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At this ranch there was a slight contretemps. Somebody had stolen the hosts and the consecration wine. The priest said it was no big deal, none of it had been blessed, nobody would suffer under a curse, they shouldn’t worry about it, in itself the theft didn’t amount to much, but, hopefully, the culprit enjoyed the taste of the hosts and didn’t get a nasty headache from the consecration wine. But he couldn’t say Mass because they hadn’t brought another batch of hosts or any wine in the suitcase. He heard some confessions, visited a little old lady, they gave us each a delicious fried patty of lizard meat, and we turned back home, worn out, the same as every Sunday, unspeaking and dying of hunger, because the patty had only sharpened our appetites.

The priest dropped us off at home and went his way. Mama and I had a meal in our usual silence, while Grandma complained about how late it was. “How come you guys get back so late? You’re going to do yourselves an injury! Of course, I’ve nothing against you helping the priest, but think about the kid. It’s almost suppertime and you’re just having lunch!” Then she complained about her feet. About whatever.

Once we’d eaten, we dressed ourselves up and took a stroll to the Alameda. Around the central bandstand, the men were walking in one direction, the women in another. The town band played the same numbers as always, once again off-key as we’d come to expect. My nanny, Dulce, and I did a couple of turns around the bandstand with Mama and then came home, as it was my bedtime. As soon as we got back, Grandma let down her hair, Dulce started to comb it, and I lay down in my hammock. Not even for an instant did I think about the trick my imagination had apparently played on me that afternoon, nor did I pay any attention to Grandma’s story. Instead, I recalled the piece of paper that the vendor of shawls, scarves, and rebozos had given me. I was burning to read it. What was in it? I pushed aside what my imagination had seen the priest and Mama do, because I couldn’t bear to think of it. But I had to fight it off hard so that it wouldn’t get me in its ferocious hold. It was intolerable.

Today is the first time that I have recalled these details. I accept now that I didn’t dream it, that I wasn’t guilty of having produced it. It was those two who produced it, and I witnessed it by mistake. Certainly it wasn’t my imagination that hung them so grotesquely in the hammock or drove the weight of the man against the naked buttocks of the woman, or made them groan so desperately. They had repeated that scene many a Sunday. Maybe, trusting to my habit of sleeping deeply, they took me along in the car so that nobody, neither Grandma nor the other parishioners, would suspect. I no longer blame myself for it, nor do I blame them. I too would have loved the priest, and if I’d been him I wouldn’t have resisted the charms of my mother.

Finally, today, I can take a deep breath. I’m not the monster who dreamed up an abominable scene to wound the heart and body of a little girl. Delmira, it wasn’t you. Take it easy, Delmira, take it easy.

5 The Ladies Fight

On Monday, after I’d gotten back from school and eaten supper, I took advantage of Dulce’s inattention to scurry off to my wardrobe. I quickly opened my little chest, eager to read the piece of paper it contained. I took it out, but it was hardly in my hands when I heard them all coming toward my room, arguing among themselves. So I hastily locked the chest and hid the paper in the palm of my hand. They came in like a whirlwind, Dulce, my mother, my grandmother, Ofelia, who came to do the cleaning, and Petra, who came to do the washing and ironing. Instead of folding up the paper to stop them seeing it, I started to roll it up. Nobody turned to notice me, but I felt that at any moment any one of them might cast an acid, burning glance at what I was doing. So I rolled it up as fast as I could, as tight as I could make it, while they went on arguing loudly about my crinoline skirt. Dulce was saying that it was badly washed, that it had a stain. Petra was saying that she’d left it spotless, and that if it had a stain, it was Ofelia’s fault, because she was the one who’d hung it in my wardrobe. Then, without pausing in their avowals that yes, it was dirty and that no, it wasn’t dirty, they pulled the skirt out of the wardrobe to examine it, opening up the balcony windows a little to cast some light on the matter. I kept working on my roll, which I now had the impression was enormous because I couldn’t manage to complete the job.

There certainly was a stain on the crinoline. It looked like a dirty fingermark, or an earth stain. “Poor Ofelia,” I thought when I saw it, “now they’ve really started something.” Petra announced that she wasn’t going to wash it again, not for anything, that she wasn’t going to all the trouble of starching and ironing it all over again, because it was Ofelia’s fault. Then poor Ofelia, with her voice trembling, said, “It doesn’t matter, madam. I didn’t dirty it but I’ll wash it.” This infuriated Petra. “So, why don’t you admit it then? Tell the truth. You had it in your filthy paws after you’d been picking your nose.” Then Dulce waded in, saying that an idiot like Ofelia would be bound to burn it with the iron and that Petra had better do it. The argument was getting heated. Dulce, whose complexion was yellow (her face, typical of the Otomi tribe, had an oriental cast to it), had by now turned red and was totally blowing her lid. Nobody was showing any self-control.

“In my opinion, there’s no need to make such a fuss over a little matter,” I heard myself saying, with a new confidence now that my paper was totally rolled up, hidden like a tube between my fingers. “I know what we should do. After all, nobody’s going to see the stain. The crinoline goes under my dress. Once I put my dress on, who’ll know the difference?”

“In this house nobody goes dirty,” brayed Grandma. “If you want to go dirty, you’d better do it somewhere else. You are the limit!”

“It’s your fault, Dulce,” my mother accused her. “The kid is half wild because you let her get away with—”

I saw that the storm was about to burst, and since nobody was paying me any attention I slipped away toward the garden without uttering a peep, to see what the seller of shawls, veils, scarves, and rebozos had written down for me. But I’d barely gotten my two feet outside the door when the storm broke over me again.

“It’s all your fault, and you don’t care! You’re heartless!” my mother was yelling.

“I’m talking to you, and you go turn your back on me,” added my grandmother.

“Shitty kid, they’re going to blame me now all because of you,” howled Dulce. “Where you going?”

“I bet it was her,” accused Petra. “She was the one who dirtied it with her own filthy hands.”

Ofelia was also glaring at me with rage, as if I was the one responsible for everything that had gone wrong in her life.

At first I wasn’t even going to say “I’ve a right to speak,” because I was used to these irrational outbursts of foul temper and I knew they never took me into account, anyway. But now they were all staring at me in silence and I felt obliged to mutter some explanation.

“But nobody was talking to me … It’s got nothing to do with me … I’m sorry, Grandma, I didn’t realize you wanted to say something to me … I was just going out to get some fresh air, because it was starting to get hot in the room.”

“Get hot! … nothing gets you hot, you cold-blooded snake,” said Grandma. “Nothing ever matters to you. If it was up to you, you’d go around dressed like one of those Indians at the market.”