| “Ándele mi hija,” she
ordered. I listened for a moment but her foot steps told me she
hadn’t turned around, so I stuck my tongue out. “It’s
confirmed,” I muttered, “I’m in hell.” Sitting
up and stretching, I raised myself out of bed. “Cuídate. Dios escucha a todo,” she countered. Without warning, the dawn, the dirt, not understanding Spanish,all of it exploded, and with rage starting in my toes I screamed at the top of my lungs, “ME LLAMO MARIA! THAT’S ALL I KNOW!!” Silence. All I could do was stamp into the kitchen and screech. More silence. I stopped for a moment to find out where she was and to check for furniture in my way. I screamed again. I screamed and pounded the wall. I screamed and kicked the table. The only answer I got was from the ticking clock. Abuela had disappeared. Breathing heavily and cursing Abuela under my breath, I began to calm down. As I did, I felt the sun on my right cheek. The strong smell of garlic and coffee told me I was in the kitchen. Abuela didn’t yell back like Mom did, and to tell you the truth, it was eerie and spooky. The silence scared me more and more, like the time I got lost in Hopkin’s Drugstore when Mom went to get the prescription. I was so disoriented back then that I just sat on the ground and started crying as loud as my fear would let me. Now, though, in the kitchen, I was older, so I just hoarsely sobbed, “Abuela . . . I don’t understand Spanish . . . Abuela?” I still couldn’t find her. Finally, a rooster crowed and cold air hit my face. She must have been outside the entire time. I heard a metal bucket quietly clink the floor.  “Acabado mi hija?” Abuela answered. Before I could orient to her position, a bowl clicked on the table in front of me and a chair growled across the floor, softly nudging the back of my knees. I plopped in the seat, irritated that she didn’t care that I spoke no Spanish. “Tortillas. El estómago mueve el mundo,” she continued. “Aquí todo trabajan.” “I don’t understand,” I retorted. “Vamos a empezar,” she countered. She shoved my hands into sticky dough and the surprise of it torched my temper a second time. “NO!” I howled, picking up the towel and throwing it at her. I missed and she grabbed my long hair, yanking it hard so that I sat down in the chair. Squealing in fury I swung around and knocked down the chair. Stopping quickly, like a deer I smelled the air to try and find the witch. Nothing. Terror surged in me. Not even a minute later the chair growled and she yanked me into a sitting position. I felt more cold air and the door close again. No footsteps. No smells. Nothing. In retaliation I went to find something to throw, shoving the table away hard as I could before I bolted up. Before I could swing around and react, the chair was upright. She hadn’t left the room! She had to be a witch. I mean a real live witch like the ones you hear the Tias talking about at Halloween. Squealing in rage and agony I bolted up again, wildly swinging my fists. She pulled my hair again. The went on three or four more times with my fury growing with each tug of my hair. The fifth time I jumped, though, another surprise met my screech. I heard a bowl slam to the table and felt my ear pinched in her fist. Abuela slammed my head against the table and fixed my head there like it was nailed to the table. She held my upper body against the table by holding her hip tight next to the back of the chair. I tried to swing until I realized the bowl was full of onions. The demon had pinned my arms under the table so well that all I could do was cry and scream until my voice reached such a feverish pitch that it echoed off of the kitchen walls. Being trapped, I screamed grew louder and louder and Abuela could feel my surging rage. Right before I upended the table and exploded, she let go of my ear. Bursting up, I felt a red flash of pain in my temples and for an instant I thought Abuela was holding my hair the way she was holding my ear. Spinning around to hit her, the fact struck me that she had tied my long hair to the back of the chair! The more I tried to turn the more the chair clumsily followed and the more my temples throbbed. Tipping forward I pulled the hair tighter and tighter until I fell over the chair. The pain seared across my temples and the back of my neck. It was that red stab of pain you get when you bump into a cabinet corner at night. The throb flashed in my temples like an ambulance siren. The few minutes that followed my temper took over