My kitchen looked much larger before I added the center island on wheels, but it has a lot more work and storage space now. I moved my grandmother and mother’s crocks down from where they usually reside on top of the cupboards just for this photo. We were asked to also photograph our favorite cup. This Talavera cup is my favorite, partially because it is the biggest cup in the cupboard, but I also love its design.
I do not know how long ago it was that the first person died. I was not told if it was a woman or a man, an adult or a child. I was told only that the person lived in the first house on the east side of town. Then, every day for 30 days, a new person died, always on the same street in a straight line from the first death to the last, as Death visited house by house. Sometimes he would skip a house or three or five, but every day, he would visit a new house on that street, moving always Westward until at last, a month later, he passed out of town. Ever since, people have remembered the day the first death occurred as “The day that Death came to San Juan Cosala.” I was told this story by someone who came late to San Juan, but she lived in the town for three years and she was told this story and repeated it to me.
Photo by lilartsy on Unsplash. “Everybody Knows” stories are supposedly true town stories passed down to me by different mouths.
Thanks to Kenneth Salzmann on “How to Grow A Poem” for bringing it to my attention. Check our his site for interviews with intriguing American poets as well as links to their poems.
And thanks to Stephanie McCabe on Unsplash for the illustration.
Here is another story of the pueblo. (If you haven’t heard the others, they areHERE and HERE.)
The Martyr Dog
There was a pothole in the road that because of neglect got larger and deeper every year until it had swallowed most of the road, leaving only a space on one side large enough for one car to pass. People in the pueblo said it was dangerous, and everyone said that it needed to be fixed, but as is often the way, everyone waited for someone else to do the task and no one ever did anything about it. Then one day, a little boy fell into the hole and was unable to climb out of it. He was thrashing about, but could not swim. By then the hole was too deep to climb out of and there was no one close to hear his cries. But there was a stray dog in the neighborhood who did hear his cries and although even if he had jumped into the hole to save him, the sides were so steep and straight that he would not have been able to carry him out, so he went up and down the street barking and barking until at last a man came to see what the problem was and pulled the child from the hole.
What happened then was very strange, but it must be true because many people have told the story which has been passed down over the years, reporting that once the dog saw that the boy had been saved, he ran through the town directly to another hole even deeper with straighter sides and when he reached it, he jumped in and drowned. And people all say it was as though the dog had made a promise to the gods that if they spared the boy, that it would sacrifice itself in his stead. And to this day, if a dog wanders into a church during a service, no one ushers it out or makes any fuss. I have witnessed this myself on two occasions. In one case the dog even walked up onto the stage where the priests were standing and no one took notice. It is my idea that the story of the martyr dog has something to do with the fact that both the priests and the people accept the rightful presence of even dogs in the church. No one has told me this. It is my addition to the story that no doubt others have added to, as well, over the years.
After Kristina and I finished our meal in our favorite vegetarian restaurant, we had to order this chocolate cake with avocado and cocoa frosting. It came with a shot of yellow milk, which was milk with turmeric. Who could resist sampling this unique combination? I generously let Kristina drink all of the milk!!!!
These stories I am about to tell are true stories (or so I have been told) from San Juan Cosala, the small Mexican pueblo where I have lived for 21 years. Those foreigners who live in the village would say, perhaps, that I am not really a part of it, and maybe it is true, for in truth I live on the mountain a half mile or more above the town, and perhaps that is why, although I am told they are stories everyone knows, I heard this one only today. Thanks, Kristina, for adding to the rich collection of stories of the pueblo that I have heard over the years. One was. the story of the death of the town vetthat I told you two days ago. Now, I am going to tell you more—one a day—until I run out of them or people stop telling me new ones.
The Caguama*
“I’d sell my soul for a caguama!” People heard her utter the pledge as she stood in the street that they had seen her traverse so many times in search of someone who would provide her with her compulsion: beer, or if she was lucky, perhaps tequila. Those who were standing near her then saw her look down, and there at her feet was a 20 peso bill-—enough at that time long ago to buy the quart bottle of beer she had just said she desired.
So she bought the bottle of beer she had wished for and, unable to wait to drink it in the privacy of her own home, she sat on a bench near the store where she bought it to drink it. But from that time on, or so the often-repeated story goes, she wandered the streets talking to herself, and she was never the same. It was as though she had lost some part of herself. A sad story, but then that was the bargain she had made.”
*The Spanish word for a loggerhead sea turtle–caguama–is also Mexican slang for a 32 ounce bottle of beer, the connection being, presumably, that the farther down the bottle one drinks, the more it comes to resemble its aquatic namesake.
Tomorrow: “The Time that Death Came to San Juan Cosala.”
And to go with this new image, more rocks, and an old story:
After my husband Bob died and I moved to Mexico, I started finding hearts everywhere on the long walks I took every morning. The first one was on the side of a cow, the other on the forehead of a calf. I found plastic hearts and the imprints of hearts on shoe bottom impressions pressed in the sand. Then I began to find heart-shaped rocks. It was uncanny. Messages, perhaps, or perhaps just my increased consciousness of anything that could be a sign. This continued for some time, but as my initial crushing grief lifted, so did my insistence that these were messages.
Then, at least a year after his death, on a driving trip enroute to the states, I returned to one of our favorite places—Bahia de Los Angeles in Baja California. As I stood tossing rocks into the ocean, I suddenly felt my wedding ring slip off and go flying into the water. Stupid, stupid! I berated myself, and knowing it was futile, I nonetheless went wading into the surf that was spreading out on the sand, then deeper into the water to where I imagined the ring had disappeared.
What were the chances? I searched for five minutes, then ten, and I was about to give up when a retreating wave wiped the ripples out of the surface of the water and there below I saw my heavy gold ring set in diamonds and lapis lazuli. As I scooped it up, a rock that lay buried in the sand beneath it came up in my hand as well, and after slipping the ring onto my finger again, I was about to toss the rock back into the water, when I happened to glance down at it and saw that it was in the perfect shape of a heart!
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 