Late in her fifteenth year, when it was noticeable that Concha Rosales was beginning to get her growth, she saw the man she called tio slap the woman she believed to be her aunt hard enough to knock the woman down. Concha threw herself in front of her tia and got hit too. Her uncle swore at her for getting in the way, making him strike her, too. But Concha had grabbed a split piece of log and stood in front of Chela Rosales with that hefty piece of kindling raised, ready to hit back. The man, Guicho Rosales, was astonished: This strange girl that everyone in the Rosales extended family had taken in was threatening him with a guage limb large enough that he was surprised Concha could heft it. And just because he’d hit his wife. Guicho didn’t consider such a thing any of Concha’s business, except as a warning.
Mexican women were still considered expendable beings in the early 1960s If not that, then they certainly were considered subordinate in every way to men, most particularly husbands and fathers.
Concha, as an infant, was the only survivor of a rattling, home-made bus that had gone off a narrow mountainside dirt road. Its tumbling, twisting venture into the morning fog killed everyone else. Concha didn’t know this. But among the the Rosales family and its many branches, it was believed that the infant Concha’s fall through space, and explosive landing that tore the bus to pieces, accounted for her “peculiar” behavior. She was a loving child...except for certain moments that no one understood.
From an early age she had learned a fledgling housekeeper’s duties with swift concentration. Yet it was livestock, the corral, the potril (horset pasture), and even that hard chore, stringing and repairing the ranch’s fencing — a stone base that shored up posts supporting barbed wire laced with long-spined huisache branches — that drew her attention. “She must have landed on her head,” said other Rosales children, along with not a few adults.
Another peculiarity was the fierceness of her anger when she sensed she was being treated poorly simply because she was a female and a child. Many people thought this orphan — which meant she was nobody in the world--harbored too much pride in her heart. Yet Concha could be found cleaning sloppy manure out of the family’s barns, or alone digging post holes, or up before everyone else, hand grinding lime-soaked corn for the family’s morning desayuno — all without being told. Certainly, this odd mix of behavior made her a puzzle.Though I had been aware of her because of comments regarding such habits earlier, I didn’t get to know her until she was in her fifteenth year, and we often rode fence together when I visited Chema Rosales and his family. Perhaps she seemed to talk more freely because I was a gringo — and occupied no significant space in her world. That, and maybe because I was always bringing her books to make up for the nearby school, which was worse than inadequate. Later, she said it was really because of that, and because I was often seen scribbling in shirt-pocket note pads I always carried. She knew I was writing down stories I saw and heard. Yet she also knew, she told me later, that I never repeated gossip, even though I was told a lot of “secrets.”
I was wary: A gringo getting chummy with a fifteen-year-old daughter of a family I counted as good friends? Shoots of suspicion and resentment could become thick as weeds. So I asked Chema. He shook his head. “Pos, it’s true a gringo would be dumb enough to do something that stupid. But, overall, I don’t believe you are mamon (jerk) enough to consider us just a bunch of dumb indians.” He spoke about respect and trust.
The morning Guicho struck both his wife and Concha, the fifteen year-old girl stepped toward him, her features sharp and hard. When he tried to grab the split piece of guage log, she hit him a cracking blow across his forearm. The blow not only hurt like hell, but it numbed his right arm so that Guicho couldn’t raise it. He swore at her, calling her obscene names. His wife, stunned at seeing Concha aggressively defend her against Guicho, slapped the man she loved. “Don’t you call her that, pendejo.” A revolution in his own house. Even later, Guicho couldn’t believe it. Also he hadn’t even raised his strong right arm to throughly punish these two females making a fool of him.
This was when many village houses along Lake Chapala had no municipal water service. They used communal pilas (fountains), or private, hand-dug wells. Central “fountains” were placed strategically by the government to serve each barrio. Women came to them carrying on their heads large red-clay cantaras. Their menfolk criticized them for lingering at pilas to share gossip, most of it scandalous, frittering away time, instead of completing household duties. Relationships between men and women were marked by a hangover of conquistador habit that also held that women and children should speak only when spoken to, usually by men.
This was a hazy historical dream formed by both the Spanish invaders and aboriginal Mexicans, especially the Mejicas. A woman was a mystery, “an enigmatic figure,” that both attracts and is, ultimately unknown, “the living symbol of the strangeness of the universe...,” wrote Octavio Paz, Mexico’s genius of cultural examination. “What does (a woman) think? he wrote in his unparalleled text, “The Labyrinth of Solitude.” “Is she the same as we are?” Therein resided the mistrust and edginess regarding women.
The poorly educated majority of Mexico’s population would have reacted with confusion and suspicion if introduced to the implications of Paz’s words at that time. Yet some women sensed his findings without hearing of his writing.
Some curanderas half disguised their own findings among esoteric mixtures of wild animals and weeds and their juices — which more often than not worked, benefitting modern medicine. Curanderos were accused of casting deadly spells and deadly ideas. Already some neighbors spoke of Concha’s “alarming” ways. A daughter of the devil, someone called her. What some girls heard of Concha’s “power” prompted them to scoff at it. Concha certainly did. That and her reputation for hard work and frequent self-mockery drained much gossip away.
Shortly after this, Concha, out bringing in milks cows from pasture, saw a young man driving off two Rosales calves. He didn’t notice her until she was already close. Abruptly, he kicked his horse into a dead run toward the hole he’d made in a pasture fence. But the rustler’s mount, amid grass-covered rocks and boulders, hit rock and went head over butt. Concha herded the calves back into the pasture, fixed the fence with her wire cutters. She yelled at the novice rustler but he didn’t answer. His horse was grazing nearby. The 17-18 year-old was out cold. Concha tied his mount to a fence post, looped the boy’s lariat from his crotch to his arms and hoisted him up and tied him to his saddle.
The Rosales house was empty. Members of the family had gone bargaining for cheap feed for livestock when the dry season is at its worst, from late April until mid- or late June. She dragged the calf thief onto the terraza, trying various ways to wake him up. Nothing worked. She got out a book of short stories someone had loaned her. Carefully, she went to work, following how the story’s protagonist saved the life of a young man, thrown from his horse, who was unconscious.
The kid on the terraza was still breathing, but barely. The problem was getting blood flow from his head down into the rest of his body, boosting the efficiency of his heart. She put heated stones against of soles of his feet, hot compresses on his bare body. She opened a locked metal ice box, and applied chopped ice to the kid’s head, top and back. She pounded hard on his chest above the heart, slapped the inside of his wrists to get his pulse going. She tried artificial respiration. She got some ammonia, rubbed it under his nose. Using her father’s best aguardiente, she poured several large spoonfuls down his throat. Finally, the mirror from her room showed a more visible mist of breath.
People were sure this “miracle” made her a bruja for sure, at least a talented currandera, Concha said that was craziness. “I just read a book. It was a real good one.”