“UM, JUANITA, can I ask you something?” I said.
Juanita sat in the front room. The rest of the family was in the living room, doing impressions of the bishop who had visited our church that morning. He had spoken with a lisp, stuttered over his words and even said “Omen” instead of “Amen.” Even though there were fewer people this Sunday at my cousin Carlos’ house—a few of the families were in San Antonio visiting relatives—the regular noise level was being maintained. In front of me, Juanita was tickling Lilia on her lap.
She set her down on the floor and patted her back to go and play, which was all the encouragement Lilia needed. Lilia stuck her tongue out playfully at me as she ran to the living room where the other children were.
“Hola, Martha. How’ve you been? How’s school?”
I sat down on the couch next to her. “School’s great. Actually, the other day I ran across this picture of my mother as homecoming queen.”
Juanita’s face dropped at the mention of my mother, but she quickly resumed a nonchalant look.
“Yes, Rosa was the homecoming queen her junior year. She loved being the queen.”
“I’m sure. She looked a little different in the picture, too.”
Okay, this wasn’t going well. I didn’t want to piss Juanita off by bringing up old jealousies. Get to the point, Martha.
“There was a girl and a guy in the picture. Carlita and Jorge? Were they all friends?”
“Carlita Juárez and Jorge Valdez? I haven’t heard those names in a while. What made you think they were friends with Rosa?” Her eyes regarded me suspiciously.
“They had their arms around each other, were laughing. They just looked like friends.”
Juanita didn’t buy it yet. Her lips had set into the famous Gonzalez woman line of suspicion. I had to come up with something else.
I looked down at my hands and traced the lines on my left palm so Juanita wouldn’t see my face. “I only want to know my mother a little better. It helped, seeing that photograph. I miss her so much, and I don’t know . . . it just helped. I felt connected to her. I know that sounds stupid.”
“Oh, Martha, don’t say that.”
I looked up. A string of emotions crossed her face: concern, pity and finally belief. I tried not to smile at my victory.
“Carlita and Rosa were best friends and Jorge and Rosa dated for a year or so. They were a crazy lot, always running around, giving Mamá headaches all the time.”
I laughed at that and Juanita did too, breaking the tension. This was as perfect a moment as it would get.
“So, do they still live here? In Laredo, I mean?”
“You know, I think they moved.” She stood up. “I’m going to go see if Mamá and Gloria need help in the kitchen.” And she walked away without another word.
I had my answer. They were still here.
After finding my cousin Carlos alone, I asked him if he had a phone book. Abuela sure didn’t—hell, we barely used the phone, usually only when someone called with an emergency. Thankfully, Carlos did, and what’s more it was in the drawer of his bedside table and not in the family room or in the kitchen where Abuela or Gloria might see me. He showed me where it was, then left me to join the rest of the family.
I turned to ‘J’ only to find a thousand Juárezes. It was the same for Valdez, although Valdez was shorter by a few names or so. There were four Carlita Juárezes and seven Jorge Valdezes. Some had addresses, while others only had numbers. A few had both. I wrote down each number and address with a pen and a piece of paper from a small notepad I found in a drawer. I wouldn’t be able to call any of these numbers soon; it might take weeks.
When I left the room, I stuffed the papers in the only place I could hide them: my bra. There were no pockets in the horrendously flowery Sunday dress Abuela had made me wear. As I left the bedroom, I bumped into Gloria, who was heading to the bathroom.
“What were you doing in there?”
I put my hands to my breast, feeling the paper beneath the fabric.
“Praying.”
I returned home on Monday after school to find my grandmother sitting in the kitchen, strumming her fingers on the table, staring at the entryway.
“What took so long?” she asked and then stood up.
“It’s the same time I usually get home.” I flung my backpack in the chair that she had just gotten up from and sat down myself.
“Don’t sit. Come. You learn today.”
“But I have a lot of homework.”
“After.” She waddled into the hallway.
“But, you know, I . . . ”
“¡Vámonos!”
When I entered the hallway, Abuela stood at the mystery door, the one she went into to do her healing work. She pulled out a key from her pants’ pocket and stuck it into the lock.
