Grandma comes to Taos
Chapter two: Waiting for this time to be different
Recap Chapter 1: Marcela’s grandmother, Ramona, who had settled in Miami after leaving Cuba, is coming to Taos, maybe to live there permanently. But she has never gotten along with her daughter. Will things be better this time around?
Marcela woke up at dawn and stayed for a while looking at the Sangre de Cristo Mountains from her bedroom window. “When you come to Taos, the mountains either welcome you or spit you out,” Feloniz had once told her. “They test you out, and in five years you know if you belong.”
Marcela’s family had passed the test. They had lived in Taos for six years. It was their home in a way Albuquerque had never been. They loved everything there, from the esoteric little shops to the restaurants that served the best chile verde in the world. Would the mountains welcome Ramona? Her grandma, let’s face it, had a reputation of being difficult. A few months after their arrival in Miami, Ramona’s husband had left her. “He’s gone,” Marcela heard her mother say. At first she thought that the guy was dead. Later she understood that he was well and alive, but not in Miami and with a different woman, a former partner that he had gone back to.
“No wonder,” Ana Cecilia muttered, but she didn’t say why.
After that, Ramona started calling often and her relationship with Ana Cecilia improved, at least over the phone. They didn’t yell or hang up on each other more than two or three times over the course of 10 months. Ana Cecilia had visited Ramona in Miami, by herself, and reported that the visit had been “OK.”
Now it was Ramona’s turn to
visit. In a matter of hours, she would be in Taos.
Marcela was a little scared, but also excited. It would be so much fun having a grandma around! The only thing that bothered her was missing her monthly Turquoise Tea Club meeting that day. This was a girl-only association created by the owner of the Turquoise Teapot, a local teahouse, “to spread the love of tea and good manners” among the younger generation of Taoseñas. Once a year they all went to the Saint James Tearoom in Albuquerque for a two-hour workshop on the subtleties of high afternoon tea.
Marcela loved the club. She had never skipped a meeting before. She was also sure that her parents wouldn’t have insisted that she accompany them to the Albuquerque airport if she didn’t feel like it. Before she went to bed, Ana Cecilia had asked her, “Are you coming with us?” her tone signaling that “no” would be an acceptable answer.
But Marcela said “yes.” She wanted to hug and kiss her grandmother, to give her an enthusiastic welcome. Later she would pepper her with questions about Cuba —her mother didn’t like to talk about the island. She would also get a good, unique recipe for Miss Gutiz’s final project. And then, Ramona’s Cubanness might rub off on her. Marcela took after her father — a quiet, blond man from Indiana who didn’t speak Spanish despite having been married to Ana Cecilia for 15 years. Her parents were an unlikely pair, Marcela thought, but got along well. They both worked at Holy Cross Hospital — she was a pharmacist and he was an X-ray technician. They didn’t argue about money, excessive drinking or affairs, like other parents did — Feloniz’s, for example. A grandmother would complete their family. How could Marcela not welcome her?
As they drove down Blueberry Hill Road, Marcela saw the mountains in the rearview mirror and silently asked them to give Ramona their blessing.
The connecting flight from Houston was delayed by two hours, which made Marcela nervous. What if her grandma got lost in that big airport where you had to take trains to go from one terminal to another?
When passengers finally started walking through the glass revolving doors, the girl could barely contain her excitement. But would she recognize Ramona? She remembered the way her grandma sounded better than the way she looked like. During that ill-fated night when Ana Cecilia and her mother screamed at each other like deranged telenovela characters, Ramona’s loud, shrill voice had filled the Miami apartment, reverberating on the walls. That was the girl’s most vivid memory of her grandma.
A round-shouldered woman with grayish hair and the walk of a wounded duck approached, dragging a battered green suitcase behind her. Marcela got out of the way, waiting for the old lady to pass by, but Ana Cecilia ran to meet her. They hugged each other awkwardly while Marcela stood motionless by her father.
The woman exuded a mix of weakness and defiance. She had a strong, determined expression, but kept her thin arms bent at the elbows as if afraid of falling or being attacked. Marcela said shyly, “Buenas tardes, abuela.”
Ramona fixed her small brown eyes on her and replied in Spanish, “Don’t you give your grandmother a kiss?”
Her voice broke up when she said “beso,” kiss. It sounded foreign, in all the senses of the word.
Marcela didn’t know what to do. Suddenly she didn’t feel like kissing her. It felt more like an obligation. Her father saved the situation by saying, as he picked up Ramona’s suitcase, “Let’s get going. I don’t want to drive in the canyon after dark.”
The Spanish version of this story is on Page C4.