The Day of the Moon Page 5

  Flavio frowned, imagining his daughter sleeping in a cave in the heights of the sierra. He looked down at the blond curls and found it almost impossible to see his daughter eating, playing, living with the brown tribe. But then his shock began to fade, and instead he felt thankful. He sucked in a deep breath of air, took Isadora’s hand and turned toward the house.

  “Gracias, Celestino. We’ll start right away to put things together again. Tell Narcisa that I’m grateful for what she’s done for my daughter. I’ll talk with you in a while.”

  He turned away, taking Isadora to the house. There he left her in the kitchen, telling her to wait for him. Then he climbed the stairs to look for Brígida; he found her in what had been Velia Carmelita’s bedroom. The curtains were drawn in, letting in just a little light. It took Flavio’s eyes a few seconds to adjust to the gloom, but he soon saw his sister. She was crouching on the floor, her back against a corner, knees folded under her chin. Her face was buried in her lap, arms wrapped around her head. She wore a long black dress with sleeves that concealed her arms and most of her hands; it had a collar that wrapped itself up to her ears. Only Brígida’s bare feet were visible.

  The sight startled him for a moment, but then he moved toward the windows and flung one of the drapes aside. Light flooded in, jolting Brígida into rigid attention as her head jerked up to look at him. The declining sunlight washed over her face and body. She was emaciated, pale, dried out. Her hair, blond before, was disheveled and already streaked with faded gray strands. In that light, her eyes appeared transparent, nearly white, as if their pupils had been scrubbed of all color. Recognition, however, let Flavio know that Brígida had not lost her mind.

  “You’ve come back.”

  “Yes.”

  “She died.”

  Brígida raised an arm and pointed at the bed. Flavio looked from the corner of his eye as he reached out to lift his sister from the floor. She refused his gesture and dropped her head back onto her knees.

  “You’ve got to get up. People are saying that you’re crazy.”

  “I am crazy.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “I said that I am insane! Leave me alone!”

  “You must help me care for the child. There’s only you and I. And you’re a woman …”

  “Get someone from the tribe.”

  Flavio stood looking down at her, uncertain of what to do. He tried to sound firm but to himself his own voice was weak, unconvincing.

  “I’ll throw you out if you don’t do as I order. Now get on your feet, bathe, and dress yourself. We have much to do.”

  Brígida, curled and hunched in on herself, did not answer her brother, but he could hear that she was breathing heavily through her mouth. At last she spoke without raising her head; her voice was soft, but firm.

  “You won’t throw me out. I’m your sister, and it’s my right to stay here.”

  Flavio closed his eyes in frustration. He was tired and he could not find the energy to fight. He left the room after a moment, in search of his daughter.

  When she heard the door close, Brígida leaned her head against the wall. She was not insane, but her spirit had shattered. She inhabited two worlds, and she knew it. In one, she was with Velia Carmelita whose memory was so vivid for her that she could still taste her lips, smell the fragrance of her skin. The rooms and corridors of the hacienda echoed with her laughter and talk. When Brígida looked out of a window, she saw herself and her lover in a slow-moving carriage. If she listened carefully, she could hear the soft notes of the duets they sang. She felt Velia Carmelita: sitting next to her, lying in bed with her, caressing her face. She spoke to her.

  The other side of her existence was empty. Velia Carmelita had vanished from it, and there was nothing in her place. At those times Brígida tasted the bitterness of unbearable solitude and the horror of facing a lifetime of loneliness. When she lived in this world Brígida wept, often moaning so loud that the servants heard, and they gossiped about it.

  When her brother confronted her that morning, his presence only deepened the emptiness tormenting her. When he left the room, Brígida stood and walked to the window that opened to the sierras. Looking down, she saw Flavio approach Celestino.

  The next day Brígida overheard a maid say that Celestino had brought back his sister, Ursula Santiago, who was seventeen years old, to care for Isadora Betancourt.

