She traces the wall with her hand and a bit of loose plaster crumbles onto her feet. The dog scratches himself and rattles the door from somewhere unexpected. If the door is over there, that means she’s been feeling along the wall where the calendar is hung. How did she get over here?

  Holding onto the blanket with one hand, she stretches out the other and walks slowly through the room that has become an enemy hiding in the shadows, trying to disorient her with obstacles, erecting a wall in front of her face.

  But this time, guided by the rattling sound, Nefer reaches the door. She gropes for the handle and feels the paint smooth and irregular on the wood, and the room takes shape again behind her. She bends down and silently lifts the bottom latch, then she pushes the door halfway open, pushes again, and goes out. The ticking clock, her fears, and the snoring all die out behind her, because on the patio there is only the night, its cold sweet smell filling the earth.

  The dog licks her feet and jostles her blanket with the wag of his tail. Slowly, like a train passing in the distance, the wind pump lets out a long moan, and the crickets and frogs transform the air into an endless vibration.

  In the star-laden night Nefer looks to the south, to the slightly darker bump where Santa Rosa’s trees stand against the skyline, where the red light of the milking yard will shine out at three. But it’s still too early. It might be midnight. Shivering, she steps off the path and walks over the packed earth of the yard to lean against a tree. Far away, the lapwings shriek with alarm.

  She breathes deeply, and the fear that had been trapped under her skin by the darkness pours out through her eyes as they pick out objects in the distance, just as it flowed from her hands when they found the door, and as her fear is released the knot lodged in her throat loosens. How long until three o’clock? Here on her outpost they get up at four because the station is only three miles away, making it possible to get their milk to the train on time, but at Santa Rosa they start earlier because they’re farther and have more cows.

  So many months looking southward, she’s almost forgotten that the landscape extends in other directions. Sometimes she sneaks out to wait for that instant when the light turns on like a red star, and although she can’t see it, she knows exactly when Negro’s brother is herding the cows through the empty field, the exact moment that Negro ties up the cows and starts to milk them, or loads the tanks onto the cart. She knows everything that’s happening as if she too lived at Santa Rosa, between the adobe walls identical to her own, under the roof that Negro rethatched with new hay.

  The dog licks her and the heat returns her thoughts to herself, and with her thoughts comes her distress. It’s a weight too heavy to bear standing under this immense sky, and Nefer kneels down, pressing her face into the wooly fur of the dog, squeezing her eyes closed. She feels like she belongs to that fur, that heat, that smell, and not to the night with its vast scent of bitter grass from the plains and its mute dusting of stars.

  When she closes her eyes it’s as if she were opening them to her insides, to that spot where her misfortune grows and waits, and, clenching her teeth, she buries her face deeper into the dog’s neck. But she doesn’t cry. Disgraceful. I’m disgraceful. I’d be better off dead. Yes. Better off. I’d be better off if I died right now. Capitán. Capitán?

  Capitán clumsily scratches himself and yawns with a small whimper, then she grabs him by two fistfuls of fur and shakes him until his teeth clatter. Capitán is her friend and he thinks she’s playing, but no, she’s shaking him in pure rage at the huge conspiracy closing in on her: misfortune conspiring with time, conspiring with her body, fearlessly united against her like a three-headed giant, and she’s there all on her own.

  “Capitán, you don’t know anything and I don’t know what to do. I thought maybe if I got on a horse and galloped fast enough, maybe if I worked hard enough, maybe if I slept deeply enough, when I woke up it would be gone…I thought if went to see that, that person, I could…if I went to see…Maybe if God helps me…” God? Maybe I should pray? If I say one Hail Mary and three Apostles’ Creeds will a miracle occur? Maybe the Lord God is trying to scare me into praying more because I don’t pray enough. But very few people pray a lot and disgrace like mine doesn’t happen to any of them. Delia, for example, can’t be that good, maybe God will punish her. Maybe her hair will get tangled in a tree and she’ll spend days and nights there screaming till they find her, or the mare pulling her buggy will take off too fast and send her flying through the air right when Negro’s looking. And I’ll be there watching, and Negro and I will lock eyes and laugh together, and then we’ll become friends, and at the dances I’ll be the prettiest girl and he’ll come straight over and ask me to dance, and she’ll see us and die of jealousy, and she’ll be forced to come to our wedding, and I’ll be wearing a satin dress with a long train, and gloves, and then…

  She turns her head and there’s something hard caught in her throat, stifling her sobs, but still a long moan escapes her teeth and makes a muffled sound in the dog’s fur.

  5

  When Nefer wakes up Alcira has just left the bedroom, allowing a sliver of cold night to slip in through the half-open door.

  A rooster sings his strident scales, another imitates him, while another responds farther in the distance.

  Today, she thinks, the mission.

  Her face shows no expression but the air itself seems bitter. She works her feet into thick boots, pulls on a jacket, and steps out onto the patio, the sky heavy with stars. She automatically looks to the horizon where the little red light has come on; in the darkness she hears Juan’s horse galloping back and forth as he herds the cows with shouts and whistles.