and I thrashed and banged in a brutal fit punctuated with screeches and screams. I kicked the wall and tried to twirl around to untie my hair. Each move I made only tied the knot tighter and the red flash in my temples stabbed more and more. “YOU CAN’T DO THIS, WITCH,” I bellowed. “I’LL TELL MOM . . . AND I’LL BEAT YOU WHEN I FIND YOU . . . I DON’T CARE IF YOU DO HAVE TARANTULAS UNDER YOUR HOUSE!!” I was babbling in the pain. The thrashing had taken it’s toll and I was forced to hold the chair on top of my head to relieve the aching. I burst into jerky sobs and gingerly laid on my side to try and get comfortable. “She probably went back outside again - the witch,” I muttered to myself. The sun hit my face straight on now and from the heat I could tell it was at least 7:00 or 8:00 in the morning. I heard chickens clucking in the yard. I heard the clock ticking. I felt granules of flour on my cheek and the coolness of the floor. The coolness soothed my skin and was the last thing I remembered as I faded into a dream. When I awoke there was a scratchy wool blanket over me and from the threads on my cheek I could tell it was a serape like the one covering Mom’s couch at home. “I hope the colors are pretty. These are the ugliest feeling fabrics in the world,” I grumbled. The day started when Abuela had flicked the light on at 5:30 A.M., or there abouts. Who knows why she did. I only knew because in my sleepy haze I heard the switch go ‘click’. I’m really only guessing at the 5:30 part. I never know the time without feeling the sun on my face. “Tortillas mi hija,” She ordered. Silence. The next sound was her loud chopping of what must have been onions, judging from the smell. Mom had told me that she was going to get me up at dawn to teach me to cook tortillas, but I thought my crazy mother was bluffing. I grunted in disbelief. It had been a 3 ½ hour trip from Tucson and the old woman had to know that I was exhausted. On top of that, I was covered in dirt from head to toe. My foggy brain remembered riding in a smelly pick-up the afternoon before to Abuela’s house. “TÍO,” I shouted over the rumble of his engine, because my window wouldn’t roll up. Tio said he hadn’t had time to fix it. “What, María?” he replied. “Arizona has to be all dirt – that and chicos. And they stink!” I yelled. “Chicos survive because their roots go so deep,” Tio chuckled. “They survive because they stink,” I retorted. “You can say they stink, but they live long after all the complainers have died,” he winked. I quit complaining and listened to the road drone underneath me. At dawn the next day I grumbled, “At least chicos get to sleep in.” I was still tasting the sand from the trip to the house, and smelling Tio’s cheap cigars in my hair. The sizzle of the coffee dribbling on the burner brought me out of the haze. Dawn. Morning. Ugh. I remember seeing coffee commercials when I was little and wondering what was so nice about dawn that makes people smile so much. When Abuela poked me again to get me out of bed, smiling didn’t come to my mind. I didn’t drink coffee and, being new to the room, I couldn’t feel the sun on my cheek. The only thing dawn gave me was a hollow, exhausted sensation in the pit of my stomach. They lied in the commercial. “Levántate y aprendes lo que mueve el mundo,” Abuela ordered. “What?” I muttered. “Español mi hija,” she shot back. I groaned. All I heard after that was Abuela chopping a vegetable in the kitchen. It smelled like chili, but being so groggy I wasn’t sure. Mom must have told her about my “C” in Spanish and the old Indian woman was serious about teaching me the language. Once, when I was 5, Abuela visited us in San Antonio. She only spoke Spanish and never smiled. Most of her visit I spent hiding behind Mom’s skirt, and after she left I asked, “Why do Indians speak Spanish?” “What?” Mom chuckled. “Abuela speaks Spanish, but she dresses like Indians on TV and has a stone face like your old pictures,” I replied. Mom laughed out loud. “Abuela’s father was Navajo and her mother was Mexican. All the Garcia women inherited the Mexican language and temper, but Abuela was lucky enough to inherit Navajo blood too.” “Is her blood a different color?” I asked, imagining some green liquid oozing out of her when she got cut. “No, mi hija. It’s just an expression,” mom replied. She laughed again and patted my cheek. In Abuela’s house that early morning the haze of dreams and waking were blurring in my mind. I tried