Not that the deaths of Esperanza and Caridad were less brutal for el don Domingo to think about. The abduction and death in the desert of one and the jumping off a mesa like an Acapulco cliff diver with no ocean below of the other were hideous memories of the departures of their two eldest daughters for both don Domingo y la Mayor Sofia. But Fe’s death somehow hit them hardest, not because they had favored that daughter, but because they had personally fought the wasting away of Fe’s life and spirit and lost.

The sheep-raising wool-weaving co-op was doing well for the unofficial village of Tome, and so was the Tome Food Co-op (formerly Sofi’s Carne Buena Carnecería), and Sofia, at least with regards to her own livelihood, experienced a brief period of economic balance for the first time in her adult life. But this, unfortunately, did not last too long.

Sofia’s dry and thirsty land by its very nature was a land of ingenious undertakings; and while its early Spanish transplants learned irrigation methods from the indigenous residents to sustain crops and graze animals, and how to make do with raw materials, talk with the sky, and honor mountains and streams, and despite all their relentless faith together, the sheer daily toil, the centuries going by, the world changing around them, it never got no easier.

Meanwhile, Domingo’s bets got bigger and bigger and then came the day, very soon—since it don’t take a gambler running a high fever much time to lose all his jolas and then dip into yours if he can—when Sofia had enough and said “¡Ya!” Again …

All of a sudden, like a palo hitting her over the head, she remembered—oh so clearly! “Like if it was only yesterday, comadre!” she said aloud.

As her memory came back to her, Sofi la Mayor now relayed the whole story to her comadre, doña Rita de Belen, one morning at the food co-op, how back in those early days Domingo was little by little betting away the land she had inherited from her father, and finally she couldn’t take no more and gave him his walking papers. Just like that, she said, “Go, hombre, before you leave us all out on the street!” Yes! It had been Sofia who had made Domingo leave.

Believe it or not, comadre.

But for twenty years, everyone (starting with Sofia herself) had forgotten that one little detail, calling her la “Pobre Sofi” y la “Abandonada,” and that was pretty bad because there was almost nothing more pitiful to her than to be called an abandoned woman.