The Morenos pt. 3

The next morning, someone knocked on my bedroom door before sunrise. It was Sabina and Cruz’s son, José. Though I hadn’t seen him at the family gathering the night before, I instantly recognized him from Minnesota, from Lakewinds, the grocery store where we both worked. I didn’t know him well, but it was still José.

José who worked in the produce department.

José who religiously cleaned the lettuce every day except for Saturday.

José who I remembered to be quiet and whom I had suspected of pretending not to speak English.

(I have since found out that he actually doesn’t speak English.)

José said he’d woken me so that we could climb to the top of the peña – the rock I had heard so much about and glimpsed the night before -- and that we’d better get an early start since the sun would be too hot come midday.

We walked out the door with his dog in tow and a roll of toilet paper in my hand and headed toward the volcanic rock.

It took an hour (without a bathroom break, so the toilet paper was a waste) to scale. Most of the climb was walking, and we only used our hands to climb the steep rock at the very top. We didn’t speak, I was out of breath and José’s quiet anyway. I was scared but filled with adrenaline, the drug that quelled the fear and propelled my body up the face of the rock.

Out of breath and tired, we reached peña’s peak, and sat, looking out over the puebla. To the east, I saw a coalmine, to my right, there was a shrine on the mountain for those who had died on it.

I felt like I should say something like “We made it!” But instead the silence of the rock froze me and I did not know what to say to my companion. I began to feel out of place, like I had blindly journeyed with someone and had forgotten to ask their name and then arrived, only to sit in silence.

I had known Jose, but I had known him in another life in a snowy city where we worked together in a grocery store. I hadn’t been friends with Jose. We were cordial at work and I would ask him for bruised apples to take home for free, but other then that, we had never really talked.

For me, Jose was one of the hundreds of faceless, nameless Mexican workers we see in every city in America.

And now I was next to him, alone on some magical rock in the middle of the Mexican desert. My mind began to spin. I wanted to ask him questions about his journey home and if he liked it here and what he missed most about Minnesota. But before I could say anything, I looked over at José and noticed that he had covered his face with his cowboy hat and fallen asleep. I took his picture.

After a while, José awoke and began to walk down the mountain. I followed in silence.

When we got home, he said he had to go to work – selling water – and said he’d drop me off with Araceli and Jorge.

Araceli worked nights with me at the Lakewinds. I knew Araceli as the kind of woman who, instead of showing pain or fatigue, exhibited endurance and courage with a laughing grin. She had a lot of energy to clean and cook at work and I knew she had two kids at home to care for.

Her husband, Jorge was a goofball. He dubbed the white dishwasher at Lakewinds, Paul, “Pablo,” and often mocked the management’s strict rule of writing the name of the salad on top the dish by labeling tuna salad “spaghetti,” enchiladas as “tomato soup,” and so forth.

Araceli worked nights and Jorge worked days and they made it work. They bought a house, and in the sixteen years they lived in Minnesota, had three children who went to public schools.

I found Jorge, Araceli and their three children digging out a dirt hole alongside a dirt road in the desert.

When I saw them, I felt excited right away, like I could not possibly say or ask enough. I shed the dissonance I had felt with Jose and talked and talked and talked.

I updated them on others we had worked with, I told Jorge that Paul/Pablo, who is developmentally disabled, had been moved out of the kitchen since he had problems focusing after Manuel left and was now Lakewinds’ janitor. I asked about their children, I told them about my family, and, at last, I saw the baby that had grown inside of Araceli’s belly while we worked together.

His name is Joshua and he is almost four. He looks exactly like Jorge.

It took only an instant to realize that life was not easy for Jorge and Araceli in Bernal. They explained to me that they were in debt to the person who had smuggled them across the border so long ago, and that the coyote had confiscated their house long ago. The hole that they were digging was to become their house.

The Morenos, pt. 2

I decided to visit the Morenos after I was settled in Guanajuato. In the weeks pending my visit, I read about Bernal and daydreamed about seeing Araceli’s children again. I realized that the baby boy who kicked in her belly while we worked at Lakewinds would be three.

There is not much on the internet or in travel books about Bernal: it is tiny. The town has received some attention in the past few years, though, because Mexico’s new age-ers have identified the volcanic rock in the town as having healing energy. (see: http://www.mexico-with-heart.com/2003/the-magic-of-bernal/) When I did read about the town, words like “magical” and “healing” came up.

I suppose this is all to say that I had no idea what to expect from Bernal.

I took a bus from Guanajuato to Queretaro and then another bus to a town outside of Queretaro and then asked a taxi driver to bring me to Bernal, which I expected to be a few miles away. Forty minutes later I arrived at the state prison. The taxi driver had heard penal instead of Bernal.

After paying the driver a sum unheard of as far as rural Mexican taxi drivers go and winding through the desert for another hour, I arrived in Bernal.

The taxi let me out in the center square, and I stood and looked around, tired and confused and not sure how to carry my recording equipment, backpack and the flowers I had picked up to give Manuel’s mother.

Manuel’s only instructions had been to arrive in Bernal and ask for his mother, Sabina Jiminez.

I asked the first person who walked by where Sabina Jiminez lived. The person whom I asked (who I’d later be formally introduced to) told me that Sabina was her cousin and brought me to the gates of the Jiminez home. I rang the doorbell but no one answered. I sat on the curb outside of the door and prepared myself for a wait.

A few minutes later, an old man opened the door. I asked “Sabina Jiminez?” and he smiled and waved me inside. Manuel had never told me that I’d be visiting his father too.

I’ve since found out that Sr. Moreno was absent for much of the family’s upbringing – he drank too much and rode a mule an hour a day to get to the family’s farm outside of town, where he sometimes slept. A few years ago he had a stroke, and he hasn’t been able to speak clearly since.

He showed me inside. I asked him what his name was and he pointed to the crucifix on the wall.

“Jesus?”

He crossed his opposing index fingers and muttered.

Cruz. Cruz Moreno.

He looked like Manuel. He dressed the way elderly men sometimes do in the states, wearing a cardigan and slippers, only he also wore a cowboy hat. He sat down and pointed me to the garden, the horse, the kitchen and the bedrooms. The house consists of several rooms that the Morenos have spent the past fifty years building from wood and concrete, there are no hallways, and a tropical garden is in the center of the compound. I had chosen the wrong gift: the carnations I brought were pale compared to the orchids.

I didn’t know what to say to a man I had never met who could not speak. I smiled, we sat together waiting for Sabina.

Sabina arrived with dinner and half of the town in tow. I was not petted or admired. I was not chased around or stared at. None of the things that happen to the Hollywood movie white girl when she lands at an unknown third world location happened to me. The Morenos and their cousins and friends just asked me a lot of questions and then carried on with their conversation, they offered me food and I helped to cook. I felt, almost instantly, at ease.