to picture her stone face in my mind as I listened to the chopping in the kitchen and smelled the coffee. I shuddered and wished I’d never gotten that ‘C’ in Spanish. Then the day my report card came floated into the blur. “Mr. Casey didn’t like me. How can you expect me to learn anyway?” I’d told Mom. “Self pity and talking to Julie Simpson gave you the ‘C’ mi hija. When life turns fair, sell tickets,” Mom countered. Arguing with Mom never helped. Even when I slammed the door and threatened to run away all she did was start teasing me and say, “Tell the tarantulas hello,” which was mean to say because she knew spiders terrified me and that in my mind I would picture tarantulas on my face – like in a black and white horror movie. Suddenly, Abuela’s chopping stopped and the silence brought me back to the chili, garlic and the cold floor. “If she woke me up at this horrible hour she probably has tarantulas too,” I grunted to myself. Abuela, however, wasted no time with my complaining moans and with a tug on the blankets, she spilled me onto the floor. This whole summer was going to be hell. That’s when the screaming began. I wished the entire morning had been a nightmare. I felt for my hair and where it was cut and the place the chair laid on my head and tired once more to get used to my new surroundings. My neck was stiff on the left side and the rest of my hair was matted to my face with a mixture of sweat, flour, onions and tears. Again, I grunted in disbelief. Rubbing the crick in my neck, I chuckled flatly, “I must look like a giant human taco.” Feeling around, I noticed Abuela had placed the chair and table in their original locations and even t though she had let me sleep where I lied down, with the strong bleach smell hitting my nostrils, I could tell she had cleaned up the mess. Brushing the hair out of my face, I sat up and tried to orient myself to the table again. Bleach really bothers me. It blasts many of the other scents out of the place the same way that bright lights blind a person when they walk out of a dark room. “Vamos a tratar otra vez,” Abuela began. She startled me out of my own thought, as she took my right wrist and guided me back to the table. The bowl clicked quietly in front of me and my hands were again placed into the dough. This time, however, it wasn’t sticky. It felt more like Gato Negro’s stomach when He’s full. Without talking, Abuela showed me what to do. First, she took my forefinger and thumb and wrapped them around the end of dough, pinching a small ball. Then, she pressed my palm on the ball until it flattened into a disk. The bleach was wearing off and I started to smell tomatoes and chilies boiling together on the stove and cooling grease from something she had fried earlier. The sun was no longer on my face, so it was some time in the afternoon. After pressing the dough into a disk, something wooden went ‘‘lunk’’in front of me. Whatever it was, she picked it up and tapped it on my left and one more time on my right. Finally, Abuela tapped what I guessed was a rolling pin one foot in front of the first spot she touched. Then I heard all four taps again in the same order. “Mueve el mundo,” Abuela whispered. “Mundo . . . Mundo . . . ,” I repeated. Suddenly, a map legend with a big ‘N’ popped into my head. Excitedly, I took the pin and tapped the four places on my own. “North, West, East, South,” I exclaimed and knowing Abuela would say something in Spanish, I attempted, “No . . . Nor . . .” “Norte,” she responded. “Norte! North!” “Sí mi hija. Oeste,” Abuela continued as she put her hands around mine and touched the left corner. “Oriente,” she said as she tapped the right, and “sur,” as she touched the bottom corner. She did it again and had me repeat, “Norte . . . oeste . . . oriente . . . and sur. Mueve el mundo,” she whispered as she took my hand and flattened the disk a little more. “Mueve el mundo,” I muttered “Moo - a - vay?” I repeated and shrugged my shoulders to let her know I didn’t understand. Abuela took my left hand and pushed the disk across the table. “Mueve,” she said. “Mueve . . . move!” I shouted. “Move the world! Mueve el mundo!” I reached out to try to hug her, and understanding, she took my hands and let me run my fingers across her face. Abuela’s face was full of wrinkles, but I could feel her smile. “Sonrisa,” she answered. “Sonrisa,” I repeated. After that she put the pin in my right hand one more time and had me roll the disk flatter and