Abuela opened the door and walked in. I moved forward and stopped just before the door. I was reminded of the first day I had walked into Abuela’s canary yellow kitchen. That feeling of what would come, of change, of the unknown, of rejection, all of those feelings returned now. I pushed my hair from my face and felt a nervous sweat on the back of my neck.
When I crossed the threshold into my grandmother’s secret room, I would be crossing over into the world of curanderismo, and it would forever change my life. But I had to do this. I wanted to, maybe. I took a deep breath and stepped through. I had survived Laredo so far.
Drying herbs hung from the ceiling like the limbs of drooping trees. Some hung so low I had to be wary not to hit them with my head. I was taller than my grandmother, and she must have hung them so as to not hit her head. They made the room smell divine, like sweet, wet earth and lavender, so I couldn’t complain. With each breath, I felt calmer. My grandmother had walked across the room to what looked like a small altar on the far wall. She knelt down slowly as I walked to her.
In the center of the room was a long, wooden table standing two feet off the floor covered with a brightly stitched yellow and red zigzag pad. Woven blankets, like the ones I slept under, were folded at the end of the table, and a small stool sat next to it. Hanging on the walls were old, wooden shelves. Some shelves were filled with pans and pots, others with jars. I couldn’t tell what was in the jars, only that some looked like powder, while other jars held actual objects that I was unable to recognize from so far away. Small paintings of angels and Jesus printed on tiny cards stood between the items on the shelves.
Despite everything, the room was organized and clean. The rest of the house was cluttered and chaotic compared to this. When I got to the altar, I knelt down beside my grandmother and sat back on my calves as she did. I wasn’t sure what else to do. Do as the curanderas do, right?
The altar was a small wooden table covered in a white cloth that had different colored embroidery with looping, flowery designs on the edges. The fabric looked old, slightly yellowed. A larger ceramic statue of the Virgin Mary holding a baby Jesus stood in the center. A cross made of dried, yellowish leaves leaned against it. Surrounding Mary and Jesus were the holy troops, saints and angels, hands folded in prayer looking up at Mother and Son in holy reverence. Next to the statues was a bundle of sage that gave off a strong yet soothing odor.
Small picture frames littered the table. Photos of my mother when she was younger, Juanita and her family, even a sepia picture of my grandfather in his army uniform. He looked to be in his twenties. Small knickknacks of pouches, rocks and dried flowers also decorated the altar, but I wasn’t aware of their significance, and they didn’t seem to be placed in any particular order.
I felt nervous, like I was going to accidentally hit something and then ruin the entire ambience of the room. Keeping my elbows close to my body, I turned to Abuela. She waited impatiently. Not that she said anything, but I had become accustomed to noticing the pursing of the lips, the tight way in which she held herself.
“Okay, we pray first.” Abuela closed her eyes and interlaced her hands in her lap.
“Why?” I whispered. There was an essence about the room that didn’t want to be disturbed. It felt wrong to speak normally, so I whispered.
She took a deep breath of patience. Maybe she was nervous too. “We must ask Dios to forgive us of our sins so that He may give us strength and guidance. A curandera is nothing without Dios. Dios gives us our gift to heal.”
“Oh. So do we say it aloud or to ourselves . . . ?”
“Have you ever prayed?”
I averted my eyes. If I wasn’t godly enough, could I still be a curandera?
“What do you do at church?” she asked.
I shrugged. “I don’t know . . . at first I just looked at everything, you know, the paintings, the statues, the candles and all . . . Or keep up with all the sitting and kneeling. Now I just try to translate all the words the priest says.”
“That’s not bad, exactly. But church is more than statues and words. It is Dios y Cristo y María. You must believe if you are to maintain your don.”
Believe? A little easier said than done. “What’s a don?”
“I will explain later. Here. We will pray together.”
She grabbed my hands and held them between us. This was a different side of my grandmother: a dedicated woman who put aside her toughness for focus and serenity. I closed my eyes before she began.
