Illuminated Manuscripts, Part I

Atu bisabuelita Carmen se la llevaron en un caballo. Tu bisabuelo Aurelio fue al rancho y le dijo, ‘ámonos. Y la subió al caballo y se la llevo para casarse con ella. De veras. Pregúntale a tu mama.

Figure 1.

My great-grandmother, Carmen Lopez with my grandmother Angelica by her side. Other children in the photo are unknown.

And a story you’d known in your body but had not heard until now — the fairy tale come to life — animates the dead.

The gaps in the memory helix are filled in by corrupted data: cinematic colonial fantasies of rustic Mexico, the romance of the hacienda obscuring a disappearing and brutal past. The coppery-dark sheen of the photo transmits: Carmen, young and serene as the moon, shining back your own face, high cheekbones, long soft nose, strong square jaw, thick hair. Your hands are her hands, holding a child. You stare into her face and for a brief half-moment, feel the heat of a different day, a breeze on her long brown back, sweating in the sun, in the field, her thick black hair gathered into a long braid falling along one shoulder as she bends to pick a boll of cotton in a white huipil and huaraches. Then, hoofbeats; a tremor in the earth. She rises, scans the distance, where Aurelio is riding along a rift in the land known to swallow women.

This will have to do—bisabuela never had any stories about her life to tell. Instead, she lived for the dreams of her daughters. Instead, she wept. She wept at dawn in her pastel floral nightgown, she wept all day in the kitchen, ever praying: perdóname señor y protégelos, guárdalos, no los desampares, enséñales buen camino, y cúrala diosito, llévame en su lugar, tan joven y la niña tan chiquita, y Silvita siempre trabajando tanto para quedarse sola, ay dios. And she wept into all the pots, the masa, the basil plants she gathered to sweep along her grandchildren’s hair.

Why did she beg so much for forgiveness? For the daughter by her side, whom she would be forced to give away into a violent marriage at much too young an age.

Yo creo que le doblaba la edad a tu abuelita, a Angélica. No sé la fecha cuando se casaron pero tenía catorce o quince, y diez meses después, nació tu mamá. Que haya encargado tan rápido, pues … estaba chiquita. Chiquita.

Figure 2.

My grandmother, Angelica Lopez on her wedding day in 1956, fourteen or fifteen years old.

In Torreon, you lived on a rancho owned by Spaniards, on land owned by Spaniards, in a little house owned by Spaniards, the eldest daughter of five, a girl all of fourteen, raising your siblings alongside your mother. Once a humble field hand, your father is now an overseer, moving cotton through the field on the land owned by Spaniards. Antonio, a laborer boy your age, catches your eye while you’d already caught the eye of another, , a respectable man of thirty-six willing to pay any price for a virgin child bride of such a rare beauty. He arranges the sale with the Spaniard, who takes a cut before giving the rest to your father, who lives in the house, in the field, on the ranch, on the land owned by Spaniards. Childmother, your life belonged to everyone but you— would you ever belong to yourself?

Here, you stand in such grace, behind you a black bar where your groom once was, his figure now redacted, excised from time by someone’s hand. Maybe your own.

He moves you away from your family into remote wildernesses, both on the land and within yourself, your body itself a forbidden unknown that you have been told belongs to god, the church, the priest, your father, your husband, and so you cannot make sense of his body on your own, too tender for what...