Teresa patted me on the shoulder, and when I tried to return the photo she pressed it into my palm and closed my fingers around it.
As we walked to the front yard, Bernardo said, “There is something else. All the participants for the festival must register by December eighteenth at the municipal building. Pedro, Beni, and I, we already put our names on the papers.”
“But he comes every year, right?” said Owen.
“According to Teresa, he only missed one year when he could not get through because the roads flooded,” said Fabiola. “A León cousin carved for the family in the contest that year. Teresa is convinced he will come this year, with the permission of God, of course. He usually arrives in time for Las Posadas because he loves very much to participate and they start tonight.”
Graciela had already explained Las Posadas to me, how for nine nights before Christmas, neighborhoods held their own get-togethers, walking through the streets, knocking on doors and pretending to look for shelter, just like Mary and Joseph did in Bethlehem.
Today was the sixteenth. He’d have to be here within two days to register for the festival, and tonight his favorite celebration started. My stomach turned a cartwheel.
“Teresa will call some of her relatives so that maybe they can get a message to Santiago, but she worries that he is traveling already.”
“Gracias,” I said, and gave her a quick hug.
On the way home in the truck, I stared at the photo in my hand of the smiling boy and his father. They were my family, who had come to this town year after year for one special occasion. I sat a little taller in my seat. No wonder Beni examined my carvings. I was from the León family, who had been carving in the festival for over a hundred years.
I pulled out my notebook and added to “Everything We Know About Our Father”: 9) He loves Las Posadas, 10) I look just like him.
Fabiola hung up the phone and shook her head and frowned. It had been three days since we’d been to Aunt Teresa’s and still Santiago had not arrived. “Teresa, she feels confident that he still might come for the holidays. Possibly for the New Year. . . .”
“I will take Owen and Rubén to the municipal building and check the registration list this morning,” said Bernardo.
“Well, I guess that is that,” said Gram, looking into her plate of eggs.
“Gram, he still might come!” I scooted my chair away from the table and walked outside to the jacaranda tree and sat down.
Tonight was Barrio Jalatlaco’s posada, and tomorrow the radishes would be delivered. Where was Santiago? What could have happened? He was going to miss everything, including us.
I stayed beneath the tree while Bernardo left with the boys, and Gram, Fabiola, and Flora left for el mercado.
A breeze lifted the loose purple jacaranda blossoms and sprinkled them over me. Picking up a bar of soap, I held it against the sky and imagined a little white dove inside. I rounded the corners of the bar and smoothed the arch that would be the back. I thought of Blanca. I wondered what she was doing and if she missed me. I thought about Mr. Marble and Ms. Morimoto. If I didn’t find my father, would I have to live in Las Vegas and leave my life in Lemon Tree?
I worked and whittled, scraped and dug. But when I got to the center, there was nothing there, only the ground covered with my snowy frustrations.
I whispered to the leaves and the purple flowers, “Santiago, you don’t have to be our father if you don’t want to. Just show up and help me. Please?”
As I picked up another bar of soap to begin again, the gate opened and Owen walked toward me, with Rubén following. “It’s okay, Naomi. It’s okay.”
Had Santiago registered at the municipal building?
But when Bernardo walked into the yard behind the boys and I saw his sad, soft-hearted eyes, I knew that Owen had only been trying to reassure me. There was no good news to give.
That night, before Las Posadas, Graciela brushed my hair until it shimmered like velvet. Since I’d been thinking so much about my father, I wondered about Rubén’s. Gram would say to let it be and mind my own affairs. Blanca would tell me to ask lots of questions and get lots of answers.
“Graciela, dónde está Rubén’s father?”
She stopped brushing.
I hoped I hadn’t been too rude or nosy.
“We are no longer together.”
“Did you ever want to leave Rubén with Flora and Pedro and go look for your life?”
Graciela turned me around to face her. She carefully situated a beaded headband in my hair. “No, Naomi. You see, I am looking for my own life right here, with Rubén.”
