by Reyna Grande
Mago envied Doña Caro and Don Lino’s children. Don Lino made good money as a welder, and his kids didn’t have to worry about paying for school. Their oldest daughter was a kindergarten teacher. Lemo, who was fifteen, was learning to be a welder, like his father. Alba, who, at thirteen, was a year older than Mago, was already talking about going to nursing school in a few years. And little Jimmy, who was eight years old like me, didn’t know what he wanted to be yet, but when Doña Caro said her little boy was going to be the mayor of Iguala, no one laughed. If Abuelita Chinta had said the same thing about Carlos, I know the whole neighborhood would have bent over with laughter. “Him? The little orphan?” they would have said.
Abuelita Chinta did her best to look after us, but she didn’t earn much as a healer. It was hard for her to feed four children and herself. What little food she bought she distributed evenly among us. Sometimes she went without food and made sure that we were fed first. Money wasn’t the reason she tended to the sick of body and mind. But because she was a respected healer, people would sometimes bring her fruit from their trees, guavas, oranges, plums, and she would give them to us. If someone gave her a tablecloth as a gift, she would use that cloth to make dresses for us, saying that her table had no use for such things.
“She’s too old for this,” Mago said as we watched Abuelita Chinta make her way down the dirt road to do a cleansing. Mago shut her textbook.
“What’s wrong?” I asked her.
“What’s the point?” Mago said. “Why study so much when we all know I won’t finish school. I should just quit now and get a job. Put some food on the table.”
“Don’t say that!” I said. “You have to finish school. One day, you’ll be a secretary. You’ll have a good job. You’ll make us all proud.”
Mago was almost a señorita—almost because she was twelve and her body had not yet begun to bleed, but she kept praying it soon would. She was turning into a pretty girl. Her breasts were starting to grow and the boys were noticing. But Mago was very self-conscious about the way she looked, especially about her scars.
“I’m ugly,” she would say while looking at herself in the mirror.
La Quinta Castrejón had a big grove of mangoes at the rear of the lot, behind the beautiful hall for parties and the swimming pools. The owner of La Quinta was called El Cuervo, the crow, because he dyed his hair black, always dressed in black, and owned a black car.
Carlos and some of his friends decided to take a trip to the grove to help themselves to some of those mangoes. Their first attempt was successful, and Carlos came back with a bucketful of small mangoes. We gobbled them up with chili powder. “Next time,” Carlos said, “I’ll bring more mangoes. You can sell them at the train station, Mago. Maybe then you’ll have enough money for your uniform.”
The next time Mago and I went with Carlos and his friends. One of the boys was put in charge of looking out for El Cuervo while the rest of us climbed up the trees. I didn’t go up too high because I was afraid of heights. But the mangoes within my reach were tiny. Higher up, mangoes the size of a man’s fist hung like giant Christmas decorations. Carlos kept going higher and higher up the branches. Mago told him not to go too high, but Carlos didn’t listen. The bigger the mangoes, the more we could get for them at the train station, he told her.
“¡Ahí viene el Cuervo! Quick, get out. The Crow is coming!” At hearing this, we jumped down from the trees. Mago grabbed my hand and together we rushed to the hole in the fence. We turned to look behind us and gasped at seeing that Carlos was still up in the tree. Because he had climbed too high, he was now struggling to get down. We heard El Cuervo’s car crunching the gravel on the dirt path as he drove into his property.
“¡Apúrate!” Mago hissed at Carlos. He jumped down from the last branch and his bag broke. All the mangoes rolled in different directions. By then the kids we came with were running toward the train tracks, rushing home. But Carlos was busy picking up his mangoes and there was El Cuervo, unlocking the gates, ready to come in.
“¡Déjalos!” Mago yelled. But Carlos wouldn’t leave the mangoes. He scrambled to pick them up and used his shirt to hold them.
“Hey, get off my property!” El Cuervo yelled. A gunshot rang out. We pulled Carlos out of the hole in the fence and ran as fast as we could back to Abuelita’s house.