flatter, going in the directions she had tapped on the table, slowly at first, and then a bit faster. When the disk was paper thin she said, “Tortilla.” “Tortilla,” I repeated “Ahora, catorce más.” “I don’t understand,” I whispered. Abuela took my fingers and counted to fourteen by touching my fingers for each number. “Catorce,” she said. She put my right hand around the rolling pin and my left hand back into the dough. Then as usual, she vanished. “Fourteen,” I muttered. It was scary to have her always disappear the way she did. It startled me and compounded my tears and anger. It’s hard to explain, but to me, everyone brings something like a fingerprint to my nose and ears the instant they walk into the room. Men are the easiest to spot. They wear strong colognes, smoke cheap cigars or forget to take a bath. I may not see them, but I know where they are within 10 seconds. Women are more difficult, but they give their own kind of sign. The hard stepping high heels are the best. Mrs. Clay, at school, wears them every day and we giggle, since it sounds like she weighs about 300 pounds. We say, “Q: What do you call an elephant in high heels? A: I don’t know, but they eat a lot of peanuts and answer to the name Mrs. Clay.” Once Billy Gonzalez had it written on a note in Algebra, and she saw it. Boy, was he ever sorry. Besides heels, women use strong perfumes, hair sprays, or wear cheap necklaces that clatter and clang. When it comes to children, they yell and bump into furniture too much to be missed. Mom’s signal is Ivory soap, which is good. Who wants a Mom that stinks? Abuela though- she didn’t smell, she wasn’t loud, she didn’t even breathe hard after she tied me to the chair. Appear, disappear, appear, disappear – just like Gato Negro. Gato Negro is my cat. Animals don’t give signals unless they want food or attention. I guess they learn it to stay alive in the forest. Hunters would kill you right away if you smelled like cheap cigars or perfume. Mom gave me Gato Negro as my eyes started to go fuzzy-right before I lost all my sight. “Q: What’s being blind like? A: It’s like trying to find a black cat in the dark.” It’s not the best joke, but Julie told it to me and we giggled so hard Mr. Casey kicked us out of Spanish class that day. I’ll never forget how Mom came storming into my room to yell at me after school and found me arranging my furniture in clockwise order so I wouldn’t lose it. They tell us to do that with our food at the school, so I thought it would work with my furniture. Lose a chair? Sounds pretty silly, huh? She just turned around and walked into the living room. The next week Gato Negro showed up on my bed. I have a really great Mom. My smells and sounds daydream was interrupted at tortilla number 11 by Tío Pancho coming into the kitchen. Talk about signals! Tío always walks heavy in his cowboy boots and smells like horses and every time I hug him I mostly feel his gut. Lucky for me he doesn’t ever lose that horse smell or I would have lost him at the bus station. I’m not so sure the other passengers were glad. I heard an old bag say something about boots I can’t repeat, but she didn’t have room to talk because her breathe could have killed one of Tío’s horses. His horse smell comforted me until I remembered how I looked with my dirty pajamas and matted hair. Embarrassment flashed all over me and my face grew warm. My face grew even hotter as I heard Abuelaa humming outside the window. She didn’t care that I looked a wreck. “Hola Tío,” I forced out, wishing I could crawl back under the table. Tio cleared his throat and began, “Una cara exactamente como tu mama . . .” “Tío, I don’t understand,” I managed to whisper, trying to hold back my tears. “Coraje . . . está en la sangre . . .” he continued. “I don’t understand,” I sobbed. His heavy boots and smell of horses came seven steps forward and he hugged me. He let me sob and sob and sob. “How can she be so cruel? Can’t she see that I can’t see? I didn’t ask to be sick. I didn’t ask for that medication. I didn’t ask to lose. . .” I broke down and after a couple minutes of throaty sobs, “What . . . can . . . I . . . do? I can’t see. You understand Tío, don’t you?” My tears were running hot down my cheeks and cooling on my neck and mixing with the flour. I wiped my nose on my sleeve and just heaved more tears against Tío’s beer grown belly. “No lloras, mi hija.” He wiped my eyes with his callused thumb. “Lloras,” he gently mumble. He must have had