Thus the year 1520 got off to an ominous start, and rumors of events that could not be understood were blamed on Ixmiq and his misbehavior at the sacrifice. One of Lady Gray Eyes’ uncles, the wise man Xaca who served as an ambassador to the Aztecs in the great city to the southeast, returned with staggering news: “A frightening group of men, gods perhaps from another world, white of skin and speaking a strange language, have come to the jungles at the feet of the great volcanoes. They are served by lesser gods that run on four feet and carry the strangers on their backs. And both the men and the lesser gods protect themselves with a heavy cloth that glistens in the sun and cannot be pierced by arrows.”
All the priests and wise men in the city were assembled to analyze Ambassador Xaca’s report, and after each frightening item had been analyzed and rejected as absurd, the priests’ only proposal was that Xaca should be sacrificed to Mother Goddess as a liar and one who did not have her welfare at heart. But others, who struggled to understand the new mysteries, argued: “Let us accept what Xaca has said and try to determine what it means,” so the ambassador was spared to repeat what he had been told, but when the priests hammered at him: “Did you see the white-faced men? Did you see the lesser gods with four feet? Did you touch the garment that cannot be pierced?” he had to answer no, and was again discredited and sentenced to death as a deranged menace. Only the courage of the king wrested him from the priests and allowed him to escape back to the safer climate of the Aztec capital, where men now had painful proof that a new force had entered Mexican life.
With the ambassador gone, there was a strong movement to blame Lady Gray Eyes for the dangers that were threatening Mexico, for she had certainly abetted her son in his abysmal behavior. For the moment, the king remained strong enough to protect her as he had his ambassador, but events were unfolding with such speed and mystery that even he had begun to suspect her loyalty to the gods who had made his Cactus People strong.
Most of all, the priests were determined to execute Xóchitl because they believed that the sixteen-year-old girl had bewitched the Perfect Youth and had kept him from performing his duties in proper style. But they could not find her, for on the day Ixmiq was sacrificed Lady Gray Eyes had anticipated the priests’ intentions and had secreted her in a cave under the royal palace, where the queen attended her as her pregnancy advanced.
“All this senseless sacrifice must soon end,” the queen said. “Xóchitl, the priests may kill you and me, as they seem determined to do, but this evil can’t go on much longer.” Once she took the girl’s hands in hers and asked, “Tell me the truth, before you were sent to my son, did you realize how evil all this was?”
“I knew,” Xóchitl said. “My mother told me.”
“Oh my child, thank you!” Lady Gray Eyes started to weep and now it was the girl who comforted her.
“When my son is born,” Xóchitl promised, “I shall tell him the truth. So far it’s been only women telling other women.”
At these words Lady Gray Eyes felt new tears well in her eyes and she clasped the young girl in her arms. “I had forgotten how to weep,” the queen said.
In July, the seventh month of Xóchitl’s pregnancy, Lady Gray Eyes came into the cave in some excitement and carrying a package. “I must tell you what has happened,” she began. Then abruptly she stopped speaking and began to kiss Xóchitl. “My beloved daughter,” she whispered, “you are the only one to whom I can speak. Have a strong child. Have a son as beautiful as his father.”
“I know I will,” Xóchitl replied.
“This must remain a secret between us,” Lady Gray Eyes insisted as she unrolled a length of parchment. “My Uncle Xaca, ambassador to the Aztecs, sent to me secretly a picture of the gods whom the strangers worship, and here they are!” In the dim light of the cave the queen and her pregnant daughter-in-law unrolled the parchment and saw a drawing of a serene mother fondly holding on her knee a boy of one or two years, and in silence the two women contemplated the picture for a long time.
Finally Xóchitl asked: “What kind of gods are they?”
“You can see,” Lady Gray Eyes replied. “A mother whose head is not a serpent. A son whose hands are not caked with blood.”
Again the two women reflected upon the enormous moral chasm that separated the new gods from the ones they knew. Neither spoke, but years later Lady Gray Eyes reported what happened: “So we sat there in the cave, my pregnant daughter and I, and I thought, For all these years we’ve been hiding in caves and worshiping hideous gods, while in other parts of the world people could look at the sky and worship human beings like themselves who could weep. But what impressed us most that day was that the mother had a benign smile as if she loved everyone and hated none, and the difference between this kind of god and the ones we had known was so great that later, when we comprehended it more fully, Xóchitl said, ‘My son shall be born to these gods,’ and it was so.”
But after the child’s birth—it was a girl whom they named Stranger, as if she had come from nowhere so that she could not be traced back to her condemned mother—Xóchitl sought sunlight and was detected by the priests and captured. For the part she had played in ruining the ultimate celebration of the Perfect Youth, she was sentenced to death, and both the king and his queen were forced to witness her execution. Xóchitl, one of the most memorable of my ancestors, was the first Christian to die for her faith in Mexico and was later sanctified as Santa Maria of the Cave.
