[APPLAUSE]
This next poem is in honor of my maternal grandmother, who
was the barrio curandera, or faith healer-- an herbalist
and faith healer.
None of us went to church, except that every now and then,
I was sent to church on Sundays with scapulars or statuettes
or medals that I had to have blessed by the priest,
so that my grandmother could use them in her-- as my father put
it-- witchcraft.
So in the late '50s, the ecumenical council
of the Catholic Church decided that all us
heathens needed to start learning
the language of the country in which we were living.
So they removed our Mexican priest from our parish--
Father Joaquin Murrieta, can you believe it--
and replaced him with Father John Kennedy.
Literally fresh off the boat from Ireland,
along with a boatload of nuns, also
from Ireland, who had no idea what a Mexican or Chicano
population was all about.
So, this is one of those stories where
you begin to understand as a child
how injustice begins to creep in at an institutional level,
and how you can begin to feel as though there must be something
wrong with your culture because of the way
you're treated by people who are in positions of power.
But it also has something to do, I
think, with that deep and abiding faith
that children have in the mystical and the magical
and the power of being cursed.
"La Curandera.
She shuffles to the floor on faded scuffs.
Her breasts sway beneath the bodice of her muumuu
and the hands that welcomed me are warm,
the skin like old paper crumpled then smoothed.
She is la curandera, faith healer, my nana.
We face each other, child to grandmother, the trusting
balance of young to old.
Mija, did you give it to the priest, did he bless it?
she asks.
She takes the emblem of the brown-skinned Virgin
from my palm.
The sun is in her face, her eyes water.
Some say she can read minds.
She makes us drink infusions of gordo lobo, fat wolf, when
we are sick with fever from the flu.
She prescribes a tea of estrella de anís to calm the itching
rash of measles; a tea of manzanilla for those who
can't sleep.
The new Irish priest didn't understand.
Witchcraft, he snorted, and refused to bless the scapular.
So at Mass, I placed the badge with its rubbed smooth image
in my prayer book hoping to catch stray blessings.
Kyrie eleison.
Tonight, the old women of the neighborhood
begin a novena, nine days of prayer for a dying man.
Doña Juanita attends, her black lace shawl clipped to her bun.
Her husband lies at their bed at home swaddled, with sheets
fresh from the line.
The women fan their black damask skirts on red Windsor chairs.
Nana displays the scapular.
Hail Marys rise.
I can never go to heaven if the old man dies."