THE INHERITANCE
When standing tall, Consuela’s cowlick reaches the tip of a burro’s ear. She’s shaped more like a penguin, than a pencil. She’s apparently over-enchilada’d. She waddles. She’s 31 years old and about to have a change of fortune.
The sad/happy tale that I’m about to tell began at about the time Consuela took a housecleaning job in the Gringo part of town. We bumped into one another at the open market as I watched her pinch and poke, with the finesse of a natural born chicken connoisseur, until the perfect bird came along. I then picked up a lump with its head dangling, smiled sweetly and asked, in my goofy Spanish, “Fresh, senora?” Consuela knew a stupid Gringa when she saw one, and shook her head in an unmistakable, “No! Eek, no! Idiota!”
She proceeded to pinch and poke, clearly a master chick-picker, waved one in front of my face and with a flair, signaled the vendor to wrap it up, showing off her superior skills and my ignorance. With my dinner tucked into a plaid plastic sack, Consuela and I walked as far as Calle Correos together. She insisted on carrying my sack upstairs to the kitchen before she waddled on to her domain: the barrio where Gringos are rarely seen.
That’s how our friendship began. Now she cooks chicken soup for me once a week. It keeps me alive; I'm perpetually on the brink of bankruptcy. I pay her in pesos--and chicken soup. I’ve picked up a little more Spanish. She has learned the English words “two dollars.”
##
For many years, inside the walls that surround a courtyard heaped with useless collectibles of the hopelessly poor, Consuela has been caring for her ninety-year-old father. The three windowless rooms of the adobe slum are separated by paths strewn with trash, weeds and the muck of a mangy mongrel. Consuela has coaxed from the lazy soil one scrawny orange tree, a few herbs, and a jalapeno plant. Somewhere in that courtyard there must be an excuse for a toilet but, in my three visits, I haven’t sought it out.
A tin tub sits on the dirt floor of a cave-like room adjacent to the gravelly walkway. This is where Consuela bathes, and washes the necessities of her simple life. She hauls water from the communal fountain. The only light in her bedroom, other than candles, which she prays over, comes through the open door. It remains open because to close it would mean the rusted hinges would fall off. The room is otherwise lit with brightly colored, sequined pictures of the Virgin Mary, and several versions of Jesus carrying the cross.
Behind a battered green door, in the corner of the dark and dank kitchen/bedroom, Senor Suarez lies on a straw mattress atop a wood slab. He has been gasping his last breath, second by second, for two years. He is deeply wrinkled, gray and sunken-cheeked, with bulging eyes. With Consuela’s help, he manages to dangle his legs over the side of the bed, supporting his elbows on bony knees, his half dead head in his hands like a cup askew on a saucer. He slurps spoon-fed soup, and scoops bits of tortilla on his extended tongue while uttering unintelligible sounds. I want to turn my head and run but how can I? Consuela has asked me to her home so I can see first-hand the misery of her existence.
Well, the other day Consuela comes knocking on my door, tears streaming. I barely grasp what she’s blurting out between sobs; my Spanish stinks but what she’s about to tell me is expected, so I can make some sense of it.
“I don’t know what to do, Senora.”
“What’s wrong?” I ask, as if I don’t know. Her father is all she has in the world, and he’s certain to be leaving it soon.
“The doctor, he is with my father now. He is dying, Senora. The undertaker is on the way.” She breaks down. “And the priest…”
I hold the sobbing woman in my arms and cry with her for 15 minutes, trying to absorb the shock of her loss as best I can. In her hour of grief she confides that her brother is threatening to boot her out of the adobe slum because only the son, not the lowly daughter, is worthy of the Suarez inheritance: the squatter‘s plot on the outskirts of this once desolate town. I comfort her and we wail longer and stronger. When we’re all wept out, I ask Consuela if her father had signed any papers regarding the property.
“I have never heard of such a thing, Senora.”
I explain that she should have seen a lawyer; there’s one next to the post office.
“The house should be yours, Consuela. You have devoted your life…”
“Si senora, it is true . (sob sob) Papa has lived on the land almost all of his life and I have cared for him since I was only sixteen. But it is too late. My brother, he is very mean to me. What am I going to do? I'm so afraid.”