When Xóchitl stood before the Mother Goddess, she thought of the new gods, and when she looked down at Lady Gray Eyes, she knew that she was also thinking of Mary and the infant Christ. But when she turned to face death she saw five priests, their hair matted with blood, their fingernails black with caked blood, their bodies foul with tattoos and more blood. She saw a goddess whose head was a pair of serpents and whose entire being was an abomination. She looked up at the walls of the temple and they were black with smoke and blood, and fear, and death. The only clean thing she saw that day was the obsidian knife, and soon even that would be stained with blood.
With miraculous strength she broke free from the priests and shouted, “The evil god must die! A new god is coming!” She was quickly seized and thrown on the convex slab, and hers was the last human heart on which the most obscene of all Mexican gods ever feasted.
That night, while the priests were in convocation to consider what steps must be taken to protect the city from the heresy that Xóchitl had pronounced, Lady Gray Eyes, wrapped in a gray serape such as peasant women wore, left the palace, and hurried through back streets to the home of the general’s wife who had been brave enough to weep openly because her son had been needlessly sacrificed. Slipping in by the back entrance, she signaled the woman to join her in the garden, where they could speak.
“Do you remember that day when we talked of your son, and you wept?”
“Yes, and I wondered why you didn’t weep, too.”
“I did, but I did it secretly. On many nights I have gone to sleep with tears.”
“Why have you come to see me?”
“Because the time has come.” For some moments the two women allowed these fateful words to hang in the air, then the general’s wife said: “I’ve waited for you to call me.”
“Do you know others we can trust?”
“Many, many.”
“Can you bring me two others like yourself?”
“Fifty.”
“No. We must rely on only a few trusted women. Find me two more like yourself.” When the woman nodded, Gray Eyes added: “And each of us must bring a log—a piece of strong wood. Not so long that it will attract attention, but long enough to do the job.”
“What job?”
For a moment Gray Eyes was afraid to utter the fateful words and was silent, but finally she said in cold, measured tones: “The destruction of that despicable goddess.”
The general’s wife said only: “Four of us, armed with logs. It shall be. But when?”
“I
f we delay, someone or something will betray us. The deed must be done tomorrow midnight after the last priest makes his rounds.”
The general’s wife grasped the queen with both hands: “We are committed—to the death,” and they parted.
Next night the four conspirators waited nervously at separate hiding places till midnight approached, then one at a time they crept to the top of the pyramid, three of the women carrying heavy logs, Gray Eyes a length of rope. They did not assemble at the top until midnight rituals had been completed, then, when the last priest had departed, they crept to the goddess, and there Gray Eyes took upon herself the terrifying task of climbing that repulsive statue and fastening the rope around her neck. Working her way down, she ran quickly to the free end of the rope and began tugging while her three helpers, using the logs, tried to dislodge the horrible creature from her pedestal.
For a terrifying moment it seemed as if they were not strong enough to topple the Mother Goddess, but when Gray Eyes gave a mighty pull, the monster quivered, and as the three women threw their full weight on the logs, the leverage broke the statue loose and with a resounding crash it fell and broke into fragments. According to plan, the four women sped from the scene the moment the statue appeared certain to crash, and they were far down the steps of the pyramid by the time a dozen priests were surveying the wreckage of their terrible goddess.
Three hundred years after that memorable night a German archaeologist recovered most of the fragments of the Mother Goddess, and the reassembled deity can now be seen in the Palafox Museum, as repulsive as she was then.
I now move forward to a happier time, to 1601, when a document particularly precious to those who were born in the old City-of-the-Pyramid was written in the corner room of the House of Tile, the one I now occupied, by the girl who was born in the cave, Stranger, the first Christian child of the high valley:
After my mother, Xóchitl, was sacrificed to the Mother Goddess the priests suspected that she had left behind a baby and they searched for me in order to kill me, too, but I was well hidden by my grandmother, Lady Gray Eyes, who brought me up. I never considered her as my grandmother but as my real mother, for she instructed me in all ways.
She was the first of our people to become a baptized Christian, even though she performed the rite herself and assured the Spanish priest who tried to rebaptize her later, “I’ve already been a Christian for seven years.” When he said: “But that’s impossible. There were no priests here at that time,” she replied, “We won’t argue about it.” And after the king’s death, it was she who kept our people together until they had adjusted to the Spanish ways.
But what I wish to relate today is what my grandmother told me when I was fourteen years old.
To catch the flavor of what my grandmother said that long afternoon when we sat in the garden, you must remember that she spoke in the year 1535, when the Spaniards were in complete command. She was fifty-eight years old and I think she wanted to reassure me that living by the rules of our Cactus People could be just as rewarding as living by those of Spain. She had accepted Christianity joyously, but that did not mean that she approved of all she saw in Spanish behavior. But I will let her speak for herself.
Gray Eyes: You are now fourteen and from the changes in your body it is clear that when you wish you may bear a child. This poses a great problem for girls, for there are many men who are willing to help her have a child, but there are few who are willing to understand the full responsibility of this act. Certainly I would lie to you if I denied that conceiving children is pleasant, and it is a constant temptation to do so, for in this world there are many attractive men.
