And so, my mama had me after she had started playing grandmother. She loved me and I loved her very much, but we had our problems. I remember how, unable to cover me in flounces and bows, she insisted on dressing me up like a little Spanish lord, in outfits she made herself. But I was anything but lordly. And I was not at all Spanish, either, though she insisted on clothing me in little embroidered suits copied from the latest magazines from Madrid.
To her dismay, I was always covered in food or dirt, or in dog, cow, or horse crap. My knees were always grazed, and my blond hair was stiff and dark with mud. The snot that hung from my nostrils never bothered me. The handkerchief embroidered with my name, which my mama stuffed into my pocket every day, I used for everything except wiping my nose. I don’t remember this, but they say I preferred eating beetles to the chicken or beef liver the nanas made for me—on my mother’s orders—so that my cheeks would color pink.
Now that I’m a father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, I admit I wasn’t an easy child to deal with. Much less manipulate.
My mama complained all her life that, after I finally learned to speak, my favorite words were no, I do it, and not fair; that no sooner could I walk than I started to run; that once I mastered traveling at speed, I climbed every tree that appeared in front of me. She did not know what to do with me. She felt too old and thought she had already done her job as a mother with her two grown-up daughters, who were almost perfect.
She had a girl who was the apple of her eye, she would say: for my elder sister Carmen, it has to be said, was beautiful. When she was little, my mama curled her blond hair and took pleasure in people calling her an angel, a darling, a beauty. Later, Carmen broke half the hearts in town, first when she left for Monterrey as a student and then when she married. Married and living elsewhere, she never mentioned it, but I know my sister was embarrassed that the legend of her beauty was kept alive on the town’s streets. For years, my mama kept the countless letters of eternal love and slushy verses from all the unrequited admirers Carmen had, before and after she married. Anyone would think they had been written to my mama from the way she treasured that pile of papers like trophies and showed them off at any opportunity.
She would also say that she had a girl who was the apple of her ears, because my other sister, though pretty, was distinguished more by her voice. My mama would make Consuelo sing to anyone who came to visit, and her melodious voice always received praise.
“She has the voice of an angel!” they all said.
I’ve never heard angels sing, but I suppose it was true: my sister possessed an angel’s voice. What few people knew was that behind that voice she hid a demonic temper. Not even at the worst of times did she lose her melodious tone, of course, and her every sentence was pure poetry. She could say, Don’t come near me, you flea-ridden brat, you’re disgusting, and still sound like an angel to Mama’s ears. I’m telling him fairy tales, she always replied when mama asked what she was saying to me.
I didn’t much care what she said, for she was a stranger who did not really belong in my world. For years she was like one of the witches from those fairy tales; I knew she was using her voice to enchant everyone, to make them believe she was good and sweet as an angel, especially my mama.
I was one of the few who was immune to her charms. My mama couldn’t understand why I didn’t fall head over heels for my sister whenever she visited. She could not comprehend why I preferred to spend the day far away, or why, when I was sent on a visit to Monterrey, I would choose to stay at my elder sister Carmen’s house. Your sister’s such a good girl, so nice, so sweet, my mama would say to me, attempting to soften or improve our relationship.
There were two angels in the family, and there was the boy, which was me. When my mama talked about me, she would say, as if apologizing, This is the boy. Or, He’s the runt. She never said that, in me, she had the son of her dreams. She would never have had the audacity, or perhaps it never occurred to her. Ay, Dios! she would say all the time. I can’t remember ever bumping into my mama in the halls of my house, in the courtyard, dining room, or kitchen, without her letting out a loud sigh. Ay, Dios, she would say, blowing out a little, just look at that hair, that snot, those clothes, look at how dirty he is, how untidy, how suntanned, I’m too old for this, ay, Dios! Before long, her sighs shortened. Gradually it became just the Ay, Dios!, then just Ay!, and then not even that: a snort.
I was always noisy, my voice shrill. My body was a refuge for every tick, flea, or louse that needed a home and sustenance, so there was little point in my mama letting my blond curls grow. Out of necessity, I was always close cropped. Like an orphan boy.
Ay, Dios! Sigh.
If I had been entirely in the care of my mama, I might have ended up wearing more bows than my sisters. Circumstances saved me from this fate, because my papa, who was a grandfather before I was born and had resigned himself to working the land only to bequeath it to his sons-in-law, would not allow anyone to turn the son who had arrived so late in his life into a wimp. And while he had never interfered in his daughters’ upbringing, from the moment he learned a male had been born to him, he began confronting my mama about mine. He was well aware there was no place for the fragile in our land and in our time, with war surrounding us and sometimes coming to visit.
Those confrontations with my papa must have troubled her. She adored him, which was strange for a wife of almost forty, so she took a step back from my hands-on upbringing to keep the peace. My papa, meanwhile, had neither the time nor the inclination to be responsible for me, first because he did not know what to do with a baby or a little boy, and later because he spent his time going here and there, supervising and defending the cattle ranches in Tamaulipas and the orchards in Nuevo León.
Nonetheless, I had many arms just for me. My Nana Pola would leave me with the cook, Mati, who would hand me over to Lupita, the washerwoman, who would drop me off with Martín, the gardener, who after a while would leave me in the good company and care of Simonopio. He didn’t pass me on to anybody until night fell and someone came out of the house asking where the boy was.
6
Wings That Covered Him
Simonopio’s arrival was an event that marked us irreversibly. A family watershed. Later, it became the difference between life and death, though we would not understand this until we looked back on it from far in the future.
My papa would berate himself for the rest of his life for how he reacted when he first saw Simonopio.
I suppose that, as well traveled, well learned, and well enlightened as he felt, he had not completely thrown off the superstition that existed in a town not far from a community of witches. And perhaps the situation that day had weakened his conviction: first the empty rocking chair, the missing nana, the certainty of her death, the search among the surrounding bushes that extended ever farther from the house; then the discovery, the talking nana, the warlike swarm from the apron-swaddled hive; and finally a newborn baby with a disfigured face, wrapped in the nana’s shawl and a living blanket of bees.
As far as first impressions go—and first impressions are always important—Simonopio, as the nana insisted he be baptized in spite of my parents’ and the priest’s objections, had not made the best. The campesinos asked their master to leave the monstrosity there, under the anacahuita, by the side of the road.