Lilia's Secret (12 page)

Bill struggled out of the sheets the next morning, drenched in sweat. He snatched off his T-shirt, using it to wipe his chest down, and threw back the shutters so the morning sun flooded in, filling up every corner of the room. He clung to the window sill for a moment, drinking in the light.

There had been a nightmare. He fought his way through layers of subconsciousness to retrieve it. A monster. He'd been trying to run away, but he couldn't, or hadn't wanted to. Was his father's monster becoming his own? Bill shook himself. Alberto was wrong. The truth had to come out. You shouldn't get away with murdering somebody and then burying them like garbage. She had to pay.

It was the busiest part of the day in the narrow street that Teresa's house faced. Women were hurrying uniformed kids along, men were heading towards the centre of town. Bill too had something to do. He looked at the forms lying on the table. He needed to get the priest's signature on them – that was today's mission. He hoped the priest had got back by now.

After a good shower, a full breakfast and some time spent with his dictionary, Bill knocked on the door of the priest's
house. A man about Bill's age swung the door open. Despite him being dressed from head to toe in a black robe, the priest's paunch was slightly bigger than his own, Bill was quick to note. It also gave him a moment of satisfaction that the man's hair had receded so far back that he appeared to have a monk's tonsure. Bill chastised himself silently for competing with this holy man before him.

The priest's raised eyebrow jump-started Bill.

‘
Sacerdote
,' Bill spoke in the Spanish he had carefully rehearsed. ‘My name is Bill Bixton, and I'd like you to sign some documents for me.'

The priest stared at him blankly for a moment as if he hadn't understood and then stepped back, gesturing for him to enter. ‘
Claro
,
claro
, of course,' he said as he broke into a smile that seemed to take up all of his face. He led Bill into a room in the middle of the house and they sat down on opposite sides of a heavy wooden table that ran the length of the room. How did they fit the table through the door, Bill wondered.

‘
Ha estado aqui por años
. Oh, excuse me; I would undust my poor English. The table has actually been here for many years. I don't know how it got in,' he said.

Bill put his hand to his forehead as if to shield his thoughts from the mind-reading priest.

‘I didn't know her,' the man went on. ‘I've been here for only twelve years myself: a newcomer. Lilia de Las Flores has been dead for more than twenty. I hear the same stories you do.'

Bill looked at him in mute astonishment.

The priest laughed easily. ‘No, no
soy brujo
… It's not magic, you know. Everybody knows why you are here.'

‘
Por favor
,
sacerdote
…' Bill felt as if he needed to establish control.

‘No “
sacerdote
”
por favor
,' the priest replied. ‘You can call me Padre Miguel.' He leant over the table towards Bill. ‘Would it help if we spoke only English?' he asked, in English.

‘Yes.' Bill's shoulders relaxed. ‘You speak good English?'

‘I had a childhood rich in education at an international school in DF.'

Bill looked confused.

‘Mexico City. I grew up there, before I gave everything away for the church.' Padre Miguel sighed as he crossed himself.

Bill was unsure if the priest was making fun of himself or Bill. He was certainly smiling broadly. ‘Yes?' he said. ‘The documents?'

Bill flushed as he pulled his manila folder from his bag and explained his problem. ‘Padre Miguel, you probably know that my father left our family to be with Señora de Las Flores.'

Padre Miguel gave a short nod.

‘I don't understand why she buried him as an outcast.'

Padre Miguel's face folded into creases. ‘I did not know that. I am sorry for you, I'm sure he deserved better.'

‘I need to find out how he died,' Bill said. ‘I want to take his body home to the States for an autopsy.'

Padre Miguel took a pair of glasses and a pen out of an inside pocket and reached for Bill's folder. ‘This is a very ambitious project, but I will do what I can to help. Thorough, aren't they?' he remarked as he initialled each page. Once he'd finished he held the up sheaf of documents, fanning through each page. ‘At the very least your Spanish will have improved. There are some very fine words you've used in here.'

Bill smiled. ‘At the very least?'

