The Gifted Gabaldón Sisters Page 8

  SUBJECT: FERMINA/FESTIVALS AND CELEBRATIONS

  WPA: 6-17-38 —DC: HMS

  June 15, 1938

  Words: 418

  PIPTUKA: THE NON-SACRED CLOWNS

  Fermina tells of clowns, painted and dressed in ragtag costumes, that would appear on rooftops in Walpi as though descended like spirits from the clouds. They would immediately bicker about how to climb down to the ceremonial grounds. As they tumbled down ladders, these clowns insulted one another, while onlookers howled with laughter. Once on the ground, the clowns performed comic skits before the kachina dancers arrived.

  Fermina remembers four groups of ceremonial clowns. Her favorite of these were the Piptuyakyamu, or Piptuka, which she translates as “those who keep coming back, who will not stay away.” These were not sacred clowns and had no set routines or traditional costume, apart from painting their bodies. The appearance of the Piptuka depended upon the object of their satire. They would mark their faces with stripes if mocking the Navajo, wear masks if poking fun at the Paiute, or don women’s dress if burlesquing women.

  The Pitpuka’s skits satirized outsiders or the outlandish behavior of certain villagers. A routine that Fermina remembers well is one wherein they mimicked a married couple whose loud arguments disturbed the peace of their neighbors. One clown, attired as the wife, hectored the clown acting as her spouse, who, in turn, berated her. The two bellowed over petty matters, such as who had let the fire die out and who had more of the blanket when they settled down to sleep. At one point, the clown wife tossed a gourd of water at her goading husband, and missing him, she drenched the clown portraying her visiting mother-in-law. This skit reduced Fermina’s own mother to tears of hilarity. For months afterward, whenever Fermina wanted to amuse her mother, she reminded her of the water flying at the clown mother-in-law. In the aftermath of that performance, the village couple mocked by the Piptuka became more subdued, their marital spats no longer public spectacles.

  Fermina says that when she was young, she believed the purpose of the clowns was simply to make people laugh, but now she sees they were teachers, showing the Hopi how to behave by ridiculing outsiders and those whose behavior was inconsiderate of others. The kachina dancers, she observes, were always the same, like the seasons, but the clowns were like children —rude, impulsive, and unpredictable. All clowns were believed to prevent evil by confounding witchery. The Piptuka were the lowest order of this society. But for Fermina, this band of buffoons was the most memorable and enjoyable of all that she witnessed performing.

  4

  ONCE A PINT OF TIME —SOPHIA: 1968

  This is not a funny story. The princess is going to die! So how come your daddy hides behind the newspaper, silent laughter bubbling over the top like the busy water he puts in his whiskey? And your big sister Bette, on the telephone, winks and grins from across the living room. You settle Suzy, Woozy, and Doozy in your lap. They never laugh at you. They just stare. (Loretta says Suzy isn’t a Suzy, but a Raggedy Ann. “Well, she’s a Suzy now,” you tell her.) So what if Woozy is a plastic yellow horse and Doozy a Gumby with one chewed leg? These are your babies. You’d never make fun of the tiny moon marks on Doozy’s foot or the jelly stain on Suzy’s apron. You would never, ever laugh at your children.

  You start the story again. “Once a pint of time —”

  Cary stomps in from the kitchen. “Hah!” he says. That’s how he laughs —a single burst that makes you jump. “What’s that? Like two cups of days?”

  You glare at him —those chubby cheeks, that gaping mouth. The princess will have a greedy brother, and the Invisible Dragon will sneeze, lighting his hair like a match head just before the poor princess dies.

  “Or sixteen ounces of hours?” Cary says, and Daddy can’t take any more. He crumples the paper in his lap and laughs outright. Then he says, “Leave her alone. Let her tell her story.”

  “It’s ‘once a pond of time,’ ” Cary tells you.

  “I know that,” you say, wondering for a moment what a “pond” of time is. Less than a lake? More than a puddle? “Can’t you see I’m telling a silly story?” And you start again. No dead princesses, no dead princess brothers. “Once a pint of Tide,” you say, “was poured into the river, so all the goggling fish and all the wiggly worms could have a bubbly bath. . . .”

