Secrets of the Casa Rosada

by Alex Temblador

  “Doña María?” he said to my grandmother.

  “Sí, where is Señora Flores?” she replied in Spanish.

  “In the bedroom. Hurry, please. My wife is . . . ”

  The man wasn’t even able to finish his sentence when a cry echoed through the house. It was the cry of a woman in agonizing pain, loud and long. I froze, and the man groaned and became more agitated, pulling at his hair as he doubled over, then shot back up.

  “Ay, Dios, por favor, señora. It’s all my fault.”

  My grandmother hushed the man, grabbed my arm and pulled me into the house and down the hall to a closed door. We left the man on the porch, groaning. Usually I would sit in the kitchen with the patient’s family or alone, so I didn’t understand why my grandmother was taking me with her.

  “No, I don’t want to,” I said trying to turn around.

  My grandmother’s grip on my shirt tightened, whipping me back. There was a lady yelling like a banshee behind that door. I didn’t want to go in there.

  “Vamos,” my grandmother said as she opened the door.

  I was instantly overcome with the metallic stench of blood, sour sweat and other fluids.

  A woman sat up in a bed on her elbows and looked at us. Her hair was plastered to her face with sweat, and she wore a blue sleeping gown pushed up over her extended belly past her waist. Her knees were raised, and in between her legs sat an older woman with streaks of gray in her hair. The old woman’s head and body blocked an area of the sweating pregnant woman that I wasn’t even aware of on myself. The woman on the bed groaned, threw her head back, ground her teeth and groaned again. The pregnant woman’s knuckles were white as salt, gripping the sheets.

  “Who are you? Out, out now!” the pregnant woman yelled in English,

  I flinched and covered my nose with my hand. I tried turning again to leave, but my grandmother, ignoring the pregnant woman’s shout, kept a tight grip on my shirt and pulled me forward.

  “Bueno, Señora Flores. How is everything going?” my grandmother asked in Spanish to the old woman sitting between the pregnant woman’s legs.

  Señora Flores turned to us and just then, I got a glimpse of something blood-red between the pregnant woman’s legs. I turned my head away, embarrassed.

  Also in Spanish, Señora Flores replied, “It’s a big one. Is the girl ready?”

  “Sí.” My grandmother replied, then turned to me, letting go of my shoulder. “Martha, ayuda.”

  “Help with what?” I said.

  The woman giving birth screamed through her teeth.

  My grandmother pursed her lips and dragged me over to a wash bowl sitting in the corner. She made me wash my hands with soap and water, then pushed me to Señora Flores. What the hell was going on?

  I tried not to look at the woman’s spread legs when I stood next to her, but it was hard not to. I didn’t want to see this . . . ever.

  Señora Flores stood up and gestured for me to take her place on the wooden stool she’d just been sitting on. I sat down and gripped the seat of the stool with both hands. I looked up at Señora Flores. She was larger in her mid-section than my grandmother, but her eyes were kind and she was calm in the chaos that surrounded her.

  Señora Flores asked in Spanish, “Are you ready?”

  “Ready for what?” I said, fumbling over the language I had been practicing for months.

  She grabbed my hands and pulled me over in front of the pregnant woman’s spread legs. Ay, Dios mío. The smell was worse this close. Bile rose in my throat. I didn’t want to look. Didn’t want to get any closer. But Señora Flores grabbed my wrists and pulled me so that I was directly in front of the pregnant woman. Then she pulled a chair over and sat down next to me.

  “Are you serious? No, I . . . I . . . No, I . . . ”

  Oh, God. What was I about to do? Deliver a kid?

  “Tell her to push.” This lady was as crazy as my grandmother.

  I shook my head. “I can’t, I don’t know what I’m doing.”

  “Martha, just do as she says. ¡Híjole!” my grandmother said.

  Señora Flores ignored my grandmother and said, “I’m here. All you have to say is ‘push.’”

  Something about her eyes, her composure through the screams, calmed me. I nodded a few times, took a deep breath. And then something happened. A thrill ran through me, opening up something closed off inside me.

