Lilia's Secret (22 page)

It was not the house of a rich woman, but of a meticulous one. There were photographs of young women and small children on the two sideboards, a television and a nest of wooden tables near the armchair.

Bill and Angela sat in the quiet waiting for Señora Piña to come back from the kitchen. His father's daughter. She must have been in her early fifties but with her grey hair and slow movements she looked older than Bill.

Her daughter, Maria, had gone to organise the iced tea, and the señora had insisted on helping her. It was her house, after all, and her hospitality, she'd grumbled. Maria had raised her eyebrows but slowed her gait to her mother's. Maria was perhaps in her early thirties, Bill calculated. Older than his girls. Both women had dressed for the occasion. Bill felt as if he hadn't made enough of an effort as he sat in his plaid shorts.

He counted the squares on the tiled floor. He was panicking; he hadn't made a game plan.

Angela looked tense across the table. He glanced at her. She'd been taciturn with him since their argument, and was not giving much away about her trip to Monterrey, but he was
sure she was secretly pleased that he'd asked her to come with him on this visit. They hadn't spoken about the horrible things they'd said to each other. Bill had planned to, had practised the night before, but had found too many sights on the journey to point out to her instead. He hadn't told her why they were making the trip. It was too new, too raw. He'd asked Padre Miguel to keep it quiet too. He gave her a quick smile, but felt as if he were on another planet.

When they were settled around the table, Señora Piña made as if to speak. Maria hushed her and asked Bill, ‘Are you a journalist?'

He understood enough to shake his head before Angela had translated.

Maria nodded towards her mother, as if giving her consent.

‘My daughters think they have to protect me,' Señora Piña grimaced.

‘How many daughters do you have?' Angela smiled. They talked for a few minutes, with Angela summarising for Bill every few sentences. He'd never seen her like this, putting people at their ease. Where was his sullen daughter now? She smiled and put a question from Señora Piña to him.

‘What do you want to know?'

‘I'd like you to tell me everything you know about Doña de Las Flores,' Angela translated for Bill.

She smiled. ‘That is far too hard. You ask questions,' she demanded.

He thought for a moment. ‘Did you know Lilia?'

‘No,' she smiled, as if she were playing a complicated mind game.

‘Your father was married to her though?'

‘That is the only fact I know about my father. He was married to Lilia de Las Flores. My mother was a servant in their house.'

‘Did your mother love your father?' Angela stared at Bill when he put the question. ‘What has that got to do with anything?' she asked.

‘Just ask her,' Bill commanded.

It was Señora Piña and Maria's turns to stare.

‘My mother did the washing and the ironing. Of course she didn't love that man.'

‘Did your mother and your father have … close relations for a long time?'

Señora Piña cackled. ‘“Relations” is a very courtly word,' she said. ‘I think they had “close relations” for a very short time – long enough for her to grow big enough for Lilia to guess. Then all hell broke out.'

Maria made as if to quieten her mother. ‘Don't hush me,' Señor Piña retorted.

‘What happened when Lilia found out?'

‘She beat my mother, who at seventeen was barely more than a child herself, and threw her out of the house. My mother says she was lucky to escape alive. Especially since she found out later that my father hadn't.'

‘What happened to your father?' Bill held his breath.

‘He died shortly after.'

‘From what?' Bill gripped the chair.

‘He became ill. They say she killed him.' She put one hand in the air dismissively. ‘I don't know.'

Bill closed his eyes. She didn't know any more than him. He wanted to get out of her kitchen. He turned to say as
much to Angela, but she was already translating again. Bill bit his lip.

‘My mother, four and a half months pregnant, bruised and bloody, had to crawl all the way into town. It took her seven hours. She was a determined woman. Nobody wanted to help her when she got there, a refugee from the Doña's house. Somehow she managed to get a bus back to her mother's, two villages away in San Miguel.

‘Until I was born, she stayed inside, never once going out.'

‘Why not?' Angela asked.

‘In the beginning she wasn't well, and then she was scared of what people would say.'

‘This is not on the point,' Maria interrupted.

‘Hush, Maria,' Señora Piña said. ‘Let them ask their questions.'

Bill broke in. ‘How come you named your daughter Maria? That's one of the names of Doña de Las Flores.'

The señora sat back and slapped the table. ‘That's more like it. I named Maria for Doña de Las Flores.'

Bill frowned when Angela translated. ‘She wasn't your midwife was she?' he asked.

She cackled again. ‘No, as I said, I never met her.'

‘Why did you name your child after the woman who had beaten your mother and possibly murdered your father?'

