Love a Foot Above the Ground

by Anna Burke

  Guillermo turned and handed the last of the flowers to me, bowing slightly as he did. I didn’t know what to say or do. I felt myself turn a shade that must have rivaled the color of those blooms. I remained silent, almost holding my breath as he spoke.

  “Bernadette, I am honored to have the pleasure of escorting you to Mass this morning.” He had saved the best compliment for me. “You are even more beautiful than when you appeared out of nowhere on the beach at dawn yesterday. The bloom you hold will soon wilt from envy, I have no doubt.” I blushed again, of course, still trying to find something to say. You could have heard a pin drop as we all stood in silence.

  I was so happy that he liked my appearance. My mother and sisters had gone to extra trouble to help me dress. Mama had brushed my long hair and pulled it back from my face, fixing it in place with a large comb that also held a lacy black mantilla to cover my head. I wore a deep rose-colored blouse, embroidered with vines and flowers in many colors. The blouse was my mother’s, the mantilla my older sister’s, and that comb had come all the way from Mexico City. It used to belong to mi abuela. The blouse was tucked into a calf-length black skirt, with bands of color at the waist and at the hem. I felt like a grownup, especially wearing that mantilla that was so much more ornate than the shorter lace cover I usually wore on my head.

  The silence was not an awkward one, more a pause taken to mark the significance of the moment. We were all swept up by Guillermo’s charm, not to mention his good looks. He seemed even more handsome to me, Sunday morning, than he had the day before. In a white shirt and dark pants, the kind of clothes that boys wore only on Sunday, or for a special event at school, his brown skin glistened. His eyes were bright and his smile broad, teeth as dazzlingly white as the shirt he wore. On his feet were shoes that city boys wore—polished leather, not shiny patent leather, but dark with a sheen. He must have stopped to wipe them off before he knocked at the door since there was no dust from the road on them. I finally found my voice.

  “Guillermo, thank you for the kind words you have brought with you into my family’s house, and for the beautiful flowers. I am glad to have a chance to walk with you, too. I have many questions about you that I hope you will answer as we walk.” That amused him somehow. Perhaps because of my earnestness or the determination in my intention to discover who this young man really was. In any case, he smiled, brightly, as held out his arm for me to take.

  “Shall we go? I will do my best to answer whatever questions you have. I may have a few of my own,” he said as we headed out the door. When I took his arm, I felt the strength of the man in it. That strength stirred something in me, not just flashes of romance, but a desire to possess that strength and to understand its source.

  A swish of skirts and whispered commands followed us as we joined my father and brothers already in the tiny courtyard outside our house. All smiles, they waited for me and Guillermo to pass, then for my mother and sisters, finally taking their place behind us all.

  I learned many more surprising things about Guillermo that day. He came from a very traditional family who owned a large cattle ranch in the northwest part of Chihuahua. They were quite well off and he was one of many children. Like Paolo, at eighteen, Guillermo was the oldest son. He named each of his family members for me, including a grandmother and an aunt who lived with them on the hacienda at their ranch. He had one older sister, Consuelo, named for her grandmother. She had already married, but the marriage had not lasted long. The husband, an ambitious young man, had gone on a business trip to Ciudad Juarez and had not come back. It was not known if he was dead or had deserted his wife and child. The family did not speak of it, but had welcomed his sister and her child back home. Now, four generations lived at the ranch, since Grandma Consuelo live with them too.

  Fortunately, their ranch house was much larger than our home in San Felipe. More like a compound than a house. Guillermo’s grandparents had their own smaller house that was the first built on that property. That house was now occupied by Guillermo’s sister and her child, as well as his grandmother. From the way he described it, that small house was as big as my family’s home, or close to it.

  “Mi abuela needs more help to do every day chores than she once did, so the arrangement works well for my sister and my grandmother. My mother was very clever asking Grandmother to share her house with my sister and her son. That way no one had to force my grandmother to concede some of her independence to advancing age, but my sister is able to assist my Grandmother. My grandmother is still a formidable woman. She, in turn, helps my sister care for her daughter, Izzy, who adores her grandma. Given the sad circumstances that brought all of this about, it’s a small miracle that it has all turned out so well.”