She said the prayer aloud: “Dios, forgive us of our sins. You have given us the gift to heal and we are humble to this gift. Open up the soul of my granddaughter to you, her ears to my learning and her body to the power of healing,” she paused. “And please give me the strength and knowledge to teach the daughter of my daughter. Amen.”
I followed with an “Amen” of my own and opened my eyes.
Abuela sighed. She let go of my hands, pushed herself to a standing position and went near the door. I followed and stood next to her so that we faced the room.
“Now we start,” she said.
“Start how?”
She motioned with her hand to the room. “You will learn everything in this room. Everything has a purpose in here, and you will learn it. You will learn the material and the spiritual.”
“What does that mean?”
“May I have a chance to explain without you interrupting?”
She waited for a sarcastic response, but I refused to ruin this. I didn’t want us arguing when she could be telling me things.
“Material, nieta, is what Señor Díaz and Señora Flores do. They make teas and pastes, use herbs, give massages, sweat cleanses—physical healings. They heal with the earth and with physical labor. But spiritual is more than that. It’s healing on a different plane. And there’s mental healing.”
“And?”
“And I still don’t really understand what you mean about spiritual and now mental. You didn’t really tell me anything.”
“Impatience will not help you to be a curandera. Besides, you must learn the physical before the spiritual and the mental.”
She stepped forward to one of the shelves on the right side of the room.
“Wait,” I said.
She stopped and looked back at me.
“I don’t know if I can do this. I’ve never done magic or anything. Maybe you are wrong about my gift.”
“Like I told you yesterday, I’ve known you’ve had the gift since the first day you arrived. And I’m never wrong.” She smiled. Then suddenly, her voice was hard and serious, “And we don’t do magic, only brujas do. Magic. Bah!”
Abuela grabbed a stool next to one of the shelves, climbed up and handed me a few jars. I placed them on the counter beneath the shelves.
The first one I recognized before she even opened the jar. “Garlic,” I said.
“Yes, para bowel pains, toothaches and stomach troubles.” She grabbed a second jar. “And this one?”
I shrugged. It looked like a bunch of leaves to me.
“Éste es alcanfor, camphor.”
I took a step forward and peered into the jar. The jar smelled like moth balls. The leaves were glossy, yet waxy-looking, and a few black-colored berries were sprinkled among the leaves.
“It helps with pain. Like headaches and rheumatism, even with faintness. Now this next one . . . ”
“How?” I said.
“Well, how does camphor help with pain? Do you drink it or touch it? How does it cure those things?”
“It depends. Right now you only need to know what they treat.”
“Shouldn’t I learn how to treat something at the same time?”
Abuela jammed the lid back on the jar, even though it was one of those lids that needed to be twisted on. “Forgive me, almighty curandera. I forgot you know best.”
“No. Sorry. Okay, just go ahead. I’ll listen.”
She pursed her lips and grabbed another jar. “Aster, for coughs and congestion of the chest.” Then another one, “Amaranth, para el corazón, for heart trouble.”
An idea hit me. Crap, she wasn’t going to like me interrupting, but this was a good reason.
“Hold on, before you continue.”
Abuela threw her hands in the air, “Ay, m’ija, ¿ahora qué?”
“This is only the third jar and it’s a lot of new words I’ve never heard of. Can I get a notepad or something to write it all down, maybe make a few sketches of the plants, to study?” I smiled.
“¿Pluma y papel? ¡Ay! My grandmother handed down this information from her mother before her and her mother before her and not with any fancy pen and paper.”
“But it will take me weeks to memorize all this . . . without paper!”
“That’s how you will learn. No more questions.”
“Pen and paper isn’t even fancy. They have computers these days.”
“¡Bah! ¡Tecnología!” she said and climbed on the stool to bring down more jars. Even though I was a bit annoyed that Abuela wouldn’t let me write everything down, I smiled to myself. She had called me “mi’ja.”
For the next few hours, my grandmother pulled out many jars filled with spices, oils, dried fruit, dried leaves, stems from plants and even jars filled with dead animals or animal parts that smelt so bad that I gagged a few times. She opened each jar and let me smell and even touch its contents. I was repulsed touching the dead animals. A lot of the leaves looked so similar. How would I be able to tell them apart?