The priest waved his hand. ‘In matters such as these my signature guarantees nothing here. As I said, I'm a newcomer. People would rather not betray the mysterious Doña de Las Flores.' The priest dropped his voice to a dramatic whisper as he said her name.

Bill laughed. ‘So there is a conspiracy of silence?'

Padre Miguel chuckled. ‘I have only met one person who will talk about the mysterious one freely.' He narrowed his eyes. ‘Ramiro. You would not have been introduced to him yet, I think?'

Bill shook his head.

‘Ramiro is a man of mystery himself,' Padre Miguel smiled. He yelled something in Spanish through the door. ‘Just getting us something to drink,' he said, turning back to Bill.

‘He is very old and should have died years ago. Nobody knows why he hasn't, given he is so deeply attached to La Doña and dying would reunite them.'

The door opened and a round woman with grey hair stretched smoothly back in a bun came in bearing a tray on which lay two cups and saucers, a small jug and a teapot. She placed the tray precisely on the table with only a small noise. Bill smiled, thinking of how well Carole kept herself. She and this woman would be about the same age. He felt a rush of warmth towards his wife.

Padre Miguel gestured towards her, ‘Bill, this is Magdalena, the woman of my life.' His eyebrows were in motion again. ‘She makes me tea and makes sure I don't go out with sauce on my clothes.' Though he introduced Magdalena in Spanish she didn't smile; she didn't look at Bill as she turned and left the room.

‘She feels uncomfortable …' Padre Miguel trailed off.

‘Why don't people want to talk about Doña de Las Flores?' Bill leant forward.

The priest's eyebrows went up and down vigorously. ‘I made some inquiries on your behalf. A couple of the old people think they saw your father walking the roads occasionally, but nobody seems to have ever talked to him. That was after he married the Doña. Before, he spent a month at Casa Linda – a guesthouse here when the town was busier. Apparently he walked up to her house every day. To woo her, I suppose.' Padre Miguel paused and raised his eyebrows, putting the palms of his hands flat together.

‘They told me he was a very generous man. But I do not know why they say that. Perhaps he was only foolish, Bill. Hey? Foolish, with big love in his eyes.'

Nobody had told Bill that his father had stayed at Casa Linda, yet somebody must have told Padre Miguel. All these smooth, brown-faced people who'd kept their eyes on the ground and had shaken their heads – nobody had told him anything. Damn his father. Damn the damned heat and damn these Mexicans!

He rubbed his face to clear the exhaustion that was coming down on him like a blanket.

‘Father Miguel, sorry, Padre … She's dead. Why won't they talk? What's there to protect? The living, her family?'

‘Well, no, her family lives far away.' Padre Miguel paused, as if to suppress a grimace.

‘What is it?' Bill pushed.

‘She had a son. He had the unfortunate name of El Tigre, and the unfortunate fate to have earned it.'

‘The “Tiger”?'

‘He was an unpleasant man, Mexico's nastiest criminal. Cruel and merciless.'

‘A chip off the old block then,' Bill commented.

‘No,' said the priest firmly. ‘Much, much worse. Cut people's entrails out and left the sun to fry them as they slowly died.'

Bill winced.

‘And more. He was a
bandido
. Robbed, ran drugs, tortured. A terrible man. He died a handful of years ago in a Mexican jail, but some of his gang may still roam the mountains.' He flung his arm in their direction.

‘You think,' Bill said slowly, ‘that they don't talk about Lilia for fear of offending her son's friends and suffering their retribution.'

Padre Miguel smacked his hands together and held up one finger. ‘That's one guess.' He stopped abruptly. ‘We know she was no saint either.' He grimaced. ‘When bad things happen here, some think it's because Doña de Las Flores is pointing the finger from the grave. There is fear.' The priest leant across the table. ‘It crawls along the streets, licking the buildings. People here are so used to it they think it is normal. Even the young people feel it and yet they know not the source.' Padre Miguel sank back. ‘You want me to help you find out about your father and the Doña?'

Bill smiled his gratitude. ‘First, I have to find a copy of my father's death certificate.'

