Ten minutes later, I took the bag down from the hook on the door. “No way. There’s no way,” I said.
My grandmother must have heard me because she came down the hallway. She started pointing and shaking her finger at me as soon as she saw me in my underwear and bra. That was the least of her problems. She started pointing at the clothes I’d dropped onto the floor and then at me.
“Why do you want me to wear this?”
“Para la iglesia.”
“What?”
She threw her hands in the air in frustration, then pointed to the large Jesus on the wall.
“For Jesus?”
She shook her head at me. “Iglesia. Iglesia.” She put her forefingers together so they pointed upward.
What was she . . . wait . . . a steeple? “Church? We’re going to church?” I shook my head no.
“Sí, sí.”
I let out a groan. “Okay, but if I’m going, I’m not wearing that!”
My grandmother crossed her arms and gave me a cold stare. I crossed my arms and stared back. We stood there for what seemed like hours, until I looked away. The intensity behind my grandmother’s eyes burned through me until I couldn’t hold it any longer.
She smiled at my defeat, turned around and walked down the hallway. I made a frustrated noise and stomped my foot. Childish, but considering what I had to wear, it made sense.
It was a canary yellow dress made out of lace and silk. When I slung it on, it hung loosely on my thin frame. It had yellow ruffles on the sleeves and a yellow bow that tied around my waist and fell limply in front. It hugged my neck, choking me like a boa constrictor hiding all of my dirty bits from God and Heaven above. The ensemble even came with white panty hose and matching white sandals. My short, brown hair looked dingy against the yellow collar. A slight wave had formed on the right side of my head and no matter how much I brushed it, it wouldn’t go straight. I huffed at the mirror.
I looked like a school-girl-gone-bad. I was sixteen years old! The dress looked like something a freaking five-year-old would wear. Did I mention the white sandals? They pinched the sides of my feet. If my mother saw me now . . . she’d die. Did my mother stand here once in a similar dress her mother had made her wear? Is that why she left?
My grandmother smiled when she saw me and smoothed out a wrinkle on the front of the dress. I fought not to vomit. We took the gold Cadillac and picked up Gloria on our way.
St. Augustine’s was a tan-colored building with dark gray roofing and one steeple attached to the back of a longer building. What looked like a two-story house with Roman columns had been placed at the front of the church. It was a plain church, besides the columns and steeple, but better kept than the tired area in which it was set.
The polished, wooden doors stood wide open and were taller than the height of two men. People flocked toward its doors, speaking rapidly to one another. Every other girl my age wore something horribly similar to what I did, which made me feel less like a freak. I have to admit, the boys had it worse. They wore long sleeve shirts and pants. Some even had on suits and ties, despite the hundred-degree temperature.
Just like in the market, people greeted my grandmother and Gloria as if they were queens. I stood by their side, miserable already, and we weren’t even in the church yet. When we did make it inside, I almost stumbled. The ceiling stretched high, with bright lights shining down on us. Statues of Mary, Jesus and his disciples lined the walls between the glass mosaics that depicted saints doing various deeds, like healing the sick or praying on a hill.
The pews were filled, and for a moment, happiness filled me at the idea of having to leave. But my grandmother dipped her hand in a bowl of water next to the door, made the sign of the cross over her body and trudged forward. Gloria followed. I looked at the bowl for a moment and then followed Gloria up the middle aisle.
About halfway down, a bad feeling creeped up my neck until I cringed. The feeling of someone’s eyes on my back made me turn around and look over my shoulder. It didn’t take long to figure out whose eyes were trained on me. Sitting at the edge of the aisle, on the left, was the girl that had left my grandmother’s house a few days ago. The same girl from my dream. I almost didn’t recognize her with her hair down and curled instead of pulled back in a slick bun. She wore a black taffeta dress that covered her arms and fell to the floor. Her eyes, though, were recognizable by the black fire that filled their depths. Thick, black eyeliner and blacker mascara just added a more chilling effect.
