Woman Hollering Creek: And Other Stories

  Sidronio Tijerina

  Brenda A. Camacho de Tijerina

  San Angelo, Texas

  Dear San Martín de Porres,

  Please send us clothes, furniture, shoes, dishes. We need anything that don’t eat. Since the fire we have to start all over again and Lalo’s disability check ain’t much and don’t go far. Zulema would like to finish school but I says she can just forget about it now. She’s our oldest and her place is at home helping us out I told her. Please make her see some sense. She’s all we got.

  Thanking you,

  Adelfa Vásquez

  Escobas, Texas

  Dear San Antonio de Padua,

  Can you please help me find a man who isn’t a pain in the nalgas. There aren’t any in Texas, I swear. Especially not in San Antonio.

  Can you do something about all the educated Chicanos who have to go to California to find a job. I guess what my sister Irma says is true: “If you didn’t get a husband when you were in college, you don’t get one.”

  I would appreciate it very much if you sent me a man who speaks Spanish, who at least can pronounce his name the way it’s supposed to be pronounced. Someone please who never calls himself “Hispanic” unless he’s applying for a grant from Washington, D.C.

  Can you send me a man man. I mean someone who’s not ashamed to be seen cooking or cleaning or looking after himself. In other words, a man who acts like an adult. Not one who’s never lived alone, never bought his own underwear, never ironed his own shirts, never even heated his own tortillas. In other words, don’t send me someone like my brothers who my mother ruined with too much chichi, or I’ll throw him back.

  I’ll turn your statue upside down until you send him to me. I’ve put up with too much too long, and now I’m just too intelligent, too powerful, too beautiful, too sure of who I am finally to deserve anything less.

  Ms. Barbara Ybañez

  San Antonio, TX

  Dear Niño Fidencio,

  I would like for you to help me get a job with good pay, benefits, and retirement plan. I promise you if you help me I will make a pilgrimage to your tomb in Espinazo and bring you flowers. Many thanks.

  César Escandón

  Pharr, Tejas

  DEAR DON PEDRITO JARAMILLO HEALER OF LOS OLMOS

  MY NAME IS ENRIQUETA ANTONIA SANDOVAL I LIVE IN SAN MARCOS TX I AM SICK THEY OPERATED ME FROM A KIDNEY AND A TUMOR OF CANCER BUT THANKS TO GOD I AM ALIVE BUT I HAVE TO GET TREATMENTS FOR A YEAR THE KIMO I AM 2½ YEARS OLD BUT MY GRANDMA BROUGHT ME THAT YOU AND OUR LORD WHO IS IN THE HEAVENS WILL CURE ME WITH THIS LETTER THAT I AM DEPOSITING HERE ITS MY GRANDMA WHO IS WRITING THIS I HOPE EVERYBODY WHO SEES THIS LETTER WILL TAKE A MINUTE TO ASK FOR MY HEALTH

  ENRIQUETA ANTONIA SANDOVAL

  2 AND A HALF YEARS OLD

  I LEOCADIA DIMAS VDA. DE CORDERO OF SAN MARCOS TX HAVE COME TO PAY THIS REQUEST TO DON PEDRITO THAT MY GRANDDAUGHTER WILL COME OUT FINE FROM HER OPERATION THANKS TO GOD AND THOSE WHO HELPED SUCH GOOD DOCTORS THAT DID THEIR JOB WELL THE REST IS IN GODS HANDS THAT HE DO HIS WILL MANY THANKS WITH ALL MY HEART.

  YOUR VERY RESPECTFUL SERVANT

  LEOCADIA

  Oh Mighty Poderosos, Blessed Powerful Ones,

  You who are crowned in heaven and who are so close to our Divine Savior, I implore your intercession before the Almighty on my behalf. I ask for peace of spirit and prosperity, and that the demons in my path that are the cause of all my woes be removed so that they no longer torment me. Look favorably on this petition and bless me, that I may continue to glorify your deeds with all my heart—santísimo Niño Fidencio, gran General Pancho Villa, bendito Don Pedrito Jaramillo, virtuoso John F. Kennedy, and blessed Pope John Paul. Amen.

  Gertrudis Parra

  Uvalde, Tejas

  Father Almighty,

  Teach me to love my husband again. Forgive me.

  s.

