When a Woman Rises

by Christine Eber

  After we finished making the bed we returned to the kitchen and found Doña Dolores already eating and reading a book at the same time. We’d never seen anyone do that. Later that evening Lucia told me that it was a good sign that Doña Dolores liked to read because she would probably keep her promise about letting her go to school. We looked longingly at Doña Dolores’ bowl of soup. We’d had nothing to eat except a few toasted tortillas and our stomachs were rumbling. She told us to serve ourselves some soup and sit down with her. The soup was delicious. The tortillas from the tortillera weren’t as good as the ones our mothers made but they filled our stomachs. The señora asked us some questions about our famiies and told us a little about herself, how she had been a teacher and never married. Then she laid down her napkin and said, “Well, girls, I’m going to take a nap now. You can go out and look for work when you’re ready. Go in the other direction this time and be sure to come back before it’s dark so you won’t get lost. Lucia, when you come back we’ll talk about your terms of employment and how to inform your parents.”

  Walking the other way wasn’t any better. Nobody wanted a servant girl. When it was starting to get dark and we turned a corner that opened up a whole new street, instead of feeling hopeful, I felt that my dream of finding a job and going to school would never come true.

  I tugged on Lucia’s shawl and told her, “I don’t want to knock on another door. We’re not going to find a job for me. It’s good enough that you have a job. If one of us goes to school, it’s better than neither of us. I’m going home tomorrow. I’ll beg my parents pardon, and ask them to tell your mother where you are. She’ll come to visit, and she’ll see the good food the señora gives you and that she agrees for you to go to school. It’ll be alright.”

  Lucia stood very still. I did too. In that moment I think we both saw that our lives were soon to be like a forked path. Still, Lucia tried to convince me to keep looking for work.

  “Let’s keep looking for a job for you so you can have the same chances I have. Let’s not give up. It’s too early to give up.”

  “I’m not as brave as you,” I said. “I’m embarrassed to knock on doors and talk to strangers. It’s sad to give up my dream and go back to Lokan, but when you come to visit, you can tell me all about your life in the city, and it will be almost like I’m here. And when I come to visit, you’ll show me all the places you know and what you’re learning in school. We’ll still be friends.”

  Lucia could see that I had made up my mind, and so we turned around and returned to Doña Dolores’ house. The señora let us in and told us to join her by the fireplace where she had been sitting. Once we were seated on little stools by the fire, she asked us, “Did you have any luck, girls?”

  “No, Doña Dolores, we couldn’t find work for Magdalena. We don’t think it’s easy to find another job.”

  Doña Dolores put her book down and looked a little sad. “I was afraid you might not find a job for Magdalena that easily. I’m sorry about that. But God worked one miracle for us today, and that’s probably more than we deserve. It’s best that you return to your parents in the morning, Magdalena. They must be worried about you, and Lucia’s parents need to know where she is. Perhaps you can return another day to look for a job if your parents give you permission. Tonight you may sleep in Lucia’s room with her. There’s a petate you can use, and I have lots of blankets.”

  “Thank you, Doña Dolores,” Lucia said, “but Magdalena and I can sleep together in my bed. We just need another blanket.”

  Before we said goodnight, Doña Dolores told Lucia that her responsibilities would be to go to market each morning, to prepare the midday meal, and to wash the dishes after. She would also feed the chickens, mop the floors, and wash the señora’s clothes when they were dirty. In return, Doña Dolores would pay Lucia thirty pesos a month, more than most servants made back then.

  After a month, if Lucia had shown that she was a good worker and committed to doing her best in school, Doña Dolores would enroll her in middle school and pay her school expenses. In the meantime Lucia could read any of Doña Dolores’ books she wanted.

  We were so tired that we hardly talked at all before we fell asleep in Lucia’s bed. We knew there was nothing we could do but hope that my parents wouldn’t punish me too hard and that Lucia’s mother would agree to her working for Doña Dolores. Before I started to drift off to sleep, Lucia tried to comfort me by saying that she would keep looking for a job for me, and that, if she found one, we would convince my parents to let me live in the city and study.