  Nefer shivers and crosses her arms; through the kitchen door she can see Alcira in the dim candlelight using corncobs to start a fire and Don Pedro walks back from the trees buttoning his pants. From the corral comes the dry scrape of the branch and the twang of the wire as Juan closes the gate.

  Nefer tiptoes past the room where her mother is sleeping, but stops when she hears her name.

  “Nefer!”

  She knows it would be wiser to pretend she didn’t hear, but the voice calls out to her again, so she decides to respond: “What…?”

  “If I call you it’s because I want you to come in!”

  She pushes open the door and enters. The bed takes up half the room and a large mirrored wardrobe leans forward. A candle trembles on the bedside table illuminating Doña María’s coarse hair. Her knees are like two multicolored hills under the quilt.

  “What…”

  “Come here.”

  She takes a step forward and stops at the foot of the bed. “What…?”

  “Come here, I said!”

  Doña María leans forward, grabs her by the arm, and pulls her toward the bed. Her large hand lands on Nefer’s face, back and forth, then she shakes her by the shoulders until her teeth rattle.

  “What were you thinking?” she starts to say, chewing on her words, “What the hell were you thinking? Running around like some little hussy…like a piece of trash, taking off in the middle of siesta without telling anyone!…And…what for?…Why did you go over there?…Without asking for permission?…Why did you go?…Answer me, will you? How could you, without my permission! And don’t tell me that tale about the mission…What do you think, that the patrona doesn’t have any other messengers?…So she has to send you? Every other year she’s managed to get the word out herself, but this time she decided to send you?…In the middle of siesta? Without telling anyone…just why would that be? Care to explain? Why?…Why? Speak up…Why?”

  Nefer turns to stone, she speaks without moving her lips: “To let them know, that’s why.”

  “To let them know! Oh really? Then let me call your aunt in here now, she’s sleeping right next door. Let’s call her in. The patrona herself drove over to let them know…But all of a sudden she had to send you too? All sneaky like…in the middle of siesta…What kind of messenger is that! Without telling anyone…Speak up! Or have you lost your tongue?”

  “I went to let them know, the patrona told me…”

  “To let them know! Is that it? To let them know?…In that heat? All alone, like some runaway, all the way over there…?”

  Don Pedro appears in the door. “It’s late,” he says. “We won’t have the milk ready on time.”

  Doña María shouts: “Fine, take her! You can have her! The little hussy…You’re going to answer me before the day’s over…Go on! Go!”

  Nefer steps past her father and goes out into the night. She walks to the corral where the lantern shines over a confusion of animals. She hobbles the first cow and begins to milk; behind her, Alcira sits at work yawning.

  Nefer can’t yawn. Her heart is twisted in knots.

  To keep from crying she says to herself: I knew it, so why am I so upset? I knew this was going to happen.

  She becomes immersed in the dirty sweet smell of her work, the heat of the cow, and the dull sound of the alternating streams of milk hitting the bucket. Why am I so upset? I knew this would happen…A drop of milk hits her; she unties the cow and goes to the next one.

  I wish all the cows were like Princesa and I didn’t have to tie them up…She winds the rope around the cow’s legs, but the animal is nervous and kicks to avoid being hobbled.

  “Hey! Be still.”

  She reties the knots and gets to work, but the cow moves and kicks until one leg comes loose and knocks over the bucket full of milk.

  Nefer looks at the big white stain being sucked up by the ground, she lets herself fall back on her heels, buries her fists in her eyes and sobs. The pain moves up her throat slowly, stabbing like knives. It’s as if each sob were a tiny baby being born, but her wails are lost to the mooing and stamping of the cows. She’s covered by a veil of tears that erases the world and soaks her face, her hands, and the sleeves she hides behind.

  A voice rises up from the din of indifferent sounds, and through the blur of her tears she sees two large muddy boots beside her, work pants and two buckets hanging from two dirty hands.

  Juan speaks to her again, his faded beret pulled down to his eyebrows.

  “Nefer.”

  She doesn’t know how to respond. She looks up at him as she wipes her face with her sleeve.

  “Hey,” he says, setting down a bucket and scratching his head. “If there’s something wrong you can count on me…If you need anything…”

  “No. No…”

  She’s flooded by a new river of tears. Juan sets down the other bucket and fumbles in his pocket for a wrinkled handkerchief. He leans down and presses it into her hand.

  “All right then,” he says. “Bye.”

  He picks up the buckets and walks away.

  Nefer buries her face in the handkerchief and wails.

  Negro, she thinks. Negro.

  Then she turns the bucket back upright, grips it tightly between her knees, and milks. When she looks up, the stars have changed position and Nefer is the center of that sky. It circles around her like a massive gleaming ship, as much a victim to the whims of time as she is, equally submissive to the shifting of the hours, and in her anguish she clenches her fists, soiled with mud and milk.

  6

  Riding in a wagon is like skimming over the surface of the earth, viewing the countryside from above while the planks jostle nosily below. Doña María’s face is white from so much rice powder. She sits composed with her feet tucked under the seat the way she does at dances, her best manners on display.

  Nearing the chapel, at the edge of town, there are buggies and automobiles and tiny people walking by.

