He couldn’t know what those words meant! However, everyone was on their best behavior, and so we went to the supper table. Granny come from the parlor to the dining table just then with a hard, angry look on her face, and a cold chill ran up my spine. There would be no guessing or shushing anything she might say, so far was she beyond the spell of normal conversational regimens. However, without another word, my mama announced she’d be going to bed as she didn’t feel up to taking a meal. I was saved from her springing an untimely announcement on Rudolfo, but not from her glare, equally as furious as Luz’s had been, and hers she freely turned on everyone in the room before she left, including me.
Outside, a stiff breeze had come up. Chess and I brought out bowls of hot vegetables and plates piled high with tortillas and risen bread made with that fine white flour Udell had given me. We set it out with the best doings I could lay up, that is, a good sharp knife and fork, even for the blind boy, and napkins at each place, too, starched and ironed flat with creases by Elsa Mal-donado Elliot just that morning. Then I carried in two plates heavy with roast chicken that had baked slowly with onions and pomegranate juice. I wasn’t the cook in charge of it this night, and I’d never cooked it that way. Usually I’d just roast it and take the drippings and make gravy, and still have to beat the boys off it so there’d be enough to feed us all. Never anything so fancy and elegant. Elsa had put her touch on the finery by making the chicken that way. Charlie said he’d give her a signal after he told her papa she was there, but to wait in the kitchen.
Well, we were just bursting with polite talk about nothing in particular, and all Rudolfo’s family made continual compliments on the food. All the while, Elsa was listening for the right time to come out. That fancy chicken, though, changed the state of everyone in the room. Rudolfo took one bite and looked up at me. While he chewed, the expression on his face went from happy to puzzled, suspicious to angry. He took a drink of water. Glowering, he put down his knife and fork and raised one hand, lowering it to the table. With that movement, all his children noisily put their utensils down, too. He did not smile as he said, “Señora Elliot, the graciousness of your hospitality knows no boundary. There was only one person in the world to create polio granadita in this way. You have never served this at your house before.”
I’d had enough. This was just plum wrong. “Rudolfo, let’s have a talk. There’s something I got to tell you, and this here was supposed to make it easier but it’s not. I haven’t felt right about this all along. Now—”
“It’s just chicken, Señor Maldonado,” Charlie interrupted. “There is someone special here who wants to see you.” He was about to go on talking, but at those words, Elsa hurried from the kitchen door, her eyes bright with sentiment, her arms open wide.
When I saw Charlie’s expression, I knew he hadn’t meant for her to come out yet. His face was darkened by some kind of passion I feared could be anger, but I wasn’t sure. My son was no sniffling boy, of that I was sure. Rudolfo let a smile flick across his expression, then he looked around the room at all of us gathered there. He stopped Elsa in her tracks with another raised hand. “What are you doing here?” Rudolfo asked. There was no happiness in his voice.
“Papal” the girl said. Elsa drew herself up, her arms still lifted. Took in a long breath. I reckoned she’d been going over her speech for this minute all day. Maybe for weeks. Elsa said, “I’ve left the Sisters, papa. I am not a novice anymore.”
Luz had tears in her eyes, no longer the haughty and bitter one, and the other children looked expectantly toward their oldest sister, waiting only for their father’s sign to rush her and smother her with kisses. Chess put his hands in his lap. The man had never eaten a meal without both elbows propped in plain sight. Gilbert shot a look at Udell, who sat up straighter but said nothing.
Rudolfo glared at me. As if each word struggled to come from his lips, he said, “And these … friends … of ours. You betray me, and betray the Virgin, and you are so ashamed you have come to their house instead of your own home? You couldn’t come to your father’s house, where you belong?”
She fastened her gaze to the ring on her left hand, turning it as if to check its roundness. “I have come to my husband’s house, where I belong. I love you, papá.”
Rudolfo stood and angrily swept his napkin to the floor. Then his every word got louder until he was shouting and gasping, “Who is this husband? Who takes my daughter and makes her God’s whore? Who dares to impale the finest flower of my house, stealing her virtue and mine? Let him show himself. Let him come forward and be strangled for his crime! Let him be torn apart and pitched into … malo que el diablo … Where is this fatherless son of some cursed—” He stopped short. His eyes nearly shot flames as they settled on my face.
Silence dropped into the room as if the air had turned thick as pudding. Elsa’s brow was damp with sweat, and though she didn’t cower or shrink from Rudolfo, her eyes were red and brimming over. Luz had a cold expression as she watched her sister come undone before their father. Rudolfo’s children’s eager faces turned from joy to horror. They clapped hands over their mouths in fear. Tears slid down Elsa’s cheeks and printed blots on the front of her black bodice. “I’ve wanted to see you. I wrote you, papí, that I was not happy.”
“It is not a daughter’s place to be happy. It is a daughter’s place to obey her father!”
Charlie stood then, not touching Elsa but close to her. “She did obey you, Señor Maldonado, as long as she could take it. But you couldn’t keep us apart. Elsa and I have married. This is her home, now. With me.”