  The next day was very hard for me, and for my parents and Lucia too. I don’t like to remember it, but I’ll tell you what you need to know.

  After breakfast Doña Dolores sent us to the market to buy vegetables. We went to Esperanza’s mother’s stall first. Esperanza saw us coming and ran toward me to tell me that my parents had come looking for us. They came to her mother’s stall early that morning and asked if she had seen two girls from Chenalhó. She thought they might be looking for us and asked Esperanza our names. My father said that if we came to buy something to be sure to keep us there. Then my parents left and said they’d be back to see if we had come. I asked Esperanza how my parents looked, and she said my father looked angry and my mother was crying.

  I didn’t have any choice but to stay and wait for my parents. Lucia went back to Doña Dolores’ house with the vegetables and said she’d wait there for me and my parents. So, I waited, scared and alone. Esperanza tried to cheer me up by talking non-stop about whatever came into her head.

  It wasn’t long before I saw my father’s face in the crowd of shoppers. Behind him was my mother, her face smeared with tears. They came hurriedly toward me. My father grabbed me by the arm and started to yell at me. I don’t remember what he said. I just remember how ashamed and scared I felt while his words fell down on me. My mother stood behind him crying while my father scolded me harder than I’d ever been scolded in my life. I thought that if this wasn’t my punishment, I didn’t know how I could bear a harder one. I was scared that maybe my father was waiting to hit me when we got home.

  Still holding my arm, my father thanked Esperanza’s mother and told me to take them to where Lucia was. On the way to Doña Dolores’ house, I explained that Lucia had a job as a maid, but that I didn’t have one, and that I was planning to go home on the next bus. That information didn’t calm my father’s anger.

  When we finally got to Doña Dolores’ door, I thought Lucia would answer it, but she was hiding in her room afraid of what my parents would say. Doña Dolores opened the door and asked my parents to come in. Lucia had told her that my parents had come for me, so Doña Dolores had a little talk prepared for when they arrived. I remember her words well because they calmed my father down, and I learned that Doña Dolores had wanted to go to school like me when she was a girl.

  “I can only imagine how scared you were when Magdalena didn’t come home last night. I’m glad that now you’re reunited with your daughter. She was planning to return home today and apologize to you for running away. Now that you’ve come, please sit down so we can discuss how to handle the problem of Lucia wanting to stay here with me to work and study.”

  My parents had calmed down a little by then. They accepted Doña Dolores’ offer to sit with her on a bench in her patio. There she explained to them that long ago she had gone to school in Mexico City where she had learned to be a teacher. She understood how Lucia and I felt because she too had had a dream to study as far as she could. With her parents’ and God’s help she was able to.

  After she returned to San Cristóbal, she taught for many years and was proud of her students who went on to become teachers like her—or sometimes secretaries or nurses. She had never married and over the years had helped several of her maids go to school. They became like her daughters and most of them still visited her. It was a blessing, she said, when she met us in the market because she was very worried how she would go on without her maid
who had just left.

  My parents listened to Doña Dolores, and then my father said respectfully but sternly, “We understand that you want to help Lucia and that you have cared for her and our daughter until we could come for them. We’d like to talk to Lucia now so we can be sure she wants to stay with you. Then we’ll talk to her mother, and she’ll come here and talk with you.”

  Doña Dolores called for Lucia who came out of her room and stood next to me while my father asked her if she really wanted to stay and work for Doña Dolores and keep studying. Lucia looked at the ground while my father talked, but when he had finished she looked him in the face and told him that she wanted to study more than anything in the world, that she was very sorry that she had made him have to come to the city to find us, but she would work and study hard and make us all proud of her. She said that after studying she would find a job and help her mother and others in our community with her earnings.

