“My husband would also cook,” Adela said. This was not the response Ram expected. She had never spoken of him before. The air grew heavy.

“Why have you come here?” Ram asked. He confused himself. Did he mean to the farm that evening, or Fredonia? He had asked the question, but he did not know what he asked.

“The curtains,” she said, surprised. “Why have you?” she stammered. “You mean to the Valley?” she asked. Ram thought of Hambelton and shook his head.

They laughed, but it sounded hollow. Perhaps they were both too hurt to say. There was a boundary between them, a border they could not cross, a line in the earth.

“I came because he died,” she said.

“Who was he?” Ram asked, and realized this was the correct question. This was the answer he really wanted. Who had her husband been?

“He made shoes for the horses on the hacienda. My father was the caretaker and the trainer.”

“Your husband did not farm?” Ram asked. He had assumed something else.

“Miguel was a blacksmith, working for the patrón. Papá found him that job. But Miguel was filled with hope for a new México, where he could hold his head high, a new future for the people. Villa and Carranza were fighting on the same side then. It seemed possible.”

He did not dispute her. What did he know of war? She continued. “One afternoon Señor Villa and his army came to our village, and Miguel went to hear him speak. When he returned home, there was a strange look in his eyes. He collected his clothes and rolled them inside a blanket. I asked him, what was he doing? Did we not have our families here?” She shrugged her shoulders. “Did he not want to stay with me?

“But they had guns and horses and big dreams and so many followers. If you looked in their faces you could see they were the poor from the countryside, who did not eat enough, who worked their entire lives for nothing. President Díaz was snuffing the life out of them, one man, one woman at a time. He did not win his election fairly, he had done nothing but stolen the country from the people.”

She was angry—he could see that in her eyes—but her expression was so stoic. She was speaking to Ram, but also she was not. He wondered why she was telling him these things.

“I did not have children. My younger sisters were married and living with their husbands. When I saw Miguel tie his blanket in a bundle, I added my mortar and pestle and cooking pot and told him that I was bound to him for life. He could not leave without me. He had to accept what I said.