‘Start here. There are boxes and boxes of papers belonging to all sorts of people. We Mexicans keep our history in the pockets of the church rather than the state.'

‘Here? In this room.'

‘Yes. Now, no more questions. You stand out like a fisherman in the desert. I will make the inquiries from now on.'

Back in his room Bill paced. Lilia had given Mexico its cruellest son and she still had the power to terrorise a village twenty years after her death. Imagine the influence she would have had when she was alive. Again he felt a beat of empathy for his father. No man would have stood a chance.

Yet knowing all of this, he was still unable to keep her out of his head – when he scrubbed himself under the shower; when he sat down to lunch with Teresa and her kids; and when he turned off the lamp to sleep. Even when he lay in the dark and concentrated on picturing the faces of Carole and the girls. A roundness of cheek, a pigtail, a strawberry on a dress Angela wore as a kid … But nothing solid came; nothing substantial to grip on to from his life in Boston. Nothing he felt could save him from the growing thrall of Aquasecas.

After Juan's town Aguasecas seemed a metropolis. Instead of compacted dirt, its streets were paved with cobblestones; instead of small whitewashed cottages side by side there were houses with eaves and tiled roofs and window boxes blooming with flowers. There was a shop with children's sandals in the windows, and another selling paper and sharpeners, pens and scissors. There was a tiny supermarket with trays of buns and hessian bags full of beans. And yet it was still a small town, a village really. It didn't rate in my travel book.

I'd arrived in the evening, when the heat had softened in the air, and the children's voices were loud and poignant as they played soccer in the dusk.

Evening is a good time to fall in love with a place, but it's not so good for finding accommodation. I crossed the
zócalo
towards the lights of what I hoped was a café where I could get a bite to eat. I hadn't had time for food between getting off the plane at Monterrey and catching the last bus in this direction. The only thing I'd bought from the peddlers along the bus route was some roasted chestnuts, and I was starving.

As I got closer I thought it was a good sign that there was noise coming from the direction of the lights. It took the edge
off my tiredness. I was lucky enough to arrive as a middle-aged couple were leaving one of the tables outside on the pavement. It meant not having to lump my backpack through the crowded restaurant and it meant being outside in the calm of the evening.

‘Staying long?' the waiter asked me in English, nodding at my pack. I hadn't expected anyone would speak English in this out-of-the-way place and was slightly put out.

I shrugged. ‘
No sé
,' I replied.

‘You speak Spanish,' he said, grinning and rubbing his moustache. This was one of the other things I loved about countries like this, any evidence at all of being able to string a few words together in their language was met with joy. ‘
Trato
,' I said. I try.

The waiter put the menu on my table and poured me a glass of water. ‘American?'

‘Australian.' I took a sip.

‘Long way from home. What brings you here?'

‘I married a Mexican. His family comes from here.'

‘What's his name?' he asked.

‘Andrés de Las Flores.'

The waiter did a double take. ‘De Las Flores? None of them left around here.'

He took my order and left me to take in the quiet. There was a stillness in small towns like this that you never felt in big cities, even when you were in their pockets of silence. I was up to coffee when the waiter came back and slid into the chair opposite me, extending his hand. ‘Alberto Clavio.'

I shook it and told him mine. ‘I'm doing research on my husband's grandmother, Lilia de Las Flores. You know of her?'

‘Everybody knows of her one way or another.' He frowned. ‘Why the research?'

I showed the palms of my hands. ‘Just to know.'

He frowned again. ‘Why the frown?' I laughed.

He lowered his voice. ‘Do you know Bill?'

I matched his tone. ‘No.'

He saw I was teasing him and smiled. ‘There's a gringo here, Bill, also doing “research”. She's been dead twenty years and suddenly here you both are. Strange.'

I nodded, eyes wide. ‘What's his interest?'

‘He is the son of one of the murdered husbands.'

‘Oh my God.' My eyes widened even further. ‘That's too strange,' I whispered. She was real. Up until this point I realised I'd stubbornly thought of her as almost theoretical – a character in a book. I scrubbed at my wrist.

He laughed at me. ‘You are nervous?'

