My mother, Corita Pozos, was born María del Socorro Bonilla Castro in Ventura, on the southern California coast, in 1919. She was the child of Mexican immigrants and named for our Lady of Perpetual Help. Her life was like a novel in many ways. My mother, her sisters, and her brother were accomplished storytellers in a family of storytellers, in the Latin American literary tradition of magical realism in which truth is found in the narrative of this dimension and others.
The term historia in Spanish is often used in the sense of stories, whether fiction, non-fiction or a blend of both. My fictionalized family are the Mirasoles - the Sunflowers. Although Mirasol - the one looking at the sun - is feminine - la mirasol, I have used Los Mirasoles since that is how you refer to families in Spanish. Some say that mirasol is a contraction of Maria de la Soledad - Our Lady of Solitude.
In these historias, I have taken all of the liberties of my family tradition of storytelling, which is to tread lightly on the truth and to step firmly on gossamer. I have focused more on the women and their stories, not so much that women can be overlooked but because these women could not be overlooked any more than forces of nature can be glossed over. My legions of cousins can rightly criticize my fictionalized portraits of their mothers, grandmothers, and great grandmothers, but these women were much more than they let on. While my own mother might dispute the facts, I am also convinced that she would see what she imparted to me as a version of the Romances of our heritage.
A romance (Roh-man-say) is not a romance novel in our American sense of the term or necessarily of stories of human love. The term originally refers to stories translated from Latin (Roman). They are stories and ballads of chivalry from Spain. In Mexico the romance, perhaps influenced by Aztec poetry, became el corrido in the early 19th century and became the centerpiece of Mexican music in the early 20th century during the Mexican Revolution. Corridos are fast-paced poetic ballads - correr means to run - that convey stories of heroic people or events. However my stories are a romance - El Romance de los Mirasoles.
My great grandmother, María Muñoz de Bonilla, was a tobacco farmer in the late 19th century who was a devout woman given to bouts of colorful and creative profanity. She would preside at wakes and sometimes funerals out in the countryside when distance and circumstances did not permit families to get to church. María was in demand for the all-night vigil - el velorio. She came on her horse across the highlands of Guanajuato with her prayer book, rosary, whisky, and her commercially grown tobacco. The deceased was in the center of a small house or hovel. María would lead the rosary and say the prayers for the dead. As they prepared to keep vigil until sunrise, the family would serve strong black coffee. María would pass out shots and roll cigarettes as she began a night of storytelling of ghosts, unrequited love, and her own fables.
Here begins El Romance de Los Mirasoles
The late afternoon breeze
Al atardecer, that time of the day when the breeze ends the workday, Coyo faced the bay. A slight chill came through her cotton dress. The light floral print dress looked much whiter against her dark brown skin. Her black eyes under her very straight bangs saw the fog prepare for its five o’clock descent on Pierpont Bay, raising scents of warm sand, hot clay, sweet chapparal, and the sharp iodine of kelp. The bright desert light softens and cools al atardecer.
Coyo was never carefree, but she felt a tenseness in the mixing of this day’s salt and sun. Not a new experience, for there were others like it. Feelings, presentimientos, a glimpse of someone’s core, a sense of things to come and things awry were not unknown to her in her 8 years. She inhaled them from her grandmother Muñozita’s stories and flint like intuition. Como si fuera un sueño, it was like a dream perhaps, but the sage had a sharpness, and the fog was more of a mist softening the light into a pale gray.
The nice lady from across the road - la Gringa Simpática they called her - was running across the sugar beet field toward Coyo and looking beyond to Coyo’s mom at the door of their home with a deep anguish. La Simpática came up to Coyo speaking rapidly in English and making frantic gestures, hoping the girl’s limited knowledge of English could bridge the gap between histories, languages, and cultures to convey terrible news. La Simpática had gotten a phone call she mimed and kept saying accident – accidente? - choque? Crash? car – carro – wagon? Auto? Coyo’s mind raced. She ran with la Simpática to the door and saw her mother’s concerned bewilderment. Train – tren? The word hung in the wisps of fog over their heads.
María Abundia Castro de Bonilla was a young woman. She had a newborn little girl, her sixth child and was waiting for her husband Martín to bring her mother Dorotea López from Ventura in his Model A to help for a few days. Coyo’s mind was racing. Train accident? But Papa and Mama Dorotea always came in the car or Papa came on his horse. They didn’t come home on the train. She felt a fog fall on her but it wasn’t the moist salt air. ¿Qué dice? ¿Qué dice? Her mother commanded in bewilderment. Se dice, se dice, Coyo stammered, algo de accidente con el auto o un tren – something about an accident with a car or a train. Maybe a car and a train?
There was a pause and the eyes of the two women looked up from little Coyo and met in anguish and disbelief. María Abundia’s soft alabaster face was framed by her light hair lifted gently in strands by the breeze of al atardecer. Her green eyes were flecked with alarm and incomprehension. La Simpática was talking and gesturing again with more urgency. Come, come. You have to go. ¿Ven, ven? Go? Where, When, How? María Abundia looked down at her daughter in puzzlement.
Dice la Simpática que tenemos que ir. ¿Para qué? Why? What’s this about? Coyo began to see her mother’s delicate form, her fine bones, slender shape, and beautiful head beginning to waiver and Coyo’s broad and dark eight-year-old child’s arms hugged her mother into sitting on the ground before she could fall, overwhelmed with fear and grief.
Coyo’s sisters and little Martín peered anxiously out the door. Mercedes, the oldest, tall and pretty at 12 came out. Mamá. ¿Ay Mamá que pasó? She looked at la Simpática. Mrs Wilkes what happened? Mercedes, let’s get your mom into the house. There’s been an accident, a terrible accident.