|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Chapter 12: Fever takes a familyManuel, finally at peace, is laid to rest in family plot
A.E. Araiza, The Arizona Daily Star Florencia Tellez, left, Carmen and Anastacia Bejarano and Nala Leonarda attend the body of Isabel Vega, Gumesinda's year-old daughter. By Carmen Duarte The Arizona Daily Star A profound sadness settled in San Antonio. When Gumesinda lost Manuel, she lost the love of her life. His death left her with two babies to raise alone - Manuelito and Alejo. The women prayed for the widow. Tata Florentino, the community's coffin maker, prepared his granddaughter's husband for burial. He measured Manuel, whose body lay in a back room of Nana Leonarda's house - the room used for religious ceremonies. With the two-week torment of fever and hiccups gone, he looked at rest.
Tata Florentino bought lumber at Duncan's mercantile store and built a simple pine box. As Tata and his compadres helped saw the wood and hammer the nails, Nana Leonarda looked through material she had purchased at the general store. She found a large piece of blue linen to line the coffin. She and her daughters made a glue by boiling water and tossing in flour. They cut small crosses out of white lace to decorate the coffin's lining. Tata Florentino washed Manuel's tanned, muscular body and dressed him in a pair of blue pants and a blue shirt. He combed his black, wavy hair. Manuel had been a handsome man and a wonderful musician. He had moved to Duncan from Santa Clara, N.M., with his father and widowed sister. He met Gumesinda at one of the bimonthly dances. Manuel was a self-taught musician and at times earned more money playing at fiestas than he did working the fields. He made the guitar and violin sing, Mama says. He also learned piano after his widowed sister, who had two sons, met and married landowner George Elmer, who had three children - and a piano. When evening fell, the all-night wake began with a rosary led by Nana Leonarda. People filed into the house to pay their last respects and comfort Gumesinda, who was in a daze. The following morning, mourners followed the men carrying the coffin to the family cemetery, a 10-minute walk from Mama and Tata Florentino's house. Manuel was laid to rest there on a low ridge not far from the Gila River, nestled among low hills dotted with mesquite trees and greasewood bushes. But death was not satisfied with just Manuel. Manuel and Gumesinda's sons, Manuelito and Alejo, died of fever within the next seven months. La fiebre was cursing the valley and its people. Home remedies worked for some and not others. Nala accepted it as ``God's will.'' She prayed rosaries for Gumesinda, who entered a depression that weakened her body. Then the fever struck Gumesinda. Nala remembers her mother, Dolores, talking out loud, arguing with the spirit of her son-in-law. She thought Manuel had come to claim Gumesinda. ``Compadre, esta no es tu ya. Esta no te la puedes llevar.'' (Friend, this one is not yours. You cannot take this one.) The teas and poultices and patent medicines had no effect on Gumesinda. Dolores saw her daughter become weaker. She told her daughter Angela to walk over to the house of Juanita Elmer (Manuel's sister) to phone Dr. Nabors. Dolores had come to trust the doctor after he safely delivered her son José, who had come two months early. That was the first time she used a doctor for delivery, for anything. The nicely dressed doctor pulled up in his black car around two in the afternoon at the Sanders' farm, where Don Juanito was now sharecropping. Nala saw the doctor's expression of surprise when he entered their home. Gumesinda was dressed and up and walking. She had so much fever, he wondered aloud, ``Where does she get her strength?'' Nala figured Dr. Nabors knew nothing about God and the santos. The doctor left pills and instructions about caring for Gumesinda. The following day, Gumesinda dramatically improved. In three more days she was fine, in body at least. Manuel did not get his way, Nala thought. Her sister did not join Manuel and their two sons in the graveyard on a ridge high above the Gila River, where so many from my family are buried.
|
Ch. 1: Field of death
Ch. 18: The New Deal
Ch. 24: Cotton pickers and copper miners Ch. 27: The family doubles its size
|
