T. M. Wong

Julieta

She once carried ten children on her back - eleven, if you count me.  Five daughters and three sons had grown, married, and set off on their own. Two had died in infancy. All that remained was me. 

At five-foot-nothing, she was la mujer más fuerte de todo el mundo…and a conjurer. She could take ten bucks, wield her spatula, and turn out a week’s worth of sustenance for three bellies, and with a needle and thread, her hardened hands could craft an entire dress or a pair of pants, one leg always slightly tighter than the other, in the blink of an eye. With a ninth grade education, there was nothing she couldn’t do. By day, she nourished my body and mind, kept me alive; after sundown, she kept herself alive, standing up, nightly, to the hops-and-Winston-Red-breathing dragon - mujer valiente.

She was all-knowing, and she divulged me in her sagacity. She taught me how to command a needle, how to balance the heat and flavor of tomate, cebolla, and jalapeño, and how not to point at rainbows, lest I should grow a wart on my finger. I challenged her, often, on that last one. 

“Like this, grandma? Like this?” I’d thrust my index finger toward the rainbow with skepticism and defiance, and she’d meet that defiance with a slap and a scowl.

#

There endures, graphically, in my mind, a day of marked change, one that embarked with the paltriness of a Tuesday. It began with my grandmother’s quintessential breakfast of popcorn egg, sprinkled with government cheese. 

“Mija! The potcorn egg is ready!”

“It’s pronounced ‘popcorn’, grandma.” 

I would later learn, with great discomfiture, that the rest of the world called this style of egg “scrambled.”   

#

As the day began to slacken, I sat by the half-hexagonal window in my grandmother’s bedroom and watched as the sun found its resting place behind the mountains, streaking the sky with pinks, purples, and oranges with its final yawn. The rustle of raw pinto beans shaking loosely in a cardboard box broke me from meditation.

My grandmother opened the box, and both of our eyes grew in brightness as she extracted the cards and laid them out. Their colorful illustrations against my grandmother’s white bed linens mimicked the southwestern evening sky against brown peaks. I carefully selected my game card. I was always drawn to the ones that had El Diablito, La Calavera, La Muerte, or El Borracho on it. 

She called out the familiar names, card by card. Time dissolved with the deck.

“La Sirena…El Valiente…La Mano…El…” her spellbinding chant was disrupted by the slamming front door.

He was home.

“¿Que chingado haces? ¡Tengo hambre!” 

His hand flew down like a pigeon darting for bread crumbs. His exasperated flap sent happiness flying across the room, and my stomach sank with each bean that jumped onto the floor. I scrambled to retrieve the beans and followed them beneath the bed. I sheltered the beans in my fists as I watched his scuffed wingtips stomp passionately on the eggshell laminate tiles. His feet drew closer to hers, and something propelled me to stand between them. I left the beans to scatter.

They hovered over me like hot-breathed giants, nostrils flaring, their eyes cracked and red and locked in on one another’s. I searched his face for the kind and gentle grandfather that would sit me on his lap and ask for a kiss on the cheek in exchange for candy, but all I found was spit that reeked of his habits, tobacco and tincture, mixed in his blue and silver cans, escaping his mouth through the gap of his missing two front teeth - a window into his violent fog. The putrid rain muddied my innocence. 

They noticed not the tiny presence between them, though I pushed with all my might to get her to back away.

“Just agree with him!” My voice drowned amidst the wrath.  

“Limpia esta casa! Está todo cochino!” This was one of his common complaints.

“¿Y tu que? ¿Tu que haces para la familia? ¡Perdiste el negocio por la bebida!”

She had always stood her ground, always on the defense, but this was new.

I stepped out from between them and backed away. My eight-year-old mind saw what his yellowed eyes could not.

I watched as he clenched his fist, preparing to send a message, “This Bud’s for you,” but before he could deliver it, her jaded hands thundered against his chest. His wingtips danced atop the beans as he fell against the wall, and each time he tried to rise, she pushed, and pushed, until she sent him flying out the front door, and down the porch steps.

#

Now, when I stand at her bedside, her hand shakes like loose beans in mine. She appears frail, as he did that night, two decades ago. His body thinned from a steady diet of liquid and fumes, and he continued to diminish, quickly, after that night, until he vanished. 

If I close my eyes, I can still remember her as she was when she slayed the dragon, strong and resilient, her mind a treasure to be uncovered, but she is now lost at sea, washed away by corrosion and years of selflessness, unable to recall her own name.