“The way I like to eat them best…” the voice started up again, spurred by his interest, and he ignored it. But the little arrowhead of annoyance in his head did not go away, even when he turned and left Malinche suddenly and went into his house. His mother was at the metatl, grinding the corn for the evening meal: it would take two hours to prepare it. And another two hours of the same labor for the morning meal. This was a woman’s work. She looked up and nodded at him without slowing the back and forth motion.

“I see Malinche out there. She is a good girl and works very hard.”

Malinche was framed by the open entranceway, legs wide, bare feet planted firmly in the dust, the roundness of her large breasts pushing out the huipil draped across her shoulders, her arms at her side and her fists clenched as though waiting for something. Chimal turned away and, squatting on the mat, drank cool water from the porous jug.

“You are almost twenty-one years of age, my son,” Quiauh said with irritating calmness, “and the clans must be joined.”

Chimal knew all this, but he did not wish to accept it. At 21 a man must marry; at 16 a girl must marry. A woman needed a man to raise the food for her; a man needed a woman to prepare the food for him. The clan leaders would decide who would be married in such a way that it profited the clans the most, and the matchmaker would be called in…

“I will see if I can get some fish,” he said suddenly, standing and taking his knife from the niche in the wall. His mother said nothing, her lowered head bobbed as she bent over her work. Malinche was gone and he hurried between the houses to the path that led south, through the cactus and rock, toward the end of the valley.