More from Mexico

Washing Clothes in the River
When was it? I don’t know if it was one time or many times that I washed clothes in a river on the rocks; the women around me expertly pressing their weight down, rubbing and slapping the fabric against the stone surface. Or did I just watch so intently that I felt I was doing it, or perhaps there were many times I was remembering the time when I had done it, and it all blended together. Whatever the case, it has been a part of me for almost as long as I can remember: the sensation of slapping wet garments down on flat rocks in a part of the river where the current is not too strong; wringing them by hand, and making piles of the twisted garments all ready to hang.


Singing to the Moon
Somewhere in Mexico on a balmy night, we were traveling miles and miles down a highway through a brightly lit moonlit landscape. I gazed up from my window in the back of the van where I sat with my legs tucked up under me, gazing at the full moon and softly under my breath I began to sing to her in the most poetic words I could think of, song after song, mile after mile. I imagine I sang of her silver face, her resemblance to a pearl, her soft light illuminating dreams...


La Tortillería
Nearly every morning, early, Agueda and I went to the tortillería just down the street to buy fresh corn tortillas. The aroma of fresh tortillas and the sound of the machinery in motion greeted us long before we entered the shop. I marveled at how the tortillas went up the creaking metal interlinked heavy gage wire conveyor belt into an oven where they were obscured from view and came out the other side and down where they were gathered up by the awaiting assistant who asked how many tortillas each of us in the gathering crowd wanted. Señora, tres dozenas, sí?, Tres docenas aquí y una media docena acá, and they were delivered into our awaiting woven tortilla basket lined with one of the colorful bleached muslin cloths we had embroided just for the purpose. They were passed out as fast as they came of the belt; and everyone scurried away as quickly as they had come with their little package or basketful of hot tortillas.


Embroidering on the Porch
Often in the late afternoon or early evening in the long warm days of summer, we women, Agueda, her daughter, and me and sometimes another relative or friend, would gather on her porch facing the street and chat and embroider. It was here in these gregarious afternoons that I learned to the ancient art of stitching handed down through the feminine lineage. I learned the running stitch, the vine stitch, the chain stitch, the blanket stitch, the French knot, the satin stitch, and the cross stitch. These were all that I needed to fill in the drawings of flowers and vines pulled taut on the wooden embroidery hoop. I was usually embroidering a cloth to wrap tortillas in to keep them warm. We bought the hoops, the fabric, and the thread at the local Mercado on Thursdays where Agueda let me choose my designs from amidst all of those in the stall hanging on display or piled high; she let me choose the color of my thread too. She had a favorite stand for buying the hilo. As we stitched, I would sometimes get distracted chatting and laughing and when I got up, on more than one occasion, I had sewn my embroidery to my dress. Agueda patiently snipped it free, helped me to pull the threads free of the cloth leaving the leaf or flower ready to stitch again. No harm done.

More Stories from Cholula

Morning Routine

La limpieza y el orden were guiding principals for the way Agueda organized her life and that of those around her. Every morning when it was time to shower she made sure I did not just lather up, but also scoured my skin from head to foot with a rough rounded stone half the size of my palm. Often she did it for me, it felt sometimes like it was taking the top layer of my skin away while I turned a rosy pink from head to foot in contrast with the hard white tile. After my shower, she would do my hair. She sat me down in front of and old fashioned mirrored dresser and combed my hair until all hints of snarls were gone. She then gathered my hair all together in her hand and pulled it back into a pony tail making sure not a single strand or wisp escaped her grip, once secured with elastic held in place by bright round hair bobbles, she pulled the hair even tauter, till it hurt; then she smoothed the hair again with the comb and began to apply copious amounts of hair spray pumped by a black round rubber bulb squeezed between her fingers. The hair on my head acquired a hard texture, thus ensuring that not even so much as a hair would find its way loose during the course of the day.


Agueda’s Sala

Agueda’s sala was sacrosanct space; no one was allowed in it during the day. All of the furniture was encased in clear plastic to preserve it and for easy cleaning. The TV was an old style wooden console that sat against one wall decorated with embroidered doilies. In the evening we would enter the living room and under her observant eye and watch TV. I marveled at how the actors could actually have gotten inside the TV screen. I hypothesized that before we came into the room in the evening, they stealthily opened up the back and of the TV and got in and that then they either shrunk in size once they were in there so they would fit or that perhaps there was some dimensional shift once they entered the TV and that they were able to walk far back so they looked smaller.


Café con leche y pan dulce

Just before bedtime Agueda and I would enjoy a quiet moment in her kitchen at the back of the house and drinking café con leche, which was much more leche than café. The café amounted to just enough Nescafé to flavor the hot milk, served up on a brightly colored cup and saucer. She also laid out pan dulce we had ceremoniously picked out and placed on our tray with metal tongs at the neighborhood panadería. My favorite was the concha de chocolate which is a rounded roll about six inches in diameter decorated with a shell-patterned topping of flour, sugar, shortening and chocolate. I imitated her actions, breaking the bread and dipping it in the hot liquid, savoring it in my mouth for a moment, sucking the liquid from the bread, before sipping the café con leche to wash it down.


Bedtime Prayers

Every Summer, almost as soon as I arrived, Agueda gave me a brown scapular on a satin cord with the image of El Sagrado Corazón y un santo like San Martín de Porres inside to wear around my neck inside my clothes. She repeated this ritual of the escapulario every time I came to stay with her. She made sure I was protectegida in this way. También se aseguró I knew how to kneel down and pray by the side of my bed before tucking me in for the night. She taught me how to address the La Virgen, Madre de Dios and Jesus for blessing and divine intercession for family and loved ones. When my mother was sick two years ago, I learned, this is a gift and an art you can use when there is nothing else left to do.