Stranger: Why is it that in a marriage there is always only one woman and one man?
Gray Eyes: Through many centuries we have found that that’s the best way. Choose your man and be faithful to him in all things. Why men do not behave the same way with one woman I will not go into now; possibly it was because in the old days we killed so many of our best men in the temples that there were always surplus women to be taken care of and one man had to share himself with many wives. At any rate, for you there is to be one man, and he is to be your life. I have lived that way and have found it satisfactory.
Stranger: How does a girl learn to choose the right man?
Gray Eyes: I’ve heard from women who have known many men that they’re generally much alike Certainly I have never seen in men anything that would justify a woman’s abandoning her good name and her family for one rather than another. Besides, if you are caught in adultery you will be stoned to death.
Stranger: If they’re all alike, then it doesn’t matter which one I choose, does it?
Gray Eyes: Now wait! Burn this into your mind. If you’re fortunate and make the right choice the relationship between a man and woman can be like the rising of the sun or the love of a mother for her child. My mother told me that when General Tezozomoc returned from battle she could feel the earth tremble while he was still a mile away, so secure and steady was his step. I never once saw my father angry at my mother and she worshiped him so much that she went to her death because she treasured even the things he had touched. Keep that as your definition of love between a woman and a man.
Stranger: You speak as if most people don’t find that kind.
Gray Eyes: Your father did. Cherish this memory of how you came to be born. Your father was offered the four most beautiful girls in the kingdom and he preferred your mother above the others, and as I have told you many times, when your mother was taken from him he grew sick and sat by himself and would not speak until she was returned. He chose your mother alone, and in the last moment of his life he called her name because he wanted to affirm his love for her in opposition to what the priests called “an honorable death.” Never forget that you were born of such a love.
Stranger: You seem to know men rather well. In your opinion, would that Spanish lieutenant who’s been coming to our home—
Gray Eyes: Keep away from that young man. Far away. You’re destined for some significant marriage, as great perhaps as my mother’s to General Tezozomoc or mine to the king. You’re an important young woman, Stranger, destined for an important marriage.
Stranger: I can’t imagine myself brave like you or beautiful like my mother. How will I ever find the kind of man you’re describing? What chance have I?
Gray Eyes: You face the problem that all women face. In the days before you’re married you must seek and find the kind of man who is capable of the love that has marked your family, and if you find him, cling to him forever, more even than you cling to your family, or your god, or your country. But if you are unfortunate and do not find him, then hold on to whatever you are given, for it is an honorable thing simply to be a good wife. And if you are wise you will never let your husband know whether you are disappointed or not. I myself lived loyally with the king for many years yet I hated his policies, his gods, and even his manner of eating.
Stranger: First you say “Marry an important man,” then you say “Marry a man who will love you.” How can I do both?
Gray Eyes: That’s the problem all young women face. You’ll find a way. Good women usually do. But let’s stop worrying about who you’re going to marry. In due course that will be solved. Your real problem is how you are going to behave when you are married. When you’re head of a household there are two things you must attend to. Spend your husband’s money wisely and be neat, for I do not know which is worse, a sloppy woman or a spendthrift. Reprimand your husband when necessary, but never nag. And although it may at first seem unfair, you will in the end gain much pleasure by accommodating your wishes to his.
Stranger: But people say you were very strong-minded. I’m told that all the time, as if people expected me to be the same.
Gray Eyes: They speak the truth. I did fight against the cruel god, but in public I always supported my husband, no matter what I said to him at home. And if this task seems odious or impossible, remember that during t
he last years of my married life, while I fought against the gods in private, I tried to do so in a manner that would not bring shame to the king.
Stranger: I can’t imagine myself fighting any battles, or being strong enough to overthrow a war god. Times are different.
Gray Eyes: Child, I’m appalled to hear you say that. It’s true that I led the fight against the evil gods, but I was supported by hundreds of ordinary women who didn’t need any instruction from me. They’d decided for themselves that the old gods had to go. I could never have done what I did without their support. You fight the battle that confronts you at the time, and invariably there is one that has to be fought. Remember that long before the Spaniards came many of us, leaders and common people, had reached the conclusion that there could be only one God. There can now be no doubt of this, and it is a good thing that our evil gods have been replaced; but never forget that it was not the Spaniards but your own people who destroyed the old gods. Therefore worship the true God with pride, knowing that your people came to Him of their own accord.
Stranger: But the Spaniards refused to believe that. They say awful things about us.
Gray Eyes: Never allow anyone to ridicule the Cactus People. Fight back. Remind them that we were the one city that the Spaniards did not conquer. We were brave to the end, and if General Tezozomoc had lived I think we could have withstood the Spaniards. As it is, we should be glad they came, for it made our work of destroying the old gods easier. But do not let anyone claim that we were savages, or that we lived like animals, or that we were nothing before the Spaniards came. The cloth you were wrapped in when you were born was woven of rich cotton and silver and quetzal feathers, and it was much finer than any the Spaniards have shown us since.