The Women in My Life

Monday, March 06, 2006

They are proof texts for continuing to believe that grace overcomes form, destiny, curses and bad luck.

There are the twins, the youngest of seven. Their mother is a foul-mouthed angry woman who grew up in a household of foul-mouthed angry adults. (I once overheard their mother refer to them as “pendejas estupidas,” one of the grossest epitaphs). This was when the girls were five years old. Their aunts and uncles who live on the Mexican side of the border are small-time drug traffickers, human smugglers and thieves. The twins do not curse, traffic in drugs, smuggle undocumented people across the International Bridge, or steal. They spend a lot of energy seeking affection and being little girls. As far as I can tell, they are not beaten or sexually abused. I do worry about what will happen to them when they turn fifteen. For the past two years the younger of the twins has been leaving me small notes that say things like “Father, you are beautiful” and "the Father is kind and funny."

There is Berenice. She is standing next to her mother, Nicolasa. Nicolasa is variously cursed—her husband was murdered eight years ago, she suffers with a hyperthyroid, and she is an “illegal alien.” She is legally blind. Berenice lives in a small travel trailer with her mother, a step father (who, while a drunk and quite lazy, is also kind and respectful), her older sister and her younger brother. The trailer that serves as home was a generous gift of the Catholic Daughters of Texas.

The family rents a small space beside a tumbling down house that has attracted renters that cause Nicolasa constant concern and consternation. Berenice somehow floats about it all, with a gentle smile and a gracious presence that belies her mother’s iron will and the precariousness of her home. When Berenice spies me, she comes running and leaps into my arms. She does this even in the midst of dozens of her friends and classmates, which, as she is a quiet, shy child, is moving to me. She often asks me why I have no hair, and worries about this.

Analeli is dressed in pink. She is the thinnest child in the neighborhood and her smile perhaps the brightest. Analeli’s mom had the bad luck to end up pregnant after beginning a doomed relationship. She managed to cross the Rio Grande unobserved by the Border Patrol, and showed up at our church office eight years ago, filled with Analeli who was bursting to get out of her mother and into her very own life. I do not know if anyone has ever met Analeli’s father. On the other hand, we all know and love the family that took Analeli’s mom in and made them a part of the family. For the first three years of her life, Analeli shared the sofa in this family’s living room. This arrangement didn’t seem strange or even inconvenient to anyone. It was what you do for a mother and child that God drops into the family’s lap.