So much information! It felt like thousands of hands pushed on my brain, but there just wasn’t enough room. How could there be all this knowledge? And if these things did what she said they could, then why were there even doctors? But now I understood a little of why Marcela wanted to be an apprentice. If I learned all this stuff that my grandmother was showing me, I would have some power. I would be special, more so than the average person, and I supposed that was the appeal of curanderismo.
It was impossible to remember everything she told me that day, and it would take a while to remember how everything was used, thanks to Abuela’s “traditional ways.” Although, I won’t lie, that night I found some empty pages in a spiral and tried to write down as much information as I could remember, with a few drawings of the plants here and there. It was pretty difficult to do, since there was so much to fit into my mind: ingredients with weird names, leaves and stems with funny, little details.
We only got through half the jars that night and, when we returned to the kitchen, Gloria was already there cooking a meal of huevos con nopales. I didn’t realize I was starving until I smelled the food.
I didn’t fully believe the magical mumbo jumbo, but something about it was enjoyable. Abuela and I were connecting, sort of, and I was learning something that other people didn’t learn. I smiled throughout the meal, shrugging off all of Gloria’s sarcastic remarks.
I wasn’t even reprimanded for it.
The rest of the week transformed into a new routine that I would maintain for many months: enter the healing room, pray and then learn about Abuela’s tools, objects, herbs and plants. I learned how to use incense and candles, that certain colors healed certain things. I memorized plant abilities, which herbs cured what and how to squeeze precious juice from the roots of a plant. I practiced with different tools, using certain knives to cut leaves and other knives that made slicing and dicing dead animals easier. I learned that religious objects were for more than decoration, and even discovered that a pouch that hung on the wall was protection against evil spirits, that a broom swept away malo and other forms of evil.
The most important thing I learned was basically meditation, although my grandmother didn’t call it that. She called it reflexión, but the process was much the same, except for one particular thing.
“Why are we doing this?” I said as I opened one of my eyes to peek at Abuela.
We sat with our legs crossed in front of the altar, facing one another, our hands turned down flat on our knees. My lower back ached after five minutes of sitting, and I kept squirming to get comfortable. Abuela sat straight-backed and did not appear to be in any state of discomfort.
She kept her eyes closed. “You have an extra healing gift that others do not. Your don, the place within you where your gift comes from, is spiritual and mental. When you learn your body, you will find your gift.”
“So this don will do all the healing for me?”
“No, you heal through your don,” she said.
“So, how would I know if I’m using my don or not?”
Abuela laughed. “Oh, trust me, you will know. It’s like nothing you’ve ever felt before.”
“How am I learning my body by sitting here with my eyes closed?”
“¡Ay, muchacha! Can you ever be quiet? Stop talking and breathe in and out. Allow yourself to leave your body. Only then will you be able to see your don.”
I stuck out my tongue in annoyance.
“I saw that.”
I opened my right eye, but Abuela’s eyes were shut. I closed my eye.
“Saw what?”
“I saw what you did. With my don.”
I opened my right eye again and stuck my tongue out once more.
“I saw that, too.” Her eyes were closed the entire time.
I closed my eyes, maybe a little more of a believer in this whole don thing.
That Saturday, Abuela resumed her rounds helping the sick in the neighborhood. Instead of sitting in the kitchens of the homes she visited, I now went into the rooms with her and her patients. I assumed what Abuela did was like a typical doctor’s visit, but I didn’t remember myself ever being sick or visiting a doctor. I asked Abuela if that was normal.
She nodded. “Your don and your age protected you from most illnesses. Besides that, you just got lucky.”
When Abuela entered the room where the sick person was, her entire mood changed: a load was lifted, she smiled more, laughed at times, and her voice did not hold the toughness it usually did. Her mood was infectious, so that I found myself smiling goofily as I watched her interact with the sick.
