by Roger Bruner
She looked into my eyes. “If you have a better solution, my friend, speak now. I would prefer not to do this. But there’s a third issue, too.”
I wrinkled my forehead. “A third?”
This plan affected the well-being of many people, including her. Surely she had considered the facts carefully. Yet she had still chosen to do something she obviously disapproved of. For Santa María’s sake…and for mine. What issue had she failed to mention yet?
“The villagers must continue to be self-supporting. We can’t let them get used to receiving something for nothing. Marijuana has made and kept the villagers self-sufficient for decades. Generations. In all of that time, no one has come up with a better solution.”
I stared at the ground for a moment. She was right. “I’m not sure anyone has ever tried. Not hard enough, anyhow.” Was I being unreasonably judgmental?
Although I respected the villagers for working hard to support themselves the only way they knew to, the hopelessness of changing the situation angered and frustrated me.
“Rosa,”—Nikki began carefully as if unsure of my reaction—“you are more knowledgeable about the outside world than anyone here, and you alone have the potential to learn and to keep learning.”
I nodded. I knew what was coming.
“Perhaps you are the one who should find a solution.”
30
My shack had grown more crowded than I would have believed possible. Even after convincing the Elders to move the supplies and lock them in the warehouse until I finished the distribution, a task I expected to complete within another day or two.
If they hadn’t cooperated, Alazne and I wouldn’t have fit through our own doorway.
One corner of our single room contained boxes filled to overflowing with office supplies. Inexpensive bookcases spilling over with books on every conceivable subject lined the back wall; my unfamiliarity with most of them reminded me of the vastness of my ignorance.
I’d never realized how immense Mother Chalina’s library was. Although she had bought a number of books while living in the apartment and apparently had others in storage, these bookcases resembled a substantial subset of the Latino section of the San Diego public library branch I used to spend so much time in.
If the covers were any indication—I hadn’t glanced at more than a few of them—Mother Chalina’s collection included books on more subjects than I could imagine. And at various reading levels.
Thank goodness I now had the books I needed—the same ones Mother Chalina had used with me four years earlier—to teach my own daughter to read. I would use the same methods Mother Chalina had used so successfully with me.
Not only had I inherited my mother’s intelligence and her love of books and learning, but also her desire to pass that love to the next generation. The discovery that I had also inherited her ability to teach didn’t surprise me.
~*~
Nikki and I were browsing through Mother Chalina’s books. I held one out to her. “Would you look at this? She owned books about carpentry and plumbing. I shouldn’t be surprised, and yet I am.”
“Not so surprising. If Santa María ever gets running water and indoor toilets, you’ll be all set to maintain them.” Nikki’s mood that day was especially playful. “Not all of us can remember everything we read the way some people can.”
I laughed. “Which way are you saying I am?”
After more than four years of reading, studying, and remembering most of what I had read, I finally accepted the fact that my memory—although not truly photographic—was far better than average. Perhaps even superior.
“By the way…”
So she wasn’t going to answer me? I ignored her. When she poked my shoulder, I stuck out my tongue.
“You know that credit card of Tomas’s?”
I nodded. I wondered how many thousands of Tomás’s dollars we’d spent using it.
“I seem to have forgotten to cancel it.”
“Does that matter?”
“I should have done it immediately after his death. Of course, I’ve also failed to close any of his bank accounts, one of which automatically pays the credit card bill each month. I’ve always been its sole authorized user, not Tomás. So why shouldn’t I use it as long as I can?”
I shook my head. “As long as you can get away with it, you mean?”
She pretended to frown. “They shouldn’t penalize me just because you’re officially his beneficiary and not me.”
We giggled and tried to estimate how many years in jail she deserved for her “blonde reasoning.”
“American blondes are often the butt of ignorant men’s jokes,” she said. “But it’s okay for a blonde to laugh at herself.”
~*~
As I lay on my blanket that night sniffing the scent of new books—Nikki had used that VISA card to purchase a variety of books and bookcases—the smell reactivated my intense hunger for knowledge. I determined to spend most of my free time reading and digesting new information.
This time I wouldn’t learn a bit of this and a tidbit of that just to become better educated. I would focus my reading to look for some new and legal way for the village to earn its livelihood.
Knowledge for its own sake was good, but I wanted to do what would have pleased my mother if she were still alive. And to bring the villagers more fully into the current century by introducing them to a new and better lifestyle.
Where was I to begin? I didn’t expect to find a book entitled How a Tiny Mexican Village Can Earn Its Livelihood without Having to Keep Growing Marijuana, and I didn’t.
I got sidetracked from my mission that evening, however. Alazne crawled into my lap with a book in her hand.
“I’ve missed reading, Mommy. Read this one to me, please.”
And so I did. I also resolved to start teaching her to read the next day.
