“So the bullied becomes the bully. How nice.”
“You’re funny,” she said, adding, “but you know, it’s not good to be on her bad side. But you couldn’t help that, could you?”
“I couldn’t help it? I don’t even know her. Why does she have a problem with me?”
Laura leaned closer and lowered her voice. “You know how your abuela is a curandera?”
My thoughts went back to what Gloria had said. I nodded yes.
“Well, Gloria has been telling people that Marcela went to your abuela and asked to be her apprentice, but Doña María turned her down.”
“Apprentice? You mean Marcela wants to be a curand . . . what my grandmother is? Why?”
Laura bit into her sandwich and then answered after a few chews. “If you have the gift, you have the gift, and your abuela is the best curandera around. Anyway, I wouldn’t put my life in Marcela’s hands. Ever. Your abuela has never taken an apprentice before. Until you.”
I put down the apple I was about to bite into. “Me? No, no, I’m not her apprentice I’m just living with her. Wasn’t even my choice.”
“That’s not what Marcela thinks, and that’s all that matters.”
She looked over my shoulder. I turned around to see Marcela’s eyes had found me all the way from across the cafeteria. It was as if she knew that at that exact moment we were speaking about her. All hope of her forgetting about me was ridiculous. I had an enemy, and she wasn’t going away.
School ended with my backpack full to the brim with beaten-down textbooks, homework and the Spanish books. When the last bell rang, I headed to the front yard of the school, nervous because I only remembered then that my grandmother hadn’t said whether she would be there to walk home with me. When I stepped out the front doors, I spotted her standing by the flagpole with a straw hat and her braid draped over her shoulder. When she saw me she turned around and started walking to the house. I had to run with the twenty pounds strapped to my back.
If I ever caught up to the old lady, I might have confronted her about my new name or about Marcela.
The remainder of the week went something like this: I woke up, went to school, returned home to do homework and studied the Spanish books I had checked out. My first task was to memorize a few words before I started using them. I tried to pick up the pattern and movement of the language by listening to my grandmother and Gloria speak at dinner, which was like trying to identify which musical note went with what sound.
“Ay, Dios mío, ¿te enteraste de lo que pasó con Lupe?” Gloria said.
Gloria was talking about someone named Lupe and did so as a question.
“No, ¿qué pasó?” My grandmother took a bite of bread. ‘No’ was the same in both languages. Another question.
“Su esposo la está dejando por una mujer más joven,” Gloria said.
Abuela gasped, then said, “¡Ay, no!”
“En serio. Me lo comentó Doña Teresa en la iglesia.”
Church! I remembered iglesia meant church. Something about church . . .
“¡No puede ser!” Abuela replied.
“Dios nos libre. Esas mujeres no son buenas.”
I was lost. They spoke so fast: up and down, syllable after syllable, rolling the r’s, loud gasps and signs of the cross.
Gloria turned to me suddenly, “Don’t be like these cochinas around here!”
My grandmother nodded in agreement while I sat chewing my fideo.
Oh, yeah, I was still a beginner in this language game.
Laura sat with me every day at lunch. I was a junior and she was a senior, almost exactly two years older than me to the day. She introduced me to some of her friends, and halfway through the week they came and sat with us during lunch. The twins, Bella and Estrella, drove me insane, and many days I wished they had never joined us at all. No other students were keen on getting to know me. I didn’t know if it was because I was new, because of my grandmother or because of Marcela.
Every time I saw Marcela with her boyfriend, Eduardo, or her group of thugs, I went in the opposite direction. It wasn’t that I was scared. It was because Laura was right: Marcela would probably use every chance she had to get back at me, no matter how ridiculous her thoughts on my non-existent apprenticeship were. And it was a ridiculous thought. Voodoo, mumbo jumbo healing magic? Like my grandmother could really heal someone with smelly potions. Cura—that “c” word . . . I’d never heard of such a thing. And why would I want to be apprentice to my grandmother, anyway? I lived with the lady, and spending more time with her did not appeal to me.
