Teresa of the New World Read online

  Teresa studied the women sitting around the table. She looked everywhere, but she could not see herself in this courtyard. She did not sit by the saint-like wife or one of the beautiful daughters-in-law. She was not listening and smiling, dressed in a magnificent skirt with her hair lifted to cover the flattened back of her head. She did not gossip with her sisters, discussing their children and the upcoming fiesta, occasionally touching the four blue tattoos on each cheek. She was not in the background, either, as a servant. Her father did not catch her eye as she gave him his sweetened drink or hurried by with a broom or feather duster. She was simply not there. She had no place.

  She didn’t really care. What Teresa wanted now was to stone a rabbit. She wanted Plague to stop talking so she could hunt for Pomo’s supper, and for her own, before it was dark. She wanted to poke around the nearby bushes, look for a packrat’s nest or the roots of nut-grass or some other edible plant. How fortunate that I still have the tinderbox, Teresa thought for the hundredth time. It would be so nice to build a fire and cook some meat, to smell it roasting, to make a nourishing meal for Pomo.

  “Your father is certain he will win his case,” Plague rambled on. “He is certain he will be granted his old titles of land in Spain and even reimbursed for his lost estates near the Río de la Plata. He is seeking compensation for his services to various municipal courts and once these ridiculous charges are dismissed . . .”

  “You say he is old now?” Teresa interrupted.

  “He walks with a cane. He has the voice of an old man.”

  She rose, brushing the dirt from her leather skirt. “What about Pomo?” she tried to surprise Plague. “Will he survive the sarampión?”

  Her father’s eyes twinkled, and he wagged his finger. “Ah, ah, ah! I can’t say for sure.” And before he could drone on again, about his estates and the King, Teresa announced that she had to find food, if only a few nuts or pieces of root, a grasshopper or worm. She left Plague still talking to himself.

  Soon after, a hare came to drink from the spring, and she killed it quickly, hacked it apart with a sharp rock, built a fire, skewered and roasted the carcass, and mixed its juices with water in the indentation of a large flat boulder on which, she thought, she could also sit and perhaps later grind seeds or nuts. She drizzled this soup into Pomo’s mouth, although he twisted and tried to turn away. Then with her own stomach full, in the growing darkness, she thought about what she should do next. She wished she could ask Horse’s advice.

  Close by, her father watched, still holding on to the rope. “Shall I tell you about my estates in . . .”

  “No,” Teresa said, “I have to sleep.”

  For breakfast the next morning, she drank water and gnawed the bones clean, giving Pomo the rest of the soup. Sitting beside the boy, she chipped at the edges of her sharp rock, making a new cutting tool to replace the one she had left behind. In the distance, she could see agave stalks, the single spire rising up like a yucca with a similar base of thick pointed leaves. She knew it was possible to bake and eat agave root, although it would be hard work digging up the sturdy plant. She wondered if there was enough grass here for Horse. She hoped so.

  “Come on,” her father clapped his hands. “You have had your rest, and it is time to go. Put the boy on the horse.”

  Teresa sat where she was, still flinting and hoping she could actually make this tool into a real knife. “No,” she said. “We are staying here.”

  Oh, her father shouted and protested, stomped and stormed, but it was as she had thought. Plague couldn’t do much on his own. He could assume a shape that looked solid. He could cloud the mind of a horse and guide its movements. He could talk for hours. He could wheedle and coax and threaten. But she hadn’t seen him yet make a physical action—kick a rock or eat a prickly pear or pick up a boy. He could not lift Pomo onto the horse’s back. He could not take Pomo away from her.

  “We will take our chances in the desert,” she informed her father. “We have water now. I can find food. Pomo will recover, and then we will go on.”

  “Nonsense,” Plague huffed. She felt a cloud enter her mind. Dark smoke. Fear.

  She brushed it away.

  17

  Teresa felt good. The more Cabeza de Vaca begged, the better she felt. This was the right decision. Pomo seemed better this morning, too. He didn’t feel so hot. The boy would get well, and Plague would have no need for him.