Usually, my grandmother swept the room with sage that she pulled out of her bag and then proceeded to hold the patient’s hand and pray with him or her. After that, she would immediately begin her healing by telling the patient what needed to be done to cure the sickness. At first, I believed she had been previously told the person’s sickness, until once an old woman said, “How did you know that I had migraines? I never told you, did I?”
My grandmother only smiled and repeated the instructions for the tea that would help relieve the pain. As soon as we left a house, I began with the same question.
“How did you know? Have any of these people that we’ve seen told you what was wrong with them?”
“Yes, some have told me.”
I walked faster in front of her to be able to see her face. “But did they need to tell you? Or did you already know?”
Abuela’s face had lost the light-heartedness that it had held minutes earlier, so that now she looked annoyed at me. “Of course, I already knew. With my don I saw what was wrong.”
“What do you mean by you ‘saw’ what was wrong?”
“Saw, see. With my eyes. I thought you were smart.” She nudged my shoulder.
“I am! But you’re telling me something that sounds crazy. You make it sound like I will be able to see the disease.”
She nodded. “Yes, that is exactly it.”
“I don’t know if I buy it. What does disease even look like?”
“Dark and ugly.”
Figures. “So if this is real, how do I make it happen?”
“With your don.”
“I know that, but how?”
She stopped and looked at me. “By not complaining during reflexión, by trying to find your don inside you . . . and by believing.”
I silently vowed to never complain about reflexión again. Although Abuela said this don stuff wasn’t magic, it sure sounded that way to me, and I wanted to experience it myself.
Still, watching my grandmother work on patients was another experience entirely. I had started to become comfortable in the culturally unique world of Laredo. Perhaps it was because I had learned Spanish so rapidly and it linked me to everything. But after witnessing the different ways in which my grandmother cured illnesses, I was thrown seven steps back from what I thought I had gained in understanding the Mexican culture.
She used eggs to massage the arthritic joints of her ailing patients. She spat on the chest of children to rid them of whooping cough. She gave a woman a dried hummingbird as a love charm. She threw holy water in the shape of a cross on the bodies of dying patients and knelt, praying for hours, sometimes aloud, and then she’d place her hands on the parts of their body that were failing and pray to God to heal them. She cured someone of fright—susto—yes, fright! As if someone could get sick by being scared? I gained a whole new set of vocabulary words that dealt with illnesses that weren’t illnesses at all. Susto, mal de ojo, nerviosismo . . . illnesses caused by fright so that the soul became lost, illnesses caused by people looking at you with jealousy, illnesses caused by nervousness. We were not supposed to just cure the physical ailments of someone’s body but their mental state, too!
It sounded like something a psychologist or a mental hospital should cure. How could someone get sick by being scared? Abuela tried to explain that it was the soul we were curing. And yet, that scared me more. She wanted me to cure a soul? That was a lot of responsibility. I listened more carefully when she explained the spiritual illnesses because I never wanted anyone to come back and say I had ruined their soul.
“And sometimes they aren’t cured,” Abuela also told me.
“So, what’s the point of all this if we don’t actually cure them every time?”
“Do the gringo doctors cure their patients of everything, every time?”
She had a point. Abuela explained it was give and take in the world, and mostly God’s will, and how much the person believed in what we did or if they wanted to be healed.
I was still an outsider to the whole religious aspect of curanderismo—the God part. I did not understand something I had no attachment to yet. Although Abuela pushed me to “feel God” and “hear God,” you can’t force someone until they are ready to touch and listen.
It took time, and day by day, the things I saw and experienced started to become more normal to me, started to make sense.
A few weeks into my apprenticeship, Marcela and her friends marched up to me in the hallway on my way to class.
“Hey, puta, I heard you have a new job.”
Instead of stopping, I kept walking, so she had to walk faster to keep up with me.
“You hear a lot of things about me, Marcela. Some would call it an obsession.”
Everyone stopped in the hallway and stared at us as we walked by. Suddenly, Marcela sprinted ahead of me and cut me off.
“What do you want? I need to get to class,” I said.