“Don’t ever go back there again, you hear?” Mago said. “It was a bad idea. I should never have let you come!”
“I’ll be more careful next time,” Carlos said.
“I said no!” Mago hit Carlos on the arm and took off running.
“But your uniform …” Carlos said, but Mago was already long gone.
We came home to find Abuelita Chinta and Mago sitting around Betty on Abuelita’s bed. Abuelita Chinta was making a paste with the sap and pulp of aloe vera leaves. Mago was putting a wet cloth on Betty’s face, who was crying uncontrollably.
“What happened to her?” I asked.
“I was boiling water,” Abuelita Chinta said between sobs. “For her bath.”
Every few days, Abuelita Chinta would send Carlos, Mago, and me to bathe in the canal. The water was the color of coffee, and once in a while a piece of horse dung would float by, but it was fun to play in the water. Betty, as the youngest, bathed at home. That day, as Abuelita Chinta was carrying a pot of boiling water outside to mix the hot water with the cold water in the bucket, she lost her grip on the pot, and the boiling water splashed down on Betty’s face.
Betty’s cries were deafening. Mago took off the wet cloth so that Abuelita Chinta could apply the aloe vera paste, and I gasped at seeing Betty’s red face. Her skin looked as if it were melting.
“Let’s take her to the doctor, Abuelita,” Mago said.
“We have no money,” Abuelita Chinta said. “And I don’t know when your mother is going to call. But you’re right, Mago, your sister needs a doctor. She’s in too much pain, and I don’t think my remedies will be enough.”
“But you’re a great healer,” I told Abuelita Chinta. “You can heal anything, can’t you?”
Abuelita Chinta put her hand on my arm and said, “No, mija. There are many things I cannot cure. I couldn’t heal my son. I couldn’t heal your mother’s broken heart. And now, I can’t even help your little sister.”
Mago stood up. “I’ll be right back,” she said, and then left.
Mago came back with money she had borrowed from Doña Caro. She picked up Betty and carried her out of the house. We followed behind her. Abuelita Chinta hailed a cab, and we squeezed in. It was a long, painful ride. I put my hands over my ears to block out Betty’s cries. By the time we got to the emergency room, huge blisters had popped all over Betty’s face, some oozing a pinkish liquid that mixed in with her tears. We were at the hospital for many hours. The doctor put a yellow ointment on Betty’s face and wrapped her head with gauze. He did the same to the areas on her arms and chest that had gotten burned.
Mago barely had enough money left over to buy the medicine the doctor had said to buy. “We’re going to need more money,” she told Abuelita Chinta as we walked out of the pharmacy. “This medicine won’t be enough. And we need to do things right. I don’t want my little sister getting any scars on her face.”
In the morning, Mago left early and didn’t tell us where she was going. She came back with news that she’d gotten a job at the train station, selling quesadillas at one of the food stands. “I’m starting there tomorrow,” she said.
“But what about school?” Abuelita Chinta asked.
“I’m still going to go. I’ll go to my job after school. Maybe it will be enough to pay for my uniform and buy Betty’s medication.”
Abuelita Chinta looked down at the floor and shook her head. “I’m sorry, my granddaughter.”
“Don’t be,” Mago said.
The next day Carlos didn’t come home with us after school. He claimed he had something to do and took off without another word. Mago and I hurried home because she only had
about half an hour to do her homework. It was Mago’s first day of work. Her job was to help out at Doña Rosa’s food stand. As part of her wages, Doña Rosa promised to give her any leftover quesadillas.
Abuelita Chinta tried to feed Betty bean broth, but it was painful for Betty to open her mouth, and after a spoonful or two, she pushed the bowl away from her. Abuelita Chinta held her gently and kissed the top of her head. “I’m so sorry, mi niña. I’ll never forgive myself.”
“It wasn’t your fault, Abuelita,” I said quickly.
