Path to the Stars Page 2

  Not long after Laura was born, my father came home early one day and said he’d been fired. He’d been having trouble at his job, and now New Mexico State University didn’t want him to work for them anymore. At the time, I didn’t know what this meant, but when I was older, I came to understand that my father was fired because he hadn’t taken his job seriously enough. He would get to work late, or leave early, or not listen when his bosses told him what to do, so he’d make mistakes. He didn’t pay attention to details. In fact, he had been sloppy, which was dangerous since he worked with chemicals.

  In our tiny home with three young children, it was a tense time, though I didn’t know why. I thought Papá might stay home now and play with us. Instead, he spent his days at the library and much of the weekends at his sister’s house.

  Soon Tía Alma’s husband, Uncle Sam, helped my father get an interview at White Sands Missile Range. To everyone’s relief, Papá was offered a new job there as an analytical chemist. Now he got up early to take the bus to work. He left before Mario and I were awake.

  At age twenty-eight, being fired had made my father realize that he had to take responsibility for his family. He had a wife and three children who depended on him. He vowed that he would take this new job seriously. He got to the laboratory on time and worked hard. He took pride in his new position.

  Papá’s job at the missile range paid better than his old job, so my mother started looking for another house for us to rent, one not located on a busy street, with enough space for our family to grow.

  Mami had always warned us about cars, which was why we played in the arroyo and not in the street, but unfortunately, Manchas must not have been listening. Shortly after Laura was born, Manchas wandered onto the busy street and was hit by a car. Mario and I cried and cried, but there was nothing anyone could do, and Papá and Uncle Sam buried him in the desert.

  Soon after that, Mami told us she’d found a house in another part of town, on Griggs Street, which wasn’t even paved. It was close enough that we could still walk to our church and see our friends in the old neighborhood. Our new home had three bedrooms and a large backyard, with several trees big enough to climb.

  Mami felt at home on Griggs Street. From the moment we’d moved to New Mexico from South Dakota two years ago, she’d been happy to be back in a place where people spoke Spanish. Like us, most of our neighbors had friends and relatives who lived in Mexico. Now, in our third home in Las Cruces, she had a house roomy enough for our growing family. She thought we could stay there for a long time.

  In our new home, Mario had his own bedroom, and I shared a room with Laura. The weather was nearly always sunny, and people spilled out of their houses into the yards and the park down the street. My mother always had food ready for visitors, and she quickly made many friends.

  Mario and I made friends too. There were children everywhere. If you wanted to find someone to play with, you just had to go outside.

  After we moved to Griggs Street, my father bought a car to replace our old Ford, a used Rambler. We loved our new car, which was roomy and had a back seat that folded down. My father liked being able to drive to the missile range’s checkpoint. There he would park and catch a bus to his job, another twenty-six miles away on the other side of the Organ Mountains. Driving over the mountain pass would have put a strain on the engine, and my father didn’t want to wear it out. Besides, he liked reading the El Paso Times on the morning bus ride, though he read other newspapers in the library. He didn’t think much of the local Las Cruces Sun-News.

  My mother had a beautiful voice, and she sang when she was happy. After we moved to Griggs Street, I would wake up in the morning to hear her singing along to the radio. There were no Spanish language stations in Las Cruces at this time, so she listened to the Spanish radio stations from nearby Juárez, Mexico. I loved it when her favorite songs, such as “Qué rico el mambo” or “Cielito lindo,” came on. She would twirl Mario or me to the peppy music until we were dizzy, then scoop up baby Laura in her arms and dance around the kitchen, singing with joy about the rich mambo dance or someone she loved.

  Mami had an impish sense of humor, and she loved to play pranks. I remember she would go out on the roof to call for Mario or me when we were playing in the yard. We’d hear her voice, and before we realized where she was, she’d jump right down beside us, startling us. She’d laugh, so we’d know we weren’t in any trouble, and before we knew it, we’d be laughing too.