I pulled at the neckline of my dress, hot all of a sudden. Who was the girl? And why did she hate me? Because it was obvious she did. She’d only seen me twice now, and her hatred could be read on every feature of her face. I walked a little faster and caught up with my grandmother and Gloria, wanting to be as far from the girl as possible.
We finally came to the third row from the front, where, amazingly, a space for three had been spared at the end of the aisle. My grandmother kneeled, making the sign of the cross over her chest. Gloria did the same. I bent my head and sat down. My grandmother and Gloria were on their knees on a bench that folded out from the pew in front of us, their hands folded in prayer. My grandmother looked at me and frowned. She turned to Gloria and whispered something to her. Gloria’s head whipped toward me.
“What are you doing?” she whispered.
“Nothing,” I whispered back.
She frowned. “I see that. Why aren’t you praying?”
“I’ve never been to church. I don’t know what to do.”
She clutched her chest and opened her mouth in shock. Her eyes bugged out, and for a moment it looked as if she would suffer a heart attack.
“Never. Been. To church?!”
I couldn’t tell if it was a statement or a question, so I remained silent under her accusing eyes. She shook her head and then made a quick sign of the cross. She closed her eyes and pressed her hands tightly in prayer. Her lips moved but no words came out. She probably prayed for my salvation from Eternal Hell. My grandmother stared at me with lips pursed. She looked to the altar and began praying again.
Church consisted mostly of watching a graying priest in gold and green robes walking around the altar and giving a sermon in Spanish. I worked hard not to fall asleep to his monotone voice. I woke only to the unexpected movements of the entire church. Everybody else was privy to an invisible signal that alerted them to sit, stand and kneel at different points of the service. The first time it occurred, I remained seated until Gloria turned to me with a fiery glare and told me to stand up. From then on, I sat, stood and kneeled a second behind everyone else. By the end of the service, my back and knees ached.
At one point, everyone filed into line and the guy in the robe placed something in their mouths and then gave them something to drink out of a gold goblet. My grandmother made me go to the front and cross my arms in an “X” over my chest. It took forever for me to understand what she wanted me to do. The line halted for two minutes, as she crossed her arms and nodded her head at me, whispering at me in Spanish in hopes that I would understand.
“I don’t understand,” I whispered back.
Finally, Gloria quickly intervened and told me what to do. The man in the robes, who looked pretty annoyed by the delay, made the sign of the cross over me and spoke some words. The only other people I saw this also happen to were little children. I hated that I didn’t know what anything meant, as if I wasn’t lost enough here in the new world that I had been dumped into.
An hour and thirty minutes later my boredom ended. I think I walked faster to the car than Gloria or my grandmother did. For the first time since I’d been abandoned, a smile formed on my lips at the thought of returning to the pink shack. Fifteen minutes later, we pulled up to a sea-green house with white trim. Battered trucks and worn-down cars littered the front yard and the driveway. A spot just wide enough for the Cadillac had been conveniently saved directly in front of the house.
“Where are we?”
Gloria
turned around and looked at me. “We are at your tía Juanita’s.”
“Your sister?”
She raised her eyebrow and looked at my grandmother, who ignored her and got out of the car.
“Your madre tell you nothing? Juanita is your mother’s sister.” She got out of the car without waiting to see my reaction.
My mother has a sister? A mom, an aunt and now a sister. Did my mother have another child somewhere that she forgot to mention, too? Any other important person she had kept me away from? My father maybe?
I set my mouth in a firm line, refusing to let the lump forming at the base of my throat to rise. I opened the car door so I could meet another freaking aunt.
Gloria and my grandmother were already inside the house by the time I made it up the steps and to the door. I reached out for the handle and hesitated. I was going to meet my aunt, my mother’s sister. Would she know why my mother had left me? Or even why she left Laredo in the first place and never told me about our family? Perhaps my mother had stopped by here on her way out of the city. Maybe she was still in the city and, if not, well, this aunt might know where my mother was. I needed these answers. I opened the door.
