51

Eating Eden

Two hours before dawn the nightly summer rain stopped on cue, as if God had assigned a member of His staff to turn off the celestial spigot. Grace stood on her balcony and looked out at the raindrops sparkling like jewels in the light of the gibbous moon. Then she dressed and went to the kitchen.

While she waited for the kettle to boil on the big, brightly tiled stove, she wet the tip of her finger so that the last flecks of tea leaves would stick to it. Now the tin of Sir Lipton’s oolong was truly empty. When the tea finished steeping, Grace carried the steaming cup through the rear courtyard, out a side door, and into her own little Eden.

Four years ago, this garden had been a vacant lot hip-deep in garbage. Grace had hired a small army of men to haul the trash away and bring in wagonloads of rich dirt. Socrates had installed a door in the wall to give entry from the rear courtyard. Grace’s gardener had abracadabra’d the bare lot into a jungle of fruit trees and green bounty.

Because of the garden, the Colonial enjoyed a reputation for fresh fruits and vegetables that diners could eat with no intestinal regrets. Foreigners journeyed from Mexico City and beyond to enjoy what the garden produced. In those prosperous days Grace had never imagined that her house hold’s survival would depend on it.

Hunger had become so widespread in Cuernavaca that people stole in order to eat. Now, not only fine horses gazed out of second-story windows, but mules and nags. Tomatoes, squash, and beans, mangoes, avocadoes, oranges, and plums were not safe. To discourage thieves, the gardener had had to cement broken beer bottles along the top of the wall, with their jagged ends up.

The broken bottles meant that iguanas could no longer lounge on top of it. Grace missed them, basking in the sun with their eyes half-closed. They had accepted chunks of mango from Grace’s fingers as graciously as if they were doing her a favor. She was charmed by how they cocked their heads, like birds, and inspected her before they took the fruit.

She observed that when they rested, their closed eyelids met at the middle, but when sound asleep the lower lid covered the entire eye. She also learned to recognize the “Glare,” when they turned their heads to focus one eye in a stare meant to intimidate.

Lyda advised against naming the “gonners,” as she called the iguanas. “Don’t make pets of them,” she said, but Grace did it anyway. Lyda had been right. The broken bottles on the wall allowed Grace to imagine that the gonners had found somewhere else to nap, but she knew better, or worse. Foraging Cuernavacans had almost certainly turned them into soup.

As Grace stood in the moonlight, sadness swept over her. She wanted to weep for the iguanas, for the starving folk who ate them, and for this Eden of a land. Huerta and Rubio possessed an extraordinarily destructive talent to cause famine in Morelos. The Mexicans had a knack for agriculture, but even if they hadn’t, flowers flourished like weeds here. Crops sprouted so fast Grace could almost see them increasing in height by the hour.

To lay waste to a country this bountiful, inhabited by people so artistic, resourceful, hardworking, and faithful, was a crime against humanity. A few days ago Jake McGuire had asked Grace if she would pull the triggers on her shotgun. She had said “Yes.” In truth, she would shoot over the head of an intruder, but should she find the generalísimos in her sights, she would aim lower.

Grace felt among the leaves for new sprouts, but the members of her house hold had picked the garden almost bare. That was why Grace was awake so early. Still holding her cup of tea she headed for the front gate.

Leobardo and Socrates waited for her with Duke and the hotel mule. The mule was affable enough, but he lacked Moses’s roguish charm. The shotgun’s saddle scabbard was fastened in what Jake McGuire called the northwest position. Jake had taught Socrates to buckle it so it rode horizontally, with the shotgun’s butt pointing forward to make it easy to draw. Grace had the feeling that Socrates imagined himself a cowboy or an outlaw whenever he mounted the mule with the shotgun holstered in that position. She made a mental note to ask Jake, the next time she saw him, where she could buy a Stetson for Socrates.

Grace swayed sleepily, squinting in the fretful flare of the torch in Leobardo’s hand. She held the chipped porcelain cup under her nose so she could breath in the aroma. It was the last of it she would smell for the foreseeable future.

“Must we leave so early?” English was difficult enough for Grace at this hour. She concentrated on making sense in Spanish. “The market stalls will be empty anyway.”

Socrates handed her Duke’s reins and the riding crop. Grace understood that the crop was more for discouraging ruffians than encouraging Duke.

“If anything is for sale,” said Socrates, “it will be snatched up before the sun wipes the sleep from his eyes.”

Since traveling with Lieutenant Angel’s rebels, Grace considered riding sidesaddle too effete. She wore what looked like a skirt that reached a few inches above her ankles and just below the tops of her high, lace-up shoes. Full pleats in front and back hid the fact that the garment was a pair of wide-legged trousers.

