When we reached the town square, she paused as if she had heard God’s voice. Our church loomed at the center, its tall, slender bell tower never looking more important to me. I had to confess that as a little girl, and still today, I believed that all of the prayers uttered and all of the songs sung inside the church traveled up through the ceiling and through the tower directly into the ear of God.
Perhaps Abuela Anabela wanted to go inside and pray that what had happened did not happen, I thought. She lingered and gazed reverently and hopefully at the church, gazed past the curious eyes of those who had not yet heard the terrible news, the elderly sitting on benches in the shade of our immaculately pruned ash trees supposedly as old as the village, reading newspapers, drinking coffee, and talking softly. No one seemed to raise his or her voice in the presence of the church, but later in the early evening, there would be music and laughter and dancing. Street vendors would come out to sell their tacos, grilled meats, and steamed tamales.
I couldn’t help looking covetously at Señora Morales, who was eating a chocolate-dipped churro. She pushed it into her mouth like someone pushing a carrot into a grinder and then licked her fingertips. In the middle of all of this misery and shock, I was hungering for a fried strip of chocolate-covered dough. The irony didn’t escape me, nor did my sense of guilt. I shifted my gaze quickly to the church, as if I expected to see Father Martinez in the doorway shaking his head and waving his right forefinger at me, making me ashamed.
Our meditative moment was crushed by the loudspeakers on the truck passing by, announcing a sale of washing machines. It stirred little interest. I gazed at my grandmother. She crossed herself again and muttered a quick prayer before putting her head down and continuing our journey through the village.
We hurriedly passed the small menudo shop where I saw two of my grandmother’s friends, Señora Paz and her sister, just sitting down to have a bowl of warm, mushy tripe soup. When they saw us, they both crossed themselves. They had obviously heard the horrible news. I looked back, my grandmother tugging me along, but neither one of the Paz sisters smiled at me. They saw us in a dark shadow, and it frightened them.
I was still too much in shock to cry or speak. It all seemed more like a dream, like being dragged through someone else’s nightmare. I felt suspended, hanging like a puppet on dead string.
My parents were dead, gone? I had just seen them that morning. My mother had kissed me good-bye and had reminded me to come right home to help my grandmother with dinner. She was always worried that I would loiter at the square with the other girls my age, some of whom had already gotten themselves into trouble with older boys.
How could she be dead and gone, and my father, too? This couldn’t be so. In a moment, I would snap awake and be back in my classroom. Señora Cuevas would bawl me out for not paying attention. I closed my eyes and opened them quickly, but that didn’t happen.
We turned down the dusty dirt street on which was our adobe house with its sheet-metal roof. Our casa was considered one of the better ones in the village, because it was large enough for us to have three rooms. The kitchen, as in most casas here, was simply a lean-to built of poles and corn stalks against the outside wall; however, we were able to have a separate bedroom for Grandmother Anabela and me and one for my parents. We were one of the few families that had a television set, but its picture was so powdery we often couldn’t make out what was happening, and very often we would lose our electricity. Once, we didn’t have any for nearly two weeks.
There was no lawn or even any grass in front of our casa, just some shrubs, stubble of grass, stones, and the remnants of a faded pink and white fountain that no longer had water running through it unless it rained hard, but we didn’t sell it or remove it, because it had an angel at the top, and mi abuela Anabela believed that if you had a replica of an angel in or around your house, real angels would stop to bless you.
Despite what my grandmother had told Señora Cuevas, I half expected to see my father’s pickup truck in front. He and my mother worked for Señor Lopez on his soybean farm not quite ten miles from the heart of the village. He had lost his wife five years ago to a blood disease. His daughters had married and moved away, and he had no sons. My mother cleaned his home every morning and prepared all of his meals, and my father oversaw his laborers.
For the moment, my grandmother’s solution to our great tragedy was to prepare food for the expected visitors and comforters. I was brought home from school quickly so I could help. There was almost no time for tears. She went about her work diligently, grateful for everything she had to do: chop the chicken and the cheese to include in her wonderful tortillas, and prepare her salsa and beans. We had little dishware to speak of, but we had a carton of paper plates and plastic knives and forks my mother had been given by Señor Lopez. She told me to get it all out, and then I was given the job of preparing the salsa and beans.
Early that morning, mi abuela Anabela had made some of her bread, her pan hecho del rancho, a recipe she said had been passed down through generations. She always knelt down barefoot to knead the dough, because that was the way her mother made it, and her mother’s mother. To Abuela Anabela, traditions were as holy as scripture.