A mixture of noise hit my ears as soon as I opened the door. The sweet and spicy vapors of food hit my nose and created a warmth deep inside my stomach. My mouth started watering for food that I probably wouldn’t recognize or even be able to pronounce. Words and laughter floated from other rooms, words I didn’t understand and laughter that I wished for.
At the end of the entryway my grandmother and Gloria were talking to a few people and apparently had forgotten about me. To my left stood a small table filled with pictures. It didn’t take long to figure out who my aunt was. She had long, straight, black hair and the same small, button nose that my mother had. My aunt’s face was longer and narrower, like Gloria’s, but she had my grandmother’s small thin lips. Children filled the pictures as did a man, whom I assumed was her husband. I came to the last picture and stopped short.
My hand reached out for the frame and I pulled it closer for a better look. The maroon frame held an old black-and-white picture of two girls standing in front of a white truck. One girl, older and taller than the other, appeared about eight years of age, and the other looked about six years old. They both had their arms around each other’s shoulders, smiling with matching toothless gaps at the camera. I rubbed my thumb over the figure of the older girl—my mother.
Despite her young age, the contours of her face peeked through the youthful chubbiness of her cheeks. The other girl was my aunt. I stared at the picture willing some kind of feeling to rise up. My mother looked happy with her sister.
A feminine voice rang out in Spanish behind me. Startled, I hurriedly placed the frame down and turned around.
A young woman, a few inches shorter than me, stood smiling. She wore her Sunday best, a purple blouse and a matching flowery skirt, with her hair pulled back in a French braid. I would soon learn that this was my aunt Juanita.
“She didn’t tell you, either?” Gloria asked my aunt.
The woman’s smile faltered as she turned to look at Gloria and my grandmother. The people who had been speaking with them had left, leaving us four women in the hallway together.
“Tell me what? Mamá, ¿quién es ella?” Aunt Juanita said.
My grandmother looked at me and then at Aunt Juanita, her lips set firmly and a tiredness forming around her eyes. She sighed, turned around and headed through a doorway, shaking her head. Gloria, hand on her hip and a smirk on her face, appeared more than happy to relate the news of my identity.
“Juanita say, ‘hola,’ to your niece, Martha. Rosa’s daughter.”
The woman’s head snapped back to me the same time Gloria walked away. Juanita’s wide eyes looked me over and within a few seconds she had studied every part of me. Her lips trembled and her mouth opened slightly.
“Rosa?” she said as she turned and looked for someone to come through the front door.
Guess my mother hadn’t stopped by here on her way out of town.
“She’s not here.”
Aunt Juanita reminded me of a young girl, scared but hopeful. She didn’t even press further, just said, “Oh.”
I fidgeted, uncomfortable under her lost look, but she didn’t seem to really see me. Her eyes looked at something distant in time. After a few moments, she returned to the present, shaking her head.
She cleared her throat, then said, “Hi, I’m Juanita.”
“Martha.”
“Nice to meet you,” she said.
I nodded.
Awkward silence. I stood quiet, too shy to break it.
“So, Martha, how old are you?”
“Sixteen.”
“Oh,” she pondered this. “You’re, uh, very tall for your age.”
“Yeah.”
She nodded her head as she smoothed out her skirt. “Well, let’s introduce you to everyone.” She smiled wide and genuinely, unlike my mother, and gestured at the doorway that my grandmother and Gloria had disappeared through.
I hesitated for a second, scared of what or who I would find through there. I took a step, and then another. Juanita followed behind me. Through the doorway, a number of brown faces and bodies pressed together in a living room, involved in loud and animated conversations with one another. Dark-haired children ran around in their miniature versions of suits and dresses. My grandmother and Gloria were nowhere in sight.
Juanita’s hands placed themselves on my upper arms tentatively, a sign of comfort. No one noticed us at first. Juanita whistled a loud note and all the voices stopped at once. Every pair of brown and black eyes turned to us. Even the children stopped and turned to attention. A few heads popped out of a doorway across the room.