some pact with Abuela to speak Spanish with me in the house. He spoke English with me perfectly over the three hour trip. He spread out my tear on the back of my hand until the skin under the tear was cool. “Lágrima,” he muttered. Sucking in air in a jerky sob, I repeated, “Lágrima..” Tío kissed my forehead and walked out the back door. Seconds later I smelled piped tobacco. Tío’s a nice man. I set aside tortilla number 11 and started over, since it was soggy with my tears. Memories of life before I was blind and of the illness exploded in my head, so I tried to block them out by making the perfect tortilla and remembering every Spanish word I knew. Finishing number 11, I whispered, “Lágrima,” I recalled riding my bike on Christmas day when I was six and seeing the poinsettias bloom everywhere. “Tortilla,” I mumbled at 12 and remembered being at a doctor’s office when he told my Mom that I might lose my sight and how he never once looked at me when he talked. “Mundo,” I sobbed and at 13, gritting my teeth in concentration and wiping my nose again with my sleeve. With each new tortilla, I tapped the four corners before I began. “Sol,” I grimaced at 14. That was a word I remembered from Spanish class because Julie Simpson had this way of saying it that made me giggle. She was a great friend, even if I did despise Our Lady’s School for the Deaf and Blind. They should have made the green lettered sign in front longer so that it read “Our Lady’s School for the Deaf and Blind and all the other retards that can no longer live with the normal people.” You could always hear this weird tone in the teacher’s voices that made you feel like you were in kindergarten. In my concentration, I failed to notice that there were now more chopped onions in front of me. She was a witch. No normal person would be that cruel. No normal person would appear and disappear. No normal person would tie someone’s hair to a chair, and then chop it off—or put onions in your face just to make you cry. I kept making tortillas, stiffening my back to let her know she was not going to win. “Hola,” I sobbed at 15. “Lloras,” I said at 16, clearing my throat. I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of thinking that she could make me cry. I paid more and more attention to clicking the pin on the four corners and making the tortillas paper thin and perfectly round. “Abuela,” I said to myself at 17. “Bueno,” Abuela answered. Once again she startled me. I had mumbled her name because it was a Spanish word, not because I wanted to talk to her. My chest tightened with aggravation, but I could tell she was pleased to hear her name, so in spite of my feelings, I repeated, “Bueno . . . Abuela.” My emotions came swirling together—glad she approved, angry that she was so cruel, depressed that I couldn’t see a sunrise or even the color purple anymore. Tears rolled down my face. My entire body heaved in sobs that weighed more than Tio’s truck. I couldn’t stop them anymore. In a desperate attempt to focus, I mumbled, “Bueno.” “Recuerda este día. No lloras mas. Te lavas tu cara,” Abuela softly said as she brushed the hair from in front of my face. “Cara,” I repeated. “Me llamo María,” I hoarsely whispered. Abuela cupped my chin in her hand and stroked my hair. Maybe she wasn’t a demon. Maybe she was just insane and Mom didn’t know it. I was too tired to care anymore. Placing the rolling pin quietly on the table, I got up as I heard water running in the bathroom sink. When I arrived at the bathroom, Abuela guided me to sit on the toilet, and I felt a soft, heated cloth lightly rub my cheek. The sound of the cloth splashing in the water, coming close to my cheek, brought vague memories to mind of when I could see. The orange and green twisting vines in the wall paper, the gold soap, the prickly white bristles on my toothbrush. When Abuela finished, she helped me up and ushered me into my room, sitting me on the bed. She handed me my jeans, that she had neatly folded and a T-shirt that smelled of fabric softener. Then Abuela leaned over and cupped my chin in her hands again and kissed my forehead. “Cena, mi hija,” she whispered. “Cena,” I mimicked as I tried to put on my shoe. The door closed quietly, and letting my foot drop heavily, I kept repeating the words. “Hola . . . lloras . . . mundo . . .” I mumbled and fell asleep dreaming of seeing red chilies, ugly Mexican blankets and a sunrise. “Sol . . . Me llamo María . . . lágrima . . .” |
 |
 |
 |