Marcela’s eyes darkened with anger, and the vein on her forehead pulsed faster. “I asked you a question. Are you apprenticing to your damn grandmother?’
I don’t know if I was tired from all the extra work Abuela had given me, or if I was just tired of Marcela speaking to me like that and cursing my grandmother, but I let her get to me.
“Yes! What does it matter?”
“You told me you weren’t her apprentice.” Her face reddened beneath her pale make-up.
“I wasn’t then, but I am now. And I’m tired of you being pissed off because Abuela turned you away.” As soon as I said the words, I felt so much truth in them. But I wanted those words back in my mouth because I knew right away that I had pissed her off more than ever.
Marcela pulled a fist back, ready to take a punch at the same time that I made my hands into fists.
It was then that a ninth-grade science teacher spoke up. “Is there a problem here?”
The teacher stood by her door on the opposite side of the hallway, staring at us. Everyone around us became quiet, tensed for something to happen. I returned my focus back to Marcela. I saw it: she hated me with so much passion she could barely contain it.
One of her thug friends moved between us, gave me a cold stare and said in a low voice, “Come on, Marcela. You know you can’t get expelled again.”
I looked at the teacher and said, “We’re fine, Mrs. . . .” I looked past her at the sign next to her door. “Mrs. Gómez. Everything is fine.”
I turned back around to see that Marcela had moved closer to me while her friend had moved to the side. She was so close that I saw the lines between the shades of grey and black eye shadow she had applied that morning.
Marcela spoke low so that not even her friend could hear. “Talk to me like that again, little girl, and you’re going to feel my steel in your gut.”
She patted her jean pocket, where something stretched against the fabric. My first thought went to the rumor Laura had told me when I first moved here, of the girl that Marcela had almost stabbed to death. First fear shot through me, then anger.
“No, you listen to me. Leave me alone. With the stuff I’m learning from Abuela, your ‘steel’ can’t hurt me.”
It was a lie. I knew it before the words were coming out, but she didn’t know that. Marcela wanted something stronger than steel, something that would bring fear just by saying the name. I only knew the basic healing properties of herbs. I didn’t know curses, or spells, or any mal that could hurt others, but I wanted Marcela to think I did. I knew she’d believe it, because that is what she wanted. Power. Control.
Her eyes widened a bit, and she stepped back. Not exactly in fear, but in awe, or perhaps desire. She wanted to be my grandmother’s apprentice. Wanted the knowledge of curanderas but for all the wrong reasons.
I walked past her and headed to class.
Sunday, at another primo’s house after church, I snuck into the bedroom and called the list of Jorge Valdezeses first. While some numbers were disconnected, a few Jorges answered. It wasn’t until the sixth number I called that I had some kind of luck. The man who answered wasn’t Jorge, but his cousin, Felipe. He said my mother’s name sounded familiar, maybe Jorge knew my mother and maybe he didn’t. He gave me the address of Jorge’s job, Gutierrez Body Shop. He said I would find Jorge there seven days a week. I thanked him and hung up. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to call any of the Carlitas because a few of my little cousins found me in the bedroom and dragged me out to the front yard to push them on an old, wooden swing.
The next day, when the bell had rung for school to be let out, I asked Laura if she knew where the Gutierrez Body Shop was. She shifted her book bag to her other shoulder and grabbed the paper I had with Jorge’s name and the name of the garage.
“Yeah, I know it. It’s down the street from the downtown market, where my mom’s shop is.”
“Shop?”
“My mom owns a boutique called Sofía’s Cosa’s. She sells nickknacks, jewelry, clothes, house stuff.”
Laura gave me directions from the school to the garage. The downtown market was the same one that Abuela had taken me to on the first weekend I had arrived in Laredo. It wasn’t that far from the house, so the garage would be within walking distance, too.
Before Laura gave me the piece of paper back she pulled it closer to her face and squinted. “Valdez?” She looked up at me.
I grabbed the paper from her. “Just someone I need to talk to. Why?”
“I’m a Valdez.”
I fumbled with one of my textbooks and then caught it. She was right. I vaguely remember her telling me her last name was Valdez when we first met. God, I was stupid.
