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Chapter 5: Childhood talesMama and Tita reunite after 53 years! Photos by A.E. Araiza The Arizona Daily Star Leonarda ``Mama'' Duarte, right, and cousin Cruz ``Tita'' Garcia reminisce about family picnics along the Gila River and childhood pranks. By Carmen Duarte The Arizona Daily Star Mama's fondest memories are of her six years living with her grandmother, Nana Leonarda, and playing with her cousin Tita. The sweetest moment in researching my family's past came last summer, when I took Mama, who rarely leaves our southside neighborhood, to Virden, N.M., and reunited her with cousin Cruz ``Tita'' García.
Mama got out of the car. She and Tita embraced - and immediately the cousins began needling each other about their age. ``Do you need some help walking?'' Tita, 86, asked my mother, 83. ``No, I can walk, but you can take my arm if you want,'' Mama responded. I knew this was coming. When I had visited Tita a month earlier, she had asked if my Mama still made her own tortillas. I confessed that we bought them in plastic bags at the grocery store. ``You tell your mother she is not a real woman,'' Tita said. The needling gave way quickly to giggling as the two women talked and remembered. Tortillas, naturally, were one topic. In their childhood evenings after the corn harvest, all would gather outside Nana Leonarda's home around large tinas and shuck corn for the tortillas. This was not work. It was a time to rest after long days in the fields, catch up on stories and enjoy each other's renditions of ``El Rancho Grande'' and other música ranchera. The children would sip hot chocolate, and the grown-ups drank strong coffee while they cleaned and shucked corn into the quiet, still night. ``My abuelita cooked the corn in large pots over the wood-burning stove, and when it was soft we would put it in a molino,'' says Mama, who said some of the women in those days still ground their corn in metates with a stone. ``Abuelita made corn tortillas, and we ate them with asadero. It was delicious,'' says Mama, who was nicknamed Nala. Tita smacks her lips in appreciation. ``I hated making corn tortillas because the masa would break up and stick all over my hands,'' Tita says and laughs with the innocence of a child. Nala and Tita, who lived with her parents close to Nana Leonarda's house in San Antonio, remember sneaking off after morning chores to play and to occasionally misbehave. The cousins made dishes out of mud, and dolls out of rags. The dolls were lovingly scolded in Nana Leonarda's words. ``Que chivas son!'' (what brats you are) was one of their abuela's favorite lines. When they were a little older, the cousins took turns grabbing matchsticks, tobacco, rolling papers or Tata Florentino's pipe. They ran to secret hiding places under the cottonwoods to mimic the adults in smoking, before sneaking the stolen items back into place. ``Nala, are you the one who took my pipe,'' Tata Florentino would yell after his pipe miraculously appeared in a place he had already searched. ``No, abuelito. It wasn't me,'' Nala would say, trying hard not to smile and give herself away. As years passed, Nala grew closer to her grandmother and started calling her Mama. She loved her weekdays with Nana. On weekends in Duncan, she bore the brunt of brother Florentino's teasing. ``You're not a part of this family. You are an Indian who was abandoned, dumped by the side of the road, and we just took you in,'' he'd say.
Nala took it to heart. She was the one with the stigma - la burra - something her mother did not let her forget. She would cry often and run off to play with make-believe friends. When Sunday came, Nala was excited to get into the buggy and have her parents take her back to San Antonio and the loving arms of her ``Mama'' Leonarda. She loved her own mother. But Dolores did not shower her children with cariño. And Nala felt truly at home in San Antonio. There, she slept with her grandmother, while her grandfather slept in a nearby bed. There, she was treated like a queen, not having to work hard. Life was good. Nala and Tita remember the excitement of summer Sunday picnics: helping Nana Leonarda prepare the food; the families gathering in horse-drawn wagons to head for the Gila River, two miles up the dirt road that led from Tata and Nana's home. Tata Florentino's wagon parked with the others along the riverbanks, under the trees. Brothers tossed ropes over cottonwood limbs for swings and children took turns dropping into the river. Relatives pulled out their guitars and belted out Spanish tunes while the children played. Women dried off to begin serving dishes of verdolagas con frijoles, tortillas, enchiladas, nopalitos con chile, chile con carne and arroz con pollo. After dinner, the men played poker. Mothers, after cleaning the dishes and packing the leftovers, began to sing. It seemed to Nala and Tita that they always had to leave the river too early on those evenings, but the workday began at sunrise for these farmers and pickers. Nala grew stronger in her faith each year. How could she not? All good things - her loving grandmother, the wonderful fiestas and picnics - were connected to God and the santos. The children were taught about the special santos - San Isidro, the patron of farmers; Santo Niño de Atocha, the Christ Child, who worked miracles and helped prisoners, mothers and their newborns, miners and the sick and dying. She would find need for those prayers. Her life was about to get very hard indeed.
Next: Chapter 6: The education of Nala
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Ch. 1: Field of death
Ch. 18: The New Deal
Ch. 24: Cotton pickers and copper miners Ch. 27: The family doubles its size
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