Isabella readied out, grabbed my earring, and started to play with the hoop. “And it certainly doesn’t seem like either of us want to nap right now anyway.”
Like her baby, Maria had big brown eyes. They became wet with tears, though I could see my cousin was doing her best to stop them from falling. I picked up a pack of counting cards Isabella seemed to greatly enjoy.
“We can study math or something,” I said, trying to sound cheery.
Maria didn’t move.
“Go, Maria,” I said. “It’s okay. Go.”
“You been talking to Abuelita?” she asked.
I paused, not exactly sure of what to say.
“You’re a good mother, prima,” I said, then paused. “And truthfully, I don’t know where you find the strength. This little nena has many needs.” I looked at the baby, then raised my eyes to my cousin. “But so do you.”
Maria looked me in the eyes as if she were searching for permission to accept my help.
“You’re stronger than I am, prima.” I said. “But even the strong sometimes need help from those who they think are weak.”
I shifted the baby in my arms. “Do you want to spend a bit of time with Tía Sonia?” I asked. “That’s right,” I said in a baby voice, “soy Tía Sonia.”
Isabella’s face shined with a big, wide smile. Tears began to fall from Maria’s eyes.
“I am not so strong, pocha,” Maria said. “I still cry every night.” She put down the clothes she had been folding, turned, and headed for the door.
“Every fucking night,” she said in English.
The door closed behind her.
Later, I found Maria napping on the couch. She hadn’t said yes, she hadn’t said no, but somehow I had unofficially become Tiá Siesta, the aunt who would take over watching the baby while mi prima rested in the middle of warm, breezy, lazy Mexican afternoons.
It quickly became the favorite part of my day.
“Do you mind watching her for a little more?” Maria asked one afternoon as I sat on the floor making the baby laugh with a sock I was using as a puppet. “I want to bathe.”
“Sure,” I answered. “I could even walk down to the river with you, if you want.”
“The river?” Maria replied. “Who bathes down there?”
I paused.
“I do it up here in the shower shed, don’t you?”
“You mean…”
A smile crossed Maria’s face. “Welcome to Mexico…pocha.”
I hesitated, then smiled back. For the first time, Maria and I shared a laugh.
“Did you like the way I tried to dry myself like some sort of mermaid?” Maria asked. “Can I tell you how bad my tetas got sunburned that afternoon?”
I giggled.
“Hey, I’m going into town later,” she said. “You wanna come? I need to get some things for the baby and check my e-mail.”
“Uh, yeah, sure,” I answered. “Sounds good.”
It turned out that one of Juan Carlos’s old friends came by every Tuesday and Friday to take Maria and the baby into town to do errands. I thought that was nice. And though he drove a pickup truck, he didn’t make me sit in the back listening to a psycho pooch lick its balls either. That was even nicer.
“Hasta luego,” the boy said with a wide smile once we arrived in town.
“Bye, gracias,” I replied with a friendly wave.
“See you in two hours, Ignacio,” Maria said as she closed the door. He drove away. “You see that?” she asked.
“See what?” I said.
“Ignacio,” she answered. “He likes you. Probably wants to do the in-and-out with you before you go back to El Norte.”
“Stop,” I said.
“Why? You have a novio? asked Maria.
I reached over and brushed a bit of hair out of Isabella’s eyes, avoiding the question.
“You do, don’t you?” said Maria. “I can tell. What’s he like?”
“I don’t,” I said.
“Liar,” she answered. “I can tell, your heart flutters for someone.”
“There’s no one,” I said.
“Sure thing, pocha. Sure thing.”
We walked into an air-conditioned Internet cafe and sat at a table. I ordered an orange juice and fed Isabella a banana while Maria checked her e-mail and sent out a few messages. Our table was by a window at the front of the cafe. It was my first real view of town.
The first thing I noticed was that traffic lanes didn’t seem to mean anything. People drove anywhere there were no cars, that was the only rule. If there was no one to the left, they went left. If no one was on the right, they drove right. If there was no one on the sidewalk, they drove on the sidewalk.
