Song of the Mockingbird: My Journey with Josefina

I hope that someday I do get to meet Tía Magdalena, but right now I’d love to join the fandango preparation. Tía Dolores waves us to Señor Sanchez’s and heads for another house nearby. Voices call out as we stand in the doorway. The house is buzzing with activity. Girls are hanging ristras of dried peppers, women are peeling onions and squash, and others are making tortillas on a flat iron griddle over coals. I follow Josefina around the room as she greets each woman. They smile at us and the older ones pat our cheeks. It feels like a family reunion.

A comfortable-looking, older looking woman muscles over to us, her apron dusted with flour. She says she is so glad Josefina and her sisters are here. Josefina introduces me to Señora Sanchez and tells her my story. Her eyes are tender and she catches my hand. She says she’s so glad I’ve returned. She asks Josefina and me to watch the young children while the older children work with her.

I love babysitting. Back home in Chicago, I’d watch our upstairs neighbors’ kids before we moved. Josefina and I move a little boy and girl, named Luisa and Felipe, into the corner. There, a little baby named Mateo lies on a platform lined with sheepskins. It hangs from the ceiling with ropes. I coo and lean over him. The other two children run around our legs, tugging on our skirts. Josefina says we will play with them. I lift Mateo from the cradle and hold his heavy little body close to my chest. I hum him my mockingbird tune. Felipe clutches a wooden horse and Luisa has a rag doll, with a lovely little dress and tiny braids.

Josefina sits on the floor with the children and claps a game with them, going faster and faster until they scream with laughter. It reminds me of the clapping games we used to play on the bus going to school field trips. I watch them, jiggling the baby as he slurps on my fingers.

When they’re done, Josefina says that she’ll tell them a story. The children lay their heads on her lap and I sit down and hold the baby in mine so he can listen, too. Josefina tells them a story called La Jornada del Muerto. She says it’s about the trading caravans that travel for months across mountains and desert to bring wonderful things from Mexico City. The desert is hot and dry. Men die out there. The children are perfectly still, their large eyes shining. I’m still, too. Even the baby seems to be listening.

Josefina explains that one stretch of desert has been especially terrible to traders. It has no water, and some call the trail that runs through it the “Route of the Dead Man.” Her eyes widen dramatically. Josefina says the first Spanish settlers crossed the desert a long time ago. They drank just a little bit of the water they brought to save it. But they became so hot and thirsty that they drank a little more. And a little more. And by the second day, they had only enough water left to moisten their tongues. They thought they would die. But they had a little pup with them. Each day, the pup would range ahead of them to see what he could see. At sundown, he would come back to camp. But on the second day, he had mud on his paws. The settlers looked at each other with hope. If there’s mud, there’s water.

So, with the last of their strength, they followed the pup to a hidden spring deep in the desert. They drank the water to save their lives, and it allowed them to continue on their journey. From then on, that spring has been called Los Charcos del Perillo, so the people always remember him. That means the Pools of the Little Dog. What a good name, I think.

After the story, Josefina instructs the children to play quietly with their toys. I tell Josefina that I loved her story. She’s very good with children. Josefina smiles and holds out her arms for Mateo. She says she learned the story from her mamá. All she has to do is close her eyes and she can hear her mother telling it. I pass the baby to Josefina and let my eyes wander around the room. The women are talking together as they work. Their laughs are low, familiar ones, like the ones between people who have known each other their whole life.

Josefina sits peacefully, rocking the baby and humming. She looks content and comfortable, surrounded by the people who love her. I swallow and pretend to fold Luisa’s handkerchief. I see myself walking through the crowded halls at school, alone and sitting solitary on my rock outside the house. People are around me all the time, but I feel so alone. I wish I could bottle some of what Josefina has here and take it back to my own time with me.