  Corpus Christi

  Seven African Powers that surround our Savior—Obatala, Yemaya, Ochún, Orunla, Ogun, Elegua, and Shango—why don’t you behave and be good to me? Oh Seven African Powers, come on, don’t be bad. Let my Illinois lottery ticket win, and if it does, don’t let my cousin Cirilo in Chicago cheat me out of my winnings, since I’m the one who pays for the ticket and all he does is buy it for me each week—if he does even that. He’s my cousin, but like the Bible says, better to say nothing than to say nothing nice.

  Protect me from the evil eye of the envious and don’t let my enemies do me harm, because I’ve never done a thing wrong to anyone first. Save this good Christian who the wicked have taken advantage of.

  Seven Powers, reward my devotion with good luck. Look after me, why don’t you? And don’t forget me because I never forget you.

  Moises Ildefonso Mata

  San Antonio, Texas

  Virgencita de Guadalupe,

  I promise to walk to your shrine on my knees the very first day I get back, I swear, if you will only get the Tortillería la Casa de la Masa to pay me the $253.72 they owe me for two weeks’ work. I put in 67½ hours that first week and 79 hours the second, and I don’t have anything to show for it yet. I calculated with the taxes deducted, I have $253.72 coming to me. That’s all I’m asking for. The $253.72 I have coming to me.

  I have asked the proprietors Blanquita and Rudy Mondragón, and they keep telling me next week, next week, next week. And it’s almost the middle of the third week already and I don’t know how I’m going to do it to pay this week’s rent, since I’m already behind, and the other guys have loaned me as much as they’re able, and I don’t know what I’m going to do, I don’t know what I’m going to do.

  My wife and the kids and my in-laws all depend on what I send home. We are humble people, Virgencita. You know I’m not full of vices. That’s how I am. It’s been hard for me to live here so far away without seeing my wife, you know. And sometimes one gets tempted, but no, and no, and no. I’m not like that. Please, Virgencita, all I’m asking for is my $253.72. There is no one else I can turn to here in this country, and well, if you can’t help me, well, I just don’t know.

  Arnulfo Contreras

  San Antonio, Tejas

  Saint Sebastian who was persecuted with arrows and then survived, thank you for answering my prayers! All them arrows that had persecuted me—my brother-in-law Ernie and my sister Alba and their kids—el Junior, la Gloria, and el Skyler—all gone. And now my home sweet home is mine again, and my Dianita bien lovey-dovey, and my kids got something to say to me besides who hit who.

  Here is the little gold milagrito I promised you, a little house, see? And it ain’t that cheap gold-plate shit either. So now that I paid you back, we’re even, right? Cause I don’t like for no one to say Victor Lozano don’t pay his debts. I pays cash on the line, bro. And Victor Lozano’s word like his deeds is solid gold.

  Victor A. Lozano

  Houston, TX

  Dear San Lázaro,

  My mother’s comadre Demetria said if I prayed to you that like maybe you could help me because you were raised from the dead and did a lot of miracles and maybe if I lit a candle every night for seven days and prayed, you might maybe could help me with my face breaking out with so many pimples.

  Thank you.

  Rubén Ledesma

  Hebbronville, Texas

  Santísima Señora de San Juan de los Lagos,

  We came to see you twice when they brought you to San Antonio, my mother and my sister Yolanda and two of my aunts, Tía Enedina and my Tía Perla, and we drove all the way from Beeville just to visit you and make our requests.

  I don’t know what my Tía Enedina asked for, she’s always so secretive, but probably it had to do with her son Beto who doesn’t do anything but hang around the house and get into trouble. And my Tía Perla no doubt complained about her ladies’ problems—her ovaries that itch, her tangled fallopians, her uterus that makes her seasick with all its flipping and flopping. And Mami who said she only came along for the ride, lit three candles so you would bless us all and sweep j
ealousy and bitterness from our hearts because that’s what she says every day and every night. And my sister Yoli asked that you help her lose weight because I don’t want to wind up like Tía Perla, embroidering altar cloths and dressing saints.

