Sweet voices, tender tongue:
Kim ayu—come over here
My fierce soul no longer trembles
I have found my new Edén.
(En Poqomchi’) “Suk Nuk’uxl—
My heart is content.”
The Return
“Your mother never shed a tear out of self-pity. Those tears were not of anguish, or fear. They were cries of anger. Tears of hunger.” Tía Soila’s voice was shaking as she said this to Consuelo. Consuelo was listening attentively.
We were back in Mayuelas. We were back in our humid village where the mango and the tamarindo trees were the only things that kept Tía Soila’s house fresh under a blanket of shade. It was 1992, and we were back in Guatemala after living in the US for three years. I was thirteen years old and Consuelo fifteen. Mamá, Consuelo, and I were back to file our papers through the Amnesty Program. Sindy couldn’t return with us because she was on the verge of giving birth to her first son, my nephew, Andrew.
Mamá explained how Sindy couldn’t be added to the Amnesty Program because she was already over twenty-one and practically married. Sindy had moved out of the house, and I was crushed knowing that she couldn’t come with us. She gave birth alone in the US. No one was there to kiss her and bring her flowers. She was alone with the father of her son. Her depression became chronic.
I was still in disbelief that we were in the process of becoming residents of the US. Nobody was going to call me an illegal alien ever again. César, my former fifth grade classmate, would have to take all his insults back.
I was thrilled to be back. Everyone clapped when the plane landed. Some people cried tears of happiness. Others simply hugged each other. I hugged Consuelo because she was sitting next to me. Mamá sat across the aisle from us. I noticed a tear rolling down her cheek.
Three years had passed yet Tía Soila’s house looked the same. The dirt-floor patio was still filled with mango and tamarindo trees. Her kitchen still had an adobe wall adjacent to the bedroom wall. A rainbow hammock still hung in the middle of the corridor waiting for one of us to lie on it. And Tía Soila had not aged. She looked the same, dark and thin. Her voice had changed though; it had become hoarse. It felt great to see her. She was the only one out of the whole family who never expected anything from us. Not even a pack of gum.
She wasn’t as tall as I remembered. When I saw her, I dropped my two bags and ran to her. We held each other for a couple of seconds. She still smelled like a mixture of cigarette smoke and grapefruit rind, which clung to her skin, clothes, and silver hair. Both Consuelo and Mamá hugged her at the same time. She was speechless. Tears gently rolled down her wrinkly, tanned cheeks. Everyone cried, except for me. I was overwhelmed with excitement.
Tía Soila had the biggest, most beautiful smile. She had finally gotten used to her dentures.
“Her gums learned to harden, just like her lifestyle,” said Mamá.
“How long did it take you to get used to your new teeth?” I wanted to know.
“A long time. I didn’t wear them for a couple of years because they hurt my gums,” she admitted.
“Her gums are hard now and so are her hands,” added Mamá.
Sitting there, watching her interact with Mamá and Consuelo, reminded me of all the things we did together before immigrating to the US. Tía Soila would take me to el monte, the woods, to chop off the branches of ceiba trees with her machete. She fastened the leña, the firewood, with a rope and placed it on her head. Her yagual, a folded bandana, served as a cushion between her crown and the heaviness of the bundle.
She balanced the firewood on her head just like she did with the cántaro full of water, just like she did with the broken palangana full of people’s dirty clothes, just like she did while pretending to tame her hunger for solitude.
The river, el monte, her cracked adobe kitchen walls, su delantal—her apron—and the heat of her comal and iron will perpetually live within me.
Tía Soila has always been a breathing poem who knows how to climb the tallest tamarindo trees. She’s one of those epic women who makes people smile when she passes by, flaunting her thin thighs, her breast—unbroken. She wears no bra. She walks the streets of Mayuelas, selling her numbers with an impeccable posture.
Mamá hugged her again. They didn’t let go of each other for some time. Trying to hide her tears, Mamá told her, “Tía Soila, I brought you some hair dye to hide your white canas.”
