Inheritance: A Novel Part 24

"I want to read for a while," she said. "I'll probably go to bed after that."

"Okay," he said, scared to go further with what had happened between them, and put his hand over hers.

She pulled her hand away.

"I want to go read for a while," she said, and got up and got a book and went outside on the patio.

Rachel woke up soaking wet. Her skin felt hot. Her clothes were drenched in sweat. The air in the apartment felt hot and close and smelled stale. She threw back the covers and tried to catch her breath.

She was dressed in white pajama shorts and a pink tank top that read, "Tinkerbelle" across her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Paul, in his boxers next to her, was sleeping on his side, facing away from her.

Just as well, she thought, and right away hated herself for thinking it. She hated Paul at that moment, too, because he had made her think it, but that was something else.

She got out of bed and went to the thermostat on the wall. It was almost ninety degrees in the apartment. The air conditioner had stopped working again at some point after they went to bed.

She hit it with the flat of her palm, and when that didn't do anything, she said, "Come on, dammit," and hit it again.

Still nothing.

She stood there listening to the apartment around her. She could hear the wind blowing up against the corners of the house. It made the walls creak with a plaintiff moan. She could hear the floorboards beneath her as she walked. Outside, she could hear traffic going by, tires slapping the pavement, an occasional loud exhaust or the high revving drone of a motorcycle accelerating away into the night.

There was a shabbiness about this place that bothered her in a way the little house on Huisache never had. In that house, she had felt a sense of belonging, a sense that she was exactly where she needed to be for that point in her life. But now, in this place, she didn't feel that way. There were waves of anger and regret and confusion and love all going through her in a rush that was too tangled to pull apart. She couldn't pick one thing to isolate and think about. Her mind felt scattered.

Paul rolled over onto his back and groaned in his sleep. She watched him sleeping, then moved to her boxes of paperbacks and picked one out at random, a collection of Terry Bison's short stories ent.i.tled Bears Discover Fire. But as she stood there, peering into the box, a thought went through her head like the single crack of a gun across a quiet field.

This is what heartache feels like.

It was Paul, of course. His story had done this to her. He had knocked her off balance, and she hated him for it.

And she loved him in spite of it.

This is what heartache feels like.

"d.a.m.n it," she said, and got up and went out on the patio to read.

Though it was the same temperature outside as inside, it felt better to be outside, because of the breeze. She dropped into a chair and pushed her sweat-soaked bangs out of her eyes. She sighed and opened her book and began to read.

But she found her mind wandering off the page. It wasn't an unpleasant feeling though. She was thinking about the trip to Corpus Christi she and Paul had taken right before the end of their junior year to visit her parents. She remembered the look on her dad's face when he saw how big Paul was. Her dad was a comfortable looking man with a slight paunch and incipient jowls and a gray donut of hair around the back of his balding head. He was a kind man, a gentle man. And now he was meeting a giant who appeared to have been carved from solid rock.

Her mother's reaction had been even more telling. She had peeked around Paul's back and mouthed the word wow to Rachel, then laughed at the shocked look on her daughter's face.

The whole family, cousins and all, had joined them later that day, and the boys went out on the lawn for a pickup football game. Rachel and the girls watched from the sideline, drinking iced tea and talking about the boys. Her younger brother flubbed a pa.s.s to Paul, throwing it a few feet behind him. But then Paul did something amazing. Without breaking stride he reached behind him with one hand, spun, caught the football with his fingertips, and came down in the end zone. He moved like a tiger playing with house cats, so effortlessly graceful, and yet so powerful.

The men on the field just gawked. Rachel and her mother stood and cheered.

That had been a great weekend for them. She remembered the two of them floating on rafts in her parents' pool, Paul in his Hawaiian print shorts and Rachel in a yellow bikini that she hoped her dad wouldn't freak out over. Rachel had turned to him and said, "Paul, what do you want to do?"

Paul, not understanding, had turned his head towards her, lifted his sungla.s.ses, and said, "Do when, tonight?"

"No. I mean, what do you want to do, you know, after school? What are your plans?"

"You mean like a job?"

"Well, yeah. I guess."

He squinted at her, and not because of the bright suns.h.i.+ne. He seemed to give a lot of thought before he said, "I'd love to play pro ball. But I know that ain't gonna happen. What I always figured I'd do is be a cop. I've got in pretty good with this interns.h.i.+p to S.A.P.D. The pay's good. Benefits are good, too."

"Oh," she said. "Yeah, I remember you saying that."

"But I don't think that's what you mean, is it? What you mean is: who am I looking to spend my future with. Rachel, there is no doubt at all in my mind who I want to spend my future with."

