4

4

RODOLFO, JUANA, AND I reconvened for dinner in a small drawing room near the kitchen that had been repurposed for dining. Its windows opened to the back of the house: a terrace, lined with pillars and arches, overlooked a dead garden with wilted birds of paradise and black skeletons of flower beds. Heavy-bellied clouds had rolled into the valley; Ana Luisa’s daughter, Paloma, fastened the window shutters against the rain as we sat. The drawing room was cozier for three than the formal dining room, but I soon wished it were less cozy.

“I apologize for the state of the flowers,” Rodolfo said, his gaze trailing over the shutters as Paloma flitted shyly away to the kitchen. “Juana cares for maguey more than she cares for gardens.”

Juana snorted. I looked up from my food in surprise. As much as I disliked my cousins in Tío Sebastián’s house, I was well accustomed to their fine manners. It was how I had also been raised.

“Maguey is resilient,” she said flatly. “It is an admirable trait.”

Rodolfo’s eyes slid across the table to her, their blue no longer brilliant, but icy. “Beauty is also an admirable trait,” he said. A playful retort and delivered utterly without warmth. “This the maguey lack, I believe.”

“Then you’re not looking hard enough.” The edge to her voice laid clear how little she cared for his thoughts on any matter, be it maguey or anything else.

No wonder Rodolfo had never spoken to me of his sister. The air between them crackled with friction.

“The garden is beautiful, querido,” I lied, forcing a brightness into my voice that rang hollow in the closeness of the room. Rodolfo cast me a sideways glance, disbelieving. I rested my hand on his knee under the table, rubbing my thumb against the fabric of his trousers in a calculated attempt to break the tension. “My mother taught me something about gardening, when we lived in Cuernavaca,” I added. “Give me some time with it. You won’t recognize it when you return.”

In two weeks, Rodolfo would head back to the capital. He had accompanied me on the road to Apan to protect me from highwaymen, but his political work meant he could not stay in the country. The Provisional Government meant to hold elections for a president, and if sneakily peering at Rodolfo’s correspondence had taught me anything, it was that his mentor, Guadalupe Victoria, meant to win these elections.

Rodolfo opened his mouth to reply but was interrupted by his sister.

“We don’t need gardens,” she said harshly, not bothering to direct the comment at me. It dismissed me as efficiently as a slap across the face. “What we need is to keep San Cristóbal from poaching our land.”

“I decide what we need or don’t,” Rodolfo snapped. His sudden shift of temper sent a tremor of surprise down my spine. “If Doña Beatriz wants a garden, she will have a garden. My wife’s word is mine in this house, do you understand?”

If Juana did, she did not say. “I’m retiring,” she announced to the room at large, falsely bright, and set her napkin on the table with a rude slap. I stiffened as she pushed back from the table; then, with a brusque good night, she was gone.

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*   *   *IF THE RANCOR BETWEEN Rodolfo and Juana cooled over the two weeks he spent with us at San Isidro, I did not see it. I did not see her at all. It was as if she had vanished into the harsh rows of maguey that carved the fields below the main house, ephemeral as a ghost.

She did not join us when Rodolfo and I went into the town of Apan for Mass on Sunday.

It was my first visit to Apan, and the first time I would be seen by the hacendados of the other estates and their wives. Something in the air shifted as we passed through the gates of the hacienda, and I relaxed back into my seat. I rested my head on Rodolfo’s shoulder and rocked with the carriage’s movement, listening as he told me about the hacendados to whom he would introduce me after Mass.

“Their politics are slow to change, but they were my father’s allies and will continue to be ours, if their tolerance of Juana is any measure of their patience.” He took my gloved hands into his lap and held them, running a thumb over the lace absentmindedly. Though my eyes were closed, I could picture his wry half smile as he said, with a touch of knowing amusement, “Besides, country society is rather toothless compared to the capital.”

It took an hour to ride to the center of Apan. When Rodolfo helped me out of the carriage, I was struck by how small the town was. Some three thousand people lived here, Rodolfo said, and perhaps a thousand more scattered on surrounding haciendas, but what was such a number to me, who had grown accustomed to the density of the capital? Now I saw it concretely. The town itself—the central plaza de armas before the parish, post, barracks, other assorted buildings—was so small we could have passed through it in the carriage in ten minutes.

Sickly cypress trees lined the path up to the church. Though its front facade was simple, decorated only with carved stone, its stucco walls were impeccably whitewashed, as bright against the azure sky as the clouds. A bell rang from a single tower announcing the beginning of Mass.