  Plague threatened, “I’ll leave with the horse.”

  “Go on, then.” Teresa called his bluff. A horse could not help him enter the next village with the disease. He needed a human being. “Once Pomo is well,” she repeated, “we can go on alone without Horse.” She kept her face impassive, her voice steady. She couldn’t let Plague know how much she cared about the animal.

  “Daughter!” her father said.

  Teresa laughed. “You are not my father. You told me so yourself.”

  The conquistador disappeared and rearranged himself into a pillar of smoke. The gelding snorted with terror. Teresa took a deep breath, calming herself before she spoke. “That won’t work either.” Deliberately, she turned her attention back to Pomo, feeling his forehead and wetting his face.

  Fray Tomás reappeared, still holding on to Horse’s rope.

  “Oh, stop it!” Teresa scoffed and felt clever. She had outwitted Plague.

  But her triumph was short-lived. Naturally she had noticed prints in the dirt around the spring, human footprints and animal tracks, deer and peccary, mice and rabbit. Everyone in the desert came here to drink, and anyone walking from the nearest villages would know this place. It was sheer bad luck—although not unusual—that two hunters came to the spring that very afternoon. Summer was the season of prickly pear fruit. If you had a gourd or leather bag for your water, this was a good time to get away from wives and chores and the domestic life of the village.

  The two hunters approached without guile. At this time of day, they did not expect to see any game, and so they did not hide or sneak up to the spring. Teresa saw them before they saw her and crept out from under the shade of the hackberry tree where she rested with Pomo. She had to warn the men away—but how? Standing up in plain sight, she pushed the backs of her hands away in a flapping movement. Shoo, shoo. That was what the cooks did in the Governor’s kitchen to scatter the geese and turkeys crowding around the door. Shoo. Shoo. She hoped these hunters would understand. Go away, her hands signaled. Go away!

  The men wore cotton loincloths and cotton shirts, with bags and gourds slung over their shoulders. Each also carried a bow. They paused when they saw her and conferred together.

  Teresa tried shouting, “A boy here has the gift of sarampión. You will be safe if you go quickly!” She hoped they understood Spanish.

  But the hunters were gesturing at something behind Teresa on the other side of the spring, and as Teresa turned to look, she knew what she would find. Her father was gone. A stranger stood beside Horse and held the rope attached to the gelding’s neck. Like the two men, this man was short and stocky, dressed in a cotton loincloth and cotton shirt. His wrinkled face was also clean-shaven, and he spoke now—yelling through cupped hands—in a language the others recognized. They shouted in reply and nodded and came closer. They looked surprised but also pleased, exclaiming loudly and even smacking their lips over the horse.

  “No, don’t!” Teresa tried to warn them.

  The third man spoke again, pointing at her and shaking his head, gesturing. The three men talked for a short time, probably in Opata, for all this country belonged to the Opata people, who used irrigation to grow maize and beans and who built grand houses of stone and adobe. To the north and east, their villages dotted the edge of the desert. Teresa had long assumed the wise woman was an Opata, too.

  Teresa knew how convincing Plague could be. His manner was earnest, his voice urgent. Clearly he was an elder, a respected man from a village these hunters had probably never visited before—a village, Teresa thought, who had f
elt the wing brush of death for Plague to have assumed this man’s shape. These hunters had no reason to doubt such a man. They had no reason to refuse him.

  They moved toward Teresa with obvious intent. She wished suddenly for the black Moor who had seemed to know every language in the world. She berated herself for speaking only Spanish. There had been Opatas serving in the Governor’s house. Opatas and Jumanos and Aztecs and Mayans. But she had never bothered to learn their speech. She had never cared what anyone else was saying.

  One of the men bent over Pomo. “Don’t touch him!” Teresa tried to wrench the man’s arm away. He pushed her aside, but still she beat at his shoulders and head as he lifted the boy. Pomo cried out, waking from his sleep. As Teresa ran after them, the other hunter grabbed her, roughly pulling her elbows back. She gasped with the pain. These were strong hunters. They were much stronger than she was. There was nothing she could do.