I decided against asking my grandmother about why she hadn’t taken Marcela as an apprentice. First of all, I couldn’t ask her in Spanish. Within that first week, I had only advanced to small greetings, numbers, colors and items around the house, so that was out of the question. And I kept having trouble with words and their gender. That was the weirdest thing about Spanish: words were either male or female. I thought I had it figured out, though. For instance, anything ending in “o” was masculine and anything ending in “a” was feminine, but then Spanish would switch it up on me. Like you would think “día,” or day, was female but it was actually male, and you had to say buenos días and not buenas días. And it was the opposite for “night.” The “o” and “a” were kicking my ass.
Second, it wasn’t hard to guess why my grandmother hadn’t chosen Marcela: she was a bully, and wasn’t the kind of person that would do well with instruction. She had her own agenda. And Marcela’s problem with me, well, what went on between Marcela and me was between Marcela and me. I’d handle it. She looked scary, but, really, what could she do? Laura had mentioned some rumor about Marcela stabbing someone, but that sounded a little too far-fetched to me. She would have been sent to jail . . . right?
On the Friday of my first week of school, during study period, I got a bathroom pass and was on my way there, when something caught my eye. In the hallway, there were two large, glass display cases that I hadn’t really taken note of before. Because I didn’t want to get back to study period to write something about the first few chapters of The Great Gatsby, I looked in the cases to waste some time. Besides, I’d already read the book at the last school I had attended, and I didn’t relish revisiting the Gatsby and Daisy drama. I had enough drama of my own.
One display case was filled with academic awards—certificates, trophies for the debate team, pictures of the Math Club at a competition, a plaque presented by the governor for “Most Improved School in South Texas.” Most of the items were ten years old or older. It seemed the school had not been successful in anything lately.
The second case was sports related, with a faded letterman jacket, trophies, a picture of a winning baseball team and pictures of the homecoming queens and kings and their courts. I’d never been to a homecoming, although I had witnessed girls and boys at my previous school vying for the court by hanging posters in the hallways and handing out candy between classes for a vote. Part of me liked to think it was pathetic. It was a popularity vote. However, a small part of me secretly wished to be a part of homecoming elections, have lots of friends, be liked by many, admired as pretty . . . whatever. Didn’t everyone secretly wish the same thing at some time or another?
The homecoming court pictures ranged from last year all the way back to the 1960s. Some were colored photos, some were in black and white. The frames and photos dating back to the mid-1960s were larger than the recent ones. When I got to the picture of the homecoming queen of 1971, I did a double take. My hands reached forward but were stopped by glass.
I barely recognized her in the photo. Her face was younger and smoother, and her hair, jet black, had been styled in large curls that fell to her waist. She wore a sequined dress that fit her curvy frame perfectly, so that it fell like a waterfall to her feet. And she smiled! She actually smiled without the lies around the edges of her lips, a truthful smile—something I had rarely witnessed. The crown stood tall on her head, and in her arms s
he held a large bouquet of roses. My mother had been homecoming queen when she was seventeen.
Unlike the other, more formal photographs of the homecoming court with the king and queen surrounded by the princes and princesses, this picture was a candid shot with my mother looking up at the football stands. It must have been the moment just after she’d been crowned. On her right stood the king who, instead of looking where my mother was, was caught by the camera looking at her. And on my mother’s right side was another girl with straight hair and her arm around my mother’s shoulders, giving her a congratulatory hug. She had a crown half the size of my mother’s on her head. The girl’s face looked worn and her skin stretched thinly over bony cheeks, making her large, bug eyes more pronounced.
At the bottom of the frame an engraved plate read:
Left to Right: Senior Princess: Carlita Juarez;
Homecoming Queen: Junior, Rosa Gonzalez;
Homecoming King: Senior, Jorge Valdez
I stared at the photograph and tried to imagine a mother I had never known, a girl that had walked these same halls. How did my mother go from the black and white photo to the woman I had known for sixteen years? Or the woman I had never actually known. I didn’t really know her. Did I? Who was she, this homecoming queen? A Big Fake? I just didn’t get it. How come I had never pushed my mother to tell me about where she’d come from?
