Some gave coins quickly, avoiding her gaze. Others insulted her, calling her lazy, a freeloader, a woman without dignity. One spat near her feet, saying she’d be better off finding a man to support her than begging with her ragged children. That night, Catalina wept silently outside the tent, her children asleep on her lap. She had no roof, no food, no strength—but one thing remained unbroken: her fierce, almost animalistic drive to protect her children.
When the shopkeeper came out with a broom, telling her to leave, she took Tomás’s hand, picked up Carlitos, and, with Lupita beside her, left town along a dirt road that climbed toward the mountains—toward the mountains where no one went, where there was nothing to find. They walked until their legs gave out. Night fell, heavy and moonless, mountain cold seeping through their worn clothes.
Tomás coughed, a dry, groaning cough. Lupita whimpered, her feet aching and stomach growling. Carlitos slept against Catalina’s chest, trembling. Then, by chance—or desperation, or something beyond—Catalina saw the grotto: a dark opening between two large rocks, half-hidden by dry bushes and fallen branches. She approached fearfully, knowing such places could hide snakes, scorpions, or worse.
But when she stepped inside, she found a spacious room with a high ceiling. The floor was scattered with fine dust and loose stones that crunched beneath her bare feet. The air smelled of damp earth, of age, of centuries of confinement—but it was a roof over her head, and at that moment, that was enough. She spread the serape across the floor, brushing off the dust with her hands, and laid the children side by side, covering them as best she could with her own shawl. She didn’t light a fire; she had nothing with which to start one.
They didn’t eat; there was nothing to eat. They simply stayed there, wrapped in the dense silence of the cave, waiting for dawn. Catalina didn’t sleep. She stared toward the entrance, alert to every noise, every shadow, every hint of danger. All she heard was the wind whistling through the rocks outside, and occasionally a faint, muffled tapping, as if someone were shifting stones inside the mountain, or something was breathing beneath the earth.
