by Reyna Grande
“Thank you, señor,” Mago said.
“We’ll have the graduation party at my sister’s house,” Mami said. “It would be an honor if you and your family joined us, Don Oscar.”
“Of course, of course,” he said.
Mami gave us the money for our shopping, and she even gave us a few extra pesos so that we could buy ourselves a treat. Then we said our goodbyes. We walked out the door, and Mago stopped and turned to look at Oscar Jr. one more time. He smiled at her and she blushed all the way to el mercado.
“I think he likes you,” Carlos said.
She blushed even more. “I don’t think he would like someone like me,” she said.
“Why not? There’s nothing wrong with you,” I said.
“Of course there is. I’m poor.”
I thought about the movie we saw with Mami, of Paquito and his rich father. There was nothing wrong with Paquito except that he was poor. I told Mago I knew what she meant. But still, I thought about all those soap operas Tía Emperatriz liked to watch, the ones where tragically beautiful girls are saved from their miserable poverty by handsome rich men who fall desperately in love with them.
“Oscar can be your hero,” I insisted. “He can save you.”
Mago looked at me and said, “Papi will be my hero. He will save me. Save us all.”
Don Oscar, his wife, and their three children attended Mago’s sixth-grade graduation. They brought her three huge bouquets of flowers. She was the envy of the class because nobody else had gotten wealthy people for godparents. Everyone else’s flower bouquets couldn’t compare to the ones Mago got.
Mago wore her white flag-bearer uniform, which was the nicest outfit she owned. We all stood up and clapped for my sister when her name was called.
The party was held at Tía Güera’s apartment building because it had a nice courtyard. To our surprise, Mami went out of her way to be nice to Mago. She even gave her a set of gold earrings that dangled from her ears. They looked too grown up on my twelve-and-a-half-year-old sister, but that was why Mago loved them—that, and because they were a gift from Mami.
That day was the first time in a long time that Mago didn’t have to be anyone’s mother. She didn’t have to clean or take care of anything or anyone. For the first time, Mago could be a girl. Mami, Abuelita Chinta, and Tía Güera took care of the guests. They served the food and drinks. While the adults talked, we were free to run around the courtyard. We were very shy around Don Oscar’s kids; even though they were our age, they belonged to a different class than us. They had beautiful clothes, they went to private schools, they spoke formal Spanish, and once in a while they giggled at the way we talked. Mago never stopped blushing when Oscar Jr. looked her way.
I didn’t know that thirteen years later, I would return to Iguala during my junior year of college, and I would be invited by Don Oscar to celebrate Christmas with his family. I would find myself wearing clothes as nice as theirs. I would find myself not gawking at their two-story brick house because by then I would have set foot in similar houses in the United States. I would find myself sitting in their living room, and having Oscar Jr. and his sisters shove lyrics of their favorite American songs at me so that I could translate them for them. I would find myself telling them about my college courses after Oscar Jr. had told me about his last year at UNAM, Mexico’s biggest public university. I would return to the U.S. more determined than ever, because even though I had drunk Bailey’s with them, dined and sang English songs with them, my cousin Lupita, Tía Güera’s daughter, was working for them as a maid. And I knew then, as I do now, that could also have been my fate.
18
Reyna, Mami, Mago, Carlos, and Betty, 1984
AFTER MAGO’S PARTY, our relationship with our mother improved. We were like Hansel and Gretel. No matter how many times we were abandoned and left to fend for ourselves, we would always follow the crumbs back to Mami. As the months went by, she continued to visit us on Sundays, but the visits weren’t awkward anymore, and she would often take us to el zócalo where she would treat us to a churro, a cup of crushed ice with tamarind syrup, or a corn on the cob. But there were times when I was afraid that one day, the crumbs would not be there to guide us back. I would see her sitting there on the bench at el zócalo, and instead of watching us play, she would be looking longingly at the couples strolling around hand in hand. I wasn’t old enough to understand that Mami was two people in one: a woman who wanted to be loved by a man, and a mother who wanted to do right by her children. But the look on her face was enough to alert me to the conflict inside her. When men passed by and glanced at her, sometimes even stopping to ask her for the time, it terrified me. It made me want to hide her, turn her into Rapunzel and lock her up in a tower, away from men’s prying eyes.