Rudolfo trembled visibly. My mouth went to cotton. The food from the table seemed to cry out then, that we’d staged this betrayal and that it was cruel. The telltale sauce in crimson loops around the chicken was getting a film over it as we stood, all of us frozen. Silent. Before this very moment, the supper had seemed a fair enough way to tell him of the elopement and not get shot for the trouble of being a messenger. I surely regretted that we hadn’t come up with some better way. Something easier for the man to take. I felt lowdown and mean.
Rudolfo said, “No!” Then he turned his glare to me. “So you sent your cabrón to—to filthy my house, my daughter.”
“I won’t have that language in my house, Rudolfo. They were in love long ago.”
“I know what is best for my own daughter! Not you.”
“They married without telling any of us.”
He stared hard at me. “So you wait, with your trap, you wait to take, to keep, what, Dona Elliot?”
“Papá?” Elsa. said.
Rudolfo raised his hands, looked into both palms, then clenched them tightly into fists. “Magdalena, Luz, take Cedric. Margarita, all of you, go to the coach.”
The girls, except for Luz, began to whimper. Cedric cried aloud for Elsa while being led away. Luz led the parade toward the door. Elsa watched them go, and called their names, one by one. Only Margarita turned and waved to Elsa, but Luz pushed the child’s hand down with an angry slap.
“Papá, “Elsa said, “please, dearpapito, let me sit at your knee, just like long ago. Let me bring you coffee and the flan I have made for you, just the way you like it, the way mama made it, with rose essence I saved so long to buy, just for you.”
Rudolfo took a step toward Elsa and Charlie, and quick as that, Charlie tugged Elsa behind him and put up a hand to his defense. But Rudolfo did not strike him. He pulled his hand short before it even got close.
Elsa stepped forward again, too boldly, I’d have to say, and smiled through her teary expression, begging, “Papá, come and sit…”
Rudolfo’s face grew darker still, and it seemed as if lightning crackled in his eyes. He squinted at her face and leaned over, closing the distance between them, then said, “All my children … are in el coche!” Then he whirled around, stepping squarely on the creased napkin lying on the floor, left the room, left the house, leaving the front door hanging wide open, and from it we felt a cold blast of
air that carried on it the sound of horses being whipped furiously as they drove from the yard.
Elsa sobbed and ran from the room. Charlie looked helplessly at me; I nodded toward the path Elsa had taken and he followed her.
“It’s a wonder he didn’t throttle someone,” I said. “I don’t blame him for it.”
Udell sat back in his chair, looked over the remains of the uneaten supper, and said, “There wasn’t any good way to say it. The man’s dangerous, and now he’s mad like a wounded bear. It’d be one thing if Charlie was some worthless saddle tramp. Give old Rudolfo time. He’ll see Charlie’s a hardworking, Godfearing man. Fine sort.”
Chess nodded. “He’s right, Sarah. He’ll warm up to it after a while. Like you said before, when that first baby comes along.”
As the night wore on and we cleaned the supper fixings off the table, the wind that had been fussing at the windows turned into a cold blast that shot rain hard as hail against the glass. I told Udell that he’d have to stay the night, as I wouldn’t even have sent Rudolfo home in a storm like that. He didn’t put up any argument. Likely we’d all heard enough harsh words this night to last us a month or more.
Chapter Eleven
February 18, 1906
At long last, Savannah and Albert have brought Mary Pearl home. I saw their surrey coming up the road, and I went to the chicken coop to find a couple of pullets for supper to have ready to take over. They’d need something made after that long drive. Maybe I’ll put in a sweet pie, too.
Well, just as I sat plucking the chickens and had a mess of feathers flying across the porch, here came Savannah, dressed in the dress she usually wears for Sunday, and wearing her best white cap and bonnet. I waved to her and smiled, but I was too big a mess to get up and hug her. “Come on over and set a spell,” I called.
Savannah stared at the chickens, one lying headless at my feet, the other in my hands, nearly naked of feathers. She didn’t speak.
I said, “Thought I’d fix you some supper. Ezra and Zack are—”
“Sarah?” she said.
“Mary Pearl’s all right, isn’t she?”
“I’ve always trusted you. Always thought I could count on you.”
A feather flitted up and whisked at my face. I rubbed my nose with the back of my arm. “I count on you, too,” I said, and nodded, pretending I didn’t register her word “thought.” She seemed upset as ever I have known.
“Never thought you to be the kind to go behind our backs. To approve of her taking off like that. I trusted you with my children but I see that was a mistake. I should be wary of your influence with them, should never have let you have them around so much that they lose their good sense and upbringing.”
“Savannah, what’s got under your bonnet?”
“You encouraged her to go off and leave her betrothed behind, like some … some … trollop! You contrived with my daughter to send her away to some school at the far end of the country, away from her beloved and her family, away from her … her home.”
I stood up. “Now wait just a minute, Savannah. I didn’t contrive anything. Mary Pearl wanted to write to the school. She asked me about a picture she drew. I told her if she didn’t like it to draw it again.”
“You didn’t think it was important enough to tell her parents that she was planning this foolishness? You didn’t think to stop her? Talk reasonably with her? You couldn’t tell us so we could reason with her? Is that because you knew it was wrong?”
