Breathless Read online

  “I see.” Elena folded her hands in her lap and watched her for an inordinately long time. “A newborn child?”

  “Right.” Grady rubbed her forehead, glad to silence the lingering echoes of those pitiful cries. “Probably a pretty common anxiety dream. Possibly brought on by the fact that I still don’t know what to get you for Christmas, might I add.”

  “I’m not so sure this was a common dream.” Unsurprisingly, Elena didn’t seem ready to let the topic go. “I think we should take a walk.”

  Grady blinked at her. “Right now?”

  “Yes, if you’re feeling yourself again.”

  She was, more or less. Her knees only shook for a moment when she rose. Walking with Elena through the streets of Old Mesilla on Christmas Eve would be no hardship, but Elena’s insistence puzzled her. “Is there a reason we’re taking a walk?”

  “Well, this baby is obviously not in here, Grady.” Elena slung a heavy shawl over her shoulders, serene in the odd logic of curanderas. “Take your scarf, it’s cold out.”

  That much was evident as they stepped out onto the boardwalk fronting Elena’s shop. It was one of southern New Mexico’s best brands of crystalline winter nights, crisp and frosty. Elena’s breath misted from her full lips, but the cold wasn’t unbearable. Grady took Elena’s elbow as they stepped down off the boardwalk, then flinched at the noisy clack of shutters opening above them.

  “Elenita?” Inez purred from the window.

  “Sí, Mamá?”

  “Tell the heathen gringa down there to bring me back my Pepsi. There were three left in this case, now there are only two.”

  “I didn’t take your Pepsi, Inez,” Grady called pleasantly.

  “Well, then bring me back my ungrateful daughter.” Inez perched her elbows on the windowsill and drew hard on her cigarette, wincing down at them through the smoke. “What kind of lousy daughter leaves her poor widowed madre all alone on Christmas Eve?”

  “My father is alive and well in El Paso, Mamá.” Elena adjusted her shawl on her shoulders, unperturbed. “And we’ll only be gone a short while.”

  “Did you turn off the gas in the kitchen?” Inez yelled after them. “The last time the gringa was here, she left on a burner and almost gassed me to death!”

  “That wasn’t Grady, that was me,” Elena called back, taking Grady’s arm as they walked down the street. “And we have an electric stove. Cálmate, Mamá. We’ll see you soon.”

  This was Grady’s first Christmas in New Mexico, and apparently the holiday was a community event. The narrow roads that ran through Mesilla were beginning to fill with couples walking hand in hand, scrambling children, and shuffling seniors. She heard laughter and splashes of Spanish in the cold air. Elena slid her arm free and stepped further away. Grady looked at her regretfully, and Elena shrugged with an answering sadness. Mesilla was slowly catching up with the rest of the nation, but many Christmases would have to pass before two women could stroll its streets openly as a couple.

  Grady was drawn from her glum contemplation of social injustice by the pleasures of watching tradition come alive around her. A cultural anthropologist, she was familiar with Hispanic folklore, but it was still fun to see the luminarias—small brown bags, each bearing a single votive candle weighted by sand—being set along the main streets leading to San Albino Church. This was a major project, involving dozens of volunteer groups. The honor of lighting the candles was reserved for the churchgoing teenagers of the village. When all the lanterns were laid and lit, the electric light in the area would be darkened, and Mesilla Plaza would glow with thousands of twinkling candle flames.

  “The luminarias light the path leading to Midnight Mass, right?” Grady nudged Elena aside as another pickup truck rolled slowly by, carrying more pallets of filled paper bags. “The candles are supposed to guide parishioners to their spiritual home?”

  “Yes, but that’s not all.” Elena waved at a large woman across the street, who called a friendly greeting. “We still lay luminarias up our sidewalks, too, right to our front doors. They’re also meant to lead the infant Christ Child to our homes.”

  “Yeesh.”

  “Yeesh?” Elena repeated.

  “Well.” Grady frowned. “I respect religious tradition, but all I can picture tonight is a naked, bawling baby crawling on its hands and knees up a cold sidewalk trying to find a house, knocking over luminarias as it goes…”

  Elena laughed, a musical sound. “Mamá is right, Dr. Wrenn, you are a heathen. Ay, look.”

