We hurriedly passed the small menudo shop where I saw two of my grandmother’s friends, Señora Paz and her sister, just sitting down to have a bowl of warm, mushy tripe soup. When they saw us, they both crossed themselves. They had obviously heard the horrible news. I looked back, my grandmother tugging me along, but neither one of the Paz sisters smiled at me. They saw us in a dark shadow, and it frightened them.
I was still too much in shock to cry or speak. It all seemed more like a dream, like being dragged through someone else’s nightmare. I felt suspended, hanging like a puppet on dead string.
My parents were dead, gone? I had just seen them that morning. My mother had kissed me good-bye and had reminded me to come right home to help my grandmother with dinner. She was always worried that I would loiter at the square with the other girls my age, some of whom had already gotten themselves into trouble with older boys.
How could she be dead and gone, and my father, too? This couldn’t be so. In a moment, I would snap awake and be back in my classroom. Señora Cuevas would bawl me out for not paying attention. I closed my eyes and opened them quickly, but that didn’t happen.
We turned down the dusty dirt street on which was our adobe house with its sheet-metal roof. Our casa was considered one of the better ones in the village, because it was large enough for us to have three rooms. The kitchen, as in most casas here, was simply a lean-to built of poles and corn stalks against the outside wall; however, we were able to have a separate bedroom for Grandmother Anabela and me and one for my parents. We were one of the few families that had a television set, but its picture was so powdery we often couldn’t make out what was happening, and very often we would lose our electricity. Once, we didn’t have any for nearly two weeks.
There was no lawn or even any grass in front of our casa, just some shrubs, stubble of grass, stones, and the remnants of a faded pink and white fountain that no longer had water running through it unless it rained hard, but we didn’t sell it or remove it, because it had an angel at the top, and mi abuela Anabela believed that if you had a replica of an angel in or around your house, real angels would stop to bless you.
Despite what my grandmother had told Señora Cuevas, I half expected to see my father’s pickup truck in front. He and my mother worked for Señor Lopez on his soybean farm not quite ten miles from the heart of the village. He had lost his wife five years ago to a blood disease. His daughters had married and moved away, and he had no sons. My mother cleaned his home every morning and prepared all of his meals, and my father oversaw his laborers.
For the moment, my grandmother’s solution to our great tragedy was to prepare food for the expected visitors and comforters. I was brought home from school quickly so I could help. There was almost no time for tears. She went about her work diligently, grateful for everything she had to do: chop the chicken and the cheese to include in her wonderful tortillas, and prepare her salsa and beans. We had little dishware to speak of, but we had a carton of paper plates and plastic knives and forks my mother had been given by Señor Lopez. She told me to get it all out, and then I was given the job of preparing the salsa and beans.
Early that morning, mi abuela Anabela had made some of her bread, her pan hecho del rancho, a recipe she said had been passed down through generations. She always knelt down barefoot to knead the dough, because that was the way her mother made it, and her mother’s mother. To Abuela Anabela, traditions were as holy as scripture.
Many times I had worked alongside her like this, but never with this sort of frenzy. Tears streaked down her face. However, she didn’t make the sound of a single sob. I was trembling inside, still too much in shock to realize what was happening, but I did feel as if, at any moment, I might shatter like some clay pot and fall in pieces to the floor.
Just as my grandmother had expected, the villagers began to appear when the terrible news spread, most bringing food and drink. The wailing and shaking of heads began soon afterward. I could never remember how many times I was held and kissed and told to be strong. I was spun around to be embraced and comforted until I was so dizzy I nearly fell.
It wasn’t long before the crowd of mourners became thicker, finally spilling out to the front of the casa. People stopped noticing me. They were heavily into remembering their own sad tales, weaving a net of tragedy to cast over the entire gathering and hold everyone in sorrow’s grip. Old wounds were opened. We were having our own private Day of the Dead.
When Father Martinez arrived, the crowd quieted down and then parted like the Red Sea for him. He comforted mi abuela Anabela, and then he came to me, took my hands into his, and looked at me with such sad eyes I finally started to cry very hard. He said some prayers over me and then headed for the food.
I caught my breath and retreated outside to sit on a rock in a shady area, where I often sat to wait for my parents’ return from work when I was younger. Despite the people, the prayers, the tears, and the grief, I still had trouble digesting the news of their deaths. The few details I had overheard inside the casa regurgitated. An hombre borracho driving a dump truck hit them head-on while they were on their way to work. It was hours and hours before any medical help arrived, and by then it was too late. As was often the case with drunks who cause the deaths of other people on the roads, he was barely scratched. Anyway, nothing done to him would bring back my parents.
The villagers streamed by, shaking their heads at me with faces filled with so much pity that it finally occurred to me that I should be wondering what would happen to me and my grandmother now. My own welfare had never seemed as important or as much in jeopardy. My uncles, aunts, and cousins in Mexico were spread far and wide, and none but my aunt Isabela in the United States had as much as or more than we had. Most were far worse off. Uncles worked in the United States and rarely saw their own families these days. Who needed another mouth to feed, another young girl to worry about?