Grace followed Socrates through the gate and heard Leobardo slide the big bolt home. The winch creaked as he lowered the oak beam into its iron cradle with a thud like a fortress’s portcullis locking. Or a cell door.

One advantage of leaving this early was that the scores of refugees camped on the two plazas were still asleep. Grace did not have to ride past the children and sorrowful women pleading for the gift of a centavito, a little penny. She did not have to see the hunger in their eyes.

The rain had stopped, but torrents of water rushed past, forming plump wakes behind Duke’s ankles, and the mule’s. The flood, with its crust of garbage and debris, tumbled down the steep street and plunged over the rim of the brush-choked gorge. In another hour the edges of the remaining puddles would shrink and dry in the morning sun.

As usual, vendors had spent the night sleeping on mats next to their stalls. Now they were awake and hoping for customers. The market lacked the former throngs of people, dogs, livestock, produce, and poultry, but one thing remained plentiful. Grace wrinkled her nose. Even with so little food for sale it smelled as bad as always.

She dismounted and led Duke down the first side street. Today she got lucky early. A black hen, tethered by a string, pecked at the litter of garbage. An old woman sat nearby, presiding at her makeshift stall of old boards and torn canvas like a judge on his bench. Grace started toward her, but Socrates made a small hissing sound.

“What’s the matter?”

He turned away so the woman could not see his face. He lowered his voice to a murmur.

“The hen is there for a reason, Mamacita. Do not buy her.”

“Why not?”

“She is black.”

“What difference does that make?”

“A healer rubs his patients with a live black chicken to absorb the illness. That hen probably carries someone’s sickness inside it.”

Grace knew better than to scoff at a superstition powerful enough to make a reasonable man like Socrates reject food in a famine.

“Can the black chicken be cleansed of the sickness?”

Socrates hesitated. “Maybe.”

“Do you know how?”

“It must be smoked over a fire made of palm leaves, copal resin, and bay leaves that have been blessed by a priest.”

Grace was relieved. As exorcism rituals went this was a simple one.

“Palms are everywhere and we can buy copal and bay leaves here in the market.”

“And a priest for the blessing?”

“I’ll think of something.”

Socrates looked dubious and for good reason. Priests were scarcer in Cuernavaca these days than Yorkshire pudding. But Grace found two more black chickens and a small sack of dried beans before giving up. Tied by their feet to the pommel, the chickens seemed resigned to their fate, but Socrates eyed them as though they harbored all the plagues of Egypt.

On the way home Grace stopped at a small church on a narrow back street. It was called the Church of Jesus of Nazareth. She had passed it often, but she had never ventured inside. Several blocks away, the cathedral was more impressive, but Grace had always preferred the simplicity of this one. She dismounted and climbed the broad steps to the church while Socrates waited below with Duke and the mule.

The carved plaster entryway was an orange-red, but showing white where the paint had chipped and fallen away. A plaque on the wall read in Spanish, “Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace.”

Where there is hatred, let me sow love;

Where there is injury, pardon;

Where there is doubt, faith;

Where there is despair, hope;

Where there is darkness, light;

And where there is sadness, joy.

Grace touched it lightly with the tips of her fingers. She stood that way for a minute or more, as if to give the words entrance to her heart.

The weathered oak doors stood open and Grace walked into the cool twilight beyond them. Inside, the walls were of whitewashed plaster with a stripe of faded red trim around the base of the ceiling dome. The morning light from one small stained-glass window splashed in colorful patterns across the altar’s marble top. No pews stood between the door and the altar, nor hid the vivid patterns of the majolica tiles on the floor.

Grace expected the church to be empty, but a hundred or more devout filled the nave. Shawls hid the faces of the women. The men kneeled on the wide brims of their straw hats. Except for the occasional cough, the low murmur of prayer, and the clicking of rosary beads, a stillness pervaded the place.

Grace fed coins into the slot in the poor box and picked up six candles and a handful of the pale, fragrant chunks of copal from a basket. Brightly painted saints stood in niches in the white plaster walls, but Grace was interested in only one. She stood in front of Saint Jude Tadeo, the patron of desperate causes. She lit the candles and set them among the scores of others flickering at the statue’s feet.

She had little use for religion. She rather agreed with Lieutenant Angel, who said, “Don’t expect much from priests or cats.” But Grace considered faith as something separate from religion, and faith had a powerful presence here.

She asked for St. Jude’s blessing on the leaves and the incense so she could feed the people she considered family. While she was at it, she asked him to help the widowed, the orphaned, the hungry, the ill, the frightened, and the homeless. When she finished, she had one last request.

“Please, do not let them kill Federico Martín.”