Night at the Fiestas: Stories

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IN MY EARLIEST MEMORY OF MY COUSIN NEMECIA, WE ARE walking together in the bean field. I’ve been crying, and my breath is still juddering and wrecked. She holds tight to my hand and says cheerfully, “Just wait, Maria, wait ’til you see.” I don’t recall why I was upset or what my cousin showed me that day. I remember only that my sadness receded like a tide, replaced by a new quiet fizz of anticipation, and that Nemecia’s shoes had heels. She had to walk tipped forward on her toes to prevent them from sinking into the dirt.

Nemecia was the daughter of my mother’s sister. She came to live with my parents before I was born because my aunt Benigna couldn’t care for her. Later, when Aunt Benigna recovered and moved to Los Angeles, Nemecia had already lived with us for so long that she stayed. This wasn’t unusual in our New Mexico town in those years between the wars; if someone died, or came upon hard times, or simply had too many children, there were always aunts or sisters or grandmothers with room for an extra child.

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