Otila Macías Rosales. Wife to Alfredo Ramón Rosales, owner of Morales Funerales, “At Your Service.” Otila stands four-feet ten to the listener’s five-nine. Otila does not wear heels, an affectation, she says. She never has, and assures the listener that she, Otila, does not suffer “the short person syndrome.” The listener understands all of this perfectly well. The listener and Otila graduated from Klail High eighteen years ago.
Good to see you! (She laughs) Mrs. Rosales, at your service, and married these fifteen years. (More laughter) Macías, as you know, on my father’s side. Old don Cayetano, known to all as don Tano, the Tight-Rope Walker, and Morales on my mother’s side. She was the daughter of the famous third baseman, Down Town Morales, who was the best infielder Klail City has ever produced. I’m also a Parás, on my mother’s side, and she, then, was a younger sister to don Orfalindo Buitureyra y Parás, pharmacist and propietor of The Herb Shop, El Porvenir. What they now call a Botánica … We are from Klail, Klail-ites or Klail-ilians. Just like you. I heard you been going around talking to people, and I thought I’d give you the family facts, ha!
You may not know that my uncle don Orfalindo, despite his age, knew Jehu very well, and closer when Jehu first went to work at the Bank. Bright, well-educated, is how my uncle described him. And he would say that drunk or sober, and that is saying something.
It is well-known, as Reverend Mora says, all of us as God’s children are as fragile pieces of crystal. It is also well-known, I say, that my uncle used to go off on some serious parrandas; those drinking bouts were long and prolonged. Why, his fame and theirs, the parrandas, covered all of Belken County, extending to Dellis County. This is hardly something to brag about, but then there’s no reason to deny an incontrovertible fact, is there? I don’t put on airs about anything, and my husband, Alfredo Ramón, always says this about me. We’re fragile, and my late uncle don Orfalindo stood at the head of the line.
My Alfredo Ramón, born and raised in Flora, where the hardy people come from, as he says, hired, some while back, a sepulturero, a burier, that some people called Ecce Homo. Did you ever hear of him? That isn’t his name, you understand. His name is Damián Lucero.
Well, now, this Damián was a farm hand from Up River, and he worked as a gravedigger, like I said, a burier, but he could also embalm, if called upon. He’s still alive, and he’s older than the Holy Mother Church of Rome … As old as he is, he works at the same bank Jehu Malacara works, the Bank.
Ecce Homo is a man of discretion, judgment, and also a man of few words. He says he owes his job to Jehu. Jehu, though, says and tells him otherwise. Jehu says that Damián Lucero works at the Bank because he’s a good mechanic and that’s why he’s paid. I happen to know that Ecce Homo was a friend of Jehu’s father, out in Relámpago, and that’s a truth the size of a whale.
And I can tell you this, too. Ecce Homo buried Jehu’s parents, first the mother, then the father, and Ecce Homo groomed and watered the two small plots for years. And for free. That’s the truth.
After a lifetime of work here and there, and in and out of the farm fields, Ecce, I mean Damián … Damián did not have enough quarters for Social Security. So now, with his job in Noddy Perkins’s bank, Damián Lucero receives his social security, and he works, too. I swear that I am not the smartest person in Klail, but I think I can see Jehu’s hand in all of this. Back when you and I were kids, there was a line in a tango by Gardel which ran, “ … si precisás un amigo …,” if you should need a helping hand …
So let me tell you, that Jehu Malacara married that divorced girl is a good thing, a great thing. My husband says she’s a fine person, despite the divorce, and why shouldn’t she be, right? Is a divorce the worst thing that can happen to a woman? You can forget that. There are worse things in life, many-many worse things. My husband Alfredo Ramón also says she works for a living, and is employed by doña Viola, that she went to college like you, and that she’s nice, and that people say she is.
