Mama Tana would have been 100

(For Mama Tana, my grandma who passed away on April 2, 1991.)

Mama Tana as I called her would have

been 100

born at the end of an Armageddon,

'The Great War'

in Texas so near the Rio Grande

you could throw stones into

Mexico

Mama Tana always bragged about being

half Comanche Indian, the youngest of

seven born to Petra de Leon,

and a Comanche Indian father who died

when she was born

she tells the story of his kidnapping

ripped from the Reservation as a toddler

by grieving Mexican parents

losing our culture

like in one of the corridos

Living in the 20's

a child of the Roaring 20's

you didn't live in F. Scott Fitzgerald's

world

but in poverty and grace

Being Mexican was different

back then

a broken ballad in the heart

picking grapes

the grapes we cut with those

tearful knives and we washed

our hands in the blood

of what we were

Momma said she and Tio Frank

were 'chitos muy pobres'

we couldn't imagine

laying our heads against the dirt

inside a shack

Momma used to say her dad

would leave and return

one of those dogs that returned

for scraps of a good meal

I never knew him

but I did know him

the man that takes a woman by

the hair, gives her a chingaso

then laughs with a beer in his hand

a freeloader

a gambler

He left Mama Tana

and their three children

Dalia, Berta and Francisco

I can't imagine the struggle of having

to leave them every day to work

with your aging momma, Ama Petra

with the single kiss you laid

against their tiny foreheads

when roosters crowed

to remember they were still yours

to remember they would always be yours

crushed between the power of the

vineyards,

the skin of the grapes bleeding

through fingers 'bien cortadas' staining

clothes with dirt poverty

the distance you had to walk back home

no car waited for you and no man

but bony feet with callouses

Everything revolved around 'los uvas'

you packed yourselves into bags so many

times

Searching as if to peel the country for

labor were the migrant farmers with brown

legs swung over the flat bed of 'los trocas'

One afternoon in one of those intervals

when Tio Frank was a boy, he peed in the

high grass, and was bitten by a passing

'vibora' on his pale bare foot

What it must have done to you thinking of

it now,

the men had to restrain you

in a way that destroys the senses of wanting

to go in and get your child from a burning fire

And the man took a dagger out and cut

on the x, as if Tio Frank's foot was a map

and he sucked the poison out of a foot

that had swelled to a watermelon and

spitting the poison from the seeds of that

bad fruit

For Christmas you laid their toys

away in 'La Tiendita'

where you had credit it was all you had

momma said the dolls you gave her

and Tia Dalia fit perfectly cradled in such

grateful hands

and Tio Frank a small toy gun he

played with in innocence

Momma's doll she named Sowie

like Laura Ingalls corn cob

doll

swept in teenage hormones

Tia Dalia married at 13

a man who was 25

it was like that

men marrying girls

like in the Mexican Revolution

all the women including girls

encircling Zapata's feet

but he was no Zapata

and if you didn't give your consent

Tia Dalia swore she'd throw herself

off a cliff

faced with suicide or losgin a child

a woman alone you signed where they

told you

Years later Tia Dalia blamed you

For years, momma said all of you picked

the grapes form the ripened vines

under a sky that offered no protection

you let momma and Tio Frank lay

underneath the only shade

sheltered but you

would continue to labor leaving your

Ama Petra moving to California in 1959

burning us 'mas prietos'

I inherited my skin

from those monstrous rays

I remember the leathery age

that had embraced your brown face

with a grace of working hard all

of your life

For years Mama Tana baked in the rays

of the scorpion sun, drinking water out of

the rustied tin cup she told me she threw

away several times so the 'dueno' had

to provide a new one and you smiled a silent

sweet victory

we never bought grapes

as you and Tio Pancho

followed Cesar Chavez

in 'Las Huelgas'

You always said you were Comanche

but you were more Mexican

the tortillas you made us from scratch

the beans and rice we could never

reproduce

I never learned to cook like you

like a Mexican

'los recipes si murieron'

I remember you best before you passed

the gray tangle of thick hair to your

shoulder

so beautiful more than 'mi abuelita'

my Mama Tana

Every time you saw me

with the sweetest twinkle

inside the lightest brown eyes

you poured your already wrinkled brown hands

into my unwrinkled brown ones

to put a few dollars in my

palms for a soda when I had no money

the things life won't let you forget

as if to say, "No me olvidas."

Momma's best friend as you would drink

coffee together in 'las mananas'

'un cafecito' you used to say

with a 'panecito'

'con los moyetes'

When momma had Mia

at 41, you loved that baby

she belonged to you

and grandpa

the grandpa I knew

the gardener you married

years ago when you were the maid

before momma married daddy

If you had a papoose

she would have been strapped to your

back

carrying this child everywhere

your granddaughter by birth

but oh so much more

Mia inhabited the deepest sacred space

where the heart breathes

and love heals the cracks

that time created

where Jesus lives

Before she turned 5, Mama Tana

you died, reclining on the sofa

you told momma you felt

"lousy" it was

the defective pacemaker

like a 'grito' gave up

you were where I left you

with the pillow I put behind

your head

I had to rush off for what?

to see a man, I suppose

years later I only remember

I abandoned you

the last weeks of your life

I slept beside you taking care

of you

listening to the pacemaker, like

angry mice scurrying inside your chest

I feared would burst inside

It was my humbling honor

when you chose me

to stay in the thrailer

and be your care-taker

trusting me and I

'tenderly washing your grey hair'

'tenderly washing your grey hair'

as I glimpsed your rounded back sitting in a

chair to the bedroom

in my 20's still yawning so unlike a woman

inside the comfort of dreams

I never realized

you wrote your scriptures so faithfully

in illegible cursive

I kept your Bible

and the prayers you whispered

as you were silent, locked in God's

sweet embrace

we found momma sitting on the streets

the day you died

with the vacant eyes, shattered

"trastornada"

we are a little deranged without you

and when momma passes on to Jesus

and you my soul will suffer

as well

the way momma suffered

she mourned on that street curb'

for many years

momma visits your grave quietly with a

prayer

and tears I try not to look at

Mama Tana you would have been 100

now 107

with 13 grandchildren and 33 grandchildren

one of them my own

and 8 great great grandchildren

The power of your voice still calls me

I still hear you and feel you

in the echoes of my thoughts

your indomitable spirit a resounding

corrido

every time momma remembers

being your daughter

and I remember being your

granddaughter

(written August 28, 2018, taken from My Mother Knew and other poems by Matty B. Duran for sale on Amazon.com)