From Catalina…with Love

My memories of that day are like shadows. I sit on a low wooden bench in our house. It’s a big wooden house, with many rooms. People walk slowly around me. People without faces or names, lots of sad people, walking and talking in low voices. Someone stops to pat my head. Someone picks me up and sits me on their lap and talks to me. Someone takes my small hand in theirs and moves around, from room to room. Each room is crowded with other sad, quiet people. There was the main bedroom, my parents’ room. No one took me there. People were loud there. Crying hard and banging on the door. But no one dared open it. I couldn’t find my mother or father. I couldn’t find my brothers or sisters. Where were they? Were other people sitting them on their laps, stroking their hair, whispering into their ears? Mario, Esperanza, and Manases were older than me, so they probably knew what was happening. And Felicia was just a baby. This day, this day that weighs so heavily on me all these decades later. Amongst my siblings, we have never spoken about it. Yet I am sure this is the day our lives cracked open in such a terrible way. The day our papa died. The day we lost my father is the day my memories begin. I was three years old. My father was 33. My memories continue in their strange, shadowy way. Some shadows have more shading than others, some are steely gray. Mario, Esperanza, Manases, and Felicia fall into the grey then -- I cannot even make out their outlines. Even Mama doesn’t emerge from the grey. I cannot see, smell, or feel her as a young woman. Things come into focus at the river behind our house. We’d fetch water for drinking and bathing. We’d walk out the back door and down the narrow path. The path was alive with wildflowers growing on both sides, blues deeper than the sky, pinks and reds that made me want to giggle. I loved that little path. The river was a different story: I was attracted to it and terrified of it at the same time. It looked and sounded so friendly but I feared entering it alone. I was afraid of whatever could be underneath. Whenever it rained hard, the river swelled and the water churned brown. I loved sitting there and looking at the big brown river snake slowly downstream. I felt peaceful there, watching it. When I was tired of crying, I would walk down the narrow path to the river. I’d lie down in the green and refreshing bushes and fall asleep. After a while, I’d wake up listening to the sound of the water, melodious and peaceful, as it flowed downstream. Whenever my siblings were looking for me, they knew where to find me. I went there also when I ran from my mother after stealing sugar from her little container hanging high up above the stove. I loved the river but I hated fetching water for the house. I tried to balance the wooden container on my head but it was so heavy. At night, we all shared the same container and the same water to wash our faces and our feet. I hope we all did our faces before our feet!