  Las Cruces was a very small town when we moved there. Most of the streets were unpaved. Vendors sold fruit and vegetables off horse- or mule-drawn carts, and stray dogs roamed free. When you wanted to make a telephone call, you would pick up the receiver and dial only four numbers to reach anyone. And when you had to mail a letter, you just wrote the family’s name and street address on the envelope. You didn’t need to bother with the city name or Zip Code if they lived in Las Cruces.

  To me, the days were like magic. My mother tried to make plans, but she was always hospitable when visitors appeared without warning and changed the shape of our day. On the weekends, friends and family would come over, and we would enjoy long afternoons that stretched into evenings of fun and food. Left to himself, my father would have passed the weekends reading, but he knew it was important to put down his book and spend time with our family and visitors.

  Papá was stricter than Mami was. When we misbehaved, Papá would sometimes spank us. I would cry loudly, even when I knew I’d been wrong or naughty. Papá was mean, I thought, even though I knew I loved him. But all the kids in our neighborhood got spanked sometimes.

  Mami didn’t spank us, though. Instead, if two of us were fighting, she’d lock us in the bathroom together, telling us not to come out until we were friends again. Mami knew we’d resolve our differences just to get out of that tiny room.

  Before long, I thought my mother must know every family in our neighborhood. She knew who needed help, whether it was a meal or baby-sitting or a trip to the store. She knew who was having a baby and needed a crib, and whose baby was sleeping in a bed now, so the family had a crib they could spare. Mami loved to cook for visitors. And I loved our close-knit community, where every day seemed to bring us friends and get-togethers.

  I especially loved birthday parties, where we all took turns swinging a heavy stick at the piñata hanging from a tree in the park or in someone’s yard. When one of the children finally succeeded in breaking open the piñata, we’d all swarm around to gather the candy that rained onto the ground. After the piñata, we’d have colorful birthday cake and ice cream, and my mother would serve her special punch: Kool-Aid mixed with 7-Up soda and slices of orange. Before everyone left, Mami would lead the guests in “Las mañanitas,” the Mexican birthday song, singing the verses as everyone else joined in on the chorus. Except for Christmas, I didn’t think anything could be better than a birthday party.

  Now that he had a reliable car, my father would drive to El Paso, forty-five miles away, to visit his father, Abuelito Mario. My father’s parents had divorced when he was eight years old, and my grandfather had started another family. My father dutifully visited him every two weeks. He’d take his mother, Abuelita Juanita, with him and drop her at her sister’s house before visiting my grandfather.

  El Paso was considered a big city compared to Las Cruces. A trip there was a treat for our whole family. We would cross the Mexican border into Juárez to shop for items that were priced lower in Mexico or not available in the United States. We would look in the big department stores in El Paso, like the Popular, which my mother loved for its fashionable clothing. Then we would sometimes visit Abuelito Mario before picking up my grandmother at her sister’s home. I loved our trips to the big city, but usually Papá went to El Paso with only his mother. When I was little, this didn’t bother me. Papá was gone most of the time, and I didn’t really understand the difference between his being at work and visiting his father. But when I was a little older, I too wanted to see my grandfath
er.

  I remember one particular Saturday when Papá told us we would all be coming with him to El Paso. Mami made sure we were wearing our best clothes, and I thought she looked beautiful in a flowered dress she usually saved for church. We piled into the car for the hour-long drive.

  On this visit, my grandmother didn’t come. We went shopping and then stopped by Abuelito Mario’s house to visit. But my grandfather and his family weren’t there, so we sat down on the front steps to wait.

  After a little while, my mother suggested that we leave, since it was getting late. My father said no. He said he always visited his father every other Saturday afternoon, so Abuelito Mario was expecting him and would surely arrive any minute.

