16

Ghosts

In honor of the birth of Christ, revelers were setting off firecrackers in the midnight city outside Grace’s balcony. They crackled like gunfire in the distance. The reports invaded Rico’s sleep. They filled it with horse men chasing starved farmers across burning cornfields. Then the dream worsened. Rico became one of the soldiers firing into a group of women. They were the same ones he had seen getting off the train in Mexico City, except now some of them carried babies. One by one they fell into the smoldering stubble, cut down by his bullets.

He didn’t know if the horror of the image woke him, or if the largest of the fireworks, booming like heavy artillery, did. Probably both of them caused his heart to race as he lay drenched in cold sweat next to Grace. He silently recited “Hail, Mary, full of grace.” By the time he finished “Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death” for the fifth time his heart had slowed to its normal cadence.

He rolled onto his side so he could look at Grace. The street lamps were tall enough to cast a dim light through the open door to the balcony. Earlier he and Grace had thrown off the covers, unwilling to allow so much as linen cloth separate them. Now she lay naked, as natural as if shame and embarrassment had never been thought of. Her hair was spread out on the pillow, her eyes were closed, mouth at peace. In the faint glow from the street her body was as pale and smooth as the silk kimono hanging on a peg nearby.

Rico could have spent the rest of his life studying every line and hollow of her, but the air had turned chill. He pulled the sheet and blanket over her, tucking it around her shoulders. Her breathing continued deep and steady. Rico could see no sign of the insomnia that her people said plagued her.

The upstairs maids and the kitchen help had confided in him that Mamacita didn’t sleep well. The night watchman had told them so and they themselves had seen it. Sometimes when one of them got up to relieve herself she would see la señora wandering the corridors and the rear courtyard. At first those who saw her in her pale kimono thought she was a ghost. They said she had given Socorro such susto, fright, that María had had to call a curandero, a healer, to get rid of it. Of course, they hadn’t told Mamacita about that.

Rico understood how the maids could mistake Grace for a spirit. The night he had seen her gliding along in a nimbus of pale silk was the most memorable of his life. Or it had been, until this night.

Still asleep, she sighed and turned toward him. He slipped an arm under her until the nape of her neck fit perfectly into the cradle of his elbow. Her hand rested on his waist and when he drew closer, it slid down to the small of his back and cupped into the hollow at the base of his spine. He put his other arm around her and gently pulled her against him.

She stirred, and with eyes still closed she murmured, “Federico Martín, I will love you always.”

“My heaven, I have waited my whole life for you.” He kissed her mouth, her eyes, the hollows at the base of her ears, her throat, the valley between her breasts.

Rico finally understood the lyrics of every maudlin ballad he had sung under countless balconies. When he was much younger they had meant nothing at all to him. Then he had wondered if he would recognize love should it happen along. A few years later he worried that it never would happen. And until six weeks ago, he had resigned himself to the probability that he would settle for something masquerading as love.

Now, here it was, serene and soft, lovely, tough, and talented in his arms. Love’s warm breath tickled his throat. The beat of love’s heart resonated against his chest.

Rico’s nightmare became just another ghost. He could not imagine a better Christmas.

 

The maids’ rebellion did not meet the standards of a mutiny. It was more of a sit-down strike or a group sulk.

When Grace left her room she found them sitting at the bottom of the stairway. She thought they had assembled to congratulate her, and a blush spread like sunrise across her cheeks. Congratulations were in order though.

Rico had waked her a couple hours earlier for an encore of the night’s performance. Grace had still been floating blissfully between two ceiling beams when he kissed her on the forehead and slipped out into the dark hallway with his boots in his hand.

Grace danced down the stairs, singing softly.

 

A most intense young man,

A soulful-eyed young man,

An ultra-poetical, super-aesthetical,

Out-of-the-way young man.

 

Had Mr. Gilbert and Mr. Sullivan met Federico Martín?

There sat the maids on the steps, waiting for her. They had enlisted María in their cause. The maids were shy. María wasn’t, and she wasn’t sitting down.

She planted her feet a shoulders’ width apart, and María had broad shoulders. She rested her hands on her formidable hips.

“Señora Knight, tiene que echar la fantasma.”

Grace’s brain, still entwined with Rico, tried to back up and turn around. Did they want her to evict a ghost?

“¿Como? What?”

“La Llorona, allá arriba.” María pointed up the stairs behind her.

“Good morning, Grace.” Annie arrived with Socorro close behind her. Socorro had filled her in on the crisis. “They want you to exorcize the haunt who lives upstairs. Or hire someone to do it. They call her la Llorona, the One Who Weeps. Socorro has heard her crying.”

The maids gave a collective sigh of relief. The cavalry had arrived and she spoke English.

“They want you to get rid of the ghost before susto turns into espanto.”

“Susto? Espanto?”

“Susto means fright. Espanto means terror. María knows a witch who can perform a limpieza, a cleaning.”

“I see.”

But Annie wasn’t sure she did. “Susto and espanto are serious. They can frighten the soul out of a body and cause it to wander off.”

Grace had heard whispers about the cold spot in the rear upstairs hallway. She had felt it herself, but she blamed a draft from an airshaft in the ceiling.

She sorted through the options. An exorcism by a local witch would amuse the guests, but Grace could imagine them commenting in loud whispers during the ritual. The maids considered this serious and Grace had to do the same.