  “Listen to this,” Bette says. “My kid sister, she’s just five, but she’s hilarious!” She holds out the phone while you tell a silly story to make them really laugh.

  Loretta says this is what the old woman Fermina gave to you: you can make them laugh and laugh with your squeaky voice, your crossing eyes, your jokes, and silly stories. Sometimes you drop down on all fours, bark, and pant like a dog. “Rover,” they call you, and pat the socks you’ve clipped to your hair for droopy ears. You sniff shoes and lift a back leg, pretend to squirt Cary’s sneakers, or lunge to snap at Rita’s butt. Even she giggles at this. Mostly, you like making them laugh. It gives you a ticklish feeling deep in your stomach. Their laughter rattles in your ears, like pink-and-white candies bouncing in a box. But sometimes, you get tired, “cranky,” Bette says. Still they laugh when you stick out your tongue, and when you stomp out of the room, they clap.

  One dark Saturday afternoon, thunder booms, lightning flashes, and now hail hammers the roof —perfect weather for watching horror movies on television. Loretta’s real dogs, the ones she found in the park, whimper under her bed, but everyone else lounges in front of the TV. Arms out like a sleepwalker, the Mummy staggers through the night. (Rita runs to hide in the bathroom, the way she always does when the music gets scary, and Cary says, “Isn’t anything else on?”) The Mummy wants to strangle a sleeping lady, so he kicks open her door, shuffles to her bed, and then, and then —a hoarse, whispery blizzard fills the screen.

  “Now it’s broken,” Cary says. “I told you to change the channel.”

  Loretta snaps off the set. “Like that would’ve helped.”

  “Gina? Gina?” Bette says into the phone. “Damn, it’s dead.”

  Rita skulks back into the living room, her eyes big as a bug’s. “Where’s Daddy?”

  Bette shrugs. “He’s working overtime.”

  “Well, what are we supposed to do now?” asks Cary.

  They all look at you. But you don’t feel like making them laugh this time, so you say, “Tell me about Mama. What was she like?”

  Loretta’s eyes shine. “She was beautiful.”

  “She was big,” Bette says, “and heavy. She had huge arms like a wrestler.”

  “She made the best food.” Cary licks his lips.

  “Are you kidding?” Bette snorts. “She burned the meat, scorched the beans.”

  “She was better at cakes and cookies,” admits Loretta. “Mama was always nice.”

  Bette shakes her head. “She never let me do anything, never let me go anywhere. And she could smack pretty hard.”

  “You’re crazy,” Loretta says. “She never hit me.”

  “You don’t remember that time someone stole the last piece of lemon pie, and no one would admit it, so Mama got that old razor strap. You remember, don’t you, Cary?”

  Cary nods. “She got me after you. She did hit pretty hard.”

  “She never hit me,” Loretta insists. “I was supposed to get it after Cary, and then the phone rang. She forgot all about me.”

  “Who ate that pie anyway?” Cary asks.

  “I did,” Loretta says. “I loved Mama’s lemon pie.”

  “But what was Mama really like?” you want to know.

  “She was tough,” Bette says. “She didn’t let me get away with anything.”

  “She read to me,” Loretta says. “She liked to sing to me.”

  “And me,” Rita pipes in her rusty voice.

  Bette winces. “Terrible voice, though, like a cat being skinned alive.”

  The more they talk, the more confused you become. The mother you are picturing keeps changing, her face growing hard, then soft, then hard aga
in. How could she be so many different people? Who was she? Does anyone know?

  “She loved me best,” Cary says.

  No one argues with that.