At eight, when the sky was filled with darkness, we all walked the few blocks through the barrio to a small hotel for Las Posadas. Many of the neighbors gathered there in the street, as well as tourists who were staying at the hotels. Flora and Pedro and Graciela seemed to know almost everyone. In just a matter of minutes, the road filled with people.
The door to the inn opened and a handsome man with black hair and a beard walked out into the street with his two teenage daughters, their arms full of baskets.
“Look,” said Fabiola. “He has las candelas, the torches.”
The father gave the adults the long sticks of bamboo with a candle stuck in the top surrounded by an upsidedown cellophane umbrella.
One daughter handed me long wire sparklers, at least three feet long, then passed whistles to the youngest children. The other daughter gave firecrackers to the boys. Owen held up a bundle of pink and white firecrackers to show me, grinning and jumping up and down. Rubén copied him.
The man and his daughters lit the wicks of las candelas and then everyone passed the flames, candle to candle, until the street glowed with soft lights. One of the older boys held a candle and the younger ones ran to it and lit their firecrackers, tossing them quickly away from the crowd.
Pop! Pop! Crack!
The huddle of people began walking slowly through the street. Every person, from the smallest to the oldest, held a sparkler, candle, or firecracker to light the night. I held my sparkler out and watched the tiny white pinpoints sprinkle onto the street. The sound of the firecrackers echoed off the stone streets and brick walls. People wove like a snake on the cobblestones, then stopped at the first door and started to sing.
“It is a famous song about this night,” whispered Fabiola. “It says, ‘The Queen of Heaven is asking for shelter for only one night under your roof.’”
On the other side of the door, someone answered them! I looked up at Fabiola, surprised.
She nodded. “The people wait behind the door. They said,‘No hay posada. There is no shelter here.’”
“Watch,” said Graciela. “The people who turned us away will come out of the house and join us.”
As I peeked back through the crowd, the door opened and a man and a woman stepped out. Another neighbor passed them some candles, which they lit.
Then the parade started again. As I walked, my sparkler spilled a circle of brightness in front of me. Gram had a bamboo candelero, and when I glanced up at her in that light, her face looked soft and contented. She hummed along with the singers even though she didn’t know the words.
The song continued and people’s voices became stronger, floating upward and echoing off the walls of the barrio. At each house it was as if part of me knocked on the door, too, asking about my father and getting no answers.
Spurts of light and noise surrounded me. I felt tears in my eyes and wiped away the drops on my lashes. We stopped at another door and the people’s voices sang louder. Again, someone from behind the door called back to them.
“No hay posada.”
The procession circled the block and stopped in front of the inn where we had begun. The father who had passed out los candeleros knocked on his own door and sang out the words of the song.
A woman’s voice sang back.
Graciela whispered, “‘Come in, holy pilgrims. Welcome to this place. Although this house is modest
, our heart is big.’”
Everyone cheered loudly and the boys threw an army of firecrackers, the noise peppering the street. My tears spilled over.
Graciela hugged me. “It is a joy and a sadness in the heart at the same time, no?”
I nodded. No wonder my father loved Las Posadas. Then, as quickly as my tears had come, the mood around us changed. The doors flung open and several women came out with trays of sandwiches that Fabiola called tortas. The daughters served punch from a big pot.
On a nearby rooftop I noticed a boy swing a rope back and forth, then let go. Another boy on a rooftop on the other side of the street caught it, and as he pulled, a piñata slowly rose from the ground.
Someone held up a stick and the crowd clapped and cheered. Even the youngest children received a turn tapping the piñata. Owen swung and got a good crack. When everyone whooped for him, he bowed, and the people laughed, but not making fun, like in Lemon Tree. When the bigger boys took their turns and the piñata broke, Owen ran in with the rest and came back to me with his hands full of something that looked like short sticks of bamboo.
