FATHER DIES

FATHER DIES

He died suddenly, I don’t know if he had a heart attack or what. I don’t know from sadness or from happiness.

It was the time of my sister’s wedding party and he had just delivered my sister’s things for a newly wedded life. While we were playing outside and enjoying the happiness of our sister’s wedding. he went to sit at the table and he died. We tried to wake him to eat because at first we thought he was sleeping but he just sat at the table with his face down.

We shouted at him and begged him to react, we couldn’t believe it. My Tio came now and with my cousin, he got an onion and a cigar and a Guatemalan chile. Now they put these near Father’s nose so he would react and get up. But nothing! And my father turned purple. Father was a good person and I remember all this at times.

We were still children and my Mama said she could no longer do it and make ends meet with our Papa gone. Mama told us she was a woman alone and making huipiles takes the strength of a man and she just couldn’t do it alone.

So about the age of my daughter Mayra (12), I went to work for people and I grew up like this. Even when Papa was alive we did not go to school because the schools asked us to pay and we didn’t have the money. After he died, I worked in the field and as the servant for a senora—cooking, giving food to her children. For this reason I don’t know how to read and write.