“¡Familia! Ésta es la hija de Rosa . . . Martha. ¡Vamos a darle la bienvenida a Martha!” The words sounded friendly, but that was all that I picked up.
My body tensed. Mouths dropped and bodies stilled.
“What did you just say?” I whispered to Juanita, turning my head slightly to see her face.
A small line formed across her brow, confused at my question. “This is your family. I told them who you were.”
“Family?” And with that one word, a hundred brown bodies came to life and converged on me with smiles and hugs.
My family. What felt like a hundred people turned out to be only about thirty or forty people crammed into a tight space. For the next couple of hours they passed me from person to person and welcomed me home, even though this wasn’t my home. They showered me with cheek kisses and large bear hugs. No personal space existed between us. One young woman with a baby on her hip pulled me into a one-armed hug and kissed the side of my face. The tallest and widest guy, who called himself “Tanque,” pulled me into a big hug so that my face was squished into his belly and my arms were stuck to my sides.
It didn’t take long for them to realize I didn’t speak Spanish. Many switched to English or tried speaking English the best they could, but most were limited. I would have laughed at the way we tried to communicate if I hadn’t been so disoriented and shocked. I kept an uncomfortable smile on my face and nodded or shook my head at most questions.
No one mentioned my mother or asked where she was, but only showered me with their attention, commenting on my height or asking how I liked Laredo. A few invited me to their houses or to future events. They encouraged me to get a plate of food, said how skinny I was and made disapproving faces at my thin figure. My grandmother and Gloria had helped to prepare the food in the kitchen while the family moved me about. Even the children tugged on my ugly, yellow dress, and with squeaky, accented voices, asked me to play. Juanita introduced me to her husband and her children, my cousins: a chubby, eight-year-old boy, Tomas, and a three-year-old girl named Lilia who had large, black ringlets and a big smile. She attached herself to me and called me “prima,” which Juanita said meant “cousin” in Spanish.
Everyone showered me
with love and acceptance. Even so, I felt a growing pressure in my chest with each smiling face, each hug, each compliment or invitation to their home. After a while, I couldn’t stand it any longer and finally asked someone to show me to the bathroom.
I stumbled into the bathroom, shut the door and dropped to the floor. The tears that I had been holding back for the last few hours broke free and my body rocked in sobs. A family. People who showered me with love the very first time they met me. She had denied me this. Denied me this love all these years. Ran from this place and kept me away from them. I had cousins, aunts, uncles, great aunts even. And she had never allowed me to be a part of this.
Juanita found me in there and knelt down beside me. She fidgeted, and then after a few moments she wrapped her arms around me and pulled me close. When the tears finally stopped, I pulled back, wiped them away with my arm and looked at her. She didn’t look like my mother, didn’t even wear make-up. Juanita had shown me more love in the last few minutes than my mother ever really had, but for some reason I couldn’t stop thinking about my mother.
“So, you don’t know where she is?”
Juanita shook her head. “I was going to ask you the same.”
I laughed, and a few more tears escaped. “She just left me here and snuck out a window. I mean, who does that?”
Juanita’s mouth opened and shut a few times trying to find the right words until she closed it without an answer.
“Do you know why she kept me away from all of this?”
“I have a good idea,” she said.
I considered asking what she thought but I stopped. What did it matter? We sat quietly for a few moments.
“My mother might know where she’s at,” Juanita added.
“Will you ask her?”
The hope in my voice disgusted me. I had a family who welcomed me and still I wanted to leave. They didn’t even know me—it wasn’t like they’d miss me or anything. I couldn’t live here with my grandmother and her stupid rules. I was doing fine before with a shitty mother. At least I did what I wanted. Most of all, I wanted to find her and tell her she was not allowed to abandon me like this. She was not freaking allowed to be the God-awful-piece-of-shit-mother that deep down I knew she was. And how the hell did my mother expect to take care of herself? She couldn’t!
Secrets of the Casa Rosada Page 5