  That was the end of my San Cristóbal adventure. I gathered up my things, thanked Doña Dolores for giving me a place to sleep and tried not to cry when I said goodbye to Lucia. I remember walking out the door with my parents. I felt there was nothing left to look forward to in my life.

  My father didn’t hit me when we got home. I think he could tell that I was too ashamed to ever lie to them or hurt them again. And I never did. Our lives just continued as if I had never run away. Except at night, after my parents were asleep, I would cry, thinking about how my life could have been if I had stayed in San Cristóbal.

  My mother still had to talk to Lucia’s mother. Carmela was relieved to know where Lucia was and that she had found a place to work and that she would also be able to study. As soon as she could, Carmela went to San Cristóbal to see Lucia. Doña Dolores must have given the same speech to Carmela because when she came back, she stopped by our house to tell my mother what had happened. She said that it must be God’s will that her daughter found work with such a kind señora who would help her go to school. Carmela said she would miss her daughter, but she would manage with Hilario’s help. She asked me if I’d like to go with her the next time she went to visit Lucia. I said yes, of course. It had only been a few days, and already I missed Lucia.

  “COME, HILARIO, COME.”

  FOR A FEW DAYS, I couldn’t talk into the tape recorder about Lucia because Victorio and I had to go to a course that the madres organized in Yabteclum. I left Verónica at home to take care of our store. Although we were only gone two days, I knew she would be anxious for me to return and continue Lucia’s story.

  After the course had finished and we climbed out of the truck that brought us home, I looked up the hill and there was Verónica standing on a rock below our house watching the road. She hadn’t done that since she was a little girl waiting for us to come home from a meeting and rescue her from her brothers, who ordered her around and wouldn’t play with her.

  Sometimes when I came home, I’d find her weaving on a toy loom that she’d made out of sticks she found on the ground. Her loom would be tied to a low tree branch and there she would be, pretending to weave with my stray threads. When she saw me, she’d jump up and proudly hold her creation up for me to inspect. I’d look it over and say, “That’s good. Continue with that.”

  The morning after I returned from Yabteclum, I told Verónica I could talk about Lucia again. To get me started, Verónica asked how life was for Carmela and Hilario without Lucia.

  With Lucia living in San Cristóbal, Hilario didn’t have a helper when he went to heal. After she had been gone a couple weeks, he came to our house to heal my brother, who had a terrible stomach ache. Hilario knelt on the ground with difficulty and prayed so softly I could hardly hear him.

  The next morning after breakfast, my mother wrapped a few eggs in a striped tortilla cloth and said she was going to visit Carmela. She told me to stay and watch my little sister Ernestina, who, by that time, was almost ready to go to school but was still too little to be left alone.

  Ernestina was very naughty when she was little. Once my father got so angry at her for screaming at the top of her lungs when my mother wouldn’t give her more atole that he spanked her hard and yelled at my mother. The rest of the day my father stayed outside the house making a net bag and not talking to anyone. In the evening he came back to the house with some branches and asked my mother to boil a pot of water. He put the branches in the water and let them simmer. Then mother went to get Ernestina and told her they were going to do a special prayer for her. Ernestina liked the attention from my parents and didn’t fight them when they took off her clothes and bathed her in the water from the boiled branches. Afterwards, they wrapped her in my mother’s shawl and held her between them while they said a prayer that my father told me later is called “to the mother, to the father.”

  “Forgive me, what I did to you.

  I didn’t know what I was doing to you,

  because I was angry.

  Perhaps resentment made me do it.”

  After praying, my father told me that when his parents had argued or scolded him unfairly they would bathe him and pray, and he would never get sick from their anger. Our parents and grandparents believed that a parent’s anger could make a child sick, even an adult child. After praying to ask forgiveness, the parents would drink a cup of pox, but since my father no longer drank he left out that part.

  The prayer worked for the rest of the day with Ernestina, but the next day she went back to her bad ways. Maybe the prayer helped in the end, though, because today she’s a respectful woman. I wish we saw her more often, but that’s how it is after women marry and go to live in their husband’s community.

