Now I'm going to skip ahead to part two.
And probably the only thing you need to know
is that about a year after that scene when I was 19,
I decided I got into an argument with my mother.
And I showed up on my boyfriend's doorstep and said,
I need to move in.
And he lived in a house with his parents
and eight younger brothers and sisters on Tucson's South Side.
And they took me into their home.
And it took about 15 years later,
I would tell this student--
this to my students as a way of introducing myself to them.
And after about 15 years of telling this story,
it occurred to me that maybe it was
a kind of an imposition for me to have shown up
on their doorstep.
And I mean, it really-- it took me
that long to realize that that probably
was not the best thing to do, but they did take me in.
So OK, so these are from part 2 which is about that time.
18, the Summer Fernando's mother saw
La Llorona she was just a girl.
They had sprayed down the dirt outside the house
to cool the air.
It was early evening.
They had sprayed the dirt, packed it
down with their bare feet until it
was hard and polished as stone.
They had taken the beds outside to sleep
under the trees behind the hedge in her grandparents yard.
And they all saw her, a woman dressed
in white floating down the street like this as if her feet
weren't moving.
That was the summer her two younger brothers died.
First, the older one and then the baby.
The morning the baby was dying, her father
was sitting at the table in the kitchen.
He felt so helpless.
And then the older one came back on a breeze
through the open window and told him
he would take care of the baby.
In the morning, in the kitchen, in the yellow light,
I sit at the table and watch Dora gingerly heat
the tortillas on the gas stove.
She pours a spot of coffee into a cup of warm milk
and gives it to Anna with her tortilla.
I stir in the sugar.
Anna peers at me over the edge of her cup.
Sometimes, I think Dora tells me these stories simply because I
am a willing listener.
I love the way whole histories open up before my eyes, one
or two details.
And I can imagine a life.
Sometimes I think she is initiating me into the family,
showing me a history other than the one I've been taught.
Saying to me, "Listen, I know what
you think that the world has a smooth, seamless surface,
but really everything goes much deeper than that.
There is a tangled web that roots us,
makes us who we are, limits or lifts us.
What happens to us isn't a matter of simple will.
There are powers beyond our control.
And sometimes, all we can do is give in.
Have faith.
Ojala que sera, sera.
When her mother Grace was a girl,
her own mother died, and there were younger sisters
to care for.
In the mornings, Grace would go outside to get the water.
And when she came back in, her younger sisters, their hair,
it would be already brushed and braided.
"Who braided your hair?", she would ask them.
And they said, it was their mother.
Grace was old enough to understand that their mother
was dead what that meant.
And so one morning, she went out for only a little while,
and when she came back in her mother
was there, standing there.
She had just finished braiding the youngest girl's hair,
and she reached out to Grace.
But Grace was afraid and she flinched.
And so when her mother touched her temple, it burned.
Her fingers were so cold, they burned.
And after that and for all the rest of her life,
Grace got headaches there on her temple
where her mother had touched her in anger.
After that, her mother never came again,
and the priest put a glass of holy water on the mantel.
He told Grace when the water evaporates,
her soul will be in heaven.
It takes a long time to evaporate when a mother dies.
A long time because she does not want to leave her children.