  I said, “Empuja. Push,” but it wasn’t loud enough, so Señora Flores urged me to say it again. I did and the pregnant woman listened.

  The top of the baby’s head appeared and I caught, turned and pulled the child from her mother without Señora Flores’ help. The baby wasn’t even in my arms for a few seconds, when she started to cry. Instantly, I placed my knuckle in the little girl’s mouth, and she began sucking on it, quieting. How did I know to do that?

  Señora Flores who was in the process of cutting the umbilical cord asked me, “Have you ever delivered a baby before?”

  I laughed, surprising myself, then said, “No.”

  God, that was a rush! For a moment, with the child in my hands, I forgot about the mother who lay sighing and panting on the bed now.

  “Have you ever even held a baby?” Señora Flores asked.

  I thought for a moment, then replied, “No,” again.

  She smiled at me, then looked at my grandmother in the corner and gave her a nod.

  After handing the baby girl to her mother, Señora Flores showed me how to soothe the afterbirth from the mother by kneading the mother’s stomach so that it came out on its own. Although it was a gross and messy ordeal, I barely noticed and was proud that I didn’t gag when she handed my grandmother a jar filled with the afterbirth. I had forgotten about my grandmother, for the most part engrossed in everything Señora Flores was doing to help the mother recover and check the child’s health.

  An hour later we left, I in a T-shirt my grandmother had brought in her bag. The shirt I had on before was covered in blood and other unmentionable substances. Abuela said she could wash it all out without leaving a stain.

  In the car, I sank into the seat, suddenly drained, as if I had just scrubbed Abuela’s entire house without a break. I was tired but not too tired to question my grandmother as we drove.

  “What was that about?”

  This had to be about curanderismo. What other reason would she have brought me there? It wasn’t like knowing how to help bring a child into the world was something every girl learned in order to become a woman. At least not in this century, right? It could have been some weird, Laredo Mexican girl’s rite of passage, for all I knew.

  Her sagging cheeks rose in a smile. “You did good, granddaughter.”

  Surprised by her praise, I couldn’t help but smile. “Señora Flores is a curandera?”

  My grandmother nodded. “Una partera, a midwife. She helps women who are pregnant.”

  “That’s her job?”

  She nodded yes in response.

  “So . . . are you a midwife, too?”

  My grandmother snorted. “No. I do more than help pregnant women.”

  “Like what? And you still haven’t said what that was all about?”

  “You still don’t appreciate praise, nieta.”

  Typical Abuela response. “Where are we going now?”

  “To see a yerbero.”

  “What’s a yerbero?”

  “You’ll see.”

  I leaned back onto the hot leather seat, letting the warm Laredo air blow my hair off my face.

  The yerbero was a herb specialist, an old graying man with dark, leathery skin and maybe some African ancestry. Señor Díaz, whose hands shook slightly except when he was making his concoctions, spoke very low and slow, so much so that I had to get closer with each word. For some reason, I instantly liked him. When he smiled, his wrinkles cracked so that thousands of latte colored lines appeared on his face and his surprisingly straight, white teeth stood out. Something about him was genuine and truthful.r />
  Hundreds of plants filled his one-bedroom home and overflowed into his front and back lawn. As we walked through his house, he introduced me to his plants. My grandmother stayed in the kitchen.

  “This is Charlotte,” he said as he touched the leaves of a large plant with small, heart-shaped leaves, turning them different ways, putting his face close to see them better. “See how thick the stalks are? That means she’s healthy enough to do her job.”

  “Job?”

  “Charlotte’s leaves can help with stomach aches when put in a tea. Now, you feel them.”

  I smiled. The stalks did feel strong, never mind that I wasn’t sure what weak stalks felt like.

  Señor Díaz loved his plants more than anything. He told me he had had an apprentice once, his son, but he had moved to Mexico with his wife and become a yerbero in a small town. Señor Díaz asked me to touch the plants and even the soil in the pots.

  “Now speak to it.”

  “The plant?”

  “How else will it know how to grow?”

