Part 2 (2/2)

It was a stupid question that required no answer from my mother. I might as well have asked why an oxen is whipped to pull a plow. Mestizos and indios were dray animals. Forbidden to leave the haciendas, they were the property of their Spanish masters. When they strayed, they were whipped like any other animal that disobeyed its master. The king's laws actually protected indios from being put to death, but there was no protection for half-bloods.

As the man got closer, I saw that his face was marred by more than blood.

”His face is branded,” I said.

”Mine owners brand their slaves,” Miaha said. ”When they're traded or sold to other mines, more brands are burned on. This man was branded by many masters.”

I had heard of this practice from the fray. He explained that when the Crown gave the conquistadors their original land grants, they also granted them tribute-paying indios. Many of these early settlers branded their indios. Some even burned their initials into the foreheads of the indios to ensure that they could not stray. The king finally forbade the branding of encomienda indios and it came to be used only for the forced laborers and criminals who work in the dreaded silver mines.

From the indios who had come out of their huts, I heard the word casta hissed as an insult. The insult was intended as much for me as the mine slave. When I looked toward the group, one of the men caught my eye and spat upon the ground.

”Imbesil!” my mother said angrily.

The man melted into the group to avoid my mother's ire. While the villagers may have viewed my tainted blood with repugnance, my mother was india pura. Of more importance, they did not want to antagonize her because it was known that Don Francisco slept with her from time to time. My own position as the supposed b.a.s.t.a.r.d of the grandee won me nothing-there was no blood-tie to Don Francisco that was recognized by him or anyone else.

The indios also believed in the myth of sangre puro, the purity of their own blood. But I represented more than tainted blood to them. A mestizo was a living reminder of the rape of their women and the ravaging of their land.

I was just a boy and it cracked my heart to grow up surrounded by contempt.

As the man was herded toward us, I got a closer look at the agony twisting his features. I had once watched men in the village beat a crippled deer to death with clubs. I saw in the man's eyes the same feral anguish.

I don't know why his tormented eyes locked on mine. Perhaps he could see his own corrupted blood in my lighter skin and features. Or perhaps I was the only one whose face was expressing shock and horror.

”Ni Thaca!” he shouted at me. We are also human!

He grabbed my fis.h.i.+ng spear. I thought he was going to turn and fight the two soldados with it. Instead he shoved the spear against his stomach and fell on it. Air and blood bubbled from his mouth and the wound as he writhed in the dirt.

My mother pulled me aside as the soldados dismounted. One of them flogged the man, cursing him to h.e.l.l for cheating them out of a reward.

The other drew his sword and stood over the man.

”His head, we can still get something for his head and branded face. The mine owner will post it on a stake as a warning to other runaways.”

He chopped at the dying man's neck.

FIVE.

Thus i grew from baby crawling in the dirt to a young boy running in the dirt, neither brown nor white, neither espanol nor indio, welcomed nowhere save the hut of my mother and the little stone church of Fray Antonio.

My mother's hut also welcomed Don Francisco. He came each Sat.u.r.day afternoon, while his wife and daughters visited the dona of a nearby hacienda.

At those times I was sent away from the hut. No village children played with me, so I explored the riverbanks, fis.h.i.+ng and inventing playmates in my mind. Once I returned to the hut to retrieve my forgotten fis.h.i.+ng spear and heard strange noises coming from the draped-off corner where my mother's petat, her sleeping pallet, lay. I peeked through the reed curtain and saw my mother lying naked on her back. The don knelt over her, making wet, sucking noises with his mouth on one of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. His hairy hind end glared at me, his garrancha and cojones swinging back and forth like those of a bull about to mount a cow. Frightened, I fled the hut and ran to the river.

I spent most of my days with Fray Antonio. In truth, I found more love and affection from the fray than I did Miaha. While Miaha usually treated me with kindness, I never felt the warm, pa.s.sionate bond between us that I saw with other children and mothers. Deep down I always felt that my mixed blood made her ashamed of me before her own people. I once expressed this feeling to the fray, and he told me it was not my blood.

”Miaha is proud to be thought of as having the don's child. It is the woman's vanity that keeps her from showing her love. She looked into the river once, and saw her own reflection and fell in love with it.”

We both laughed over comparing her to the vain Narcissus. Some say he fell into the pool and drowned.

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