Poor, unmarried Consuela. My heart goes out to her. I have visions of smuggling her over the border if only to cook chicken soup but such an act of compassion would get me into a heap of trouble. I’ll make my own chicken soup.
“Never mind, Consuela, we’ll think of something,” I say, and the dear woman smiles at me as if I’m Mother Teresa.
Two days later she’s standing at my door, crying again. At the sight of her I feel guilty because I‘m not Mother Teresa.
“What now, Consuela?” This time it’s the dog, I figure. What else is left?
“My father, he is dead, Senora.”
“What’s come over you? I know he’s dead. You told me so the other day.”
“But, Senora, he wasn’t dead then. The doctor, he made a mistake. Papa was still breathing so the undertaker didn’t take him. He died for sure an hour ago.”
“For sure?”
“For sure. An hour ago. He stopped breathing. The undertaker is coming.”
Consuela senses my skepticism and repeats, “This time for sure, Senora.”
Grieving is a drag. I’m not going through it again, so I say, “Be glad it’s over, Consuela…stop it! If you must cry, you’re on your own.”
One sob scene per nonagenarian is enough. Better her padre is in the process of reincarnating than that she has to watch him die, day by day, in that dungeon she calls home. It can’t be anything I’ve said, but Consuela’s eyes gradually light up and the corners of her mouth turn into a devilish smile. Am I being overly intuitive, or is she bursting to tell me a secret?
“Ok, out with it,” I say. “There’s something on your mind, I can tell.”
She sniffles through her grin which means her mourning has come to an end but what’s behind this sudden change? I hand her a tissue.
“Everything is all right now,” she says. Sniffle. Smile.
“What do you mean, all right? Your rotten brother is heaving you out of the only home you have ever known and everything is all right?!”
She breaks out in a big grin. What’s going on here?
“On Tuesday, when I got home and saw my father is still breathing, I remembered what you said, Senora. I ran right to the lawyer as fast as I could…next to the post office. He gave me a paper and told me Papa must sign. Right away. Before he dies. So I ran home and Papa signed. He was still breathing, Senora.”
“Great, Consuela…so he’s still breathing, but can he write his name?”
“He made a sign like this.” She crosses the air.
“Xs are better than squares,” I say. “So when’s the funeral?”
“I don’t have money for a funeral, Senora.”
“Well, what are you going to do with the body?” I ask, which must have struck her funny because she ponders the question for a few seconds and says, so help me.
“Maybe the mayor would like to have it.”
She laughs at her own wisecrack, so what can I do but go along with the comic relief?
“You can give him to the undertaker as a gift…when's his birthday?” I say.
“How about if I dump him over the wall and let the neighbors worry about it?” she says. I know you’re not believing a word of this, but “so help me” again.
By now she’s holding her crouch with laughter, and I’m relieved because I don’t have to go through the dirge routine again. Now that her father has signed the paper, she owns that hovel and her brother can go bark up a jacaranda.
“I must hurry, Senora. I’m late for work,” she says, when she finally catches her breath.
“Since when does late mean anything in San Miguel? Come…I’ll buy you lunch. You look sick.”
Truth is, she looks better than I have ever seen her, which is still sick.
At the corner café, Consuela takes in every detail of the unadorned walls, as fascinated as a redneck at the Taj Majal. She timidly sits beside me at the counter. I order a bean and beef burrito for each of us. She wiggles as if she has nettles in her bloomers.
“Something bothering you, Consuela?”
“I’ve never been in a restaurant before, Senora.”
“Are you kidding? Are you kidding?” I say, before it occurs to me that there’s no reason why she should have been. Who cared enough to take her and who would pay?
“So enjoy yourself, my friend. This is a big day in your life.”
Consuela is still fidgeting when our meal is set before us.
“What’s wrong this time?” I ask.
Her eyes are welling up. Lord, spare me this.
“Oh, Senora, my father, he would like half a beef burrito from a restaurant.”
“I bet he would, Consuela. But only if he were still breathing. For God sakes, eat!”