Many times I had worked alongside her like this, but never with this sort of frenzy. Tears streaked down her face. However, she didn’t make the sound of a single sob. I was trembling inside, still too much in shock to realize what was happening, but I did feel as if, at any moment, I might shatter like some clay pot and fall in pieces to the floor.
Just as my grandmother had expected, the villagers began to appear when the terrible news spread, most bringing food and drink. The wailing and shaking of heads began soon afterward. I could never remember how many times I was held and kissed and told to be strong. I was spun around to be embraced and comforted until I was so dizzy I nearly fell.
It wasn’t long before the crowd of mourners became thicker, finally spilling out to the front of the casa. People stopped noticing me. They were heavily into remembering their own sad tales, weaving a net of tragedy to cast over the entire gathering and hold everyone in sorrow’s grip. Old wounds were opened. We were having our own private Day of the Dead.
When Father Martinez arrived, the crowd quieted down and then parted like the Red Sea for him. He comforted mi abuela Anabela, and then he came to me, took my hands into his, and looked at me with such sad eyes I finally started to cry very hard. He said some prayers over me and then headed for the food.
I caught my breath and retreated outside to sit on a rock in a shady area, where I often sat to wait for my parents’ return from work when I was younger. Despite the people, the prayers, the tears, and the grief, I still had trouble digesting the news of their deaths. The few details I had overheard inside the casa regurgitated. An hombre borracho driving a dump truck hit them head-on while they were on their way to work. It was hours and hours before any medical help arrived, and by then it was too late. As was often the case with drunks who cause the deaths of other people on the roads, he was barely scratched. Anyway, nothing done to him would bring back my parents.
The villagers streamed by, shaking their heads at me with faces filled with so much pity that it finally occurred to me that I should be wondering what would happen to me and my grandmother now. My own welfare had never seemed as important or as much in jeopardy. My uncles, aunts, and cousins in Mexico were spread far and wide, and none but my aunt Isabela in the United States had as much as or more than we had. Most were far worse off. Uncles worked in the United States and rarely saw their own families these days. Who needed another mouth to feed, another young girl to worry about?
Despite her ability to work in our kitchen, mi abuela Anabela couldn’t earn enough working for a restaurant or any wealthy person now. No one would hire someone her age. The most she could hope for would be taking in someone else’s wash or selling some of her wonderful chocolate mole whenever she had a chance to make some. It would provide only a piddling income.
Maybe I would have to stop attending school to go out to Señor Lopez and take my mother’s place. Because of my grandmother having me work beside her in the kitchen and because of what she had taught me, I could prepare many meals myself, and I could certainly clean and keep up his house. Many girls my age were already working full time, and some of them were already married, but my parents were determined that I remain in school, something my mother had reinforced just last night after the quinceañera. I had always done well in my studies, and my mother especially had hope that I would be something more. I had no idea what, but as she often said, “La esperanza se encienda mañana.” Hope lights tomorrow.
Suddenly, I saw Señor Orozco, our postmaster, come running down our street, his skinny legs kicking up a trail of dust that lingered in his wake like a low-lying clay fog. His nearly shoulder-length white hair flew about him as if the strands wanted to break free of his scalp. He was in a frenzy, looking as if he might explode with excitement. When he saw me, he came to a dead stop and pulled back his shoulders, brushed back his hair, and hurried into the house.
I rose to follow and see what had brought him with such urgency. Was there some miracle? Did they find out that my parents were alive? Had the tragic news simply been a terrible misunderstanding? I hoped we would hear that it wasn’t my parents in the accident after all but some other people in a similar pickup truck. Was it sinful to wish it on someone else? And would I be punished for it?
“Señora Yebarra,” he called to my grandmother. She pulled herself away from her comforters and stepped forward to meet him.
“Your daughter-in-law’s sister, she has called back and been given the terrible news,” he declared. His body stiffened with his sense of importance as he pull
ed in his stomach and pushed out his chest to deliver the message.
The remaining mourners grew still. All eyes were on him. The tragedy had reached into California, and in no time, there had been a response. Despite this being the age of computers and satellites, some still saw such communication as an amazing and miraculous feat. It was as if we lived in a place on the earth that revolved at a slower place, crawling through history, decades behind the rest of the world.
“And?” my grandmother asked Señor Orozco. Death and mourning had made privacy quite unnecessary. Everyone was listening keenly. I held my breath.
“She said she is unable to attend the funeral,” he said. “She will send some money for the funeral costs and money for the church.”
Heads shook in disgust and disbelief. My aunt was unable to attend the funeral of her one and only sister? Many looked at my grandmother with pity. Everything was falling on her tired, old shoulders. She did not wince, however. She sucked in her breath and lifted her shoulders like someone recuperating from another blow.