“The next day we rode through another village. It had been almost four months since I had left home with Miguel. But that was at a different time; now Villa had gone mad, raiding village after village, putting innocents to death. We heard that in one town, he had rounded up the women and tied them together and set them on fire in the middle of the square. One of them had dared to question him about the death of her husband.

“I wanted to leave and return home, but I did not know how. One day as we marched onward, the soldiers riding before us set the buildings aflame. I realized where we were. It was my own place; it was the hacienda where my father used to work. I heard some of the men say that Villa was putting villagers to death, that he had taken two men who had refused to join their band and had them shot in the middle of the square. I did not wait to find out if such a story could be true. In my heart, I knew it was.

“Without telling any others I ran toward the burning hacienda and caught one of the escaping horses. I rode north to Los Algodones, where my madrina lives with her husband. She had told me to come to her if I was ever in trouble. She has always been my savior. I have always known the way to her home, even as a child: It is not far from the dunes that lay between El Norte and Baja, where the land is like one country. Abandon the train tracks before the border and walk west, past the dance hall to the grove of mesquite. There stands a tree with a double trunk, twenty meters high, the tree that everyone knows. My madrina’s home is five hundred paces north. When I arrived, the horse was stumbling, foaming at the mouth.

“I stayed for many months while she nursed me back to health, listened to my stories, held me when I cried. One day a letter arrived from Esperanza. ‘Come and stay with me, Adelita. Your own house is waiting for you here,’ she wrote.

“My madrina encouraged me. ‘Be with young people again,’ she said. ‘Perhaps find another husband. Go back among the living.’”

When Adela finished speaking, Ram did not know what to say.

“You do not believe me, Ram?” she said, after moments of silence.

“I believe you,” he said. She had told him so much. He felt it was a gift.