Josefina

by Newlands, Tara

  This rugged dark, mixed pairing of old and new reminded Sookie of herself: a crossbreed of two ways of life that had made something new.

  “You know, baby, that we’re moving toward our twilight years.”

  Her friend, her partner reached out, brushing a single fingertip down her cheek, over her nose. “I know, Sookie. However, we’re not there yet.”

  “I always thought Josefina didn’t like Lolo and me till I realized she lived a hard life as a woman before her time.”

  She stood, gently disengaging her hand from his with a soft squeeze, moving toward the stove as she said, “Come on, let’s start dinner because I’m sure the boys are getting hungry.”

  “Do you still want to talk?”

  “Yes.” She turned to him with a smile, holding her arms up. “You know how good I am at doing two things at once.”

  Shaking his head and giving her a lopsided smile, Dennis said, “Yes, that is very true.”

  She began to mix dry and solids for a short time, preparing dinner with soft, steady hands. She began to mix eggs, then poured flour into a mixing bowl, then breaded chicken as her mind continued to wander down memories of her recently departed Nana, of her childhood and how connection to a forgotten past lingered even now as her own body began to change, moving toward the second term of her life.

  “Josefina didn’t like my father. In fact, she disliked him with intensity. However, it wasn’t just because he’d been such a snake to us, it was also because he was coloured.”

  Several times during these past few years Sookie often considered how lessons learned from Josefina and the barrio ‘Santa Cruz’ in childhood had shaped her, strengthened her, and sometimes shook her confidence in trying to adjust in meeting so many challenges of a fast-changing, unsteady modern world.

  Sookie continued talking while placing piece after piece of chicken into hot oil. “Josefina lived as a strong-willed woman living free in a society filled with ‘machismo’ coupled with masculine valor before a time when western women, especially Mexican ones, were allowed to follow their own destinies.”

  Sookie sighed thinking about it. “Her power was at times frenzied, rushed, but could turn nurturing and loving with the drop of a hat. I image it must have driven her nuts knowing she had an inner strength that could rival any man.”

  “She could be quite intense,” Dennis said softly. “I was more than a little afraid of her.”

  “She really was the glue that held all of us together during often heated arguments, marriages, and every other event changing the lives of my tias and my mom.”

  She turned back to the stove, trying to contain light oil pops, and placing a spatter guard over the chicken while beginning to peel potatoes. Dennis stood, taking the white-handled peeler out of her hand. “I’ll do that.”

  Sookie smiled. “Thanks.”

  Today, only in Josefina’s departure, did Sookie truly begin to see how her strength, coupled with her furiously intense experiences, had impacted her own life before she’d ever been a glint in her father’s eye. That she had not been there to support Josefina’s departure from Earth would haunt her, because even when she received her sometimes cold behavior she still cared for her throughout most of her life with an honest lack of guile only children seemed to carry.

  Even so, during those childhood years Sookie strained her brain repeatedly, trying to figure out why, when people from outside Josefina’s family would visit, that she’d tell people Sookie and her sister were only family friends.

  She’d only been able to guess at reasons until one day that part of her childhood ended with words from a little boy’s smart mouth.

  However, now she could see she might have felt it was easier saying that than having to explain to oftentimes some racist friends, ‘My daughter married a coloured man, birthing two bi-racial girls.’ Josefina truly lived privately in everything she did.

  Sounds of clanging pots, and pans filled with the oncoming dinner, returned Sookie’s thoughts to the present. “It’s funny, really. I well remember the day adulthood came in with a somber, weird crash.”

  As a child, she and Lolo cooked with Josefina, learning all secrets of good Mexican cooking. They stayed over every weekend, played with their primos, grew in the knowledge she taught. However painfully and just a bit sadly, they remained friends even as their respect for her, and her returned love for them, grew.

  Even so, that old neighborhood at that time held many secrets most didn’t know how to share.

  Anna, Sookie’s mother, use to say she’d just been making a joke about their disconnection and that distance was her way. Nevertheless, Sookie noted, she always looked a bit sad when she said that.

  “Baby, you know I’ve always been an observer, a watcher of people,” she said, “and never more so than then. Reading people became almost an art for me and the falsehood of my mother’s statements written clearly across her face often used to bring tears to my eyes.”

  So, Sookie grew as one of the children of Marbelle, Michelle and Anna Verdugo numbering in that second generation; twelve in all.

  Josefina’s temper was a legend in that close-knit barrio zone. She kept the pulse on all its goings on. There was a fraud-creating trio of brothers from California claiming no connection to the Latino community in which they lived, although their name, which was spelled clearly in Spanish, meant ‘the small fence’. Josefina protected her own fence as a woman born near the sea of Cortez, where Sookie herself had once lived. There were so many ‘little fences’ time wasn’t able to breach between anyone in that formerly familiar, yet distant world.

  Sookie never stopped loving the woman her nana had been. She’d been the only grandmother Sookie would ever know.

  Her father’s mother, Velma, the bootlegging former owner of a speakeasy in the old south, disappeared quickly from her life into New Orleans nightlife, never to be heard from again.

  “But what bothers me a lot, Den, is that part of me is relieved to say I wasn’t there. It makes me a bad person?”

