A Thorn in the Bush Read Online Free PDF Page A

was growing more pronounced. She sensed the hush outside that came over San Juan at siesta time. A sigh lifted her shoulders.
    Perhaps I’ve been pushing myself too hard lately, she thought. Maybe I should spend a few days in bed. It doesn’t pay to take chances with these Mexican germs.
    She lay back on the bed, her thought growing to decision. Just a day or two in bed. She yawned, listening for Serena with the luncheon tray. And the thought occurred to her that she would be besieged by little cups and bowls of herbal remedies if she stayed in bed. Two tribulations of being ill in San Juan were the sudden martinet officiousness of Serena and the procession of native medicines delivered by narrow-faced girl children with dirty legs and wearing oversized hand-me-down head shawls.
    And there was no stopping Serena’s outpouring of epidemic calamities, each closed by the ominous portents that had warned of disaster: “… if only they had known.”
    ***

Chapter 7
    On Sunday, the second morning of Mrs. Ross’s “illness,” Serena entered the sick chamber at eight-thirty, shouldering the door open while she protected the breakfast tray in her thick arms. She wore an orange bib apron over her black “church” dress. Her braids were tied off by two bits of silver ribbon rescued from a Christmas wrapping the previous year. On the tray was the diet she considered fitting for the ill: two eggs coddled in milk, orange juice, one piece of dry toast. And instead of coffee, she had brought this morning a cup of Jamaica tea looking faintly pinkish in a yellow cup.
    Mrs. Ross had been awake since the first church bells had begun calling to Mass at five-thirty. But there was no way to get Serena to bring breakfast earlier.
    “The sick need more sleep!” Serena would say. Then would come the calamitous case histories of those who had ignored this warning.
    Mrs. Ross listened to Serena’s sandals slapping across the tile floor, heard them go mute on the serape-rug. She turned, looked up at the maid.
    Serena’s Aztec face held a look of pleased grief. There was a small bandage on the middle finger of her right hand. She had burned herself at the gas stove the previous day. Mrs. Ross knew that the bandage would stay there at least two days past the point of complete healing—a reminder of martyrdom.
    “Father Aguilar said Mass for the repose of Hector Reliquero’s soul this morning,” said Serena.
    Mrs. Ross blinked. “Oh?” Then she remembered: Reliquero—that’s the young fisherman from Solas who drowned.
    Serena put the breakfast tray on the nightstand while she raised the blinds at the window beside the bed half way. (To raise window blinds all the way in a sick room created great danger.) Still, there was a warm wash of sunshine across the edge of the bed. Mrs. Ross bathed a hand in it. Serena bent, helped her employer sit up, adjusted the nightgown worn at these times as a concession to propriety.
    The glow of sunlight failed to dispel a cold gloom that dripped from the maid’s every motion as she deposited the tray in Mrs. Ross’s lap.
    “On the radio, it was said that an entire busload of religious pilgrims was killed in an accident near Oaxaca last night,” she announced.
    Mrs. Ross grimaced. Yesterday, it had been the collapse of a building in Italy. Serena’s recording-device memory switched automatically to these things at the first hint of sickness. Global news services kept her saturated with avalanches, floods, train accidents, hotel fires.…
    “Anyone from San Juan on the bus?” asked Mrs. Ross.
    “They have not yet released the names of the dead.” Serena folded her arms, stared at the breakfast tray.
    Alerted, Mrs. Ross studied the array of food, noted the washed-out pinkish-brown of what should have been a cup of coffee. She pointed to it. “What’s that?”
    “Jamaica tea, Señora.”
    “Jamaica tea?”
    “My sainted mother, Señora, if only we had given her Jamaica tea soon enough, I am