  “Yes, I understand what you’re saying, Guillermo, an everyday miracle.” He turned his head and looked at me with admiration in his eyes.

  “You are wise beyond your years, Bernadette. Wise and beautiful, how lucky can one man be?” He smiled as he continued to tell me about his family homestead. There were also outbuildings for the care of the animals, as well as a bunkhouse where ranch hands slept. His father was one of several patròns that had large holdings in the area. Like his family, most had livestock of some kind, but some were involved in the sale of timber from trees that grew in dense forests. The trees, as he described them, were so tall that I was amazed.

  I listened carefully as he described the area. Acres of pasture land backed up into foothills of the Sierra Madre mountains that stretch north to south through the state of Chihuahua. He spoke rapidly, with excitement, about the breathtaking splendor of the region, the richness of the land, and the purity of the water. I was captivated by the things he described, mountains and waterfalls and a grand canyon called Barranca del Cobre—Copper Canyon, deeper even than the Grand Canyon in the United States. It all sounded so different from San Felipe and the area around the Sea of Cortez. It was the first time I realized how much bigger the world was and how exciting it might be to see it.

  His family did, indeed, believe that as the eldest son, he should take his place at his father’s side and prepare to run the ranch. Guillermo was willing to do that, but he and his father disagreed about many things when it came to the future of the ranch. While finishing his high school education in Mexicali, he had begun to read about agriculture and the environment, and the need to protect treasures like the land around his family’s ranch. Guillermo spoke of concerns about overgrazing and destruction of the forests, about threats from poisons in the air and water, and a recent book he had read that struck him like a hammer’s blow: A Silent Spring. I tried to follow along. This Guillermo was going to be a tough guy to keep up with, as deeply as he thought, and as fast as he spoke.

  At one point I stopped in my tracks when he said the most impossible thing I had ever heard. I doubted what I was hearing and made him repeat it.

  “What did you say? The Sea of Cortez might someday run out of fish?”

  “Yes, unless we figure out how to better manage its gifts. The Sea of Cortez, like other areas of our Mother Ocean, will let us down.”

  A couple times my father had taken me aboard to show me what it was like on the large diesel fishing trawler. I remembered the way it looked, once, at the end of a run at sea, when it was filled, not just with shrimp but fish too, some of them nearly as big as me. I found Guillermo’s words impossible to believe. Still stunned by his words, I began to move again as he continued to talk.

  Guillermo was adamant that it would happen unless we learned to find other ways to fish, through fish farming, or some other form of sustainable fishing. He used that word several times, sustainable, as he spoke about agriculture and raising cattle, while preserving the land. There were things he wanted to learn—that he felt he had to learn to truly honor his family’s legacy. To Guillermo a few more years of schooling was a small price to pay to extend the life of the ranch for generations.

  While I found his words unbelievable, I wanted to believe the y
oung man whose arm I held. I realized I was clinching it tightly, in fact. I loosened my grip, a little, but did not let go. He was so convincing, but if even his own father doubted him, what was I to do? What would my family think if they heard him speak this way? Had he shared his ideas with my father and brothers? What would they make of his claims that the sea would run out of fish? I glanced over my shoulders as we grew closer to the small Catholic Church, dedicated to Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, our Blessed Mother, and the patron saint of Mexico.

  “Guillermo, have you told all of this to Paolo and Tomàs, or to my father?” Guillermo laughed and patted my hand that clutched his arm, gently.

  “Do you think I’m crazy, Chica? My own father thinks I have fallen off the back of a truck in Mexicali, and landed on my head. What could I expect from your father? Besides, it would be rude to come here to learn about the sea and fishing, and then, tell them how to do their jobs.” He laughed again, and tapped the side of his head a couple times. “Your Guillermo is a thinking man, Bernadette.”