Despite her ability to work in our kitchen, mi abuela Anabela couldn’t earn enough working for a restaurant or any wealthy person now. No one would hire someone her age. The most she could hope for would be taking in someone else’s wash or selling some of her wonderful chocolate mole whenever she had a chance to make some. It would provide only a piddling income.
Maybe I would have to stop attending school to go out to Señor Lopez and take my mother’s place. Because of my grandmother having me work beside her in the kitchen and because of what she had taught me, I could prepare many meals myself, and I could certainly clean and keep up his house. Many girls my age were already working full time, and some of them were already married, but my parents were determined that I remain in school, something my mother had reinforced just last night after the quinceañera. I had always done well in my studies, and my mother especially had hope that I would be something more. I had no idea what, but as she often said, “La esperanza se encienda mañana.” Hope lights tomorrow.
Suddenly, I saw Señor Orozco, our postmaster, come running down our street, his skinny legs kicking up a trail of dust that lingered in his wake like a low-lying clay fog. His nearly shoulder-length white hair flew about him as if the strands wanted to break free of his scalp. He was in a frenzy, looking as if he might explode with excitement. When he saw me, he came to a dead stop and pulled back his shoulders, brushed back his hair, and hurried into the house.
I rose to follow and see what had brought him with such urgency. Was there some miracle? Did they find out that my parents were alive? Had the tragic news simply been a terrible misunderstanding? I hoped we would hear that it wasn’t my parents in the accident after all but some other people in a similar pickup truck. Was it sinful to wish it on someone else? And would I be punished for it?
“Señora Yebarra,” he called to my grandmother. She pulled herself away from her comforters and stepped forward to meet him.
“Your daughter-in-law’s sister, she has called back and been given the terrible news,” he declared. His body stiffened with his sense of importance as he pull
ed in his stomach and pushed out his chest to deliver the message.
The remaining mourners grew still. All eyes were on him. The tragedy had reached into California, and in no time, there had been a response. Despite this being the age of computers and satellites, some still saw such communication as an amazing and miraculous feat. It was as if we lived in a place on the earth that revolved at a slower place, crawling through history, decades behind the rest of the world.
“And?” my grandmother asked Señor Orozco. Death and mourning had made privacy quite unnecessary. Everyone was listening keenly. I held my breath.
“She said she is unable to attend the funeral,” he said. “She will send some money for the funeral costs and money for the church.”
Heads shook in disgust and disbelief. My aunt was unable to attend the funeral of her one and only sister? Many looked at my grandmother with pity. Everything was falling on her tired, old shoulders. She did not wince, however. She sucked in her breath and lifted her shoulders like someone recuperating from another blow.
“And?” Grandmother Anabela asked again. What more could there be?
He turned, his eyes searching the crowd until his gaze fell on me. Everyone else looked my way as well.
“She said you are to pack whatever su nieta has, everything that is…” He paused and added, “That isn’t full of lice, and prepare her for the trip. She has decided to take her into her home.”
Someone clicked her lips, but no one spoke. Everyone’s eyes remained on me for a moment before turning to my grandmother to see her response.
Grandmother Anabela looked up and whispered something to God. It looked to me as if she was giving thanks. She was always having private conversations with the Almighty. Until now, I believed that her special conversations with him had protected us. What had we done for him to turn a deaf ear even to mi abuela Anabela, who was to me truly what a saint should be?
Slowly, she lowered her head, and then her eyes locked on me.
She didn’t have to say anything. I could read it in her face.
Delia, I cannot take care of you. I am on death’s doorway myself. Your uncles and aunt in Mexico have their own overwhelming burdens. This is the best solution and your best hope.
In less than a day, you lost us all, your parents and me. You will pack a small bag, but in your heart, you will carry the heavy burden of great sadness and loneliness. You might carry it for the rest of your life.
I shook my head. It was raining sorrow too hard and too quickly. Yes, I was drowning in this sea of sadness. Maybe it was my fault. Maybe I had done something. Maybe I had opened the evil eye to look our way.
My terrified eyes fell on Señora Morales, and suddenly, all I could think of was that chocolate-dipped churro that she had slipped past her lips.
I turned and ran from that image as much as from anything else that haunted me this terrible day.
2
Good-bye
Any memories I had of my aunt Isabela were as vague and indistinct as the faded old sepia pictures in our chest of family photographs, the images evaporating with time. Mi tía Isabela drifted in and out of my thoughts so rarely, I often forgot my mother had an older sister. We had a few snapshots that were still quite good, but they were taken of her and my mother when they were little more than children. There were no photographs of her children or her husband, who I knew had died. He was much older than Tía Isabela, actually close to twenty years older. I had seen her only once, now more than ten years ago, when my maternal grandmother passed away. She hadn’t come for her father’s funeral, but she had come for her mother’s. When she had defied my grandfather and married her much older American husband, he had disowned her.
To me, the story was almost a fairy tale or our own family soap opera. I couldn’t help but be curious about every detail, but I always would hesitate to ask too many questions, because I could see it saddened my mother to talk about her sister and what had happened. Nevertheless, the whole story had trickled out over time until I now understood this much.