  “No, my dear. It’s normal not to want to see someone you love die.” Coming closer, he stood next to her, looking down into her eyes. She looked up at his face. It was a study of solid character with wisdom beyond his years. He looked at her lovingly. “None of us really want to accept how a death changes things. It’s what makes us human.”

  “I was remembering how my primos and I use to hang out together while my mom and aunts would go out seeking to find joy, men, and what life had to offer them.”

  Sookie reached into the refrigerator for a jar of iced tea. She poured him a glass, turning to him with a gentle smile, holding out the cup. “For you.”

  Together, they continued their preparations as Dennis absentmindedly took sips of tea from his glass.

  Sitting down at the dining room table together, he smiled at her as she continued. “I’d never completely understood why Josefina was the way she was until I moved there.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Looking at her husband now, Sookie realized she’d been lucky to find this man, who still looked at her with his heart in his eyes. Although he could be frosty sometimes, she knew he remained as committed to their family as the day they’d married, and he continued to be committed to her in the way Josefina had struggled for most of her lifetime to find.

  Luckily for Sookie, she’d never become a gang banger, which in their barrio had been easy to do. Especially because she and her female band of cousins, who had no boyfriends at the time due to their young age, hung out on the corner of south Sixth Avenue, sitting down, watching and playing That’s my car, which was what the ghetto poor kids used to do, passing the time dreaming of the someday, where life would offer them a choice.

  Leaning back in her high-backed chair, Sookie looked off into the distance as she said, “My nana also lived in a mixed marriage. I figure she’d had to struggle with people’s bigotry on more than a daily basis in the early 1900s. My mom told me more than once how it
changed her.”

  Shifting, then stretching, standing on her slightly aching legs, she arched her back with an internal groan, releasing tension she’d carried since discovering her mother’s news. Sookie poured her own cup of iced tea into a brown, curved-edge tea cup and carried it to wooden table while Dennis started on the last ingredient for their meal.

  “But it wasn’t until I was ten I began to understand just how strange this world can be at times.”

  Dennis frowned, searching her eyes with a question mirrored in his own. “Go on.”

  “I was ten when I first learned about that type of nonsense bigotry firsthand. You know I miss the desert sometimes. Nighttime in the desert can be a beautiful thing, thousands upon thousands of stars. I loved star-gazing, doing it on countless warm summer nights from the time I was nine years old.”

  Thinking out loud, she smiled. “The neighborhood held few secrets to an observing eye coupled with open ears. The antics of the sons of the bakers down the street, to the unfortunate drug dealing of Eddie, the area’s local Romeo, was always common knowledge, even to the children.”

  Her voice trailed off for a moment as she got caught up in the past to the day she’d learned what a bigot was and Josefina’s reaction to it. It was from a child whom Sookie discovered the difference that taught her the way of her grandmother’s sometimes harsh manner.

  * * * *

  She’d had been spinning, laughing, playing all day just down the street around the corner from her grandmother’s house as the day passed toward night until under a street lamp that glowed soft and warm against her skin, she learned someone else’s view of her own truth.

  Surrounded by four of her best cousins, the younger ones like her, they were playing silly girl games whose names she couldn’t quite remember, until fast Eddie’s little brother, Juan, forever known in her memory as ‘the bully number one’ came pouring venom from his mouth in an effort to make trouble.

  A thug in training, Juan had been. Nevertheless, Sookie only remembered it at that moment. In her shadow mind, Juan had always just been a hulking, smirking face.

  “Why are you playing here, wetback?” Sookie could hear him say as she stopped her bantering, laughing conversation. She stared down the intruder who’d entered into their presence.

  She, having more bravery than good sense, spoke first. “Go away.”

  Lolo, wearing a blue tube top, and ever present near her, tried to shush her. “Mana…”

  However, Sookie hushed her by holding up her hand as she stared him down. She pressed on, unfazed. “We’re busy, Juan. Go away.”

  “Shut up, wetback.”

  She well remembered a furious angry heat rise in her face; it indeed had felt the same a few short hours ago as she faced that jackass boss of hers.

  She’d just stared at him, growing more incensed by the moment. What the heck was he talking about? Shivering a bit in slightly moist night air, she’d been unable to think of a word to say.

  “Wetback, wetback. Your mother came across the river, across the Rio Grande, marrying a black man.” He’d smirked, shrugging his shoulder like an old time gangster.

  Chapter Four

  It’s funny really, children do repeat things they hear. On and on, he, then two of his little friends mocked Sookie and Lolo. The irony was that their skin hadn’t been much lighter than hers. All the girls were furious in their anger.

  She couldn’t help but chuckle out loud, thinking that they could have easily taken his trio in a fight.

  Sookie gave her husband a smile. “A taunting word fight ensued among the group of us. Names called names while denials rang out, and still he would not back down.”

  She didn't realize someone must have called the parents because moments later Sookie’s mom’s voice shouted, “Sookie, Lolo, ven aqui!” quickly followed by Juan’s own mother shouting much the same from the opposite end of the street.