Something in me couldn’t shake the questions for the rest of the day, until finally I decided that I’d rather run into the open arms of Marcela than let these questions go unanswered.
That Friday after school, I finally felt confident enough to use Spanish with my grandmother. I figured she would laugh at me or ignore me. Either way I was determined to try. I hadn’t counted on Gloria coming over for dinner, but I thought, to hell with it, I’d have to speak in front of her sometime. I brought one of the Spanish books into the kitchen with me. It was more for encouragement rather than to look at. Maybe that’s why my grandmother carried a Bible with her in her purse when she left the house. Encouragement.
A sweet aroma of potatoes and meat filled the kitchen. Papas y carne. Gloria was speaking to my grandmother as the old woman placed a glass of milk, a plate of food and a piece of chocolate cake for dessert in front of me. I ate quickly, enjoying the spicy flavors that Abuela had used. When I finished eating the meat and potatoes, I finally summoned all the courage I had and spoke my first Spanish words to Abuela.
“Muy bueno.”
The words felt like Jell-O in my mouth, not fully under my control as they rolled across my tongue. Gloria, who hadn’t stopped talking since she had arrived, suddenly went quiet and looked at me. Her head reared back like a dog unsure of what had come across its path. I risked a glance up at my grandmother, who regarded me with an expression I couldn’t quite read. It was somewhere between interest and amusement.
Gloria laughed loud. “¿Muy bueno? Mira, you hear her? Oh, speaking Spanish now? A real mexicana we have here.”
My grandmother smirked, and my cheeks grew hot. Gloria continued with what she thought were witty jokes as I ate my desert.
“Repeat after me, Martha. La chica es inteligente.” And, “Remember, Martha, es muy. Not moo-ey. Nothings worse than saying it like a gringo.”
After the last one, my grandmother said something to her which made Gloria stop. But she continued to smile and laugh at random moments for no reason. I stifled the urge to stab her with my fork, but instead jabbed my chocolate cake. Honestly, it wasn’t that funny. I didn’t say anything else, only ate, then hurried and placed my dishes in the sink.
I was determined to say one more thing in Spanish. Gloria thought she could make fun of me? Fine, I’d throw something else in her face. So before I walked out of the kitchen, I turned around and looked at my grandmother and aunt who were speaking rapid Spanish.
Without waiting for them to stop, I interrupted them with, “Buenos noches, señores.” I overtly pronounced each syllable before stomping out of the kitchen and to my room.
“¡¿Buenos?!” My grandmother shouted in glee.
“¡Y señores!” Gloria exclaimed. “I thought the only huevos you had were in the fridge!”
They didn’t stop laughing for an hour.
My Spanish continued to improve, especially with my grandmother’s help. I didn’t really ask her for help, but she wouldn’t stop looking over my shoulder when I studied from the Spanish books at the dining room table before meals. Then she proceeded to point her finger at different things, flip the pages while I was reading and kept saying, “No, no, no. No right.” Or she’d laugh at the word a book used. Like for car, she said, “No es ‘automóvil,’ es ‘carro.’” Then she’d laugh again. I didn’t get any studying done during those moments. That’s how she forced herself into my Spanish education, which was kind of funny, since the reason I wanted to learn Spanish was to grill her about my mother.
My grandmother came up with this idea to go around the house and point out every object and give me its name. I took it a step further and wrote the names of the objects on pieces of paper and placed them on everything in the house. Soon, little white pieces of paper were taped on everything. My grandmother didn’t like it, because it took away from the religious gaudiness, but in the end she allowed me my scraps of paper. On weekends, she’d quiz me by taking all of the papers off, pointing to the object for its name and waiting for my answer. For each name I got wrong, I had to scrub the floor of a room in the house. Not my idea at all. My grandmother could come up with the most creative punishments. But after three weeks, I knew hundreds of nouns, could count to infinity (or close to it), could name the colors, knew every basic greeting and the floors were entirely too clean. I had worked up to basic sentences and was starting to learn to conjugate verbs. By the middle of September, I was able to speak basic sentences to my grandmother.