  Plague echoed her thoughts, addressing her in Spanish, “Stop getting in the way. There is nothing you can do.”

  Teresa dangled from the hunter’s grip. He shook her and then pushed her to the ground. She moved away from him, creeping backward toward the hackberry tree, the empty place where Pomo had been just a moment ago.

  “Don’t take him to your village,” she begged the man, but he only stared at her and touched his face. Her blue tattoos had made him curious. He tapped his cheek and wrinkled his nose as if to say, “How ugly!”

  “Don’t try to come with us,” Plague said to Teresa, again in Spanish. “I have explained to them that you are a bad person, a witch who has stolen this boy from his rightful parents. I told them how you poisoned the child, how you want to drink his blood to feed your power. Since you speak Spanish, I told them you were a Christian witch, and they are properly impressed and horrified. Don’t follow us now. If you do, I will tell them to kill you.”

  By now, Pomo lay slumped on Horse’s back. The Opata made another speech, and both hunters went to the spring to drink and fill their gourds and leather pouches. Then they trotted off obediently, leading the way back to their village. It was the direction they had come from and probably not the way they had meant to go next. Still, they seemed content to do what the elder told them to do.

  “Stop, please!” Teresa had to call out one more time. She dropped to her knees.

  The Opatas never looked back. But Plague turned to face her, and as he did, he changed again from an older Opata man dressed in cotton shirt and loincloth to a much older Opata woman in a leather skirt, her bone-white hair braided down her back, her breasts bare but for a seashell necklace.

  The wise woman smiled, and Teresa could hear Plague whispering, not out loud but in her thoughts. Remember me? Remember how I came to you in the barn where you shivered with chills and burned with fever? I walked with you out of the Governor’s house through the village. I hurried you north. I drove you north, faster and faster.

  Teresa was glad she was already on her knees. What a fool she was. An ignorant servant girl. An ignoble bastard. Tricked from the beginning. Years ago, the wise woman had looked straight at Cabeza de Vaca, never at her. What you have lost will be restored to you. And so it had been. So her father had returned to Spain, to his wife, to his King.

  And the real wise woman?

  Dead, Plague told her. Dead from the sarampión, which kills, most especially, the very young and very old.

  Now Plague was turning and taking Horse with him, taking away Pomo. It had all happened so quickly. It was over so quickly. Teresa was dumbfounded. Pomo looked small and unresisting slung over the horse’s back like a captured animal. And Horse, too. The Opatas had smacked their lips as you do over a pile of meat or berries or other good food. They were leading him back to the village to butcher. They were thinking about their next feast and dance.

  Teresa let herself collapse onto the ground, onto the hard dirt, her mouth tasting dirt, dirt filling her eyes. There was nothing she could do, nowhere she could go, no one who could help her. She should just die here. She should lie here in the hot sun and never get up. She should let her body feed the coyotes and ravens. Almost, Teresa felt pleased about this decision. She was tired of being so empty and unhappy.

  A movement swelled, pushing gently against her stomach.

  What? Her stomach asked.

  Teresa tried to listen. Since leaving the Governor’s house, not even a month ago, a matter of weeks, she had found herself speaking to Horse and to the jaguar. But that was not the same as speaking to the earth. That had been so very long ago. She could hardly remember. She had stopped asking, stopped caring.

  Do you still love me? she whispered now.

  What you have lost will be restored to you.

  I need your help.

  I am all alone.

  I don’t know what to do.

  Teresa understood she had to be patient. She spread her arms as though embracing all the flatness of the desert. She turned so that her cheek pressed into soil, gravel and leaves and prickly thorns. In the distance she could see the green edge of the spring and a patch of blue sky. She was prepared to wait for as long as necessary. This was her last hope to save Pomo and Horse. She closed her eyes. She was prepared to wait like this for hours.