These drivers are crazy, I thought. Then I looked to the left.
“Hey, what’s that big line across the street for?” I asked.
Maria looked over. There must have been at least 150 women standing against a wall, waiting to enter a store.
“It’s Friday, payday,” Maria explained. “Today’s the day the vatos in the United States send their money home.”
I stared at the ladies waiting their turn for wire transfers to arrive from the U.S.
“Are there always so many?” I asked.
“No,” Maria answered. “Tomorrow, on Saturday, there will be more.”
More, I thought. Mi prima didn’t even look up from the computer screen.
When Maria finished, we exited the cafe and walked past the long line of women. I stared at them. Tall, short, fat, skinny, they all looked different, yet they all looked the same, as though poverty had created the same kind of wrinkles for each one of them. All that lettuce picking in the States, all those dishes being washed, all those lawns being mowed, and all those gardens being tended to…so this is where the men sent their wages, to the women down here, the women who, without American dollars, would not survive.
“Hey, look…” Maria suddenly said.
Maria turned Isabella so that she could see a group of barefoot children across the street. They were flying kites. Actually, they weren’t kites like American kites; they were pieces of string wrapped around june bugs that danced in the sky at the end of small strands of rope.
A giant smile came to Isabella’s face. She stared at the barefoot boys with wide, amazed eyes. I looked on in wonder, too. I had never seen such a thing. The june bugs fluttered and flittered in a way that made them almost hypnotic to watch, and the boys seemed to greatly love what they were doing.
Watching the boys play with their bugs made me think about my brothers back home. The kids here may not have had money, but they made due with what they had without complaining. My brothers at home were always sitting around the house, playing violent video games and whining about how they needed more of this or more of that while they drank soda pop and ate chips. I couldn’t even remember the last time my brothers played outside without a Game Boy in their hands. The boys here didn’t even have shoes.
Suddenly I realized, if only a few small things had happened differently, those would be my brothers out there flying june bug kites. And that might be me standing in line waiting for U.S. dollars to be sent home from El Norte.
Wow, I thought, what would my life have been like if my parents had not jumped the border? I couldn’t even imagine.
“Hey, pocha…pocha, you ready? We still have a few errands to run.”
“Sí,” I said, waking from my daze. I looked back at the boys with the june bug kites and the women with wrinkled faces waiting in a line that seemed to stretch on forever.
“Yes,” I said. “I’m ready. Let’s go.”
chapter veintidós
Maria and I became inseparable. We cooked, we cleaned, we walked in the hills, and we laughed about things like doing the in-and-out with Ignacio and about how we needed to feed Rodrigo some butt glue so he would stop farting all the time. And as crazy as it sounds, sitting on the porch became enjoyable for me. Very enjoyable. I had grown to love rocking chai
rs.
“Hey, Abuelita, how come you had so many children?” Maria asked one night after dinner as we rocked and relaxed in the soft, warm breeze.
“What else is there to do here?” Abuelita answered. “Nada, so we make woop-woop to pass the time.”
My grandmother smiled with a grin that showed her one tooth. Maria and I couldn’t help but laugh.
“What was he like?” Maria asked.
“Your grandfather? Oh, he was good in bed. Had very strong legs so he could pump a long time.”
“No, Abuelita, as a person,” Maria responded, shaking her head. “As a person, you dirty old bird, what was he like? I never met him.”
“Oh, as a person. Honorable,” my grandmother replied. “Very honorable. Never told a lie. Nunca. He passed quietly in his sleep. It was a good death.”
“Do you miss him?” I asked.
Abuelita looked off into the distance and paused. Slowly she took a puff off her cigar.
“He used to smoke these,” she said. “And when he passed, we had so many in the drawer, I…well, the smoke rings, I guess they are my little way of remembering.”
She blew another puff.
“Each one is a valentine.”
It was quiet for a moment. Rain began to fall.
“I’ll be with him again, though,” she added. “People think death divides, but it reunites, too.”