She tilted down her sungla.s.ses and looked at him.

"Rachel, you're my center. I have never met anyone who can focus me the way you do. It's like, the way you know something is so completely right that all the rest of the world can fall away, but what stays here between you and me will always be whole. That part's indestructible. That's how certain I am that I love you."

Rachel smiled inwardly at the memory and longed for a little of that security now. The rest of the world had certainly fallen away, but she was far from convinced that the two of them were whole. The indestructible felt like it was starting to crumble.

This is what heartache feels like.

Something caught her eye down on the lawn. She put her finger in the book to save her place, stood up and walked to the railing. She had seen a man there, she was almost sure of it. A man in a white s.h.i.+rt and dark slacks, an old cowboy hat in his hand. But there was no one there now. Just the junipers dancing in the breeze.

d.a.m.n it, Paul, she thought. Paul and his stories about the homicidal maniacs who were his parents. Now you've even got me rattled.

Chapter 11.

At first, Magdalena Chavarria didn't recognize her own living room. Her head was ringing and it was hard to concentrate. There was a film over her eyes that she couldn't wipe away. She'd been sitting in the same position for a long time and her back and hips ached. There was blood in her mouth. She touched her fingers to her lips and winced.

In front of her was a stick lattice, only the third one she'd ever been called upon to make. The first was twelve years ago, in Mexico, right after the death of her Abuela. After that lattice, she'd buried the woman in the rocky white soil near their home and gone into town to call Martin Henninger, the young man from Texas who had stayed with them for so long while he learned the secrets of the way, and told him that it was her Abuela's instructions that the power now pa.s.s to him.

After that she made the trek northwards, first crossing the border into Texas with six other illegals. From there she'd made it to this little house on the east side of San Antonio, where she hung the sign of the curandera above her door.

Her first year had been a lean one, but certainly no harder than her life in Mexico had been. She told fortunes for the old women in the neighborhood. Sometimes she offered herbal remedies and prayers for aching joints or helped the younger women with the cramps that came with their monthly visits. Business was never enough to make her rich, but it was steady enough to live on-and it seemed like a fortune after Mexico.

And then, on a cold, rainy morning in early September, an old woman from down the street came to her house, pounding on the door, begging for help. Magdalena went with the frantic woman to her house and was ushered into her living room, where the woman's fourteen year old granddaughter was on the couch, naked from the waist down, screaming in agony from the depths of her labor pains. A group of woman knelt around the young girl's head, mopping the sweat from her face with towels and trying to rea.s.sure her, though from their faces they all knew that death was coming.

"Please help her," the old woman begged in Spanish. "She's bleeding so much. I don't know how to stop it."

Magdalena looked from the old woman to the girl on the couch. She was writhing in agony, and there was blood all over her legs and running down the skirts of the couch. Magdalena felt ice forming in her belly. She felt angry, too. These women wanted too much from her. She couldn't do this. She couldn't wield the power. Not really. She looked at the dying girl on the couch, the poisonous beads of sweat popping up all over her face, and she knew the girl was going to die. Death was already crouching on her chest, licking at her lips.

The other women stared at Magdalena. She could hear them muttering to each other. Magdalena wanted to turn around and run out the back door, anything to get away from here. She came close to losing herself to anger. She hadn't asked for this. These women, they'd brought her here to do the impossible. If the girl died, it wouldn't be because of some complication resulting from a child having a child, but because Magdalena had failed her. That wasn't fair. She hadn't asked for this.

"Please do something," the old woman said.

She grabbed Magdalena's hands in hers and went down on her knees.

"Please."

Magdalena touched the wrinkles in the old woman's skin and felt the fragile bones in her hands, and all at once her Abuela's words came back to her. Life and death are reflections of each other. If you trust in this power that I'm teaching you, it won't matter what side of the mirror you're standing on.

"On the way in, I saw some chickens in your backyard," Magdalena said. "Are any of them sitting on eggs that are about to hatch?"

"Yes. Several."

"Go and get me one of those eggs, please."

"Of course," the woman said.

The woman left and Magdalena went to the girl's side. The other women parted for her.

Magdalena touched the girl's forehead and felt how hot she was. The girl's breathing was ragged and her pulse was out of control. A big blue vein throbbed in her forehead.

"Can you hear me?" Magdalena said.

The girl opened her eyes. There was madness there for a moment, bloodshot crazed madness, but it faded.

The girl nodded.

"Good. I want you to breathe with me."

Magdalena was aware of the power flowing between them, and in that moment she knew that she could help this little girl. She could feel the little one taking strength from her, the energy flowing down her arm and out her fingertips like a living thing.

"Breathe with me," Magdalena urged.

