|
Comadres
One of my earliest and most vivid memories
was the bruja who appeared one day in my
bedroom, clutching a chicken egg in one hand,
a cup in the other. I was lying in bed,
slowly turning into a blind person from
terrible eye infections that the doctors
couldn’t seem to cure. The bruja pulled over
a chair, plopped down next to my head, and
began rolling the cold egg around my eyes,
buzzing a swarm of Our Fathers and Hail
Marys. Mama stood at the doorway, signaling
me to behave by tapping her finger on her
scarlet lips as she prayed along. After an
eternity, the bruja cracked the egg, poured
it into the cup, and slid it under my bed. |
 |
Guess what? The very next
morning, I woke up cured! Honest. Peering at the egg,
Mama pointed to a white streak across the brilliant
orange yolk, and said, “Ahhh ... it was mal de ojo,
evil eye. Your eyes got infected because someone
admired them but didn’t touch them.” When I asked
about the bruja, she replied, “No, she isn’t a witch
at all. She’s a curandera, someone with the don, the
supernatural gift to heal others through prayers and
plants. And she’s my comadre, someone who makes
people into a family.”
 Although
our barrio in McAllen was poor, surrounded by cotton
gins and packing sheds, our South Texas border
community felt rich, even magical, for we kids lived
in the protective web that our mothers and their
comadres wove. Some of these comadres were
curanderas, curing where degreed doctors couldn’t;
all of them had supernatural powers: cooking
mouthwatering dishes for hundreds in kitchens as
tiny as closets, sewing eye-catching dresses from
bed sheets, telling the most amazing tales without
ever learning to read or write. The neverending
cycle of rituals and traditions—baptisms,
quinceñeras, weddings, wakes, Christmas (tamaladas
and posadas), Easter (cascarones), and Dia de los
Muertos (sugar skulls and home altars)—bound us
together.
My life felt so rich that I didn’t realize I was
poor until I won a scholarship to an elite boarding
school 300 miles away in Austin. I showed up with my
home-made dresses for the school’s dress-up dinners.
And when classmates talked about their summers
traveling through Europe, I kept silent about the
crazy cucumbers I’d sorted at the packing shed,
three blocks from my home.
Mama didn’t want me to go. She
was afraid I’d get lost in a world we didn’t know, a
world of the rich and privileged. And while she
agreed that my formal education would certainly
benefit from the opportunities at St. Stephen’s, she
worried that I wouldn’t receive the priceless
education that can only come through everyday living
among comadres. But like most young people, I
thought I already knew everything the barrio could
teach me, and longed to explore the world beyond.
Guess what? When my dream came true—thanks to Papa’s
overcoming Mama’s resistance—I became terribly,
terribly sick. Homesick. The teachers, education,
and sports were all terrific, but I felt hollowed
out. It was then—feeling so, so alone—that I began
to understand the power, magic, and importance of a
community, built, sustained, and strengthened
through the loving relationships among comadres. And
it was then, writing stories to myself to conjure up
the barrio I missed, that I learned the power of
storytelling, and became a writer.
My new novel, The Tequila Worm, is about the
importance of learning how to become a good comadre.
It tells the story of Sofia, who grows up in the
barrio and learns to use the power of stories and
traditions to navigate the strange world of
privilege she finds at a boarding school, too far
away from home.
Watching the heartbreaking destruction of African
American and Cajun communities in Louisiana (where
many Latinos also live) after Hurricane Katrina,
I’ve been shocked and saddened to hear prominent
people suggest that the thousands of poor New
Orleaneans being housed in the Houston Astrodome are
better off now. Only someone blind to the magical
connections that bind even the least affluent
communities could ignore how people need their roots
to thrive. And only someone ignorant of the magic of
foods, music, traditions, and stories created by
tight-knit neighborhoods, like my barrio or the
Ninth Ward, can fail to understand the priceless
treasures these places produce, not just for their
own neighbors but for all of us.
A roof, cots, bottles of water, packets of MREs does
not a community make. For that, it takes the love of
an army of good comadres! |
