he did because Aparicio has no saint but Nicanor, and Nicanor died hacked to death with a machete by the girl’s brother, Viviana was her name and he took her to a little hut at the far end of San Felipe. People said that Viviana went with him at night by force. But I’ll tell you something that only time lets me say. If they had told me back then that Nicanor brought the girl to that hut to climb onto her by force, I would have hacked him to death with a machete myself, this is something lodged in me here like a sigh I can’t let out, I carry it here lodged inside me always and it breaks me to talk about it because a man climbed onto my sister Francisca that way and I could do nothing to help her. And then I heard about what happened with Nicanor and Viviana. He didn’t climb onto her by force, they went together at night, Nicanor didn’t climb onto her by force but I would have pulled him off her myself and hacked him to death with a machete if he had, because of the man who did that to my sister Francisca.

My sister Francisca told me what had happened after she had her first moon and before I was married and I saw it years later in a ceremony I made for my sister after I received the Book, the one my father had spoken about before he died and the one Gaspar said I would have, before he was Paloma, there in the ceremony I saw the wretch climb onto my sister by force and I tell you I could have killed him myself with a machete, and still to this day because memory doesn’t quiet the rage. I don’t kill, I don’t do people harm, but I feel rage against that wretch and so I say I could have killed him, may God forgive me for saying it. It was in the milpa, it was right over there. My sister Francisca had just had her first moon and she made waters on our sleeping mat, sometimes that happened to her at night, I saw that and before I was married to Nicanor I told my sister Francisca, you’re a woman now, what are you doing, go outside to do that. During the day she went outside, but at night sometimes she still wet herself. Even before Francisca had her first moon her breasts were already like sweet fruits and she was always taller than me, who knows how because my mother was short like I am and my grandmother Paz was even shorter, shorter than my mother and me, and my grandfather Cosme was short, too, but people respected him because of how he was and because of the way he treated people, he looked them in the eye and remembered the things they’d said and he knew all their names and what they’d talked about the last time he saw them, my grandfather Cosme was short like us and my sister Francisca, God knows how, was taller than us the way one stalk can grow taller than the rest of the corn no matter how hard the wind shakes it, and she grew quickly into a woman’s body, and all the men watched her when she walked through the town, they said things to her. I remember Gaspar who wasn’t yet Paloma said to her that she was beautiful and painted her lips but my sister Francisca wiped her lips clean with a rag because she didn’t want people to see her so much like a woman. Before I was married I saw that my sister Francisca was wetting herself in her sleep and I woke her and said to her, Francisca, go get some rags to clean this, you’re a woman now and too old to be doing this and she began to cry and didn’t say a word and I went to get the rags so she wouldn’t get a caning across her hands. I did that other times, too, and went to buy a new mat so no one would say anything to her, I changed the new mat for the old one and no one noticed, that’s how she came to tell me what happened to her, and later I saw it in a ceremony.

The wretch stuck his fat, dirty fingers in my sister Francisca by force, it burned and she wanted to be anywhere else but there was no one to help her, her breasts were bare to the harsh sun burning white in the sky, she could hardly speak because she wanted to be anywhere else and didn’t understand why he was sticking his dirty fingers in her, she wanted to escape from that wretch and his fingers cracked from ploughing but he didn’t stop and she couldn’t escape, he was holding her down with the breasts of her woman’s body bare but she wanted to be anywhere else, not with that wretch who was telling her in her ear that she was going to thank him one day after she was married off with her bride price, that she was going to remember him on her wedding night, that she was going to remember how big he was, but what was big was my sister Francisca’s terror, and the wretch forced her, he told her many times that she would always remember him, that no one would ever give it to her like he did, and he forced himself inside her and it hurt and Francisca wanted to be anywhere else when he stuck his fingers inside her with his dirty nails and his putrid soul and he grabbed her breasts, breasts even she never touched when she washed in the mornings before the sun came out of its mountain so she didn’t have to see her woman’s body, with her big black eyes and her long black hair that she scrubbed with reeds to make it shine, and while it was happening my sister Francisca rested her mind on a painting hung next to Christ in the town church, a painting of a white Virgin with her white feet floating in the clouds and the clouds look like they’re moving, like the ones that blow through on clear afternoons when the sky is clean and freshly washed blue, fat white clouds like children fat and red-cheeked with breast milk, Because those clouds took me to another place, Feliciana, she said, a place where she was safe inside the smell of white flowers in the town church, and she felt the cool of its floor and its shade on hot days, my sister Francisca saw the Virgin and felt her feet in those fat white clouds like children fat and red-cheeked with breast milk, clouds that smell like milk like newborn babies smell, and she thought about how feet must feel in those soft white clouds, lighter than air, and my sister Francisca smelled the milk scent of newborn babies and she felt peace while the wretch licked her breasts like fruit that belonged to him and drooled the rank pulque of his soul all over them.

There are wretches who have no name, there are wretches in the Bible, wretches in every town, wretches in every tongue and every time and women will keep birthing them, but for me none of them will ever have a name, because their name is the name of their crime. My sister Francisca is a woman with a clean and quiet soul and has been since the day she was born. I wouldn’t be Feliciana if I didn’t have my sister Francisca, just like you wouldn’t be who you are without your sister Leandra. Sisters are what we are not, they have what we don’t and we are what they are not.

Nicanor didn’t climb onto Viviana by force. A few years later Apolonia came to tell me that Viviana was pregnant from her husband, she had four children with her husband, and Aniceta and Apolonia held bitterness toward Nicanor because they heard people in town say that their father was a drunk who had gone at night with Viviana, but I said to them, Nicanor gave you life, don’t hold spite toward him because nothing grows from burnt seeds, girls, flowers most certainly don’t, those won’t grow if your father’s name is burnt. You have a husband and a son, so you understand. I told my children, Nicanor gave you life so don’t hold spite toward him, go to where he is buried under the cross I made with a nail to plant his name in the earth, go pray to the name of your father Nicanor, go to the wood cross to share your pain and your joy because he gave you life. One day Viviana came to see me because her cousin had pains of the liver, and Viviana told me that she had known other men before Nicanor and that she had wanted to run away with him, that they had gone together at night because it was what she wanted, that he hadn’t climbed onto her by force but her brother hacked Nicanor to death with his machete because he thought his sister was there by force, she told me that she felt guilt towards me and wanted to tell me and also that she wanted me to heal the pains troubling her cousin’s liver. I helped Viviana’s cousin, I healed her cousin’s liver and I tell you, in this land the sun shines a light on all it touches, Viviana told me that she had brought Nicanor to her house with her, that he was drunk and her brother didn’t know she was already going with men at night, that Nicanor had the bad luck of being the first one her brother found out about and the boy thought Nicanor had climbed onto her by force.