ESTA ES SU CASA--APRIL 2010

ESTA ES SU CASA--APRIL 2010

See you...in September

If this were any other April, I’d be in St. Louis right about now, accepting your gracious invitations to a chaw and a talk or a hearty meal. But, as I mentioned last month, I’ll wait till September for another visit this year.... In fact, this is the first time since I moved down here that I will spend the whole month of April in Honduras. What’s so significant about that? Well, April is the hottest month, the most globally warm, you might say. And they’re not promising any relief this year till June, when the rainy season should start, a month later than normal. I know I’ll get no sympathy from you, just enjoy your SPRING!

Chemo has a new teacher, a lovely young woman named Regina, whose husband Lindolfo, is the first-grade teacher for Chemo’s nieces Mirna and Reina. Chemo’s third-grade class had 42 kids, so they split it in half; I had to smile, I sorta think Profe Vitelio saw his chance, and shipped out Chemo to the new teacher. Well, that’s fine, I feel more confident now about his prospects for passing. The first grading period is upon us, she has to give him a break, right?

Lindolfo--I’m sure he has no idea why I smile so every time I see him. He’s the only Lindolfo I ever heard of outside of an opera aria. But if he teaches Mirna and Reina how to read, hey, I’ll be singing his praises, too!

Just walking to school each day with Mirna and Reina, as well as Chila their sister in second grade, is sort of a miracle, since they’ve never attended before. Their mom and dad, Alba and Santos, finally came home to Las Vegas after 4 months picking coffee in Quebrada Amarilla. In fact, they arrived on Father’s Day, here celebrated on March 19, feast of St. Joseph (ironically, a “father” with no children, except that one rather famous foster-child, Jesus Christ). Santitos, or Joel, their little son who stayed with them picking coffee (and so will miss school--again!) comes sauntering down the street to my house about 6 in the morning, and I jumped for joy. I take him into Chemo’s bedroom. “Chemo! Look who’s here! Who is it? Who is it?” Chemo raises his groggy head from the covers, takes a look, takes another look, “It’s Joel,” and falls back on the pillow. But pretty soon he was bouncing out of bed and getting dressed. We all went over to the house and there they all were, including the girls, who had been staying with their grandmother Natalia while Santos and Alba were away. It was a happy reunion all around, and Alba was right back at it, handing out coffee with cream and tasty rolls to everyone.

I urged Santos to attend the Father’s Day celebration at the school, but he was, of course, bushed--months picking coffee and a red-eye return in the back of a truck from Quebrada Amarilla that traveled all night. Meanwhile, I was inviting any kids who came by my house to make a card for their father, using cards that Mary Morini made from Chepito’s drawings. (She’s still got sets available, if you’re looking for cards YOU can use for Father’s Day...!) Chemo made one, discarded it, and worked on another. It astonished me: “Muchas gracias por atenderme y salvarme la vida.” (Thank you for taking care of me and for saving my life.) It suddenly confirmed the decision to spend April with him.

And Chepito is drawing again! I guess I caught him in a good mood, or maybe it goes in cycles, like sunspots. He wants to draw every day. “Do you still have ideas?” “Uh-huh.” And he does, elaborate crosses (which I keep insisting, “These aren’t gang signs, are they?”), churches, palaces, and structures that look like Alice in Wonderland. Fine, precise details, just lines, you might say, but hours of painstaking art. And the colors! You know, it’s funny that conventional wisdom calls black and white photography, for example, “realistic.” If Chepito were a philosopher, he might say, “No, color is real.” And the statement would be greeted with interest and respect, especially if the interviewer had seen his drawings.

Red blood is certainly real. But when Dulis came to me with his hand bandaged in a rag and some leaves, I did not even want to look at the wound, wounds, actually, a slice to the bone along the thumb and a gash in his wrist, from falling onto his machete somehow. I sent him off with a note to Dr. Meme (that I would pay the expenses). I caught up with him a little later, while Meme was stitching away, I think with no anesthetic, judging by Dulis’ grinding teeth, and Meme’s hands painted red like a MASH surgeon. I just glanced in every now and then, lest I faint dead away. The doctor ended the session with three shots, and told Dulis to come to the clinic for a Tetanus shot the next day. Meme was just saving me a little money. The bill was already a thousand Lempiras since this was “private” time, and the shot at the clinic would be free. I paid, but it opened a wound in my wallet. I had been counting my money every night, trying to calculate if it would last till I got my pension in April. I was expecting an emergency, you know, you have to allow for that any time. Hey, where’s OUR Obamacare?

I still had the gauzes and tape and Neobol cream and iodine out from changing Dulis’ dressings a day later when Joel limps in, with strips of rag around both knees and hands. He’d fallen, “What? Off a mountain?” I asked. He had these big red patches where skin used to be, so I set to work. By the time I had him bandaged up, he had enough white trim and red spots he looked like a cut-rate Santa Claus.

“Use the root! Use the root!” This was the cry as they started vaccinating all the dogs in town against rabies, a public service provided by the mayor. The first one was a tiny thing you could hold in one hand, a puppy. But when the next one whipped around like a kite--they shoot them up in a hind leg, because it’s the farthest away from their teeth, I assume!--a veteran of the operation pointed to a tree root that looped out of the ground about three inches. Now, don’t get upset, you dog-lovers, but they feed the leash through the root (and vaccination day is the only time dogs around here ever see a leash) and pull tight, in effect nailing the dog’s head down to the ground, while someone else wrests the dog’s hind leg free enough to inject it. Some dogs still try to thrash, but they are no match for...the root. Immediately after the shot, they are released and are meek as kittens, a dazed look on their mugs, like, “What the heck was that?” When my neighbor Lalito brought his two huge wolves that bark all night like banshees, I was chanting, “Overdose, overdose!” under my breath. But to no avail.

You can’t overdose on birthdays. Elsa, Chemo’s cousin, had her first birthday party ever, at age 11. It was also partly to thank her mother Natalia for taking such good care of Chemo and me while Santos and Alba were away. I realized this committed me to more parties--for her brother Dionis, as well as Chemo’s nieces and so on. Oh, please! What a “problem”! It’s a kid’s birthday. Childhood is not a “pre-existing condition”! You gotta celebrate. As Joan Sebastian, a Mexican composer, sings of his son, who died young, “Eres el trigo de mi pan,” you are the wheat of my bread.

And all of you are my daily sustenance.

Love, Miguel