  I felt somewhat ridiculous, but I did what he asked. “Um . . . ” I looked at him.

  He nodded smiling.

  “Grow strong, um, please?” I whispered to the plant.

  Later, while we looked at a big, spiky plant that sat inside his bedroom, a woman came for help, to rid herself of a red rash on her hand. He examined her, then showed it to me. Small, circular dots covered the top of her hand. They clustered close together and were flat on her skin. The woman had been scratching them because a few were bright red and a little bloodied.

  “What do you think, m’ija?”

  I was taken back when he called me m’ija, “my daughter,” and even more so because he had asked me what I thought. That never happened with adults.

  “I really don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like it. What is it?”

  He shrugged. “Nothing but a rash, though you will find that rashes look different on each person. What matters most is how we heal it. Choose the leaves and we will make something for her.”

  “You want me to choose the leaves? There are thousands of plants. You know how to cure it, not me.”

  “I trust you. Now hurry, more people will come soon, and I don’t want to get behind,” he said.

  I turned slowly on my heel, catching my grandmother’s eye. I mouthed, “What do I do?”

  “Do as he says,” she said.

  Thanks for the help. I maneuvered between the plants, letting my hands fall to my side and brush over the leaves just as Señor Díaz had. Maybe, it’d help?

  I chose two leaves from a purple plant that sat on the TV in the living room, one small pea pod from a plant on top of the refrigerator, and as I was about to hand them to Señor Díaz, I saw a large red plant on the back porch. I don’t know why, but I ran outside, plucked a leaf and ran back in to give Señor Díaz my picks.

  He put them in his palm and felt them. He hummed in his throat as he rubbed the leaves. The patient sat in the living room, nursing her hand, so she didn’t watch me squirm.

  “Ah!” He winked at my grandmother in the corner.

  She sighed. Not a sad sigh or a mad sigh, just a . . . sigh. I couldn’t really read her expression.

  “I got it wrong, huh?”

  “Actually, you surprised me with what you chose. This will work.”

  Señor Díaz showed me how to cut, squeeze and grind the leaves with holy water, soil and egg to make a thick, sandy paste to place on the woman’s hand.

  When we left, Señor Díaz told me I was welcome back anytime and that he would be glad to teach me the secrets of his plants. I thanked him and surprised myself when I gave him a hug. He laughed and patted my back. Part of me wished he was my grandfather. Even though I was given a family, I’d never had a father or a grandfather. I never would. Gloria had told me a month earlier that my grandfather had died in the Korean War. Or at least that’s what everyone believed, since he never returned home.

  As soon as we got in the car, Abuela turned to me and told me to be quiet and not to ask questions, because she had some thinking to do. I didn’t argue. My mind and body exhausted, I fell asleep on the way home. That night, eating carne con chile rojo and rice with Gloria, I decided my grandmother had had enough time to think.

  “So Señora Flores and Señor Díaz . . . does this mean . . . ?”

  “You went to see them? Why?” Gloria asked my grandmother.

  “You know why,” my grandmother said to Gloria. Before Gloria responded, Abuela put her fork down, leaned back and looked at me. “Yes,” she paused, sighing, “You are going to learn curanderismo.”

  I placed my cup of milk down on the table, not caring that my mouth burned from the spicy red chile. Hearing my thoughts confirmed was more disconcerting than I thought it would be. I didn’t know what to think. Gloria dropped her fork, and it clanged loudly against her plate.

  Before I could speak, Gloria did. “Are you crazy, sister? Look what happened last time.”

  My grandmother narrowed her eyes at Gloria, the same angry look that she had given to Juanita the other day when they were speaking about my mother.

  “What happened last time?” I said.

  “Why would you bring that up?” Abuela said through clenched teeth to Gloria.

  Gloria flipped her hand sideways twice at Abuela, as if saying, “Forget it. The girl just learned Spanish. She doesn’t know a thing yet.”

  This was getting annoying. Couldn’t someone answer me? I spoke a little louder, directing my attention to Abuela. “Why now? Why teach me now?”

  Abuela opened her mouth, then closed it.