  Grady felt the first cold touch of lace on her cheek before she followed Elena’s gaze to the clouded sky. She heard a few delighted yelps from a group up ahead. Snow wasn’t common in southern New Mexico, and this light dusting was nicely timed.

  “I hope it sticks.” Elena caught a flake on her tongue. “The kids around here would be so jazzed to wake up to snow on Christmas morning.”

  The simple happiness on Elena’s face made Grady jam her fists in her coat pockets to keep from taking her hand. They wandered toward the Plaza. Grady was content to enjoy the night and leave images of cold babies in snowstorms, or any babies of any kind, well behind them.

  “And I have finally decided.” Elena walked with her hands clasped behind her, her eyes on the ground, a mysterious smile on her lips.

  “You have decided…?”

  “What I want for my Christmas gift. I want us to have a baby.” Elena walked on for several steps before realizing she was alone and turning back. “Cálmate, querida,” she called. “I don’t mean this Christmas.”

  “Good.” Grady folded her arms against a sudden chill. “I couldn’t possibly have a baby gift-wrapped by morning.”

  Elena came back to her and touched her arm. “All I’m asking for now is your faith in this matter, Grady. A promise between us, that we’ll raise a child together.”

  “Well, you and I have talked about family.” Grady glanced over her shoulder to be sure they wouldn’t be overheard. “We both want the possibility of kids, sometime in the future.”

  “And how distant must this future be?” A dimple appeared in Elena’s cheek. “Your womb is getting no younger, Professor Gringa.”

  “Me?”

  “Grady, you know I can’t.” Elena’s smile faltered. “If we’re to have a child from one of us, it will have to be you.”

  “Me.” Grady rubbed the back of her neck. “Elena, we’ve talked about taking in foster kids, or adopting someday, and we’re nowhere near ready for that. Now you want me to consider getting pregnant, some year soon?”

  “Some year soon.” Elena nodded. “That’s the gift I’m hoping for. And I know it’s an enormous thing to ask, Grady. I’ll honor your decision entirely if you don’t want this. We can still look into fostering, adoption—”

  “Or we could start out with a goldfish. Or an iguana.” Grady walked on, her shoulders hunched. She wasn’t sure why this conversation rattled her so. Elena wasn’t suggesting they break into a sperm bank tonight. That damn dream must still be getting to her. Well, that and the sudden and unexpected prospect of grueling labor and episiotomies.

  The Plaza awakened around them. Streams of flickering lights came alive, candle by candle, leading toward the dignified edifice of San Albino. Snowflakes fell more heavily now, a drifting curtain of white, lending the scene a timeless charm.

  “Feliz Navidad.” An older man with a broad smile waited at the corner, balancing a round tray of paper cups that steamed in the brisk night air. He extended the tray gallantly to Grady and Elena, and they accepted cups of fragrant hot cider, sweetened with cinnamon sticks. “Pass by this way again, Señorita Montalvo,” he said. “My wife is bringing fresh biscochitos soon.”

  “Gracias, Señor Paz.” Elena patted his frail arm as they went on. Grady had noted much of Mesilla addressed Elena with this same friendly courtesy. This community respected their curandera as an ethical and highly effective healer. Grady only wished the village where Elena was born and grew up was more wi
lling to truly know her.

  Elena walked silently beside her, cupping her fingers over her steaming drink to warm them.

  “Elena, if we have a child, where will we raise it?”

  “Well, in Mesilla.” Elena’s smile was hopeful. “Wouldn’t we? My mother would welcome a grandchild, even one who came to us through…untraditional means.”

  “Okay, but would Mesilla welcome me, as this kid’s parent?” Grady spoke gently. “I can’t move in with you, we can’t live openly here as a family. So I’d sleep in my lousy condo in Las Cruces, then try to catch a few hours with you both during the day? I don’t want to hide, Elena.”

  “No. Of course you don’t.” Elena rested her head very briefly on Grady’s shoulder.

