The woman behind the house
Tía Chabe came like a Mary Poppins, but with rebozo.
The land where my dad built our home was my great-grandparents' home. My grandpa
was born in Ixtlahuaca and left to work in Mexico City. He didn't finish school,
but he loved books, became super literate, and wrote many poems. He ended up
working in the Mexico City theatre, where eventually my dad and the rest of the
family worked too. He became such an inspiration to our dear Ixtlahuaca that they
named the public library after him: Francisco Orozco Jiménez.
His sister Isabel — who we called "Tía Chabe" — came to live with us in this little
humble house when I was less than two years old, and she stayed with us until she
passed. That's the age my daughter is now.
She taught me my first poem, "La Mañanita" by Rubén Darío. It talks about life in
rural Nicaragua, but it definitely tells the story of my own Ixtlahuaca:
"How joyful and fresh the early morning!
The breeze catches me by the nose;
the dogs bark, a young boy shouts,
and a plump, pretty girl,
next to a stone, grinds the corn."
Rubén Darío — La Mañanita
The poem ends with the comforting longing for a warm cup of chocolate served
with toast and cottage cheese.
She gave me some of my first books — cheap paper, no more than twelve pages and
two staples in the middle. I still have them. She drew, she did embroidery. While
she lived with us she bought a piece of land in the next town, Las Pintas — she
paid $10 pesos as a down payment, on a hill full of volcanic rocks. She had to
break those rocks. That was part of the deal. So she paid for the land, and worked
for that land.
Imagine Ixtlahuaca is the valley and Las Pintas is the hill. Sometimes we would
walk four or five kilometers from town to town. She made us love being outside in
the fields collecting tunas, chilitos de biznaga and verdolagas — everything the
land provides when you wander.
She built a little house, a separate room for the kitchen and a division for the
bathroom. She had many birds, including geese in a pond she improvised. She had
four dogs: Cherry, Tiger, Quick and My Friend. I'm not translating — she used
names in English. She was so smart and creative!
I would wake up at her house with the sound of the animals and the smell of oatmeal
for breakfast and eggs with green beans. I can remember the smell of the house so
clearly — it smelled like her. I think children learn to belong by being aware of
their surroundings. I remember the shampoo she used — those pink plastic pods sold
cheaply in the neighborhood tienditas — and the lotion she liked.
She passed away from cancer on November 20th, 1998. I was six years old. She didn't
want to die alone — that was her biggest fear — so my parents brought her back to
our home in Ixtlahuaca for the last months of her life. When she passed, she gave
specific instructions for everything: who could get the birds, the pots, her bed.
She didn't have much, but she gave it all.
She said the house was going to be mine. In college I made the hard decision to
sell it to my tío Toño to pay part of my tuition; after graduating, I bought half
of it back. My friend Josue Escorza — who I met in the Methodist church youth camps —
became an amazing architect. I wanted to keep the walls she built; I loved that the
walls don't make a ninety-degree angle, they are so irregular. Josue showed me a
Kandinsky painting whose structure echoes the shape of that land — the circle is
the tree, the asymmetric lines.
So this is the house we are using for Elerie.
The story behind it is a beautiful woman called Isabel Orozco Jiménez — a devoted
teacher who loved the land of her ancestors. She had a very strong and sometimes
difficult personality, but she gave me something beyond a piece of land. She taught
me that children have a special place at the table, in the house, in our lives —
that children are part of the joy and pain that happens inside the walls. It is
real for them too. I keep her silver medal for thirty years of service as a teacher.
She was an amazing woman of faith and shared the gospel with everyone she could.
In my town there really wasn't a Christian church — Catholics and Protestants
didn't get along, and when my great-grandpa became a Christian he kept it to
himself for a long time. My Tía Chabe is remembered by many friends in town
because through her they met Jesus. She had a big blue Bible that was given to
Lulu Rivera Orozco, one of the founders of the church my parents opened in our
garden. But that's another beautiful story. (By the way — Lulu also has a
beautiful bugambilia in her house, and we did many church events at her home too.)