  “My Guillermo,” he had said. My heart skipped a beat as it began to pound so hard I felt I might lose my breath.

  “My father is a thinking man too,” he said as we stopped near the entrance to the small whitewashed church with the doors thrown wide to welcome us. “Four years of coursework, even if I could do it in three, seems like an eternity if it means we will be apart. How could I wait so long to see, every day, your dark eyes flash, your chin stuck out, and your small foot stamping the ground como El Pinto?” I gasped, as he pawed the ground. Who had told him about El Pinto?

  I tried to stop myself, but before I knew it I had spun around, and my foot, on its own accord, kicked at the ground and stamped twice. My family that had kept a discrete distance as we walked through town to the church, now, stood close by. They roared with laughter and that laughter caused other parishioners nearby to stare and laugh too. I was poised to take off and run all the way back home, but Guillermo reached out and caught my hand.

  In that moment the church bells rang. A flock of doves rose into the air from the tiny bell tower. One snow white dove, plunged toward us, circling above our heads for no more than thirty seconds, then, took off, disappearing into the glare of the morning sun.

  The laughter stopped. My mother made the sign of the cross, as did others around us. Guillermo smiled, placed my hand back into the crook of his arm and we marched, for the first time, down the aisle of that church. I remember looking at him from the corner of my eye as we made our way to a pew up front. What other surprises did Guillermo have for me?

  5 a traveling man

  My nine-year-old self, overcome with laughter, sat down at the table in the morning room just off the kitchen. For the second time that day I had tears in my eyes. These tears were from laughing with Bernadette about El Pinto. Today, in my thirties, I could easily imagine the feisty Bernadette stomping her feet and telling off the love of her life. Not to mention all those family members who were teasing her! I had seen the woman in action, many times.

  At the time, though, it struck me as so totally out of character. The diminutive Bernadette was a kind and gentle woman, always calm and composed, infinitely patient. It was hard to visualize her as a stormy teenager. I found it shocking and hilarious, like bumping into a teacher from school chewing out a grocery store clerk.

  “El Pinto is about as great a nickname as Jinx, Bernadette.” That was my nickname, short for Jessica Alexis. My father had given it to me when, at age four I had done a little foot-stamping of my own. I had demanded a nickname after my parents tried to explain why people called my father Hank when his name was actually Henry, just like my grandfather.

  “Well it was more like name-calling to me, Jessica, than a nickname.”

  “But you were laughing today, Bernadette, so hard you were crying too.”

  “That’s true. I was a very silly girl then, Jessica. Sometimes it’s not until you tell someone else, say it out loud, that you can really see how silly you were.”

  The nine-year-old Jessica struggled to understand. Geez, is all I can say now! Another of Bernadette’s lessons stored away until confronted by my own silliness, over and over again. Mind you, like the young Bernadette on the verge of her quinceañera who took herself so seriously, I have had a hard time learning to laugh at myself. Some of us are just harder to teach than others. I must confess that even now, I get it, but don’t always laugh along with life when it points out my latest absurdity.

  That afternoon, as the two of us sat eating a lunch I had helped prepare, I urged her to go on with her story. Not without a word, first, about that visit from the dove and the idea of everyday miracles. At nine religion was more an idea than an experience, so I was not religious in the way Bernadette was. I still struggle, as an adult, to believe in something larger than myself. My forays into religion have been numerous. Like trying out one clothing designer or another, a subject I know a lot about as a wanton shopaholic. None of my religious sprees, undertaken more or less mindfully, has held sway for long.

  Anyway, Bernadette’s faith was the real deal, although it must surely have been tested by the story she told. Then, as now, there was nothing superficial about her faith. It was woven deeply into her DNA, to resort to a commonly used phrase, today. The desire for goodness was an integral part of the woman, like breathing. Her sincerity invited me inside the helix of her beliefs.

