Woman Hollering Creek (20 page)

So many
milagritos
safety-pinned here, so many little miracles dangling from red thread—a gold Sacred Heart, a tiny copper arm, a kneeling man in silver, a bottle, a brass truck, a foot, a house, a hand, a baby, a cat, a breast, a tooth, a belly button, an evil eye. So many petitions, so many promises made and kept. And there is nothing I can give you except this braid of hair the color of coffee in a glass.

Chayo, what have you done! All that beautiful hair
.

Chayito, how could you ruin in one second what your mother took years to create?

You might as well’ve plucked out your eyes like Saint Lucy. All that hair!

My mother cried, did I tell you? All that beautiful hair …

I’ve cut off my hair. Which I’ve never cut since the day I was born. The donkey tail in a birthday game. Something shed like a snakeskin.

My head as light as if I’d raised it from water. My heart buoyant again, as if before I’d worn
el
Sagrado corazón in my open chest. I could’ve lit this entire church with my grief.

I’m a bell without a clapper. A woman with one foot in this world and one foot in that. A woman straddling both. This thing between my legs, this unmentionable.

I’m a snake swallowing its tail. I’m my history and my future. All my ancestors’ ancestors inside my own belly. All my futures and all my pasts.

I’ve had to steel and hoard and hone myself. I’ve had to push the furniture against the door and not let you in.

What you doing sitting in there in the dark?

I’m thinking.

Thinking of what?

Just … thinking.

You’re nuts. Chayo
, ven a saludar.
All the relatives are here. You come out of there and be sociable
.

Do boys think, and girls daydream? Do only girls have to come out and greet the relatives and smile and be nice and
quedar bien
?

It’s not good to spend so much time alone
.

What she do in there all by herself? It don’t look right
.

Chayito, when you getting married? Look at your cousin Leticia. She’s younger than you
.

How many kids you want when you grow up?

When I become a mommy …

You’ll change. You’ll see. Wait till you meet Mr. Right
.

Chayo, tell everybody what it is you’re studying again
.

Look at our Chayito. She likes making her little pictures. She’s gonna be a painter
.

A painter! Tell her I got five rooms that need painting
.

When you become a mother …

Thank you for making all those months I held my breath not a child in my belly, but a thyroid problem in my throat.

I can’t be a mother. Not now. Maybe never. Not for me to choose, like I didn’t choose being female. Like I didn’t choose being artist—it isn’t something you choose. It’s something you are, only I can’t explain it.

I don’t want to be a mother.

I wouldn’t mind being a father. At least a father could still be artist, could love some
thing
instead of some
one
, and no one would call that selfish.

I leave my braid here and thank you for believing what I do is important. Though no one else in my family, no other woman, neither friend nor relative, no one I know, not even the heroine in the
telenovelas
, no woman wants to live alone.

I do.

Virgencita de Guadalupe. For a long time I wouldn’t let you in my house. I couldn’t see you without seeing my ma each time my father came home drunk and yelling, blaming everything that ever went wrong in his life on her.

I couldn’t look at your folded hands without seeing my
abuela
mumbling, “My son, my son, my son …” Couldn’t look at you without blaming you for all the pain my mother and her mother and all our mothers’ mothers have put up with in the name of God. Couldn’t let you in my house.

I wanted you bare-breasted, snakes in your hands. I wanted you leaping and somersaulting the backs of bulls. I wanted you swallowing raw hearts and rattling volcanic ash. I wasn’t going to be my mother or my grandma. All that self-sacrifice, all that silent suffering. Hell no. Not here. Not me.

Don’t think it was easy going without you. Don’t think I didn’t get my share of it from everyone. Heretic. Atheist.
Malinchista. Hocicona
. But I wouldn’t shut my yap. My mouth always getting
me in trouble.
Is
that
what they teach you at the university? Miss High-and-Mighty. Miss Thinks-She’s-Too-Good-for-Us
. Acting like a
bolilla
, a white girl.
Malinche
. Don’t think it didn’t hurt being called a traitor. Trying to explain to my ma, to my
abuela
, why I didn’t want to be like them.

I don’t know how it all fell in place. How I finally understood who you are. No longer Mary the mild, but our mother Tonantzín. Your church at Tepeyac built on the site of her temple. Sacred ground no matter whose goddess claims it.

That you could have the power to rally a people when a country was born, and again during civil war, and during a farmworkers’ strike in California made me think maybe there is power in my mother’s patience, strength in my grandmother’s endurance. Because those who suffer have a special power, don’t they? The power of understanding someone else’s pain. And understanding is the beginning of healing.