  When Mother came back from visiting Carmela, she told me that Hilario was very sick and that he wanted Lucia at home to pray for him. Carmela was going to go to San Cristóbal the next day to bring her home, just for a few days. I was very excited to see Lucia again.

  Lucia returned with her mother to Lokan the next day. It was exactly one month since we had run away and the end of her month of proving to Doña Dolores that she deserved to go to school. When I went with my family to Lucia’s house, I waited while she finished praying for Hilario. Carmela told us that Lucia had been praying for him continuously since she returned.

  About a dozen Believers arrived before us. They knelt beside rows of candles that had been placed on the ground outside the door of the house where Lucia was praying. Hilario had healed practically everyone in the community at one time or another. Over the coming days, they came to visit him. They brought tortillas, beans, sodas, pox, coffee, rolls, and firewood. The stack of firewood outside Carmela’s door grew so big that it extended several yards into the patio. I had never seen so much firewood in one place!

  My mother and I helped Carmela make coffee and tortillas and beans to give to the visitors. My brother handed out pox to those who drank and sodas for the Believers. That night our family and some of the other Believers stayed and slept on petates on the kitchen floor. I waited for Lucia to come into the kitchen to sleep. I wanted so much to see her and ask about her new life in San Cristóbal.

  I was lying on my petate getting sleepy when Lucia finally opened the kitchen door. Her mother gave her a gourd of matz, and Lucia drank it down quickly. Carmela said there was still chicken soup if Lucia wanted some, but she only wanted to sleep. I pulled my blanket aside, and Lucia slipped in beside me. I put my arms around her and told her how happy I was to see her. She smiled and rested her head on my shoulder.

  “Until tomorrow,” she whispered before she fell asleep.

  In the morning Hilario woke up feeling a little better. Everyone was happy. Soon people started to roll up their petates and pack their things to go back home. It seemed that the crisis had past. After breakfast Lucia and I went to fetch water at the water hole. We talked all the way there and back and rested on the path just to have more time to talk. I asked her if she ate chicken every day at Doña Dolores’ house.

  “No, but we eat well. Sometim
es we have fish or beef. I wanted to save some of the food for you, but it would have spoiled before we saw each other.”

  “That’s alright. You know how it is here—we’re not starving. How about your work? Did Doña Dolores work you hard?”

  “No, I didn’t have to work that hard. Her clothes didn’t get that dirty so I didn’t have to wash often. I went to the market every morning, but I really liked that. I learned to cook a lot of things.

  “On Sunday evening, Doña Dolores asked me to walk with her to the center of the city to listen to miramba music. We would sit on a bench in the park and watch the people. The mestizos have this custom where boys walk one way around the zocalo and the girls walk the other, and they get to look at each other and pick out someone they like. The girls dress up in their prettiest clothes, and the boys slick their hair back to look handsome.

  “It’s so different from our tradition where we can’t talk to boys until we marry. That got me thinking that our tradition isn’t fair. I don’t want to wait for a man to ask my parents to marry me. I don’t think I even want to marry. Once I have a job I can support myself and won’t need a husband. In fact, if he drank or ordered me around the way men do, he might just make my life harder.”

  I was thinking about what Lucia said because I hadn’t thought of not marrying. In fact since my plan to go to school failed, I’d been praying to God to send me a good man like my father who didn’t drink, helped my mother, and listened to the word of God. I just didn’t want him to come too soon, though, before I was ready to get married. I couldn’t imagine life without a companion and children to help me when I grow old, just like you and your brothers are doing for me now.

  I told Lucia my thoughts and she said, “Sometimes I wish that I felt like you because I might be lonely without a companion, and when I get a job it probably won’t be in Lokan. That will mean I’ll have to get to know strangers and their ways. They might not even speak our language! I hope the women will be like Doña Dolores and the men will be like—I don’t know, maybe like your father?”