At school, I tried to stay out of Marcela’s way, although she made it a point to find me. If I saw her in the hallway, she’d try to trip me or say things under her breath in the Spanish I didn’t know yet, or make threats in English that I did know and didn’t like. I sidestepped her trips or ignored her words and kept moving. One day I was waiting for Laura at our table, when Laura slapped her tray down next to me. I jumped. Heads turned from up to three tables away.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
She glared over my shoulder at Marcela’s tables, which only made her widow’s peak stretch farther down her head. “Esa puta,” she said, “cornered me in the bathroom earlier.” Laura had taught me all the bad words in Spanish weeks ago. “Puta” was my favorite word for Marcela.
“Wait, what? Why?”
“She wants to know what your abuela is teaching you. She still thinks you’re her apprentice.”
I put the chicken sandwich I had been holding down onto my plate. “So . . . what happened?”
She picked up her slice of pizza and took an angry bite out of it, causing grease to drip down her chin. She didn’t wipe it off. “¡Nada! I couldn’t tell her nothing, because you’re not her apprentice. She didn’t like that. But whatever, that’s her problem. All I know is I hope your abuela starts teaching you to be a curandera. Ay, Dios, I’d love to see her face then!”
I didn’t agree with Laura. Since I wasn’t at home anymore during the days, the only time I saw my grandmother do her curandera work was on Saturdays. And even then I stayed in whoever’s kitchen we were at, doing homework or reading my Spanish books. Besides, learning the curandera’s secret healing magic wasn’t important to me. Finding out the location of my mother was at the top of my list. I’d even go look at that homecoming picture at times to keep focused.
Every once in a while I’d ask my grandmother, “¿Dónde está mi madre?” Where is my mother? And she’d purse her lips and go off on a rant that she knew I wouldn’t understand. I had to learn more. I had to become fluent. My mother couldn’t just leave me like she did. I wanted to know why: why she left me, why she left all those years ago, why s
he changed.
But what I wanted never happened—at least, not in Laredo. I could have jumped in the Rio Grande in hopes of floating to the ocean, and somehow, someway, I’m sure that river would have turned me right back around and flopped me on the front lawn of the Pepto-Bismol casa, where my grandmother would be waiting with a bucket of water and soap to tell me I got it all wrong once again.
Cinco
ONE SUNDAY AFTER CHURCH, it was Juanita’s turn to host the family again at her house. Her house didn’t smell like dogs, like Tío Jesús’ did, and wasn’t miserably hot, like my cousin Elva’s house. Elva, like many people in Laredo, didn’t have an air conditioner, but she also refused to open windows, because “What if someone stuck their head out of the window and the window fell and sliced their head off?!” She didn’t have fans because, “God forbid, someone might have their finger chopped off!” The time we were at her house, my cousins and tías and tíos had begged her to open the windows and insisted on fans until Elva, with her loca nature, ran at my cousin, Mario, with an ear of corn to beat him over his head. She did something similar to one or two of the familia each time someone suggested not having Sunday meals at her house.
Lilia was playing with dolls in the living room after we had eaten, and I was drawing her as she did. The house still smelled of carnitas and rice. I was beginning to like this new diet. I inhaled the sweet and spicy aftermath of our large lunch. My clothes had already captured the perfume of the food, which would only be removed with a good washing. Lilia and I were both sucking on watermelon lollipops con chile as we played.
“Martha, I need mi otra muñeca, Mimi,” Lilia said. She was in the middle of a reenactment with her dolls featuring an argument she had had with some girl in Sunday school class over a crayon.
“Lilia, there’s five dolls here. You don’t need Mimi,” I said.
She put the two dolls down and stood in front of me. “Pero I do. Ella es mi favorita.”
Secrets of the Casa Rosada Page 7