“Do they have any idea who the Weeper might be?”

Annie and the maids put their heads together. After much discussion Annie reported. “They say that one of Hernán Cortés’s men got an Indian woman with child. When the baby was born the mother brought him here to ask the gachupin, the Spaniard, to give her money to buy food. He grabbed the baby’s feet and dashed its head against a column. The mother ran away, but he chased her and ran his sword through her.”

“Good lord!”

“She’s been crying for her child ever since.”

“All right.” Grace turned and headed upstairs. Fortunately, the back corridor was where the army officers stayed and they had left early.

Annie followed. “What are you going to do?”

“I’ll have a talk with her.”

Grace retrieved a stool from her room and the Bible she had never read. She placed the stool under the air vent and sat on it. The Bible was a prop to impress the maids, so she opened it at random and laid it on her lap. Behind her she could hear the women rustling like mice, jostling for a view from where the stairs made a turn at the first landing.

Grace cleared her throat and for want of anything better, she said, “Good morning.” That wasn’t the Weeper’s language, but if the maids wanted this done in Nahuatl they would have to do it themselves.

A faint moaning came from overhead. Grace knew it was the wind blowing across the air vent on the roof, but the hair stirred on her arms anyway. She glanced down at the Bible. The first words she saw were in 1 Samuel, verse one. “I am a woman of a sorrowful spirit.”

Maybe the line was coincidence or maybe not, but Grace realized that nothing she could say about Satan or demons or evil spirits would be appropriate. She took a deep breath and began a heart-to-heart talk, as if the grieving young mother were sitting in front of her. When she finished she made an awkward sign of the cross and said, “Go in peace, dear girl. Your child waits for you in Heaven.”

She returned the stool and the Bible to her room. She would ask Socrates to block up the vent on the roof immediately. The maids made way for her to pass, then closed in behind her, laughing and chatting, happy that the matter had been settled. When they reached the ground floor they scampered off down the wide corridor, playing tag on their way to the linen pantry.

One of her guests watched them go with disapproval stamped all over her. She was one of those English dowagers who would travel halfway around the world, only to demand that everything be exactly as she had left it in Kensington. Her idea of exotic cuisine was roast beef with a hint of pink in the middle.

She had a new complaint this morning. “Mrs. Knight, why does the chambermaid insist on turning my shoes upside down?”

“Some Mexicans believe that leaving shoes upside down overnight empties out the day’s accumulation of evil. It also relieves pain in the feet and legs.” Grace didn’t mention that she stored her own shoes upside down to keep insects, spiders, and scorpions from setting up house in them.

“What rubbish! That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

“I’ll instruct them to leave your shoes with soles on the floor in the future. But please do bear in mind, Mrs. Fitz-Goring, that they believed they were helping you.”

Grace found Socrates and told him about the vent. She was headed for breakfast in the courtyard when Leobardo, the night watchman, appeared with his hat in his hand. He launched into his request, talking so fast that Grace called Lyda to help with the translation.

“Word spreads fast,” said Lyda. “He claims his wife hired a nagual, a witch, to tie a knot in the drawstrings of his unmentionables so he wouldn’t, you know…”

“Wouldn’t what? Use the toilet?”

“No, Gracie, so he wouldn’t fool around with other women.”

Grace maintained a poker face. “Tell him I don’t exorcise underwear.”

Lyda managed to keep from smiling while she explained that to Leobardo. After he headed, crestfallen, for his hammock in the rear courtyard she said, “I should ask him for the name of that witch. Jake is going to Chihuahua on business for a month. I should engage someone to tie a knot in his nappies.”

“Well, I’m not qualified.”

Grace was glad Rico hadn’t witnessed all this. She was pretty sure he would tease her. On the other hand, only a couple hours had passed since she saw him and already his absence was causing an ache in the vicinity of her heart.

After breakfast she climbed the stairs from the second floor to the Colonial’s flat roof. Her excuse was to make sure the cisterns of rainwater were clean and to see if Socrates had closed off the air vent. She knew there was no need. Socrates always kept the cisterns clean and he had taken care of the vent immediately. She had another reason for going.

Grace was proud of the roof. Three years ago she had had workmen cover it with the latest in building material, something called tar-paper. She had not been up here since it was first installed, and it stretched around her like a desert of black lava.

She walked to the northeast corner. On her right rose the two volcanoes, Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl, the one called Sleeping Lady. To the left of the volcanoes were the three peaks known as Tres Marías. They rose only a little above the mountain chain. The three peaks and the range that encircled the valley reminded Grace of a tiara. Puffs of white smoke rose in a line above the dense stand of trees on the steep slope leading up to them.

The puffs of smoke were what she had come up here to see. Rico and his men were on that train. They were headed for the small railroad depot in the village of Tres Marías at the pass. When Rico left her this morning he told her that his company would be joining General Huerta. It was a routine patrol, he said, to make sure no troublemakers interfered with the operation of the railroad, but he might be gone for a week or more.

Why would the army’s commander-in-chief come to Morelos for a routine patrol?

For all his scapegracery, honor counted with Rico. Grace could imagine him lying to her for only one reason, to protect her from an unpleasant truth. She stared at the smoke unreeling as the train chugged up the slope, and she wondered what the truth was.