Chapter 8

Having dealt with one question by nearly getting myself kicked out of the car – not that Cecelia would do that – I asked another. "How do you know la abuela?"

"Through Señora Álvarez." That's the woman who taught Cecelia how to make tortillas and carne adovada, and various other New Mexican dishes, and from whom we get all our clover honey. "I'm not certain of the precise relationship, but they seem to be family of some sort."

"I suppose if I had you list everyone you know, and how you got to know 'em, it'd take a book."

"Perhaps," she said, and again the corner of her mouth moved in her gentle smile. "I am – surprisingly, considering my natural arrogance – more gregarious than you are."

"You know, C, I would like to argue with you on that arrogance bit..."

"But you cannot, Darvin, for it's true. I am not proud of it, but I can be less than gracious."

"Shoot, if you didn't have nothin' to be ashamed of at all, you'd be in heaven already, and I'd be sittin' here wipin' my tears." I said it jokingly, but the fact was that if Cecelia were to die, I have no idea how I'd go on. I know I would, but it's purely intellectual knowledge – my emotions don't believe it.

"Are you trying to remind me that no one is free of flaws?"

"Yep."

"Then I agree." She flipped on the blinker, for it was time to take the Rio Bravo exit. That's another name the Spanish explorers gave what we call the Rio Grande, the river that flows through Albuquerque.

After a moment I said, "A short sentence, no big words, and agreeing with me yet. Are you sure the aliens didn't abduct you?"

"I have never been to Roswell," she said.

I chuckled. "Memphis tells about a guy he knew in the Air Force. This guy passed through Roswell in the early 80s, and said they wasn't all this big alien industry back then, or so Memphis says. Apparently this guy never even knew they'd been – supposedly – aliens anywhere near the place, though he spent the night and walked around some."

"It wouldn't be the first time that something in the past suddenly became profitable, and spawned an industry."

"Sheesh, Darlia," I said, "Mommy's forgot how to talk. She's startin' to sound like the rest of us."

"I think she's driving," my daughter told me.

"Slain by the truth," I muttered – and it was true, for Cecelia had gotten me lost already. The parts of town I know, I know well, for I've been walking them, day and night, for pleasure and for business, since 1992. But my work hasn't carried me into the South Valley much, and even I, as much as I love to see new things while walking, can't always convince myself that it's okay to drive all the way down there just to walk around. If I'm going to go that far for a walk, I might as well keep going, and stop off in California.

She was driving along twisting and turning streets that were barely wide enough for a single car, with blind corners that could get you dead if someone came around 'em in a truck moving along. Clearly this part of town had been here before the Anglos showed up with their surveying implements and laid out grids, the way Anglos tend to do.

Then we came out of the neighborhood into what could almost have been the countryside. Though Albuquerque's growing everywhere, including the South Valley, there are still spots down there where people run farms and have horses and cattle and such. We were in one of those areas, and the impression of being far from the city grew as Cecelia turned into a driveway and pulled up under a spreading old cottonwood. From the gnarled branches and thick trunk I figured it had to be 100 years old or so, not that I know how old cottonwoods get.

The house was clapboard, with the paint faded almost completely away. There was an adobe wall, in need of some serious repair work, that enclosed an area to the left side of the house and, apparently, the back as well. Knowing that it was a curandera's house, I suspected that the inside the wall was a herb garden ... or would that be an herb garden. Some people pronounce the H in the word, some don't.

Cecelia and I got out, and Darlia climbed out too on the driver's side. Cecelia took my left hand, and Darlia took her left hand, and we walked up to the small front porch. Cecelia knocked on the screen door, looking into the dark house, and called out, "Abuela Carolina, ¿está en casa?"

There was a voice from inside, much younger than I'd expected. "¿Quién es?" A little chill went through me at those words. They were the last words Billy the Kid ever spoke, inquiring who was there as he cautiously entered the room where Pat Garrett shot him dead. It's certain that the Kid did not shoot 21 men, one for every year of his life, but he was a murderer, a cop-killer in fact, as vicious a little psychopath as New Mexico has ever produced.

Cecelia replied in a spate of Spanish too fast and too complicated for me to follow, though I did understand hija and esposo, the words for "daughter" and "husband." From within came the words, in accented English, "Please come in."

Cecelia pulled the door open, and we stepped into the house. It had a musty smell, as though something had mildewed so thoroughly that it had permanently scented the place. We were in a living room crammed with knickknacks, but I didn't see much as Cecelia led Darlia and me through into the kitchen. It was lighter there, with an ancient gas stove, a refrigerator nearly as old with rounded corners and a latching handle, and a Formica table surrounded with vinyl and aluminum chairs. It reminded me of the little trailer I'd grown up in, with the older furnishings that Tony and Anna had kept because they still worked.

The old woman on the right had to be Abuela Carolina, for she was indeed old – her face was seamed with wrinkles, her hair was skimpy and pure white, and the flesh hung from her, with the detached look that comes to the elderly as though the meat will fall right off the bones. On the left was a younger woman, perhaps our age, though her hair was graying and her hands showed the evidence of hard work.

Cecelia introduced us in Spanish – I could follow well enough to make out that much. The young lady was Lidia Cortés, it turned out, the old woman's granddaughter. "Her youngest granddaughter," Cecelia explained; Carolina must have been truly old to have a granddaughter in her 40s.

The old woman waved us to seats at the table, and sent a spattering of Spanish at Darlia. But our daughter is truly bilingual – she's been speaking Spanish all her life. She went into the living room and returned with a footstool, which she plopped down beside Cecilia and sat on.