A Small Prayer
I look at the money in my hand and bite my lip as I enter the dress shop, hoping that fifteen dollars is enough to hang up my worries for a night. I haven’t stopped helping Mamí and Daddy with the bills, but I’ve put away every other cent I could, only allowing for bus money. I didn’t want a homemade dress or hand-me-down from Victoria this time. I’m not ungrateful for my belly full of blessed food, or the bed Daddy built with his carpenter’s hands, but I want to own something that’s mine in the shared closet of my shared room in this shared house packed with 13 siblings, Mamí, Daddy, Tío Rudolfo, and Momo Alma. I love mi familia, but this is a chance for something to be mine.
Dress shopping is already hell. Dress shopping with three of my younger sisters when mosquitoes have shooed away the already sparse summer clouds, is worse than hell, it’s Texas. If the mosquitoes here aren’t blood-drunk around you, stomachs hanging low like sun-ripened peaches, you’re anemic. These hand fans did little to threaten these chupagente pests and even less to cool any of us down.
We’ve already been scared away from perusing the windows of two shops on Deleon Plaza and have had to head to the shops closer to the Guadalupe, closer to bloodsucker breeding grounds.
“Tengo caloooor,” Sophie and Ninfa whine in unison.
“Por qué las tra–” Angela tries to ask why we brought our youngest sisters before she is interrupted.
“English!” A beady-eyed shopkeeper yells from his perch in the center of the store. He hasn’t taken his eyes off my sisters or me since we entered, but the only other clothing store that doesn’t have a “No Mexicans” sign in the window is a mile away. Besides, we have always bought clothes from Doña Rosaria, and she has sucked her teeth in disapproval of my figure ever since she tailored my confirmation dress. Poking and prodding at my growing chest and hips. I can swallow racism in lieu of a shame that has taught me the exact price of womanhood.
“Sorry sir, my sisters need new dresses so they can find husbands at the dance!” Ninfa giggles as she brushes off the shopkeeper’s hostility.
“Oh hush up Ninfa,” Ángela elbows Ninfa to reinforce her warning. “At least I’m allowed to go to the dance. Plus,” she sashays, punctuating her declaration with her confident hips. “Our husbands will be finding us.”
It isn’t Ninfa’s fault that my parents are more protective over their youngest babies than they were with us. The oldest seven of us left school in the third grade to accompany our father in the cornfields, peach groves, or strawberry fields depending on the season. By the time Joe came along, Daddy was working as a carpenter full-time, and Mamí swore she was done having children just to send them to the fields, fingers still stubby with youth. Carpentry doesn’t pay well, but it's more consistent than picking, and it meant we didn't have to travel with Daddy to find work anymore. We were allowed to return to school the following fall, but, the oldest of us, more accustomed to labor than schoolwork, chose the greater independence that accompanied jobs.
Still, each of us kids was always free to roam when the sun did. We were. Until one day, Joe, the youngest and best of us, wasn't back for dinner. And when he wasn’t back at wash time, the oldest went out looking for him. We always tried to fiercely protect him because little Joey was like our baby too. It wasn’t like him to forget to call about being late or to miss Momo’s cooking.
With one hand Daddy stoically calmed Mamí as he dialed the police with the other.
“Well, what was he wearing?” asked the mustachioed officer.
Mamí bit her lip as Daddy looked away in shame.
“W-we don’t know. I helped my mom make lunch and my husband does work.” Mamí answered for both of them because her English was better. Ninfa helped translate any questions or important information.
For two days we didn’t give up looking for him, and for two days no one slept or ate. You could see in Daddy’s faraway gaze and Mamí wet eyes, that hope was waning. Every call, every knock could be the one to let us know that Joey was never coming back home.
On the third day, the knocks came. They found Joey in the Guadalupe River. Face-up and still clutching a toy in his hand. Still wearing his striped shirt and shorts with no signs of a struggle. Officers said he probably fell in the water and hit his head on a rock, but Momo said La Llorona saw how happy Joey was and wanted him for herself.
*******
Cornelio only sees the right world. A firework stole his left eye as a kid, and he’s lucky that’s all the capricious explosive took. This way, he can work at the shop with Estaquio, and I can see him whenever I bring Estaquio his bean and rice tacos straight from Momo’s stove and his drink straight from the icebox. But do I get fresh tacos and something cold to press against my neck as I work hard in the factory? No! Why? Because he is a “growing boy and works so hard, mijo deserves it.” Short answer? I am not a man.
“Llegas a casa antes de la luna.” I warn my brother in our native tongue before his white, sour-faced supervisor walks over, and I reflexively switch to English. “Daddy wants help with the radio before dinner. Gotta go, bye.”
I am usually so good at scurrying about undetected, but Sour Face was not doing paperwork in his office today. I turn into a deer mouse staring at the throat of a striking rattlesnake. Before I can turn to leave, I find myself bristling at the touch of the supervisor’s hands slithering around my backside. It is an open secret that no woman should be alone with him. Not me, not the wives of these working men, not their mothers or daughters. His sticky hands attract trouble, and no one can say anything, or men lose jobs and whispers haunt women around town.
“Sir,” Cornelio shoves a piece of metal into the supervisor’s face. “Does this piston look chipped to you?”
Sour Face huffs as his hand moves to push Cornelio away and Estaquio unclenches his fist from around the neck of his wrench. “Perez, this looks fine. Get back to work.”
Gracias, I mouth as I back out of the shop’s open garage door.
I appreciate so much about Cornelio. I appreciate the peace of his protection. I appreciate the deliberate way he meters his gaze. He knows how precious sight is and doesn’t want to waste it looking at noise. He doesn’t just see me, but it’s something more—he considers me. Like a cat studying a bird, not as prey, but because it wishes it could fly too.
