For the first time since March, a house was mine.
So why didn’t I feel safe when the enormous door of Hacienda San Isidro groaned open and Rodolfo and I walked into the first courtyard of the estate?
A delicate tremor, the tremble of a monarch’s wings, fluttered at the back of my throat as I took in the hacienda.
Its buildings were muscular and ungainly, the awkwardly splayed limbs of a beast frozen halfway into adolescence. The rainy season was ending; the garden should have been shades of emerald at this point in September, but what scarce vegetation grew in the outer courtyard was as brown as the earth. Wild magueys scattered weed-like and drooping on either side of a grayed capilla—it must have once been white—and dotted the lawn that led up to the house. Rotting birds of paradise crowded in scattered beds, their heads submissively bowed before us as our boots crunched up the gravel path. The air felt heavier inside San Isidro’s walls, thicker, as if I had stepped into a strange, soundless dream where the stucco swallowed even the songs of the birds.
Outside of the chapel, we passed into an inner courtyard. Here, Rodolfo gestured to two rows of servants who stood at attention in front of their quarters and kitchen, waiting to greet us. Before they dipped their heads, a dozen pairs of black shining eyes swept over me, cool and assessing.
After explaining that the tlachiqueros were in the fields until dusk, Rodolfo made introductions: José Mendoza, once the right-hand man to the dismissed foreman Esteban Villalobos, had acted as record keeper for over a decade. He was the chief authority when Rodolfo was in the capital. Mendoza removed his weather-stained hat and placed it on his chest; his hands were gnarled with age and work. He looked old enough to be my grandfather.
Ana Luisa, the head of household, was a woman of about fifty, her steel-gray hair parted severely in the center, her plaits wound tightly around her head in a solemn crown. Her daughter, Paloma—Ana Luisa’s double with raven black hair and rounder cheeks—stood at her side. Other names rolled over me like water; I heard them but remembered none, for a figure caught my eye at an arched doorway at the far entrance to the servants’ courtyard.
A woman strode toward us, tall as a soldier and possessing all the same swagger. She wore a faded blue skirt that was short enough to reveal leather riding boots, stained with sweat; a wide-brimmed hat hung down her back by a cord around her neck, but if her complexion was any indication, she rarely wore it. Her skin was bronze and her hair streaked gold from long hours in the sun.
Stay out of the sun or you’ll never get a husband, Tía Fernanda once whispered snidely, pinching the skin on the back of my hand. Though she had never met my father, and my mother refused to reveal any information about how mixed his heritage was, it didn’t matter to Tía Fernanda: my hair and face gave her enough ammunition to find me undesirable. To refuse to let me stand next to her cream-pale daughters at the ball where I had met Rodolfo.
In the end, Fernanda’s behavior meant that I had a golden husband, and her daughters did not. Fate had been unkind to me, but sometimes, its pettiness worked in my favor.
The woman stopped directly in front of me. Her pale eyes were the mirror of Rodolfo’s, and her hair was the same color, sun-gilded and windswept. She gave me a swift, frank look from polished black shoes—quickly gathering dust—to my gloves and hat.
“You’re early,” she announced. “Is this my new sister?”
My lips parted in surprise. Who? Rodolfo had only ever mentioned a sister once in passing. She was called Juana; he said she was a few years younger than his own twenty-eight years, an age that led me to assume she was married. Never once had he mentioned her in the same breath as San Isidro.
“You look displeased,” Juana said after Rodolfo introduced me, a hint of amusement in her voice. It was not warm. “Did Rodolfo not warn you about me?” Her lips were dry, and thinner than was considered attractive. They disappeared entirely when she smiled; her teeth were almost too bright, even and ivory as a set of piano keys. “Don’t worry, I keep to myself. I won’t even be underfoot—I live over there.” She jutted her sharp chin over the line of servants, to a set of low buildings between the house and the capilla.
Not in the family’s house? “Why?” I blurted out.
Juana’s face shifted, resettled. “The house is terribly drafty this time of year,” she said lightly. “Isn’t it, Rodolfo?”
Rodolfo’s face looked a bit strained as he agreed and returned her smile. He was embarrassed by her, I realized with a start. Why? She was unusual, to be sure, but there was a frankness to her that reminded me of Papá’s no-nonsense manner. A simple, easy kind of authority, one that drew the attention of all the servants to her.
I could almost feel the air shift around me, toward her and her undeniable gravity. Rodolfo was not the master of this house.
Juana was.
A breathless fear uncurled in my chest; in response, I adjusted my posture, drawing my shoulders back as my father used to. There was nothing to be afraid of. This hacienda was mine. I married its patrón, and Juana chose to live among the servants. I ought to be glad Juana was so embarrassing to Rodolfo that he barely spoke of her. She was no threat to me. Let her stay in this middle courtyard, in the servants’ quarters. The main house would be mine to rule. My domain.
Those thoughts quieted the unsettled lurch of my gut as we chatted with Juana for another moment longer, and then left the servants to their work and walked through the arched doorway into the innermost courtyard.
Rodolfo had asked me twice if I wanted to stay in the capital, in his family’s old Baroque apartment, but I refused. I wanted the house. I wanted to steal Mamá away from Tía Fernanda, bring her here and show it to her. I wanted to prove to Mamá that marrying Rodolfo was right. That my choice would open a door into a new life for us.
And now, as I at last faced the house, the slant of its gap-toothed roof, its dark windows and age-weathered white stucco walls, a feral feeling seized me.
Get back.
My spine stiffened. I wanted to fling myself back from the courtyard as if I had been burned.
But I refused to let myself falter. I tightened my grip on Rodolfo’s hand and banished the feeling. It was foolish. I was taken aback by Juana, but that was no reason to flee. Not when I had won so much.
Not when I had nothing to run to.