They both exploded with laughter as they sat on the wooden bench leaning against the kitchen’s adobe wall. It was time to reminisce about the past. We left our bags in the middle of the corridor. I knew exactly what story they were going to recall. I sat still, silent with expectation. Crossing my fingers, I hoped they might reveal something new about Mamá’s past.
“Your mother is a silent warrior who never tells her stories,” said Tía Soila. “She has always been too proud to show people her scars.”
I had always wanted to know all of Mamá’s secrets. Mamá was bitter about life and I wanted to know why: Why she stopped smiling one day. Why the short hair. She taught my sisters and I to never get close to family. Her advice was always the same: “Don’t look for family! Family members only look for you when they need something from you—only to screw you over and over; it’s just you three, always help each other. You and your sisters should always stick together and help each other so that you don’t depend on others.”
But Tía Soila was the exception. She was everything to Mamá.
Va callada
absorbiendo el silencio
de senderos polvorientos,
atestados de flores muertas
de la sed: Madrecacao,
Malvas, Petunias, a veces hasta los
Pensamientos se secan y se queman.
Aligerada huye de la sombra
alargada de una mujer desdeñada:
va en busca de agua fresca …
con su yagual enrollado en la cabeza
balancea un cántaro quebrantado—
ya no zarandea sus caderas
redondas, ceñidas—
hunde ambas manos en los huecos
profundos de su delantal.
A lo lejos oye el río;
se oye bravo.
Quietly, she goes,
absorbing the silence
of dusty paths,
saturated with wild flowers
dying of thirst: Madrecacao,
Malvas, Petunias, sometimes
even Pensamientos, dry and burn.
Hurriedly, she flees
from the elongated shade
of a forgotten woman:
she goes in search of fresh,
new water …
with her yagual
wrapped around her head,
she balances a broken cántaro—
she no longer sways her dented/
rounded hips—
she sinks both hands
into the hollows of her apron.
Far away,
she hears the deafening river.
Victoria
Tía Soila took out a pack of menthol cigarettes. She hit the end three times with her bare palm to break them loose; I sat there in silence contemplating her ritual. She lit one cigarette and inhaled. Her dimples seemed to connect inside her mouth. Then she slowly exhaled the smoke through her nose like one of those mobsters who was getting ready to talk serious business, just like I had seen in The Godfather.
After taking a couple of drags, Tía Soila began Mamá’s story.
“At the age of eight, your mother ruled the streets of Mayuelas. She was a chunky little tomboy with a braid on each side of her head. She was afraid of the toma, the thing that terrified her the most when it got dark. She played from dawn to dusk until she would holler for me, Tía Soila, come get me, please! I’d help her cross the dark side of the toma that was under the shade of the biggest mango tree from the house. This mango tree, she said, had the shape of a witch’s face. Always sweating,
running from here to there, tishuda—barefoot. Her thick lips popping out because of her crooked top front teeth. She listened to no one, and no one dare messed with her on the streets. She had a reputation of beating up kids who bothered her about her looks and teeth. This made her strong—invincible.
“Victoria, do you remember the day I found out you were pregnant? I held you in my arms cussing you out at the same time. You were so stupid and young.”
Mamá agreed and couldn’t help but hide a smile full of shame. Tía Soila’s eyes were on us now. She continued, “Your mother got pregnant at a very young age.” I already knew that. At the age of fifteen she had given birth to a dead child. She never bothered to name her. I was afraid to ask why.
Tía Soila stopped again and from her corridor bench where we were all sitting, she gazed at the distant burning sky with a blank stare. She took another drag of her menthol cigarette. Mamá stayed quiet. We all did. Tía Soila’s opening line was going exactly where I wanted it to go: Mamá’s youth.
Sindy was born when Mamá was only seventeen. Consuelo was born six years later, and I was born two years after Consuelo. Mamá was a twenty-five-year-old woman with a second grade education raising three daughters, most of the time alone; I vaguely remember Papá being around. And when he was in the picture, he was usually drunk and fighting with Mamá.