I relaxed a little at his lightness. ‘You could say that.'

‘Where are you staying?'

I shrugged. ‘Do you know somewhere?'

‘A nervous girl, maybe, but not a practical one. Doesn't this lack of planning add to your anxiety?'

‘It does actually.' I grimaced. ‘But then lots of things add to my anxiety.'

‘Like travelling without your husband?'

‘Exactly,' I laughed. I liked Alberto.

‘There is no public accommodation in this town, but you're in luck. My wife's sister, Marta, has a spare room you can pay her for.'

‘What a night of marvels. Thank you,' I said, trying to convey how much I meant it.

He gave me the directions and left me to finish my coffee.

There was red dirt as far as I could see; just as scorched and barren as the yellow paddocks I'd grown up in. I slipped my daypack off and crouched down. There was a single blackened tree about half a kilometre from where I squatted. It was so lonely. I thought about walking back to town and trying borrow a car, but instead I picked myself up and kept on down the road. Marta had said Lilia's house was not so far after the tree.

I'd decided to try to avoid the mysterious Bill for now. I wanted to get an undiluted feel for Lilia before I talked to people here. Everything I knew about her confused me. It seemed to be an established legend that she was a murderess, although Gabriela and Lupita thought otherwise. Juan had terrible stories about her. And then there was this other thing, that she was the village healer. Was she a monster or not? At the moment in the middle of a sleepless night I found it calming to let my brain worry about the enigmas of her life, rather than the confusion in mine. Yet this morning, on the road, it wasn't working. Everything I saw remind me of my childhood.

A large blackbird took off from the tree and circled towards me; the birds on our farm were magpies. There were always lots of them in the eucalypt trees lining each side of the track to our house and I looked out on them through the torn white lace of my window. I don't remember how my curtain got torn but it happened when Mum disappeared and she never seemed to notice it once she'd come back.

There is a season with eucalypt trees – well, the kind we had – when the bark comes away. I used to get off the school bus and crunch home over the dried bark carpet. I was queen of the world. The eucalypt trees were hardy. They were tall and thin and straggly and they didn't die – so different from the three pine trees that sighed outside my window, whispering in the breeze and swooshing in the wind. They were like Auntie Rose – arms open and inviting.

One of us went to Auntie Rose's house in town one night a week, so every seven weeks it was my turn. She tucked me into a fold-up bed and read me a blue-bird story from her
Women's Weekly
magazine. She'd leave the small red rabbit light on. In the morning she asked me how I'd like my egg and she'd cut my buttered white-bread toast into soldiers. Those were the only mornings I ever had hot chocolate.

I loved Auntie Rose with a passion I kept to myself. Helen would throw herself at her, wrapping her arms around her big belly, but I hung back. When she demanded a hug I would let her drape herself around me.

There was only one time I didn't want to go to Auntie Rose's. It was just before Mum disappeared. Blue, Dad's cattle dog, who had a patch of grey over her left eye, gave birth to seven puppies. They were mewing, pale-skinned puppies, fumbling blindly around and over each other. Each of us kids got one and they all died one after the other. Ellen's runt didn't feed properly, Susan's and Ben's both got run over by the milk truck one week apart; nor did the others last. Within eight weeks just mine and Jane's were left. I ran up the track every day after school to feed my puppy, Pepper. I made a special bed for her in the laundry and I got up early every
morning to hold her back when the milk truck lumbered up the driveway.

Each night for a week before my visit to Auntie Rose's was due I prayed that something would happen so that I didn't have to go. Wednesday rolled around and I packed my school bag with extra underwear and a toothbrush. Helen jumped up and down, her glasses jiggling on her nose, when I told her she could look after Pepper. I'd been fending her off for three weeks, ever since her puppy, Lucky, died – not so lucky after all.