  “Bernadette, what did you think about that dove circling you like that? Is that an everyday miracle? At church the dove is a symbol of the Holy Spirit—was that a visitation?”

  “At the time that’s exactly what I thought. The others who saw it thought so too. There was whispering for some time about it. For some, my nickname went from El Pinto to La niña Paloma in that one morning. It was one of those small everyday miracles that we too often miss, Jessica. Still, I didn’t fully understand how much my life had changed because Guillermo had travelled to San Felipe, as though destined to meet me.”

  ****

  Guillermo called on me regularly after that. Not just on Sundays, but evenings too, until the shrimp boats set out in October. In my mind, that evening breeze still swirls about me as it did sitting in the small courtyard outside my family’s house.

  Guillermo told me more stories about his childhood. He spoke of encounters in the wild, with bear and other animals, when on hunting trips with his father and grandfather. He was also a traveling man. Not just to Mexicali, but to Chihuahua City, and he had made trips to La Ciudad Juarez, a huge city, near the U.S. border at El Paso. There was an array of government offices and companies in that city important to his family’s land, farming and cattle interests. His father took him, and his younger brother, Roberto, along to watch and learn. The size of the city was difficult for me to imagine, but Guillermo tried to describe it to me and to my brothers who sometimes joined us. That it would take hours to walk from one side of the city to the other was a stunning idea.

  “Of course, that isn’t something a young woman would want to do. La Ciudad Juarez is a city with a reputation, like many large cities. I am cautious, too, especially since my brother-in-law disappeared there.” The troubles in Juarez then, were nothing like today. Guillermo visited before the explosion of maquiladoras. Those are manufacturing plants, opened by foreign companies, which grew the city too fast. It has since become not only a troubled border town, but a center of great interest to those who transport drugs into the United States.

  “There is one place you would love to see, Bernadette. Juarez has its own church dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe. A cathedral, in fact, with spires the reach into the sky. It takes up an entire city block, and it could hold your church inside it—maybe two or three of them, in fact.” I must have had a skeptical look on my face, because he quickly added, “I will have my family send one of the postcards we brought back so you can see for yourself.”

  “I believe you, Guillermo. I was just thinking about how much more comfortable it would be t
o marry in a small chapel, rather than in a cathedral like that. Our Lady would still be with us there...” It suddenly dawned on me that I had mentioned marriage so blithely, and with such forwardness. I had embarrassed myself, once again, in front of Guillermo. He looked over at my brothers who were snoozing in their chairs. Taking both of my hands in his, only for a moment, he gazed directly into my eyes.

  “Yes, Our Lady will be with us, anywhere we choose to marry, when you are older.” My heart leaped with joy and with that feeling I always had when Guillermo touched me. A feeling like every last part of my being was alive. Then, he placed a gentle kiss on one hand before letting go. I went to sleep that night with the side of my face resting on the hand he had kissed. That was no formal proposal, but I took it as a promise that Guillermo and I would be married, someday. I scolded myself, just a little, for being so young. It was another month until my fifteenth birthday and the celebration my parents had planned.

  “Patience, El Pinto,” I chided myself as I willed myself to sleep. There was so much I still did not know about Guillermo. I was eager—greedy, in fact, to learn everything there was to know about him. In the months Guillermo was a member of the shrimp fishing fleet we continued to share the stories of our short lives. My brothers helped me tell about growing up beside the Sea of Cortez. Or, on it, too, as it was for them. They had started going to sea, part time, while they were still in school. Then, full time for Paolo when he turned fifteen a few years ago. Tomàs joined him, reaching his fifteenth birthday the year after Paolo.

  They had stories about their escapades at sea that were fascinating. Some of them quite funny, practical jokes played on each other or one of their shipmates. Other stories made me anxious—near misses with equipment that broke or riding out a storm at sea when they could not beat it back to anchor the trawler properly. I tried to wear a brave face. Some of their stories I had heard before, but others were new to me. My brothers laughed at close calls. That night I prayed fervently, to my favorite saints.