I had assembled my attire from demure colors, soft gray and green, and was glad I did so as we entered the church. Even though my dress was by no means the most elaborate, it was by far of the highest quality, and I drew stares from the townspeople as I fell into step beside Rodolfo up the aisle of the church. My mantilla fluttered gently against my cheek as I genuflected and took a seat in a pew reserved for us and other hacendados near the altar.

In the capital, I had been merely one general’s daughter among many; here I was Doña Beatriz Solórzano, the wife of one of the wealthiest estate owners, urbane and mysterious. Whispers rippled through the pews behind me in the quiet moments before the beginning of Mass.

I relished it. I cupped that power and held it close to my chest as Mass began. San Isidro was not what I had pictured when I married Rodolfo, but that power was. This was my new life. This was what I had won.

Mass was a long hour of incense and murmurs, rising and sitting. We all moved as one, speaking and responding, the steps of the dance carved into us from years of repetition like the rhythm of a lullaby. I had always found the Latin rites monotonous at best but paid even less attention than usual now there were hacendados around me to size up. Rather than watch the gray-haired, plump priest and his raven-like mestizo attendant behind the altar, my attention flitted like a hummingbird from head to head in the pews. Which of these strangers would be a friend? Who might be a foe?

After Mass, Rodolfo began his introductions: Severo Piña y Cuevas and his wife, Encarnación, of Hacienda Ocotepec, a pair of Muñoz brothers from Hacienda Alcantarilla, and elderly Atenógenes Moreno and his wife, María José, of San Antonio Ometusco. All were pulque-producing haciendas, and—judging from the fine silk and stately peninsular fashions of the wives—they had survived eleven years of civil war as well as Rodolfo’s family had.

“It is good your husband’s sister is no longer alone,” Doña María José Moreno said, taking my hand and putting it on her arm affectionately as we followed her husband, Atenógenes, and Rodolfo toward the door of the church. Her hair was spun silver beneath her mantilla, her back slightly humped from age. “There are widows who run their own haciendas, it is true. I must introduce you to the widow of old Herrera. She used to live in the capital as well and has been running Hacienda Buenavista for nearly ten years now. But Doña Juana . . . she is a figure of some curiosity. I am glad she now has someone as refined as you to be her example.”

She patted my hand with the absentminded affection of a grandmother, but a hint of warning underscored the softness of her voice. I kept my expression carefully still as I tucked that information away. Perhaps the hacendados were not as tolerant of Juana as Rodolfo thought.

Doña María José lifted her rheumy eyes, squinting through her mantilla. “You’re nearly as lovely as Doña María Catalina, though quite darker. Perhaps you will weather the country better than her. Poor thing. Such a delicate constitution.”

The words struck me like freezing water to the face. Rodolfo’s first wife. Of course they would bring her up. I pasted a concerned look on my face, nodding in agreement. This was the first time I had met someone who knew Rodolfo’s previous wife, who wasn’t merely sharing ill-spirited gossip. I should have asked her for the truth about the first Doña Solórzano’s untimely death.

But the idea repulsed me. Less lovely or not, quite darker or not, I was Doña Solórzano now. Rodolfo and all that was his were mine, won in a fair fight.

Loathing itched under my skin as I looked down at Doña María José. Women like her thought themselves sage when doling out advice to young brides, so I steered the conversation away from dead women and my complexion by asking her empty questions regarding marriage, nodding and smiling where I knew I ought to as she replied. But my mind was elsewhere.

She is a figure of some . . . curiosity.

Curiosity meant gossip, and gossip—be it ill-intentioned or not—always had a seed to spring from. Perhaps it was Juana’s irreverence about her appearance that inspired talk. Perhaps it was her brusqueness. She certainly did not beget the same kind of sympathy her deceased sister-in-law stirred in acquaintances.

These thoughts trailed after me into the evening, coiling through my fingers like my hair as I plaited it by candlelight, sitting in a chair before my vanity. I did not tell Rodolfo about my conversation with Doña María José, though questions uncurled in my chest like weeds, their roots finding firm purchase in my ribs.

I couldn’t ask him much of anything still. Our newlywed intimacy was an uneven thing: I knew the warm smell of his throat, the rhythm of his breathing as he slept, but not the thoughts that played behind his face. Uncharted silences stretched between us, long and pitted with secrets. What did he fear? Why had he hidden Juana from me? If he loved San Isidro so much, why avoid it for so many years?