  Of course, I love you, the earth said, rippling with amusement. Why would I not love you?

  The voice was so familiar. I have been away, Teresa replied, ashamed.

  Have you? The earth was curious. Where have you been?

  Teresa thought. For a moment, she couldn’t remember. With my father, she answered at last. With the housekeeper in the Governor’s kitchen, with Fray Tomás. With the horse. And the boy.

  Tell me a secret, the earth said. Tell me a secret about me.

  The earth was growing softer, softer, and her body fitted so easily into its curves.

  I have to tell you about Plague first. I need your help.

  I know Plague, the earth said, uninterested.

  Then you’ve seen the villages! Teresa exclaimed. You’ve seen the people crying and moaning. You’ve seen how the mothers and fathers cry when their children suffer. You know about the sores and scalded skin, the smell of bodies. You’ve heard the silence.

  Yes, the earth said. I like watching people. I like watching what you do.

  But how can we stop him? Teresa asked, meaning the form of Plague that had tricked and chased and brought her here.

  Why should we stop him? the earth wondered.

  Listen to me, Teresa said. She tried to explain how the pockmarked housekeeper had loved life. That strong busy woman had loved to eat and make good food. She had loved to feed people. She had loved to stand in the kitchen before all her cooks and assistant cooks and assistants to the assistant cooks as they chopped and cut and pounded and stirred. Teresa felt a pang. The housekeeper was dead, and Teresa had not even tried to help her or say good-bye. She tried to explain to the earth how the women in the kitchen had sung so bravely, so afraid but still cheerful, still singing and gossiping. She tried to make the earth see how Fray Tomás had taught the Indian boys and girls to read, how he had patted Teresa’s hair, how he had nursed the sick. She remembered the horse’s master who had gone insane mourning his wife, wrapping their dead child into her arms. She described the bleeding heart of Christ, how a man nailed to a cross could feel compassion for all the world, for all the suffering people.

  The earth shrugged. They will come back to me, the earth reminded her. I will still love them.

  Yes, but . . . Teresa wished she had the words. She wished she could speak like her father with all his words.

  I want Pomo, she said at last. Help me find Pomo. Please.

  The earth hemmed and hawed.

  Please, Teresa coaxed, and let herself sink deeper. Long ago, she had felt the excitement in her veins and watched the magic crackle from her father into yucca and saltbush and locust tree. Long ago, her foster mother had said she would be a woman of power. Long ago, she had floated toward the rattling pebbles in t
he gourd. Now was the time. If she were ever to find and use that power . . . Teresa gathered herself and let herself sink deeper, her arms stretching and reaching out. She bent her neck and fell forward, downward. She felt the earth soften. She remembered the girl with long black hair who could swim through rivers of stone. That girl had moved through stone as easily as the wind moves through the branches of a tree. This is how it feels! Teresa thought. Her feet and legs, her groin, her stomach, her breasts, her hands, her arms and shoulders, her face settled more deeply into the softening ground. She was about to disappear.

  Only something held her back. Something hard and unyielding. Teresa felt her ribs enter the earth and then stop, unable to go further. It was her hard heart. Her hard heart could not come with her. For a second, Teresa hesitated. She needed that protection against disease—against memories. She thought of her father in his courtyard in Spain, scratching at his papers, playing with his grandchildren. He had conquered the New World, and now he wanted his estates back. He had wrapped her in his arms and in his language, whispering about a life she did not understand although understanding seemed to form just beyond the sea and sand, waiting there for her to grow older. Even when the story confused her, she had caught words or phrases, ideas like fish, bold and surprising, tasting of her father’s mind. She had learned quickly to nod and speak because he needed her to do this, because his need surrounded her like the blue sky. She was his bastard, and he had loved her. Yes, he had loved her. That was the memory she couldn’t bear. He had loved her, and he had lifted her up from the bed of crushed oyster shells away from her familiar life. He had taken her on his journey, and nothing had ever been the same.