  My mother could see that this visit was important to my father, and we ended up waiting several hours for my grandfather to show up. When Mario and I grew restless and began to complain, my mother let us explore the neighborhood, telling us not to go too far. We went around the block several times, investigating the houses, a church, and a small corner store. Finally, tired, we joined my parents and Laura on the front steps of my grandfather’s house, and as the shadows began to lengthen, Abuelito Mario, his wife, and their daughters finally arrived.

  By now, Mario and I were famished.

  If they had been visiting us, my mother would have served them an entire meal without even asking if they were hungry. But my abuelito and his wife didn’t seem all that interested in seeing us. We sat around awkwardly while Papá and his father talked. Even though we hadn’t eaten since breakfast, we children had to content ourselves with some cookies and a shared soda, and that was only after Mami asked.

  I was surprised that my grandfather’s family seemed to think we were a bother. When we visited with my cousins in Las Cruces or in Mexico, all of us would run around outside and play. But my grandfather’s daughters, who were my father’s stepsisters, were older than we were and didn’t want to play with us.

  On the drive home, my father kept talking about the visit with his wonderful father, and my mother didn’t say much at all, which was unlike her. It was as if Papá were describing an entirely different visit than the one we had just experienced.

  My mother was quiet on the car ride home, which was unlike her. Normally after a get-together, she would have discussed the people we had just spent time with and the things we had done that day. This time, she was being very kind and gentle with my father, not disagreeing with him, even though it was clear to me that my grandfather had not been excited to see us. I remember her saying “Sí, sí, sí,” agreeing when my father talked about how smart and wonderful my grandfather was.

  I thought my father wanted attention from my grandfather, that he was acting the way Mario and I did when we would say “Papá, Papá, Papá,” getting louder until he looked up from his book. That was not how Papá normally acted, and he certainly was not like that with his mother, my abuelita Juanita.

  We didn’t return as a family to visit my grandfather for many years. Although my father continued to speak reverently about his father, we didn’t stop at Abuelito Mario’s house when we went to El Paso to go shopping. As a result, I didn’t really get to know my father’s stepsisters. I was very curious about them, but my father rarely answered my questions.

  Papá still visited his father regularly, but we never asked to go with him. He always went without us, just as he’d done in the past. After that unwelcoming visit, Mami, Mario, Laura, and I stayed home.

  Mami, Papá, and me, 1960

  Mario and me, around 1960

  Chapter 2

  Preschool for Mario and Me

  The Spanish Baptist church, La Primera Iglesia Bautista, was not only our spiritual home, but also the center of our family’s social life.

  Many of our neighbors, and most other families we knew who were from Mexico, were Catholic. We were Baptist. My father’s family had converted to Protestantism in Mexico in the 1800s. When they fled Mexico during the revolution, they found a church home in the Spanish Baptist church in El Paso, Texas. My great-grandfather became a pastor there.

  My mother’s mother, Abuelita Leonor, had been widowed young. My mother’s father had been a Jehovah’s Witness, and in time, my grandmother explored other religions. When Mami moved to Juárez, she in turn investigated different churches that offered services in Spanish. She first met my father and his family at the Spanish Baptist church in El Paso on Valentine’s Day.

  When we moved to Las Cruces, the Spanish Baptist church had a full service that was all in Spanish, and my mother felt comfortable there. Most of my parents’ friends attended services at the church as well. One of my favorite photographs shows my mother, both my grandmothers, and two of my aunts at a meeting of the Women’s Auxiliary, a group of women who did volunteer work for the church. The photo was taken when my mother’s mother, who lived in Chihuahua, Mexico, visited us after Laura was born.

  The sanctuary in our church was small. The center was filled with pews, and there were three side rooms that served as overflow areas or makeshift classrooms. In the front, behind the choir’s pews and preacher’s pulpit, was the baptismal font. Behind the font was the vestry, a room where the choir robes were kept. That space was off-limits to children, so of course we were fascinated with it, and we made up crazy stories about what might be inside. If we got bored at the church when my mother was busy with auxiliary work or chatting with her friends during Bible study, we’d play in the nearby park.