When I learned your real name is Coatlaxopeuh, She Who Has Dominion over Serpents, when I recognized you as Tonantzín, and learned your names are Teteoinnan, Toci, Xochiquetzal, Tlazolteotl, Coatlicue, Chalchiuhtlicue, Coyolxauhqui, Huixtocihuatl, Chicomecoatl, Cihuacoatl, when I could see you as Nuestra Señora de la Soledad, Nuestra Señora de los Remedios, Nuestra Señora del Perpetuo Socorro, Nuestra Señora de San Juan de los Lagos, Our Lady of Lourdes, Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Our Lady of the Rosary, Our Lady of Sorrows, I wasn’t ashamed, then, to be my mother’s daughter, my grandmother’s granddaughter, my ancestors’ child.

When I could see you in all your facets, all at once the Buddha, the Tao, the true Messiah, Yahweh, Allah, the Heart of the Sky, the Heart of the Earth, the Lord of the Near and Far, the Spirit, the Light, the Universe, I could love you, and, finally, learn to love me.

Mighty Guadalupana Coatlaxopeuh Tonantzín,

What “little miracle” could I pin here? Braid of hair in its place and know that I thank you.

Los
Boxers
 

Whoops! There goes your soda water. See. Now look. Mama, come get your little one. Watch her now, she’s barefoot and could cut herself. Guess you get to mop it up, huh? I haven’t dropped anything in a long time. Since I was a kid, I guess. I can’t remember the last time I dropped a soda water. Big Red sure is sticky, ain’t it? Gets in the clothes and don’t wash out, and leaves the kids’ mouths painted like clowns, right? She sure is pretty. You betcha. But oh kids, they’s cute when they’re little, but by the time they start turning ugly, it’s too late, you already love them.

Got to watch not to buy them soda water in a glass bottle next time. Specially not Big Red. But that’s the one they keep asking for the most, right? You betcha you can have my basket. My stuff ain’t ready yet.

When my wife died I used to go to a place over on Calaveras way bigger than this. This ain’t nothing. That place had twice as many machines. And they had dryers that was fifteen minutes for a quarter, so you didn’t have to waste an extra quarter for say polyester
that dries real quick. There was only two of them, though—you had to be sharp and grab ’em soon as they was free.

Here everything’s thirty minutes for fifty cents. ’Spensive when you got to keep dropping quarters and quarters and quarters. Sometimes if you’re lucky you could maybe get a machine that’s got time on it, see. Throw in the light stuff that dries like that. Socks, washcloths, the fifty-fifty shirts maybe so they don’t get wrinkled, right?

My jeans could use more than thirty minutes, though. Thirty minutes ain’t enough, but I’d rather take them home damp and hang them on the windowsill before I drop in another fifty cents. It’s ’cause I dry them on low, see. Before I used to dry them on high, and they’d always fit me tight later on. Lady at the K mart said, You gotta dry your jeans on low, otherwise they shrink on you. She’s right. I always set them on low now, see, even though it takes longer and they’re still damp after thirty minutes. Least they fit right. I learned that much.

You know what else? When you wash, it ain’t enough to separate the clothes by temperature. You need to separate them by weight. Towels with towels. Jeans with jeans. Sheets with sheets. And always make sure you use plenty of water. That’s the secret. Even if it’s just a few things in the machine. Lots of water, got it? So’s the clothes all wash better and don’t take any wear and tear, see, and last longer. That’s another trick I picked up too.

Make sure you don’t let those clothes sit in that dryer now. You’re welcome. Gotta keep on top of them, right? Soon as they stop spinning, get ’em out of there. Otherwise it just means more work later.

My T-shirts get wrinkled even if I dry them fifteen minutes hot or cold. That’s T-shirts for you. Always get a little wrinkled one way or another. They’s funny, T-shirts.

You know how to keep a stain from setting? Guess. Ice cube.
Yup. My wife taught me that one. I used to think she was crazy. Anytime I spilled something on the tablecloth, off she’d go running to the ice box. Spot my shirts with
mole
, ice cube. Stain a towel with blood, ice cube. Kick over a beer on the living-room rug, you got it, ice cube.

Oh boy, she was clean. Everything in the house looked new even though it was old. Towels, sheets, embroidered pillowcases, and them little table runners like doilies, them you put on chairs for your head, those, she had them white and stiff like the collar of a nun. You betcha. Starched and ironed everything. My socks, my T-shirts. Even ironed
los
boxers. Yup, drove me crazy with her ice cubes. But now that she’s dead, well, that’s just how life is.

There Was a Man,
There Was a Woman