“Sugarcane,” said Graciela. She took the thick cane, peeled back the top like a banana, and handed a piece to Owen and another to me. “Taste it.”
Owen ran off with the sugarcane dangling from his mouth like a cigar. I carefully put the white bark to my lips and sucked on the sweetness.
One after the other, the pottery insides of the five piñatas clattered onto the street and little children ran to collect the peanuts, small oranges, and sugarcane that spilled from their clay tummies. The women passed out orange, pink, and yellow tissue-paper bundles to each person. Then people began to drift away, in twos and threes, back to their own parts of the neighborhood. As they left, they called out, “¡Feliz Navidad!”
We headed home, too. Flora, Gram, and Fabiola walked arm in arm ahead of me, three links in a chain. Bernardo and Pedro walked behind us, talking in their deep Spanish voices, probably about the radishes that would be delivered from the fields tomorrow. Rubén and Owen, on one side of me, already nibbled the cookies and candy that had been inside the tissue bundles. On the other side, Graciela held my hand. Every few minutes she looked down at me and smiled with a face full of kindness.
Just for a blink of my eye, I pretended that Graciela was my mother. I wondered if my father had ever married again. Maybe he would show up and he would meet Graciela and they could get married. Then Owen, Gram, and I could live with them in a little house like Flora and Pedro’s, with Fabiola and Bernardo close by. I would never have to go back to Lemon Tree and take the chance of having to live with Skyla. Every year we could all walk home from Las Posadas together, one big family.
We turned the corner and the street lamp gave off enough light so that we could see a lone figure up ahead standing in front of the wooden gates.
“I told Beni to come over so we can make the decisions tonight,” said Bernardo.
Pedro waved and the person waved back.
As we walked closer, I thought, What if it isn’t Beni? What if it’s my father?
But it wasn’t. It was Beni.
Everyone went to bed except for the men, who huddled together in the yard and discussed what they would carve for the festival. With my box of carvings under my arm, I tiptoed into Flora’s kitchen for the last of the hot chocolate, which I knew was on the back of the stove. As I sipped, I examined a jacaranda branch that Rubén had dragged inside and left on Flora’s table.
I picked up the branch and held it above my animals. I moved the branch back and forth like a puppeteer and imagined what my father had once carved for us. Then I held the branch upright, as if it grew out of the table. Since it was flat on the bottom, it balanced and stood like a young sapling. I braced it with Flora’s salt and pepper shakers and bottles of hot sauce for extra support, then carefully began placing my soap figures among the spindly twigs.
Beni walked in, and while he drank a glass of water, he glanced at my arrangements on the table. He came closer, studying the animals in the tree.
“Don’t touch. Don’t touch,” he said. Then he ran outside.
“¡Finalmente!” said Fabiola as I walked into the kitchen for breakfast. “They would not tell us what they decided to carve until you got here.” She turned back to the stove to flip a tortilla on what Gram called the black trivet.
“We wait until everyone is here,” said Bernardo.
Pedro winked at me.
“Here’s the rest of us,” said Gram, with Owen and Rubén right behind her.
My carvings were all over the table. Bernardo scooted his chair and pulled another chair over so I could sit between him and Pedro.
“¿Qué?” said Flora. “What? Tell us.”
Bernardo started talking fast and excited in Spanish and Pedro nodded. Then Pedro stood up and paced around the kitchen, describing something and using his hands to express his excitement, waving them around. All this made his big belly dance.
Fabiola translated. “A gigantic branch like a big tree. Instead of leaves, there will be pigs and birds and fish and crocodiles. The panther lying here and an elephant sleeping there. Little parades. Giraffes and monkeys all together . . .”
Pedro sat back down and reached over and hugged my shoulder.
“. . . and on the top,” continued Fabiola, “un león, the king of beasts. It will be maravilloso, wonderful!” (I was definitely going to add maravilloso to the “Superb Spanish Words” list.)
“Shhh . . . shhh. . . . the neighbors . . . they could hear,” said Pedro, putting his finger to his mustache. “People are jealous and could steal our ideas.”