She tapped the table in front of her. ‘What do I care about my father? A few moments against the boilers in the laundry; they don't count for much.' She stopped and leant towards Bill. ‘I care about what she did for the woman who brought me into the world, who wiped my mouth when I was learning to eat, who curled my hair when I was getting ready for my fifteenth
birthday party, who held my hand when I gave birth to my own baby.'

‘But Doña de Las Flores had tried to beat her to a pulp. Why would you honour somebody who'd hurt your mother like that?' Angela asked.

Señora Piña stabbed the table, and made as if to get up. Her daughter pulled her down. ‘Doña de Las Flores did hurt my mother,' she allowed. ‘Everyone is allowed to get angry. But she also sent a servant to our home with a little piece of paper wrapped around enough money to keep us.'

Bill and Angela gasped.

‘Yes,' the señora nodded, pleased with their response. ‘Every three months for twenty years. At first she sent Sol, one of the women my mother had worked with at the hacienda, but after she died another woman came. We didn't know her and she never stopped for coffee and a chat as Sol had.'

Bill tried to interrupt, but she wouldn't be stopped.

‘For many years I thought Sol was giving us that money. Then, on my tenth birthday, my mother sat me down on the very chair you are sitting in.'

Bill looked around, half expecting to see her mother.

‘She sat just where I am sitting now and she took my hands in hers.' Señora Piña made as if to take Bill's hands. He drew back slightly. Her hands sat like islands in the middle of the table.

‘She said, “It is time for you to grow up. That means it's time you heard the truth. Our guardian angel is Doña Del Las Flores.”'

Señora Piña paused to take a sip from her glass. ‘I had the same question as you,' she said, nodding at Bill and Angela.
‘Why did she do that? My mother never found out. She tried to thank the Doña, but her notes came back unopened.

‘After three years of the money coming every month my mother took a bus to Aguasecas. She wore her second-best dress with the flowers on the collar. She'd thought about waiting outside the church but, it being so public, the Doña may have reacted badly. She'd thought about going to Doña de Las Flores' house, but she didn't want to have to crawl back to town if she was beaten again. So she waited on a quiet street on the Doña's route to mass.

‘My mother's hands trembled. She'd made it worse by arriving far too early. But finally she saw Lilia turn the corner in her black dress, which swept the ground behind her. After her came her servants, all in a line. My mother knew all of them; none dared look at her.

‘My mother wanted to run away, or faint, but she forced herself to step out on to the road and to kneel. The Doña did not pause.

‘My mother waited until she and her entourage had gone around the next corner and then she sat back on her heels and sobbed, she was so relieved. She got back on the bus and never tried to say thank you again. The next month when Sol came with her little package there was double the amount of money, and it stayed like that until the day the Doña died.'

Señora Piña sat back, nodding in amazement at her own story. ‘Lilia de Las Flores allowed us to live and eat and buy small luxuries, because of course nobody would have given a woman with a bastard a job. It would have been very hard on my grandmother to support us all with her cleaning. It didn't
matter when she started to get too old to work, we had enough money for all of us.'

‘So she was a force for good in your life?' Angela asked tentatively when Bill remained silent.

Señora Piña nodded. ‘That's why Maria carries her name: to honour this woman who made her life possible.'

Maria, sitting beside her mother, seemed to have thawed a little with the story, because she stood up, smoothed down the back of her skirt and went into the kitchen. Bill glanced at her back. ‘What is your first name?' he asked in a low voice in Spanish.

Señora Piña looked at him as if he were mad.

‘Your name?' he whispered urgently.

‘Paulina,' she finally said.

‘Paulina, your father was my father.'

‘Dad!' yelped Angela. ‘Do you know what you just said?'

He turned fully to her, looked in her eyes and nodded. ‘This woman is my half-sister, your aunt.'

Angela looked from Señora Piña to Bill and back again. Finally she managed to say, ‘How long have you known?'

‘Padre Miguel told me last night.' He had to hold his hands together to stop them shaking.

‘Why didn't you tell me?'

He shook his head. ‘I meant to, but … it was too hard to take in.'

‘Are you mad?' Señora Piña broke in.

‘What was your father's name?' Bill asked.

‘Guillermo,' she said.

‘That's Spanish for William,' Angela said. ‘That was Grandfather's name.' She looked at Señora Piña, who
squeezed her eyes closed and then got up. She opened and shut drawers in the credenza until she finally found what she was looking for.

Maria came back into the room carrying a plate of small round biscuits. ‘What are you doing, Mama?'