When the Christmas season finally arrived a few months later, las posadas took my mind off my worries. The Christmas season is something that all of us kids looked forward to, when our bellies would be stuffed like piñatas with peanuts, jicamas, candy, oranges, and sugarcane. Beginning on December 16th and ending on the 24th, churches all over Iguala did reenactments of the difficult journey Mary and Joseph took as they traveled from Nazareth to Bethlehem looking for shelter. The evening would end with a party at someone’s home, where participants would be offered hot fruit punch, tamales, buñuelos, and a goodie bag. Sometimes we would even get to break a piñata.
At dusk, Carlos, Mago, Betty, and I would hurry over to the church where everyone was meeting. There the “pilgrims” were given a candle. The procession moved out of the church gates, and we began to sing. In the front of the procession were the two boy attendants who held a wooden box with statues of Mary and Joseph. We stopped in front of a house and asked for shelter. En el nombre del cielo os pido posada, pues no puede andar mi esposa amada. When shelter was denied, the procession continued on to another house, where again, they wouldn’t let us in. Aquí no es mesón sigan adelante: yo no puedo abrir no sea algún tunante.
We visited a few more houses until finally we came to the house that would give us “shelter,” and we heard the words we’d been waiting to hear since the procession first started: ¡Entren santos peregrinos, peregrinos, reciban este rincón, no de esta pobre morada sino de mi corazón!
Then we all rejoiced and put out our candles. The children clapped because finally it was time for the best part of the posada—the breaking of the piñata and the goodie bags. We would rush home and share them with our grandmother. Then we went to sleep with our bellies full of fruit and candy.
On the last day of the posadas, Mago, Carlos, Betty, and I went to the part of the town where the wealthy people lived, where Don Oscar and his family lived. In that neighborhood, beside the goodie bags, they would be giving out toys.
Because it would be a long walk in the dark, Abuelita Chinta insisted Tío Crece go with us. Mago and I didn’t want him to come, but we also didn’t want to walk in the dark by ourselves, so we said okay. He rode his bicycle alongside us. Sometimes, he would put Betty on the handlebars because she was small and tired right away. And it turned out that Tío Crece wasn’t feeling crazy that night. Carlos told us jokes about Pepito, and Tío Crece laughed harder than any of us. He even had his own Pepito jokes, and Carlos memorized them to retell to his friends.
We walked for forty-five minutes along the dark dirt roads. By the time we got to the rich neighborhood, the posada was already starting. Our feet were tired from all the walking, but once we got in line, we felt as if we could have walked a hundred miles more for our free toys. Betty and I got a doll, Mago a porcelain tea set, and Carlos a car. We sat on the sidewalk playing with our new toys, eating the peanuts in our goodie bags and sharing them with Tío Crece, who wished he were still a kid and had gotten a goodie bag and a toy for himself.
The next day was Christmas, and Tío Crece found a large dry branch and sanded it until it was smooth. He then painted it white and filled a coffee can with wet cement and stuck the branch into it and waite
d until the cement hardened and the branch could stand on its own. Then he brought it into the house and told us, “Here is our Christmas tree!”
Abuelita Chinta would save the shells of the eggs she fed us all year long. She would make a little hole in the egg, empty its contents into the frying pan, and then wash the shell and put it in a bag. When Easter came around we would paint the eggshells, stuff them with confetti, and glue a piece of tissue paper on the opening. Then Abuelita would sell most of the eggs, but she would keep a few for us to smash on one another’s heads, as is tradition.
Because we didn’t have decorations for our tree, we used our eggshells. We painted them in different colors and hung them from our tree, which in the end no longer looked like a branch but a work of art.