  Old man Flavio remembered that day as he sat glaring at the Los Angeles night sky. He had wanted to rid himself of his sister Brígida, as he wanted to erase the memory of her relationship with his wife, but it was beyond his power. He snorted, chiding himself for having been a coward for so long.

  Chapter 6

  As the years dragged on, Brígida was seen only at table for meals, or during the night, when she wandered the corridors of the big house. She hardly spoke to anyone, which convinced the workers of the hacienda that she was a soul out of Purgatory—como alma del purgatorio.

  During those years, Flavio concentrated his energies on reconstructing his holdings. It took years, but he did recoup almost all that had been lost during the Revolution. Many of the political ties that he had made during the Madero days survived. His allies had not forgotten that it had been Betancourt who had shown them how to weather the bad times.

  Flavio was able to get his hands on added resources from the Urrutia family. Don Plutarco and Doña Domitila had died without any other heirs. The old man was killed when he was thrown from a horse. Doña Domitila’s death happened shortly after. It was considered a mystery because she was not stricken by an illness her doctors could identify. In the kitchens and stables, it was said that sadness took her life. Fue de tristeza because it was sadness that overcame her inexplicably, little by little. Even though the Urrutia holdings had been dismantled by the Revolution, there was still some land left, much of it wooded. When Doña Domitila died, what was left of the family’s wealth was passed on to Flavio Betancourt.

  Flavio threw himself into work and business, but whenever he returned from his trips, he spent as much time as he could with Isadora. He had his daughter ride with him so that she would learn the routine of inspecting the livestock and of dealing with the men charged with their care, using every opportunity to instruct her on running the hacienda. Flavio was happy to see her confidence grow and her beauty increase each time he saw her. He loved her temperament, which was sunny, always ready to make him laugh.

  However, his daughter was not receiving the education proper for a woman of her position, and this gnawed at Don Flavio. He had seen to it that she learned to read and write, but not much more. He took every opportunity to plant certain ideas in her, hoping that they would take root and guard her against making mistakes.

  One morning as they rode, they came upon a bull mounting a heifer. Flavio, embarrassed, took the bridle of Isadora’s horse to avoid the sight.

  “Papá! Stop! Why are we going in the wrong direction?”

  Flavio halted the horses and, knowing that he should take the occasion to teach Isadora a lesson, decided to touch on a delicate subject.

  “Hija, what those animals were doing is natural; there’s nothing wrong.”

  “Then why did we run away?”

  “We did not run away. I want to speak to you about something. It’s this: Unlike that bull and heifer, men and women are governed by rules that they must obey.”

  He looked at Isadora and saw that her head was cocked; she was listening intently. But Flavio did not know what else to say.

  “Listen to me, Isadora. We humans beings, and women especially, are governed by barriers that they must never trespass. If they do, then there is trouble.”

  Flavio took in her expression and realized that Isadora had not understood his meaning. The girl’s eyes told him that in her mind his words about women had little relation to what they had just witnessed with the bull and cow.

  “Women especially? Why not men, Papá?”

  “Because … Because God
said it should be that way.”

  “God?”

  Isadora’s intelligence usually pleased Flavio, except in moments like these, when she seemed dissatisfied with a simple explanation. He decided to invent a parable.

  “Let me tell you about the woman who decided that she wanted to be like a man …”

  “Like a man?”

  “What I mean is that she wanted to have authority like her husband. Well, one day she thought that she could do what he did, and she crossed over the forbidden line.”

  “The forbidden line?”

  “Yes, yes, Isadora!”

  Flavio’s voice betrayed the irritation he was feeling. He paused for a moment; his horse snorted as it flicked flies from its rump with its tail.

  “There is a boundary that a woman should never trespass; only her husband has that right. At any rate, as I was saying, that woman, the disobedient wife, was condemned to wander the Earth for all eternity, weeping and howling, because she went against her husband’s commands.”