Abuelita turned to Maria. I didn’t notice that she had started crying.
“Don’t worry, mija, you’ll be with your love again as well,” Abuelita said to my cousin. “One day, when your work down here is done, you’ll be reunited with your Juan Carlos. You must not lose faith. Some things in this world, they have been written.”
The tears fell from Maria’s eyes without her even bothering to wipe them. For the next few minutes the sound of raindrops plopping on the roof filled the night air. My heart grew heavy.
“The sky sobs,” I said.
“¿Qué?” asked Maria.
“The sky cries. And the hills are filled with stories, and the clouds, when they hear the sad tales, they cry too.” I looked out at the mountains. “But it’s a beautiful sadness,” I said. “A beautiful sadness.”
A tear began to form in my heart for all the mujeres de México. I had never realized how much loneliness there was in the hearts of my people, especially the women. Or how much strength there was to go on, in spite of everything they faced. Maria looked at Abuelita and smiled.
“What?” I said.
“The porch,” my cousin answered. “Like Abuelita says, eventually it turns everyone into a poet.”
A small grin came to my face, and each of us took a sip of hot tea. It was the prettiest rainfall I had ever seen, and I never wanted it to stop.
Over the next few weeks I learned about the history of mi familia, I discovered the magic of the countryside, and I saw firsthand the kindness, courage, and intelligence of my people in a way I had never known. Eight weeks passed as if it were one, and before I realized, it was time to return home.
“But please, no feast, Abuelita,” I said.
“Why not?” Maria asked. “Pocha still scared of chickens?”
“No,” I said with a grin. “I just want a quiet night. A night with"—I paused—“mi familia.”
I looked at Isabella as she put a toy bunny rabbit in her mouth. She must have sensed me watching her because suddenly, she looked up and smiled.
“Just familia,” I repeated.
A last quiet night with Abuelita, Maria, and Isabella would be enough for me. Besides, Rodrigo wouldn’t care. He’d spent so much time getting drunk in town, I was sure his final evening would most certainly be at the local bar.
“Okay,” Abuelita agreed. “We’ll make tamales.”
Tamales? A grin came to my face.
“What, you don’t like tamales, pocha? What are you, a gabacba?”
“No,” I answered with a laugh. “Tamales sound great.”
Each ingredient started from scratch. Each tortilla was rolled by hand, each filling was accompanied by a story, each spice was inserted with either a laugh or a cry or a piece of timeless wisdom. By the time we were done preparing the food, every tamale had been filled to the tippy-top with love, and it turned out to be the most delicious meal I had ever eaten. When we were done, the only thing I wanted was to hold baby Isabella in my arms. I wanted to hold her in my arms forever.
Though you are usually not supposed to wake a sleeping baby, Maria allowed me to take Isabella from her bed and rock her gently in my arms as a final night’s treat. I started singing her a song, a lullaby in English.
“I know she can’t hear me,” I said to Maria in the middle of my song. “But also, I know she can. Does that make sense?”
“It makes perfect sense,” Abuelita answered as she lit a cigar. “Perfect sense.”
Isabella fell back asleep in my arms as if she were my own.
“You sad, pocha?” asked Maria a few minutes later.
I looked up with wet eyes. “I don’t want to go.”
“Don’t be stupid, yes you do.”
“But I could stay,” I replied. “I mean, I could help you and the baby and…”
“You must go!” she snapped. “You must go and seize the opportunity.” My cousin stared at me with fierceness. “It is not an option, you must go.”
Maria came over and took the baby from my arms. Her message was clear: I must leave to make something good of myself for all those who can’t.
I turned to Abuelita. She rocked back and forth and took a puff off of her cigar. Of course, she didn’t say a word.
After a tense moment I stood, walked over to Maria, and gave her a hug. We may have started the summer as cousins who didn’t know each other, but we were ending it as more than just primas…. We were hermanas, sisters.
I squeezed her more tightly than I had ever squeezed a person in my entire life.
“Be careful, pocha… you’ll crush the baby.”
