Mexico City, 1954
Clues
A few days after the funeral, I had lunch with Doña Antonia at her house next to La Escondida. It was less cluttered than Lola’s place, more traditional in design. Heavy, Spanish-style furniture distributed sparsely about the parlor. One lordly, silver-framed mirror above the sofa.
Esperanza brought us roast chicken and rice. Doña Antonia had to be careful with her diet, she explained. She had to avoid cholesterol and salt. I watched her pick up her napkin and spread it over her lap. Plump blue veins were visible under her thinning skin, and brown spots, some as large as dimes, dotted the backs of her hands. Esperanza served the lemonade, her arms trembled slightly. We’re all growing older, I thought. Ladies and maids alike.
Doña Antonia said grace, crossed herself, and took a breath. “About your family,” she began. “I’ve asked around but I haven’t been well.”
“I understand,” I said.
“However, I’ve located a woman Doña Elvira. I spoke to her on the phone, but I really didn’t understand much of what she said. She lives here in the capital.”
I was relieved. I had no desire to make the long trip to Durango, even though now, I could afford to hire a car.
I spent a while figuring out exactly how I would frame the story I was going to tell the woman Doña Antonia had contacted. Finally, Lola’s chauffeur drove me to a once-tony part of Mexico City, where Doña Elvira lived in a substantial but not spectacular colonial house.
A maid answered the door in traditional garb—a black dress with a white apron and mop cap of the kind that hadn’t been used in Mexico for decades. She looked to be about seventy and rather frail.
She showed me into the parlor, where another elderly lady sat, this one even more fragile looking.
Doña Elvira held out her hand without getting up.
“Laura, bring us some coffee and sweets,” she commanded.
“Sí, señora,” said Laura. “I’ll tell Obdulia to make a fresh pot and put together a tray.”
A few minutes later, she tottered in with a large silver platter with a coffeepot, porcelain cups, and a selection of cinnamon, coconut, and almond cookies. The fragrance was divine. They must have been freshly baked.
I explained my mission to Doña Elvira, about Tía Emi and my search for Emi’s sister, my mother. I asked about the girl in the photograph whose name had been scratched out. Doña Elvira, leaning forward in her seat, seemed to be hanging on to my every word. But then I realized she had fallen asleep! She was sleeping with her eyes open!
“Doña Elvira!” I called. “Did you hear me?”
She snapped to attention. “Yes, dear?”
“The hacienda...”
“Oh, they’re all dead.”
“Do you remember Don Adalberto and Doña Verónica?”
“Who?”
I repeated my story.
She stared at me, confused. “Who are you, dear?”
“Do you remember a seamstress named Emilia Rojas-Moreno?”
“Dead! They’re all dead! They died a long time ago! Dead! Dead! Dead!”
I thanked her for the coffee and cookies and got up to leave. She watched me pick up my purse and turn toward the door. Then, without warning, she let out a shriek.
“Laura! Laura!” she screamed. “This woman is a thief! She wants to steal my silverware!”
She pulled herself up, and, with an agility of which I wouldn’t have believed her capable, she grabbed a fork and lunged at me. Before she could thrust it into my cheek, Laura grasped both her arms and eased her back into the chair.
“There there, Señora Elvira. This nice lady only came to visit. She doesn’t want your silver.”
I made a beeline for the door. David was slumped down in the driver’s seat, smoking. He apparently hadn’t expected the meeting to be so short, but the moment he saw me stumbling down the path, he leaped out of the automobile and opened the door.
“Señora, wait!” called someone behind me.
I turned and saw that it was Laura.
“Apologies, señora,” she said. “Señora Elvira is not always like that, but lately it happens more and more often. I just wanted to say, I think I might be able to help you.”
“In what way?” I was inching back toward the car.
“I knew the Morales y Pardo hacienda. I worked on a neighboring estate, on the hacienda of Don Gustavo Kehlmann. Don Gustavo and Don Adalberto were friends, and the Morales y Pardo family sometimes visited with their children and some of the staff.”
“Oh?”
“I was Doña Paulina’s personal maid and wasn’t up on much of the gossip, but I did hear that Pedro, Don Gustavo and Doña Paulina’s youngest son, was quite smitten with a laundress from the Morales hacienda. So smitten, in fact, that Don Gustavo asked Don Adalberto to let her come and work for him. In those days, servants were like sewing needles. If you lost one, you could replace it without too much trouble, so it’s not surprising that Don Adalberto said yes. That’s probably the girl whose name was scratched out on the photo you saw. They scratched it out because she no longer worked there.”
“Do you remember her name? You worked together in the same house.”
“I never knew her name.”
“Thank you, Laura,” I said, “and thank you for saving me from being stabbed with a fork.” I turned back toward the car, but then I thought of something else.
“One other thing, Laura. Why did you leave the Kehlmanns?”
She hesitated a moment. “Something awful happened. One morning, Pedro’s servant went in to open his curtains and found him dead!”
“Dead? How did he die?”
“I don’t know, señora. Some disease, maybe. Perhaps a heart attack. All I can tell you is that his mother was so disconsolate that she moved back to Mexico City to live with an aging aunt and uncle. Naturally, as her maid, I went with her. I never returned to Durango.”
“And the laundress?”
“I don’t know what happened to her.”
“Where is Doña Paulina now?”
“She died of grief, señora. Not long afterward.”
My head was spinning. When I’d seen the photo of the Morales-Pardo servants, I thought I detected a resemblance between the girl whose name was crossed out and Tía Emi. Was she Tía Emi’s sister—and therefore my mother? The old ballad came back to me: “Don Pedro loved Miguela—” Was it about Pedro Kehlmann and the laundress?
“Thank you, Laura,” I said. “You’ve been very helpful. Uh, the laundress,” I called as she entered the house, “do you know if she had any relatives?”
She turned around, looking puzzled.
“I don’t know, señora. I really don’t know anything about her.”
She went into the house and closed the door.