Dios resiste a los soberbios y da gracia a los humildes.
God denies the wise and gives grace to the humble.
On this visit to Chimayó, Mom and I decide to visit a neighborhood that the people from the Plaza del Cerro refer to simply as la otra banda (the other bank), since it’s on the other, south side of the Santa Cruz River. This little neighborhood is situated near Potrero and across the river from Los Ranchos. It also goes by the toponym Los Vigiles, since it is populated mostly by the extended Vigil family.
Benerito Vigil and I became friends years ago when he managed the county refuse transfer station on the road to Nambé. Everyone knew Benerito, and he knew everyone—and their trash. He and I became friends after many days of conversation there as flies buzzed around and pickup trucks full of rubbish came full and left empty—usually after their drivers had had a good conversation with Benerito.
One can’t help but like Benerito, with his rugged yet cherubic face and the twinkle in his eye. Besides being gregarious and a great conversationalist, he is a master of Spanglish profanity. I’ve learned a lot of special words from him, picking up where I left off when running around Chimayó as a child. He always greets me with a cheerful “¡Cabrón!” when I visit him in his family compound on la otra banda. Today is no exception. He doesn’t at first see my mother in the car and comes out of his house affectionately shouting the usual epithet, followed by a string of a few others for good measure.
“What the f—— you doing here?” he asks—and then he realizes who is seated next to me on the passenger side. “¡Descúlpeme, señora!” he pleads, asking her forgiveness and offering a more palatable greeting.
Benerito is delighted to see my mother, and once she’s over her shock and embarrassment, my mother warms to him, too. He immediately sets about asking for her family. Mom does the same. Benerito is a couple of decades younger than she is, but they nonetheless share many memories of old times. He warmly remembers my grandmother and her four sisters—Juanita, Petrita, Melita, and Candelaria—as well as my mother’s younger brother, Bobby. He and Mom compare recollections of their time at the John Hyson Elementary School, which they both attended, years apart. And of course they go through a genealogical labyrinth, only to conclude they can’t pinpoint a connection in kin, although my mother and I are quick to point out we have a strong Vigil line in our ancestry, including Guadalupe Vigil (“mi madre Vigila”), who was married to my great-great-great-grandfather, Gervacio Ortega. Then of course my great-great-aunt, Gelacia Chávez, married Longino Vigil from Cundiyó. And in our papers, a Juan Antonio Begil shows up on a land sale dated 1786. Both of our families refer to the Vigils from Cundiyó as primos, so we agree that surely there is a connection between us somewhere in the multitude of marriages and births stretching between 1786 and now.
As soon as Benerito turns his head away from the car window, he seems to forget Mom is with me, and he lapses back into his coarse profanity. The subject of the local bully comes up, with reference to how he used to harass Benerito at the transfer station. In fact, he has harassed just about everyone in Chimayó, including me, and talking about him prompts Benerito to spit on the ground and emit a string of eloquent bilingual expletives. I take notes on the terminology and inflection of his invective as my mother winces.
I leave Mom in the car while I walk over to the abandoned house next to Benerito’s, a simple adobe, built in the old L-shaped, pitched-roof style and now crumpling into ruin. Behind the house loom rugged, steep barrancas, bright orange red in color, bordered at their base by blazing yellow cottonwoods that line the Acequia del Potrero. A kind of fallout zone of discarded machinery and household items surrounds the house. Its rusted roof lifts into the sunshine. We’re on the edge here—of Chimayó and of the cultivated land, which is watered by a winding finger of the Potrero acequia. Above the ditch and houses, the arid lands parch in the sun, in a vast landscape empty of human habitation. But it hasn’t always been that way. I’ve walked out there enough to know of extensive Pueblo ruins, inhabited some six hundred years ago by hundreds of people who depended on this “vacant” land nearly as much as on the bottomlands by the river. Out there too are old trails where Chimayosos led their livestock, where curanderos gathered herbs. But nowadays, very few venture out beyond the roads in the settled land by the waterways.