“When your mother was little,” Tía Soila continued, “she went through many phases in her life. She was young and didn’t know how to raise a baby girl all by herself without a partner. She had barely finished raising herself on the streets, selling mangoes and grapefruit or whatever fruit she got from the trees she rocked.”
A mocking laugh shook her thin body. “We have all gone through the same hell,” Tía Soila added nonchalantly.
Mamatoya remarried when Mamá was six years old. She left her old life behind, including Mamá, to move to Tactic.
“I’ll look after her. She won’t go hungry with me,” said Tía Soila to Mamatoya as she boarded the guagua headed to El Rancho, the midpoint between Mayuelas and Tactic.
“Tía Soila was my hero. I knew I could always count on her,” cut in Mamá, finally boasting about her childhood adventures. “What I really enjoyed doing at the age of eight, nine, and ten was cleaning Alba’s diner. I’d wash dishes, wipe down the tables, and eat for free. And if I wanted to buy a dress, or a pair of new shoes, I climbed the mango and grapefruit trees to fetch the fruit and sell it to the people boarding the guaguas,” Mamá said.
Mamá always reminded us how much she resented Mamatoya, her mother, for choosing Don Lalo over her. She admitted enjoying her childhood freedom, though. Tía Soila was like an older sister who couldn’t control her, but she was there to console her whenever she made mistakes or someone broke her heart.
I never quite understood how she enjoyed that freedom. I know I wouldn’t have at her age. I always wanted Mamá around. I had missed her terribly the three years she was gone. But she had had no choice. Mamá immigrated to the US in search of a better life for herself, for us, and to run away from Papá, whose toxic love was destroying her.
“Those were the days when your mother barely had enough to feed herself. But Sindy found the perfect way to deal with her hunger,” said Tía Soila.
“Sindy waited patiently for your mother to finish washing Doña Petronila’s dirty clothes. The pila withered your mother’s hands every day. Every night she rubbed them with lotion. Tears erupted from her eyes when she counted the few quetzales that she earned at the end of the month.”
At the age of twenty-one, she didn’t know how to discipline Sindy. Sindy was only four years old, and she loved to eat mud like it was chocolate pudding.
Tía Soila continued, “Your mother would sit Sindy down on top of the wobbly wooden dinner table that was next to the pila. The pila was against one of the walls that connected the kitchen with the outdoor dining patio. Poor Sindy had a fear of heights. She didn’t dare move. And your mother knew this well.”
“But Sindy was clever enough to balance herself on the center of the table by leaning against one of the walls,” added Mamá.
Consuelo and I laughed picturing Sindy sitting on the table, terrified of heights.
“She sat there quietly, patiently, observing how Victoria slammed her hips against the pila trying to beat each dirty garment with her bare fists. She had already broken the other side of the washbasin,” said Tía Soila.
Tía Soila pointed to the far-left corner of the garden. We all turned, and under the shade of the biggest grapefruit tree, we saw Mamá’s broken pila buried halfway into the ground. The right side was still broken, but the left side had lavender bellflowers blooming. Its light green vine had wrapped itself on the broken side of the washbasin.
“Your mother was famous for being one of the most reliable lavanderas in town,” Tía Soila boasted. “She washed people’s clothes better than her own. She was also famous for stealing detergent from Gualán’s mercado, and hiding it well in her soaked apron.
“The outline of the bar of soap was obvious in her apron’s pocket, but nobody ever dared accuse your mother of stealing anything. Her apron was never dry. Always wet, always,” chuckled Tía Soila.
Suddenly I heard Mamá mumbling between her lips, “Filthy people! But Sindy and I ate with those nickels and dimes.”
“Sindy eventually learned to cope with her phobia,” Tía Soila continued. “While sitting on the wobbly table, she found her haven. Her favorite wall—made out of clay, mud, and hay—nurtured her while she waited long hours for your mother to wash and hang people’s clothes to dry.