  Just the lights come back on, you are hungry again. It’s all that talk about Mama’s baking and lemon pie, but the truth is there’s always a yawning feeling in your stomach. You imagine a deep hole like the one your uncle Santi, the baby of his family just like you, dug to put pipes for an indoor bathroom in your grandparents’ house in Río Puerco. There’s something dark and earthy like that carved deep in you, something you can’t possibly fill, though it feels pretty good to try. You tiptoe to the old, ticking Amana and ease open the door. You go right for the cold-cut drawer —pimento loaf, your favorite! And there’s a long yellow brick of Velveeta cheese. But only a heel of Wonder bread left, so you scoop out a small handful of cheese, roll it into a slice of pimento loaf, and devour the salty, waxy cigarlike mess of it, standing like a horse before the opened refrigerator. Tastes so good, you whinny and paw the linoleum floor with one foot, before preparing another snack, this time with bologna. You neigh happily before biting into this.

  Loretta startles you, saying, “Why are you standing there making horse noises?”

  “I’m Silver,” you say, “the Lone Ranger’s great stallion.”

  “More like Tonto,” she says, “or tonta, letting all the cold out like that.”

  “Do horses like lunch meat?” you ask.

  “No, dum-dum, they eat hay and oats.”

  “Well, I’m a meat-eating horse.” You pop the last bite into your mouth and slam the refrigerator shut. You wipe your chilled, greasy fingers on your shorts and break into a foot-stomping dance. “I’m the meat-eating, tap-dancing horse of the Lone Ranger, the first and last of my kind!” Your arms shoot out, your hair flops about, and your cheeks burn, but those feet tap-tap-tap like you’re stamping out a raging forest fire. If you stop, the bad guys will remember to shoot the Lone Ranger. Then they’ll strip off his mask and spit in his dead face. (And Loretta will say, “Why are you eating again, so soon after lunch?”) So you’re dancing, dancing, dancing for all you’re worth —

  “You know what,” Loretta says. “You’re nuts,” but she laughs anyway.

  That night, Bette crawls into your bed with a few snapshots. One you recognize right away: an old woman in a shawl. “That’s my fairy godmother,” you say, wriggling a loose tooth. You picture her flitting about your room at night with a silver dollar.

  “No, it’s Fermina. She stood in at your baptism when Grandma couldn’t come, so she’s like your godmother. Fermina gave you the gift to be funny.” Bette shows another photo. It’s of a woman so large she fills the doorway she’s standing in. She’s wearing a housecoat, a kerchief over her hair, and glasses with dark frames shaped like sideways teardrops. Her face is lifted to the sunlight and she’s squinting. Her mouth is open like she’s ready to speak, about to introduce herself to you.

  “That’s Mama,” Bette says. “That’s her when she first married Dad.”

  “What was her name?” you ask.

  “Esperanza,” Bette says. “That means ‘hope.’ ”

  “She’s big,” you say, fingering the photograph’s scalloped edges.

  “Big and tough.”

  There’s a heavy gilt-framed portrait of your great-grandparents with your grandfather as a baby in the front room, which is identical to the one hanging in your aunt Nilda’s house. There’s even a photo of that old woman you don’t remember, the one who made you be funny, in an oval frame in Bette and Loretta’s bedroom. Though you love monster movies and scary stories, that picture spooks the heck out of you. Fermina looks so grim in it that you can hardly believe she would think to put this laughing gift on you, like an itchy sweater you can’t ever take off. “Why don’t we put these pictures up?”

  Bette shrugs. “Ask Dad.”

  There’s something in your mother’s sunlit face, her squinched-up eyes and bunching cheeks. She’s not about to speak; she’s going to laugh. She’s looking straight at you, ready to hoot. “Do I miss her?” you ask Bette.

  “Yes,” she says, “yes, you do.”

  SUBJECT: FERMINA/SLAVERY

  WPA: 6-17-38 —DC: HMS

  June 6, 1938

  Words: 496

  RETURN OF A SLAVE

  Fermina learned of the enslavement of the Hopi not long after her father had died. One night, when the village was enjoying a feast, a man emerged from the shadows and limped toward the hearth. The villagers stood in surprise. “Chuka,” one of the men said. “Where have you been?” Fermina did not recognize the newcomer. Later her mother explained he was from another mesa. He had relatives living in Walpi, so many villagers knew him.

  The man was sooty with filth and emaciated. “Let me eat,” he said. The women filled a bowl for him and handed him a gourd of water.

  “We thought you were dead,” someone told him.

