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frightened by stories of La Llorona, the witch<br />
who sucks little<br />
children's blood, or the boogeyman, or other<br />
scary stories, Chencha was<br />
trying to frighten her with stories of hangings,<br />
shootings,<br />
dismemberments, decapitations, and even<br />
sacrifices in which the<br />
victim's heart was cut outin the heat of battle!<br />
On some other<br />
occasion she might have enjoyed getting<br />
carried away by Chencha's<br />
ridiculous story, and wound up believing her<br />
lies, even the one where<br />
Poncho Villa removes his enemies' bloody<br />
hearts so he can devour them,<br />
but not today.<br />
Pedro's look had revived her faith in his love<br />
for her.<br />
For months she'd been tormented by the<br />
thought that Pedro had lied to<br />
her on his wedding day, that he'd told her he<br />
loved her just so she<br />
wouldn't suffer, or that as time went on, he<br />
really had grown to love<br />
Rosaura.<br />
These doubts started when he suddenly,<br />
inexplicably, stopped raving<br />
about her cooking. Crushed, Tita took<br />
elaborate pains to cook better<br />
meals each day. In despair, at night-after<br />
she had knit a little<br />
section of bedspread, of course-she would<br />
invent new recipes, hoping to<br />
repair the connection that flowed between<br />
them through the food she<br />
prepared. Her finest recipes date from this<br />
period of suffering.<br />
just as a poet plays with words, Tita juggled<br />
ingredients and<br />
quantities at will, obtaining phenomenal<br />
results, and all for nothing:<br />
her best efforts were in vain. She couldn't<br />
drag a single word of<br />
appreciation out of Pedro's mouth. What she<br />
didn't know was that Mama<br />
Elena had "asked" Pedro to stop praising the<br />
meals, on the grounds that<br />
it made Rosaura feel insecure, when she<br />
was fat and misshapen because<br />
of her pregnancy, to have to listen to him<br />
compliment Tita in the guise<br />
of praising the delicious food she cooked.<br />
How alone Tita felt during this period. How<br />
she missed Nancha!<br />
She hated them all, including Pedro. She<br />
was convinced she would never<br />
love anyone again as long as she lived. But<br />
it all melted away when<br />
she held Rosaura's son in her hands.<br />
It had been a cold March morning. She was<br />
in the henhouse gathering<br />
the just-laid eggs to fix them for breakfast.<br />
Some of the eggs were<br />
still warm, so she put them in her blouse,<br />
next to her skin, to relieve<br />
her constant chill, which had gradually been<br />
getting worse.<br />
She got up before everyone else as usual.<br />
But today she'd gotten up a half hour earlier<br />
than usual, to pack a<br />
suitcase with Gertrudis' clothes. Nicholas<br />
was making a trip to round<br />
up some cattle, and she planned to ask him<br />
to please take the suitcase<br />
to her sister. Of course, she had to hide all<br />
this from her mother.<br />
Tita wanted to send the clothes because she<br />
couldn't get the idea that<br />
Gertrudis was still naked out of her head.<br />
Not, of course, because of<br />
her sister's work in a bordertown brothel;<br />
rather, because Tita knew
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