Tía Isabela had matured into a beautiful young woman early in her life, and by the time she was twelve, she was attracting the interest of men twice her age and older, because she looked twice her age. No one, not my father or my mother, would come right out and say it, but from what I heard in their voices and saw in their faces, I could see they believed Aunt Isabela was quite a flirtatious muchacha.
“She had a way of looking a man up and down that stirred his blood,” mi madre told me once, when she was more relaxed about discussing her sister. “I’m not even sure she was fully aware of what she was doing, but I’m sure to most men, it looked like she was sending some kind of invitation.”
My mother paused and looked at me. I was only ten myself when she was telling me this.
“Entiendes, Delia?”
I nodded, even though I wasn’t sure I fully understood. What sort of invitation was it? To a party? To a dinner? How could you send an invitation with your eyes?
“Men,” she told me, leaning down to speak more softly and more privately so neither mi abuela nor mi padre could hear her, “are too quick to read what they want to read, see what they want to see. Recuerda eso, Delia.”
She didn’t have to say it. I wouldn’t forget anything she told me in such confidence with her eyes so big and dark. She so rarely talked about the relations between men and women that whenever she did, I was mesmerized.
According to what my mother had described, no matter what Tía Isabela did, it displeased my grandfather. She was rebellious, disobeying him almost from the moment she awoke every morning. He didn’t like the way she dressed for school or her putting on lipstick before she was eleven. He did all he could to stop her from doing these things, even when he caught her in the village and wiped her lips with the sleeve of his shirt. The second he was gone, her lips were red again.
“The more your grandfather punished Isabela, the more defiant she became. She was a wild thing, una cosa salvaje, no tamer than a coyote.”
“A coyote in heat,” my father added, overhearing our discussion as he passed by.
My mother glared at him, and he turned away quickly. For a reason I would come to understand, talking about Tía Isabela was not something they would do in each other’s presence.
My mother was very upset about all of it and somehow blamed herself for what happened between mi tía Isabela and their father later on. It was a family mystery, why she would blame herself, a skeleton in one of our closets, but I sensed now that it wouldn’t be much longer before I opened that closet, saw those dangling old white bones, and found out why. Was I better off never knowing?
“Tu abuelo thought tu tía was headed for lots of trouble,” my mother said. “They were always at each other. I did what I could to help her, make excuses for her, protect her, but nothing I would do or tu abuela would do mattered. If your grandfather confined her to the house, she snuck out. If he dragged her home kicking and screaming, she would turn and run off. He was at wits’ end and finally gave up trying. At one point, both he and my mother were considering sending her to a nunnery, but they decided not to put such a burden on the sisters.
“She quit school at your age and went to work at a hotel on the beach, first as a housekeeper, and then she was trained to be a waitress in the restaurant. Two years later, she met Señor Dallas. We did not know she was seeing him romantically. He returned to the hotel many times for vacations. We didn’t know he returned solely because of her, but then, one day, she announced he had proposed to her and she wanted to marry him. We knew nothing about him, of course,” my mother told me.
“At first, tu abuelo and abuela were cautiously happy about it,” she told me, and smiled. “After all, someone else was going to take responsibility for their cosa salvaje, but when they met him and found out more about him, they were very disapproving. He was nearly twenty years older than she was, not a Catholic, and an American who barely spoke Spanish.
“Even t
hough she did not do well in school, she was not stupid, my sister Isabela. When she put her mind to something, she did it or learned it, and learning English was very important to her. The faster she learned it, the more responsibility she was given at the hotel, responsibility and opportunity. It made her feel superior. In fact, whenever she came home from the hotel, she would avoid speaking Spanish and pretend she didn’t understand anyone who did, which infuriated my father even more. She put on airs and made it seem as if she was better than the rest of us.
“They forbade the marriage. I should have suspected something when she didn’t argue. She left one night, and we heard nothing from her until we received an announcement of their wedding in Palm Springs, California. My father burned it and went through the house tossing out anything that reminded him of her, all the clothes she had left behind and especially pictures.
“‘Ella está muerta a mí. I wipe her from my memory!’ he cried. My mother was very upset. For days afterward, it was truly like someone in the family really had died. We didn’t speak at our meals. My father went to work in silence, and my mother sobbed in the corner whenever anything reminded her of Isabela. He would get so angry if she cried in front of him.
“We heard very little about or from her for some time, and if anyone did bring any news here, my father would refuse to listen to it. The mere mention of her name burned his ears.
“‘I have only one daughter now,’ he would say.
“I went to the pay phone at the post office and called her when our father died. She told me he had died years ago and hung up. When our mother died, as you know, she came to the funeral, but I wished she hadn’t,” she added. “You were too young to remember it all. She arrived in this limousine as long as the street, just in time for the church service. Bedecked in jewels, with her hair full of diamonds and her face caked with makeup, she was dressed as if she were going to a ball and not a funeral. Her husband wasn’t with her. He was already quite ill. And neither were her children. She brought a personal secretary instead, a personal assistant, a fragile young woman following at her heels, holding an umbrella over her as if she had become supersensitive to sunshine. The poor girl was terrified of missing a step or a word of her commands.