“Dios mío!” Abuelita suddenly shouted.
I looked out into the evening rain. Stumbling up to the porch was Rodrigo. One eye was as big as a soft-ball, his lip was split with a gigantic gash, and his shirt was torn and covered in blood.
“What happened?” I yelled as Rodrigo collapsed onto the front porch. But there was no need for me to ask, because the answer was obvious.
Locals, they don’t like pocbos messing with their women.
Abuelita went to the back of the house and got out her basket of medicine.
“This will hurt,” she told my brother as she took out a jar of plants that had no name.
“My nose, Abuelita,” Rodrigo complained. “I think they broke my nose.”
Abuelita paused, looked at Rodrigo’s nose, then reached out and yanked.
“Aaaargghh!” A gush of blood poured from his left nostril.
“There, it’s fixed,” Abuelita said. A moment later she reached under my brother’s shirt and felt around his ribs. “You will urinate blood for a week, but you’re lucky.”
“Lucky? How’m I lucky?” my brother asked, in great pain.
Abuelita raised her head and looked at my brother with eyes that seemed to glow.
“You’re lucky you’re not dead.”
The porch fell silent. We all knew she was right.
The next day Rodrigo complained that he was in too much pain to fly, but Abuelita told him it was his fault he had gotten into this mess and he had to take the flight.
“I can’t, Abuelita,” he said.
“You will,” she said as the ranchero pulled up to the property, and that ended the conversation. When Abuelita spoke in that tone of voice, everyone knew there was no arguing with her. Rodrigo limped toward the front seat of the truck and opened the door.
“In the back,” she said.
Rodrigo looked up. Abuelita stared at him with a look that could have burned a hole through iron.
“I said, in the back,” she repeated. “The ride in
the front seat belongs to tortuguita.”
“Tortu…quién?” Rodrigo asked with a puzzled look.
“Tortuguita,” repeated my grandmother. She turned to me. “You have great strength, Sonia. Go .. . and do what you must.”
A tear came to my eye. Abuelita reached out and hugged me. Her skin was soft and warm, quite unlike what I had expected.
“Te quiero, Abuelita. Y muchas gracias.”
“Listen to your heart, tortuguita. It’s not the turtle’s shell that protects it. It’s the turtle’s wisdom.”
Tears dropped from my eyes when I told my grandmother I loved her. Then more tears came as I kissed the baby and hugged Maria good-bye. The baby smiled the whole time. My heart sank. While here, I felt I could protect Isabella, but with me in America, well, what would they do?
“E-mail me, pocha” said Maria.
“I will,” I answered. “I will.”
We hugged again.
The ranchero tossed our bags in the back of the truck, and Rodrigo climbed into the rear, his pain obvious.
“And you,” said my grandmother to Rodrigo. “For you, I have only one piece of advice.
“What’s that?” said my brother with a bitter look on his face. The hard surface of the truck and all the bouncing on unpaved roads would most certainly not make it a comfortable three-hour journey for him.
“Don’t kiss the dog,” said Abuelita. And just like that, the dirty mutt appeared from behind an old tractor tire. “Don’t kiss the dog.”
I smiled and closed the door. Eight weeks had gone by in the blink of an eye. I waved one last good-bye to Maria and Isabella and Abuelita, and we pulled away. For sure, I’d one day return to visit my grandmother’s house, but a part of me knew it would never be like this again.
Never.
Before I knew it, the ranchero had gotten us to the airport, we’d crossed through security and were boarding our plane. I went to row twenty-two, seat B.
“That fucking dog,” Rodrigo moaned. “All he did was lick his balls the whole trip.”
Though originally I had been assigned to the window seat, I decided to give it to my brother. His lip was like a balloon, he couldn’t lift his left arm, and I could tell from the way he wore his baseball cap low over his eyes that he had the kind of headache that made a person wish someone would just chop their head off. The least I could do was not make him sit in the middle seat for the whole flight.
The Secret Story of Sonia Rodriguez Page 12