Mago and I spent all morning cleaning the house. I sprinkled water on the dirt floor and swept it until it was as smooth as clay. When I was done, Mago used the broom to get rid of the spiderwebs on the ceiling and the walls. We dusted the furniture, wiped the chairs and table, and even went outside to sweep the dirt road. We wanted this Christmas to be special. Mami and Tía Güera were coming over in the evening, and we hoped that if we made the house look beautiful, maybe Mami would finally decide to come back to live with us. We loved spending Sundays with Mami, but seeing our mother only once a week was not enough.
In the evening, when we saw Mami and Tía Güera walking across the bridge, we ran to meet them. There was a man walking with them, and I thought it was my aunt’s husband. I had seen him only once or twice, but when they got closer to the house, I knew it wasn’t him.
“This is Rey,” Mami said.
I turned to look at Mago and saw that her smile had completely vanished. I tried to hold her hand, but she pulled it away.
They came into the house, and I could smell the delicious scent of the roasted chicken Mami had brought. I looked at Rey. He seemed too young for Mami, and later I would learn he was in fact fourteen years younger than she. He was going on twenty-one, and my mother was two months away from turning thirty-five. How flattered my mother must have felt to have a twenty-year-old lusting after her, a woman who had given birth to four children and whose body was not what it had once been. If she had still harbored any insecurities after having been abandoned by my father for another woman, Rey came and helped her get rid of them once and for all.
She met him at the rotisserie where she worked a second job. Rey worked at a hardware store near the marketplace and would go in during his break to buy a meal. At the sight of him, I hated him. I wished his name wasn’t the male version of my name. I didn’t want to have anything in common with that man, and I especially didn’t want to share my mother with him. Suddenly, the chicken didn’t smell as good. Our Christmas tree was a branch, and it looked pathetic with all those eggshells. And who were we trying to fool by cleaning the house? No matter how hard we scrubbed, the floor was still made of dirt, the walls were still made of sticks and cardboard.
Abuelita Chinta said, “The children are hungry. They’ve been working hard all day. Please, let us sit at the table.” That which I had dreaded for months now had finally come to pass. I felt my eyes burn with tears, but I quickly wiped them away. I couldn’t ruin our Christmas dinner.
Mago, however, had no qualms about ruining our meal. We hadn’t been sitting for a minute before she started to cry.
“What’s the matter with you?” Mami asked.
“What’s the matter? What do you think is the matter with me?” Mago yelled. “Why did you have to bring him? This is our night with you. It’s Christmas. We don’t need you to bring your boyfriends home!”
“I can bring whoever I want,” Mami said.
Mago rushed at her, and for a moment, I thought she was going to hit our mother. Instead, she started kicking the chairs, pulling out her own hair, and screaming at the top of her lungs. It sent shivers down my spine. My sister had turned into a monster.
Tía Güera and Mami rushed to Mago and held her down, but Mago just screamed and screamed: “I want to die! I want to die!” They forced her onto Abuelita Chinta’s bed, and Mami and Tía Güera pinned her down while Tío Crece grabbed a rope. Rey stood by the door and didn’t say or do anything.
“I want to die. I want to die!” Mago shrieked. “¡Me quiero morir!”
“What are you doing?” Abuelita Chinta said.
Nobody listened to her. I held Betty and my cousin Lupita in my arms because Mago was scaring them. She kicked and screamed as if she were possessed by the devil himself. I watched Mami, my aunt, and my uncle tie Mago’s ankles and wrists. Mago kicked her legs up in the air and hit Mami in the face before Tío Crece finally restrained her.
I had not noticed Rey had gone outside, but when I looked around, he wasn’t there anymore. The screaming suddenly stopped, and when I turned to look at Mago, her eyes were rolling back, then her head hung limply to the side.
“She’s fainted!” Abuelita Chinta said, making the sign of the cross. She rushed to her wardrobe where she kept her medicine and came back with a bottle of alcohol. “Look at what you’ve done, Juana! You should be ashamed of yourself.” My grandmother started to cry as she tended to my sister.
Mami’s hair was a mess. Her cheeks were stained with mascara and her hot pink lipstick was smeared across her chin. She rubbed her cheek where Mago had kicked her, and I could tell it was swelling. Mami said, “I’m leaving now. If she isn’t going to welcome Rey into this house, then I won’t stay.”