Carlos came home with great news. He’d gone to visit Tía Emperatriz to ask if she could make Mago her flag-bearer uniform. “She said to come pick it up next week.”
“Thanks be to God,” Abuelita Chinta said, crossing herself. Maybe Mago doesn’t have to work, after all, I thought. But then I looked at Betty, who looked like a mummy with her face all bandaged up, and I remembered there was another reason Mago had looked for a job.
At dusk, Abuelita Chinta sent us to the train station to wait for Mago. “It will soon be dark, and it is not safe for your sister to walk home by herself,” she said.
Carlos and I put on our sandals and left. We had a competition to see who could balance on the rail the longest. Soon, we heard the rumbling of the approaching evening train, and we turned to see it snaking its way through the hills, shaking the leaves of the guamúchil trees along the tracks. The conductor blew the whistle as Carlos and I scrambled out of the way. We rushed down to the dirt path and ran alongside the train.
When we got to the station, most of the passengers had gotten off the train, and the few that were continuing on to Cuernavaca or Mexico City were boarding. We sat on a bench and watched Mago go from passenger car to passenger car carrying a tray of hot chicken quesadillas, offering them to the people who were sitting in their seats, waiting for the train to depart. The whistle blew, the conductor yelled, “¡Váaaaamonooooos!” but Mago was still inside the train. Last-minute passengers hurried to get on. “Come out, come out,” I said under my breath. The train started to move, and Mago was nowhere in sight.
Iguala’s train station
I stood up and rushed over to the train. “What are you doing?” Carlos said as he ran after me. The train slowly began to pull out of the station.
It would be so easy, I thought, for Mago to stay on the train. She could decide to leave this place and not come back. She could finally say that enough was enough, that she was tired of being our little mother. My breath caught in my throat, and I found myself rushing to the moving train, walking alongside of it, searching desperately for my sister. “Mago! Mago!” I yelled, tears already streaming down my face. Then finally, Mago appeared on the landing of the last passenger car with an empty tray and jumped off just before the train sped up.
“I thought you were leaving me,” I told her reproachfully. She laughed and ruffled my hair.
“Never,” she said. We stood by the train as it rushed past us in a blur.
16
Abuelita Chinta
MAMI’S SISTER, TÍA Güera, would usually come over during the week to visit Abuelita Chinta. She and my grandmother would take two plastic chairs and sit outside the shack. I dreaded my aunt’s visits. She would call me over to delouse my hair. It was excruciating getting deloused by her. She seemed to get too much pleasure out of hunting for the little suckers, and she would pull out whole strands of hair along with the lice. At this rate, I would tell myself, I’m going to go bald!
It was also excruciating to have to listen to her talk. My aunt would do her usual complaints: “Ay, Amá, I don’t have any money to buy food and my husband drinks his wages away.” Or “Ay, Amá, there’s a sharp pain in my stomach that won’t go away, and I think someone is doing witchcraft on me.” Or “Ay, Amá, why is my husband such a drunk? Maybe you can make him a remedy so that he can stop.” Or, “Ay, Amá, how hard life is. Why does my husband stay out all night long, saying he’s working, but then comes home smelling of some other woman’s perfume?”
“Let me make you a tea of flor de azahar,” Abuelita Chinta would say to Tía Güera once she was done listening to my aunt’s complaints. “It’s good for the nerves.” I wanted to ask Abuelita Chinta if she had anything for my poor scalp, which by then would be throbbing with pain.
But one day, just as they were about to go inside the shack, Doña Caro came out of her house and called out to my grandmother.
“Doña Jacinta,” she said as she walked over to us. “Juana called this morning, but you weren’t home.”
Mami would sometimes call us at Doña Caro’s house to tell us she had wired money so that Abuelita Chinta could go pick it up at the bank. The phone calls were rare, but nevertheless, every day we would stop by Doña Caro’s house to check if our mother had called. Abuelita warned us about annoying Doña Caro, but we couldn’t stop ourselves from inquiring about the phone call.