So many questions, yet I bit my tongue. I glanced over my shoulder at the bed behind me. Rodolfo was already breathing deeply, tangled in white blankets, a lock of bronze hair flopped over his forehead and straight, sharp nose. A sleeping prince beneath a delicate shroud.

As beautiful as he was, I had no romantic notions about Rodolfo when I accepted his offer. Though he wooed me with sweet litanies of my fine qualities—my strength, my kind smile, my laughter, and my eyes—I did not believe he married me for who I was at all. My appearance may have convinced him to look past my father’s politics; after all, I was a newcomer to capital society, and I knew I was beautiful. These two truths made me an enticing mystery to conquest-minded men.

But I was also someone who turned a blind eye to the susurration of rumors circling his widowerhood, and Rodolfo wanted a bride who did not ask too many questions. I chose to gamble on his secrets. Our relationship was founded on one thing and one thing only: my world was a dark, windowless room, and he was a door.

I turned back to the mirror and continued braiding my hair. An ache built slowly in my chest, a heavy, sweet ache edged with sharpness like broken glass. I missed Mamá. I missed Papá. I missed who I was before we lost everything: someone who saw her parents tease each other and laugh, who watched them hold hands while reading beside the fire at night or while whispering conspiratorially behind a door they thought was fully shut.

I used to be someone who wanted that. Who yearned for it. I wanted what it was Mamá had when Papá kissed her forehead and ran his thumb over her cheek before he left for battle. Whatever it was that made Mamá watch the window, restless and unable to be comforted, whenever he was due to return. Whatever it was that made them see each other for who they were, not their class or their casta.

My parents fought to be married despite their differences, despite the prejudice of Mamá’s family, because they had that to fight for. That was what I wanted. Someone who saw me not as darker than someone else, nor not quite as lovely as someone else. Not the daughter of someone. Not a piece to be played in a larger game. Someone who saw me for who I was and treasured me for it.

And what did I have?

A stranger whose lips left me cold, whose heavy touch in the darkness inspired no desire in me. Questions swirling unanswered through my mind. Letters to my mother sent and unanswered. A house bare of family. An emptiness in my own rib cage, yawning and clawing and growing as much as I tried to repress it.

I bit my lip as it began to tremble. Yes, I had seized the name Solórzano despite barely knowing the man who bore it. Yes, I had married a man who came between me and Mamá, a man whom I did not love.

I sacrificed that dream because survival was more important than being lonely.

And now I had a roof over my head. An hacienda in my name. An income rooted in the land, firm and sheltered from the twin tempests of war and plague.

A future.

I was grateful to Rodolfo for lifting me from obscurity. For saving me from poverty. Perhaps, on my warmer days, I even felt fond of him for transforming my life. Perhaps one day I could even learn to love him for it.

A wink of color caught my attention in the mirror. Two red lights stared at me from a darkened corner beneath the window.

I blinked, and they were gone.

The hair on the back of my neck stood on end. An oily feeling slipped over my shoulders.

I was being watched.

I whirled to face the corner, eyes wide and desperate, searching the dark.

The light cast by the dying candle barely reached the foot of the bed. Black shadows shrouded the room, deepening near the walls.

The room was empty but for sleeping Rodolfo. There was nothing there.

I took a deep breath and exhaled, brusque and hard, to clear my head. I was exhausted from the trip into town and meeting so many new people. I was overwhelmed by the mountainous task fixing the house presented me. I had imagined the winks of red. I had imagined the feeling of being watched. That, or it was one of the cats Juana mentioned when I first arrived at San Isidro.

Yes, it had to be one of the cats.

Mind settled on this explanation, I turned back to my vanity and blew out the candle. I felt my way through the clammy dark to the bed, and slid under the blankets, letting myself be drawn to Rodolfo’s warmth like a moth to flame. He flinched once at the cold brush of my feet, then shifted sleepily into me. The peace of his own sleep, of his solidness, settled over me. I closed my eyes.

His weight on the mattress was so different from when I had shared a bed with Mamá in Tía Fernanda’s house. As grateful as I was for it, I fantasized idly about when he left for the capital and, for the first time in many, many months, I would have a bed to myself. And more. My own house. My own world. I slowed my mind with choosing paint colors for the different rooms downstairs, tempting dreaming to take me.

It was not until much later, as I swayed on the dark cusp of sleep, that I realized that since arriving at Hacienda San Isidro, I had not seen a single cat.