“Juana, be reasonable,” Abuelita Chinta said, drying her tears. “You shouldn’t have brought that man here. Not tonight. The children wanted to spend this special day with you. Por el amor de Dios, Juana, son tus hijos.”
“I’m sorry, Amá.” Mami didn’t look at us. She walked out the door and left. We sat on the bed, and finally Mago opened her eyes. She looked around and saw that Mami was gone.
“Come, children,” Abuelita Chinta said. “The chicken is getting cold and we must not waste the food God has so kindly provided for us.”
Carlos and I untied Mago’s wrists and ankles, but we stayed there on the bed. Mago got up and headed to the opened door. I thought she was going to go outside and run to catch up to Mami, ask her to please come back. Instead, Mago slammed the door shut.
The next day, as she listened to songs from Juan Gabriel, Mago wrote a letter to Papi. But she couldn’t find the right words, so she included lyrics from “Querida,” which is about a woman, but the root of the feelings was the same—wishing for that loved one’s return.
Iguala, Gro. 26 of December, 1984
Papá, don’t get mad when I tell you this, but I can’t stand this anymore. I think that when you come back you are going to find me dead and buried because I can’t stand this life anymore. Papá, I don’t know why you don’t love my mom anymore if she hadn’t done anything bad. She says you tried to hurt her, but I don’t believe that, Papá.
Papá, every moment of my life I think of you. Look at my loneliness. Come. I miss you and cry still for you. Take pity on me. Tell me when you are going to return. Beloved. Come to me as I am suffering. Come to me as I am dying. In this loneliness. In this loneliness …
I love you with all my soul.
Magloria Grande Rodríguez
I took Papi’s photo down from the wall and placed it on my grandmother’s altar, next to my grandfather’s picture. There the Man Behind the Glass was surrounded by San Judas Tadeo, El Santo Niño de Atocha, San Martín de Porres, San Antonio de Padúa, La Virgen de Guadalupe, and other saints I didn’t know the names of. Maybe while we knelt at the altar to pray, the saints would have to deliver our words to our father, now that he was right next to Them. And really, there was only one prayer they had to deliver, only one thing we asked for—that he come back.
19
Carlos, Reyna, and Mago, 1985
ONE SUNNY DAY in May of 1985, when I was four months away from turning ten, my cousin Félix showed up at Abuelita Chinta’s house and said, “Your fat
her is going to call you in an hour. He wants to talk to you.”
He turned around and ran off, and it took us a moment to recover from the shock. By the time we could speak, Félix was already hurrying across the bridge and turning the corner to head to the main road.
“Papi is going to call?” Carlos asked, and then the question turned into something else when he shouted, “Papi is going to call!”
We laughed and danced around in a circle. “Papi is going to call. Papi is going to call.”
“But what are we doing? We don’t have much time, let’s go!” Mago said. Since Abuelita Chinta wasn’t home to give us bus money, we had no choice but to walk to Abuela Evila’s. My heart beat so hard against my chest, it hurt. I couldn’t believe Papi was going to call. I couldn’t believe that soon I would hear his voice.
Is he finally coming home? I wondered. We walked along the pereférico, passing a mango grove and a sugarcane field. Finally, after forty-five minutes, we came to the entrance of my grandmother’s neighborhood, La Guadalupe. I glanced up the hill at the familiar church towers. We stopped to rest by Don Rubén’s house, which by then had been turned into a liquor store. The walls were white and a huge Corona bottle was painted on one side. I felt so sad to look at that little house, which was no longer a house but a place for drunks like Tío Crece.
“Come on,” Mago said. She wiped her forehead and then picked up Betty. Carlos and I ran after her. Since I didn’t want to be the last one to Abuela Evila’s house, I ran as fast as I could, but my side hurt and my throat was dry and my head was burning from too much sun. Then I thought of Papi, and I picked up my pace again. I could kiss Juan Gabriel. It seemed that the lyrics of his song had finally touched a chord in Papi. Thank goodness Mago had thought of using them in the letters she had written to him not only in December, but in the past few months as well.