Señora Piña sat back down. ‘I feel like a cup of coffee, Maria. No, make that a small tequila. I'm sure we'd all like a
tequilita
,' she said, gesturing at Bill and Angela. Maria went back to the kitchen.

Señora Piña put a little pouch on the table. ‘It was his. The only thing my mother had. I wanted to throw it out many times. Now I see why I never could.' She drew out a small package and unwrapped it. A gold ring. He remembered the ring from when he was a boy. He took it and turned it over – there were his initials, ‘W.B.'

‘It's my father's ring,' his voice croaked. He looked at Angela, tears in his eyes. Angela let out a small cry and took his arm, holding fast.

Maria came running back into the room. ‘What is it?' she exclaimed, taking in the scene.

Her mother stood up and drew her to the table. ‘Meet your uncle.'

‘What a joy to hear your voice,' Gabriela said. I smiled at her exuberance. ‘It's Maddy,' she told somebody in the room with her. I heard a squeal and then Lupita came on the line. ‘We've been wondering when we'd hear from you again, haven't we sister?' said Lupita.

‘Yes, yes,' agreed Gabriela. I imagined them cradling the handpiece between them.

It had only been a couple of weeks but it seemed like an age since I'd sat with them in that smoke-filled restaurant talking in the abstract about Lilia.

‘You were both right,' I admitted. ‘There's so much more to Lilia.'

‘We knew.'

‘I don't think even you two could have imagined the half of it,' I said. I started with the news of El Tigre, because that was the biggest piece of the puzzle.

There was a silence down the line.

‘El Tigre?' whispered Lupita finally.

‘Our
grandfather
?' added Gabriela. I heard them both light up cigarettes.

‘This is a fact?'

‘This will take some getting used to, sister,' said Gabriela. I could feel Lupita nodding as she sucked on her cigarette.

‘So our father and uncle were
his
children?' Gabriela went on.

‘Maybe that's why she treated them so badly,' Lupita said. ‘You know, to beat their father's evil out of them.'

‘Where is their mother, our grandmother?' asked Gabriela.

‘Alive?' Lupita almost squealed.

‘We don't know. She disappeared when the boys were small. We only have her first name – Amalia. I've been through the news clippings about El Tigre and there's no word of a wife or sons.'

I gripped the phone, trying to make out what they were saying to each other.

‘Lilia had two children,' I interrupted them. ‘Her first child was a little girl, who also disappeared. In all your extraterrestrial communing with Lilia did you ever get anything about a child?'

There was a silence for a moment then came, ‘No, no,' in unison.

‘If you have a vision about someone does it mean that someone is dead?' I asked tentatively.

‘You've seen something!' Lupita cried.

‘What?' demanded Gabriela.

I described the blood around Juan's throat and then the baby's feet. ‘Could the feet belong to Lilia's daughter?'

‘Maybe,' they agreed.

‘Does that mean she's dead?' I squeezed my eyes shut, waiting for the verdict.

They conferred together in Spanish so rapid I couldn't
follow. I nervously toyed with the coins I had lined up ready to feed the slot.

It was Lupita who spoke first. ‘This child could be anybody's; could be yours …'

‘I don't want a baby,' I blurted out. I expected them to remonstrate with me; what kind of a woman doesn't want a baby? But neither said anything.

I gripped the phone harder. ‘I don't want a baby,' I enunciated, as if I were making a declaration of independence.

‘If a baby wants to come through to you, it'll come – whether you want it or not,' said Lupita dismissively. ‘But no, a vision is not the same as a ghost.'

‘Should I dig under the bush?'

‘Oh no, not you, sister,' said Gabriela.

‘Get a man to do it,' added Lupita.

After I'd rung off I sat in the square and took out Magdalena's little magic pot. I had to scrape out the bottom to apply the cream to my wrist. The area had that pink fragility of newborn skin. A small girl dressed in her Sunday best stopped to giggle at me. I dropped my wrist and laughed back and she ran away back to her friends. While I was talking to Lupita and Gabriela the church doors had opened and people were streaming down the steps into the square. Mass here was the focal point of the week.

It had been like that for us growing up. It was the one social gathering of the week. Women would spend whole weeks in their own farmhouses, never seeing anybody but their children
and husband. The men fared better because there was usually a heifer to check or a spare part to chase down, which would take them to another farm at least once a week.

