The Five Acts of Diego Leon Read Online Free

stooped over, her arms reaching down, deep between tall blades of grass and weeds and wildflowers. The gray mountains, veins of snow lacing their sides, circled them, keeping watch, cradling the whole valley. An eagle soared across the sky, and when its screech pierced the silence, Elva straightened her back and held a hand up to cover her eyes from the sun.
    “No one abandoned you, Diego,” she said. “Your father’s still out there.”
    “He could be dead. Like my mother.”
    “You father’s not dead.”
    “How do you know?”
    Elva laughed. “He’s very stubborn. He always has been. Your grandfather raised him to be a farmer like him and his father before him, but Gabriel didn’t want that life. So, he went off to the city. And now he’s gone off with the revolutionaries. Always looking for one thing or another. Always being called by something. When he left for Morelia, people thought he’d never be seen again. Well, not only did he come back, but he brought your mother back with him.”
    Elva said she didn’t think his mother would survive that first year. Such a fine lady, she said, living this life. She grew up with servants who took care of her. But she was stubborn, just like his father, she explained. And she was smart, quick to learn. Elva had taught her many things.
    “Like what?” Diego asked.
    How to grind corn for tortillas, how to milk a cow, what to do when a scorpion or snake invaded the house. Elva and the other women showed her what plants were poisonous, showed her how to make a balm out of animal fat and sprigs of mint, which rocks were the best for scrubbing the laundry, how to drape the wet clothing on the branches to prevent them from snapping. And she taught them things they never knew. She urged them to boil their water and when they asked why, she told them about small creatures, so tiny one couldn’t see them with the eye, swimming inside, carrying diseases that made people sick. She talked about wide paved avenues and trolley cars, railroads that brought the riches of the capital and, still further, the cities of the north, los Estados Unidos. She showed them magazines and newspapers advertising a hand-cranked washing machine, voyages on big ships to faraway places, women in elegant evening dresses and fancy hats.
    “I thought she was a little full of herself,” Elva said now as she gathered more twigs. “But she was brave. Strong-willed. She cared for your father.” Elva gathered the large bundle of spindly mesquite twigs, wrapped them together in a burlap sack, and tied this with a strip of twine. She heaved it onto her back and held it. With her free hand, she took Diego’s. “Come. It’ll be dark soon. We have a ways to go.”
    They traveled through a flat meadow and into a thicket of tall oak trees where the air cooled and dampened. Diego loved the vastness here, the shadows, the stones furry with bright jade moss, and the silence. It reminded him of a church, so still, so sacred.
    “And you will teach me things, right?” he asked. “Like you taught my mother?”
    “Yes,” the old woman said. “I told you already.”
    Elva taught him the P’urhépecha words for everything: fish and cotton, cinnamon and water. “Kóki,” she said when they were out washing clothes and there came, from a small rivulet, the sound of frogs croaking. “Listen to the song of the kóki.” Elva pointed to the sun. “Tsánda,” she said. “Janikua.” She showed him the thin clouds skirting the sky. “Anhatapu.” She pointed to the trees around them.She taught him to sing the pirékuas, P’urhépecha songs. His favorite was “Canel Tsïtsïki,” which he started singing now as they walked on. She hummed the tune, and he cleared his throat and raised his voice, which was high and strong:
    Tsïtsïki urápiti, xankare sesi jaxeka, ka xamare p’untsumenjaka
    Ji uerasïngani sani, ka xankeni nona mirikurhini ia …
    “Very good,” she said, smiling. “What a lovely voice you