  They walked together silently, and Grady’s heart ached at the new slump in Elena’s shoulders. They had circled this topic before, more than once. Long before the subject of babies came up, Grady knew what she wanted. She believed Elena wanted it, too. It was past time they lived together, shared a home. She couldn’t resist giving logic one more try.

  “Las Cruces is a big city compared to Mesilla, much more open. And I’ve got a big condo in this big city.”

  “I know.”

  “Elena, if you moved in with me, she would still see you almost every day. You’d still spend more than thirty hours a week in your shop, right downstairs.”

  “Yes.”

  “Cruces is within walking distance of Mesilla. It’s not like we couldn’t get to Inez quickly if she needed us.”

  “I know.”

  “And there’s really nothing wrong with your mother, physically. She’s not elderly, or medically frail, or disabled. She’s capable of taking care of herself.”

  “Grady, she needs me. She gets frightened sometimes.”

  “Elena, the woman has a loaded Remington pump-action shotgun under her bed. I should know, she tried to shoot me with it. Inez is far from helpless, believe me.”

  “I didn’t say she was helpless, I said she was afraid.” Elena sighed. “You’ve known this about her, as long as you’ve known me. I can’t heal whatever is broken inside my mother that makes her so fearful. She feels safer when I’m near, and a daughter should look after her mother.”

  “For the next forty years?” Grady softened her tone. “Elena, when will it be your turn? When do you get to have a life?”

  “I wish I could help you understand, Grady. I grew up so differently than you.” Elena frowned at the ground passing beneath their feet, as if hoping to read words there. “I know what you’re saying is important, and I worry about these things, too. I don’t have all of the answers tonight. I just thought if we made a commitment to each other now, about this child…it would be a promise to work together, to find a way. And it would say something about us.”

  “About us?” Grady wished Elena would lift her head. She thought she heard tears in her voice.

  “It would say what we have between us is strong enough to overcome all of these problems. That we both believe that.”

  “Elena.” Grady turned and stood directly in front of her. If ever there was a moment for looming, this was it. “Look at me, please.”

  Elena did, and Grady had been right about the tears.

  “What we have together is stronger than any love I’ve ever known,” Grady said quietly. “I may not be real clear on motherhood yet. But I know with absolute certainty that you’re the woman I want to wake up next to each morning, for the rest of my life. If you need to hear me say that every single day, Elena, it would be my honor.”

  Beyond Elena, Grady caught a glimpse of a small flame near the ground as another luminaria was lit, but all she really needed to see was Elena’s slow smile. They stood close, almost touching, the steam of their breath blending. Somehow the sweet intimacy of Elena’s gaze was more powerful in that moment than her touch could have been.

  “Thank you, querida.”

  “You’re welcome.” Grady took their empty cups and dropped them into a curbside bin. Beyond Elena, a cloaked woman kneeling in the entrance to an alley used a tapered candle to light the next in a series of luminarias leading into the dark passage. “Hmm. What’s up with that?”

  “What?” Elena asked.

  “I thought teenagers usually lit a town’s luminarias. And she’s placing them pretty far from the church, isn’t she?”

  “Who is?” Elena looked over her shoulder, then studied Grady intently. “You see a woman lighting luminarias, back in that alley?”

  “Well, yeah, honey. She’s right there.”

  “All right.” Elena smiled and bounced on her toes. “I think perhaps we should stroll down this alley.”

  “Down there? But it’s dark.” Grady pointed the way they came. “And the biscochitos are back there.”

  “We’ll get you some cookies on the way home. Come, please.”

  Grady sighed and followed Elena down the twisting path. Elena walked past the kneeling woman without acknowledging her. The woman cupped the lit taper with her hand, and its glow gave her porcelain features a reddish cast. She wore an intricate metal crucifix around her neck. She had large, kind eyes, and she smiled up at Grady.

  “Evening,” Grady said.

  The cloaked woman nodded pleasantly, then bent over the next paper bag.

  The alley was narrow and apparently deep. A thin, wet trail of melting snow marked the middle of the stony ground, and Grady walked closely behind Elena.

  “Watch that broken glass there.” Grady detected no sign of other holiday revelers in this dank place, so she took Elena’s hand. The passage was crowded with barrels and stacked wooden crates, and they had to wend carefully around them. The cold seemed to have deepened several degrees in the dim corridor. “Do you know what we’re looking for?”