  Each group of potential combatants moved slowly apart, almost like groups of dancers in a play as harsh feelings held. Turning with an angry stride, she led her rag tag bunch of females toward her mother and just beyond her, her grandmother, standing silently on the steps.

  Her heart had been beating rapidly in her chest. She knew she, who’d always tried to be the ‘good kid’, was about to get a reprimand she might not like.

  Her mother’s tense, thin-lipped expression was fierce. It drove her to present downcast eyes while she climbed concrete steps outside Josefina’s house to meet her mother’s eyes with a question, then a confused voice. “Mama, what’s a wetback?”

  “What? Why were you fighting with Eddie’s little brother?”

  “He wouldn’t leave us alone, Mom,” Lolo said as she walked up with the rest of the cousin maidens in tow.

  “Well, that doesn’t mean you should be fighting with other kids.”

  Anna tried to avoid her question by giving her a sound scolding. “You know better than to be talking to the Bara kids. That Eddie is no good and Juan is no better. You guys need to stay here, understand?”

  “Yes, Mom.”

  Josefina cut like a lion into their conversation with, “Anna, diga la verdad.”

  Tell her the truth, she’d said.

  “Ah, Mama,” came Anna’s frustrated groan.

  Into the house, the pair went. A bickering argument followed and she’d sat listening to furious whispers about her parents’ marriage. Josefina’s angry voice floated in to settle on her ears. “Jaquel hombre nunca se preocupó por usted y sus ninas!”

  Josefina had said harshly, “That man never worried about you or the girls!”

  * * * *

  Sookie’s father had been gone a long time then.

  He hadn’t been a great fellow too many days facing; heavy drinking and a blood bath as a solider in America’s forgotten war saw to that. However, he always said he loved them while he’d been with them. He called Sookie his ‘little ball’ and Lolo ‘the weenie.’

  She missed him when he’d gone.

  Those endearments, which had been long forgotten, still had power to make her smile.

  Anna never liked to talk about the roads they’d been on together; maybe it had been just too much to face.

  Sookie knew she’d wanted to count on him, but he had never completely been there for her, for them or for himself.

  Dennis winced slightly, understanding his wife’s struggles against her corrupt boss started long before she ever set foot on Citycore’s floors. Silently, he listened while she continued. “She told her to explain to us why Juan had called us names.”

  She could still hear Josefina say, “Ahora debio expliciar a sus chicas por que punk pequeno les llama norbmos.”

  “Tell them why that little punk called them names,” she’d said.

  However, she knew she’d been digressing internally.

  She’d been thinking about the difference, which really wasn’t a difference to her anymore. If there was one thing she’d learned in these past years it was that most people still wanted a suitor to love, a home to have, a place to belong, and a place to hang their hats.

  Her mind swam with thoughts as she compared grey rain clouds outside now with how that day looked.

  * * * *

  She’d watched dim orange light change the evening night around them while voices inside her grandmother’s house drifted into uneasy silence. In the time she’d lived there she’d had more than her share of ups and downs, making her reflect often on where she’d been, who she was as a mother, and where her own mixed family was going, but she realized that night had been a turning point in how she finally began to learn to love herself.

  * * * *

  Anna drove them home after her daughter’s rude run, in an old, rusty, brown cutlass with silver-plated door handles that were starting to tear off; their plastic coverings were unable to withstand harsh New Mexico sun. The trinity in that battered vehicle stared at their separate, yet equal destinations with thoughtful, contemplating eyes.


  “Mama, what’s a wetback?”

  Anna gave a quiet, disheartened sigh as she answered in English, “You’re not a wetback, Sookie.”

  “Then, why did he say we were?” Child-like logic insisted on an answer.

  “A wetback is a hateful word to say someone isn’t from America.”

  “We’re not from America?”

  Anna laughed softly, shaking her wavy hair that often fell into her eyes as she’d continued, “You’re as American as anyone else here can be, Sookie.”

  “So, he was lying?”

  “He doesn’t understand what he said any more than you do. He was trying to say that you’re mixed and you should be ashamed.”

  “Mixed?”

  They’d continued heading south down Sixth, turning at a street she couldn’t remember the name of, where generations of Mexican Americans took their first steps into God’s house by attending Mass under the smooth, curved domes of a Catholic church as they moved east towards home.

  “Your father is black and I’m Mexican. Some people didn’t like us together. I fooled myself into thinking that no one would dare say mean things to you.”

  Sookie had been unable to see her face at that moment, turned as it was toward her reflection in the side mirror. Lolo apparently could because she touched their mother’s hand on the wheel, and then her eyes met Sookie’s in the mirror.

  Deep, dark, and sad, her mother’s eyes looked for a moment to be haunted. Even so, that look became quickly replaced with a look of steely resolve.

  “Sookie,” she said, “there is nothing, and I mean nothing wrong with you, your sister or the love that your father and I use to share. I love you guys, and I know that you’ll continue to make me proud like you do every day.”

  After that day, Josefina’s demeanor towards her and her sister began to change. While not completely loving, something in her softened, as if accepting and then loving her own mirrored kinship to Anna’s brown-skinned girls. That uneasy truce had lasted with Sookie as some of Josefina’s strength helped her make her own way in the world.