“Why can’t we go, Mamá, why can’t we go to the cave?” begged Buti. “When he comes back . . .”
“When he comes back . . .” The thought floated in Trini’s mind. Sabochi, a Tarahumara, took mysterious trips into the Barranca del Cobre. In the shadowed silence of his cave, he spoke many times about the world outside the valley of Bachotigori. All of a sudden, Trini saw pain cross her mother’s face, eyes deep in the pain, one hand, fingers spread, falling on her stomach. With difficulty, she tried to stand, straining. Trini ran to help her. Her mother grasped Trini’s shoulder for balance, her breathing thick and hoarse. “Run, get Papá.”
“The baby?” Trini asked in a frightened voice, standing frozen, undecided. But then, she turned to Buti and Lupita. “Get Papá, get Papá . . .”
The two little ones ran down the slope toward the path that led into the valley. Matilda collapsed, falling heavily on Trini, head limp to one side. Time froze as she looked at her mother’s limp form fallen to the ground. She whispered, half-sobbing, “Mamá, can you hear me?”
Her mother lay on the grass, eyes closed, mouth slightly open, a deadly pallor on her face. Trini knelt, then drew her mother’s head upon her lap. Now the rhythm of her mother’s breath came softly like the wind that touched the palos blancos. Amidst tears, Trini became aware of the life around her, trees with their showering clouds of blossoms, wild flowers in the brightness of bloom, and a sky so blue that the blueness hurt. She looked down again at the windblown figure of her mother.
“Mamá, can you hear me?”
She looked into the still white face gleaming with the cold perspiration of unconsciousness, frail bones sweetly visible through her stretched skin, one hand still lying across her stomach as if to protect the child she carried inside her. Then Trini noticed the blood forming a pool, turning the grass darkish purple She touched the knotted skirt around her mother’s knees. With one free hand, she awkwardly undid the knot and smoothed her mother’s skirt as she avoided looking at the growing pool of blood. She bent and pressed her lips to the cold forehead as if wishing to give her mother life, and she whispered, “Mamá?”
* * *
“Why must you lock the gate, Papá?”
Trini felt the injustice of it all. After all, she was thirteen and quite capable of looking after Buti and Lupita.
“It is safer now that your mamá . . .” José Mario’s voice trailed off. No one wanted to think about Matilda’s death, the baby’s death. Now that Matilda was gone, Papá locked them inside the yard before he went off to the mines. All of them had lived in a mist of pain. But it had affected her father the most. The state of loss was still in his reflexes, his seeing, his hearing, as he moved mechanically through the days. Matilda had been dead for six months. Pain was revived in the children’s eyes at the mention of Matilda. Their mother was gone.
“I have to go.” José Mario touched each child’s head, hand lingering, shoulders bent. After that, he turned away, a sadness in his step. He made his way across the huge yard, locking the gate behind him. Trini and the little ones followed to the gate, their eyes focused on the trudging figure of their father. It overwhelmed Trini, watching her father make his way to the turn on the hill. She felt the same kind of helplessness when José Mario sat in the dark. Her heart would cry, oh Mamá, we need you so! She wanted to reach out and comfort him, to stroke his hand, to put her cheek against his as Matilda had done, but she never could. Her father felt her presence and that was enough. Now she watched the lonely figure take the turn.
“Let’s watch for Sabochi on the rocks,” Buti suggested. The late morning was before them. Why not? thought Trini. Sabochi had come after Matilda’s funeral. Shocked and full of grief, he had left almost as soon as he had come. He had promised to return again soon to help and to try to be the children’s “mother.” His promise hung in the air each waking day for Trini. But then, Matilda could never be replaced. But Sabochi coming home! There was happiness in that. He came, always bringing with him stories of the outside world. The three of them sat on the rocks that looked upon the hill. They could see Sabochi’s cave from where they sat on a pile of rainbow rocks, rocks gathered by José Mario from all across the mountain and valley. The pile spoke its own stone language, of time making beauty, purple pinks and orange golds mixed with the contours of brown rocks, well veined in green. There was the glassiness of dark, glinting rocks gathered along streams. This was the place where the rainbow lived. After baptizing the sky with rain, the rainbow would pour itself into the rocks and rest there until the next rain storm.
The breathing valley rose eagerly along the curve of mountain. Inside the yard was the freedom of space and sun changing season. The leaves of a fig tree tangled the morning’s quiet. Buti and Lupita had already found a new interest. Buti was stalking, following a darting lizard; he squatted in complications of moss, calling out, “Chapulín, chapulín, sin, sin, sin . . .” The lizard darted under the huge pile of rocks. “¡Allá va!” screamed Lupita, pointing.
They waited quietly for the lizard to reappear. He was gone. The sun was burning against her face, so Trini found the shade of the fig tree where Buti and Lupita were already stretched out on the grass.
“Let me braid your hair, Lupita,” offered Trini.
Lupita pushed herself up to a sitting position, then sat cross-legged, rocking to and fro, following the dance of the fig leaves’ shadows. Trini’s nimble fingers braided hair as Buti poked around for the lizard. They sat in happy silence under leaf-shaped shadows. Then Buti’s whisper was against her ear. “Who’s that?”
They were looking at a little man, naked except for what seemed to be a red cloth around the groin and a gold earring in his right ear. He looked properly human; still, there was an air of the unreal about him. His lower lip was extremely full and widened into a smile, a comical expression. His eyebrows were heavy and peaked, yet his head was very round and bald. His marble eyes, quick and full of mischief, darted from one child to another. Only his hands seemed inordinately large, with long, tapered fingers. His nose and thighs were those of a tiny gladiator. He inclined his head to one side to observe them, put a finger to his lips, then clapped his hands in merriment as he ran toward them. The children could not do otherwise. They clapped too and followed him as he ran around in a circle. Now he was going around the fig tree, pointing up at the leaves.
“It’s too late for figs,” Trini informed him. “We picked them all.” He shook his head and kept pointing, then he scampered up the tree effortlessly with those sturdy, muscular little legs. He shook the tree. Figs rained down on them. Did we forget to pick them all? wondered Trini. She still remembered the last of the figs—the empty tree. Where did all these figs come from?
Buti was turning somersaults and stuffing his mouth. Trini did not question any more, but sat down with Lupita to eat figs, watching the little man climb down. He sat down next to them, looking at them, head tilted. He began to eat figs with great concentration. The little man picked each fig, examined it, smelled it, then popped it into his mouth, showing his enjoyment by nodding his head and rolling his eyes. Buti had to do the same ecstatically.
“What’s your name? Where do you come from?” asked Trini curiously. The little man smiled and pointed to the purple rocks. He handed Trini a fig. “How did you get in? The gate’s locked. We didn’t see you come over the fence.”
He merely nodded an answer and invited Buti with gestures to do more somersaults. Lupita, open-mouthed, stared at the little man. While El Enano and Buti were turning cartwheels all over the yard, she ventured to ask Trini in a whisper, “Is he magic?” Lupita, seven, and Buti, six, knew about magic from their mother, who had spoken of duendes living in the circle of hills. “Is he a duende?”
“I don’t know. Es un enano.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Un enano is a very small person.”
“Is he real?”
“I think so. This is the first time I’ve seen one.”