Chapter III #2
Alba spun the emerald on her fourth finger. It slipped against clammy skin.
Of all the men in Zacatecas, Carlos Monterrubio did not want to own her.
That was why she shuffled through her father’s papers that night, looking for hard evidence of the Monterrubios’ debt. She knew Carlos did not want to marry, but she was a daughter of Zacatecas: She knew the power of silver hinged not on hearsay, but figures.
She found what she sought in a letter dated 1740.
Twenty-five years ago, a man called Victoriano Monterrubio had approached Papá seeking a loan to buy a flooded mine south of Zacatecas.
Monterrubio.
And after that, there it was: cold, hard figures. Enormous figures. The Monterrubios had required a loan that was as much as the mine itself.
But the letter went on:
He says the infant was given a wet nurse to be cared for and grows stronger with each passing day. No one has claimed her, though she is as fair as ivory.
Her heart stuttered in her chest. She stared at the letter—no, she stared through the letter, mouth dry.
Papá’s handwriting related how when he went to Mina San Gabriel to inspect the property, Victoriano Monterrubio told him that an abandoned infant had been discovered.
If Papá and Mamá wanted the baby, he would swear an oath to never tell.
Apparently he never had.
No one had.
Mamá had a collection of fables about Alba’s origins and chose from them as if picking a playing card at random.
Alba was a foundling nursed back to health by the Carmelite sisters; Alba was the niece, or granddaughter, of Mamá’s favorite housekeeper (dearly departed, may God rest her soul, and therefore conveniently unable to be questioned on the matter); Alba was a wicked fairy child sent to torment Mamá with questions.
Why did they never tell her the truth?
Though she is as fair as ivory . Was it because she was of an unknown casta, but pale enough that they could pretend she was criolla? All in the pursuit of claiming her, shaping her, making her something she was not, owning her, lifting her up on marionette strings…
They had never wanted a daughter. They wanted another possession to add to their collection of beautiful, valuable objects.
A hollow had opened in Alba’s gut as she read; a hot sweep of anger filled it like water flooding the Monterrubio mine.
She replaced the papers with shaking hands.
By marrying Carlos, she could get away from her parents. She would be free of anyone else trying to make her their own. Free of the sweaty handed, the groping, the ones who told one another they found her ugly but lusted for her father’s silver.
And so, the following day, she pulled Carlos aside at a society gathering to speak to him about financial realities.
About facts: Papá’s impatience, the numbers that tied a sword hanging over the Monterrubios’ head on an ever-fraying thread, the truth that Papá would never call in the debts of a family into which his daughter had married.
I don’t want a husband , she had said, only a married name and my own space . They could continue as they were, as friends. Together, they could hide behind the curtains from a world that would push them in directions they did not want.
Carlos had not looked at her like she was a monster, like she deserved. He rubbed a hand along his jaw. He gave her proposal, such as it was, the weight and consideration that such a decision entailed.
He said: That sounds mutually beneficial.
The emerald was on her left hand the next day.
“That is a sin,” the priest said.
His voice shattered the spell.
Alba was in a stuffy confessional, still thick with incense and her mother’s perfume, on the opposite side of a grate from a stranger.
She should stand and leave the confessional at once. Would Mamá know what she had done and send her right back in?
“You disobeyed your parents by becoming betrothed to someone they did not want you to marry. To disobey one’s parents contravenes the fifth commandment,” the priest said sternly. “Do you know which that is, mi hija?”
Heat flushed her neck and crept up to her face. Condescension never failed to make annoyance rise like bile in her breast.
“?‘Honor thy father and thy mother,’?” she muttered.
A hum of assent from the other side of the grate.
“In Proverbs, it is written that ‘the eye that mocks a father and scorns to obey a mother will be plucked out by the ravens of the valley and eaten by the vultures,’?” the priest said.
“You deliberately disobeyed your parents. I hope you will be more obedient to your future husband.”
This struck like a physical blow. She flinched. “Yes, Padre.”
“Do you wish to confess anything else?”
She seized the handles of every door that led to her heart and yanked them shut. “That is all I can remember.”
Another lie. Forgive her, Padre, for she had sinned.
“Then recite the Act of Contrition,” the priest said.
Alba inhaled, leaning her weight on her elbows.
“Oh my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee.” She knew the prayer backward, forward, upside down, in her sleep. “I detest all my sins, because I dread the loss of Heaven and the pains of Hell, but most of all because they offend Thee.”
She did not detest what she had done, though she sat at the center of a silvery web of deceit, each of the threads firmly wrapped around her hands, a spider spinning herself one step ahead of the snapping jaws of fate.
She had outmaneuvered Mamá and Papá and driven herself forward. For the first time, she decided where to step. If she gave up her plan, she would die, and her body would become an empty shell, a wooden puppet, for as long as it then saw fit to walk the earth.
“I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace, to do penance and to amend my life.”
The priest’s voice on the other side of the grate replied in a low murmur. A suggestion for penance; a novena, or two, or eleven, Alba did not care.
The rite of confession continued, and Alba plotted to sin again.