  Even though our family and all of our neighbors in Las Cruces spoke Spanish, Mami had not forgotten what it had been like in South Dakota, when she couldn’t understand the language everyone else was speaking. My father spoke both English and Spanish well, and that was what my mother wanted for Mario and me.

  Mami had made friends with Hermana Amelia Díaz, a missionary who lived in a cottage on the church grounds. Hermana Díaz spoke English and Spanish and sang in a high, warbly, birdlike voice. She always wore her hair pulled back, and she seemed very strict. She spoke in polite, formal language, and unlike most adults I knew, she didn’t smile when she talked to children. I was a little scared of her.

  One spring day, not long after Laura was born, Mami invited Hermana Díaz over to our house. Mami set the table with her prettiest napkins and served her guest cake with lemon-yellow icing and coffee. Mami never drank tea. Tea made her think of her childhood in Mexico, when they were so poor that they couldn’t afford coffee. Instead, they had drunk tea, water flavored with dried herbs that my Abuelita Leonor had collected by the roadside. My mother always said that tea reminded her of being poor. Every morning, Mami relished her cup of coffee.

  Now Mami welcomed Hermana Díaz into our home with pride. The two women sat drinking their coffee, chatting about church and the neighborhood. Then Mami told Hermana Díaz that she had learned that the teachers at the local school, Bradley Elementary, would speak to us in English, not Spanish. Would Hermana Díaz be willing to teach English to Mario and me so we’d be ready when we started school?

  I knew that Mario would be starting first grade in August, a few months away. But I was two years younger and wouldn’t be in school for a long time as there was no kindergarden at Bradley in those days. I would have plenty of time to learn English with Hermana Díaz.

  Hermana Díaz looked thoughtful. She turned to my brother and me. “Are you willing to study and work hard?” she asked in Spanish.

  Mario and I just nodded. I felt too shy to speak.

  “Yes,” Hermana Díaz told Mami. She would teach us.

  We started preschool a few days later, in the morning after breakfast. The first day, Mami and Laura came with us, but after that, twice a week, Mario and I often would walk the three blocks to the church alone while Mami stayed home with Laura to start the day’s housework.

  At the time, Mario was six years old and I was four. No one ever questioned whether it was safe for my brother and me, young as we were, to walk around without an adult. Back then, it wasn’t unusual
for children as young as four to cross busy streets or to spend most of the day outside unsupervised. Even before they were old enough for elementary school, children were often sent to run errands several blocks away, buying groceries or even cigarettes for their parents.

  From the first day, I knew that school was serious. Hermana Díaz had set up a classroom in an alcove of the church. She had found a little desk with a bench just big enough for my brother and me to sit on side-by-side. On the desk were two Big Chief writing tablets—notebooks with a picture of a Native American wearing a feather headdress on the red cover—and fat pencils that were easy to grip. There was an American flag in the corner of the room and, in the center, a blackboard easel with new sticks of white chalk and an eraser. Hermana Díaz had a chair so she could sit down while she worked with us.

  Hermana Díaz was born in San Antonio, Texas, and she wanted us to be as proud of our American citizenship as she was of hers. On the first day, she told Mario and me that we would begin by saying the Pledge of Allegiance. I didn’t know what that was.

  Speaking in Spanish, Hermana Díaz told us to face the flag with our hands over our hearts. Confused, I put both hands on my chest.

  Hermana Díaz reached over and adjusted my right hand so that it squarely covered my heart. She gently pushed my left hand down to my side. “Repeat after me,” she said in English. Then she said the words in Spanish.

  “I pledge allegiance to the flag . . .” she started, not stopping until Mario and I could both say the unfamiliar words in both languages.

  Even after Hermana Díaz taught us the Pledge of Allegiance, I didn’t know what it was for or why it was so important. I had never heard my parents recite the pledge, so I figured it must have had something to do with learning English, even though I didn’t really understand the difference between the two languages. We knew Papá spoke English at work, but Spanish was still the only language used in our home.