Él que al pobre cierra la puerta, la del cielo no halla abierta.
One who closes the door on the poor will not find
the gates of heaven open.
It’s a warm January day. I slip into the driveway at María and Narciso’s place and encounter a man I haven’t met before, standing on the sunny side of the building (la resolana) where I so often find Narciso warming himself. He introduces himself as Tom Montoya, Narciso’s nephew. He holds back a minute, until he notices the camera around my neck, at which point he says, “Oh, you must be the guy who took the pictures of my mom and tío!” He extends his hand, and I join him in the resolana, taking in the sun. Tattoos decorate his exposed forearms, and he wears a silver cross around his neck; it gleams brightly against his black sweater. A black headband holds back a shock of silvered hair that tapers to a ponytail, matching the color of his wispy beard. Tom’s bright blue eyes regard me warmly.
“We really like those pictures, man,” he says, leaning back against the wall. I ask him about himself. He grew up right here, he tells me, went to high school in Española, then was off to Vietnam, where he served as a medic.
“It was heavy, let me tell you,” Tom says. “I saw all these guys who were really messed up. Had to try and patch them together. I’m still dealing with it.”
Tom is one of five children of María. Their father died just two years ago. María is not doing so well. But the family is rallying around her, with three taking the lead in caring for her. Tom is one of those three and proud of it.
He asks about my family and stops me when I tell him my grandmother’s name.
“You’re Benigna Chávez’s grandson? That was your grandma?” he asks and then says, “Eee, I know her! From up there at the plaza, no? I bought her washing machine!”
“No,” I say. “You’re kidding. You’re the one who got her old machine?”
“Yes, in 1980. I heard she was selling it and went over and picked it up for a hundred bucks. I figured it was a good price, you know.”
“That old machine with the rollers, the Maytag?” I ask.
“Yes, that’s the one.”
“I used to do laundry on it when I was little,” I tell him.
“I still use it, in the summer,” Tom says.
“Where is it?” I ask, and Tom leads me behind his house, just down the driveway. He pulls off a couple of old handmade rag rugs, and there it is, the old Maytag with the rollers, looking just like it did when Grandma had it inside her screened porch. There’s no rust on it, and Tom says it still works fine.
One of my chores at Grandma’s was to feed clothes into the wringer—a task that always frightened me because I was sure the rollers would suck my fingers in and mash them flat, like the towels, socks, and other items that passed through. After wringing the clothes, I’d help hang them on the rickety clothesline in the patio. And then came my favorite task: dumping the leftover water from the machine onto the red-ant hills that continually cropped up in the driveway. I would hook a garden hose to the machine and direct the flow onto the mounds, sending the ants into a feverish rage. Each time I was sure I had eliminated them for good, but the next morning they would be back, as if nothing had happened.
I remember when Grandma sold the machine. She regretted it for years. Afterward, she had to rely on others to take her laundry to town to wash it for her.
We return to the resolana. Betty, Tom’s sister, comes out of María’s house to see what’s happening, and then Telesfor walks up from his place. They line up for photos against the wall, three of the five in the family. Next, Lawrence, Betty’s partner, appears. I’ve met him here before.
All of us chat about family names and ancestry, searching for family relations that the Montoyas and my family hold in common, but we come up empty-handed. Although I can’t find records of Montoyas living around the Plaza del Cerro in our documents, the Montoya family name shows up in an 1809 land sale of eighty-two varas castellanas from José Franciso Montoya to Juan Bautista Vegil, for the price of “una mula de camino y dos bacas paridas y dos pesos en rreales y dose pesos de la tierra.—one walking mule, two cows lately delivered, two pesos in coin, and twelve ‘pesos de la tierra,’” a quasi-monetary unit indicating an exchange of agricultural products in lieu of currency. Additionally, several Montoyas were signatories to an 1825 land sale (one of them, Severiano, as alcalde of Santa Cruz de la Cañada).
Tom asks if I know how to copy photographs. He has a picture of his parents he’d like to duplicate for his siblings. Lawrence enters the house he and Betty share and comes out with the picture, a photocopy of Manuel and María’s wedding photo, framed in coarse pinewood with the bark still on it. Smoke has stained the photo, but the youthfulness and joy of the young newlyweds shines through. Tom and Lawrence hold it up for me to photograph, and I promise to make some copy prints for them.
Lawrence is a Medina from Potrero, where my mom’s grandfather was from. Lawrence knows many of my distant cousins in the Chávez family there, but what’s most remarkable for him is the realization it was my uncle, Bobby Chávez, who saved Lawrence’s brother from drowning in Santa Cruz Lake, sometime during World War II.
“Bobby was your uncle? Really? He was there that day, one of the kids in the boat, and the only one who could swim. He managed to pull out my brother Frankie, but he couldn’t save Rafelito. But Bobby—he was a hero, man! I heard he died a few years back.”
I remember the story well. As Bobby told it, he tried to rescue Elías’s son Rafelito too, but he couldn’t. Poor Rafelito was all tangled up in branches or rope or something. But the good karma from Bobby’s deed still resonates. Any friend or relative of Bobby Chávez is a friend to the Medinas and to many others in Potrero, even though the incident happened decades ago and Bobby is long gone.
Buscando trabajo y rogando a Dios no hallar.
Looking for work and begging God not to find any.
¿Dónde va a ir el buey que no are?
Where can an ox go that he does not have to plow? (A laborer will always be stuck in menial jobs.)
El dinero del mezquino anda dos veces el camino.
The miser makes his money travel the road twice.
El trabajo es virtud.
Work is a virtue.
Él que ha de ser real sencillo aunque ande entre los doblones.
Small change will remain small change even if it is mixed with big money. (A poor person will always be poor, even if she associates with the rich.)
Él que no trabaja, no avanza.
One who doesn’t work doesn’t get ahead.
La pereza es llave de la pobreza.
Laziness is the key to poverty.
Lo barato cuesta caro.
Cheap things end up costing plenty.
Lo que puedas hacer hoy, no lo dejes para mañana.
Don’t leave until tomorrow what you can do today.
Más da el duro que el desnudo.
The stingy person gives more than the penniless.
No es oro todo lo que relumbra.
All that glitters is not gold.
No hay atajo sin trabajo.
There’s no shortcut without work.
No hay bolsa más quieta que una bolsa sin dinero.
There is no purse more still than a purse without money.
Nomás las orillas y el medio me faltan.
Just the ends and the middle are left to do. (Said when you haven’t even started what you are supposed to do.)
Unos son los de la fama y otros son los que cardan la lana.
Some have the fame and others card the wool. (Some get the credit while others do the work.)
Vale más una gotera seguida que una chorrera de repente.
A steady drip is better than a sudden gush.