“Your mother’s chores seemed to go on forever, but Sindy never complained. She was happy to be placed next to her muddy wall. After gathering the dry clothes in her broken bowl, your mother was ready to attack a pile of clean, dried clothes that needed to be press-ironed. Your mother had an established routine, and she knew better than to leave the ironing until the end of the day.”
Mamá interrupted Tía Soila, “I didn’t want my hands to curl up with rheumatism for wetting them after absorbing the heat of the iron. I was tired of being burned by life.”
Tía Soila nodded. She knew well the life of a lavandera. She was still washing people’s dirty clothes even though both her sons lived in the US, and sometimes forgot to send her money.
Tía Soila continued, “To keep an eye on your sister, your mother would set her ironing board on the kitchen table right next to her. She folded three to four towels over the table so the heat of the iron wouldn’t penetrate the wood. This was your mother’s routine every other day.”
Mamá sat quietly, nodding her head.
“The comal was fueled with burning coals throughout the day. Carefully, she picked up the blazing coals with a spatula and placed them in the rusted pressing iron. Her iron weighed more than your skinny sister. Even though she was skin and bones, Sindy’s belly was bigger than her head. Your mother constantly mocked her bubble belly by saying, The tapeworms are eating you alive from all the mud you gobble up. Your sister knew to stay quiet.”
Tía Soila paused to light another cigarette and then went on.
“Sindy carefully watched your mother’s movements. She was afraid to move. On one side, there was heat and on the other side, there was height. Either way, she was damned.
“Your sister was always hungry, but not for love. She was not hungry for food, either. She simply loved the way her teeth crushed the clumps of mud in her mouth. She craved mud more than anything else.
“One day, she leaned her head against the wall and discovered a hole. It was a tiny muddy hole. Discretely, she hid both hands behind her back, and with one of her little fingers began making the hole in the wall bigger. She felt the prickly hay poke one of her fingers. She bled, but she didn’t cry because she knew that she had found her paradise—a heaven full of mud.
“Your mother thought she had found the perfect solution to your sister’s eating habit by sitting her on the table. A week
later, she noticed the big hole in the wall. Your mother scolded her again and again. Sindy never learned.
“A month later, your mother and I found more holes. I became obsessed with the idea that somebody had given your sister a mal de ojo, the evil eye, or that she was possessed. I convinced your mother to call the town’s curandera to come and do a limpia, a spiritual cleansing, on your sister.
“Doña Tomasa, the town’s healer, came and did the cleansing right away. She burned incense, lit some candles, and whipped the walls with ruda, long sprigs of rue. Doña Tomasa passed the rue over Sindy’s body. The smell made your sister gag. She couldn’t stand the smell of it and vomited up all the mud in her stomach.
“Finally, Doña Tomasa rubbed an egg on Sindy’s head. She closed her eyes and spoke in tongues. To finish the ritual, she broke the egg and emptied it into a glass of water. The egg came out fully transparent. There were no threads or bubbles. We knew then your sister had been cured of the evil eye.
“After the Santería ritual, your sister stayed away from the walls inside the house, but she couldn’t resist the outdoor walls. Those were also rich with clay and mud. The temptation was too much for her.
“One day, your mother caught her little fingers digging a hole in the patio wall. Your mother couldn’t help laughing, but in the midst of her laughter, she broke out into sobs that made her tremble. Your mother was hungry. And so was your sister.”
“We were all hungry,” interrupted a high-pitched voice from the kitchen. It was Mamatoya, accompanied by Tía Negra. I couldn’t believe my eyes. My abuelita was in our presence; I had missed her patchouli smell these last three years. Her short, black, curly hair—still the same. Her freckles spread over her face like tiny wild-flower seeds. Her thin lips, pink and soft, but firm. La mera mera, Mamatoya, was now in the middle of our conversation. Consuelo and I ran up to them. I hugged la Negra first, and then timidly hugged Mamatoya. La Negra was there with her beautiful energy—soft spoken and gentle. She attracted not just the mosquitoes, but all of us, especially Mamá, who felt comfortable around her, opening up like a pink cactus flower.
Knitting the Fog Page 12