  But that was a year ago, Virgencita, and since then my cousin Beto was fined for killing the neighbor’s rooster with a flying Big Red bottle, and my Tía Perla is convinced her uterus has fallen because when she walks something inside her rattles like a maraca, and my mother and my aunts are arguing and yelling at each other same as always. And my stupid sister Yoli is still sending away for even stupider products like the Grasa Fantástica, guaranteed to burn away fat—It really works, Tere, just rub some on while you’re watching TV—only she’s fatter than ever and just as sad.

  What I realize is that we all made the trip to San Antonio to ask something of you, Virgencita, we all needed you to listen to us. And of all of us, my mama and sister Yoli, and my aunts Enedina and Perla, of all of us, you granted me my petition and sent, just like I asked, a guy who would love only me because I was tired of looking at girls younger than me walking along the street or riding in cars or standing in front of the school with a guy’s arm hooked around their neck.

  So what is it I’m asking for? Please, Virgencita. Lift this heavy cross from my shoulders and leave me like I was before, wind on my neck, my arms swinging free, and no one telling me how I ought to be.

  Teresa Galindo

  Beeville, Texas

  Miraculous Black Christ of Esquipulas,

  Please make our grandson to be nice to us and stay away from drugs. Save him to find a job and move away from us.

  Thank you.

  Grandma y Grandfather

  Harlingen

  M3r1c5l45s Bl1ck Chr3st 4f 2sq53p5l1s,

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  B2nj1m3n T.

  D21 R34 TX

  Milagroso Cristo Negro de Esquipulas,

  Te ofrezco este retrato de mis niños. Wáchelos, Dios Santo, y si le quitas el trago a mi hijo te prometo prender velitas. Ayúdanos con nuestras cuentas, Señor, y que el cheque del income tax nos llegue pronto para pagar los biles. Danos una buena vida y que les ayudes a mis hijos a cambiar sus modos. Tú que eres tan bondadoso escucha estas peticiones que te pido con todo mi corazón y con toda la fe de mi alma. Ten piedad, Padre mio. Mi nombre es Adela O.

  Elizondo.

  Cotulla TX

  Milagroso Cristo Negro,

  Thank you por el milagro de haber graduado de high school. Aquí le regalo mi retrato de graduation.

  Fito Moroles

  Rockport, Texas

  Cristo Negro,

  Venimos desde muy lejos. Infinitas gracias, Señor. Gracias por habernos escuchado.

  Familia Armendáriz G.

  Matamoros, Tamps. México

  Jesus Christ,

  Please keep Deborah Abrego and Ralph S. Urrea together forever.

  Love,

  Deborah Abrego

  Sabinal, Texas

  Blessed Virgen de los Remedios,

  Señora Dolores Alcalá de Corchado finds herself gravely ill from a complication that resulted after a delicate operation she underwent Thursday last, and from which she was recovering satisfactorily until suffering a hemmorhage Tuesday morning. Please intercede on her behalf. We leave her in the hands of God, that His will be done, now that we have witnessed her suffering and don’t know whether she should die or continue this life. Her husband of forty-eight years offers this request with all his heart.

  Señor Gustavo Corchado B.

  Laredo, Tejas

  Madrecita de Dios,

  Thank you. Our child is born healthy!

  Rene y Janie Garza

  Hondo, TX

  Saint Jude, patron saint of lost causes,

  Help me pass my English 320, British Restoration Literature class and everything to turn out ok.

  Eliberto González

  Dallas

  Virgencita …

  I’ve cut off my hair just like I promised I would and pinned my braid here by your statue. Above a Toys “ᴙ” Us name tag that says IZAURA. Along several hospital bracelets. Next to a business card for Sergio’s Casa de la Belleza Beauty College. Domingo Reyna’s driver’s license. Notes printed on the flaps of envelopes. Silk roses, plastic roses, paper roses, roses crocheted out of fluorescent orange yarn. Photo button of a baby in a charro hat. Caramel-skinned woman in a white graduation cap and gown. Mean dude in bandanna and tattoos. Oval black-and-white passport portrait of the sad uncle who never married. A mama in a sleeveless dress watering the porch plants. Sweet boy with new mustache and new soldier uniform. Teenager with a little bit of herself sitting on her lap. Blurred husband and wife leaning one into the other as if joined at the hip. Black-and-white photo of the cousins la Josie y la Mary Helen, circa 1942. Polaroid of Sylvia Rios, First Holy Communion, age nine years.