Primera Comunión: One Story, Three Narrations

I stood on Agueda’s porch in Cholula listening to the peel of the church bells announcing the passage of teams of girls with gleaming hair and freshly starched white dresses with frilly lace, transparent taffeta, frothy ruffles, and crinoline slips catecismos y rosarios in hand, streaming towards the cathedral. Agueda told me they were going for primera comunión. I was transfixed by the tide of girls in the prettiest dresses imaginable. Their freshly scoured skin shone brightly under a swath of Crema Nívea. There was excitement in the air—- how I longed to be parading with them through the streets on the way to such an important event.

I am standing on Agueda's porch in Cholula, listening to the peel of the church bells announcing the passage of teams of girls with gleaming hair and freshly starched white dresses with frilly lace, transparent taffeta, frothy ruffles, and crinoline slips, catecismos y rosarios in hand, streaming towards the cathedral. Agueda tells me they are going for primera comunión. I am transfixed by the tide of girls in the prettiest dresses imaginable. Their freshly scoured skin shines brightly under a swath of Crema Nívea. There is excitement in the air-- how I long to be parading with them through the streets on the way to such an important event.

Agueda, Agueda, a dónde van tantos niños? I ask as I watch and am transfixed by the peel of the church bells of Cholula Dong, dong, dong... and by the streams of girls with gleaming hair and freshly starched white dresses with frilly lace, transparent taffeta, frothy ruffles, and crinoline slips, catecismos y rosarios in hand, streaming towards the cathedral. Van a primera comunión, she says with admiration. I stand motionless on Agueda's porch. I can't pull my eyes away from the street that is awash in girls in the prettiest dresses imaginable. I marvel, como les brilla piel, and I remember the Crema Nívea from the shallow round blue can, that Agueda applied to my skin just that morning. My heart pounds, quiero ser como ellas llendo a un evento tan importante.

Storylines

Last week in Soto's Monday night class, we were asked to come up with three unique movement qualities while attaching "text" to each one. First quality was a slow sustained movement, the next quality was something of our own invention to contrast with that movement, and finally we were to choose a part of the body to lead the third movement and tell a story about an injury we sustained as a child. I was fascinated with the text some of the participants came up. Feeling on the spot, my narratives, apart from the story of the injury were abstract, about a sleeping octopus and "la luz que se separó del cielo". But after the class, my mind began to race to all kinds of vignettes or storylines or "text", if you like, from different times in my life. I put some of them down in writing... the following are a few:


I was just learning to ride my brand new green bicycle. My father held on the back to give me stability and pushed me along very slowly. Just as I was finding my balance and we were going very smoothly, he gave the bicycle a little push. I held tightly to the handle bars, careening out of control, wobbling as I went, but heading directly and inexorably for an "oncoming" tree at the side of the road. I hit the tree head on and fell to ground sustaining scrapes and bruises and feeling very shaken by the heretofore unrecognized magnetic power of trees.

***

For a week I was offered no water, only pulque. I lived in a tarpaper shack, the walls carefully papered with the colored pages of newpapers and magazines and held in place with nails hammered through bottle caps. Outside this shack, this home, I remember tall maguey cactuses. Tengo sed, tengo sed, ¡quiero agua! Por favor quiero agua, I pled. Only to be told, Ten, esto es agua, but I knew it wasn’t. It was pulque.

***

My mother told me stories of ravens, of seals, of mountain lions, and of the sea, and of the wind and of the trees. These were her favorite stories. She told me about the time a raven guided her out of the thickest dense fog on some rural highway in Mexico. She told me about the seal who, as she walked along the water’s edge, swam along with her just off shore. She told me about the tree whose life she saved by touching it and talking it daily. I think they saved each other again and again.

***

And I went to Ceci’s house. Ceci, ¿dónde está mi muñeca? ¿Cómo que no sabes? ¿Dónde la tienes? Dámela. Seguro que la tienes. I had never been to Ceci’s house. It was dark, it felt damp. The floors were scattered with toys and clothes. Somewhere in a pile de cosas revueltas, I found my doll without her head.

***

I am not from any place. I am not from here, and not from there. I am not Mexican; I am from any place in the United States. I can never be from anyplace because I never had a home. I didn’t even have a family. I come from the road, from some interstate highway between the East Coast and the West Coast, between the Southwest and the South, between Mexico and the United States, between Mexico and Guatemala, from some highway on isthmus of Tehuantepec, some highway in the highlands of Guatemala, I come from some highway I can barely remember or was I left on some highway I can barely remember, lost there in the hours of monotony.

***

Mano, oye mano, vamos a nadar, ¿sabes nadar?, ¿sabes cómo se hace?, se mueve las patas así, sí así, y los brazos, oye mano, a ver si sabe nadar Fred. Fred, Fred, [chiflando], ven Fred. She dove in. She kept her head above the water, paddling her way to the side with the most miserable, worried and betrayed expression in her eyes. From then on my dog Fred was terrified of the water. To this day, when I recall her eyes at that moment when she hit the water and could not touch bottom, I feel the weight of having betrayed her trust.

***

When he offered me the seat beside him, with a gesture of his hand, it opened up like the most inviting, like the safest place, like a place I could be and be safe and cared for, a place from with to greet the world. I thought it meant that I could trust him. I thought it meant that I could relax. I thought it meant so many things.