I am the favorite child of a favorite child. I know my worth. Mother named me after a famous battle where Pancho Villa met his Waterloo.
I am the seventh born in the Reyes family of six sons. Father named them all. Rafael, Refugio, Gustavo, Alberto, Lorenzo, and Guillermo. This he did without Mother’s consultation, claiming us like uncharted continents to honor the Reyes ancestors dead or dying.
Then I was born. I was a disappointment. Father had expected another boy. When I was still a spiral of sleep, he’d laugh and rub Mother’s belly, bragging, —I’m going to create my own soccer team.
But he didn’t laugh when he saw me. —¡Otra vieja! Ahora, ¿cómo la voy a cuidar?* Mother had goofed.
—Cripes almighty! Mother said. —At least she’s healthy. Here, you hold her.
Not exactly love at first sight, but a strange déjà vu, as if Father was looking into a well. The same silly face as his own, his mother’s. Eyes like little houses beneath the sad roof of brow.
—Leticia. We’ll name her Leticia, Father murmured.
—But I don’t like that name.
—It’s a good name. Leticia Reyes. Leticia. Leticia. Leticia.
And then he left. But when the nurse came to record my name, Mama heard herself say, —Celaya. A town where they’d once stopped for a mineral water and a torta de milanesa on a trip through Guanajuato. —Celaya, she said, surprised at her own audacity. It was the first time she disobeyed Father, but no, not the last. She reasoned the name “Leticia” belonged to some fulana, one of my father’s “histories.” —Why else would he have insisted so stubbornly?
And so I was christened Celaya, a name Father hated until his mother declared over the telephone wires, —A name pretty enough for a telenovela. After that, he said nothing.
Days and days, months and months. Father carried me wherever he went. I was a little fist. And then a thumb. And then I could hold my head up without letting it flop over. Father bought me crinolines, and taffeta dresses, and ribbons, and socks, and ruffled panties edged with lace, and white leather shoes soft as the ears of rabbits, and demanded I never be allowed to look raggedy. I was a cupcake. —¿Quién te quiere? Who loves you? he’d coo. When I burped up my milk, he was there to wipe my mouth with his Irish linen handkerchief and spit. When I began scratching and pulling my hair, he sewed flannel mittens for me that tied with pink ribbons at the wrist. When I sneezed, Father held me up to his face, and let me sneeze on him. He also learned to change my diapers, which he had never done for his sons.
I was worn on the arm like a jewel, like a bouquet of flowers, like the Infant of Prague. —My daughter, he said to the interested and uninterested. When I began to accept the bottle, Father bought one airline ticket and took me home to meet his mother. And when the Awful Grandmother saw my Father with that crazy look of joy in his eye, she knew. She was no longer his queen.
It was too late. Celaya, a town in Guanajuato where Pancho Villa met his nemesis. Celaya, the seventh child. Celaya, my father’s Waterloo.