“She was sick and we thought she was dying. What was the use of telling it? Then, why, I was sick, too. It never crossed my—by the time she started getting better, they never wrote back, so I figured it was not going to happen anyway. I thought about telling you at first and then I forgot. Seemed like it was over and they didn’t want her. I simply forgot.”
“You forgot? Well, they do want her. And she wants to go, just like that. And her father is allowing it! You have been pushing her toward this all her life just like your own children, always insisting everybody ought to go to college. Telling her that’s the most important thing. Well, it isn’t necessary for every girl to go to school—it’s not even in this Territory!—or boy, either. She’s got her reading and writing and plenty of education, and has no need to traipse across the country, a betrothed woman. He’ll have grounds to put her aside, same as divorced. He’ll marry some other. I thought I made that understood to you!” She turned to leave, but stopped short and whirled around at me. “Don’t think I will let you have your hand in the teaching of my children anymore, from this day on. I’m perfectly capable of learning my own children all they need. And if you have need of a Sunday School lesson, which I think you do, you should make the effort to study the only book a woman need concern herself with.”
With that, she walked away, and her every step beat her fury into the ground of my yard. Even Savannah’s back looked angry.
I sat over the bloody mess of chicken feathers and guts. And I cried. Deep, long, childish gulps of agony swept through me and racked me until I thought I might vomit. Elsa came out the door then, hearing me, I suspect. I handed her the pullets, and walked and walked, through the yard and out the gate and over the hill. There I sat on the cold ground and sobbed like the child I felt—scolded and scorned. Savannah and I have not had harsh words with each other in the twenty years I’ve known her. Now she felt betrayed and maybe rightly so. It seemed all I was good for lately was back-shooting people I had cared about.
I walked to the banks of the Cienega and rinsed my hands in the icy water. She’d worked hard on that speech. Just like Elsa had done trying to please her papa, Savannah had practiced her scorn. I felt so forlorn, it was near as hard as when Jack died. Worse, almost, because he didn’t have a choice about dying. I stayed there, shivering and miserable, not ready to go to the house, not able to move. It wasn’t long, however, before Albert came up on horseback. He got down, sitting on his haunches next to me. I sniffed, staring hard into the water.
After a while, Albert said, “Savannah told me what she said to you. She said she only meant to ask why you’d not told us about Mary Pearl writing the letter, but she got angrier and angrier as she spoke and said it got bad. She’s pretty torn up. I’m sorry.”
“What’s the good of you being sorry, Albert?”
“Well, she’s upset.”
“I figured that.”
“I come to get you.”
“Go home, Albert.”
“At least let me take you to the house.”
“I’ve just been shot with both barrels. And Savannah didn’t send you to apologize for her, you only said you were sorry. Go on home and leave me be, brother. Go on.”
“Sarah?”
“Get!” I said, and stomped off toward home. By the time I got there, though, I felt just awful, and I went to bed, without explaining anything, without a kind word, just straight to bed. There I relived the afternoon again, seeing it this way and that, one time hearing this thing said and one time that thing, until the room darkened and I fell asleep.
March 2, 1907
A light has gone out in this land, oh, my soul, and darkness overtakes me, and my soul cries out to Thee and Thou hearest me not. Something like that, Savannah read once. I can’t even find my Bible. Likely it’s gone somewhere for some good purpose but I can’t lay my hands on it. I know how that one felt, though. King David just crying out and no one to hear, and not even God gives a dang about it.
I never felt so forsaken. Never thought I could be so torn. Why, I’d have hurt less if Savannah had died. I haven’t heard from her since that day, nearly a fortnight. Lands and heavens and earth and vexation, all is vexation and bro-kenness of spirit.
I went to their house today, and Albert received me in and the children were sweet as could be and polite, but Savannah wouldn’t come from her room. I’m as shunned as if I had murdered Mary Pearl with my own hands. I said to Albert, “You and the children come on over any time you choose, but I won’t come here u
ntil I’m invited by Savannah herself. I can’t cross this bridge she’s torn down unless some of the ties come from her side. So you tell her that. I’m waiting.”
Since I said those words my every footstep wants to turn toward their house, to hug Savannah to my bosom and cry on her neck and beg her to love me again. I don’t understand this nor cotton to it in any way. I can see being angry with folks. Shoot, I’d about hang Chess on the laundry line any day of the week, but I don’t shun him. Shunning’s no way to get over and done with your fussing. It just drives in a sword that won’t come out unless the person holding it pulls first. So every few minutes, I look toward their house and sigh. And I don’t go over there.
It is March and Mary Pearl may be getting ready to leave for school or for a wedding and I won’t know.
I only know I have work to do.
March 11, 1907
All morning, Elsa and I have been turning soil in the garden, working side by side. We got down the end of a long row that had overgrown with goat thorn, and when she pulled back the dried weed tops with a hoe, she let out a gasp.
“Snake?” I asked.
“No, Dona. A big hole.”
I came closer, a long-handled shovel in my hands. “Step back. Let’s have a look.”
We peered carefully. The hole was four inches across. Elsa leaned over it. “What do you think it is? Rabbits?”