~*~
The Elders sequestered the truck in the storage barn the night before Nikki’s departure. Whether they hid marijuana in it, neither of us knew. I would have preferred not to know of the possibility.
“Please don’t tell me what you’re doing with that truck,” I begged the Council of Elders after Señora Valdes started telling me about her role in loading the truck. “I will share your guilt if need be. I will go to jail with you, but don’t make me guilty of anything but failing to find a practical and ethical solution to this problem and to do it soon enough.”
No one spoke to me further about the village commerce.
“The loneliness of the road is good for me, girlfriend.” Nikki looked at my long face the next morning. “It gives me time to sort out my feelings about Tomás and Mother Chalina. I must also deal with my mixed feelings about Señora del Mundo. I think you understand.”
I nodded, trying in vain to keep my eyes from misting.
“I’ll see you again in three months. Or perhaps I’ll surprise you sometime when you least expect to see me. I won’t drive the truck then. Don’t live in anticipation of those visits. They’ll no longer be surprises, and then they’ll be less likely to happen.”
My face must have reflected my confusion. “I don’t understand what you’re saying, but I think perhaps you are teasing me. You have fun playing with words to keep me from taking your good intentions as a promise you may not be able to keep. I look forward to seeing you when I see you. Is that good enough?”
“Ah, Rosa, your head is covered with transparent plastic wrap, not hair and skin. I see inside so clearly I know you’re still hoping I will move here someday. As much as I love you, girlfriend, and as much as I love Alazne, my life wasn’t meant to be lived in this tiny village of yours.
“You haven’t determined your future yet, and I haven’t figured mine out, either. We will remain best friends. Although I can promise that with certainty, that is the only thing I can promise.”
I smiled and nodded. What other choice did I have?
“Vaya con Diós, friend Rosa. Go with God—or may God go with you.
”
“Nikki, who is this god you speak of?”
“I don’t know him personally. He has something to do with church and the Bible and religion, I think, but I don’t understand exactly what. I didn’t grow up in a religious family, and I’ve never been interested in religion, not even as an adult. ‘Vaya con Diós’ is just a saying I’ve heard Dr. Morales use.”
“I’ve heard him say it, too.”
Religion? Church? Bible? God? What did those words mean? I would research them when I could, but other needs took precedence over my search for Diós.
~*~
I knew better than to awaken sleeping children by knocking at the doorframes of their houses in the evening to carry out my census or deliver supplies. So I used that time to begin my research beneath the light of a single oil lantern. Although my hearth fire still had a slight glow as it burned down after cooking supper, it wasn’t bright enough to read by.
I would start by putting my books in alphabetical order as if they were fiction. Then I would list them individually on index cards. Although those two steps might require days—probably weeks—I could also work on that project during the day once I finished the distribution.
The final step would be categorizing the cards by subject. That would take longer.
Many books contained keywords on the title page, and all of them had a description of the contents on the back cover. I sought help there only when the book contained no keywords, however.
Thinking about my many pleasurable hours in the library in San Diego, I realized I was using their classification system. Or at least adapting and simplifying it. Just as the card catalog of a real library enabled patrons to search quickly through thousands of books, mine would help me search through hundreds.
I sighed. If only I had a computer.
But then I laughed out loud. I was going to face a typical library problem every time Nikki came. She would bring books, and I would constantly have to rearrange my stacks to fit each new book where it belonged.
What a wonderful problem...
~*~
Although I kept my eyes open for religion, church, Bible, and god in the book titles and keywords, my first real clue came not from a book, but from one of the village Elders. After hearing what I was doing, he came to see me one evening.
“Did you know the unused building in the center of the village—the one across from the warehouse—was built more than a century ago as a church? My great-grandmother told me that when I was a small boy.”
“But what was it actually used for? What is a church?”
“She didn’t tell me.” He sighed softly. “I don’t think she knew, either. No one has used it—no one has been inside—for years.”
He wasn’t exaggerating. The villagers avoided going anywhere near the building. As if it were the center of some ancestral superstition—a Pandora’s Box that would prove fatal to the whole village if it were opened. Their failure to put the second largest building in the village to good use had always mystified me. Especially since it appeared to be in excellent condition despite its lack of maintenance.
Although the discovery of those facts related to my “god search” should have elated me, I felt even more frustrated because no one could tell me what a church was or who god was or what god had to do with a church.
Recent reading about ancient Greek and Roman mythology had introduced me to gods, but not to the god I wanted to learn about. The mythological gods had numerous shortcomings. So many they seemed worse than regular people. Although they were far more powerful than human beings, they didn’t live up to my concept of a good, kind, or loving god. Or even a helpful one.
This quest differed substantially from my youthful inquiries about my background. The villagers had refused to give me answers, even though they knew them. No one tried to withhold information about god or churches in general or the village church in particular. No one knew anything to tell me.