I stayed at Auntie Rose's and the next day Helen wasn't at school. I didn't stop to catch my breath once as I ran up the track that afternoon. I raced into the house, the door shuddering as I slammed it behind me, dropped my school bag in my room, ripped off my uniform and pulled on my after-school trousers and jumper, then I headed back outside to find Pepper. She wasn't in the little box I'd made for her and she wasn't under the tank. She wasn't nosing around the rose bush. Something ripped open inside me. I held my stomach with my two hands as I ran. Mum didn't get home from work until after six and Helen was nowhere to be found. I charged down to the cowshed, where Dad and Ben were marking cows.

‘Where's Pepper?' I yelled.

They didn't hear me.

‘Where's Pepper?'

I was furious and got under the gate, which I wasn't supposed to do when they were marking cattle. I shoved at Dad's thigh.

‘Hey!' he protested.

‘Where's Pepper?'

‘Dunno, love.'

I held my stomach tighter. ‘Dad, where's Pepper?'

‘Dunno, love,' he said, with the same mild tone, as he shot off the gun that bit off a piece of the cow's ear.

I blinked back the tears. ‘Where's Helen, then?'

‘Dunno, love. Check up at the house.' Ben slipped the bar and the cow was free. They sized up the next one, ready to drag her forwards, and she slipped on the steamy poo of the cows before her, falling against the rails.

‘Get outta here, love,' Dad said.

I ran back up to the house. Ellen and Susan were in their home clothes, sitting around the kitchen table buttering bread. Ellen looked up as I closed the door.

‘You know, baby?' she asked.

I nodded my head.

‘It wasn't her fault. She was doing her best.'

She squatted down in front of me and wiped my cheeks with the back of her sleeve.

‘How did it happen?' I whispered.

‘What, sweetie? I didn't hear.'

I asked again.

‘It was freezing last night. Helen was worried that Pepper would be cold, so she sneaked out and put her in the cupboard on the verandah to keep her warm.'

Ellen pushed my hair back from my eyes. My knuckles were white, clenched tight against my stomach.

‘Pepper couldn't breathe in there, baby, but Helen didn't know that. She thought she was doing the right thing.'

I broke away and ran out of the door and down to the back paddock. My gumboot got stuck in a muddy bit and when I
pulled at it my foot came out of the boot. I sat down in the mud and bawled my eyes out.

Why am I remembering that now – I snapped myself from the reverie. As I say, thinking about Lilia's life meant a break from obsessing about my own. I could see her ranch in the distance. It was as if, now I was getting closer to her, it was all changing. Now thinking about her was making me more raw, instead of distracting me from my pain.

As I reached the gate of Lilia's house, I noticed that the wind had picked up – Marta had warned me there might be a dust storm. I searched the sky and it was as cruelly blue as it had been all morning.

Her house was simple for a rich woman's house, but the door was ornate, engraved with worn figures that filled the stillness with silent activity. The house was a square building with peeling stucco walls, and a deep verandah jutted out in front of the bottom storey. I could see a bit of salmon pink here and there where the original paint colour hadn't completely worn away. I went up the path, past a broken fountain, up the steps on to the verandah and put the palms of my hands and my cheek flat against the walls, closing my eyes, as if I could coax Lilia's secrets from the layers of her house.

Deep in the quietness I'd made in me, I finally registered that the noise of the wind had picked up and dust stung my face. I opened my eyes, but had to scrunch them almost shut against the wind and dust. The horizon was a black wall and it was eddying towards me. I couldn't outrun it; it had come up so suddenly it would be upon me in a couple of minutes. I ran to the door and rattled the handle, shoving my shoulder against the wood; it didn't move. I tried to hoist the front
windows up, one by one, and kept my lips folded to stop the dust getting in my mouth.

I raced to the back of the house and tried a window there; it didn't budge and now the black wall of dust was almost at the fence. I wrenched at the second window with a strength born of desperation and it moved. I was nearly sobbing, still trying to keep my mouth shut. Somehow I managed to get the window up a little more, but it wouldn't stay and I had to hold it up with one hand as I scrambled through. Once inside I let it fall with a bang and collapsed on the floor.

After a while I brushed the dirt off the scarf around my wrist and lifted the layers to look at the thin, raw-pink skin. It reminded me of a vulnerable newborn pig. I pressed it with all my strength, trying to stop the itching.