Song of the Mockingbird: My Journey with Josefina

I tell Josefina I’d love to see the memory book, and she jumps up and scurries from the room. When she comes back, she’s holding a little book with soft, brown leather covers. I gently turn the pages while she looks over my shoulder. There are little drawings, handwritten poems, and quotes. I think about how heart-wrenching it must be for the girls to lose their mother. Josefina points to a few lines written in careful script. It’s a song Mamá used to sing to Josefina when she was a baby. She sings softly:

  Sleep, my beautiful baby,
  Sleep, my grain of gold.
  The night is very cold.
  The night is very cold.

She pauses, her face lit up by firelight. I smile because I sense her amazement. She doesn’t have a picture of her mother, but she has these words. Clara says she remembers the song, too. They’d all listen when Mamá sang it to Josefina in her cradle. Francisca’s eyes are shining. She remembers, too. My own throat aches as I look at the sisters’ faces. I’ve left behind a city I loved, but the people I love are still with me. You can replace a home, but not the people you love.

Josefina asks if I can draw what my home was like. Tía Dolores flips through the pages and pulls out the last page, which has an ink stain on it. She hands it to me. From the way they’re acting, I’m guessing that paper is pretty rare around here, also. Josefina hands me a big feather with most of the feathery part stripped off. The end is sharpened into a point, and she places a jar of ink beside me.