  “I was in the south herding sheep for el Señor.” He told the villagers that el Señor was a kind man who had treated him well. But weeks ago, Chuka led the sheep to an alkaline pond, and many fell dead. Afterward, el Señor decided the slave should return to his village. He was on his way there when he stopped in Walpi for food.

  The men asked when he was captured. Many had heard the Navajo would seize Hopis and trade them to the Hispaños or the strangers from the east or keep them for themselves as slaves. But Chuka said he had not been captured. He was sold by his own clan during a famine on the Third Mesa. He shrugged, as though this was a bit of misfortune, nobody to blame for it. The villagers glanced at one another, probably wondering if their families would ever grow desperate enough to sell them.

  That night before sleep, Fermina’s mother warned her to keep away from the man called Chuka while he stayed in the village. His flesh smells of Maski, she said, of bone ash and sulfur. She claimed he had been expelled from the underworld, not wanting to believe his story that a family would trade a member for cornmeal and meat.

  This was the first Fermina heard of the People taking the Hopi from their villages. That is what the Navajo called themselves, the People. The Hopi called them the Tavasu. Fermina’s mother told her the Hopi used to trade with them —corn for sheep. The Hopi always had corn or cornmeal to exchange for mutton. But later, cattlemen from the east filled the plains with their herds, and the Navajo had few places for sheep to graze, so they raided others, seizing food, horses, and captives. Fermina spied Chuka from a distance during the few days he remained in the village. She did not fear him, though; he was too frail and haggard. If he had not come from Maski, he was headed there soon. Fermina worried more about the Navajo raiders. In weeks to come, news of assaults on neighboring villages became so frequent that many no longer wondered if the village in Walpi would be attacked. They speculated instead on when, and this filled Fermina with dread.

  5

  THEY WERE LIKE THIS —LORETTA: 1971

  The day of the earthquake, I woke to the attic bedroom shuddering and rolling from side to side, like a ship tossed by steep swells.

  I had been dreaming I was in a movie theater, stumbling, searching for a seat. I bumped knees and stepped on the feet of people already seated in the row. They hissed at me, whispered curses. “Sorry,” I said, “sorry, sorry” as I guided myself with the worn velveteen seat backs. These were stiff to the touch, cool and inert like the shorn pelt of dead animals. The movie, an old film in sepia and cream, had already started. But the celluloid, scribbled with luminescent streaks, ticked and stuttered out of focus when the projector stalled. Still, I’d recognized the actresses, though I couldn’t name them —famous, all of them, stars of the fifties. They wore flowing dresses that cinched at the waist, tapered at the wrists, and draped to the floor like sculpted ivory. My eyes on the screen, I fumbled forward and trod on a small booted foot. “Excuse me,” I said, glancing at an old woman, in a shawl, huddled in the seat.

  My hand reached out, lifted the rebozo. Fermina! Sh
e compressed her lips in a sympathetic smile. I knew this look well, and my heart contracted. “What’s wrong?”

  Fermina turned to the person beside her. I followed her gaze and gasped. I slid past Fermina and sank to my knees. “Mama!” I buried my face in my mother’s warm lap, encircling her legs with my arms. “You’re here,” I said. “You’re whole.”

  “Can I stay with you?” I asked.

  Fermina strokes my shoulder. “No, mi’ja.”

  “You don’t belong here,” my mother said.

  “Let me stay,” I begged. “I can’t lose you again.”

  My mother swayed to shake me off, and the floor trembled with the force of it, tumbling me from that dim theater into the sunlit attic bedroom I shared with my sister.

  Bette, in the twin bed beside mine, yanked a blanket over her head and murmured, “Leave me alone, will you?”

  “This is not normal,” I said.

  My bed vibrated, jostling me. Books slid off the shelves, and the bookshelf itself seemed to take a few steps from the wall. From the window, I glimpsed power lines snapping from their poles near Queen of Angels Hospital on the hill. These flashed and sparked like fireworks. Framed posters rattled against the walls, water sloshed out of my fish tank, and somewhere deep in the outer attic, glass shattered.