Since her father-in-law died and Francisco inherited his properties, Beatriz had shared responsibility for everything, including the now-missing old woman.
The Morales family mobilized the hacienda workers: some to ask around the town, others to look among the bushes.
“Could a bear have taken her?”
“We would’ve found paw prints.”
“Where could she have gone, if she hasn’t moved from her spot in thirty years?”
There was no answer to that question. Alive or dead, they needed to find her. While Francisco coordinated the search on horseback, Beatriz went to sit in the nana’s vacant chair, which creaked as it felt her weight. She thought it the right place to wait for news, but soon asked Lupita, the washerwoman, to bring a different chair. As much as Beatriz tried, she couldn’t manage to control the rocking chair, to which her body’s contours were alien.
She sat for endless hours on her own chair beside Nana Reja’s, which rocked by itself, perhaps helped by the wind that blew down from the mountain or maybe purely out of habit. Mati, the cook, brought her some breakfast, but Beatriz had no appetite. All she could do was look into the distance. Try to make out any far-off movements. Some interruption in the monotony of the crops or in the improvised and intact beauty of the hills.
How lovely, the view of the mountains and sugarcane fields from there. She had never admired it from that viewpoint, and now she understood the initial charm the place had held for Nana Reja. But why look eternally out toward those endless, unchanging hills? Why look always toward that dirt road winding through them? And why look constantly in that direction, if her eyes weren’t even open? What was she waiting for?
While she awaited news, Beatriz, a practical-minded woman, concluded they were unlikely to find the nana alive. Her pragmatism therefore also permitted her to make concrete plans for dear Nana Reja’s wake: they would wrap her in a sheet of white linen and bury her in a coffin of fine timber that Beatriz had already sent for. Father Pedro would conduct the mass, and the whole town would be invited to attend the funeral of the most long-lived woman in the region.
Of course, without a body, there would be no wake. Could there be a Requiem Mass without the deceased?
As for the rocking chair, she couldn’t decide on the best thing to do. They could burn it, or turn it to sawdust and spread it around the garden, or put it in the coffin with the dead woman. Or they could leave it where it was as a reminder of the body that occupied it for so long.
It would have been sacrilege to let it go from being an extension of Nana Reja herself to serving a practical use again for someone else. That much was certain.
She studied the old chair, because she had never before seen it vacant. It had never been repaired or maintained, but it held together. It creaked a little when it rocked, yet seemed immune to the weather and the elements, like its owner. There was a symbiosis between the chair and its owner, and she imagined that, while one lived, so would the other.
Beatriz realized with alarm that someone was running toward her on the road through the sugarcane plantations.
“What is it, Martín? Have you found her?”
“Yes, Señora. Sr. Francisco sent me to fetch the cart.”
Beatriz watched him hurry off in search of the wagon. They had found the body, she thought, and despite her practical woman’s mind, she felt a heavy sorrow. Nana Reja was incalculably old, and it was to be expected that she would die soon, but Beatriz would have liked for her to depart in a different way: in peace, in her bed or rocking in the wind on her chair. Not like this, attacked by a wild animal, perhaps, alone and no doubt scared, exposed to the elements on that road that disappeared into the hills.
Too long a life for it to end like that.
She shook off her sorrow: there was much to do before they arrived with the body.
When the men returned with the loaded cart, it was clear that the plans and preparations had been for nothing: defying all predictions, the nana was alive.
4
In the Shade of the Anacahuita
Francisco would later describe how some laborers found her, a league and a half from the house. They came to him, upset, because when they finally located the old woman, she refused to answer them or move from where she was. So Francisco sent for the cart and then went himself to the place where Reja was, sitting on a rock with her eyes closed, rocking in the shade of an anacahuita. She held two wrapped bundles: one in her apron, the other in her shawl. Francisco approached softly so as not to alarm her.
“Nana Reja, it’s Francisco,” he said, heartened when she opened her eyes. “What’re you doing so far from the house, Nana?” He asked without expecting any answer from the old woman, who had fallen mute years ago.
“I came to find him,” she said quietly, her voice croaky from old age and disuse.
“Whom?”
“The baby that was crying.”
“Nana, there’re no babies here,” he responded. “Not anymore.”
In reply, Reja held the bundles out to Francisco.
“What are they?” Francisco took the bundle wrapped in the apron, then quickly dropped it, startled. It was a beehive. “Nana, why were you holding this? Have they stung you?”
As the hive hit the ground, the bees still living inside came out in a rage, in search of the culprit. Some laborers ran to get away from the danger, pursued by the insects, but in unison the bees stopped their aggressive foray and returned, as if called home. The shawl-wrapped bundle that Nana Reja still held moved, and Francisco and some workers who had resisted the temptation to run from the enraged bees were left dumbstruck, especially when the old lady hugged the package to herself again, continuing to rock it as if it were a child.
“Nana. What else do you have there?”
Then the bundle burst into wails and frenetic movements.
“He’s hungry, boy,” said Nana Reja as she carried on with her constant swaying.
“May I see?”
As he unrolled the shawl, Francisco and his men at last saw what the nana had in her arms: a baby.
Their horror made them step back. Some of them crossed themselves.
5
Ribbons and Lice
I was never allowed childish illusions about the source of babies. I always knew that the story about the stork was just that: pure make-believe for inquisitive children. My mama never pretended with me like most ladies of her time did. If I threw a tantrum, she would tell me how many hours she had spent in labor with me; if I disobeyed her, she bemoaned the pain of giving birth. After some of my pranks, had it been possible, she would have made me pay dearly for every contraction.
My mama was a good woman. It’s true. She just couldn’t explain where I came from. I don’t mean the physical aspect of it: she was very intelligent, and though she lived in an age of modesty, she knew that the consequence of marital intimacy was children. The problem was that she had assumed her fertile period was over: my two sisters were already married and had made her a grandmother. My arrival late in her life came as a surprise.
With this in mind, it is easy to understand my mother’s shock when she realized she was expecting a baby at the unlikely age of thirty-eight. I can imagine how hard it was to confess her condition to my elder sisters. Worse still to her friends at the Linares Social Club. And I understand her desperation when, after having two señoritas with their ribbons and lace, she gave birth to a little boy complete with mud, head lice, and dark-skinned toads.