~*~
Several days after Nikki returned to San Diego, I completed the census and the distribution of supplies. My handling of the task seemed to please the villagers. If anyone had complaints, I didn’t hear them.
I smiled inwardly. I would have heard. That’s how the villagers were. I understand now that most people are like that.
In spite of my double-quest, I made time to start teaching Alazne to read, and she absorbed everything I told her. I drilled her just as Mother Chalina had drilled Nikki and me. “This is what the letter looks like, this is its name, and it makes these sounds depending on the letters before and after it.”
In no time at all, she could identify all of the letters of the alphabet and find each of them on any page of any book—children’s or adult’s.
I had made up my mind to postpone teaching her to write, but my decision proved unnecessary. She started learning on her own.
In the back of one of her books, she found a stencil containing the numbers and the letters of the alphabet. She instinctively understood its use. If her small-muscle control had developed more fully by then, she might have become an excellent cursive writer. As it was, her printing was more legible than mine.
Counting came just as easily. In no time at all, she came to me with a handful of books. “Momma, sit down. Let me read you one of these five books. Do you want me to read the first, the second, the third, the fourth, or the fifth one?”
“Are those my only choices?” I teased her, unable to disguise my pride.
“No. I can go back and pick out a sixth and a seventh.”
My mouth dropped open in amazement. I couldn’t get over how much she had learned. Although learning had come easily for me at sixteen, I wondered if it would have come this easily at four.
And now that I knew I was pregnant, would it come this easily for my baby when she turned four?
Señora Valdes had predicted that this baby would be a girl, too. Since she had been right the first time, how could I doubt her now? I named my new baby Anjelita three months before she was born.
31
Mother Chalina’s letter had suggested that “You can’t go home again” might not apply to me. She had been partially right. Although Santa María didn’t feel like home, at least it served as the safest of havens from the dangers of so-called civilized society.
I had never felt completely at home in San Diego, either. In spite of my closeness to Nikki and Mother Chalina and their frequent efforts to get me out of the apartment, I spent too much time there. If Tomás had permitted me to drive, that might not have been as much of a problem.
Life in San Diego had been less meaningful than I’d realized. Rearing Alazne had been wonderful—I wouldn’t have traded it for anything and I continued to delight in it daily—but motherhood hadn’t fulfilled me the way it did many women.
Learning to read and write. Learning to learn. I would always be proud of those accomplishments. Books had occupied my mind as well as my hours, and they had profoundly changed my outlook and my understanding of the world, which I no longer viewed as flat, but amazingly three-dimensional—in spite of how little of the world I had seen except through books.
But I had never had anything especially meaningful to look forward to. Not since my mid-teen years had I dreamed about what my future might hold, and those dreams had proven superficial. My limited understanding of life had prevented me from dreaming more substantially.
Now that I was back in Santa María as a respected equal, I realized I belonged here. Who knows? I might even come to think of this safe haven as home eventually.
I set my god-quest aside for a while and turned my full attention to the more pressing issue—an alternative source of revenue for the villagers. They didn’t pressure me for a solution, however. In truth, only a few of them understood that I was trying to find one.
They wouldn’t have cared, anyhow. They had never understood the moral implications of drug production and the negative effects their toils had on both individuals and society in general. The
y couldn’t afford to care.
Without a viable alternative, they had to continue their generations-old tradition. Or die.
Perhaps providing marijuana for medical research wasn’t such a bad thing. But if it was acceptable, why did Nikki have to smuggle it across the border?
I had used my index card classification system to assist in my god-search. I had automatically eliminated certain classes of books—mathematics and geography, for example. That system should prove equally effective in searching for an alternate source of village income.
But why not carry out both searches simultaneously?
Confident that the answers to both quests lay somewhere inside the books that lined the back wall of my shack, I would look for relevant titles and keywords as I searched the index cards. The right one would eventually grab my attention and offer a solution.
~*~
Bless Alazne’s little heart. How she thrilled me by neatly printing the words bible, god, church, and religion on a piece of notebook paper. Not wanting her to accidentally mix up my cards, I asked her to limit her search to the books themselves.
Although she started by examining only the titles and keywords, she soon extended her search to the back covers. I regretted not having done that more consistently when creating my card catalog.
My daughter was smarter than her momma.
~*~
Alazne was spending a lot of time inside with me. More time than was healthy.
I loved being with her—we had fun together—but she should’ve been outside playing with her friends and enjoying the sunshine and fresh air. I would barely miss her help, but someday she might regret her failure to live a normal, playful childhood.
I couldn’t permit her to relive the solitary lifestyle I’d had to endure while growing up. It was unnecessary. A large majority of the villagers loved and accepted her. What a wonderful difference between her childhood and mine.