I can only see the left world. I lost my right eye to diabetes, too many servings of frijoles fried in grease and all the burnt bits of whatever meat Momo made the day before, or too much pan dulce, or too much of everything that makes life worth living.
I’ve caught Cornelio’s glances before and returned respectable, close-mouthed smiles. Every look, a small seed planted, stalk taking root in my stomach, growing until I am all popcorn crunch heart, eager kernels waiting behind the silk of my lips.
*******
“Aurora, will you be going to the dance at The Westerner on Saturday?” Cornelio interrupts my daydreams as I walk back home after work. “Valerio Longoria is visiting with his grupo y Benny told me the accordion player es excelente.”
I look how I feel after a day of mixing and rolling masa. My baby hairs are vines crawling outward, and the rest of my hair is confined in a hairnet. A thin layer of vagrant flour covers every inch of my body, mixing with my sweat to form a sticky dough.
I give Cornelio a deliberate nod. “Yes, I’ll be going with Ángela, and Estaquio is taking Lupe. We are all riding over together.” How lucky that Ángela and I have already bought our dresses.
“Ah, bueno,” he rubs an oil-blackened hand on the nape of his already-splotched neck. Stubborn grease gathers in its creases. “I was thinking maybe you could save a dance for me if that’s alright with you?” He rubs his other hand on his stained cornflower blue mechanic’s jumpsuit.
Though it takes a few seconds to register what he is asking, some part of me has the good sense to lick my gritty lips and speak. “¡Sí, sí, I would like that very much!” I answer, a bit louder than I meant to.
Yet, his full-cob smile calms me.
“¡Bueno, bueno, muy bueno!” His hands clap in excitement, forming a prayer. “Then I will see you there, Aurorita.”
I do not feel butterflies in my stomach. Instead, something blossoms. I haven’t known that name, Little Aurora, since I was a child, but it doesn’t feel out of time or place fluttering out of his lips.
Cornelio is a sturdy man, but he is not tough. Not all machismo and testosterone. He hasn’t had the goodness beaten out of him or chased away. He is hardworking, a good man like Daddy, and I could only hope for a man like Daddy. He shows his love for Mamí with actions, and what more should I want than a man who proves he loves me every day?
*******
I had my Ángela brush out my hair just so to give it volume, and I asked Mamí if I could wear the earrings Daddy got her for their 15th anniversary.
“Ay, mija,” she cupped my face in her hands. “You do not have to try so hard, he is only a man.”
But, she brought out the wooden jewelry box Daddy built for her. As I touch the sanded-down edges, I remember how proud Daddy was of his little creation, confidently presenting Mamí with the box as she spread masa on damp corn husks.
“Geronima, it is not Navidad yet, pero I saw you looking at the velvet-lined one in the Sears catalog.”
With a flourish, he brought the box into her eyeline as I giggled into Mamí’s apron.
“Ay, Raymundo, it is better than the one in the catalog.” Mamí’s eyes twinkled as she touched the cloth liner. It wasn’t fancy, but it was borne out of love to be loved.
“Now, Aurora,” Mamí said as she fastened the earrings, “if you lose these . . .” Her face darkened for a second. “Well, just don't.” She kisses my forehead and turns to Estaquio, “And you, you watch your sisters. Particularly, I do not want your little friend making a woman out Aurora or a grandmother out of me.”
I gasped and felt my cheeks flush, but everyone else laughed, and Daddy shot me a cautionary glance.
“Everyone, just be safe okay.” She gently studies Estaquio’s face in her hands and makes mental notes of our outfits, no doubt remembering sending Joey out with a quick, inattentive kiss for the last time. “Okay, okay, have fun.” Mamí pats his cheek and shoos us away with a dish rag.
And we did have fun. Cornelio and I danced all night, calloused hand in calloused hand. Ángela danced with her pick of handsome men. Estaquio's hands rested on the small of Lupe’s back, and I don't think I once saw his eyes leave her face except to share sweet kisses. Everyone was sweaty and puffing by the end of the night, but everyone was smiling.
That night was the first dance of many for Cornelio and me. We danced at every dance we could. We danced all the way to going steady. Then, we danced all the way to swearing in front of Jesús y La Virgen to love each other in sickness and in health.
“This isn’t much, but with what I’ve saved up from the shop and your wages at El Rey, we’ll be able to afford a place of our own very soon. I promise you this,” my new husband assures me as he carries me past the threshold of the house he shares with his parents—we share with his parents.
It is modest, decorated with crosses on the wall and an image of Jesus side-by-side with a photo of Pope Pius XII, but it smells like a home well-lived in. Like the charred bits of a tortilla on the comal and fresh comino from the molcajete dropped into arroz con Pollo.
After he sets me down, he presents me with what looks like a few stalks of thorny bamboo. “This is not a gift to mark our wedding, but instead it is an extension of my vows to you.”
“Is this. . . a money tree? For prosperity in our new life?” I search his eyes for the answer but only find a wide grin.
“No, no, mi amor,” he pulls me into an embrace. “This is a rose bush. It may not look like much now, but these yellow roses will surprise you. Like our love, if you nurture it, it will bloom.” He plants a kiss on my forehead. “And bloom.” Then, my cheek. “And bloom.” Then, my waiting lips. “And bloom.”
I return his kisses with a smile, not the least bit concerned about tomorrow.
A simple life, two working eyes between us. That’s all I ask de Dios. He doesn’t have to take me away from the tortilla factory, from the fields I’ve tended, or from the river that murdered my brother. I see myself content in this life in the strong arms of a man who has promised me everything he can, nurturing an ever-lasting rose bush and a house full of children who will never have to carry our struggle on their tongues.