As far as I’m concerned, all of that, to me, is as fine a recommendation as you can get. On that account, and from what one hears and sees, the divorce matter means absolutely nothing. If the Church has a worry, let the Church worry about it, if it wants to. Better yet, the Church’s priests who come to the Valley, should come prepared to speak Spanish, YESSIR. I say this with some heat, because once in too many whiles they’ll send us some Irishman or a French guy, and worst of all, one of the damned Spaniards whose tongues, I swear on St. Elmo, Patron Saint of Sailors, I swear those Spaniards have tongues that just don’t seem to fit in their mouths. So they send that type, old Church, old Church, old Church. Irish, French, Spaniards, whatever. Divorce is bad, yes, it is terrible, but it is also human, isn’t it? I mean, animals don’t divorce … so what do they recommend? Prayer and reconciliation. That’s what comes from not being married, don’t you think? Que recen ellos, nosotros a trabajar. That’s what my father used to say: Let them pray, as for us, we got to work …
Anyway … who understands those gachupines? I bet even they don’t understand each other. As for the French, well! And the Irish? They can say what they wish, but that’s not English, is it?
May God forgive me, but I only go to Mass to go. I lost my religion along the way, and I like what Jehu said one day when he brought Damián Lucero for a visit.
“All you have to do is believe, have faith. Everything else, what they demand, that has nothing to do with believing.”
How about that? That’s the type of advice I can live with.
My Alfredo Ramón says Jehu is right. I do too, and that’s why I think that he must be something special. Got to be.
He’s firm; firme. He’s there at baptisms, marriages, and burials. He knows a lot of people, and they know him back. And now that he’s married, his wife’s kids go out with him from time to time.
I was raised in the old-fashioned way, and I think that people who come through in a pinch are special people. When my uncle don Orfalindo passed on some two years ago, Viola Barragán and Jehu attended the funeral and brought wreaths, flowers, and I’m talking about fresh-cut flowers, none of that paper stuff or those plastic ones, either.
Of course, everybody in the world knew that my uncle was madly in love with Viola, but one of those far-away loves, nothing to it. A theoretical love, you know? It was one-sided, and yet Viola, not once, laughed or said a word. That would’ve hurt my uncle. Oh, I know he was a sad, ridiculous figure and all that, and who knows? Maybe in his old age he began to believe that he had poisoned Viola’s first husband on purpose … He didn’t; he was an apprentice pharmacist at the time, and he had no business concocting anything for anybody …
You know, he would’ve died of happiness had he known that Viola had come to his funeral, but that water has gone out to the Gulf and back since that time.
As you know, my husband and I work together. Not in the body business, but in tailoring. I’m a tailor. A tailoress? Whatever; I design, cut and sew dresses, blouses, all kinds of skirts, and I can fix up coats and such. I can do anything. And, because of the tailoring, that’s how I came to know Becky Malacara. And I also got to know her tastes, her preferences.
She knows material, too. Knows what it’s all about. Cashmere this, or Indian wool that, or cotton, Egyptian and Pima, she knows. Better than that, she knows what she wants. First class in clothes. Buys only what’s necessary, not a waster but not a haggler, either. Judges quality, can distinguish. And she knows how to treat a person.
As for shoes, well, I don’t know the first or the last thing, and that’s the truth. She does. And as I said, when it comes to quality goods, she knows what that’s about. Well, when she sent that shrimp trawler called the Ira Escobar to the bottom of the boat basin, and then turned around and married Jehu, that should’ve shown that she was no fool.
And listen to this: Her mother, doña Elvira, for years, has come by car, from Jonesville, so I can fit her up. Her tastes are somewhat exotic, know what I mean? I was learning the trade then; you remember doña Elenita? Now there was a seamstress … Anyway, Becky would show up with her mom, and she must’ve picked up her knowledge then.
There’s some raza in the Valley with more money and time, but they lack the mesura … the touch and feel. Why, not even Sammie Jo can beat her, and that red-head’s no cow, right?
Take silk. It’s a delicate fabric. A treacherous piece of material, and Becky can wear it. That comes from knowing what goes with a body … she’s something like doña Viola, who can wear a box suit better than anyone I know or have seen on the television.
The listener had heard, from other sources, that Becky Malacara was a spendthrift. Otila Macías Rosales’s words give the lie to that report. What the informant also stated, “Her children dress nicely, but not tailor-mades; that’s silly,” is also revelatory.