  So many milagritos safety-pinned here, so many little miracles dangling from red thread—a gold Sacred Heart, a tiny copper arm, a kneeling man in silver, a bottle, a brass truck, a foot, a house, a hand, a baby, a cat, a breast, a tooth, a belly button, an evil eye. So many petitions, so many promises made and kept. And there is nothing I can give you except this braid of hair the color of coffee in a glass.

  Chayo, what have you done! All that beautiful hair.

  Chayito, how could you ruin in one second what your mother took years to create?

  You might as well’ve plucked out your eyes like Saint Lucy. All that hair!

  My mother cried, did I tell you? All that beautiful hair …

  I’ve cut off my hair. Which I’ve never cut since the day I was born. The donkey tail in a birthday game. Something shed like a snakeskin.

  My head as light as if I’d raised it from water. My heart buoyant again, as if before I’d worn el Sagrado corazón in my open chest. I could’ve lit this entire church with my grief.

  I’m a bell without a clapper. A woman with one foot in this world and one foot in that. A woman straddling both. This thing between my legs, this unmentionable.

  I’m a snake swallowing its tail. I’m my history and my future. All my ancestors’ ancestors inside my own belly. All my futures and all my pasts.

  I’ve had to steel and hoard and hone myself. I’ve had to push the furniture against the door and not let you in.

  What you doing sitting in there in the dark?

  I’m thinking.

  Thinking of what?

  Just … thinking.

  You’re nuts. Chayo, ven a saludar. All the relatives are here. You come out of there and be sociable.

  Do boys think, and girls daydream? Do only girls have to come out and greet the relatives and smile and be nice and quedar bien?

  It’s not good to spend so much time alone.

  What she do in there all by herself? It don’t look right.

  Chayito, when you getting married? Look at your cousin Leticia. She’s younger than you.

  How many kids you want when you grow up?

  When I become a mommy …

  You’ll change. You’ll see. Wait till you meet Mr. Right.

  Chayo, tell everybody what it is you’re studying again.

  Look at our Chayito. She likes making her little pictures. She’s gonna be a painter.

  A painter! Tell her I got five rooms that need painting.

  When you become a mother …

  Thank you for making all those months I held my breath not a child in my belly, but a thyroid problem in my throat.

  I can’t be a mother. Not now. Maybe never. Not for me to choose, like I didn’t choose being female. Like I didn’t choose being artist—it isn’t something you choose. It’s something you are, only I can’t explain it.

  I don’t want to be a mother.

  I wouldn’t mind being a father. At least a father could still be
artist, could love something instead of someone, and no one would call that selfish.

  I leave my braid here and thank you for believing what I do is important. Though no one else in my family, no other woman, neither friend nor relative, no one I know, not even the heroine in the telenovelas, no woman wants to live alone.

  I do.

  Virgencita de Guadalupe. For a long time I wouldn’t let you in my house. I couldn’t see you without seeing my ma each time my father came home drunk and yelling, blaming everything that ever went wrong in his life on her.

  I couldn’t look at your folded hands without seeing my abuela mumbling, “My son, my son, my son …” Couldn’t look at you without blaming you for all the pain my mother and her mother and all our mothers’ mothers have put up with in the name of God. Couldn’t let you in my house.

  I wanted you bare-breasted, snakes in your hands. I wanted you leaping and somersaulting the backs of bulls. I wanted you swallowing raw hearts and rattling volcanic ash. I wasn’t going to be my mother or my grandma. All that self-sacrifice, all that silent suffering. Hell no. Not here. Not me.

  Don’t think it was easy going without you. Don’t think I didn’t get my share of it from everyone. Heretic. Atheist. Malinchista. Hocicona. But I wouldn’t shut my yap. My mouth always getting me in trouble. Is that what they teach you at the university? Miss High-and-Mighty. Miss Thinks-She’s-Too-Good-for-Us. Acting like a bolilla, a white girl. Malinche. Don’t think it didn’t hurt being called a traitor. Trying to explain to my ma, to my abuela, why I didn’t want to be like them.

  I don’t know how it all fell in place. How I finally understood who you are. No longer Mary the mild, but our mother Tonantzín. Your church at Tepeyac built on the site of her temple. Sacred ground no matter whose goddess claims it.