“Do you know a Jorge Valdez?”
She shook her head no. “Sorry, I don’t even know my own dad.”
“Is Valdez his last name?”
“Yeah, my mom gave it to me, but she won’t even tell me his first name. Says he died long ago, so there’s no reason I should know about him.”
“Sounds like something Abuela would say.”
Laura giggled. “Well, good luck with finding the guy. Why do you need to talk to him?”
I wasn’t going to have that conversation. “Sorry, I gotta get home. Abuela will kill me if I’m five minutes late.” I waved and started to turn away.
“Martha, wait.” Laura looked behind her, then to her side. She walked closer to me and spoke low. “Look, if you get a chance, come by my mom’s shop sometime on a Saturday. I work there on the weekends.”
“You know if Abuela found out, I’d be dead.”
Laura’s eyes darted back and forth. “I know, but this is important. I have to show you something. My mom works in the back doing inventory on Saturdays, so she wouldn’t even see you.”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I could tr . . . ”
“Okay, good.” Laura smiled. “I’ll see you soon, okay? Soon.” She gave me one last stare before turning around and walking off.
That was weird. I headed for the Pepto Bismol house. I didn’t really have time to think about Laura’s request. I had more important things on my mind. Like how I was going to actually go to the garage, since my grandmother was always at home, and with my curandera apprenticeship, I barely had time to finish school work at night. More patience? It was almost the end of October. As soon as I found out where my mother was, I was going to flip out on her for making me go through all this work.
A few days later, I returned home to find the Cadillac missing and the house empty. I was more of a believer in God at that moment than ever before. There was a note on the kitchen table written in English. It said that my grandmother had been called to an emergency on the opposite side of the border and that she would return home late. There were leftovers in the fridge. It was signed by Gloria with the following written beneath her name: “P.S. Act right, chica.”
I didn’t waste a second thinking about what I was about to do. I dropped my backpack and rushed out the front door. It was a twenty-five-minute walk to the garage and I didn’t know how long it would take to talk to the guy. Besides, I wanted to return as quickly as possible, just in case Abuela returned early.
I practically ran to the garage and got there in fifteen minutes, sweating. Even though it was October, it was still hot. The garage, a rusted gray building that looked ready to topple over, stood on a corner. Cars, some fairly old, yet with new paint jobs and new accessories, stood in between newer, broken-down cars with missing or rusted parts in the front drive of the garage and in the street. A large garage door stood open on the left side. Three guys worked on a red Chevy with the hood popped open while another watched.
This was it. Would he be here? Would he be the right Jorge Valdez, or was he lost and my mother with him? I didn’t have long to think or be nervous. Abuela was going to come home whether I got my answers or not. I walked to the open garage door. Before I was even fifteen feet from it, the man who had been watching the three guys work noticed me.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
My mouth became dry. He looked down at me over his bushy, grey mustache.
“Sí, uh, does a Jorge Valdez work here?” I asked.
The man regarded me for a second, debating whether or not to tell me. Then he motioned with his head to the right. A lone man worked under the hood of a cream-colored car on the other side of the garage.
“Gracias.” I felt the old man’s eyes watching me as I walked away. Now that I was in the garage, the overwhelming stench of oil and grease and the heavy, rubber smell of tires assaulted me. Instead of pulling my shirt over my nose like I wanted to, I focused on my target.
The man known as Jorge Valdez was hidden in the depths of the car’s opened hood. I wasn’t sure if it was him. The man wore a white tank with faded blue jeans that had oil and grime marks down the sides of them, as if he wiped his hands on them every few seconds. His arms were a tanned brown and a little on the meaty side. His stomach rolled over the edge of his jeans, even more so since he was bent over.
As I walked up, Led Zeppelin’s “Black Dog” rang out. No way. Rock in Laredo? I couldn’t contain myself.
“Is Zeppelin actually on the radio?”