The girl's ragged breathing began to slow. Magdalena breathed in, breathed out. Breathed in, breathed out. Her hand was steady on the girl's cheek. The girl's convulsions were easing, her fear ebbing away from her like she was shucking off a heavy wet coat. The big blue vein stopped throbbing.

"Good," Magdalena said. "Breathe with me."

And then they were breathing together, the two of them in perfect time.

The old woman came back in with the egg and handed it to Magdalena.

"Thank you," Magdalena said.

To the girl, she said, "I'm going to lift your s.h.i.+rt now. Keep breathing with me."

The girl nodded.

Magdalena lifted the girl's s.h.i.+rt and revealed the swollen belly beneath. She could see what she thought was the baby moving, low in the birth ca.n.a.l, fighting for daylight.

"Good," she said, "you're good, child. Keep breathing. In and out, in and out."

She placed the egg on the girl's stomach and rolled it across the downward swell of her belly with the flat of her palm. There was no more doubt in her mind now. She could feel the circuit forming between the fetus in the egg and the fetus in the girl's belly, one life taking shape, one life going away.

Magdalena said, "Do you feel it? Do you feel it?"

The girl nodded eagerly. Her breathing broke with the sound of snot bubbling in her nose and Magdalena said, "Easy girl. Breathe deep. Breathe with me."

Magdalena took the egg away. She was suddenly dizzy and had to steady herself on the side of the couch. She turned and looked for the old woman who had brought her here.

"Bring me a bowl," she said.

Someone handed her a bowl, and Magdalena put the egg inside it and stood up.

She turned to the old woman and said, "She's ready for the baby. Help her."

Magdalena stood on unsteady legs and stumbled away from the couch. She stood in the middle of the room, watching the egg, glancing at the girl who was now pus.h.i.+ng her baby out of the birth ca.n.a.l. She saw the b.l.o.o.d.y baby emerge. She watched as the old woman cradled the still, purple-skinned child in her arms.

The old woman looked from the still baby to Magdalena, her face a ruin of grief.

Magdalena turned to the egg in the bowl. She muttered, "One life goes in, the other out. All things in balance."

And almost as though on cue the egg burst with a sound like that of a gunshot. The old women who had gathered around the young girl's head spread like startled birds, all of them looking at the bowl.

Inside it, a fetal chick lay dead in a flower of blackish red blood.

Magdalena was also looking at the bowl. She was aware of the sounds of the girl crying, though these were not tears of pain, but of a relief so complete it seemed almost spiritual.

And then there was the sound of a baby crying.

Magdalena let out a long sigh. The women turned from the bowl to the baby in a flood of ecstatic voices, and Magdalena stumbled out the door.

From that day forward, Magdalena's reputation as a curandera was secure.

That first lattice she made all those years ago in Mexico was like a slowly burning pile of coals. She had felt its power for years, burning within her with a slow, steady heat that was as rea.s.suring as her Abuela's touch had been when she was just a child.

The second lattice, though, had felt very different. That one, made only four days ago, was like a bonfire in her chest. The need to make it had come upon her with all the unexpected force of a car crash, and when she was done with it, she had staggered out the back door and into the yard where she kept a small herd of goats and vomited all over the gra.s.s.

She came to with the goats pressing their noses against her mouth. Slowly, like an old woman, she rose and staggered back inside. It was then that she saw the lines of Hebrew scrawled across her walls.

There was a black magic marker on the floor in the kitchen, the cap off and probably lost during her fugue state. She picked it up and went to a bare spot on the wall and tried to copy some of the script. She couldn't. For some reason her hand wouldn't work, wouldn't make the necessary movements. It felt like so much work just to keep her chin up, and soon she gave up on the pen and dropped it to the floor.

After that she stumbled into the living room and stared at the lattice in the middle of the floor. It was not very large, certainly no bigger than the one she had made in Mexico all those years ago, but this one resonated with a power that terrified her. She could feel a heat coming off it. Magdalena put out a hand to it and just as quickly pulled it away. Apparently, now that it was made, she was not to touch it.

But she did know what she was supposed to do. She went out back again and led two of her goats to her truck and tied them up in the bed. Then she drove them to the old Morgan Rollins Iron Works, said the prayers her abuela had taught her, killed one of the goats, and set the other free inside the complex.

"Come back with the priest," she said to the goat in Spanish.

When she was done, she drove home and poured herself a gla.s.s of water. She was so thirsty. She downed her first gla.s.s in a gulp and poured another. That one went down in another gulp. As did the third and the fourth. After that she felt a little better, though she did pour yet another gla.s.s and took a few swallows from it before setting it down on the counter.