  There were other similar lessons later on, lessons in which he was careful to emphasize the differences in races: A white person, especially a white woman, should never mix her blood with a man of another race. When Isadora asked why not, he told her of the deformed child, half-animal, half-human that resulted from such a union, and how it was doomed to travel in a circus as a living example of what happens when men and women fall into such depravity. (When she asked him to explain what a man and a woman do to mix their blood, Flavio changed the subject.)

  Going through those brief lessons did not dispel his concerns about her schooling, and no matter how much he resisted his fears, he was forced to remember that soon she would have to marry. He knew, also, that to be considered suitable, she would have to learn more than just reading and writing. She would have to be polished, prepared, as was expected of a woman of her class.

  Flavio admitted that instead of seeing to it that she be properly instructed, he was allowing Isadora to grow up among the natives, almost as wild as they. Her closest friends were people of the sierra—women who knew only how to grind maize, weave cotton, and raise children. What worried Flavio even more was Isadora’s close friendship with Celestino’s three sons.

  Once, by chance, he happened to be at the spot that the Santiago boys had designated as the end of a foot race. He saw four runners bolt into a full gallop, accelerating, gaining speed, kicking up billows of yellow dust that rose high above them as they approached him. He was shocked when he realized that Isadora was one of the four. They ran abreast, locked into place, neck and neck as their legs blurred with speed. Each runner was so intent upon lurching out front that no one noticed Don Flavio standing up ahead of them. He gawked at them, wide-eyed at what seemed to be a machine, driven by spinning legs, coming straight at him. He barely had time to jump to the side before the runners thundered past him, heading for a tree.

  It was Isadora and Jerónimo, arms outstretched, who first reached the mark. The other two runners were clearly the losers. When Isadora and Jerónimo realized that they had won the race, they hugged, faces squeezed cheek to cheek, gasping for air, sweating and shouting. Jerónimo lifted Isadora, swinging her around and around as she laughed, mouth wide open. She held onto him, obviously elated to be a winner and to be in his arms, and she was so happy that she did not see her father standing a few paces away, glaring at her and at Jerónimo.

  When she did notice Flavio she became very still and began to pull away from Jerónimo’s arms. The three boys followed her eyes and froze, stifling their panting, trying to control their pounding hearts. They had been caught playing while they were supposed to be working: This was the thought that crossed the mind of the Santiago boys. Jerónimo had his arms around her, and her father had seen it: This was the thought that paralyzed Isadora.

  Don Flavio looked sternly at his daughter, his mouth pinched, but he did not speak. With his eyes he commanded her to return to the house. He had nothing to say to the boys, who turned away and disappeared behind the stable. He brooded silently over the incident for days and nights. In the late summer of 1926, he made certain arrangements, and then he had a conversation with Isadora.

  “You’re going to Chihuahua in September.”

  Flavio was sitting at his place at the dinner table. He was dressed in a serge suit and wore the bow tie that by then had become his trademark. At the far end Brígida sat, dressed as always in a high-collared black dress. In the background, Ursula Santiago, Celestino’s sister, silently moved about, seeing that plates were served and removed as necessary. Flavio was looking at his daughter, who was so busy eating that she did not realize that she was the person concerned. Ursula, who stood close by, nudged the girl.

  “Chihuahua? Me?”

  Isadora straightened her back and put down the fork that she had held in mid-air. Her mouth, cheeks puffed out, was filled with food.

  “Yes. Chihuahua.”

  Flavio put a piece of meat into his mouth and took a sip of wine, but he kept his eyes on her.

  “Papá, what for?”

  “You need to be educated.”

  He glanced at Brígida, a rapid, furtive glimpse. He disliked making even eye contact with her. He noticed his sister’s raised eyebrows. He looked away from her, suddenly realizing that although she never uttered words, it was through her eyes that Brígida spoke.

