We were at work on the steep roof of the templo of Las Guayabas, a minute pueblo where my friend Chema Rosales‘ grandfather had been born.
The church had been burned down many times, beginning with President Benito Juarez’s War of Reform (1858-1861), ending with the Jalisco-centered Cristero Rebellion (1926-1929). Generations of townspeople had the habit of rebuilding cheaply, hurriedly, expecting the worst to come. Even now the reddish curved clay tiles were poorly made, the lamina (rippled tar paper) beneath them was thin, ragged.
On the steeply slanted roof, we moved heedfully, stepping only on the hand hewn wooden roof beams – careful not to mistake the tempting new or replaced used lamina for solid footing.
Chema’s foster daughter, 16-year-old Concha, was working with us. Below, adeptly throwing tight unbound stacks of six tile, then of four lamina up to us was her uncle, Chema’s oldest brother, Anselmo.
Concha was supposed to be in school. A government official had come out with a warning – three times. Concha, after passing her most disliked class, mathematics, hit a wall – again. The first time had been with reading. There, too, she was doing well. Then suddenly she ran into some invisible obstacle. No one understood it, certainly not the carelessly educated teachers assigned to a tiny campo school. Concha, believing that with math she had dodged all walls, was bitter about her failure.
But she wasn’t a failure on the church roof. She was quiet, watchful, deft. When Selmo called to his son, Lalo, Concha’s cousin and sometime tormenter, to join them, the 19-year-old jumped onto the ladder grimly. “It’s hot up here. Jesus Cristo, this roof is a mess. That padre should keep it in better condition than this.” Everyone kept working. Lalo began yanking up old lamina recklessly and throwing the pieces over the side.“Save all the old ones that can be used again,” Chema said.
Lalo grunted, stretched to reach a lamina at the crest of the roof with the claws of his hammer.
“Lalo.” Concha squinted in the pouring sea of sunlight. “Use another cleat.”
“Be quiet, niñita.” Lalo stretched out, hammer clawing at a lamina bent over the roof’s crest. Then his left huarache twisted sideways under his bent weight. He came rolling down sideways like a log. Concha stepped to the next cleat, into the path of Lalo’s rolling body. He shouted in fear. Stabbing the sharp end of a gringo crowbar in front of her right leg braced on a wooden viga. Leaning forward, she reached out to grab him as he bounced into her. His body hit her 16-year-old muscles, knocking her back a step. But with her left hand caught his belt. His rolling torso skidded to a splayed stop.
Releasing loud breath, Concha gave him a peeved adult-like look. “Don’t leave now, niñito. You just got here.” Everyone but Lalo laughed.
Chema, sliding down to them, shook his head. She’d never let Lalo forget this stupid display. Selma grabbed his son, making sure he wasn’t hurt, then led him down the ladder.
Concha returned to easing apart old laminas, stuck together where they overlapped.
“Bien hecho,” Chema said, touching her bent shoulder. He smiled. “Well done. He would have gone right off if you hadn’t done that.” He looked over the edge at a peaked pile of brick and tile pieces below. “He would have a broken bone or two. Worse if he’d landed on his head.”
“His head is harder than these old bricks,” she said.
“He doesn’t like you, eh?
“Some. Not much.”
“Why do you think that is?” Chema asked to see whether her watching was doing her any good.
“He’s 19.” She shrugged, adding another lamina to her stack. “A boy, but older, stronger.” Then to let Chema – and me – -know she realized what Chema was asking, she stood silently in the vast bath of sun, sorting the right words. Her face looked younger than sixteen, but her body’s posture seemed older – a foot braced on a cleat, her uphill foot dug into the debris of ruined laminas, bits of broken tile, a hammer in one hand, a rusted crowbar I’d loaned her in the other. “But he is not smarter.” She squinted at us, “He’s not a listener. He’ll never be a watcher.”
Yet that was the beginning of a sudden friendship between the two teenagers. They were together so much that Lupe Rosales, who knew puberty was pounding at Concha’s body, soon took her to Doña Caridad, La Bruja. That was for the sage old woman’s short version how to keep from getting pregnant, what to do if unwanted pregnancy occurred. Later, uneasily, embarrassed, Concha clenched her fists and said she blushed all through that lecture, wondering how the two women knew what Lalo was pressing her to do. “Pos, they didn’t need to do that. I knew all about that years ago. Everybody gossips about those things.”
“La Bruja, your family just want to keep you safe ... Until you find the person you love. Some girls, as the chismes tell you, play quick games with the wrong boy, or man. And the hopes for what they want their lives to be are destroyed.”
That was before condoms were sold openly, before the pill came to Mexico.
Sometime later, she disclosed that Lalo wanted to take her into the mountains. An ancient tradition. Young men would “rob” a girl, and they’d go into the mountains together, perhaps just over night, some times longer. From that time the girl, clearly no longer a virgin, had to marry the boy. Seems odd today. Lalo also wanted to take her to the United States. “We would work and make a lot of money,” he told me. “Get an apartment, buy gringo clothes, a car.” Lalo’s dream of paradise. Concha shook her head. “Lalo is muy decarado, no?” Yes, Lalo was brazen; her reading was showing. “He likes ... fantasias. Going to Estados Unidos together?” She shook her head.
“Was that a close call?”
“No. What I liked was that he stopped strutting and being a bully for a while.” Concha frowned and smiled at the same time. “Then, he went loco.” She peered at me. Inspector Concha. “Were you like that when you were his age?
“No, even before that age, I was waiting.”
“What for?”
“To escape. My parents and I always lived in different worlds.”
“Was it a close call?
“No, it was a good call. It was the first step in many that got me to Mexico.”
We were sitting on the corral fence. She reached over and punched me on the shoulder. A gringo habit she’d adopted. “Que bueno.”