Abandoned car in la otra banda, 2010.
Benerito has given me free rein to go inside the house, although he can’t understand why I would want to. “There’s nothing but death there,” he says. “We never go in.” Walking down to the house, I remember on an earlier visit Benerito told me his Tío Alfredo died in bed when the house burned in a fire ignited by his burning cigarette.
I step through the doorway and see scorched bedsprings lying on the floor. The walls and ceilings still bear the marks of smoke and flames. I’m fascinated by the ruins, especially the odd details: a coatrack made of two battered boards painted pastel green and yellow; pink paint and raw mud on a crumbling wall; muddy trails left on paint and plaster by rivulets of rain; gaping holes in the wooden floor beside the dust-filled porcelain bathtub; smoke-stained window glass refracting images of abandoned vehicles shimmering in the sun outside.
I exit the house through a doorway beside an apricot tree that leans, spilling a rich carpet of golden leaves. Tiptoeing around a caved-in septic tank that gapes like a pit trap, I walk over to peer into the old stone-and-mud soterrano (cellar) out back. Its roof has almost completely collapsed, but I’m able to squeeze inside with just enough room to maneuver to a window and look out through it, back toward the house.
Evening approaches. The light has grown gloomy. Mom waits in the car, chatting with Benerito, now in polite Spanish. From somewhere in the cottonwoods along the acequia, a great horned owl begins to hoot, and I’m reminded of a story about brujería (witchcraft) that Grandma told me. It was about a woman from Rincón who was alleged to be a bruja. Like all brujas, she turned into an owl at night and flew about doing evil deeds. The setting for the story as Grandma painted it looked very much like the scene before me: an abandoned house with a haunting history; a peaked, rusted roof; trees rustling in the gathering darkness; an owl hooting; and, yes, a sliver of moon hanging in the sky.
Listening to the hooting, I recall a little song about an owl Grandma used to sing to entertain me:
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“¡Tecolotito valiente! |
“Brave little owl! |
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¡Tecolotito valiente! |
Brave little owl! |
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¿Qué haces en esa sotea? |
What are you doing on that roof? |
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¿Qué haces en esa sotea?” |
What are you doing on that roof?” |
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“Mirando los borracheros, |
“Looking at the drunkards, |
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Mirando los borracheros, |
Looking at the drunkards, |
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Empinarse la botella, |
Tipping the bottle, |
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Empinarse la botella.” |
Tipping the bottle.” |
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Pobrecito animalito, |
Poor little animal, |
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Tiene hambre tecolotito, |
He’s hungry, that little owl, |
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Ooooo, oooo . . . |
Ooooo, oooo . . . |
Alfredo Vigil’s abandoned house, la otra banda, 2009.
Al que va a la bodega por vez se le cuenta, beba o no beba.
People will talk when someone goes into a bar, whether he drinks or not.
Anda buscando pies al gato.
She’s looking for feet on the cat. (She is suspiciously looking for something.)
Anda dándose golpes de pecho.
He is going around beating his breast. (Said of someone who is a braggart or someone feeling sorry for himself.)
Anda haciendo tripas corazones.
She is making guts into hearts. (She is trying her best to be brave after a tragedy; putting a good face on a bad situation.)
Anda tirando manotadas de ’hogado.
He’s flailing like a drowning man. (He’s got himself into trouble and doesn’t know how to get out.)
Aquí en la gloria y en el infierno ardiendo.
Here in heaven, and in hell burning. (A person will pay later for all the good times she is having.)
Allí no engordan perros flacos.
Skinny dogs don’t get fat there. (Said about families who are stingy.)
Caballo ajeno, espuelas propias: el mundo es mío.
Borrowed horse, my own spurs: the world is mine. (Said of someone who is having a good time with things that don’t belong to him.)
Cada chango en su columpio.
Each monkey on his swing. (Everybody does his own thing.)
Cada maestrito tiene su librito.
Each little teacher has his own little book. (Each person has his own way of doing things.)