  “But Papá,” Isadora pressed, “I am educated. I’ve learned to read and how to write. Ask Father Pascual. He’s the one who taught me.”

  “Hija, you need to know much, much more than just how to read a book or write a letter.”

  Isadora looked over her shoulder, searching for Ursula. When she caught sight of her, she looked at her apprehensively, and her expression begged Ursula to do something. Ursula instead picked up a pile of plates and disappeared behind the door leading to the kitchen. Isadora looked over at Brígida, and they exchanged a look that Flavio caught.

  “Does this mean I have to live there?”

  “Yes. At Convento de la Encarnación. All the fine young ladies of the region have been received there. I’ve investigated their record.”

  “Live there? In a convent?” Isadora’s voice was now tinged with terror. “With nuns? With only girls?”

  “Yes.”

  “I won’t go, Papá. I won’t.”

  Flavio put down the crust of bread he held, took the napkin that he had stuffed into his collar, wiped his mouth, and looked steadily at his daughter.

  “Isadora, you’ll go because I’m asking you to go. Years from now you’ll thank me.”

  His voice was soft; it was not threatening. When he finished, he looked over at his sister and saw that she had grown very pale. Her expression was blank, and it said nothing to him.

  Isadora left Hacienda Miraflores for the convent school in Chihuahua when she was fourteen years old. As she joined her father in the back seat of the touring automobile that now transported him on his trips, she was crying. He tried to comfort her, putting his arm around her shoulders, but he realized that she was trying to crane her neck to look out through the rear window, so he loosened his hold on her. When she looked out the window, Flavio did too. They both saw that receding into the distance were Ursula, Celestino, and his sons. This image stayed with Isadora during her four years at school, which ended in the spring of 1930.

  Chapter 7

  For Flavio, those years were empty. He traveled to see Isadora once a month, but he knew increasingly little of her friends, her thoughts, her life. He felt a separation growing between them with each visit. He counted the days and months until the end of Isadora’s studies finally arrived. On that day he appeared at the convent door before any of the other parents. He was so early that he was asked to wait in the courtyard, where he and his driver stood by his car, listening to the hubbub of the students saying their good-byes. When the girls’ chatter died down, he instructed his driver to load his daughter’s things while he took leave of the nuns and other teachers.
Soon he and Isadora were in his car, speeding south toward Hacienda Miraflores.

  At first, they sat quietly, as if listening to the hum of the motor. From time to time, they were jostled when the car hit a bump in the road. Isadora was remembering the four years, which had passed by faster than she had expected, and Flavio was thinking that his daughter had blossomed into a stylish young woman. He gazed at the small felt hat that she wore cocked over one eye, the leather gloves and shoes to match, and he was happy that he had decided to part with her during the years of her education. She was, as he had hoped, transformed.

  “Are there many of your friends that will soon be married?”

  Isadora was thinking of her closest friends when Flavio’s words broke into her thoughts. She sighed while she made a mental count.

  “Yes, Papá. Blanca Peralta will marry in June. Isabel Morán and her cousin, Yolanda Lizardi, will marry in July. It’s going to be a double wedding.”

  “The Lizardis are the bankers, aren’t they?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where will the weddings be?”

  “In the capital. Probably in the cathedral. The fiestas will have to be in the Zócalo, since their families are so big. There must be thousands of them.”

  Isadora giggled at her exaggeration, and Flavio joined her. He liked chatting this way with his daughter, even though he knew it was silly. It was the opportunity to bring up a subject that was not frivolous.

  “Have you thought of marrying?”

  Her head snapped toward him. Her expression had taken a seriousness that contradicted the giddy disposition of moments before.

  “Getting married was all anyone could talk about during the last months of the term. But since I don’t know anyone, I can’t say that I’ve thought about it for myself.” Isadora looked out the window at the flat landscape blurring by as the car sped southbound. Flavio kept his gaze on her, studying her face and the movements of her body.

  “There are several young men who would want to marry you, Isadora.”