Harriet Doerr by The Tiger in the Grass Page B

Sara could see the thongs of his sandals and the broken toenails that protruded from them. Fermin’s face was entirely shadowed by the brim of his hat, wide as an oxcart wheel. A truck passed on the road and then a motorcycle.
    “However, I do have a child,” Fermin said, “at least one child and perhaps two more. That is what she says.”
    “Who is she?” Sara asked.
    “The mother,” Fermin told her. “María del Rosario, the mother of my child and the other two that may be mine. Also the mother of seven others, including Ramón, who came here last month to weed. But Ramón is not mine.
    “María has ten children, each of a different father, unless it is correct, as the woman insists, that three of them are mine.”
    Fermin gazed down the road in the direction of Ibarra and went on. “I acknowledge the one child and have consented to pay for her needs.” He sighed, and his long nose seemed to grow longer.
    “Pay for no more than one,” said Richard.
    “Does the little girl look like you?” Sara inquired. “Has she your nose and chin?”
    At this, Fermin looked up and exposed his gentle, raw-boned face to the moonlight. “My nose, señora? My chin?” And together they started to laugh.
    Because Ramón, who came to weed, was fourteen and had never been to school, Sara arranged a meeting with his mother. María del Rosario was a short, cheerful woman, apparently happy with her lot. Although seven of the ten children were old enough for school, none of Sara’s arguments in favor of enrollment prevailed. Maria regarded education as a passing fad of the current administration. In any case, she said, one or two of the older ones must stay with the babies while she was at her work, washing dishes at the café on the plaza.
    “As for the others,” Maria said, “who can tell how and where they spend their time? I sometimes notice them at noon, begging from the grocer and the baker.”
    “Some of the fathers must be helping you,” Sara said.
    Maria shook her head. “Not one.” Then, seeing the señora’s look, she changed this to “Only one.”
    Maria said that she and her family lived, not in an ordinary dwelling, but in a narrow thatch-covered space between two houses. She and the ten children shared one room, behind a front wall of rocks and cardboard.
    “There are ways to prevent pregnancy without interfering with your normal activities,” Sara said. “Have you consulted the doctor at the clinic?” But such a procedure had never occurred to Maria.
    “Surely, when life is so hard, you will not want to bear more children,” the North American woman said.
    “That is something only the Virgin knows,” said Maria.
    Sara looked at her guest. Who am I to attempt to impose common sense on this person? she asked herself. Perhaps I should be like her. She accepts life whole, all of it, as it comes.
    With Luis and Fermin in attendance, the Evertons left Ibarra for occasional vacations with confidence, certain that the house and garden would be secure twenty-four hours a day.
    But on their return one spring evening from a month’s absence, they discovered that Luis was in prison. He had written to Lourdes with messages for them.
    “Pues,” he wrote. “Well, mi amíga Lulu. After you have read this letter, please explain the true circumstances of my arrest to the señor and señora. As you know, from time to time I have grown a few marijuana plants between the nopal cactus behind my house. Only rarely did I profit from this marijuana, which I sold now and then in the form of cigarettes costing five pesos each. Twice I had been warned about this negotiation by agents of the federal government who entered my neighbor’s corral and looked over the wall. Each time they confiscated the plants. But I decided to try one more time and soon had my finest crop. I was rolling a few cigarettes one evening when the federales came back and burst into my house without permission. ‘Luis Fuentes Castillo,’ they said,