The man stood up and turned to me, holding a screwdriver. It was him, the Jorge Valdez I was looking for. Even after all those years, the youthful teenager shone out from the hardened lines of his face. His deep widow’s peak looked more pronounced with the straight, black, hair that fell around his face. A thick, black mustache coated his upper lip now, but damn it, it was Jorge.
He looked at me, his head cocked to the side. “You like Zeppelin?”
“Yeah. But I didn’t know anyone else down here did. I’ve only heard Tejano and cumbias and stuff.”
Smiling, Jorge placed the screwdriver in his front pocket and grabbed a towel hanging on the hood. He leaned casually against the truck as he wiped his hands.
“There’s a few of us down here who like rock. A group of us even get together and play, but we don’t get many gigs,” he said.
I smiled. And he played in a band? My mom’s cup of tea.
Then he asked, “How old are you, kid?”
“Sixteen.”
“Don’t know many sixteen-year-olds who like bands like Zeppelin. You guys are usually into that punk stuff.”
I didn’t know how to respond, so I just shrugged.
My mother had dated a guy once, Bob, who had worked for a rock & roll radio station. Each time she took me to the station, he’d introduce me to a new album of a different band: Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Aerosmith, The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix and the list went on. Bob was the only guy who had ever paid me much attention.
“So is that on the radio?” I asked.
He laughed, and it was his laugh that made me see why my mother had fallen for him. He was pretty handsome even for an old guy. “No, that’s a tape a cousin from Austin sent me.”
I replied with, “Cool,” just as he finished wiping his hands.
“So you come to the garage to just talk rock or can I help you with something?”
“Uh, yes, I think so. My name is Martha George. I’ve been looking for you.”
“Need a semi-good band for a gig?” he joked.
I took a second and licked my dry lips. “My mother is Rosa Gonzalez.”
As soon as her name hit the air, his shoulders stiffened for a second. His feet shuffled away from the car while he looked behind me as if expecting her to be there in the shadows. He was not the joking, relaxed guy he had been a moment ago. Jorge was on edge, a scared animal backed in a corner.
“Sorry, but I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do. You used to be her boyfriend in high school,” I said.
He laughed mockingly. “Look there were a lot of Rosa Gonzalezes at my school. And I had a lot of girlfriends.”
My face burned. “I only need a few answers, and then I’ll leave. I just want to know if you’ve seen or talked to her within the last few months.”
His mouth was set in a grim line, and his dark eyes looked at me with such anger. It was as if I was uncovering something he had tried to forget. What had just happened? One moment we were talking rock, he was being cool, and now he was lying to me. We stared at each other, neither one wanting to blink first. The chorus played and I caught the lyrics, Eyes that shine burning red . . .
“I don’t know who . . . ” he began.
“That’s bullshit. I know you know her. I saw homecoming pictures of you two at school. I know it’s you.”
He shuffled his feet some more and shook his head, looking like a mad child. “I haven’t seen your mother since high school.”
“Do you at least know why she left in the first place? What happened?”
“If you want to know why she left, ask her!” He turned away from me, but I stopped his movement short with my next words.
“If I knew where she was, I’d ask her. The only people who might tell me something I want to know are you and Carlita Juárez. And since I found you first, I’m here.”
His body slumped, and his arms hung at his sides. He refused to look at me. “Leave things in the past. Move on. Your mother did.”
My fists clenched at my side. “Thanks for the advice, cabrón. At least tell me where I can find Carlita Juárez.”
Jorge looked inside the front hood. “I don’t know anyone by that name.”
Whatever had happened with my mother had been big. It had to be. Jorge wanted to keep the secret just as much as Abuela and everyone else in my family did. But why? I didn’t know if he knew how to contact Carlita or not, but fuck it—this pendejo wasn’t going to help me. And to think, for a moment there I had thought he was cool. I turned around to leave.
“Don’t come back here,” he said softly.
“Gladly!” I yelled as I stomped past the other workers and the old man with the bushy mustache.
When Abuela returned home that night, I was already in bed. She opened the door and looked in on me, but my body was wrapped in blankets, turned away from her. I stared at the wall with so much anger that I’m surprised the crucifixes didn’t fall off and clatter to the floor.