“Naomi, you can come to the market with me or stay and carve with these crazy men all day,” said Graciela.
I knew she was kidding. “Aquí,” I said. “Here.”
Graciela rolled her eyes. “Bueno, como quieras. As you wish.” She pulled the shade on the back door before she walked out.
A few minutes later Beni arrived. He backed a truck into the yard and unloaded tubs filled with twisted and gnarled, knotty and contorted red vegetables that didn’t resemble any delicate little radish that came from Gram’s garden.
Gram stood over them with her hands on her hips. “I have never seen anything like them in my life. Why, they look like giant, overgrown yams that went through a pretzel maker. I think some of these are as tall as Owen.”
Bernardo, Pedro, and Beni each dragged a big tub of radishes into Flora’s kitchen.
Owen and Rubén had the job of misting the radishes with water so they would not dry out. They both took this duty seriously and sat on the floor with their water bottles ready, waiting for the first cuts to be made.
Bernardo grinned at me and rubbed his hands together in anticipation. Then he picked up a knife and started to carve.
“What happens to these radishes after the festival?” asked Gram.
“After the judging each booth gives away the dolls and characters. It is good luck to have one of them on your table for your Christmas feast. But soon they dry up and must be thrown away.”
“All that work and they only last a few days!” said Gram, shaking her head.
“But of course,” said Bernardo. “It is for the joy of doing it, of participating, and for the prize, if you win.”
The men’s fingers were nimble and I was amazed they didn’t cut themselves. They twisted and turned the radishes as if they were on spools, making impressions that often left the radish with a face or a remarkable feature, like an elephant’s knee in a knotty whorl. Outside the radishes were dark and brownish red. As the men scraped off the layers of skin, they revealed true red, the palest pinks, and in the heart of the radish, white. But the white was tainted, as if someone had tried to bleach a pink blouse, and around the edges of the seams, the faintest trace of rosy color remained.
I watched the men make magic out of vegetable and copied them. The radishes cut like potatoes, only firmer, and gave way much easier than soap,
which meant I made more mistakes. Beni said I could carve anything I liked, as long as it was an animal. I made little elephants, doves, bears, and squirrels, sticking at first to things I’d carved before.
At the end of the day, we covered the radishes with damp towels and set them in coolers.
The next day it was the same. We worked for hours, laughing and talking and singing songs in Spanish. I didn’t even care that I didn’t know all the words. Fabiola, Gram, and Flora made food and lemonade, and when Owen and Rubén’s excitement could not be contained, Graciela took them away to find lucky spiders.
On the last day of carving, Beni brought in a radish that looked like a giant bulb.
“What will you do with that?” I asked.
“It is for the crown. The lion. We want you to carve it . . . to thank you for your idea.”
I looked at Pedro and Bernardo and they nodded. I took the radish from Beni, knowing that this was an honor. I held it up and examined it.
“The lion could be sitting, facing us, with the front legs straight and resting on its back legs. That way, I could carve the entire mane in a giant jagged circle.”
“Yes,” said Beni. “Perfecto.”
I studied the radish again and made a few careful cuts. If I scraped a very thin layer of red in a long line, it curled slightly. Could I get a curly mane on el león? León. Thinking the name reminded me of the tiny thread of hope to which I clung. If my father came to the festival, would he see the radish tree full of animals and remember what he’d carved for us all those years ago? Would it make him happy? Would he like to know that his daughter was a carver, too?
“Today’s the day,” I whispered to Gram on the morning of the Night of the Radishes, waking her from a sound sleep. I had already dressed in my peasant blouse, jeans, and huaraches.
Gram sat up and pulled the light blanket around herself. “Naomi, what time is it?”
“Early, but I couldn’t sleep.”
Gram ran her hands through her thin hair and cleared her throat. “There’s something I want to say to you before you get going.”
Becoming Naomi Leon Page 10