  Gloria spoke first, “Yes, María, you knew she had the gift the whole time . . . Why now?”

  “¡Ay, chingao!” Abuela looked like she wanted to stab Gloria with her fork.

  “What? Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked Abuela.

  Abuela gave Gloria one last glare, then stuck her fork in a piece of steak. “Just because you have a gift doesn’t mean you should learn curanderismo. You think everyone who has a gift uses it?” She took a bite, not looking at me.

  “So what? Today was a test? If you knew, why did I need to do that stuff?”

  “To see what areas you might have a natural affinity in.”

  Something hit me. “Did my mother know? About me? And this . . . gift?”

  Gloria let out a harsh “Hah!”

  I looked at Abuela. “She did, didn’t she?”

  Abuela sighed, “She did.”

  “Is that why she left me here?”

  Abuela wouldn’t look at me when she softly said, “Martha, she would have used any reasoning, any justification to leave you here.”

  I sat back in my chair. My throat felt tight and my stomach ached like someone had punched me. They continued bickering.

  “I still don’t think this is a . . . ”

  “¡Ya, Gloria! Don’t start . . . ”

  My mother knew about my gift. She could have left me here because of the gift . . . No . . . that wasn’t true. She jumped out of a window. If she truly left me here for the gift, she could have just said that. She left me because she just didn’t want me. Oddly, I couldn’t help but wish my mother was here to confirm it.

  But this apprenticeship . . . learning the things that my grandmother did in her back room? Part of me felt like arguing with Abuela. Maybe I didn’t want to be a curandera. I mean, who was she to say what I was going to do or not do? And maybe I didn’t have the gift—Abuela could be wrong. Part of me knew that was a lie; I’d never felt like I had earlier, helping Señora Flores and Señor Díaz. It was exhilarating. I felt like I was good at something beyond drawing.

  God, Laura was going to die when she heard about this. Oh, shit, and Marcela. She’d go crazy when she found out. Then again, it’d serve her right. What I saw today . . . No wonder Abuela didn’t take Marcela as an apprentice. Marcela speaking to leaves? Yeah, right.

  My thoughts boiled as I listened to Abuela and Gl
oria speak about me as if I wasn’t there. Gloria telling Abuela how ridiculous this was, Abuela telling her to shut her mouth. They didn’t even care about my thoughts, and this was all about me!

  “Doesn’t anyone want to know what I want?”

  Gloria and my grandmother stopped speaking and looked at me with the same expression: eyes opened wide, nostrils flared and lips pursed.

  Guess not.

  Seis

  “UM, JUANITA, can I ask you something?” I said.

  Juanita sat in the front room. The rest of the family was in the living room, doing impressions of the bishop who had visited our church that morning. He had spoken with a lisp, stuttered over his words and even said “Omen” instead of “Amen.” Even though there were fewer people this Sunday at my cousin Carlos’ house—a few of the families were in San Antonio visiting relatives—the regular noise level was being maintained. In front of me, Juanita was tickling Lilia on her lap.

  She set her down on the floor and patted her back to go and play, which was all the encouragement Lilia needed. Lilia stuck her tongue out playfully at me as she ran to the living room where the other children were.

  “Hola, Martha. How’ve you been? How’s school?”

  I sat down on the couch next to her. “School’s great. Actually, the other day I ran across this picture of my mother as homecoming queen.”

  Juanita’s face dropped at the mention of my mother, but she quickly resumed a nonchalant look.

  “Yes, Rosa was the homecoming queen her junior year. She loved being the queen.”

  “I’m sure. She looked a little different in the picture, too.”

  “Ever the pretty one.”

  Okay, this wasn’t going well. I didn’t want to piss Juanita off by bringing up old jealousies. Get to the point, Martha.

  “There was a girl and a guy in the picture. Carlita and Jorge? Were they all friends?”

  “Carlita Juárez and Jorge Valdez? I haven’t heard those names in a while. What made you think they were friends with Rosa?” Her eyes regarded me suspiciously.

  “They had their arms around each other, were laughing. They just looked like friends.”