“I’m afraid something awful has happened,” Doña Caro said. “Juana and the wrestler got into a car accident, and he’s dead.”
“And my daughter?” Abuelita Chinta asked. I grabbed her hand and I leaned against her.
“She was in the hospital. She said to tell you she’s coming home.”
“Is Mami really hurt?” I asked Doña Caro.
“Nothing serious, child. Just a cut and some bruises,” she said, then she turned and went back to her house.
For the following days, all we could think about was our mother, and the thought that we had come so close to losing her would keep us up at night.
Years later, my mother would tell me the story of the wrestler, of how she had not meant to fall in love with him, but this is the way things happen sometimes, especially when you’re hurting from a broken heart. He worked next door to the record shop.
He told her, “I only sell car insurance during the day. At night, and on the weekends, I’m a luchador. I dream of one day becoming a great wrestler, like the legendary El Santo.”
That’s when she began to think of him as more than just the man who worked next door. That’s when the small things he did for her—like bringing extra tacos to share with her during lunch, buying her popsicles from La Michoacana across the street, watching the record shop for her when she needed to make a quick run to the bathroom—became much bigger in her eyes. A luchador! There was more to this man, Francisco, than met the eye, after all. But a wrestler? Who would have thought?
She liked the way he stood next to her, as if ready to protect her from any harm that came her way. And being a wrestler, he could protect her from anything. Anyone. When he took her to a wrestling match and won, she decided that Francisco would be the man to save her. From what? She didn’t know. All she knew was that my father had let her go, that he had come after her with a gun, and ever since that day, she’d felt as if she were trying to stay afloat, with nothing to hold on to. Francisco would be her way out of the sorrow and fear that threatened to engulf her every waking hour. When he asked her to go with him to Acapulco, she didn’t think twice about it.
But then, as she lay with her head against the shattered windshield of his car and saw him slumped over the steering wheel, unconscious, she realized that even he, with all his strength, couldn’t save her.
During the two weeks after Mami’s return, I would wake up to the sound of crying. In the thin moonlight streaming through the gaps between the bamboo sticks, I saw her sitting in her bed, trembling as she sobbed. We hadn’t known how to comfort her or what to say, so we stayed away. She stayed away from us too, and only once did she try to hold one of us—my little sister. Yet when she reached for Betty, my sister cried and held her arms out to Mago.
“Why are you crying? I’m your mother,” Mami said. But Betty just cried harder, and Mami had no choice but to give her back to Mago. She didn’t try to hold her again.
“You have to give her time,” Abuelita Chinta said. “You’ve been gone for many months, Juana.”
“I came back, didn’t I?” Mami said. The
truth is that she had come back, but would she have done so if the wrestler hadn’t died? Would she have come back if my father hadn’t left her for someone else? We didn’t know the answers to our questions, and we were afraid to ask.
In the morning, Abuelita Chinta gave Mami a cleansing. She sent Carlos to the neighbor’s down the street to buy an egg while she gathered the rest of the items she would need: the bottle of almond oil, a bunch of epazote from her garden, a cigarette. Mami lay down on the bed. Abuelita Chinta sat next to her on the edge and began to rub Mami’s body with the almond oil. My grandmother prayed under her breath as she did this. She took the egg from Carlos and then rubbed it on Mami’s head, being careful not to touch the bandaged area on Mami’s forehead where she had gotten cut. Then she rolled the egg on her chest, arms, hands, legs, and feet so that it would absorb the impurities inside my mother’s body and soul. Mami kept her eyes closed as my grandmother gently tapped the branches of the epazote all over her body.
Finally, Abuelita Chinta lit a cigarette and blew puffs of smoke all over Mami. The smoke settled over Mami like an invisible blanket. The cleansing was so soothing that she fell asleep, and Abuelita Chinta sent us all outside to let our mother rest.
“Hopefully now her soul can be at peace,” Abuelita Chinta said. I crossed myself at the altar on my way out the door and prayed for Mami to wake up without any more sadness weighing her down.