On Sunday mornings Mum would yell at us ‘get your socks on', and ‘find your good shoes', and ‘where's your white ribbon?' She'd whip us all into action with the sound of the big wooden hairbrush crashing down against the surface of the bench, and finally pile us into the car; the older children in their school uniforms because we couldn't afford nice ‘civvies' for them and Mum didn't have the time to make them.

Dad would have got a late start on getting ready – there was always something that needed to be done with the cows after milking – so we'd be in the car waiting, Mum nearly in tears after the pressure of getting herself and seven kids ready, and we'd still almost be late for church. Ben, from even before he could see over the dashboard, would reverse the old Holden out of the garage and position it, ready and pumping, with the driver's door open.

Dad would come flying out of the house, charging down the path combing his hair, and jump into the front as the car took off. At the last second Ben would slide over and Dad would take over the accelerator and we'd zoom off down the track.

At church we were a small, tight group who gathered after the service. The women stood in a circle in the church porch, the men two metres away in the open. The kids played in the paddock beside the church, big sweeping games that needed space, such as ‘What's the Time, Mr Wolf?' and ‘Scarecrow Tiggy'. In the unspoken rule book, before you hit puberty you were allowed to hang around the legs of either group. The men would talk about the crops and rain and drought. The women
would talk about people. The women's circle was close and personal and warm; someone was always calling someone else ‘a poor dear'. The men's circle was a strange land. Mr Baden's hooked nose was always red, Mr Salgor talked a lot, but no one looked at him much when he spoke. They looked down and pawed at the ground, digging into it with the heel of their boots.

At a secret signal nobody ever saw, suddenly you were too old to play games and you took your quiet place among the women if you were a girl, or the men – arms folded – if you were a boy.

Twenty minutes after the service ended people started to dribble away. First went those who only had to walk down the road to be home, then those in cars who lived in the town. The last to leave were the farm people – always two families, ours and the Dogels. Mrs Dogel and my mother would give several warnings to their husbands, pausing in their conversation to sing out, ‘The roast will be burning.' They were always ignored.

The two women would make their way down the path to the front gate, stopping to chat at the same landmarks each week, first when they drew level with the men's group, then at the rosebush. When they reached the gate, that was the signal for us to finally pay attention to our mother's calls and pour into the cars. Ours was soon packed tightly with children, the younger ones perched forward on the seats or sitting on the knees of the older kids.

Mrs Dogel and my mother would say their goodbyes, call out again to remind their husbands of the meat in danger of spoiling in the oven at home, and get into their respective cars.
With hands folded they'd wait, and Mum would send us out at intervals to hurry our father along.

Sometimes there'd be good-tempered yelling and skylarking in our car, depending on Mum's mood, and how far down the path the two men had advanced. Once they hit the gate, they'd exchange their last remarks and hurry towards us. Dad would wrench open the driver's door and jump into the seat with tremendous energy, as if to make up for the dawdling of the last twenty minutes. He'd slam the car into gear and twist his head as he reversed. This was our signal. ‘Can we have an ice cream, Dad? Can we, Dad? Can we?'

‘We'll see,' he'd say every time, with a smile in his voice. He was always in a good mood after church, even if Mum was a tight bundle of bitterness sitting beside him. I think he had perfected the art of shutting out other people's feelings way before I came along. That was his salvation and his downfall.

We'd coast down the hill to the bluestone store, never quite sure that he'd stop at the shop. We usually did though – to pick up our mail, to fill the car with petrol, and to buy Choc Wedges for us kids and one Barney Banana for Dad. Mum would sit in the car with her hands still crossed on her lap. There was nothing but a few kilometres between her and saving the roast now.

By the time we hit the last hill before our place we'd have finished our ice creams. Dad would put the car in first gear and snail down that steep decline so slowly that we'd all start yelling at him to bring him back to the task at hand. Sometimes Ellen would bark out commands to the rest of us, ‘Susan, you check the level of the creek; Ben, you keep an eye on the Lucerne crop; Maddy, you report on the number of cows on
the flat; Dad, you can keep your eyes on the road now.' I could see Dad's grin out of the side of his mouth from where I sat in the back seat. Whenever Ellen gave Helen or me a job like that we would report earnestly that the creek was higher than two days ago, or that there were a lot of cows.

When we'd got through our front door the roast was never spoilt. We dashed in, changed out of our church clothes back into our old woolly jumpers with holes under the arms, and raced out to collect kindling for the fire, or chop wood, or whatever needed to be done as Mum turned the vegetables and put the peas to boil.

Sunday was the quiet, easy day of the week, when we acted like a family. Of course, that was before my mother disappeared and my father hung himself.