  “I might.” Elena peered around a jag in the alley’s wall. “I seem to remember a…ay, there she is. There she still is.”

  Grady felt an odd prickling at the back of her neck.

  As Catholic shrines go, this one was small and looked long neglected. The image of the honored saint stood about waist-high in a wooden square no larger than a shoebox set on an upended barrel. Old, melted candles stood in a half-circle before the image, and long-dried stems of flowers adorned its frame.

  “My grandmother brought me here once.” Elena slid the shawl off her shoulders and folded it. She lay it on the cold stones at the base of the shrine and knelt on the bunched fabric. “Grady, this is Saint Brigid.” She crossed herself and whispered softly in Spanish.

  “Saint Brigid? Brigid of Ireland?” Grady rested her hands on her knees, fascinated. “I wouldn’t think an Irish saint would have a big following in Mesi—”

  “Excúseme.” Elena opened one eye and pointed skyward. “I am not talking to you.”

  “Oops. Sorry.” Grinning, Grady unbuttoned her coat and slipped it over Elena’s shoulders. Crouching on her heels, she studied the icon while Elena prayed.

  The pale face wore a generically benevolent expression, interchangeable with most religious portraits Grady had seen. She touched the thick glass square covering the picture and gently wiped the moisture from the pane to see her more clearly. The dark-haired woman wore a cross around her neck and carried a lit candle in her hand. Grady blinked. When she focused on the saint again, the candle had changed into a small lamp.

  Grady sensed Elena watching her with an indulgent smile. “Hey. Really. What are we doing here?”

  “You tell me. I’m not the one who was drawn to this place.”

  “Are you kidding? Elena, you all but dragged me in here.”

  “Grady, of the two of us, who would you say is more Irish?”

  “All right, yes, I’m Irish. But I don’t pray to—”

  “Saint Brigid is always depicted carrying a lamp. Which of us saw a woman lighting luminarias leading to this shrine?”

  “I thought we both did…”

  Elena cleared her throat.

  “Oh,” Grady said.
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  “And which of us is having dreams pleading for holy intervention?”

  “What?”

  “Saint Brigid is the patron saint of babies.” Elena nodded fondly at the icon. “Specifically of newborns.”

  And Brigid began to weep.

  They didn’t see the saint cry, they heard her. Elena’s eyes widened as soft sobs sounded in the freezing alley. They both turned to the icon, but the saint still regarded them with serene detachment, dry-eyed.

  “What is that?” Grady’s heart filled with rising horror. “Jesus, Elena.”

  “If it’s Jesus, we better find Him fast.” Elena jumped up and began searching behind the crates and short towers of boxes that cluttered the space.

  Grady searched, too, shaking with cold, listening hard for the faint cries. Her stomach soured with fear and disorientation at this jarring return to her nightmare.

  “Do you hear it?” Elena sounded shaken, too.

  “It’s not over here—”

  But it was.

  Grady lifted a snarl of crumpled newspaper covering a tattered box. Speechless, she could only stare.

  “Grady? What is it?”

  “Uh, it’s a rat.” Grady bent and lifted a small puppy carefully by its nape. Its legs kicked the air feebly, and it whimpered again.

  Elena gasped. “Diosa. The poor thing.” She quickly took the little animal from Grady, cradled it against her chest, and wrapped Grady’s coat around it. The puppy trembled so hard it seemed to vibrate in Elena’s arms.

  “Damn, it’s just a baby.” Grady’s pulse began to settle. “Doesn’t look old enough to be weaned yet.”

  “The little niña is skin and bones.” Elena rested her cheek on the puppy’s head. “No one has been looking after her. Hurry, Grady. We need to get her someplace warm.”

  Elena rushed away and Grady stumbled to catch up She slowed just long enough to snatch Elena’s shawl from the ground at the base of Saint Brigid’s shrine, taking one last look at the saint’s distant smile before bolting after Elena.

  The puppy made weak mournful piping sounds as they emerged from the alley. Grady didn’t see the woman lighting luminarias at its entrance—she didn’t even see the luminarias now. The path was dark.