For Valentina Perla Luisa
To speak about them I need to distance myself from all things learned and read; from my feminism and my pseudoleftism; from all things known and apprehended, even my uncertain feminine condition and to see myself as a child once more.
To speak about Marga and my papi, I need to get up close to certain hazy images which the infinite sands of time have been eating away.
One
Let’s begin with Marga’s embrace, suffocated by the heat, red from the heat, sweating in the heat; crying and hugging my sister and I, seven and six, after long months of separation, she in “Gringoland,” us left behind in Guadalajara while we waited for the “green card” that legitimized our residency in this country.
Two
Now an auditory memory: my papi’s laughter in the orchards and fields, the never ending fields; his happy laughter in spite of his clothes drenched in his sweat.
The songs my papi would whistle as if he never tired, atop skinny and long ladders all named by him with a woman’s name (I remember a Martha); ladders that would take him high into the tops of peach, apple, pear, cherry, olive trees and from which he hurriedly would climb down with sacks filled with the fruits from this noble planet.
Three
I see my parents squatting, mounted on buckets, crawling or with hoe in hand among rows of tomato, watermelon, beets, strawberry; or under almond or pecan trees; both of them picking, always picking; Marga, tenacious and indefatigable, determined to give a little more; my papi happy, always, happy; laughing, always laughing.
Four
My parents’ house was a house of open doors and windows. Long was the list of relatives who paraded through my parents home. Many work seasons my parents’ home was a boarding house for peasants from Michoacan who would send their meager earnings back home, earnings that in Mexico would became a fortune for wives and children, whom everyday would fold their sadness as a handkerchief and who would let pride and hope fly high as kites, for the absent husband and father, far away in el Norte, but that in some small way alleviated the chronic poverty that afflicts my people even today.
Five
Marga would always get up earlier than anybody because, of course, all those adult mouths had to be fed. The still-young woman would invest herself making the flour tortillas for the tacos that would be eaten later for breakfast and lunch in the field and which we all ate voraciously. Then Marga would gather with all these cabrones to demonstrate that a woman with strong ovaries tends to work harder than anybody who claims to be a total macho. That’s just how she rolls.
Six
My papi always seemed very proud of his woman. And to reciprocate he would never say no to a pan or to the mop, and how he loved to spend his evenings in the back yard tending his tomato and pepper plants.
Seven
The image that absolutely never fades is my papi speaking to us in formal Spanish when he scolded us; my papi instilling in me a blind passion for the education that he never knew.