  “Are we running late?” says Doña María.

  “There seem to be a lot of people.”

  “The priest will be glad…”

  “There are the folks who work La Florida Ranch…”

  “And here come the patrones in their motorcar…”

  A plume of dust rises from the plains, trailing a car that looks like a toy in the sudden gleam of sunlight.

  Don Pedro holds the reins in lifeless hands. He’s wearing a clean handkerchief with the two ends tied in a knot at his neck; he sees an owl in the path as he rides past and thinks it looks just like María, but his face remains wooden, unaltered by laughter or sorrow.

  Sitting beside him is Alcira, the prettiest girl in town. Her arms are three times the size of Nefer’s. Don Pedro admires her like a flower out in the meadow: lovely, a beauty to behold; she won’t be an easy catch.

  The wagon needs to be overhauled because parts are coming loose and heaven forbid an accident should occur. The ironwork and the wooden planks clank loudly.

  “And that motorcar, over there?”

  “Hmmm…”

  “They must be guests at El Destino Ranch.”

  “Or they’ve bought a new car…”

  Nefer is not looking. Since they arrived, since they made their way around the bend and into town, her attention has been somewhere else.

  Her eyes are on the general store, on the hitching post where the horses are tied up between buggies. She’s too far away to be able to tell the horses apart and so, raising her arms and pretending to adjust her headscarf, she shifts her eyes to the right, quickly, beyond the pasture and into the horizon, in case a certain horseman were to approach, dark in the distance but recognizable by his posture, by the curve of his arm, or by the gait of his horse.

  But the countryside is deserted and silent under the sun.

  Nefer doesn’t know how to get rid of this fear that gnaws at her stomach and haunts her dreams. Last year she was scared of confession, but that was different. And this chapel, where every step echoes and echoes and where every gesture is caught by watchful eyes – what a shabby suit! What a long confession! What a face lined with sin! And the priest there listening, inside, in that cage of his. He might tell Doña María, Don Pedro, or maybe even the rich folks from the ranch in the middle of their lunch, and then she’d be the talk of the town.

  She used to like the mission. They’d have stories to tell for months afterward, but today Nefer would rather dig a hole in the ground, even if it meant digging with her own hands until her fingernails bled, she would dig with her raw fingers until her nails broke off, then with her arms when her fingers wore down, and inside that deep hole she would bury herself, close her eyes and cover them with dirt and slowly turn into roots or grass or mud, without dreams, alone, her fears forgotten. Because the days are yoked together, one starts and another is inevitably on the way, and then another, and another, and they must be endured. Because man is a pathetic creature, he cannot raise his knife and say, “I can no longer endure this” without saying, “I can no longer endure myself.” He will solve nothing by sticking the knife into his belly. Because the days come and go like an endless herd tromping through an open gate.

  Nefer runs her hand along a rough plank, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Planks are serious, there’s a kind of virtue about them. But the wagon is a rickety bag of bones; it jumps, creaks, rattles. Junk heap of a vehicle. The countryside spins as they jostle along.

  What if…what if someone were to come now and tell them: the priest got sick, he had to go back to the city, there is no mission.

  There’s no mission, no need to greet everyone, no people to look you up and down and say: you’re so thin, so pale. What if there’s none of that?

  Of course there’s a mission. The town is filled with people, and yet so empty. All those horses tied up but there’s no one around. Could he have a new horse? Nefer knows what his tack looks like, and Negro – no, Negro’s isn’t there.

  The horses pulling the wagon know the way by heart, they turn and stop at the hitching post.

  “Good morning, Doña María…”

  “Good morning. How d’you do? Good morning, ma’am…”

  “Nice weather…”

  “Morning. My how the boy’s grown!”

  “Are we on time…?”

  “…young priest…”

  “…yes, let’s go in…”

  * * *

  —

  It’s a box, a little box inside this large building, and the wood creaks, it creaks. The legs of the girl kneeling inside stick out; when she gets up it will be Nefer’s turn. Her turn, her turn, Nefer’s turn; a boy comes to light the candles, he stands on his tiptoes holding out a pole: the flame flickers, rises, stretches, no, the candle is stubborn. Again, the flame flickers, it gets bigger, he moves away. Two flames, another candle.

  The heads all in a row donning colorful kerchiefs, Raquel’s with a blue boat on it and another with lettering – who knows what it says – red flowers, stars.

  The wood creaks, her heart jumps. Is it her turn? No. How did it go last year? What did the priest ask? She can’t remember, he was a little old man, he was nice. Has Negro arrived yet? She doesn’t dare turn around, so many sounds, footsteps, maybe his, maybe…

  What if she leaves? What if she doesn’t confess? Says she feels bad, like Alcira did last year? She’s so frightened by this chapel where every footstep says: here I am, stepping forward. Look, I’m on the left, I’m getting closer to the confessional, I’m kneeling down, pay attention please. The people pay attention. When the confessional finally creaks open they watch to see the look on each person’s face; full of penance? Full of sin? The face says nothing, sometimes it even smiles a little, hiding something. But, what happens before that? The priest always asks a question. What does he say? What does he say?

 

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